"I don"t understand," said the young man from Earth. As young men went, thought Lady Disdain, he seemed quite a reasonable specimen and would fit in well on Cartaginia... - So Megan Sunrise told Imry the terrible story of Mankind"s first voyage to the stars, to Secunda- It"s an old story and mer- cifully not well known, because humans have tried to put it behind them. Mankind"s first starship was built centuries be- fore the faster-than-light travel known as Froanways. It is said that the Froans gave Mankind the secret of Froanways simply because they didn"t want any more Secundans around the gal- axy. That is very likely true.
"You see, Imry," Megan said, "Earth was poor. Equipment was heavy and expensive. The voyage was to take many gen- erations. Excess pa.s.sengers could not be tolerated. By excess pa.s.sengers, I mean old people ... and men. So a special race of humans was bred."
"Disgusting!" shouted Lady Disdain. Her entourage, some twenty elderly humans, nodded their heads on feeble necks, THE SMALL PENANCE OF LADY DISDAIN 69.
murmured "Hear, hear", and prodded their peac.o.c.ks into ac- tivity. The birds sat on their laps, small iridescent mutants bred for human use. The Cartaginians could not conceive the offense these bird fans-and their fur-trimmed clothes- caused Imry from Earth, where animals were sacrosanct.
Megan said quietly, "It all seems perfectly natural to us, so it"s not nice to hear other people calling us names."
"I will call you what I like, young woman!"
Megan ignored her. "We have four age groups," she told Imry. "We have children, we have bloomers, we have parents, and we have crones. Much like any other human race, except we"re nearly all females. We usually wear a color to show our age: blue for children, red for bloomers, gray for parents, and green for crones. We don"t necessarily dress all in one color; just an indication is enough; a scarf or something. It"s not re- ally important until we get older, but it"s become part of our culture. Like a national dress back in the old days of Earth."
She sighed. "But all that"s changing now. Our people are changing. Or maybe I should say they"re being Revised." The green eyes were sad.
Lady Disdain shuddered theatrically. "It"s bad enough that your kind of perversion exists. I see no reason to wash Man- kind"s dirty linen in front of this alien. Just shut up, will you, young woman? Now, Froan. It must be quite clear to you that those appalling Secundans represent a danger to any civilized race, is it not?"
The alien"s voice was like a rasp against steel. "No, it is not. They are a danger only to humans. And humans are not a civilized race by our reckoning. We cannot solve your prob- lem because it is a human problem. Lady Disdain, you are wasting the time of Hotel Security."
"My clone-sister is the president of Earth""
"We are aware of your relationship to Emerald Kemp."
"Are you aware of the purpose of my visit to Earth? Of the president"s sickness, and our need to mindmeld before she dies? The continuity of government depends on the mindmeld. Without it, there will be anarchy on Earth! And there will be no mindmeld if I am attacked and killed by cannibals in your hotel!"
"A human problem, you will agree."
"So you will not confine these creatures to their quarters?"
70 Michael Coney "You have made the same request three times in the last seven days. Lady Disdain. The answer is the same. It is not Security"s problem."
Lady Disdain felt her cheeks flaming and her control slip- ping. d.a.m.n these all-powerful Froans and their so-logical ar- guments! "Listen to that, you humans. The Froans will not help. That tells you something about these creatures. You think they"re benevolent because they gave us Froanways travel and promised us longevity. But it"s not benevolence; it"s politics! They"re directing human development down the path they"ve chosen. In this way they maintain control and stifle other directions our development may take-directions that might have challenged their superiority""
While the humans stared at her, stunned, Froan said, "It is Security that is refusing your request, not the Proans. Security is a multispecies organization."
"I don"t see any other species around. There"s just you!"
"Obviously the other species trust us to make rational judg- ments."
Lady Disdain rose. Her entourage rose. Peac.o.c.ks fluttered.
She glared at Megan. "I shall have to bring other forces to bear, that much is clear. I should have known better than to expect common sense from an alien." She transferred her gaze to Imry. "You"re well advised to stay clear of this Secundan, young man. You heard what she said. You never know when her primitive instincts may come to the fore."
Imry found Megan walking beside him as he left Security.
It seemed impolite to veer off and leave her; politeness had been instilled in him since birth, as a very necessary prerequi- site to life on Cartaginia. He glanced at her. She held her head high but tears glistened in the brown eyes. Surely she"d never -.. eaten people? It was impossible.
He"d heard plenty of rumors about Secunda during this past few years while the Secundans were being snipped back to Earth for Revision. Earth alone had the technology and capac- ity for such a huge task. Quite simply, the Secundans were being transformed into normal humans, shipload by shipload, and then returned to Secunda.
And Megan"s shipload was the last- Once she and her com- THE SMALL PENANCE OF LADY DISDAIN.
71.
panions had been Revised, Froans would consider humans to be civilized.
And the Gift of Longevity would be theirs.
"All that stuff ..." He hesitated. "About your age groups and what they do. It"s not really like that, is it?"
She swung round, pink with anger. "It"s exactly like that, and so what! Are you afraid I"m going to bite? Well, I"m past bloomer age, if that makes you feel any safer. But a lot of us ... It"s so unfair! What"s wrong with disposing of people who are past contributing to society? What is wrong with bloomers being ... involved in disposing of them? For us it must be right, because we can"t have children until we"ve achieved hormony."
"Honnony?"
"You don"t know anything, but you"re so quick to judge, like everyone else! Hormony is the ability to have children. It disappears at the crone stage, just like it does in your race.
But in our crones a dormant strain of hormones are still being produced, building up in the system. Before a bloomer can bear children, she must ... ingest these hormones to achieve hormony."
"It"s not your fault," said Imry.
She snapped. "There is no fault, don"t you see? Somebody changed the rules on us, that"s all. And the people who changed the rules are the people who made us in the first place. You Earth people!"
He looked away. She was right. She was beautiful, too. He wondered if Revision would change the way she looked.
What a pity he was going to Cartaginia among all the old farts, instead of Secunda....
"Sorry, Megan," he said at last. "But it was the Froans who made the rules, and now they bribe us to stick by them. And the bribe is too good to turn down."
"Yes. Well ... I guess you don"t want me around any- more." She turned away.
"No, wait a minute. Don"t go, Megan. Give me a chance to come to terms with this. Anyway, you can"t just leave me Just like that. You saved my life. By the way, how did you happen to be around when I needed you?"
She hesitated, then offered a reluctant smile. "I ... fol- lowed you."
72 Michael Coney This was much better. He took her hand. "Let"s start again, shall we?"
So they explored Hotel Andromeda together and found more interesting things than Secundan culture to talk about.
"Longevity. Maybe four hundred years of life. Do you want it, Imry?"
Her gaze held his, and he felt a strange weakness inside.
Do I want to live that long? he wondered. Maybe, but I wish it wasn"t going to be among those old/arts on Cartaginia. A younger world would be nice. Like Secunda ...
And so, in the External Communications Room of Hotel Andromeda, he began to wonder if he was falling in love with a cannibal.
Interplanetary communication, as we now know it, grew out of a paradox. There was little point in Earth, for example, communicating with Hotel Andromeda at the speed of radio waves, because the Froanways ships themselves move very much faster. For a century or so this problem defeated hu- mans, and messages were carried on board ships and shuttles like the mail on Old Earth. The Froans showed no inclination to help out. It was not their problem. They communicated with one another instantaneously, telepathically.
It was almost as though the Froans were testing Mankind"s ingenuity.
Then one day. a bright young spark on Earth played around with two known facts about Froanways. Firstly, the great ships were driven through s.p.a.ce by mental as well as physical methods from within the ships themselves. Secondly, the laws of inertia and momentum still applied: the rate of acceleration and deceleration depended on the ma.s.s of the ship. The heav- ier the ship, the greater the power needed and the longer it took to reach its destination.
Might it be possible to create a tiny ship, big enough to contain a message, that would operate on the same Froanways principle but move a billion times faster because it was a bil- lion tiroes smaller?
It was. These tiny messengers became known as blips.
Imry and Megan visited the External Communications Room. "Why does she call herself Lady Disdain?" asked Imry. His mind was elsewhere. As a blipreader, communica- THE SMALL PENANCE OF LADY DISDAIN 73.
tions were his job and the External Communications Room was not particularly interesting.
A buzzer sounded, a tiny door flipped open, and a black object the size of a fist dropped into a tray. A white-suited hu- man technician levered it open with a flat tool; the action re- minded Imry of shucking oysters in the wilderness area where he"d been raised. The technician held the opened thing to his temple and appeared to be listening.
"Blip for Lady Disdain of Cartaginia," he announced to the room at large. "She"ll be the new Earth president in a few months, I"ll bet."
A man at the far end of the room called, "How many times do I have to tell you, Anders? The contents of personal blips are confidential, for Pete"s sake. We don"t go sounding off about them in front of the whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned hotel!" He nod- ded toward Imry and Megan.
"h.e.l.l, it"s only speculation. I didn"t read the message," said the other sulkily.
"Sure. But speculating is the first step toward reading. I"ve seen it happen before. Just do your job and don"t get too in- terested, huh?"
The blipreader, scowling, clicked the blip shut again, slipped it into a package, sprayed it with Lady Disdain"s per- sonal odor from the dispenser, and handed it to a messenger dog. The small drama was over.
"People on Cartaginia have hereditary t.i.tles like on Old Earth." Megan returned to Imry"s question. "They"re pa.s.sed down from their first genetic leaders."
"Tough luck on the rest of the people," said Imry. "Does that mean I"ll never get to be called Lord Imry?"
She laughed. "Is that your wish, my lord?"
"Well ... I"d like to think I had the chance. After all, what"s an accident of birthplace got to do with anything?"
"What, indeed, Imry from Earth?" asked the cannibal-...
"I"m so sorry, Megan."
"She wants us locked up. Froan says it"s a human matter.
That means a referendum. She could call it anytime; maybe she"s calling it right now. All people have to do is push a but- ton and we"ll be caged like animals."
"If the referendum goes against you."
"It will. There are four shiploads of Earth people in An- 74 Michael Coney dromeda, and n.o.body likes Secundans. It doesn"t matter to them that we"ve already confined all our bloomers; they don"t want to understand that. We moved into our Earth shuttle twenty hours ago, but it"ll be a week before we"re ready for departure. They won"t let any of us out of that shuttle for a week."
He tried to make light of it. "A week"s not so bad. h.e.l.l, the trip Earthside takes months."
"But it could have been a very nice week."
As she looked at him, he knew what she meant. And he knew she couldn"t put it into words, because she was Secundan and-until Revision-tainted. And even after Revi- sion, people would be looking at Secundans and thinking: / wonder if she ever ... You hww what I mean?
Then she added something he"d never thought of. "You"re the first man I"ve ever talked to. We only have seventeen men on Secunda-great fat seed machines, lying on pillows and eating all day. Revolting. Are Earth Men all as nice as you?"
So as they left External Communications he was wondering if he was mistaken, and if her interest in him was simple cu- riosity bom of the practice of artificial insemination on Secunda. Then he began to wonder if his interest in her was simple grat.i.tude for having saved him from the girl gang.
Two depressing items.
Such things come in threes. At that moment speakers all over the hotel boomed a message: "A Human Referendum is being held at this time. The proposition is that members of the Secundan race const.i.tute a danger to elderly humans and should be confined to Shuttle A-4 effective immediately, until its departure for Earth in ap- proximately seven standard days."
"Don"t you have a chance to defend yourself?" asked Imry desperately.
"What could we say? Nothing they"d listen to." She turned away. "Good-bye, Earth man. Good luck on Cartaginia. I ...
I really mean that."
She was going- He grabbed her, spun her around. Her face was wet with tears. "No! Let"s hide somewhere!"
She tried to smile. "You"ve only just arrived. I"ve been here weeks. You"ll find hiding isn"t so easy in Hotel Androm- THE SMALL PENANCE OF LADY DISDAIN.
75.
eda as it is in an Earth wilderness. This place is Just not built for ... for fugitives."
"Maybe n.o.body"s needed to try before."
One hour later Lady Disdain of Cartaginia faced Froan yet again, chin high, expressionless as only a self-admitted fool can be.
"I wish you to cancel the confinement of the appalling Secundans immediately."
The alien regarded her blandly. "You surprise me. Lady Disdain."
"That is neither here nor there. Cancel the confinement, please."
"Perhaps you"d care to tell me why."
Really, thought Lady Disdain, it was no business of Froan"s. It was absolutely disgraceful the way these wretched aliens threw their weight about-just because they happened to have been first to invent FTL travel. However, there was no harm in telling it. That might even speed matters up. "I"ve just received a blip from Earth. My clone-sister is president of Earth, you know."
If sighing had been a Froan characteristic, Froan would have sighed. "I do know."
"Her condition had worsened. As you know, her sickness is the whole reason for my voyage. I must mindmeld with her before she dies. I am to be the next president of the Earth."