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that it was best that we not mention this incident to our parents.

Bio of a Space Tyrant 1 - Refugee
    Chapter 3 — HARD CHOICE
    Maraud, 2-2-'15—They came resplendent in the military uniform of the Maraud police, delivering the foreclosure on our property. I mentioned the debt and mortgage our father took on to insure an education for his children. He was in arrears on the payments, of course, because all peasants were. That was the way of life on Callisto.
    My father, Major Hubris, was an intelligent man with minimal formal education. He knew very well that the big landowners were systematically cheating the peasants, but didn't know how to stop it. I had progressed far enough in my education to have a fair notion of the situation, and was confident that by the time I reached maturity I would be able to set about reversing the downward trend for our family. But until that time, the Hubrises were vulnerable—and that vulnerability had abruptly been exploited.
    Foreclosure—that finished us before we could begin to fight back.
    We had three days to vacate, unless we could pay off the mortgage in its entirety before that deadline.
    Of course we could not. People do not get into debt if they have the wherewithal to escape it. That clause of the contract is an almost open mockery of the hopes of the peasants. If there had been any reasonable hope of paying on demand, you can be sure the landowners would have passed a law to eliminate that hope.
    My father put in a call to our creditor, who had been reasonably tolerant before. This was Colonel Guillaume, of an ancient military family, now retired to his wealth and not really a bad person as creditors went. That is, he cheated the peasants less than some creditors did, treated them with reasonable courtesy, and did seem to have some concern for their welfare. The colonel did not speak to my father personally, of course; the secretary of one of his administrative functionaries handled that matter. That was all we had any right to expect.
    “Why?” my father asked, and I perceived the baffled hurt in his voice. "Why foreclose with no warning?
    Have we not behaved well? Did I make some error in the tally? If I have given any offense, I shall proffer my most abject apology."
    I did not like hearing my father speak this way. To me he had always been strong, the master of the household, a column of strength. Now his darkly handsome face showed lines and sags of confusion and defeat, as though the column were cracking and crumbling under a sudden, intolerable and inexplicable burden. His newly apparent weakness frightened and embarrassed me and made my knees feel spongy and my stomach knot. I saw little beads of sweat on his forehead and shades of gray in his short, curly hair. But his hands bothered me more, for now the strong fingers clenched and unclenched spasmodically behind his back, out of the view of the secretary in the phone-screen but in full view of my eyes, and the tendons flexed along the back of his hand as if suffering some special torture of their own. But most of all it was his voice that bothered me: that cowed, self-effacing, almost whining tone, as if he were a cur submitting to legitimate but painful discipline, sorry not so much for the strike of the rod on his flesh as for the infraction that caused this punishment to be necessary. I had never before seen him this way and wished I were not seeing it now. A bastion of my self-esteem, rooted ineluctably in my perceived strength of my father, was tumbling. This is an insidiously unpleasant thing for a child. It is as if he stands upon bedrock and then experiences the first tremor of the earthquake that will destroy his house.
    The secretary was female, of low degree, not unsympathetic, but compelled by her own employment to deliver the cruel response. “The Hubris account is three months in arrears on payments—”
    “Of course,” my father cut in, showing at least this token of mettle. “We are all behind