The Hume stared, and Dar could almost see her suddenly pulling back, withdrawing into a thickened shell. But something clicked, and her eyes turned defiant again. “All right.” She gulped the rest of her drink and slammed the glass back down on the bar. “Sure.” She stood up, hooking her thumbs in her pockets. “Ready to go. Where’s your pack mule?”
Dar grinned. “It’s a little more civilized than that—but it’s just out back. Shall we?” And he bowed her toward the door.
She spared him a last withering glance, and marched past him. Dar smiled, and followed.
As they passed Cholly and the sergeant, the bartender was saying earnestly, “So Descartes felt he had to prove it all, don’t you see—everything, from the ground up. No assumptions, none.”
“Ayuh. Ah kin see thet.” The sergeant nodded, frowning. “If’n he assumed anything, and thet one thing turned out to be wrong, everything else he’d figgered out’d be wrong, too.”
“Right, right!” Cholly nodded emphatically. “So he stopped right there, don’t you see, took out a hotel room, and swore he’d not stir till he’d found some one thing he could prove, some one way to be sure he existed. And he thought and he thought, and it finally hit him.”
“Whut dud?”
“He was thinking! And if’n he wuz thinking, there had to be someone there to do the thinking! And that someone was him, of course—so the simple fact that he was thinking proved he existed!”
“Ay-y-y-y-uh!” The sergeant’s face lit with the glow of enlightenment, and the Hume stopped in the doorway, turning back to watch, hushed, almost reverent.
Cholly nodded, glowing, victorious. “So he laid it out, right then and there, and set it down on paper, where he could read it. Cogito, ergo sum, he wrote—for he wrote in Latin, don’t you see, all them philosphers did, back then—Cogito, ergo sum; and it means ‘I think; therefore: I exist.’ ”
“Ay-y-y-y-uh. Ayuh, I see.” The sergeant scratched his head, then looked up at Cholly again. “Well, then—that’s whut makes us human, ain’t it? Thinking, I mean.”
The Hume drew in a long, shuddering breath, then looked up at Dar. “What is this—a tavern, or a college?”
“Yes.” Dar pushed the door open. “Shall we?”
They came out into the light of early afternoon. Dar led the Hume to a long, narrow grav-sled, lumpy with trade goods under a tarpaulin. “No room for us, I’m afraid—every ounce of lift has to go to the payload. We walk.”
“Not till I get an answer.” The Hume planted her feet, and set her fists on his hips.
“Answer?” Dar looked up, surprised. “To what?”
“To my question. This boss of yours—what is he? A capitalist? An immoral, unethical, swindling trader? A bartender? Or a professor?”
“Oh.” Dar sat down on his heels, checking the fastenings of the tarp. “Well, I wouldn’t really call him a capitalist, ‘cause he never really does more than break even; and he’s as moral as a preacher, and as ethical as a statue. And he’s never swindled anybody. Aside from that, though, you’ve pretty well pegged him.”
“Then he is a professor!”
Dar nodded. “Used to teach at the University of Luna.”
The Hume frowned. “So what happened? What’s he doing tending bar?”
Dar shrugged. “I think he got the idea from his last name: Barman.”
“ ‘Barman’?” She frowned. “Cholly Barman? Whoa! Not Charles T. Barman!”
Dar nodded.
“But he’s famous! I mean, he’s got to be the most famous teacher alive!”
“Well, notorious, anyway.” Dar gave the fastenings a last tug and stood up. “He came up with some very wild theories of education. I gather they weren’t too popular.”
“So I heard. But I can’t figure why; all he was saying was that everybody ought to have a college education.”
“And thereby threatened the ones who already had it.” Dar smiled sweetly. “But it was more than that. He thinks all teaching ought to be done on a one-to-one basis, which made him unpopular with the administrators—imagine having to pay that many teachers!—and thought the teaching ought to be done in an informal environment, without the student realizing he was being taught. That meant each professor would have to have a cover role, such as bartending, which made him unpopular with the educators.”
The Hume frowned. “I didn’t hear about that part of it.”
Dar shrugged. “He published it; it was there to read, if you managed to get hold of a copy before the LORDS party convinced the central book-feed to quit distributing it down the line to the retail terminals.”
“Yes.” Her mouth flattened, as though she’d tasted something sour “Freedom of the press isn’t what it used to be, is it?”
“Not really, no. But you can see why the talk gets so deep, back in there; Cholly never misses a chance to do some teaching on the side. When he’s got ‘em hooked on talk, he lets ‘em start hanging out in the back room—it’s got an open beer keg, and wall-to-wall books.”
She nodded, looking a little dazzled. “You don’t sound so ‘innocent of books’ yourself, come to think of it.”
Dar grinned, and picked up the towrope. “Shall we go?”
They trudged down the alley and out into the plastrete street, the Hume walking beside Dar, brooding.
Finally she looked up. “But what’s he doing out here? I mean, he’s putting his theories into practice, that’s clear—but why here? Why not on some fat planet in near Terra?”
“Well, the LORDS seem to have had something to do with that.”
“That bunch of fascists! I knew they were taking over the Assembly—but I didn’t know they were down on education!”
“Figure it out.” Dar spread his hands. “They say they want really efficient central government; they mean totalitarianism. And one of the biggest threats to a totalitarian government is a liberal education.”
“Oh.” Her face clouded. “Yes, of course. So what did they do?”
“Well, Cholly won’t go into much detail about it, but I gather they tried to assassinate him on Luna, and he ran for it. The assassins chased him, so he kept running—and he wound up here.”
“Isn’t he still worried about assassins?”
Dar flashed her a grin. “Not with Shacklar running the place. By the way, if we’re going to be traveling together, we really oughta get onto a first-name basis. I’m Dar Mandra.” He held out his hand.
She seemed to shrink back again, considering the offer; then, slowly, she extended her own hand, looking up at him gravely. “Samantha Bine. Call me Sam.”
Dar gave her hand a shake, and her face his warmest smile. “Good to meet you, Sam. Welcome to education.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “There is a lot here that wasn’t in the reports, isn’t there?”
Sam looked at the town gate as they passed through it, and frowned. “A little archaic, isn’t it? I thought walled towns went out with the Middle Ages.”
“Only because the attackers had cannon, which the Wolmen didn’t have when this colony started.”
“But they do now?”
“Well,” Dar hedged, “let’s say they’re working on it.”
“Hey! You, there! Halt!”
They looked back to see a corporal in impeccable battle-dress running after them.
“Here now, Dar Mandra!” he panted as he caught up with them. “You know better than to go hiking out at two o’clock!”
“Is it that late already?” Dar glanced up at the sun. “Yeah, it is. My, how the time flies!” He hauled the grav-sled around. “Come on, Sam. We’ve gotta get back against the wall.”
“Why?” Sam came along, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just that it’s time for one of those continual battles you mentioned.”