“We won’t have to sleep so much, no. It’s a big ship, and evidently being on a big ship is less tiring. There’s an empty room next door to this one, that you can have.”
“Hey,” he said. “Cool. It’ll be fun hearing about what happened on the way.”
And without fuss, he departed to the next roomlet, taking the book with him.
During the trip, Carlos was charming. He was respectful to Chad, boyishly awed by the president, sincere and intent with the Big SA. He talked art endlessly with the artists, asking intelligent questions. During the trip, Benita watched him, bouncing back and forth between awe and jealousy. A nootch! Who wasn’t even human! And look what she’d managed to do!
During the trip, Chiddy and Vess stayed away from the humans and busied themselves ostentatiously with running the spaceship, though both Benita and Chad knew it hardly took any effort to run.
At breakfast on the first “day” of the journey, they asked one of the Inkleozese what the feeling had been on Pistach-home about what had happened.
“Yes, please tell us,” murmured the president. “How were they reacting?”
The Inkleozese made a chuckling sound. “The majority of the people of Pistach have decided it was a miracle. The Chapter closed the House of the Fresco after T’Fees’s people cleaned it, so few if any of the Pistach actually saw it the way it was, though rumors flew, of course. Since any wise government knows it is best to go along with the majority of the people, it is very likely that the curators will confirm that it was a miracle and leave well enough alone. There is precedent for this. On a former occasion, as Chiddy may have told you, the Chapter decided not to upset the status quo by inquiring into the real content of the Fresco. Since the current Fresco maintains that status quo, they will no doubt come to a like conclusion.
“Of course,” and she actually laughed, “they have never seen human art. Our sisters who visited you on Earth have seen it. They have told us all about the remarkable talents of humans. It was amusing to see the Chapter members teetering on their ethical slide, deciding whether to inquire about or even mention the artistry of Earthians. Several of them finally got up the courage to ask me if I had seen Earthian art. Of course, I had to be honest. I told them, no, I had not.”
Then she turned to the president and asked softly, “Have the Pistach really done so much for your people?”
“They really have,” he murmured. “A lot of things they speak of doing are things many humans have wanted to do but have never been able to muster a mandate to get them done. Things like legalizing drugs to take out the profit motive. Or paying teachers the way we do athletes, depending on how effective they are. Or getting rid of weapons whose only purpose is to kill people.”
“Is a mandate necessary?”
“If you’re going to overcome an economic incentive, yes.”
“Logic has no part?”
“No part at all. People can see the problem, they’re not stupid, but they can’t influence the legislators the way money can. Even when bad situations go on and on until the people are desperate for a correction, even when they threaten legislators with voting them out, the money still prevails.”
“It is hard for me to see how this could happen.”
Chad said, “The legislators react to a problem by writing a law, let’s say to put repeat drunk drivers in jail. The liquor industry objects, because they don’t like a lot of discussion about drunkenness, it hurts their image. The legislators react by amending the law to create a commission to study how best to jail drunk drivers. Then, when the budget bills come along, they fund only the commission. The appointees to the commission include representatives of the liquor industry.
“This allows the legislators to claim success, because the law got voted in. The liquor industry also claims success, because they made sure the law won’t work.
“The next step is to hire a lot people to work for the commission, many of whom are also liquor industry supporters, and the commission begins to issue long, complicated, vaguely pointless reports. Now, however, there are jobs involved, and legislators can’t get rid of jobs, even useless ones.