A FEW MILES NORTH OF Catalina Island, the Sassy Lady trailed a foamy wake across a placid sea rolling gently under a cloudless sky. Cade, in a straw hat and swim trunks, leaned over from a sun lounge on the boat deck aft of the wheelhouse, helped himself to another beer from the ice chest, and passed one to Blair. Vrel and Krossig declined, nursing their previous ones, still somewhat wary of this dubious Terran habit. Julia and Dee were sunning themselves on the bow, while Luke kept Warren company in the wheelhouse, and others were in the main cabin below. A crewman was preparing rods and tackle on the fishing platform at the stern. Rebecca had stayed behind, preferring to remain within the security of the house. Blair was still enthusing about his forthcoming move to Australia. He had some things to finish up in Los Angeles, and would be following on a month or so after Krossig.
"Just think, they're giving me a position to study Hyadean science officially," he told Cade. "I'll be getting paid for it."
"But don't our own people have jobs like that here?" Cade said. "I thought half of Washington was into it."
Blair shook his head. "I'm talking about understanding the real science, the attitude of mind that let them get it right. The government collaborations focus too much on short-term applicationsbetter ways to make weapons and profits. I got offers there a couple of times but it wasn't what I wanted."
Cade really didn't know one way or the other. He nodded, sipped his beer, and left it at that.
"We got a message from Erya, on her way to Chryse," Krossig told Cade. "She says you've shown her a new way of seeing things. She hopes she'll be able to spread it on Chryse."
"Sounds as if the place could do with it," Blair commented.
"I just received a gift too," Vrel told them. He had acquired an outrageously gaudy pair of beach shorts and was sprawled on a blanket spread out over the deck. The Chrysean sun, Amaris, shone more brightly and slightly more toward the violet. Hyadeans had no problem with the solar intensity on Earth and soaked up all they could get. Blair had speculated to Cade that maybe that was why they chose mountainous areas. Vrel made the announcement sound like a special event.
"What was that?" Cade asked him.
"From Neville Baxterat the party. It's a Maori sculpture, a kind of figurine. Very attractive. I'll show it to you next time you're at the mission. Dee says it's probably worth quite a lot."
"That sounds like Neville," Cade agreed.
"He also says I have to visit him in New Zealand. Apparently, it's important to see that all the world isn't like America. What does he mean by that?"
"A kind of private joke that we have between countries," Cade said. Vrel nodded vaguely but didn't really seem to understand.
"Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the East," Krossig said. "I might even get a chance to visit other areas . . . even the Himalayas, maybe." He leaned back against the sun lounge he was on and tossed out an arm in a sweeping gesture. "Have you any idea how unique this planet of yours is? These huge mountain ranges; chasms like the Yangtze gorges. The whole surface is young, sculpted only yesterday. That's why life here is so colorful and varied. It's life that has been renewed and reinvigorated. The worlds we know are old and tiredendless expanses of monotonous plains and eroded hills, silted rivers, insipid swamplands. Worlds in their old age, awaiting rejuvenation."
"Have those planets been around all that much longer, then?" Cade asked.
"No. They've just been wearing down for longer," Krossig said.
"They haven't had the disruptions that Earth has gone through," Blair put in. "Not anytime lately, anyhow. Our conventional notion of slow, gradual change over huge time-spans got it wrong. Changes happen quickly and violently."
Cade knew that Blair could go on for hours if he was allowed to warm to a theme. He looked over at Vrel. "I don't know about quick and violent changes to planets, but I've seen plenty of them in people. This is starting to sound more like your field." Vrel was the political economist.
Vrel raised the can he was holding, twirled it around and contemplated it for a few seconds, then seemed to change his mind and lowered it again. "Hm. There's something paradoxical here," he said. "Terrans believed in gradualism, but their whole history is violent and catastrophic. Hyadeans accept upheaval as the natural way of change, but we deplore it and try to eliminate it from our affairs. That's what's at the bottom of our problems with the Querlwhy we and they are in armed opposition."
"How's that?" Blair asked. The reasons for the standoff and occasional conflict between the Hyadean and the Querl worlds was something that Cade had long wanted to understand better too.
"Well, we are taught that their system reflects values that are incompatible with ours," Vrel said. "They take pride in what we consider to be social ills in need of correction. They could never conform to the system of approvals and entitlements that our social structure is built on."
"So does that make them a threat that you have to defend against?" Cade asked.
"We've always been told that they are," Vrel replied.
Krossig conceded the field to politics and elaborated. "Their system can't work. Our economists have proved it. Because it's based on conflicts and rivalries that consume nonproductive effort, it must devour resources faster than it can replenish them. As the situation becomes more critical, the conflicts will increase, making the imbalance worse. Eventually, the only solution left to them will be to try and take from usprovided we let them. If we make that impossible by maintaining sufficient military strength, the outcome, eventually, must be the Querl's downfall."
Cade drank again and stared at him. It was too pat, like a memorized line that had been drummed in through life. Typically Hyadean. He shifted his gaze to Vrel, whose response had been less automatic. Twice, Vrel had qualified his statements by cautioning that they were what Hyadeans were "taught" or had been "told." Those were surprising words to hear coming from a Hyadean. "I assume the Querl must know the Chrysean position," he said. "So how do they see it?"
"They don't see themselves as disorderly or unruly, but simply as pursuing their ideals of independence and freedom," Vrel replied. He thought for a moment, and then smiled uncomfortably. "And we're supposed to be here to save Earth from going the same way. Yet it seems that those same things are also regarded as ideals by most humans." He looked from one to another of the others helplessly. "Another paradox. There's something wrong somewhere, isn't there? But I can't put my finger on what it is."
Warren came out from the wheelhouse at that point to announce that they had reached the fishing grounds and were slowing down to begin casting, and Vrel's question never did get answered. Later, when Cade and Blair were leaning on the rail together, watching the waves, Blair remarked that it was the first time he had ever heard a Chrysean questioning the home world's system.
"I know," Cade replied. "Interesting, isn't it? Maybe this crazy world of ours is starting to rub off on them more than we think." He lifted his head to follow a group of porpoises as they broke surface to frolic a hundred feet or so from the boat. "And then again . . . maybe it was just the beer."