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if Mission Control picked Langhorne and Bédard because the planners knew they were megalomaniacs?
    He tried to tell himself that that was only because of the weariness almost sixty standard years—almost sixty-five local years—of watching the two of them in operation had made inevitable. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite shake the thought that the people who’d selected Eric Langhorne as the colony’s chief administrator and Dr. Adorée Bédard as its chief psychologist had known exactly what they were doing. After all, the survival of the human race—at any cost—was far more important than any minor abridgments of basic human rights.
    â€œâ€”and we implore you, once again,” the slender, silver-haired woman standing in the center of the breezy hearing room said, “to consider how vital it is that as the human culture on this planet grows and matures, it remembers the Gbaba. That it understands why we came here, why we renounced advanced technology.”
    Kau-yung regarded her with stony brown eyes. She didn’t even look in his direction, and he felt one or two of the Councillors glancing at him with what they fondly imagined was hidden sympathy. Or, in some cases, concealed amusement.
    â€œWe’ve heard all of these arguments before, Dr. Pei,” Eric Langhorne said. “We understand the point you’re raising. But I’m afraid that nothing you’ve said is likely to change our established policy.”
    â€œAdministrator,” Pei Shan-wei said, “your ‘established policy’ overlooks the fact that mankind has always been a toolmaker and a problem solver. Eventually, those qualities are going to surface here on Safehold. When they do, without an institutional memory of what happened to the Federation, our descendants aren’t going to know about the dangers waiting for them out there.”
    â€œThat particular concern is based on a faulty understanding of the societal matrix we’re creating here, Dr. Pei,” Adorée Bédard said. “I assure you, with the safeguards we’ve put in place, the inhabitants of Safehold will be safely insulated against the sort of technological advancement which might attract the Gbaba’s attention. Unless, of course”—the psychiatrist’s eyes narrowed—“there’s some outside stimulus to violate the parameters of our matrix.”
    â€œI don’t doubt that you can—that you have already—created an anti-technology mind-set on an individual and a societal level,” Shan-wei replied. Her own voice was level, but it didn’t take someone with Bédard’s psychological training to hear the distaste and personal antipathy under its surface. “I simply believe that whatever you can accomplish right now, whatever curbs and safeguards you can impose at this moment, five hundred years from now, or a thousand, there’s going to come a moment when those safeguards fail.”
    â€œThey won’t,” Bédard said flatly. Then she made herself sit back a bit from the table and smile. “I realize psychology isn’t your field, Doctor. And I also realize one of your doctorates is in history. Because it is, you’re quite rightly aware of the frenetic pace at which technology has advanced in the modern era. Certainly, on the basis of humanity’s history on Old Earth, especially during the last five or six centuries, it would appear the ‘innovation bug’ is hardwired into the human psyche. It isn’t, however. There are examples from our own history of lengthy, very static periods. In particular, I draw your attention to the thousands of years of the Egyptian empire, during which significant innovation basically didn’t happen. What we’ve done here, on Safehold, is to re-create that same basic mind-set, and we’ve also installed certain…institutional and physical checks to maintain that