Hirlaji will be wiped out. The men here are already talking … they’re afraid of them.”

“Why? The Hirlaji are harmless.”

“Because of their size, and because we don’t know anything about them. Because they’re intelligent—any uneducated man is afraid of intelligence, and when it’s an alien….” He shook his head. “Manning isn’t helping the situation.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mara asked.

Malhomme’s frown deepened, creasing the dark lines of his forehead into furrows. “He’s using the Hirlaji as bogey-men. Says he’s the only man on the planet who knows how to deal with them safely. Oh, you should hear him when he moves among his people…. I envy his ability to control them with words. A little backslapping, a joke or two—most of them I was telling last year—and he talks to them man to man, very friendly.” He shook his head again. “Manning is so friendly with this scum that his attitude is nothing short of patronizing.”

Rynason smiled wearily at Malhomme; for all the man’s wildness, he couldn’t help liking him. It had been like this every time he had run into him, on a dozen of the Edge-worlds. Malhomme, dirty and cynical, moved among the dregs of the stars preaching religion and fighting the corporations, the opportunists, the phony rebels who wanted nothing for anyone but themselves. He had been known to break heads together with his huge fists, and he had no qualms about stealing or even killing when his anger was aroused. Yet there was a peculiar honesty about him.

“You always have to have a cause, don’t you, Rene?”

The greying giant shrugged. “It makes life interesting, and it makes me feel good sometimes. But I don’t overestimate myself: I’m scum, like the rest of them. The only difference is that I know it; I’m just one man, with no more rights than anyone else, except those I can take.” He held up his large knuckled hands and turned them in front of his face. “I’ve got broken bones in both of them. I wonder if the Buddha or the Christ ever hit a man. The books on religion that are left in the repositories don’t say.”

“Would it make any difference if they hadn’t?” Rynason asked.

“Hell, no! I’m just curious.” Malhomme stood up, hefting his repentance sign in the crook of one big arm. His face again took on its arched look as he said, “My duty calls me elsewhere. But I leave you with a message from the scriptures, and it has 

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