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Not wishing to offend, Persoff, who hadn’t eaten a carrot since he was big enough to spit, said, “Thanks,” and took a bite. It tasted a lot better than he remembered. Of course, he was used to them cooked.

“We’ve got maybe ten seconds,” said the pilot. “Is your mind being read? He’d have stopped when you bit it.”

Persoff stopped chewing to stare, then said, “No. You were expecting kzinti?”

The two looked at each other, then at Persoff. “Yes,” said the pilot. “You’re wearing clothes, but if they were rational enough to use cover they might think of that too. It’s my job to think of things like that. I’m Tom, the Johnson for this vessel. This is Ron, our Denver.”

“Micah Persoff, Captain, commanding officer of the carrier Yorktown.”

The two local men looked astonished, then came to attention and saluted.

Persoff returned their salutes. “It’s lucky for me you showed up so soon. I was here planning missions to find the colonists.”

“Colonists?” said Tom.

“We came here because the ship signaled us that someone had landed,” said Ron.

“What do you mean, ‘colonists’? We’re stranded.” Tom appeared to be getting upset.

Persoff shook his head. “Force of habit. I tend to think of settlements off Earth as colonies. We need to talk with you about getting off the planet again.”

Tom nodded shortly. “Of course. Ron, give the All Clear.”

Ron turned to the canoe and bellowed, at a volume Persoff found painful, “It’s okay!”

Eighteen men, all chewing, stood up and began methodically unloading their crossbows. The women, serious now, returned to the canoe, where men who were done early began tossing them clothing.

Persoff stared, put it together, and said, “You were going to ambush the kzinti?”

“If they were here,” said Tom. “They wouldn’t read a female’s mind right away.”

“How would you ambush them in ten seconds?”

“Oh, Ron would have knocked you out.”

Persoff looked at Ron, who had a low-gee build and seemed skinny at that. “How?”

His head hurt less than he would have expected, and he was lying before a brand-new hut, near a campfire, surrounded by women. “How many fingers do you see?” said the nearest, holding up a hand.

“Five,” he said, “three of them folded.”

“Talks like a Johnson,” said another woman. She was prettier than the one who’d spoken first, and that was odd, because they all had about the same set of features. “Good stock, I bet.”

“Well, he’s starship crew,” said yet another.

“I still think the basic stock might be deteriorating. They send off all the best.”

“And I still say-Hey, he’s right here, we can ask. Captain Micah Persoff, does the UN Fertility Board store sperm samples of men who go out to fight the kzinti, and make the samples available from the ones who did really well?”

Persoff was still a little stunned, and it took him a moment to follow the question. Then he said, “Yeah, any citable accomplishment is an automatic Birthright. Women who use donations get low numbers in the queue, too.”

“See!”

“How’d you figure that out?” he said.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise you’d all have been eaten before you got here.”

“They still could have repopulated from colony worlds,” said a woman who’d spoken before.

“Lightspeed and too busy.”

“Loyalty and conditioning!”

“Alienation.”

Others had begun chiming in, and it was getting loud. Persoff said, “What happened to me?”

“Oh, you got knocked out,” said the woman who’d spoken first, all the rest shutting up.

“I’d figured out that much, but how?”

A man’s voice-Tom-broke in. “Lateral impact near the left end of the mandible turns the head far enough to jar the brain stem.” He got into view, raised his hand, and snapped his fingers. “Shuts you off like a bucket of wet sand on a small fire. But without the steam.”

“Speaking of which,” said the first woman.

“I thought he’d be waking up soon-not yet, in fact; he’s tough-and he should have some things explained to him. And first he should have an apology. Captain, a Denver is identified by decisive action. Unfortunately it isn’t always preceded by thought. Often that’s a good thing, since it lets a Denver act without fear. Not always. I’m not familiar with your habits of speech, so once it was clear you were alone I should have had him stand further from you. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. How did he get so fast? I didn’t even see him move.”

“That’s because he did it when you blinked. An early hint of the Denver gene complex is when a child seems unobservant but, now and then, somehow does some difficult thing exactly right. Which is not the same as doing the right thing. Incidentally, would it be possible to analyze people’s DNA when your ship is back in operation? Working all this stuff out by inductive reasoning is quite a burden.”

“You Johnsons do fine,” said a woman.

“I never said otherwise. It’s just hard.”

Several women cleared their throats, and Tom looked like he’d suddenly remembered something he should never have forgotten. “Sorry. Captain, is your neck in pain? We can’t do real regeneration, but I used the things we do have that improve healing ability.”

“Actually the only thing that hurts is my teeth,” Persoff said, touching his cheek. There were things sticking out of his skin. “What are these?” he said.

“Sutures. You’d lost a tooth. I had to go in from the side to make sure circulation was restored. They should come out now, in fact.” He reached into a bag sitting nearby, and took out tweezers that looked like bamboo, and a small pair of scissors with clay handles and obsidian blades.

As threads were snipped and pulled out of his face, Persoff was able to distract himself by being deeply impressed with the quality of the tools. Ever since the kzinti attacked, History of Technology was a prerequisite for combat officers, so he knew fairly well how difficult those instruments had been to make.

He suspected even his teachers didn’t know it nearly as well as the people here, whose ancestors had grown up with the “everybody play nice” version of social development. They must have had to learn everything down to rock chipping from scratch.

Tom put some goo on the holes and said, “Wash your mouth out with this.”

Persoff obeyed, but regretted it at once. Once he’d spit it out, he said, “What was that?”

“Everyone asks that, but nobody ever likes the details. It’s something that bacteria won’t live in. You won’t have to brush your teeth for a few days.”

“I’ve never had to.”

Tom studied him silently, then said, “May I take it that the process that prevents that still works? On your ship?”

“Absolutely. There’s something I have to discuss with your people.”

Tom nodded. “The Hales aren’t all here yet.”

Persoff said, “The Hale clan are in charge?”

“That would be ‘is.’ The word ‘clan’ is singular. And they’re not a clan, they’re a type. We’d be in a sorry mess if we chose leaders by heredity.”

“You have elections?”

Tom waited until most of the crowd was pretty much done laughing. “If we chose leaders for their ability to talk people into things they’d all be Blackers!” he said, grinning.

“Sounds fair,” said the woman who’d said he was good stock. She was joking.

“Of course it sounds fair. That’s the point, isn’t it?” Tom said, followed by more laughter. When that had diminished, he explained, “Hales are identified by character, same as everybody else.”

“Who chooses them?”

Tom looked confused. “Chooses?”