“Is the Fresco very beautiful?” te asked me, after a long, thoughtful pause. “Though I am now only a former artist, I judged that the Compendium was not very artistically done.”
Though it was painful for me to tell T’Fees it was virtually invisible behind its veils of grime, in the interest of truth I did so, explaining that its holiness prevented our cleaning it. “As for beauty, we know that Canthorel painted only beauty,” I replied. I knew this had to be true, regardless of how it was conveyed in Glumshalak’s Compendium.
T’fees and I grew to be almost friends upon that journey. I was hurt by the look te gave me when ton’i parted on Quirk. By that time, of course, all those from Assurdo knew that only adults come to Quirk and no real children are ever born there. They also knew why: because the people of Quirk value their own individuality over the welfare of the whole, and Mengantowhai’s rule allows no young to be brought into a world that has not prepared an orderly, safe and peaceful place for them.
You will be sympathetic to this, I know, dearest Benita. Though not all human receptors or nootchi are good ones, you fulfilled those roles ably. You bore children, and you labored mightily to be sure they had an orderly, safe, and peaceful place. It is a sorrow that one of your children was unable to appreciate this. Some other races in the Confederation do not have our ways. They are like some of your people on Earth. They demand that children be born, even without a place for them or a good person to nootch them. If the children die, well, say they, it is the will of their gods. I do not like such ways,- certainly I would not follow such gods.
I remember often what you said the night of our dinner with your people, about your people improving while your god stayed the same. I think of the races I have known who defined their gods when they were still savages, giving their gods the power and cruelty they themselves displayed. The gods of the Fluiquosm, for example, are invisible spirits of death. And the Wulivery carve their hungry gods into immortal stone, while the Xankatikitiki recite long sagas of their heavenly hunters. So they have gone on, generation after generation, unchanging, and in following them, their peoples have shut off all avenues to a better way of life. Would it not be a good thing if we could retire old gods, like old soldiers, to a peaceful place in the country? Let them live like retired warriors whose time of violence is past? Or like old politicians, perhaps, who have learned the wrong lessons in striving youth and have not had enough lifetimes to unlearn them.
Pistach management—MONDAY
On Monday, the Pistach Questionnaires were delivered by postmen to every household. They came in a plain brown envelope containing individual packets for various members of the family. Some were for adult women, some for adult men, some for children between eight and twelve, others for teenagers. The instructions specified that each person must first select the age and gender appropriate packet, affix his or her own thumbprint on the sticky patch at the top of each page, then answer the questions below, without help, in pencil or pen.
“If the person filling out the questionnaire is someone other than the thumb printer, the questionnaire will self-destruct,” said the instructions. “If the person filling out the questionnaire is under duress or being helped, the questionnaire will self-destruct. Please, do this individually and honestly.”
Benita, reading this, was most amused. They had found a use for old Mission Impossibletechnology after all.
The questionnaires included several hundred questions about society, about people’s positions in society, about behavior, work habits, morality. Even people who did not read at all, or at all well, found the questions easy to understand. Many questions asked that certain behaviors be ranked in order of preference or by degree of sinfulness, such as, “Is sex outside of marriage more or less sinful than a) not paying one’s employees a living wage, b) cheating on taxes, c) passing laws to benefit the rich by further oppressing the poor?”