Lisa started. Shum was a word educated pans, er, shimps, used: if they were supersmart chimps, then the dumb homs were sub humans. This was the first time a shimp had ever used it in her presence, however.
“Allison. The child’s name was Allison.”
“What did Allison do?”
Lisa closed her eyes for a moment. “She came in second place in the school’s annual math contest.”
“Oh, the worst kind.” Ben shook his head. “The ones who are smart, but not smart enough to play dumb. Don’t they know how tough they make it on the rest of us?”
He looked up at her, his eyes humorous with self-deprecation. “But that still doesn’t explain what happened to you,” he said. “I take it you came to her defense.”
“Worse than that. I made them see why it happened—what they really thought and felt, and how it affected the children.”
“Hmmm, oh dear, not a very good idea. And how did we pull that off?” Despite herself, Lisa couldn’t fight off the laughter that bubbled up at Ben’s sarcasm. Undoubtedly, it was how he had long ago learned to live with the realities of his own life. She told him the whole story: how she had used the cyberlink to raise her students’ consciousness about historic bigotries, such as the Nazi concentration camps; about the initial outrage her methods provoked; about her confrontation with the board, and how she won them over by telling them about the girl and how the other students treated her, about being given the newly created position of Coordinator for Developmental Methods.
Ben nodded as she spoke, his eyes steadily widening, whether in admiration or incredulity she didn’t know. “That was a couple of months before the strike,” she finished her story without concluding either way.
“Ah. The Big Bug Strike.”
It hardly seemed necessary to continue. It was a widely known fact that the great majority of asteroid miners were shimps; it was also a fact, albeit not as widely known, that most of those shimps had built the Lagrange and lunar colonies, only to find themselves for various reasons ineligible for citizenship on those same colonies afterwards. “Before what happened to Allison,” she nodded. “After the—incident—I tried to set up a new program, using the cyberlink to explore contemporary forms of prejudice. Of course I knew it would only mean more controversy, but I thought—I felt I owed it to her…”
This time she accepted the napkin, and blew her nose noisily.
“There, there,” Ben comforted her, “wipe your nose and dry your eyes, and Uncle Ben will tell you where you screwed up.” Then he wrinkled his chimpish nose: “You know, you have a way of taking all the fun out of human stupidity.”
Again, she couldn’t stop the laughter he seemed to find in her so effortlessly. “I’m sorry.”
“Your mistake was that you forgot why they gave you that fancy title. ‘Coordinator for Developmental Methods.’ It was to convince themselves that they weren’t what you were exposing them as. And by accepting it, you gave them the assurance they wanted. After that, you have to understand, in their eyes what you did was treason.”
“But—”
He raised a hairy hand. “No, listen to me, my dear Ms. Jiang. They know they’re not bigots. Racism, sexism, religious persecution: that’s all history as far as they’re concerned. Humans fought long and hard to overcome those things, feel proud of their triumphs, and don’t want to be told that the enemy is still alive and kicking.” Lisa put her own hands on top of his, and forced them down on the table. “But that’s exactly what I was trying to show them!”
“And you thought you would succeed. Funny: I thought you were a smart hom.”
At that moment, a bot came up to them and asked if they were finished with their meals, and, if so, were interested in seeing the dessert list. When Lisa made no response, Ben squirmed from her grip and flashed his credit strip to the bot. The bot intoned, “Thank you sir,” and vanished back where it had come from.
“Hey—”
“The one mistake you must never make, is to assume that human nature has changed in some fundamental way,” Ben insisted. “That’s the mistake Arthur made at Camelot. External circumstances change, yes; internal—when that happens, you won’t be dealing with people anymore.” He thumbed in the direction the bot had disappeared. “Maybe you’ll be dealing with that. But not human beings. Or even shimps.” He chuckled.
Lisa thought for a while, then shook her head stubbornly. “No. The problem isn’t human nature. The problem is, is, well for one, it’s people like this Reed Ready jerk of yours.” She snorted her disgust. “What sewer did he crawl out of anyway?”
Ben made a face. “Of mine? Hey, don’t assign ownership of that chiphead to me. And don’t ask me where he came from. I can only tell you when: nobody I know ever heard of Reed Ready and the Voice of Reason until the Strike, although he must have been living in some little hole in the net somewhere. Now—you can’t go on-line anywhere without finding him there, waiting for you.
“What does that prove?” he cut off Lisa’s that’s-what-I’m-talking-about. “It’s a free society; the Readys don’t prosper unless people want what they’re selling. People filled with love don’t buy hate.”
“But if hate is being shoved down their throats, day and night—”
“Try telling them that.”
She took a breath. “Maybe nobody has—”
“Be my guest. Ready lets anyone talk who wants to. Not too many people try. At least not twice. He’s very good with facts, if you know what I mean. And the worse thing is, he’s principled too; he really believes what he believes, if you know what I mean about that too.”
Lisa knew. “At least we didn’t have that up on the colony.” Even Frederickson wouldn’t have spewed his venom all over the net.
“No, you just beat up little kids.”
The riposte cut right through her.
“I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that.”
Lisa smiled grimly. “Don’t I? I was Allison’s favorite teacher, you know.”
Ben sat up straight. “No, I didn’t know.” He leaned his head back. “Let me guess: you’re the reason why she entered that contest in the first place. Which, of course, makes what happened to her all your fault.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me that it isn’t my fault, that I shouldn’t blame myself, and all that? That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
It was exactly what she expected him to do, but instead, Ben checked his watch. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to take a crack at that no doubt invincible wall. But I’m afraid my fifty minutes were up ten minutes ago.” He stood. “If there’s anything I can do—”
“No. There’s nothing. There’s nothing anyone can do. I have to live with it, that’s all.”
Ben frowned, and nodded. “In that case, Ms. Jiang, I suggest you start thinking about how to do so. It strikes me as a job you don’t want to put off too long.” He left her sitting by herself, with her thoughts and her unfinished lunch.
She was still shaking when she got back to her compartment, where she collapsed onto the divan. “News update. The Strike.”
The housepad defuzzed into life, and images from across a billion kilometers flooded into her compartment, along with the newscaster’s easy monologue. She grimaced at the impact. The UN was still denying the legitimacy of the strikers’ demands, and insisting on full compliance with the ’84 contract. The Lagrange and lunar colonies agreed with this position, which didn’t quiet the loudmouths on Earth who claimed the colonies had instigated the strike in order to control the terrestrial markets the Belt had generated. Lisa sighed again: she’d heard the same allegations, victims and villains reversed, on the colony. Everyone took it for granted that he was the one getting the shitty end of the stick; and that the miners, who were in fact truly holding that end, were greedy, selfish usurpers of a public trust who were abusing the power of their position and needed to be shown that they couldn’t get away with having their grubby hands in the cookie jar all the time… You got that right, brother!