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the rediscovery reinforced their determination to remain isolated and free from interference.
    â€˜The children of the Zodiac hate us. It will wear off in time. It is wearing off. But we—New Rome and New Alexandria particularly—came and trampled all over their sacred Promised Land and told them how they would have to run it if they didn’t want it taken away from them. All that hatred is going to work against us down there. The only thing which will work in our favour is the fact that the only thing the Zodiac people are afraid of is the possibility of our coming back to carry out our threats. They’ll have to cooperate with us, but we’ll have to threaten them in order to make them. They’ll be as difficult as they can contrive to be without actually getting us killed or refusing point-blank to help us in accordance with the law.
    â€˜I don’t think they’ll let me land. They might not let more than one of us land in any case, in which case it will have to be you.’
    He meant me.
    â€˜Thanks a lot,’ I said.
    â€˜Whatever you do,’ he said, ‘don’t let them think that the whole galaxy isn’t behind you. Don’t ever suggest for a moment that if they don’t do as we say they’ll get away with it. We have to make this look like a diplomatic incident of the highest order. The New Romans on planet will back us up. They know the score. But don’t give the Zodiac people an inch.’
    â€˜That’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘I might have to go down there on my own. To a world where every man hates me. Great.’
    It didn’t really worry me all that much. It looked like the sort of thing I could handle. I only get into difficulties when the situation demands that I be nice to people.
    Charlot, on the other hand, was very worried. He was nursing a lot of bitterness about Chao Phrya. I could afford to be philosophical about the sad story he’d just told us. It’s a big galaxy. Things go wrong. People are always getting hurt. When cultures collide, someone always suffers. But there’s never any way back to square one. These things happen. Too bad.
    Being philosophical and cynical about things doesn’t make them any better, though. Charlot couldn’t be cynical and philosophical, because he saw his purpose in life—the purpose of all human life—in making things better. He was unalterably committed to New Alexandria (just as the colonists were unalterably committed to their Promised Land), and he could never afford to shrug his shoulders. He had tremendous faith in New Alexandria as an instrument of his brand of good.
    I don’t believe in any brand of good, and I have dire suspicions about New Alexandria, and even direr ones about New Rome. It’s not only generation ships which give rise to the Promised Land syndrome, and at least the children of the Zodiac would eventually be able to take a practical view of existence. I doubted that New Alexandria and New Rome would ever change. Sacred ideas are always more difficult to reify than sacred soil. I can’t help thinking that New Alexandria might be the biggest cultural genocide machine of all time. No matter how sincere its concern for the alien races of the galaxy, its philosophy is unavoidably anthropocentric. Its precepts are human and its methods are human. It’s some comment on the New Alexandrian Way that the much-vaunted synthesis of human and Khormon intellectual heritages resulted in a big step forward on human technology. No Khormon, so far as I knew, was flying a Hooded Swan . I didn’t want to argue any of this with Charlot. I think my way, for me. We could never even have compared ideas on a sensible basis. But I knew that if he sent me down alone to the surface of Chao Phrya, I wouldn’t be able to throw myself wholeheartedly into his mission. He knew it too. I just don’t believe in Homo galacticus , much less in Homo deus .