“No. The builders of Thistledown—they survived the Death, grew out of it, developed a new civilization. They invented their own marvels, struggled to supremacy, launched their asteroid starships. We cannot do that. They’ve come to us with hands full of marvels, like parents raising children, giving us miracles here and wonders there, sometimes forcing them upon us. They did not let us make our own mistakes—”

“Thank God,” Lanier said dryly. “We’d screwed up badly enough already.”

“Yes, but do you see what I mean?” Kanazawa asked plaintively. “My constituents feel lost when confronted by these saviors; they think of them as angels. A visitor from the precincts or the asteroid is still rare; they are respected and feared. We are left on Earth like backwater bumpkins.”

“If the shoe fits,” Lanier said.

“You’ve grown cynical, Garry.”

“Not without reason, Senator,” Lanier said, smiling wryly. “But I understand what you’re saying. Still, we have to make more of an effort. Earth can’t live in resentment and bitterness and envy like some twisted postbellum South. Maybe a larger issue like this is what we need to spark enthusiasm down here.”

“They will not understand, Garry,” Kanazawa said. “It is beyond their experience. A fairy tale. It’s the stuff myths are made of. Myths don’t play well in politics. You have to disguise them, make them seem down-to-Earth.”

Ram Kikura and Karen came back from the fence, both looking somber. “Mortality is not the only thing that separates some of us,” Kanazawa said in an undertone.

Dinner was served by robots. The four of them sat around the table, Lanier and Karen and Kanazawa feeling slightly giddy with big tumblers of rum after the day’s solemnity and worry. Lanier hadn’t been even mildly drunk in decades; he found more knots loosening, and regarded Karen with eyes of a distant, more youthful self. She was truly a lovely woman; however young she seemed, she had much of the wisdom of age, and that made her even more beautiful. Lanier did not despise youth; he was simply unwilling to let its attractions dominate him.

Working together might be a remedy, he thought; but she was still not as warm to him as he felt toward her, and they behaved as an old married couple might, talking more with others at the table than between themselves.

Ram Kikura was reluctant to try rum. “I’ve heard about alcohol,” she said with a voice of temperance caution. “A narcotic poison.”

“Was Thistledown dry during its voyage?” Kanazawa asked, astonishment creeping into his voice.