"Not so odd," the Captain said. "The Amish pretty much invented American
agriculture, you know. They've developed the finest low-energy farming
there is. Clover-growing, crop-rotation, using animal manures, those are
their inventions. Aaron, by his example, will teach the natives here
Pennsylvania farming. Before you can say Tom Malthus, there'll be steel
cities in this wilderness, filled with citizens eager to open charge
accounts for low-gravs and stereo sets."

"You expect our bearded friend to reap quite a harvest, Captain," the
Engineer said. "I just hope the natives here let him plant the seed."

"Did you get along with him, Hymie?"

"Sure," the Engineer said. "Aaron even made our smiths, those human
sharks bound for Qureysh, act friendly. For all his strange ways, he's a
nice guy."

"Nice guy, hell," the Captain said. "He's a genius. That
seventeenth-century un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in his
calloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How do
you suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tiny
Deitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lane
highways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs.
The Amish have never been missionaries--they learned in 1600 that
missionaries are resented, and either slaughtered or absorbed."

"Sometimes digestively," the Engineer remarked.

"Since the Thirty Years' War, back when 'Hamlet' was opening in London,
these people have been breeding a man who can fit one special niche in
society. The failures were killed in the early days, or later went gay
and took the trappings of the majority. The successes stayed on the
farm, respected and left alone. Aaron has flirted with our century; he
and his wife learned some very un-Amish skills at the Homestead School.
The skill that makes Aaron worth his fare out here, though, is an Amish
skill, and the rarest one of all. He knows the Right Way to Live, and
lives it; but he knows, too, that your Truth-of-the Universe is
something different. And right, for you. He's quite a man, our Aaron
Stoltzfoos. That's why we dropped him here."

"Better him than me," the Engineer said.

"Precisely," the Captain said. He turned to the Exec. "As soon as we've
lifted, ask Colonel Harris to call on me in my cabin, Gene. Our Marines
had better fresh-up their swordsmanship and cavalry tactics if they're
to help our Inad Tuaregs establish that foundry on Qureysh."

"It s