remarked with a delighted leer on his face. “It is, isn’t it,” Colman agreed dismally.
Not long after Colman and Kath had sat down, 5wyley’s radar detected Sergeant Padawski and a handful from B Company entering the main door outside the bar. They were talking loudly and seemed to be a little the worse for drink. Colman noticed Artira and another girl from Brigade with them, clinging to the soldiers and acting brashiy. He shook his head despairingly, but it wasn’t really his business. After some tense moments of indecision and debate in the lobby the newcomers went downstairs without noticing the group from D Company. Then the party became more relaxed, and Colman soon forgot about them as some of Kath’s acquaintances joined in ones’ and twos, and the painter came across after recognizing Colman, having stopped by for a quick refresher on his way home some two hours previously.
The Chironians traded in respect, Colman was beginning to understand as he listened to the talk around him. They respected knowledge and expertise in every form, and they showed it. Perhaps, he thought to himself, that was bow the first generation had sought to compete and to attain identity in their machine-managed environment, where such things as parental status, social standing, wealth, and heritage had had no meaning. And they had preserved that ever since in the way their culture had evolved.
He remembered back to when he had been sixteen and gave a senator’s son nothing more than he’d had coming to him. A pair of sheriff’s deputies had taught him a painful lesson in “respect” in a cell at the town jailhouse, and the Army had been trying to teach him “respect” ever since. But that had been Earth-style respect. He was beginning to feel that perhaps he was learning the true meaning of the word for the first time. True respect could only be earned; it couldn’t be extorted. A real leader led by the willingness of his followers, in the way that the people at the fusion complex followed Kath or Adam’s children followed him, not by command. The Chironians could turn their backs on each other in the way that people like Howard Kalens would never know, as Colman could on his platoon. These were his kind of people. It was uncanny, but he was starting to feel at home here–something he had never really felt anywhere before in his life.
Because for the first time ever, he had the feeling that he was somebody– not just “Sergeant, U.S. Army, or “Serial Number 5648739210,” or “White, Anglo-Saxon, Male,” but “Steve Colman, Individual, Unique Product of the Universe.”
It was a nice feeling.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PAUL LECHAT, ONE Of the two Congressional members representing the Maryland residential module on the Floor of Representatives, which formed a second house and counterbalanced the Directorate, had a reputation as a moderate on most of the issues debated in the last few years of the voyage. Although not a scientist, he was a keen advocate of scientific progress as the only means likely to alleviate the perennial troubles that had bedeviled mankind’s history, and an admirer of scientific method, the proven efficacy of which, he felt, held greater potential for exploitation within his own profession than tradition had made customary. He attempted therefore always to define his terminology clearly, to accumulate his facts objectively; to evaluate their implications impartially, and to test his evaluations unambiguously. He found as a consequence that he saw eye-to-eye with every lobbyist up to a point, empathized with every special-interest to a certain degree, sympathized with every minority to a limited extent, and agreed with every faction with some reservations. He was wary of rationalizings, cautious of extrapolatings, suspicious of generalizings, and ‘skeptical at dogmatizings. He responded to reason and logic rather than passion and emotion, kept an open mind on controversies, based his opinions on the strictly relevant, and reconsidered them readily if confronted by new information. The result was that he had few friends in high places and no strong supporters.
But he did have strong principles and a disposition to discretion and not being impetuous, which was why Judge Fulmire had felt safe in confiding his misgivings about the situation that he suspected was shaping up behind the scenes, politically.