Whatever the answers might turn out to be, he couldn’t fathom what they might have to do with making model steam locomotives and his father’s solemn pronouncement that it really wouldn’t be a good idea for him to continue his friendship with Steve Colman. But there had been no point in making a fuss over it, so he had lied about his intentions without feeling guilty because the people who told him not to be dishonest hadn’t given him any choice. Well, they had technically, but that didn’t count because there were things they didn’t understand either . . . or had forgotten, maybe. But Steve would understand.
“I’m glad I wasn’t alive then,” Marie said from behind him. “I can’t imagine whole cities burning. It must have been horrible.”
“It was,” Jean agreed. “It’s a lesson that we an have to remember. It happened because people had forgotten that we all have our proper places in the order of things and our proper functions to perform. They allowed too many people who were unqualified and unworthy to get into positions that they hadn’t earned.”
“Pay our debt, collect our due/Each one proud/or what we do,” Marie recited.
“Very good,” her mother said.
Little snot, Jay thought to himself and turned the page. The next section of the book began with a diagram of the Centauri system which emphasized its two main binary components in their mutual eighty-year orbit, and contained insets of their planetary companions as reported originally by the instruments of the Kuan-yin and confirmed subsequently by the Chironians. Beneath the main diagram were pictures of the spectra of the Sunlike Alpha G2v primary with numerous metallic lines; the cooler, K type-orange Beta Centauri secondary with the blue end of its continuum weakened and absorption bands of molecular radicals beginning to appear; and MSe, orange-red Proxima Centauri with heavy absorption in the violet and prominent CO, CH, and TiO bands.
“There won’t be a war on Chiron, will there?” Marie asked.
“Of course not, dear. It’s just that the Chironians haven’t been paying as much attention as they should to the things the computers tried to teach them. They’ve always had machines to give them everything they want, and they think
life is all one long playtime. But it’s not really their fault because they’re not really people like us.” The conviction was widespread even though the Mayflower II’s presiding bishop was carrying a special ordinance from Earth decreeing that Chironians had souls. Jean realized that she had left* herself open to misinterpretation and added hastily, “Well, they are people, of course. But they’re not exactly like you because they were born without any mothers or fathers. You mustn’t hate them or anything. Just remember that you’re a little better than they are because you’ve been luckier, and you know about things they’ve never had a chance to learn. Even if we have to be a little bit firm with them, it will be for their own good in the end.”
“You mean when the Chinese and the Europeans get here?”
“Quite. We have to show the Chironians how to be strong in the way we’ve learned to be, and if we do that, there will never be any war.”
Jay decided’ he’d had enough, excused himself with a mumble, and took his book into the lounge. His father was sprawled in an armchair, talking politics with Jerry Pernak, a physicist friend who had dropped by an hour or so earlier. Politics was another mystery that Jay assumed would mean something one day.
To preserve the essential characteristics of the American System, life aboard the Mayflower I1 was’ organized under a civilian administration to which both the regular military command and the military-style crew organization were subordinated. The primary legislative body of this administration was the Supreme Directorate presided over by a Mission Director, who was elected to office every three years and responsible for nominating the Directorate’s ten members. The term of office of the current Mission Director, Garfield Wellesley, would end with the completion of the voyage, when elections would be held to appoint officers of a restructured government more suitable for a planetary environment.
“Howard Kalens, no doubt about it,” Bernard Fallows was saying. “If we’ve only got two years to knock the place .. into shape, he’s lust the kind of man we need. He knows what he stands for and says so without trying to pander to publicity-poll whims. And he’s got the breeding for the position. You can’t make a planetary governor out of any rabble, you how.”