"No, Mas- No, Captain; I washed it."

"I see." He recalled that its gaudy pattern had been enhanced by coffee and other things while the girl was botching breakfast. "Take it off and hang it somewhere; don't let it dry on your body."

She started slowly to comply. Her chin quivered-and he recalled how she had admired herself in a tall mirror when he bought it for her. "Wait a moment, Llita. Joe, take off your breechclout. And sandals."

The lad complied at once.

"Thank you, Joe. Don't put that clout back on without washing it; by now it's dirty even though it looks clean. Don't wear it under way unless it suits you. You sit down. Llita, were you wearing anything when I bought you?"

"No...Captain."

"Am I wearing anything now?"

"No, Captain."

"There are times and places to wear clothes-and other times and places when clothes are silly. If this were a passenger ship, we would all wear clothes and I would wear a fancy uniform. But it is not, and there is nobody here but me and your brother. See that instrument there? That's a thermohumidostat which tells the ship's computer to hold the temperature at twenty-seven Celsius and forty percent humidity, with random variation to stimulate us-which may not mean anything to you but is my notion of comfort in bare skin. For an hour each afternoon it drops that temperature to encourage exercise, as flab is the curse of shipboard life.

"If that cycle doesn't suit you two, we'll reach a compromise. But first we'll try it my way. Now about that wet rag plastered to your hips- If you are stupid, you'll let it dry where it is and be uncomfortable. If you are smart, you'll hang it up and let it dry without wrinkling. That's a suggestion, not an order; if you wish, you may wear it at all times. But don't sit down with it on you, wet; there is no reason to get cushions wet. Can you sew?"

"Yes, Captain. Uh...some."

"I'll see what I can dig up. You are wearing the only woman's garment in the ship, and if you insist on clothes, you'll need to make some for the months ahead. You'll need something for Valhalla, too: it's not as warm as Blessed. Women there wear trousers and short coats; men wear trousers and long coats; everyone wears boots. I had three outfits custom-made on Landfall; maybe we can make do with them until I can get you two to a tailor. Boots- Mine would fit you like socks on a rooster. Hmm- We can wrap your feet so that a pair will stay on long enough to get you to a bootery.

"We won't worry about that now. Join the conference- standing up and wet, or sitting down and comfortable."

Estrellita bit her lip and decided in favor of comfort.

Minerva, those youngsters were brighter than I had expected. At first they studied because I told them to. But once they tasted the magic of the printed word, they were hooked. They learned to read like grass through a goose and didn't want to do anything else. Especially stories. I had a good library, mostly in micro, thousands of those, but also a few dozen valuable bound books, facsimile antiques I had picked up on Landfall where they speak English and use Galacta only as a trade tongue. Savvy Oz books, Minerva?

Yes, of course you do; I helped plan the Great Library and included my childhood favorites as well as more sober things. I did make sure that Joe and Llita read a spread of sober stuff but mostly I let them wallow in stories- The Just So Stories, and the Oz books, and Alice in Wonderland, and A Child's Garden of Verses, and Two Little Savages, and such. Too limited; they were books from my childhood, three centuries before the Diaspora. On the other hand, every human culture in the Galaxy derives from that one.

But I tried to make sure that they understood the difference between fiction and history-difficult, as I wasn't certain that there was a difference. Then I had to explain that a fairy tale was still a different sort, one step farther along the spectrum from fact to fancy.

Minerva, this is very hard to explain to an inexperienced mind. What is "magic"? You are more magical than any "magic" in fairy tales, and it does no good to say that you are 'a product of science, rather than magic, in speaking to kids who have no idea what is meant by "science"-and I wasn't sure that the distinction was valid even when I was explaining the distinction. In my wanderings I have run across magic many times-which simply says that I have seen wonders I could not explain.

I finally let it go by asserting ex cathedra that some stories were just for fun and not necessarily true-Gulliver's Travels were not the same sort of thing as The Adventures of Marco Polo, while Robinson Crusoe lay somewhere in between-and they should ask me, if in doubt.

They did ask, sometimes, and accepted my decision without argument. But I could see that they did not always believe me. That pleased me; they were starting to think for themselves-didn't matter if they were wrong. Llita was simply politely respectful to me about Oz. She believed in the Emerald City with all her heart and, if she had had her druthers, she would have been going there rather than to Valhalla. Well, so would I.

The important thing was that they were cutting the cord.

I did not hesitate to use fiction in teaching them. Fiction is a faster way to get a feeling for alien patterns of human -behavior than is nonfiction; it is one stage short of actual experience and I had only months in which to turn these cowed and ignorant animals into people. I could, have offered them psychology and sociology and comparative anthropology; I had such books on hand. But Joe and Llita could not have put them together into a gestalt-and I recall another teacher who used parables in putting over ideas.

They read every hour I would let them, huddled together like puppies and staring at the reading machine and nagging each other about how fast to raise the pages. Usually Llita nagged Joe; she was quicker than he-but as may be, they spurred each other from-illiterate to speedreaders in zip time. I didn't let them have sound-and-picture tapes-I wanted them to read.

Couldn't let 'em spend all their time reading; they had to learn other things-not just salable skills but, much more important, that aggressive self-reliance necessary to a free human-which they totally lacked when I saddled myself with them. Shucks, I wasn't certain they had the potential; it might have been bred out of their line. But if the spark was in them, I had to find it and fan it into flame-or I would never be able to make them run free.

So I forced them to make up their -own minds as much as possible, while being cautiously rough on them in other ways and greeted every sign of rebellion-silently, in my mind- as a triumphant proof of progress.

I started by teaching Joe to fight-just hand to hand; I didn't want either of us killed. One compartment was fitted as a gymnasium, with equipment that could be adapted for gee or for free-fall; I used it that hour a day of lowered temperature. Here I worked Joe out. Llita was required to attend but just to exercise-although I had in mind that it might spur Joe along if his sister saw him getting the whey knocked out of him.

Joe needed that spur; he had a terrible time getting it through his head that it was okay to hit or kick me, that I wanted him to try, that I would not be angry if he succeeded-but that I would be angry if he didn't try his darnedest.

Took a while. At first he wouldn't chop at me no matter how wide open I left myself and when I got him past that, calling him names and taunting him, he still hesitated that split second that let me close and chop him instead.

But one afternoon he got the idea so well that he landed a good one on me and I hardly had to hold back to let him land it. After supper he got his reward: permission to read a bound book, one with pages, him dressed in a pair of my surgical gloves and warned that I would clobber him if he got it dirty or tore a page. Llita wasn't permitted to touch it; this was his prize. She sulked and didn't even want to use the reading machine-until he asked if it was all right for him to read aloud to her.