When I was eighteen, I was admitted to the Advanced College of Linguistics and Policy from among whose graduates most of Earth’s diplomats and ambassadors were selected—that is, those persons that Earthgov titled ambassadors or diplomats. What they were called by the other races involved was known only to a few, who thought it wisest not to publicize the matter.
ACoLaP, as the school was called, was one of the few educational institutions with a permanent exemption from the nondiscrimination rules. In all Earthian, nondidactibot schools, exceptionally bright students could move no faster than the slowest in the class in order that no lazy or inept student be left behind. It had proven easier to slow down everyone than to speed up the laggards. Earthgov, however, felt this rule should not apply when Earth’s planetary security was involved, which gave my admission a definite éclat. Both my parents basked in the glow generated by this accomplishment, and I was trotted out on various occasions to meet my parents’ friends, rather as a prize cow might once have been.
Since neither Mother nor Father had been at all helpful in my achievement, I rather resented their gloating. I had to give myself a good talking-to in order to let it go. They were not bad people; they were as they were. If they had been different, probably so would I, and I rather liked the way my own life was tending, for I had met someone.
Sybil, one of my classmates, was the daughter of a largish clan of professional people, and Sybil invited several of her classmates, including me, to dinner at her family’s home. I liked Sybil far better than the other students she had invited, for they were among a small elitist group at the college, about a dozen sons and daughters of extreme wealth and power. Though two of the young men had condescended to honor me with their attentions a time or two, I had not been interested, but my indifference did not extend to Sybil’s brother. He was Bryan Mackey, young Dr. Mackey, currently established in the extended residency program of a premier and respected hospital.
Young Dr. Mackey had a mop of sandy hair, amber brown eyes, a wide mouth, and a disconcertingly penetrating look, which he focused on me the moment we met. We sat next to each other at dinner. He asked me out. I agreed, somewhat nervous at having an actual date, and even more nervous on finding the experience enjoyable.
Thereafter, whenever he had a few hours off duty, he asked to see me, usually for dinner, where he very shortly fell into the pattern of complaining throughout the meal about problems in his professional life.
“The man doesn’t know medicine?” he said of a superior.
“He’s an administrator,” I said, in what I hoped was a soothing voice.
“Yes, but he’s a medical administrator. How in heaven’s name can a man administer a program he knows nothing about?”
A week or so later it was something else, and something yet again the week after that, a whole chain of somethings I could identify very readily as “annoyances”: directors who knew little but directed much; decisions that favored ease over idealism; rulings that frustrated his skill; orders that wounded his pride. I had seen it all on Phobos, where it had been decently hidden by custom. Here, his bleeding resentment was ripped out and laid before me in all its blatant gore.
“There’s a better way to do that procedure! The damned rules were written twenty years ago! Mortality is a lot higher than it needs to be, if they’d just let us treat people the way we’ve been taught to…”
Slightly irritated, I said something I’d thought of many times but had heretofore refrained from saying. “Have you considered that they may want to keep the mortality as high as possible?”
He turned, eyes blazing, only to pale as though he had been slapped in the face by an icy wind. “You mean…”
“My father says population numbers aren’t dropping fast enough. Desertification has eaten too much cropland there’s no way of replacing. Look at how hard they’re pushing emigration.”
“Emigration! Call it what it is: providing slave labor for the Omniont Federation and the Mercan Combine.”
I said, “It’s not really slavery. It’s bonded labor for only fifteen years. It’s better than dying, Bryan.”
“Have you ever seen a settlement planet?”
I shook my head, worried at his tone, which was more hostile and furious than usual, even for Bryan.
“Well then, don’t be so damned sure it’s better than dying.”
I felt myself getting angry. “Do you enjoy being with me?”
“Margaret! You know I do!”
“Most times when we’re together, I go home feeling…as though someone had been beating on me.” Actually, I usually went home full of such vicarious anger on his behalf, such overriding animosity against those who were frustrating him, that I lay awake most of the night explaining to them what stupid people they were. I had little experience with violent emotion, and that little had been troublesome. Even on Earth, I had seen little or no emotion displayed until I met Bryan, who was looking at me now with wrathful exasperation. I spoke through gritted teeth:
“Could we…could we just have dinner together sometimes without your being…so furious about everything?”
He gaped, then closed his mouth with a snap, turning red, breathing heavily. I was about to get up and leave him there when he said through his teeth, “You’re right! Father tells me the same thing. He says I mustn’t take the day’s
