Eichra Oren was sweating.
An artificial sun burned through the canopy, sharpening the shadows without raising temperatures. New friends and old enemies had departed for mankind's homeworld hours ago. Order was being restored to the motley communities of 5023 Eris.
By anybody's estimate, his professional tasks were probably over with. Now he steeled himself to attend to personal business. It was necessary, he told himself, and yet something he'd dreaded for weeks.
His relationship with Toya Pulaski, as artificial as the second sun shining overhead, had been imposed on him. From the first it had troubled his sense of ethics. The simple fact was that he found the woman about as unattractive as a human being could be. He felt guilty, but there was nothing he could do to hide it from himself, nor, knowing what he did of sapient psychology, would he have tried.
Just to make things even more complicated, he was interested in Rosalind Nguyen. It seemed to him she was everything that Toya could never be: graceful, beautiful, confident, even a little mysterious; the one similarity between the two was their intelligence. Rosalind, however, was unafraid of hers, and used it to accomplish things in the real world, rather than as a refuge from it. Still, before he could do anything about that, he had a debt to pay, and it was possible that it might spoil whatever chance he had with Rosalind. But as a man, and as a debt assessor, he couldn't afford to abdicate. He must tell Toya the truth about his assignment by Mister Thoggosh. Try as he might, in his 542 years of experience, he couldn't think of anything he'd ever looked forward to less.
After literally searching the world overhis legs ached from being folded under him in the electrostat he'd requisitioned for the purposehe found her near the yawning triangular entrance to the asteroid's interior. A canvas awning had been put up on poles to protect its occupants from whatever weather 5023 Eris had to offer. Beneath it, a large table had been built from neatly sawn logs.
"Did you have a chance to talk with Colonel Tai about his personal background?" she was asking her companion. "I hear that the Chinese who came here are the result of endless batteries of personality tests as children who then underwent decades of isolation and cold-blooded conditioning."
Since the fighting, there had already been another subsurface excursion. Toya was examining Predecessor artifacts of a technical nature, spread out on the table before her. Nearby lay solvents, soap and water, and brushes of various sizes and stiffness. Bending over the table beside her, the machinist, Owen, was attempting to identify each of the pieces as it was cleaned off.
"What kind of training? Hello, Eichra Oren."
The Antarctican nodded back. Owen's beard was freshly trimmed and he was wearing what Eichra Oren was certain had recently been a clean uniform. He was shocked at this miraculous transformation. He hadn't seen an ironed uniform during his entire acquaintance with his fellow human beings on the asteroid, and Owen was the last individual he'd have expected to be wearing one. Sharp creases and pocket folds were still visible, although he and Toya were covered, head to toe, with several eons' accumulation of dust and dirt. It was clear to any observer that they were having the time of their lives.
"Hello, Eichra Oren," Toya echoed and went on. "Well, some subjects he mentioned were `Elementary Practical Jokes,' `Intermediate Intransigence,' `Advanced Profanity,' and `Postgraduate Greed.' "
"All of them meant," Eichra Oren told them, "to mimic the rugged individualism they feel was once characteristic of Americans and made you a great people. You began to declineTai's words, although I agreewhen `team-play' and other forms of soft collectivism became the order of the day. `Ask not what your country can do for you,' et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."
"You're saying it was Wall Street and Madison Avenue that ruined us," Owen asked, "rather than Marxism?"
"I'm sayingor Colonel Tai isthat Marxism would have been laughed out of existence without Wall Street and Madison Avenue doing its advance work. However the kind of rugged individual the PRC most admires and tries to emulate isn't Rambo or John Waynealthough it's true that warriors are useful and comforting to have aroundbut the technically oriented `nerd.' "
Toya started. Owen repeated, "Nerd?"
"Sure. Tai pointed out that the Japanese, to name a bad example, lost their technological and economic lead over that very issue. Not once during the twentieth or twenty-first centuries has that country ever suffered from mischievous computer hacking or lost a single person-hour to a domestic computer virus."
"This is bad?" There was a twinkle in Owen's eye.
"The PRC thinks it's bad for any culture. Like the lack of crime in Englandbecause they haven't got the gumption for itthe Japanese lack the requisite individualism for such pranks. It's beaten out of them at an astonishingly early age, along with any real creativity, by their schoolmates, with the full approval of authority. There's a name for it that means `Hammering down the nail that sticks up.' All they have left after that is a dull, placid conformityand some really serious pathologies."
Owen nodded. "Therefore they lacked the resourcescall it the mental capitalfor maintaining their otherwise impressive mid-twentieth-century gains."
"That's about it. The PRC belatedly decided to close its own potential `nerd gap.' They built whole villages, high in the mountains or deep in the deserts, where individualism was practiced as if it were a foreign language. It was their hope that someday their experimental subjects could leave the villages to spread that `language' among the rest of the people."
Toya shook her head. "But instead they risked everything to preserve the international balance of power? That doesn't make much sense."
Eichra Oren shrugged. "The whole effort would have been for nothing if the Russians or Americans acquired exclusive control of an overwhelmingly advanced technology." He cleared his throat. "Pardon me for changing the subject, Roger, but I need to speak with Toya, if you don't mind."
Before Owen could speak, Toya astonished them both. She blinked and looked at Eichra Oren. "I know why you're here and we don't have to make a big deal of it. There isn't anything we can't say in front of Roger."
Owen pointed a stubby finger at his own chest, silently mouthing the word "moi?"
Toya ignored him and continued speaking to the Antarctican. "I've been dreading this moment, having to tell you the truth, for weeks. I was assignedagainst my willby General Gutierrez and by Arthur Empleado, to `distract' you and learn the Elders' secrets. I want to make it clearno, no, please don't interrupt me, or I'll never get this outthat I have nothing against you. I enjoyed what happened, and I hope you did, too. It didn't just make me feel like a woman, it made me feel like a full-fledged human being for the first time in my life, and I'll always be grateful to you for that. But Eichra Oren, let's be realistic: I had my orders from the KGB, and I'll bet you had yours, too, from Mister Thoggosh."
Eichra Oren felt like imitating Owen, but she didn't give him time.
"Now I have my own interests." He knew that she meant something other than intellectual interests. Her gaze directed itself at the overweight, grease-covered machinist standing next to her. "And from the way you look at Dr. Nguyen and the way she looks at you, I'd guess that you have yours, as well. Over the past few weeks, I've learned to value you as a colleague and as a friend, Eichra Oren. Why can't we just leave it at that?"
Heretofore, Owen had been a dedicated bachelor, the expedition character. The lives of the Soviet Americans had often depended on his ability to fabricate whatever they needed. Laying a grimy hand on Toya's, he looked up from his work and grinned man-to-man at the assessor. Something about that grin told Eichra Oren he was more than he appeared to be. Not knowing what else to do, Eichra Oren grinned back, nodded at Toya, left the pair to their archaeological research, and stumped back the way he'd come to his waiting aerocraft.
To his surprise he found anger bubbling up inside him and knew he had some thinking to do before he could call his mind his own again.
It wasn't that he'd wanted the girl. She was right. His interests, like hers, lay elsewhere. Yet his ego felt bruised by rejection and he was dismayed to discover such a childish reaction lurking within him. It was another phenomenon he felt reluctant to tell his mother about. He knew from experience that this was a danger sign. He'd never been anything resembling a mother's boy. Eneri Relda, an active individual with "interests" of her own, would never have permitted it. But she was also a person of acute judgement who'd lived 15,000 years. He'd always valued her advice even when receiving it was painful or embarrassing.
By the time he reached his aerocraft, he'd had time to consider further and realized, with gratification, what had happened. As usual, the Elders' ancient p'Nan philosophy was proven correct. On the Forge of Adversity, Toya had transformed herself into her own person, self-confident and autonomous. And almost pretty, in a way, now that he came to think of it. It pleased him to believe he might have had something to do with the change.
Relievedand freehe went to look for Rosalind.
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