Even for them, the offering of humans proved disadvantageous in the long run, as the Aztec example most clearly demonstrates. “What did Moru do with Donli that you might have prevented if you’d arrived in time?”, Fiell continued to look past her. “Remember him.”. Someone from another tribe may well set upon him. “What are you talking about?”. “And what kind of race are they to acquire it? The flesh still needs to delight its wants, while the spirit needs to gravitate toward to God. “—2600 hours.”, Evalyth swallowed around a clump of dryness. “My emotions don’t matter,” she said. And, to be sure, they were not cruel. “Cannibalism was an occasional part of human sacrifice. She could not entirely comprehend the fact that Donli was gone. She could practically feel the heat and dank weight of the atmosphere, smell the unpleasant pungencies. And there was his hand, huge in the field of view, gathering specimens. Therefore it must have some value and the problem is to find what. Evalyth didn’t rise to turn on the light. And anyway, they had been friendly, downright frolicsome after they got over their initial fear of us, and they’d shown as much eagerness for further contact as anybody here in Lokon has, and—” His voice trailed off. “Dung fly—good, yes!”. Aside from what was lost during the Long Night, knowledge is under the handicap that the last primitive societies there vanished before interstellar travel began. He rarely returned in her dreams. He knows why he murdered and butchered a man who trusted him. We are not savages, warring and raiding and skulking to get our man-flesh. “Their wish was to do so,” Evalyth replied. I have just modified one external link on The Sharing of Flesh. We’d have to conquer them, kill most, make sullen prisoners of the rest. The chemical barriers were crumbling. New Dawn herself must be readied, numerous systems recommissioned and tested. At least the tall strangers had demonstrated to their guides what the things that each of them carried at his hip could do in a flash and a flameburst. Moru’s gear consisted of a Ioinstrap, a cord around his body for preparing snares, an obsidian knife, and a knapsack so woven and greased that it could hold liquids at need. Except for prearranged times at morning and evening of the planet’s twenty-eight-hour day, the biologist, like his fellows, sent only to his computer. Rogar sat on a dais in a room opening on a courtyard. The expedition’s linguists had unraveled the language in a few intensive weeks. How can I find him who slew my man?”, Rogar frowned. That was the effect of the psycho-drugs, she knew and damned the kindliness of the medic. “You mean the psychological torture.”, “Yes. He’d never have thought of it unassisted. The clouds were breaking and the moon shone ice-white. But it’s not as if Donli’d been killed in an honest war or feud—or he was slaughtered like a pig. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers Nothing more. But—well, I do know enough about what happened on Old Earth, and elsewhere, when advanced societies undertook to reform primitive ones. From outside the stockade drifted sounds of feet, foreign voices, the whine of a wooden flute. She could scarcely discern the frescos on the walls or the patterns on the carpet; they were crude art anyway. Captain Jonafer objected mildly to this. They couldn’t. “You’re too good a chance, I suppose. They can’t deny me that. The prisoner will be brought to your place privately after dark. The nights were welcome. Did he read judgment in her gaze? (2 Chronicles 32:1-8) An Arm Of Flesh. But, Captain, the personnel of this expedition are from several different planets, each with its characteristic societies. Their fear of the absolutely unknown—Well, Evalyth, I had to stop observing. You will dwell apart from these too many machines and grow up as the gods meant you should. At last he said, out of a stiff face: “The clinical team has finished with the prisoners.”, Somehow it was a shock. Evalyth lowered her sled to a meter off the ground and got to her feet again. Some were sleek household servants. In effect, Atheian flesh is alien here. She scowled at her position indicators, aglow on the control panel. Because naturally the prisoners know they’re in the power of those who hate them with a hate that goes beyond the grave.”, Jonafer paused. She felt a little more tired than usual, a little more peaceful. The business will be scheduled for—” Jonafer glanced at his watch, set to local rotation. The entire structure was destroyed. I love watching the ocean and hearing it’s magical sound. Sharing the Flesh of the World Merleau-Ponty and the Problem of Animal Minds Abstract In this paper I argue that And that is why a lowlander is good at hiding.”, Evalyth did not move or speak. “Information is fragmentary. The coincidence that she was tuned in at that one moment was not great. “Cannibalism could be a form of magic, too. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ was fully human, sharing the same flesh that all mankind has - including the "law of sin and death." Here. Sweat gleamed in droplets on his forehead. Without room for expansion, the island populace must be highly inbred. “I questioned Rogar for more than an hour,” Evalyth replied in the same flat voice, looking out of the same flat eyes as before. Gear must be dismantled, packed, ferried to the ship, and stowed. “You understand that none of us had anything to do with the evil, do you not? Very limited forms of what might be called ceremonial cannibalism have occurred, as for example the drinking of minute amounts of each other’s blood in pledging oath brotherhood among the Falkens of Lochlanna—”, “Never mind that,” Chena said. It was a debased form of Lokonese, which in turn was remotely descended from Anglic. But for the lowlanders it is a powerful evil, a source of perpetual danger, a diversion of effort and resources that are badly needed for survival. Moru must have had some superstitious reason.”, Jonafer nodded. “Nor will the sons of your sons.”, Anxiety tinged his words: “Do you know why I slew your man? As he struggled out of its muck, Evalyth shot the woman. Not that he, or anybody from this part of the galaxy, had yet made it back to the mother world. First Edition . You will not cheat me of my right to obtain justice. Evalyth fought for breath. He stripped Donli, hung him up by the heels from a tree, bled him into that knapsack. Carnal Christianity has emerged from centuries of the church trying to do the impossible: tame the flesh. Suddenly the gloom thickened. The guide looked childish beside the space traveler, barely up to his shoulder; an old child, though, near-naked body seamed with scars and lame in the right foot from some injury of the past, face wizened in a great black bush of hair and beard. “We do not fight wars, save when we are attacked, nor do we hunt our fellowmen as if they were animals. Shrewdly thought, heaven-borne. From time to time, she got glimpses of the broader setting. “Native Atheian biochemistry developed in a manner quite parallel to Earth’s,” said the voice, “and the early colonists had no difficulty in introducing terrestrial species. No reflection on you, but detailed human physiology is out of your line.”, “Um-m-m… yes and no. “My duty does. She shivered. “Understood, Captain,” she said. “I wish you wouldn’t,” Chena said. Evalyth’s palms grew wet. Since she had been let out of sickbay, there had been a kind of numbness in Evalyth. That will teach all the savages to beware of their betters. “The test is more complicated than your computer suggested—but then, it’s for Donli’s kind of skill, not Uden’s. “Think of the result, if we told these people to desist from their puberty rite. Only a few of the expedition stirred among the machines and remaining cabins. [2] College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. “Are you quite certain of your facts, dear?” the anthropologist asked as gently as possible. “But, heaven-borne, your man was slain. One of them. He shivered but met her eyes. Moru did likewise. From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core, "Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Experience: Paul Anderson (Stories M-S)", Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W, https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=The_Sharing_of_Flesh&oldid=713033403, Pages with citations using unsupported parameters, Hugo Award for Best Novelette winning works, Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, About Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core, "Enter a Soldier. It scanned him and Moru while they moved across a meadow. She sighed with pleasure, sat down, and activated the receiver. The single big moon rose nearly full, shortly after sundown. True, the captives had been getting a balanced diet for a change, and medicine had probably eliminated various chronic low-level infections. But she could not look away from the unique scratches and bumps on that square case, as she could not escape his microscope, chemanalyzers, chromosome tracer, biological specimens… She seated herself. It’s designed to help research. Its neurodetector antenna was not aimlessly wobbling, but pointed straight west-northwest, declination thirty-two degrees below horizontal. “Oh, yes, oh yes!” she wanted to cry. They ought to be able to find his body regardless, ought they not? 7 Steps to Crucify Flesh Daily. Her ears buzzed. “It is uncommon and so is not widely known. The Lokonese later elaborated and rationalized the practice. “No, but—Well, be realistic. “I’m no medic.” Jonafer kept his tone altogether colorless. The boys and their mother will be flown to their home area and released tomorrow.”, “Why not today?” Evalyth asked, foreseeing his reply. However, the inhabitants of Lokon were as cooperative with the visitors from heaven as mutual mysteriousness allowed. Lokon lay as hushed as it had lately become. Guards in scarlet robes and grotesquely carved wooden helmets stood always at its gates. I won’t love you the less, darling. It had to be. “No more than required. Are they not fat? “Ya-a-ah!” She couldn’t help the one hawk-yell. We do not mask the truth on Kraken. Chena grimaced. But we did not see any reason to—I mean, Donli was bigger, stronger, armed with a blaster. The savage’s hands were tied behind his back, and the spaceman loomed enormous over him. The fact is that, everywhere in this country, in whatever fashion it may be, the boys undergo a puberty rite that involves eating an adult male.”, Chena bit her lip. Afraid of our revenge, evidently. The lust of the flesh is contrary to the desire to do the will of God. They did establish a few digestive peculiarities—nothing that couldn’t have been predicted on the basis of ambient ecology.”, “Then why have they stopped? He had no hope of killing himself a man except by treachery. She saw him reach with the gentleness she also knew, into the shrub, easing its branches aside. And they did kill Donli.”, “Not they. His deviations from their norm are not extreme. Prayer is a means of communicating with God. “I have to grant that,” he said low. Every instinct and experience assured Evalyth Sairn that their reticence masked nothing except awe, with perhaps a wistful hope of friendship. It was not alone the goods you might someday let us buy, nor that your wise-men talked of ways to end hunger, sickness, danger, and sorrow. Outside, sunlight struck fierce and brass-colored on dusty ground, on prefab shacks huddled about the boat which had brought everyone and everything down from the orbit where New Dawn circled, on the parked flitters and gravsleds that took men around the big island that was the only habitable land on this globe, on the men and the women themselves. But really, Evalyth thought, what possible menace can they be? I ordered the investigation terminated. “Activate!” she ordered. She didn’t see me; her eyes were blind with fear. The dwarfish man squatted, parting a shrub with his hands. I am going to recommend this planet be left alone.”, Evalyth considered her for a moment before asking: “Isn’t that partly because of your own reaction?”, “Yes,” Chena admitted. Often they were virtually unrecognizable; over thousands of years, evolution had fitted them to alien conditions, or mutation and genetic drift had acted on small initial populations in a nearly random fashion. “Be greeted, heaven-borne.” Alone now, shadowed from the cruel sun, they observed a ritual period of silence. Why should they, when they saw their problem as strictly medical? “There’ll be no problem to ending the practice. Although no one feared any longer that the strangers meant harm, she did tower above the tallest man, her hair was colored like metal and her eyes like the sky, she bore lightning at her waist and none knew what other godlike powers. But Donli was gone, and no one else was competent to do his work—to be any part of him, but she fled from that thought and from the thought of what she must presently do. “Isn’t that rather late?”, “On purpose,” he told her. “He cannot go with companions after every kind of game, or the noise and scent would frighten it away. “I cannot overcome my disgust. Yes, the notion is true.”. How cool and dim the shack was! The air was growing cold—the planet spinning toward an autumn—and a small wind had arisen to whimper behind the dust devils that stirred across the earth. She saw him kneel in the long, ill-colored vegetation. Rings rattled along the rod. In addition, she kept up the routines of defense in the compound. 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