The gavel slammed. How far back did that signal go, anyway? To the first cave patriarch whose stone hammer smote a log? There was strength in the thought, a sense of not being utterly adrift and alone in time. No wonder the colonists tried so hard to keep Earth ways alive, or actually to revive some which had been as obsolete on Earth as the liberty their ancestors came here to save. And when this failed on a world that was not Earth, no wonder they were so quick to develop rituals and taboos of their own.
“In the name of the people of Rustum, for whom we are gathered, I call this meeting to order,” said the clear female voice. It continued through parliamentary formalities to which nobody really listened, not even those who took part.
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“As you doubtless know, we’ve had a surprise dropped in our laps.” Coffin felt his mouth twitch upward. Now Dorcas could start behaving like herself! She leaned forward, hands on the lectern, small in her gown but large in her presence, “Maybe it’s best that it did occur at this precise time. In writing the basic law of our planet, we’ll remember that a universe encloses it.
“At any rate, many persons, including many members of this assembly, feel we should take the matter up before going on to our regular agenda. I agree. By virtue of the powers vested in me, et cetera, I’ve appointed a couple of committees to study the implications of the immigrant fleet and make recommendations. This will be kept brief, ladies and gentlemen. No general discussion. The idea is to set forth different views as clearly as possible, then adjourn to consider them, then reconvene to exchange thoughts in detail.
“Will Dr. O’Malley’s committee please report first?”
Only their chairman joined her. He’d probably domineered over everyone else, for he had inherited genes from his grandfather. However; Jack O’Malley made his domineering fun, Coffin remembered from boyhood. Also,… well, I’m not saying Morris O’Malley is inferior; but a lab administrator is not the same as an explorer who could drink his whole band under the table and wake in six hours, hound-dog eager to go discover some new miracle.
The speaker rustled papers. “My lady and colleagues, perhaps it would be best if I commence by summarizing the situation as my group understands it,” he said, and did at a length which caused Hirayama to drum nails on the arm of her chair.
“Well.” Finally O’Malley’s tone grew vigorous. “The question before us is twofold. Should we allow the travelers to join us? If not, can we prevent it?
“The second part is simple. We can. Presumably the fleet is already en route. Theron Svoboda, chief of interstellar communications, thinks we have a fair chance of intercepting it with a maser beam, getting a message through to the officers on watch. These can change course for a different star or, more likely, return to the Solar System.
“If this fails and the ships arrive, we—rather, the next generation of us—will nevertheless be in full control. A minority of your committee advocates constructing nuclear missiles to ensure it. The majority considers that would be a waste of effort. Fuel requirements being what they are, those are surely unarmed vessels. They will depend on us to help them refine reaction mass for the trip home. In no case can a few bewildered newcomers impose their will on a planet.”
He paused for a sip of water. “Very well. The issue is, therefore, should we give entry to these self-invited strangers?
“They bring us no benefit. We’d have to nurse them through adjustment to Rustum; for certainly we could never let them suffer and die as horribly as did many among our forefathers, whom nobody helped. Later we’d have to take time we can ill afford to teach them the habits, technicalities, and tricks which generations on Rustum have painfully learned for themselves. And at the end, in reward, what would we get? Workers not especially desirable, being grossly limited in what they can do. Perhaps not workers at all, but mere parasites. I shall return to this point shortly.
“We are under no moral obligation to admit them. Your committee has reviewed every tape of every communication between Earth and Rustum. A few from our side may have waxed overenthusiastic. But no government of ours has ever issued any invitation or given any promises—if only because hitherto we have never possessed a very formally organized government.
“If they are turned back, none but their officers on watch will even have looked upon the Promised Land. The human cargo would remain in suspended animation until reawakened in Earth orbit or, conceivably, in orbit around some wholly new planet. If they feel disappointment, why, so must every human being, often in this life.
“We have the power to exclude them, and we have the right. Your committee finds that we have, in addition and ultimately, the duty to exclude them.”
Coffin heard out the argument against allowing a proletariat to appear overnight. He wasn’t surprised to find it almost identical with the position he’d outlined to George Stein and the others. O’Malley was an intelligent man in his way, and knew history…. Coffin felt his lips quirk afresh.
You’ve got a moderately good opinion of yourself, don’t you, Daniel, my boy?
He tensed when O’Malley went on, because here he recognized, not an abstract sociological argument, but that which reached into the guts and grabbed.
“More vital, ladies and gentlemen, people of Rustum, far more vital is what I next have to say. Dare we open our gates to a gang of aliens?”
O’Malley let silence underline that before he continued. “Your committee does not necessarily denigrate anyone’s human worth,” he said; and Coffin thought that the measured syllables, the overtones of regret, were the best oratory he’d heard in years. “Assuredly we do not subscribe to any cruel and absurd doctrine of racial hierarchies.” He bowed a little toward Hirayama, toward Gabriel Burns, toward the entire room and planet. “If we are of predominantly Caucasoid North American stock, we are not exclusively that, and we are proud that in us lives the entire human species.
“But”—he lifted a finger—”it would be equally absurd and, in the long run, equally cruel, to pretend that cultures do not differ in basic ways. And let us hear no bleat that there can be no value judgments between them. The freedom we enjoy is superior to the despotism on Earth; the rational judgment we cultivate is superior to, yes, more truly human than the blind obedience and blinder faith which have overwhelmed Earth.
“People of Rustum, it is all too easy for us to imagine that the thousands on their way here are just like our forebears—perhaps not the same in color of skin or shape of eyelids, but the same inside, where it counts. Were this true, we might hope to prevent them from becoming proles, difficult though that would be.
“But consider. Earth has not been static since our founding fathers made their weary pilgrimage hither. Study the transcribed communication tapes for yourselves, people of Rustum. Judge for yourselves how social evolution back there seems to have nearly obliterated the last shards of American—no, Western civilization—those shards which we mean to preserve and to make the foundation of a new and more enduring house of liberty.
“Today’s emigrants are not in search of freedom. That notion is extinct on Earth. They are apparently dissenters, but their dissent is not that of the individual demanding a steelclad bill of rights. What they seek, that puts them in conflict with their authorities, is not certain. It appears to be a kind of neo-Confucianism, though with paradoxical ecstatic elements. Who can tell? When seventy years must pass between question asked and reply received, there can be no real understanding.