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If the children die, well, say they, it is the will of their gods. I do not like such ways; certainly I would not follow such gods.

One of the strangest things I have encountered on your world, dear Benita, is that many of your people have no idea who they really are but many ridiculous ideas about what they are expected to be, plus many religious convictions about what they should be, although nobody is! One should not want to be anything but what one is because it creates unhappiness.

“Thirst makes any wine drinkable…”

“…And greed makes any crime thinkable.”

“But how is it you know all this about how large the ocean is? I thought you girls were limited to pretty chatter and the economics of housekeeping. I didn’t know you learned geography.”

“We don’t,” she said, somewhat shamefaced. “But we learned to read, and once one can read, one can learn anything.”

“So the Glass Master story is real?”

“Oh, yes, my dear. The story is real. When you must lie, my dear, lie as little as possible. That way you’ll have the least to remember.”

Despite his concern, he was not so out of control as to forget that a frantic man is a careless man, a lesson every soldier learns soon or dies wishing he had learned sooner.

“Why do reporters have to dig into people’s privacy?” she fumed.

“Communication is much like sex.”

This set her back. “I don’t understand...”

A chuckle. “Being celibate is often wise and prudent. People know this, but the inborn drive to reproduce makes their organs wag. Keeping silent is often wise and prudent. People know this, also, but the drive to question and tell makes their tongues wag. Sex spreads genetic material, good and bad; prying spreads information, true and false; natural selection takes over and both ethical failings contribute to continuing evolution.”

The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.

Thinking it over later, she blamed TV and the movies for her immediate reaction. The media gobbled everything that happened or could happen, then spit it out, over and over, every idea regurgitated, every concept so mushed up that when anything remarkable actually occurred it was already a cliché. Like cloning or surrogate mothers or extraterrestrials and UFOs. The whole world had heard about it and seen movies about it, and had become bored with the subject before it even happened!

She concluded: “Legalization would drive prices down, crime would stop, then we could take care of the addicts...”

“And you do not do this because of...politics?”

The Secretary of State said, “The war against drugs is big business. Thousands of people are on the payroll. The people on the payroll don’t want the problem solved, though they can’t say that out loud or, perhaps, even admit it to themselves. Instead, they continue to take a moral position that requires them to punish people. Punishing people is always considered moral.”

It’s hard to talk like a human being when one hasn’t been treated like one for years!

Don’t you find that predators are those who most often assert absolute rights to personal freedoms?