"Not a very funny joke," von Schlichten told her. "It's been played on
us till it's lost its humor."
"Yes, geek ingratitude's an old story to all of us," Blount agreed.
"You stay on this planet very long and you'll see what I mean."
"You call them that, too?" she asked, as though disappointed in him.
"Maybe if you stopped calling them geeks, they wouldn't resent you the
way they do. You know, that's a nasty name; in the First Century
Pre-Atomic, it designated a degraded person who performed some sort of
revolting public exhibition...."
"Biting off live chickens' heads, in a sideshow wild-man act,"
Hideyoshi O'Leary supplied. "When you get up north, watch how the
peasants kill these little things like six-legged iguanas that they
raise for food."
"That isn't the reason, though," von Schlichten said. "As we use it,
the word's pure onomatopoeia. You've learned some of the languages;
you know what they sound like. _Geek-geek-geek._"
"As far as that goes, you know what the geek name for a Terran is?"
Blount asked. "_Suddabit._"
She looked puzzled for a moment, then slipped in her enunciator.
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