Текст книги "A Woman of the Iron People"

Автор книги: Eleanor Arnason

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“It’s a good thing you showed up,” Derek said. “Eddie has decided that we need to hold a meeting.”

I sat down and poured out coffee. What an aroma! How had I lived without it?

Eddie said, “I’ve been telling Derek, you ought to start work on your reports. You’re in a new environment now. You’re getting a different kind of information. It’s going to start interfering.”

“Gresham’s Law of Memory,” Derek said.

“What?”

“New information drives out old. Bad information drives out good.”

I buttered the muffin, which was banana walnut bran. “I don’t think that formulation is right.”

“It is frivolous and unuseful,” Eddie said. “Which seems to be Derek’s mood this morning.” He glanced at the notebook in front of him. It was open, and there was print on the screen. “Will you start work on the report, Lixia?”

“Yes.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

Eddie pressed a button in the notebook. A line of print vanished. “The medical team says they want to watch you for another day.”

“Not us personally,” Derek said. “They are watching our cultures. If nothing strange and terrible has appeared by tomorrow evening, we can go back to work.”

Eddie looked impatient, but he let Derek finish talking. Then he leaned forward. “Ivanova and I want you to accompany us when we go upriver.”

I made the gesture that meant “I know.”

“Will you go?”

“Yes.”

He pressed the button again. Another line of print vanished. “Derek has suggested that we ask Nia and the oracle to come along.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. She’s from that village. They sent her into exile. They won’t harm her if she goes back, but they might not welcome her especially warmly.”

“Ask her,” Derek said.

“Why do you want her to go?”

“She and the oracle know more about humans than anyone else on this planet. They might have something useful to say about the problem at hand. And I don’t want to leave the two of them alone in the middle of nowhere. We can’t give them food, and I don’t know how people are going to feel about giving them tools or weapons. God knows what will happen if these savages get fishing hooks or knives with stainless steel blades. And—” He grinned. “I’m afraid to leave them here unprotected. The med people want to examine them. So do the biologists and the psychologists and…”

“What do you think?” Eddie asked.

I finished the muffin, washing it down with coffee. “We might as well ask her. Derek is right. She is something of an expert on humanity. We can’t leave her alone on the plain. And I’d hate to come back and find that she’d left because of the medical people. She might. She isn’t entirely easy with us, and a medical examination can be pretty dehumanizing, even if you know what is going on.”

Eddie nodded. More print disappeared out of the notebook. I glanced over. The screen was empty except for two characters. I squinted. The number four and a question mark. “Is that it?”

He looked at me somberly, his eyes unprotected. He wore a blue shirt this morning: plain chambray, open at the neck to show a bone-and-shell necklace. His hair was clipped at the back of his neck. The clip was beaded: a geometric design. Dakota work, like the necklace. Most of his ancestors were Anishinabe, but a few had come from the Seven Council Fires. A few more were French or English.

“There’s one more thing.” He paused.

“I told her,” said Derek.

“What do you think, Lixia?”

“I think it’s a lousy idea.”

Eddie sighed. Number four vanished. He turned the notebook off and closed it, folding the screen over the keyboard. The notebook was still too big to go into an ordinary pocket. The problem was human fingers. They had not been miniaturized. The keyboard had to be at least twenty centimeters wide in order for most people to use it.

“I was afraid of that,” Eddie said. “I’ll talk to you later. Please start on the report.” He walked away from us, carrying the notebook in one hand.

“That is going to be an unpleasant conversation,” I said.

Derek made the gesture of agreement.

“If you had told him no, I could have avoided it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you had told him no, he’d be angry with you. Now, he is going to be angry with me.”

“Maybe.”

“Did you plan this?”

“I don’t plan nearly as much as you think I do.”

“Huh.” I took my dishes to the recycling table, then went to the supply dome and got a notebook with a 256K memory.

I spent the morning in my room. First I wrote down the stories that I’d heard the night before: the People Whose Gift Is Folly.

After that I did an outline of my report.

I stopped at noon and went and got a sandwich. I was missing a gorgeous day. Huge clouds blew across the sky. The lake glittered. There were people on the dock, unloading more boxes. I took the sandwich back to my room and ate it as I wrote.

I noticed, finally, that my back hurt. No more sunlight came in my window, and the sky was more green than blue. A late afternoon color. I saved my work and shut off the notebook, then stood and stretched.

It was too early for dinner. In any case I wasn’t hungry. I decided to take a walk.

I went south along the lake. The beach was flat and comparatively wide. Easy to walk on. Here and there streams came down off the bluff. They were small and almost dry. I stepped over them.

The beach narrowed. Vegetation loomed on my right, and I could smell the damp, close aroma of a forest. I looked back. The camp was out of sight.

“Ha-runh,” said something.

I looked ahead. A creature had emerged from the vegetation. It stood on the beach, about ten meters away, regarding me with a tiny dark eye. It didn’t seem worried. Why should it be? It was as big as a rhinoceros.

I kept still, frightened but also interested.

It was a quadruped. Nothing like a bowhorn. Its skin was brown and hairless. Its legs were thick. It had a long tail, which it held in a graceful curve. The tip waved slowly back and forth. What did that mean? Was it a sign of good humor?

Odd flat horns stuck off the animal’s head. There were two pairs. They reminded me of the cantilevered roofs of certain modern buildings. Or of shelf fungus. They were covered with a fine short down or fur.

Brown velvet fungus. Brown velvet cantilevered roofs.

The animal watched me for another moment or two. Then it picked its way delicately to the lake, the huge feet making hardly any noise, and waded into the water. It had a flexible, almost-prehensile upper lip, which it lifted as it drank, exposing its teeth. They were long and flat and shovel-like.

A herbivore, almost certainly. I suspected it was a browser.

It lifted its head and looked at me again, then went back to drinking.

Time to leave. I backed down the beach. The animal kept on drinking, though its tail began to twitch. A rapid, nervous motion. My hunch was it indicated irritation.

I stopped moving.

The animal waded back to shore.

Where could I run to? Would I be safer in the water or the forest?

The animal paused a moment and stared at me, then turned and trotted south along the beach. I watched it go, the wide backside swaying, the tail moving to and fro. From this angle the animal looked silly. I did not think it would have looked silly if it had been coming toward me.

I walked back to camp, glancing over my shoulder from time to time to make sure nothing was coming up behind me. The beach remained empty.

Marina was in her dome, feeding leaves to a biped. “It doesn’t like anything I give it. I’m going to have to let it go. Unless I decide to dissect it.”

“I’ve got to tell you what I saw.”

She glanced at me. Today she wore golden contacts. They matched her earrings, which were intricate and dangly and chimed every time she moved. “Do I need a recorder?”

“Yes.”

She found one and turned it on. “Okay.”

I described the animal.

“That big?”

“I’m not especially good at judging sizes. But it had legs like an elephant. How big does that make it?”

“Not small. Could it have been a domestic animal?”

“I don’t know. But I haven’t seen anything like it in any village.”

“If it isn’t.” She tugged her lower lip. “More problems. More questions. I wish I knew which god to thank.” She turned off the recorder. “I’ll go down there tomorrow and look at the prints. If I’m lucky, I’ll find some droppings. That will tell us what the critter eats.”

“Nia might know what it is.”

Marina nodded. “I really ought to spend some time with her. How about tomorrow? You introduce us. She can come with me and look for piles of shit.”

“Sounds great.”

I left her there, still trying to feed the biped, which was a lovely specimen. The feathers on the back were pale soft gray. The belly was cream-white. The forearms ended in pink claws, and the clawed feet were the same delicate color. The animal moved restlessly back and forth in its cage. The clawed hands picked up Marina’s food, then dropped it. The clawed feet kicked the leaves away.

I went to the big dome. This time I followed a sign, which led me to the commons—a large room full of low tables and comfortable chairs. It was almost empty. I saw Brian, sitting with a pair of Chinese. He lifted a hand in greeting. I waved and went over to the bar.

The bartender was a stocky man with Mayan features. Most of the time his eyes were ordinary dark brown. Now and then, when the light hit them at just the right angle, the irises turned green—a shimmering metallic color, stunning and disturbing.

“Li Lixia.” He held out his hand. “Gustavo Isidis Planitia. I’m on the medical team.”

We shook. He asked me to name my toxin. I said chablis.

He filled a glass. “Are you still in quarantine?”

“What do you mean?”

“Eddie put out the word to leave you alone. We are supposed to give you plenty of time to recover from whatever.”

I tasted the wine. It was young and harsh. There had been no practical way to keep the winery going on the long trip out and no good reason to. The people were sleeping. The computers did not drink. All our wine had been made in the last year or so. It all tasted like this or worse.

“Eddie is probably right,” I said. “We are having some trouble readjusting.”

“I think it’s a plot,” Gustavo said. “We know Eddie’s position. I think he is trying to control information—from you to us and from us to you.”

I looked at him. His eyes were green at the moment, shining like the plumage of some kind of tropical bird.

“That sounds like paranoia,” I said.

“That’s a technical term, and it’s out of date. What you mean is—you think I’m harboring an unfounded suspicion. What you said is—you think I am crazy.”

“Okay. I withdraw paranoia. But I think you are wrong. Thank you for the wine.”

“My pleasure. And I’m glad to have met you.”

I sat down by myself. There was a bowl of bar mix on the table: nuts and dried fruit and other things I could not identify. Pretty tasty. I ate a handful and sipped at my wine.

It might be true. Eddie might be trying to isolate us. On the other hand I wasn’t in the mood for political game-playing. Maybe he knew that and was simply protecting me.

Brian stopped on the way out and introduced me to his companions. They were young and earnest-looking, from the planetology team. They bowed and shook hands and said it was a pleasure.

“We’re going to have to talk,” said Brian.

“Okay.”

“We look forward,” said one of the Chinese.

“Eagerly,” said the other.

They left. I drank more wine and looked at the window above me. It was hexagonal, set in the curving ceiling. Above it was a cloud, moving in the wind and darkening as the last sunlight faded off it.

“Can I join you?” asked Eddie.

I made the gesture of assent.

He lowered himself into a chair. “Derek has talked to Nia and the oracle. He is willing to go. She says she has to think.”

I made the gesture of acknowledgment.

He took a long swallow from the bottle he carried—it was mineral water—and set the bottle on the table, then took a big handful of the bar mix. He glanced at me. “Is there coconut in this?”

“No.”

“I don’t like coconut.” He ate the mix, washing it down with more mineral water. “You really think my idea is lousy.”

“It won’t work. We’ll get in trouble. And it’s immoral. The people here have the right to make their own decision, using good information.”

He frowned. “I think Ivanova has an advantage. I’m trying to do something about it.”

“How so?” I ate some more of the bar mix.

“These people know about strangers and trade. When Ivanova talks about cultural exchange, they are going to understand her. But they know nothing about modern technology. And they have no idea what happens when an industrial society meets a society that is barely agricultural.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘barely.’ It seems to me they have a pretty highly developed agriculture. And animal husbandry. What they don’t have is a state apparatus—which can be a sign of a primitive society or of a very highly developed one.”

“You are playing games, Lixia. These people are tribal, pre-urban, and pre-industrial. They don’t have the kind of society that the anarchists imagine. They have what my people had till the end of the nineteenth century.” He paused for a moment and looked at me, his expression thoughtful. “You aren’t going to help me, are you?”

“No.”

“Will you report me?”

“To the all-ship committee? No. I’m not sure what the charge would be. Corrupting a translator? Conduct unbefitting a scholar?”

“God, what a mess.” He stood and walked out of the room.

I couldn’t tell from the tone of his voice whether he was angry or merely depressed. Angry, most likely. At the moment I did not care. I would in the morning when I was sober. But now … I finished drinking my wine and ate another handful of the bar mix, then I stood. My coordination was off. I swayed slightly.

“Are you all right?” asked Gustavo.

“Yes.” I decided to skip dinner. I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t like to be the only drunk in a room. Curious, that one glass of wine should hit so hard. I went to my room and to bed.

Waking, I looked up and saw nothing outside my window. A dim grayness. There were fine beads of water on the glass. I could feel moisture in the air, even inside.

I got up and showered, putting on coveralls, a jacket, heavy socks and shoes.

Outside it was cool, maybe even cold. The bluff was invisible. I could barely see the trees at the edge of camp. The domes around me had lost most of their color and most of their solidity. They seemed to float in the fog: shadows or bubbles.

I walked to the lake. I could see the first few meters of water. It barely moved, making no noise as it touched the pebble beach. Why was fog so appealing? Was it the mystery? The sense of possibility? There was an old story that argued for the existence of many alternate worlds in close proximity. Sometimes the worlds touched and—for a time—blurred together. That made fog. It was the blending of different realities. Sometimes, when the worlds separated and the fog cleared, people found themselves in unexpected places. They had crossed over. They were in an alternate reality.

I decided I wasn’t interested in an alternate reality. Not at the moment. Though I liked the idea that life was blurred and shadowed by possibility. Nothing was fixed. Nothing was certain. There were no sharp edges, no immutable courses.

I walked up to the big dome and had breakfast with Marina and a trio of biologists. They asked me questions about the natives. I answered as best I could.

“Chia met a native,” Marina said and pointed at a tiny brown woman.

“You did?”

“Yes. North of the camp. I was looking for—” She hesitated. “We haven’t got a name for them. They look like centipedes. They are twenty centimeters long, and they live under rocks in the water.” She paused. “Most of them are blue.”

“About the native,” Marina said.

“He was pulling traps out of the water. We looked at one another for a while. Then he went back to his work, and I went back to mine. I had not realized they were so big.”

“That was Nia,” I said. “She is female, and she is no taller than I am.”

“You are tall, Lixia, compared to people in my country. And the native was very—” She hesitated again. “Very wide and solid.”

“The fur makes a difference. She doesn’t look as big when she’s wet.”

“Ah,” said the little woman. “Like a cat.” She added, “I have met tigers in the jungle. They like to swim. They look big even when they climb out of a river.”

I made the gesture that meant “I don’t know from personal experience, but most likely you are right.”

Marina said, “I miss cats. I keep saying we ought to grow a few.”

“No mice,” said one of the other biologists. “Except in the labs, and they aren’t a problem.”

“They will be,” said Marina. “Someone will lose a few. They’ll get in the gardens. We’ll have a plague, just like in the Bible. Mice and hemorrhoids.”

“What?” said the third biologist. He was huge and almost certainly Polynesian.

“The Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant, whatever that might be, and the Lord Almighty afflicted them with mice and hemorrhoids. I’m not lying. It’s in the Bible.”

“If that happens, we’ll grow some cats,” the man said. He sounded calm and practical.

The tiny woman frowned. “I do not understand how cats will be any use in dealing with hemorrhoids.”

“I have to work,” I said and left.

By noon the sky above my window was hazy blue-green. My report was a mess. I had a lot of information, but no structure. No ideological frame.

Oh, to be a Marxist! Especially a vulgar Marxist. They always had an explanation. Usually it came from the nineteenth century. Engels on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.Surely Fred could explain this planet to me. Maybe I ought to find a library computer and call up ancient documents on social theory. I tossed my notebook on the bed.

The door opened. Derek leaned in and said, “You have a visitor.”

Nia entered, dressed in light gray shorts and a burgundy shirt. The shirt had big white letters on it. They said, “Best Wishes from the Iroquois Confederation.”

A donation. Everyone had wanted to contribute to the expedition. The ship was full of objects with names on them given by clubs and co-ops, cities, unions, tribes, and kibbutzim. The lamp in my cabin came from the Association of Airship Workers. The union emblem was on the shade: two hands clasped in front of a dirigible.

Derek said, “I looked for something without writing. But it is impossible to find a short-sleeved cotton shirt without a motto.”

Nia said, “Speak a language that I can understand.”

“He has said nothing important,” I told her.

“Good. I have decided to go with you.”

“Why?”

She made the gesture that meant “why not?”

“Is that a good answer?”

She came in and sat on the floor, folding herself neatly into a cross-legged position. “No. I want to find out what has happened to my children and cousins. I have told you that before. And I have to go in that direction. I promised to do work for Tanajin.” She paused for a moment. “Someone has to tell her what happened to the boat. Someone has to tell her that Ulzai has vanished. These clothes are tight. How can your people be comfortable?”

“Not easily,” I said.

“I’ll get new clothes at the village. And food. And tools. They will give me that even though they know me and can be almost certain that I am not the Dark One.”

Did I have a recorder? I glanced around.

“Here,” said Derek.

He tossed. I caught. It was an audio recorder the size of a box of matches. I turned it on. “Who is the Dark One?”

“A spirit. She comes to villages as a stranger—usually a woman, sometimes a man. Often she is ragged and hungry. She may be ill. She may look peculiar.

“Hua—the woman who taught me smithing—said her true shape is an old woman with black fur, bent and twisted. She has an odd aroma. She asks for help, though not in a pleasant way. Most of the time she is surly.

“If the village is generous, she continues on her way. If the village is stingy or rude, then…” Nia made the gesture that meant “you know” or “what do you expect?”

“Bad things happen,” Derek said.

Nia made the gesture of agreement.

“What kind of bad things?” I asked.

“People get sick. Animals die. There is not enough food.” She paused and looked at me. It must have been obvious that I wanted to know more. “The shamaness finds out which spirit is angry. Then the village must perform a ceremony. It is called ‘Welcoming the Stranger.’ They gather everything they like best: good food, knives with sharp edges, clothing that is covered with embroidery, gifts that come from the most distant places. They build a fire. The people sing.

 
“Notice
how we welcome you.
Notice
the fine provisions.
 

“The food goes in. The knives. The clothing. Everything is burnt. If the people are fortunate, the Dark One will be satisfied. But it takes a lot. It is better to give her what she needs when she comes as an old woman.”

“What would happen if the Dark One came to the village of the People Whose Gift Is Folly?”

“I have never heard a story about that, and I don’t expect to.”

“Why not?”

“Stories about the Dark One are told in the summer and fall. That is when most people travel. That is when strangers are met.

“Stories about the People Whose Gift Is Folly are told in winter when the snow is deep and travel is impossible. That is when people like to hear about stupid behavior that has happened a long distance away.”

“The snow is deep,” said Derek in English. “The wind is howling. Let’s sit by the fire and laugh at foreigners.”

I turned off the recorder.

Nia stood. “If you are going to talk in that language, I am going to leave.”

“Do you want to eat?” asked Derek. He spoke the language of gifts.

I made the gesture of affirmation.

Nia said, “I’m making a bow. I’ve found some wood that isn’t bad. Deragu has given me a string.”

“You did?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

We left together, going out into the hazy sunlight. Nia made the gesture of farewell and headed inland toward the bluff. Derek and I went to the dining room.

We ate with Agopian and a thin black man, Cyril Johnson. He was the hydrology team, and his equipment hadn’t arrived. He made a speech about bloody incompetence on the ship and throughout human history.

We listened politely. I ate something that tried to be a Greek salad. The cheese was goat cheese, and there were too few olives. Most of the olive trees had died on the trip out. It would be years before the new trees were old enough to bear.

“We’ve scheduled a general meeting tonight,” said Agopian. “These people have the right to know what is going on.”

“You’re right,” said Derek. “They do. Unfortunately, we haven’t any idea.”

“You know more about the natives than anyone else.”

“Are they going to let us stay?” asked Cyril.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He frowned, pressing narrow lips together. Another example of bloody incompetence.

I finished my coffee and took my tray to the recycling table. Agopian followed me. We went outside. The sky was clear. The air was hot and damp. I took off my jacket.

“I’m going with you,” Agopian said.

“Upriver?”

He nodded.

“I’m sure there’s a good reason why Ivanova is taking an astrogator.” I looked at the dock. Both boats were tied up. People were working on them, doing maintenance or repair.

“I am a historian as well.”

“Of labor history, I think you said.”

“Every society has work and workers.”

I glanced at him. He wasn’t wearing the crew uniform today. Instead he looked almost American: faded jeans and a cotton shirt with narrow vertical blue and white stripes. Huaraches on his feet. His belt had a large metal buckle. There was a rocket plane on it and some writing in the Cyrillic alphabet.

“In North America we’d called that a railroad shirt.”

He grinned. “I got it in Detroit, in the gift store at the Museum of Working-class Culture.”

We walked toward the lake.

“The belt is from the gift shop on Transfer Station Number One. I got it when I joined the Kollontai.I am—I used to be—a great collector of souvenirs.”

“Not anymore?”

“Not really. Though I wouldn’t mind taking something back from here. If we go back.”

“If?”

“It is a long journey; and we have no idea what Earth will be like when we get there. Here—maybe—we have a future. There we’ll be curious leftovers from the distant past, like the mammoths they have reconstructed.”

“I thought they were going to be the new beast of burden in Siberia.”

“They are stupider than elephants; and their tempers are not reliable. It is not easy to domesticate a new species. Or, in this case, a very old species.”

We stopped at the edge of the water. There were the usual little brown birds running over the pebbles, hunting and pecking.

“How in hell did you end up with an astrogation certificate?”

He laughed. “You are wondering if Derek is right, and I am a—what is that word?—a vegetable.”

“I think you mean a plant.”

He nodded. “Or a vole.”

“All at once your English is deteriorating.”

“I have trouble with the language of paranoia. It does not come naturally to me.”

“Oh.”

“I got the certificate because I was a failure as a political officer.”

“You were?”

He nodded again. “You have to realize—from the time I was a boy, I had two dreams. Two passions. Space and political theory.”

An odd combination, I thought. But there was no accounting for tastes or passions.

“I knew from early on that I wanted to be a political officer in the Soviet fleet. I made it, and I found I was no good.” He pushed at a stone with the toe of his boot. It flipped over, revealing a bright yellow bug. The bug scurried away.

“The Kollontaiwas a freighter. I think I told you that. The crew were the kind of people you find in warehouses and on ships. Have you ever met any?”

I made the gesture of affirmation.

“There is something about the people who move freight around. All over the world and even in space, they are the same. How should I describe them? Robust? Down to earth? Though that sounds strange when I am talking about space travelers.

“They are certainly blue collar. The kind of people who made all three of our revolutions. I had no idea how to get along with them.”

He paused a moment, looking at the lake. “I am an intellectual. I think it would be fair to say that. I study ideas. That is what interests me. Political theory. The theory of history. The philosophy of science. The relationship between people and machines.

“I don’t really care for a lot of ordinary human activities. I play no games. I have no hobbies. I don’t like sports. I almost never watch holovision. I have never married. I have no children. I drink wine and beer, usually in moderation. I never drink brandy or vodka.”

“What do you do for entertainment?”

“I read science fiction, and I think.”

“It sounds like a heck of a lot of fun.”

“You see? Can you imagine me surrounded by blue-collar workers?”

I grinned. “No. Not really.”

He nodded. “It was terrible. I organized classes on Marxist theory. No one came. I tried to celebrate important events in the history of class struggle. Either they ignored me or they used the event as an excuse to get drunk. I spent time in the recreational areas, trying to get to know the crew.

“I couldn’t talk to them. It seemed to me as if we were speaking different languages. I had no idea of what was going on inside them.

“Things floated to the surface. I knew they liked sex and alcohol, z-gee and soccer. I knew the names of all their favorite shows, and I had seen most of them at least once. War and Peace. Crossing the Urals. Deep-Ocean Adventure. The Potato Cosmonauts.

“But I did not understand the pattern of their thinking. The intellectual framework. The underlying ideology. They made no sense to me.

“I should have quit and gone back to Earth. I could have gotten a job teaching. I would have fit in at a college or a polytechnic.

“But I stayed, even after I stopped trying to be a political officer.” He glanced at me, smiling. “I gave up. I went through the motions.”

Agopian reminded me of someone; and I had been trying to figure out who. Now it came to me. Eddie. They both lived in their heads. They were both moved to passion by theory.

What did I love? I wondered. Sunlight. Food. Certain human bodies. A landscape like the one in front of me, big enough to put human activity in perspective, and alive.

“It got boring,” Agopian said. “I had to do something. I decided to learn a new skill. I took up astrogation.”

“That’s how you got your certificate.”

He nodded. “And it is how I finally got to know some of the people on the ship. We had two astrogators. I asked them questions when I got into trouble with the learning program.

“One of them read science fiction. She told me the cook had a remarkable personal collection. He was from Siberia. A huge man. He talked in grunts, and I hadn’t been sure he was entirely human. After he realized that I read science fiction, he began to use entire sentences.

“He loaned me his books. We talked about them and about Siberia. One of his brothers is—or was—a mammoth trainer. That’s how I know about the mammoths.”

He pushed another stone over. There was nothing under it except wet pebbles. “That is the end of the story. I got my certificate, and I never really learned to get along with those people. It got better, but there was always something about the way they think—” He shook his head. “Or the way I think. They, after all, are in the majority.”

Did I really believe this clever little man had been a failure? “You don’t have the same trouble here?”

“No. For one thing, I am no longer a political officer. An astrogator doesn’t have to worry about agitation and propaganda. All I have to do is get the numbers right.

“For another thing, it takes a special kind of person to go to the stars. We are not better than the rest of humanity, but we are different. I understand most of the people here.”

“Who else is going upriver?” I asked.

“Tatiana. Ivanova. Eddie. You and Derek. The natives. Mr. Fang.”

“Is he here?”

“Yes. He is the representative for the majority position. He’s here to observe and to make sure that the natives understand this is their decision.”

I thought for a moment. “It sounds crowded.”

“We are going to have to take both boats. It leaves the camp in a bad position. I think Ivanova is planning to send one of the planes up for more supplies, including another boat.”