The Lotus Eaters

hundred.'

'That's bullshit,' Cano said. 'He's ten. And you cannot stick this boy with one wife, let alone twelve.'

'That is for Iskandr to say.' She frowned. 'But I do hope he won't disappoint the girls chosen for him.'

'And what about the game? You know, the one where I got the living shit knocked out of me to win you? Bushkazi? You can't put an ten year old into that?'

'Of course not,' Alena agreed. 'Well, not this ten year old. After all, it would be sacrilege to strike him. No, he is above the game.'

She sighed, then sniffed. A small tear crept into her eye. 'Poor Iskandr; so much joy he is denied because of what he is. Yet the Avatar of God has duties to his people.'

Cano shook his head. Sure, the boy was a good kid; everything one might want in a boy, in fact. But Alena and her people were just overboard on the whole subject.

'What about bride price?' he asked.

Alena brushed away her tear. 'Bride price?' she asked, incredulously. 'Bride price to be a bride of Iskandr? That's absurd. The problem is going to be keeping the married women from sending him messages, asking that he buy or trade them out of their marriages.'

'Alena,' Cano said, 'I fell in love with your people when I was leading them in the war. Marrying you was icing . . . and well worth having the crap knocked out of me playing bushkazi. But, I've got to tell you, beloved wife and witch, that you are all nuts. Jesus, Redeemer and Savior, twelve wives? Don't you people know how the Zhong write the word for trouble? It's a stick drawing of two women under the same roof.'

'Well, of course,' Alena answered. 'And if you don't believe it just you try taking a second wife. That's one reason why we built Iskandr such a wide roof.'

Chapter Twenty-three

The key, then, to good and long lasting governance is to reduce the dosage of toxic elements, to drive away and exclude from political power as many of those people who lack the requisite civic virtue as can be positively identified. Implicitly, this requires admitting to political power as many of those who have civic virtue as also can be positively identified.

As we have seen, breeding fails. Wealth? There are many wealthy thieves. Education? The world is full of educated derelicts, utterly self-centered and completely devoid of civic virtue.

Motherhood? Leave aside that sons and daughters vote their parents interests, and that men vote their wives and sisters, to boot, thus giving mothers a great deal of indirect political power already. Motherhood indicates an interest in the future, but only for the narrow family, not for society as a whole. Remember that a small number of wealthy and connected Spartan mothers, in the interests of their own narrow gene pool, took control of the property of the society, economically ruining the rest, thus driving them out of membership in the sistisia, and ruining thereby both the army and the state.

We must further beware of assigning civic virtue to any calling, be it ever so beneficial to society, that a person does because he simply enjoy it, or derives self-satisfaction from it. A socially beneficial calling, as far as the realm of civic virtue is concerned, exists parallel to those which entail civic virtue.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

Anno Condita 472 Carrera Family Cemetery, Cochea, Balboa, Terra Nova

Tranzitree wax candles burned in a perimeter around the man. Though they were not deadly to insects, as they were to people, the bugs tended to hate the smell of the things and so tended to stay away.

It still hurt, even if time had attenuated the pain.

Time, thought Patricio Carrera, is a funny thing. Here it is, only forty odd years since you were born, Linda . . . and centuries, it seems, since you died.

There had been a time when he would camp out by his late family's graves and drink himself into a coma, usually becoming hysterical sometime in the process. Time had, if not quite healed the wounds, at least reduced the intensity of the pain. Besides, he had other pains to eat away at him, and those he had caused himself.

Carrera sat, back against the tall white marble stele that marked the graves of his slaughtered first family. Next to him was a basket of plum-sized, gray and wrinkled Terra Novan olives. He always brought Linda and the kids a gift offering when he came. Birds fluttered from branch to branch and insects chirped in the grass surrounding the candled perimeter. A steady breeze added a rustling of fallen leaves and bent the grass under its push. Further away from the marker, past where family retainers kept the grass well trimmed, a gurgling stream—running even though the dry season and a near torrent now, in the middle of the wet—added to the music.

Carrera blanked his mind to everything but the sounds and smells for a moment, then thought, I have always loved this place. Partly because you came from it. But also because it is so quiet and peaceful. Everything so clean and fresh. As you were.

Your mother and father get along well with Lourdes. Maybe it helps that she's a distant relative. On the other hand, she tries very hard too.