But, as she watched the scene, Indira knew that the essence of it was not physical, but spiritual. The calm, confident serenity that exuded from Joseph’s person as he watched the physicist take and gobble down his food did not stem from simple confidence in his muscles. They stemmed from the very soul of the boy.
Indira recognized what she was seeing. It was that vision the human race had always possessed of youth in its glory. Not arrogant, not callous, not vainglorious—simply the calm certainty of young strength and courage. Utter fearlessness in the face of danger; total willingness to stand against it.
The vision was found in all human cultures, expressed in a myriad ways. But Indira thought it had been completely captured only once, by the greatest artist the human race perhaps ever produced.
The superficial appearance was, of course, different. Joseph’s skin was black; his hair was kinky; his features were African. But those were meaningless things. The soul of the boy was the same as that captured by the artist’s genius.
The young shepherd, guarding his flock. Sling in hand. Poised, yet not tense; calmly gazing forward, secure in his youth, ready to deal with whatever horrors might come over the horizon. Lions; or bears; or perhaps even a giant. Whatever. It made no difference, for he would slay the monster without fail.
She had seen it once, that vision. In Florence.
The David, by Michelangelo.
David had not failed. Nor did Joseph, when the monsters came to his people, three months after Hector died.
The long years of the colony’s peaceful existence ended, and gave way to the washing of the spears.
Chapter 10
The first slaver raid caught the colony by surprise.
It shouldn’t have, in theory. The colonists had been preparing to defend themselves, and the owoc, for over ten years. Enough spears had been produced to arm every single human down to the new-born babies, with a number left over. The teenagers had been organized into five-person squads, which, in turn, had been organized into three platoons.
Hector, who was the only adult with any military training at all, had been selected as the commander of the defense force. The organizational structure was his idea, and it had been he who had drilled the young humans in basic tactics.
The other adults had participated in the training, in the first few years. But once the children became teenagers, all the adults except Julius stopped engaging in the exercises. And if Hector had had his way, Julius would have been barred as well.
“It’s a young person’s game, man.”
“You’re saying I’m too old and feeble and slow?” demanded Julius.
“Yes. Exactly. Precisely.”
But Julius had refused to quit, to Indira’s disgust. Indira had never been an avid supporter of the military exercises in the first place. And as the years went by without any signs of trouble, she came to the private conclusion that the training was a waste of time and energy. But she did not interfere, except in three ways.
First, she made clear to Julius that she considered his insistence on remaining in the defense guard to be a prime example of delayed adolescence, of which, to his discomfort, she pointed to numerous other symptoms.
Secondly, she insisted that if there was going to be a defense guard, the girls would participate on an equal basis. This had caused no difficulty, for Hector was quite favorable to the idea. In fact, he had appointed Ludmilla Rozkowski one of the three platoon leaders (the others were Joseph Adekunle and Takashi Mizoguchi). After the babies began arriving, Hector maintained the sexual egalitarianism by establishing a platoon rotation system. Each month one of the platoons was assigned the primary duty of rounding up and protecting the children in the event of a military crisis.
Finally, and most forcefully, Indira refused to accept Hector’s proposed title for his own position.
“What’s wrong with it?” he complained.
“Admiral of the Ocean Sea?” demanded Indira.
He pouted. “It’s got a nice ring to it.”
“Not a chance. You can be Captain Quintero.”
The training had been maintained for several years, but it had slowly become more and more lackadaisical. After Hector died, the defense guard essentially disintegrated. Julius assumed the mantle of Captain, but he was too preoccupied with other matters to pay any real attention to the task.