“Max Schlepzig,” repeats Slothrop, goggling, “quit fooling. Max Schlepzig?” “It wasn’t his real name. Erdmann wasn’t mine. But anything with Earth in it was politically safe—Earth, Soil, Folk . . . a code. Which they, staring, knew how to decipher. . . . Max had a very Jewish name, Something-sky, and Gerhardt thought it more prudent to give him a new one.”
