One of the less experienced selectors, however, had selected Chom as an inceptor on the grounds of certain self-gratifying behaviors which a more experienced selector would have recognized as infantile survivals. In addition to bad selection, training for inceptor-hood had been so abbreviated that none of Chom’s natural territoriality had been fully suppressed.
Campesi are obsessive about their own space and their own habits. Chom had become obsessed with one particular receptor. Campesi are suspicious of novelty, which meant that Chom could not be easily diverted to other receptors. Campesi need routine and immediate satisfactions, and Chom had enjoyed the routines and satisfactions of that particular receptor and continued to plague ker even when the receptor was brooding and not in condition to receive an inceptor’s attentions.
To state it simply: Chom had gone breeding-mad, and when the receptor had repulsed ter, te had invaded a meeting of the entire selectorial body at their annual Fresco Meditation breakfast, killed over half of them and then attempted to kill self.
Though the receptor in question subsequently delivered a fine egg to the nootch, ke had been gravely traumatized by the incident and requested immediate reselection as a field campes, working on one of the outlying farms. All this, and stillno one had sent for athyci! The remaining selectors were required by the rules of settlement to do so, but they did not.
We recognize a reluctance on the part of inexperienced persons to get athyci involved in their troubles. Inexperienced persons are often ingenuous. They have a sweet naivete about them, an innocent faith that if they can only talk long enough about problems, they will come up with solutions that will not hurt anyone. They have a penchant for committees and group discussions, for bumbling along, never wishing to offend but unable to avoid offense, always caring but never courageous, always pitying but never resolute, always doubting but stubbornly avoiding decision.
So they had done on Assurdo. In the absence of experienced mentors, the inexperienced selectors had continued doing their well-intentioned worst. There was no malice in them, though there was a good deal of mis-hoping. Mistake compounds mistake, and by the time we arrived, conditions had deteriorated into near anarchy. I reminded myself of panel four of the Fresco,Peaceful Work, in which the Jaupati are shown working usefully under the watchful eyes of Pistach mentors, though in the preceding panel three,Uniting the Tribes, the Jaupati are shown in total chaos and disarray. The situation could be fixed. It was not impossible. I told myself this, over and over.
The selectors, being young and proud and unwilling to offend, had fallen into the trap of choosing far too many specialized castes. When a selector is too sympathetic, le may overvalue the least passing interest expressed by an undifferentiated one, assuming this transitory regard is a sign of talent or affinity. If the selector is also impatient and/or overworked, the selector may neglect to observe the candidate’s actual performance during the selection process, thus allowing the first impression to prevail. Commit this same error over and over for a period of several decades and anarchy results! The colony was awash in artists who did no art, sculptors who sculpted nothing, musicians who were pitch deaf, doctors who couldn’t distinguish healthy persons from sick ones, much less treat the diseases. When I remember it, dear Benita, I think of your spouse and son. There were a great many Berts and Carloses in that settlement! There were even a few contempli sitting about, looking at the walls. One can’t train contempli in a new colony! Contempli need advanced mentoring of very specialized types! How does one come up with the design of new nanobots or spaciotemporal diffusers by looking at walls! Oh, mathematical contempli do a lot of staring into space, I grant you, though they would rather scribble abstruse formulae on the walls than stare at them, but one cannot come up with micro-chem experts or morph-beam engineers in a new colony!
All these specialists were, of course, drawing their rations, keeping cozy and warm, accomplishing nothing, while the colony was desperate for ditch diggers to install the sewage system, plumbers to hook up the drains, technicians to install the hydroelectric plant which had been shipped with the settlers, and so on. Pistach systems are carefully engineered to afford gainful, useful employment for all members, even the inevitable supply of glusi (except under conditions of glusi glut, as previously mentioned) but in the colony of Assurdo, the balance had been lost and there were misassignment glusi everywhere!