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The PanAsians
    were murdering and oppressing a once-free people. A good PanAsian was a
    dead PanAsian, he told himself, until the last one was driven back across the
    Pacific. If Asia was overpopulated, let them limit their birth rate.
    Nevertheless, Finny's detachment and freedom from animus enabled
    Thomas more nearly to appreciate the nature of the problem. "Don't make the
    mistake of thinking of the PanAsians as bad -they're not, but they are
    different. Behind their arrogance is a racial inferiority complex, a mass
    paranoia, that makes it necessary for them to prove to themselves by proving
    to us that a yellow man is just as good as a white man, and a damned sight
    better. Remember that, son, they want the outward signs of respect more
    than they want anything else in the world."
    "But why should they have an inferiority complex about us? We've been
    completely out of touch with them for more than two generations-ever since
    the Nonintercourse Act."
    "Do you think racial memory is that short-lived? The seeds of this are
    way back in the nineteenth century. Do you recall that two high Japanese
    officials had to commit honorable suicide to wipe out a slight that was done
    Commodore Perry when he opened up Japan? Now those two deaths are
    being paid for by the deaths of thousands of American officials."
    "But the PanAsians aren't Japanese."
    "No, and they are not Chinese. They are a mixed race, strong, proud,
    and prolific. From the American standpoint they have the vices of both and
    the virtues.. of neither. But from my standpoint they are simply human
    beings, who have been duped into the old fallacy of the State as a superentity. Ich habe einen Kameraden.' Once you understand the nature of-" He
    went off into a long dissertation, a mixture of Rousseau, Rocker, Thoreau,
    and others. Thomas found it inspirational, but unconvincing.
    But the discussion with Finny was of real use to Thomas in
    comprehending what they were up against. The Nonintercourse Act had kept
    the American people from knowing anything important about their enemy.
    Thomas wrinkled his brow, trying to recall what he knew about the history of
    it.
    At the time it had been passed, the Act had been no more than a de jure
    recognition of a de facto condition. The sovietizing of Asia had excluded
    westerners, particularly Americans, from Asia more effectively than could any
    Act of Congress. The obscure reasons that had led the Congress of that
    period to think that the United States gained in dignity by passing a law
    confirming what the commissars had already done to us baled Thomas; it
    smacked of Sergeant Dogberry's policy toward thieves. He supposed that it
    had simply seemed cheaper to wish Red Asia out of existence than to fight a
    war.
    The policy behind the Act had certainly seemed to justify itself for better
    than half a century; there had been no war. The proponents of the measure
    had maintained that China was a big bite even for Soviet Russia to digest
    and that the United States need fear no war while the digesting was taking
    place. They had been correct as far as they went but as a result of the
    Nonintercourse Act we had our backs turned when China digested Russia . .
    leaving America to face a system even stranger to western ways of thinking
    than had been the Soviet system it displaced.
    On the strength of the forged registration card and Finny's coaching as to
    the etiquette of being a serf, Thomas ventured into a medium-sized city. The
    cleverness of Finny's work was put to test almost immediately.
    He had stopped at a street corner to read a posted notice. It was a
    general order to all Americans to be present at a television receiver at eight
    each evening in order to note any instructions that their rulers might have for
    them. It was not news; the order had been in effect for some days and he
    had heard of it. He was about to turn away when he felt a sharp, stinging
    blow across his shoulder blades. He whirled around and found