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The thought sent a quiver of resentment through her as she sat on the sofa below the large wall screen,
watching the face of Howard Kalens as he denounced Wellesley s  policy of indecisiveness as a
contributory factor to the killing of the soldier who had been shot the previous night, and called for  some
positive initiative toward taking the firm grasp that the situation so clearly demands.
 A boy of twenty-three, Kalens had said a few minutes previously.  Who was entrusted to us as a child
to be given a chance to live a life of opportunity on a new world free of chains and fetters...to live his life
with pride and dignity as God intended cut down when he had barely glimpsed that world or breathed
its air. Bruce Wilson did not die yesterday. His life ended when he was three years old.
Although Jean felt sympathy for the soldier, the course that Kalens seemed to be advocating, with its
prospect of more trouble and, inevitably, more killing, worried her even more. Why did it always have to
be like this? she asked herself. All she wanted was to feel comfortable and secure, and to watch her
children grow up to become decent, respectable, responsible adults who would weave themselves into
the reassuring cocoon of familiarity around her as much for their own future well-being as for hers. That
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much was hers to expect as her due because she had made sacrifices to earn it. It threatened nobody. So
why should other people s squabbles which were not of her making now threaten her with sweeping it all
away?
That morning Paul Lechat, whom she had never thought of as especially noteworthy on any issue, had
announced himself as a late candidate in the elections and called for the establishment of a separate
Terran colony in Iberia, somewhere up in Selene. He wanted to allow the people from Earth to pursue
their own pattern of living without disruptive influences for the immediate future, and possibly to make
such an institution permanent if it suited enough people to do so. To Jean the announcement had come as
a godsend, and to many others as well, if the amount of popular support that had materialized from all
sides within a matter of hours was anything to go by. Why couldn t everybody see it that way? she
wondered. It was so obvious. Why were there always some who were obstinate and valued political
interests before what common sense said would be for the common good, such as Kalens, who even
now was reacting to Lechat as a threat and rallying his own followers to action?
 Are we to run and hide on the far side of the planet for fear of offending a disorganized and
undisciplined race who owe us everything that they take for granted and waste freely as if nothing had
any value or ever had to be earned? Kalens was asking from the screen.  Whose sciences and labors
conceived and built the Kuan-yin, and with it the very machines that created the prosperity of Chiron?
Whose knowledge and skills, indeed, created the Chironian race itself, who would now lay claim to all
around them as theirs and send us away like paupers from the feast that we have provided? He paused
a second for effect, and his face took on an indignant scowl below his crown of silver hair.  I say no! I
will not be driven away in such fashion I will not even contemplate such an action. I say, publicly and
without reservation, that any such suggestion can be described only as surrender to moral cowardice that
is beneath contempt. Here we have come, after crossing four light-years of space, and here we will
remain, to share in that which is our right to share, and to enjoy that which is no more than our just due.
A thunder of applause greeted the exhortation. Jean had heard enough and told Jeeves to turn off the
screen,
For a while after listening to Lechat, she had entertained a brief hope that his announcement might
precipitate a landslide of opinion that would force a more enlightened official policy, but the hope had
faded a mere two hours later when Eve and Jerry stopped by for a brief farewell before moving out to
take up the Chironian way of living. Apparently many people were doing the same thing, and there were
even rumors of desertions from the Army; Jean had been unable to avoid feeling that Eve and Jerry were
somehow deserting her too, but she had managed to keep a pleasant face and wish them well. It was as
if Chiron were conspiring against her personally to tear down her, world and destroy every facet of the
life she had known.
The house around her was another part of it. She no longer saw it as the dream it had been on the day [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]