This last came with a tremulous smile, and for the first time gave Ornery something to feel thankful for. Thanks be to the Hagions that Pearla had been here in Sendoph rather than at home.
Pearla and Ornery took the trouble to learn something about chatrons, it being a subject not much thought of on the farms even though male things were gelded or neutered there all the time. Chatrons were mostly playmates for city daughters, companions for young wives tired from bearing but not yet entitled to a Hunk, de-sexed beings who wore a distinctive dress of baggy trousers and embroidered vests and veils a bit lighter than most men.
Before long, Pearla’s soon-husband, all well-meaning ignorance, fell in with their plans. He had not previously known that Oram was a chatron, but then, he did not really know Pearla well, as yet, and might, if he followed custom, never know her much better. Chatron though Oram was, this brother of his soon-wife would be properly provided for.
3—The Establishment of the Questioner by Haraldson the Beneficent
Mothers can not tell us who we are.
Mirrors can not tell us who we are.
Only time can tell for every moment
we are choosing what to be.
—”Reflections”
Haraldson And The Holies
Galactic Metronome
Terrareg, Reproright 3351 AZY
The life of Haraldson (3306-3454 AZY) has been the subject of many biographers; his abilities and intentions have been analyzed for centuries. It is true that he was a popular musician of interstellar fame, one who could move the population of whole systems with the sound of his voice or the twitch of a finger on the strings. It is true he had wed the most beautiful woman in the known universe and fathered children whose charm and poise, even in adolescence, had to be witnessed to be believed. It is true that he had no faults anyone could uncover with the most diligent search, and it was also true that he displayed the virtues of kindness, fidelity, modesty, and empathy combined with a political savvy which had not been known since before the Dispersion and had, even then, been rare. He was a phenomenon, a unique example of mankind, one whose honesty and goodwill could not be questioned, and it is probable that only Haraldson could have done what he did.
What he did was to get himself elected President for Life of the Council of Worlds (COW), with the title of Beneficent Exemplary. At his coronation, Haraldson sang the first verse of “Reflections,” the song that had first brought him to the attention of the worlds: “Mothers can not tell us who we are. Mirrors can not tell us who we are. Only time can tell, for every moment we are choosing what to be.”
“Let us choose justice and civility,” he went on. “Let us do so in the company of beauty and joy. If we have not that company, let us still honor ourselves in the choice of justice and civility.”
No sooner had the coronation occurred than Haraldson issued the Edicts of Equity, in which for the first time humanity was defined in terms of intelligence, civility, and the pursuit of justice rather than by species or form. Certain Earthian creatures other than mankind were immediately rendered human by the edicts, gaining the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of satisfactions thereby, and some extremist individuals and groups who had previously paraded themselves as human were disabused of this notion.
The fallout from the edicts had not yet settled when Haraldson reorganized the bureaucracy of the council, setting up several departments or “Houses,” among which were HoTA, House of Technical Advancement, and HoLI, House of Legislation and Investigation. In setting up HoLI, Haraldson declared that regulation and research should be inseparable, since mankind’s societies had for too long been hip-deep in laws that had been useless, unenforceable, and despicable from inception. If a law needed constant tinkering with, he said, it is a bad law, and the goal of justice should always be superior to the rule of bad law no matter how good the intent!
It was Haraldson, almost single-handedly, who made COW an effective agent of general welfare for all member worlds—as well as any mankind worlds COW could reach—were then subject to Haraldson’s edicts forbidding slavery, genocide, settling on previously occupied planets, racial crowding, and the destruction of either habitat or biodiversity. Haraldson further provided that persons must not only advocate but assure personal rights for all races, and that they must not discriminate against born, hatched, aggregated, or budded creatures on the basis of species, morphology, color, hispidity, gender, age, or opinion, except as species, morphology, gender, et al. provably altered the consequence of any given situation.