Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

the habit of seeking privacy, though much more stubborn, was dying away in

its wake. There was a theory current aboard ship that this kind of physical

openness-and it was not merely erotic, but included everything from

scratching to plumbing-was good; but it was equally easy to find partisans

of the opposite view. One aspect of it, however, was undeniable: it was

fatal to sexual possessiveness and jealousy. The customs of some five

centuries back, when love-making had been regarded as often a team sport

and almost always a spectator sport, were undergoing an obvious renaissance

on board the faveline (though the fact was not read into the Grand Log, nor

was it reported from any other ship in the fleet; as usual, the letter was

showing itself far more durable than the facts).

It was also gradually becoming evident, as the calendars ticked inexorably

on, that it was true that

94 fames Blish

males are more adept with machinery than females are, despite the vast

number of women in the past society who had made successes in engineering

and other mechanical trades. Even in the fabric of that society that

assumption had been built firmly, for it bad been standard, as Jorn himself

exemplifled, to give a surplus male an engineering education. The theory was

that if such a male were ever needed in a hurry, he would be most likely to

be needed for that sort of task–or, at the least, that that was the best

one could do toward training him to be proteanly useful. This had seemed to

be a workable arrangement in the relatively static matriarchy-though its