“Trustworthy persons are hard to find,” Markham stated, “especially in the younger generation.”
“I've gathered you don't approve of postwar developments on your planet.” Dorcas glanced at Tregennis.
“That's apropos the reason I hoped you would be here, Professor. I'm reading The House on Crowsnest —”
“What do you mean?” Markham interrupted. “Crowsnest is an area on top of Mount Lookitthat.”
Dorcas curbed exasperation. Maybe he couldn't help being arrogant. “I understand it's considered the greatest novel ever written on Plateau,” she said.
Tregennis nodded. “Many think so. I confess the language in it gets too strong for my taste.”
“Well, the author is a Colonist, telling how things were before and during the revolution,” Dorcas said in Markham's direction. “Oppression does not make people nice. The wonder is that Crew rule was overthrown almost bloodlessly.”
“If you please,” Tregennis responded, “we of the Crew families were not monsters. Many of us realized reform was overdue and worked for it. I sympathized myself, you know, although I did not take an active role. I do believe Nairn exaggerates the degree and extent of brutality under the old order.”
“That's one thing I wanted to ask you about. His book's full of people, places, events, practices that must be familiar to you but that nobody on any other planet ever heard of, Laurinda herself couldn't tell me what some passages refer to.”
Tregennis smiled. “She has only been on Plateau as a student, and was born into a democracy. Why should she concern herself about old, unhappy, far off things? Not that she is narrow, she comes from a cultured home, but she is young and has a whole universe opening before her.”
Dorcas nodded. “A lucky generation, hers.”
“Yes, indeed. Landholder Markham, I must disagree with views you have expressed. Taken as a whole, on every world the young are rising marvelously well to their opportunities — better, I fear, than their elders would have done.”
“It makes a huge difference, being free,” Dorcas said.
Markham sat bolt upright. “Free to do what?” he snapped. “To be vulgar, slovenly, ignorant, self-centered, materialistic, conman? I have seen the degradation go on, year by year. You have stayed safe in your ivory tower, Professor. You, Mme. Saxtorph, operate in situations where a measure of discipline, sometimes old-fashioned self- sacrifice, is a condition of survival. But I have gotten out into the muck and tried to stem the tide of it.”
“I heard you'd run for your new parliament, and I know you don't care for the popular modern styles,” Dorcas answered dryly. She shrugged. “I often don't myself. But why should people not have what they want, if they can come by it honestly? Nobody forces you to join them. It seems you'd force them to do what pleases you. Well, that might not be what pleases me!”
Markham swallowed. His ears lay back. “I suspect our likes are not extremely dissimilar. You are a person of quality, a natural leader.” Abruptly his voice quivered. He must be waging battle to keep his feelings under control. “In a healthy society, the superior person is recognized for what he or she is, and lesser ones are happy to be guided, because they realize that not only they but generations to come will benefit. The leader is not interested in power or glory for their own sake. At most, they are means to an end, the end to which he gives his life, the organic evolution of the society toward its destiny, the full flowering of its soul. But we are replacing living Gemeinschaft with mechanical Gesellschaft. The cyborg civilization! It goes as crazy as a cyborg individual. The leading classes also lose their sense of responsibility. Those members who do not become openly corrupt turn into reckless megalomaniacs.”
Dorcas paled, which was her body's way of showing anger. “I've seen that kind of thinking described in history books,” she said. “I thought better of you, sir. For your information, my grandfather was a cyborg after an accident. Belters always believed it was as criminal to send convicts into the organ banks as any crime of theirs could be. He was the sanest man I've known. Nor have I noticed leaders of free folk doing much that is half as stupid or evil as what the master classes used to order. I'll make my own mistakes, thank you.”
“You certainly will. You already have. I must speak plainly. Your husband's insistence on this expedition, against every dictate of sound judgment, merely because it suits him to go, is a perfect example of a leader who has ceased to be a shepherd. Or perhaps you yourself are, since you have aided and abetted him. You could have remembered how full of terrible unknowns space is. Belters are born to that understanding. He is a flatlander.”
Dorcas whitened entirely. Her crest bristled. She stood up, fists on hips, to loom over Markham and say word by word: “That will do. We have endured your presence, that you pushed on us, in hopes you would prove to be housebroken. We have now listened to your ridiculous ranting’s because we believe in free speech where you do not, and in hopes you would soon finish. Instead, you have delivered an intolerable racist insult. You will go to your cabin and remain there for twenty-four hours. Bread and water will be brought to you.”
Markham gaped. “What? Are you mad?”
“Furious, yes. As for sanity, I refrain from expressing an opinion about who may lack it.” Dorcas consulted her watch. “You can walk to your cabin in about five minutes. Therefore, do not be seen outside it, except for visits to the head, until 1737 hours tomorrow. Go.”
He half rose himself, sank back down, and exclaimed, “This is impossible! Professor Tregennis, I call you to witness.”
“Yes,” Dorcas said. “Please witness that he has received a direct order from me, who am second in command of the ship. Shall we call Captain Saxtorph to confirm it? You can be led off in irons, Markham. Better you obey. Go.”
The commissioner clambered to his feet. He breathed hard. The others could smell his sweat. “Very well,” he said tonelessly. “of course I will file a complaint when we return. Meanwhile we shall minimize further conversation. Good day.” He jerked a bow and marched off.
After a time in which only the multitudinous low murmurings of the vessel had utterance, Tregennis breathed, “Dear me. Was that not a… slightly excessive reaction?”
Dorcas sat down again. Her iciness was dissolving in calm. “Maybe. Bob would think so, though naturally he'd have backed me up. He's more good-natured than I am. I do not tolerate such language about him. This hasn't been the only incident.”
“There is a certain prejudice against the Earthborn among the space-born. I understand it is quite widespread.”
“It is, and it's not altogether without foundation — in a number of cases.” Dorcas laughed. “I shared it, at the time Bob and I met. It caused some monumental quarrels the first couple of years, years when we could already have been married. I finally got rid of it and took to judging individuals on their merits.”
“Forgive me, but are you not a little intolerant of those who have not had your enlightening experience?”
“Doubtless. However, between you and me, I welcomed the chance to show Markham who's boss here. I worried that if we have an emergency he could get insubordinate. That would be an invitation to disaster.”
“He is a strange man,” Tregennis mused. “His behavior, his talk, his past career, everything seems such a welter of contradictions. Or am I being naive?”
“Not really, unless I am, too. Oh, people aren't self-consistent like the laws of mechanics — even quantum mechanics. But I do think we lack some key fact about Landholder Markham, and will never understand him till we have it.” Dorcas made a gesture of dismissal. “Enough. Now may I do what I originally intended and quiz you about Plateau?”
While Rover was in hyperspace, all five of her gang stood mass detector watch, six hours a day for four days, fifth day off. It was unpopular duty, but they would have enjoyed still less letting the ship fly blind, risking an entry into a gravity well deep enough to throw her to whatever fate awaited vessels which did not steer clear. The daydream was becoming commonplace among their kind, that someday somebody would gain sufficient understanding of the psionics involved that the whole operation could be automated.
It wasn't torture, of course, once you had schooled yourself never to look into the Less Than Void which filled the single port necessarily left unshuttered. You learned how to keep an eye on the indicator globe while you exercised, read, watched a show, practiced a handicraft. On the infrequent occasions when it registered something, matters did get interesting.
“And I've decided I don't mind it in the least,” said Juan Yoshii after Kamehameha Ryan had relieved
