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avoidance of pain, was that the state, the people, the community, or whatever putative entity might be involved, or the metaparty, if there were such an organization, was asserted to be the truest “Mother,” and accordingly, at her discretion and convenience, had inalienable death rights over whatever might be temporarily housed within her.
    “We can get away with a great deal,” said Rodriguez to Brenner, “as we are known as slovenly creatures in the galaxy, and little is expected of us. For example, if a Narnian were to have said what I said, there might have been something of a flap.”
    “I see,” said Brenner.
    “Our species is despised throughout the galaxy,” said Rodriguez.
    “Absurd,” said Brenner.
    “And quite rightfully so, in my opinion,” said Rodriguez, “in spite of the titles of politeness. They change nothing of importance, you know, at least when we consider the interstellar expanses, the multiplicity of worlds, and such. Only people like you take them seriously.”
    “Surely that’s not true,” said Brenner.
    “So don’t worry,” said Rodriguez, blearily.
    Sometimes Brenner did not care to talk with Rodriguez, though, to be sure, he had really not often done so, not to a great extent at any rate. It was not as though they were cronies or confidants, in spite of the months they had spent, even at hyperlight velocities, making their way from one port of call to another, from one system to another, sometimes on commercial lines, of one grade or another, sometimes on military vessels, patrol ships, and others, sometimes on research ships, most often, on one or another of the out-the-way routes, on one freighter or another. Rodriguez, except when drunk, tended to keep his own counsels, and if Brenner belonged to a species Rodriguez felt was rightfully despised throughout the universe, he had little doubt but what his own particular portion of that species, in the lofty criticality of Rodriguez, within the scope of which he undoubtedly, with magnanimous consistency, included himself, was not likely to be much more exempt, if that, than any other. Talking with Rodriguez was a bit unnerving at times, much like handling an unfamiliar piece of charged apparatus, not wholly understood, which occasionally, for no clear or obvious reason, reciprocated the attentions bestowed upon it with a series of unpleasant shocks. Brenner did know, of course, that his species was not generally regarded as one of the serious life forms of the galaxy, which discovery by the species, which had stood at the top of its own food chain for centuries, had come as a disillusioning surprise. A great deal of literature, poetry, and philosophy had come, almost immediately, to be seen in a quite different perspective. But then his species had encountered such surprises before. It did disturb Brenner to know that his species, a backward one, except in its own view, a view adjusted in such a way as to define progress in its own terms, commanded so little respect in the galaxy. It was generally regarded as a set of weak, uninteresting, self-righteous mediocrities. It was not a species with a project, not a species with a dream, to accomplish which it was willing to work and sacrifice. It was not, many said, a species which belonged amongst the stars. It would stain the stars or demean them. There was some agitation to keep it isolated, and treat it as unwholesome vegetable matter, not to be brought across stellar borders. It was better left, some said, to crawl on the surface of its own world, like worms, looking for small comforts. They were not giants, whose hands might pull them upward, from planet to planet, scaling the cliffs of space, giants whose brows might crash against stars, in whose hair would race the stellar winds. It did not strive, it did not care, except for itself; it did not think in terms of millenniums, but in terms of the day. Take one day at a time, it said. And that is how many of its members managed