Front matter (continued 2)

"Sorry for us?"

"Yes, sorry for us. They're sorry for us because we don't know how to enjoy life, because we worry about all sorts of things that don't matter, and knock ourselves out working, and need other people to reassure us of our own worth. Because we have bad tempers and awkward bodies, and we don't have that warmth inside of us flowing out toward other people.

"Even toward us," she said. "They're kind to us. They're tolerant. They want us to be happy. And they do accept us eventually. If we stay here enough years. If we change. Maybe not quite as one of them, but almost. Sometimes they even marry us."

Kirk shook his head, trying to clear it. "I can't think. I feel confused, I—"

"Still thinking about our great technological achievements? We're pretty cocky about them, aren't we? We come here all set to spread enlightenment among the savages." She shrugged. "They're not impressed with our magic machines. They're not selling their planet for a handful of beads. They took a good look at us and decided to try to keep what they had."

She looked at him steadily. "Personally, I've decided I can do without the vidar-shows. I'm going to stay and try to make the grade here. I'm going to work at becoming a better human being. I'm tired of being flippant and smart and sophisticated. I'd like to be happy." She paused. "Maybe a Nemarian will even fall in love with me eventually and marry me."

"You want to marry one of them!"

"You catch on fast." She blinked. "Sorry. That's not a very good beginning. It's going to take awhile to shake that flippancy." She caught his eyes. "Wouldn't you like to marry Nanae?"

He didn't answer.

She smiled oddly. "Yes, I'd like to marry one of them and have children like theirs." She hesitated. "I said once, they spoil their children rotten. I guess they do in a way, but the children turn out fine. We Terrans just aren't used to children with a sense of their rights. These children overwhelm me." She lowered her eyes. "You know how flippant I am—when I try it in their presence I feel terribly stupid. They make me aware of every affectation; their eyes are so clear—like a deer's—I feel like a fool." She looked at him tremulously, defensively. "Anyway, I said that about their being spoiled, out of envy. When I first saw how their mothers held them—all that tenderness, all that love, all that warmth—I envied them with a terrible bitterness. It wasn't that I had bad parents. Just ordinary ones, trying to do their best and all that."

"Why do you keep talking about children all the time? After all, it's the adults who run things."

"The children are the adults of the future. It's the way they're brought up that makes these people what they are. You and I—all of us from Terra—we've been brought up on a limited, scientifically regimented, controlled amount of love. These natives have something we'll never have. We've got to work and strive for what comes as naturally to them as breathing."

As she spoke, Kirk suddenly remembered the close-packed faces of Terrans speeding by in the opposite direction on the moving sidewalks at home—tense faces, hard faces, resigned faces, sad faces, timid faces, worried faces. Maybe one in fifty serene and self-confident, maybe one in a hundred vibrantly, joyously alive. Maybe. Probably not that many.

He thought of the faces of the Nemarians.

Jeannette was still talking. "They are what human beings should be," she said slowly. "Somehow they've kept their birthright—the ability to be full of the joy of living whenever they're not in real trouble or sorrow, the ability to be happy just because they're alive. I haven't understood these people because I didn't want to understand them. I didn't want to see that they were better than I am. They're very simple, really; it's we who are complicated and devious."

"Why hasn't anybody ever heard of this place?" Kirk asked.

"It's isolated," she said, "and people don't leave here, once they've seen what's here. They don't write too much, either, because by the time the spaceship arrives again, they understand. They cooperate with the authorities, who are trying to keep this place as much of a secret as possible. Publicize it, and within ten years it would be swarming with wealthy businessmen on vacation and jaded neurotics trying to get away from it all. The Nemarians would be lost in the shuffle."

She was still a moment. "My husband came here to get away from it all. He heard rumors of this place a long way off and traced them. I didn't want to come. I liked cities and night-clubs; I liked being surrounded by amiable, promiscuous men. He dragged me here against my will. Now he's dead, and I'm caught up in his dreams. These people are irresistible; they call out to something basic and deep in you, and you respond to it whether you want to or not. You can't leave this place—unless you have to. Like you will."

Kirk stood up abruptly. "Jeannette, do you mind? I feel terribly confused. A lot has happened to me today. I want to walk alone awhile and think things out."

She nodded, with a sudden look of compassion.

He walked away from her slowly, turning half unconsciously in the direction of his house. His mind was a swirl of confusion. He tried to think. He needed to get it all straightened out.

The sense of inferiority, she'd said, the constant sense of inferiority. Let's not fool ourselves, she'd said. There isn't one of them that isn't superior to every Terran here.

And he'd just sat there, stupefied, not denying it.

Because once it was spoken, put into words, it had a certain rightness. A certain obviousness. He'd known it all the time.

He hadn't let himself know it, though. He'd struggled against it, choking it back when it started seeping up from his unconscious. He'd worked so hard and kept himself so busy and exhausted he didn't have time to think. He'd thought so hard about other things he didn't have time to think about the truth.

He'd arrived here looking for the answer to a mystery. Thinking maybe the planet had a secret value, hoping maybe it held an explosive or new weapon that was classified as Super Top Secret, wondering if maybe it weren't really primitive.

And nobody could have told him: it does have a secret value—secret because you're too blind to see it. Nobody could have told him; these people are more advanced than you are. Because advanced meant machines. Advanced didn't mean happy, loving, graceful, courageous, honest.

They couldn't have told him with words if he couldn't see it with his eyes—if he couldn't see that the glowing faces of the natives held a secret worth learning.

The only secret that really mattered.

How to be happy.

Nanae was there waiting when he reached the house, as though she had been expecting him.

She looked at him silently, then smiled. "You're not angry?"

"Angry?"

"About the Council decision."

"Oh—oh, I was. I'm all mixed up now. I've been doing some thinking."

She looked at him intently, then nodded slowly. "Do you know why you were sent here?" she asked.

"I'm just beginning to get a glimmering of it."

"Did you know we are the only planet yet discovered whose people have never known war?"

"No, I didn't know."

"Ross came to Nemar when the Galactic Union first discovered it. He didn't find any of the things he was looking for, but he did discover something else, a way of life." She paused. "Have you ever gone over his record?"

"No."

"You should, sometime. He's done a great deal of good." She looked at him steadily, her eyes clear and soft. "He keeps sending the very best of the Institute graduates here, hoping they'll study our society and work out some theories about what makes us the way we are. He hopes some of the happiness here can be transplanted.

"We don't know why we're the way we are. We don't even know how it's possible to be any other way, and we don't understand why anyone should be willing to fight wars, or why they should lie or hit their children or make long speeches that don't say anything."

Kirk was silent.

"We're inside the problem," she said. "We can't see ourselves from the outside."

Kirk spoke very slowly, thinking it out. "You mean, Ross sent me here to study you, to try to find out what factors are involved in—"

"Yes. He sent you here to learn."

He was quiet, digesting that.

"One day you'll be in Ross's place," she said.

He accepted the words quietly, knowing it was true.

Yesterday, that would have seemed like the most desirable thing in the universe, the height of happiness.

It seemed like a long time ago.

It meant nothing now but a heavy burden.

He sat thinking of Nanae after she had gone, of how he had longed to put his arms around her and draw her to him, kiss the soft mouth, run his hands through the long, glowing strands of hair.

He'd have to work first, work at changing himself, becoming the kind of person she could love. She would love differently and more deeply than the girls he had known. She would love with a passion and tenderness they'd never be capable of. That kind of love would have to be earned.

He wondered whether she'd be willing to go to Terra with him.

He got up and moved toward the bedroom. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day—changing things, making apologies. Feasting. Dancing. Going midnight swimming.

He realized suddenly that he was very happy.