From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: In Re: Dragonslayers
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 11:02:54 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1466602024@igc.apc.org> alanm@igc.apc.org writes:

 > >I suggest again, fellow, dragons be there. I can take you to face
 > >them at your leisure. Just send your cheque, and I shall alert our
 > >people to prepare something. How frightening, or how simply absurd
 > >it will finally get just depends on you.
 >  
 > Poor Gil. He still hasn't figured out what happens to the 
 > Dragonslayer in the end.

Ah, Alan, you want to join the expedition? I thought it would be a
little flat and one-dimensional with only McCarthy and his motley crew
of rich tourists on board, but with you and Mr Tobis with us we now
have *both* sides of the one corrupt and inflated coinage to be spent.

Anytime any of you people want to step out of the safety and comfort
of your pathetic "culture", beyond the territorial boundaries held by
your mightily armed and artificially provisioned self-delusion, please
do feel free to come down here awhile and learn to live off your own
wits. Learn something about what reality represents to most people.

 > My money is still on the Rhinemaidens. They had it right from 
 > the beginning:
 >  
 >      Traulich und treu ist's nur in der Tiefe;
 >      falsch und feig ist, was dort oben sich freut!
 >  
 > And that applies to the would-be dragonslayers just as much as to 
 > the would-be gods.

Someone will have to translate this for me.

If you want to put your money up you will need truck loads of it where
I'll be taking you. Perhaps you can burn it all to keep warm at night,
while you learn to exploit the other resources around you. You might be
well advised that the Australian Army on patrol there has its supplies
airlifted in, much to the astonishment of the Aboriginal people who see
tucker all around them. Actually the area is very rich; its just that
the white people usually can't see it until they have had their eyes
opened.

You won't have any supplies dropped to you; that part of the deal will
be entirely yours to meet. You can bring an axe or a machete to make a
spear with, or we may even relent sufficiently to allow you a shotgun
with a packet of cartridges. I think some string you would find more
generally useful than anything thing else, but a compass or a watch is
*definitely* out.

Beyond that, for my part I really don't care all that much. I simply
remain fully agog to see just how long your universal objective truths
are going to stand up.

I really wonder how long it will take before you start trading off your
beliefs against a full belly every other day? Or whether you are going
to lie down and die, too bloody stubborn to admit that somebody else
might have some knowledge which may be of benefit to you?

You won't be the first, believe me. Nor anywhere near the last. I saw
a bloke who'd run a full twenty miles through the bush about 17 years
ago, trying to get back to the mission and away from his horrors. He
wasn't drunk, just refused to admit that he didn't know how to cope
any more. Others haven't been so lucky, and their remains usually get
found by a passing patrol a couple of years later, if ever.

If you *do* manage to slay your dragons, which from your performance
to date I doubt very much is anywhere near within your capacity (I
won't be there to help you, you have to do it by yourself), you may
finally earn some measure of respect from me, and some credibility to
your currently thoroughly unsubstantiated ecology.

I look, indeed, forward to such a day. We really do need more people
with sufficient training and experience for some of the projects we
have on hand.

On the other hand, maybe the police won't let me do it. They do get
fed up with searching for missing people all the time, and having to
scrape up their dried out bits into a bag for identification . . .

Gil