“He’s very shrewd, Julius. I hadn’t thought of the idea myself, but it’s a good one. It allows the colony to elect the people they feel most confident holding the military positions, without automatically imposing the military chain of command onto the colony as a whole.”
“Still, I would have thought they’d want Joseph on the council, as a voting member. As the leader of the council, actually.” He chuckled. “`Admiral of the Ocean Sea’ Adekunle.”
Indira shook her head. “I’m afraid the youngsters are seeing the picture more clearly than we are, Julius. They’re expecting the military structure to be the dominant one.”
Julius was surprised. “You mean they think we’re going to be another Sparta?”
Indira shook her head again. “I doubt if they remember much of what I taught them about the ancient Greeks. And I mainly concentrated on Athens, anyway. Besides, the Spartan analogy’s inaccurate. The military structure of Spartan society was shaped by the necessity of holding down the helot class that did all the actual work. It wasn’t just militarist, it was class-ridden and highly oppressive. Our colony doesn’t resemble that in the slightest. No, the structure’s more like that of the Zulus, except it’s democratic. Or the early Romans. That’s probably a better analogy.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Then, after gazing at her for a few minutes:
“I notice that you don’t seem too relieved. Why?”
“What? Oh, sorry. I’m—” She paused, heaved a sigh. “I am afraid, Julius.”
“Of what? That we’ll survive?”
“No, not that.” A humorless chuckle. “Human beings have always been quite good at surviving. No, I’m worried about the future. What’ll become of this little society we’ve built, after we’re gone.”
“We seem to be off to a good start. They’re nice kids, Indira. Not a tyrant in the lot. And if there were, the rest of them wouldn’t tolerate it. If I say so myself, we’ve raised them with good ideas.”
Indira shook her head. “That means nothing, Julius. Or almost nothing. The forces that shape history have their roots in the most basic conditions of social and economic life. Good ideas are like the morning dew in the face of those forces.”
“I don’t understand.”
She stared at him, grim-faced. “The Zulus were an impressive people, in many ways. But they were a disaster for their neighbors. So were the Romans, if you recall. It’s easy to admire the culture of the early Roman republic. But the republic didn’t last, Julius. It gave way to the empire, and all the rest of it. Not immediately, of course. It took centuries. But historians think in terms of centuries. Sure, our kids are filled with democratic and egalitarian ideas. How many generations will that last—in a Bronze Age society?”
She stared down the valley.
“What have we set loose upon this world?”
Chapter 11
Whatever the future might bring, the change in authority set loose an immediate whirlwind of activity.
The first thing Joseph did, after re-establishing the training program, was to institute a systematic policy of exploration and reconnaissance. Despite the fact that it had been twelve years since the humans arrived on Ishtar, they really knew very little about the planet except the immediate vicinity of the valley. Julius had often expressed a desire to explore further, but the press of immediate concerns had always led him to postpone the task.
The task would no longer be postponed. Nor was there any need to postpone it. Grudgingly, Julius admitted to himself that he had fallen into a pattern of inertia and routine. The truth was that the cultivation of the upunu fields did not require all that much of the colony’s labor. In fact, the fields were producing a surplus well above what the owoc in the valley needed, even without the colonists engaging in constant toil. In the first years of upunu agriculture, the colonists had been kept very busy exterminating the uduwo-snails that proliferated every few months. But years of systematic slaughter had done their work. For the past three years, they had only found snails on rare occasions. And those were obviously recent immigrants from outside the valley—which only emphasized the importance of learning more about the region surrounding them.