The Lotus Eaters

'Apology? Late? But no one's asked for a 'flypaper report' until now.'

'I know.' Carrera smiled knowingly. 'Now let's have those drinks. And Merry Christmas.'

Chapter Six

Besides failing to account for the cost of a given good, it is a great moral and logical fallacy of the universe, or at least upon the two planets of it which know Man, to measure good and evil only by their intensity and scope and never by their duration. War is the greatest of evils, so might Man (or at least Cosmopolitan Progressive, or Kosmo, Man) say, and so might he say, too, that we must never wage war even against the greatest oppression. And yet wars inevitably end while oppression goes on and on (and typically ends, if it ends, in war anyway).

War, however, is only the obvious extreme case. Consider reproductive rights. Surely a woman has a right to her own body to do with as she pleases. This is a certain, plain, obvious, and irrefutable good. But just as surely, the children of the women who do not feel that way will soon outnumber the children of the women who do. Those children will learn and carry the values of their parents, as will their children. Also, they will vote. And then expansive, liberal reproductive rights will democratically disappear to join with the children never born to the women most dedicated to those rights. Thus will a generation or two of free reproductive rights for women be followed by one hundred or one thousand generations that scorn them. Thus, the plain, certain, irrefutable and obvious good is meaningless, because it cannot last, because it destroys itself as it destroys the conditions which permitted it.

So, too, unlimited democracy . . .

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

Anno Condita 470–471 Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

The tree was decorated, the stockings hung, and the Hamilcar's Pashtun guards had even managed to figure out where the exterior lights went. (Also, since the lights would have tended to silhouette them, they'd figured out that they'd better double the number of guards and push them out, away from the house. As Lourdes said, 'Paranoia, thou art a Pashtun. Thank goodness.') Now, as the clock neared midnight, Carrera and Lourdes had the Casa Linda mostly to themselves but for the guards outside and the ones keeping watch over Hamilcar, upstairs.

As midnight struck, Carrera walked to a console and removed a small box, the kind that would contain a necklace. He handed the box to Lourdes. She opened it to find a string of pearls, large and perfect, shining pink and iridescent in the subdued light. Lourdes made a happy sound, reached up to kiss Carrera heavily, and ran to where she had hidden her gift to Carrera.

Lourdes' gift was in a box, about three feet long—or a bit more, and four inches on a side. When Carrera had removed the paper he found that the box was wooden. He removed the lid to discover a sword, old and, from the inscription, Spanish.

Lourdes said 'I had to send all the way to Taurus to find it for you. It is from the 16th century on Old Earth. The dealer told me it wasn't the sword of anyone famous. But he believed and showed me why he believed that it once belonged to a Conquistador. I thought it would go well with your collection. I hope you like it.'

Carrera took the sword from its box. He drew the blade from the scabbard. It was very well preserved, he saw, for something nearly a millennium old and made of steel. The lights from the tree gleamed along the shimmering metal of the blade. Carrera made an appreciative sound. 'It's wonderful, Lourdes. You understand, though, it's too rare for me to carry around.'

Holding the sword to catch the light better, Carrera saw small flakes of rust and that the blade was, in a few places, pitted. This was no surprise. He said softly, to no one in particular:

'How dull it is, to pause, to make and end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use,

As though to breathe were life.'

By his tone, and his eye, Lourdes knew he was pleased. She paused, took a deep breath. 'I have another present for you, Patricio. I hope you like it as well. But you can't have it for a while.'

Carrera raised a quizzical eyebrow.

'I'm going to have another baby . . . in about seven months.'

'Really?' he asked, then, smiling broadly, said, 'Coool.'

'Well,' she said, eyes sparkling and lips turning wicked, 'it's not like you've left me with my legs together too often lately.

'Just making up for lost time.'

University of Balboa, Ciudad Balboa

The university was rapidly becoming as split an entity as the country which supported it. True enough, most of the facilities were here on the main campus, in what many were beginning to call 'Free Balboa,' as opposed to 'occupied Balboa.' Even so, that portion which was in the Transitway Area, plus the few buildings in the small portion of the city owned by the rump government of Rocaberti and his cronies, had pretty much ceased responding to anything emanating from the University Rectory.

Professor Ruiz, de facto propaganda minister for the Legion and the rest of the country, at the moment not only did not but could not care a bit about the split in the country or the split in the university. He was nursing a splitting headache, courtesy of the New Years' party held by his