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sea and sky, with a glimpse of fading Zamba in between as the poop rose and fell.
    Althea had been a good sailor on Earth. Since coming aboard, some of the clouds of despondency had lifted from her. But for her fear of Gorchakov and doubt about her future, she might almost have enjoyed herself. The relaxation, the seemingly aimless wandering of the ship among the fairy-tale islands of this fanciful planet, suited her temperament.
    Once, she had thought to find her unknown goal in self-sacrificing service to her mother. Then she had turned to the hope of the primly abstract heaven of Ecumenical Monotheism. This was a powerful syncretic cult combining Judaic, Christian, and Islamic elements, founded by Getulio C&aTilde;o.
    Now, however, the catastrophic absence of Bishop Harichand Raman had soured her on his church. She was just as glad to be still sailing under her own name and not the alternative one, such as “Piety” or “Chastity,” which the bishop was to have conferred upon her when he gave her her assignment. Still, if Bishop Raman had materialized upon the Labághti right then, conscience would have forced her to obey his commands.
    Bahr, endowed like Althea with a sea-going constitution, leaned against one of the crates lashed to the deck and smoked his pipe. The three Terrans had boarded just as the crew were stowing these crates. Since there had been too many crates to fit into the hold, the overflow had been stowed on deck.
    Brian Kirwan, looking almost as green as a Krishnan, staggered forward.
    “Feeling better?” said Althea.
    “Ha! It takes more than a touch of sea to down the great Brian Kirwan for long, though I curse the man who first tied two logs together to make a boat.” The poet shook his head and ran a hand across his forehead. “ ’Twill pass. Now, isn’t that the sight for you?” He waved an arm toward the sunset and broke into guttural Gaelic noises. “That’s a bit of a poem I’m after composing, in Irish, of course. All about how the isle of Zamba sits in the evening on the smaragdine Sadabao Sea, but for all its chlorophyllic greenery it’s not Eire, and wouldn’t be even if it was, because the Ireland that Zamba isn’t doesn’t exist except in the poetical imagination. If I make myself clear.”
    Althea did not think that Kirwan had made himself clear but refrained from telling him so. The samples of his verse that he had quoted had impressed Althea as pretty amateurish. In fact, she was becoming convinced that Kirwan was no more than an eccentric idler, who claimed poetic talents to justify an otherwise useless existence. Kirwan continued, “Poignant, isn’t it? But at least Krishna has some color and poetry left to it, unlike my native land, which shows the same dull-gray uniformity as the rest of the Earth. The back of me hand to democracy! We need kings and nobility again, a system with a soul.”
    Althea said, “That’s all very well if you happen to be one of the nobles—”
    “And who could deny the rank to the great Brian Kirwan? But who can write serious poetry about some ninny passing a civil service examination, so as to be hired as a dark by some stupid board or commission?”
    “Ignore him,” said Bahr. “As a poet he feels obliged to affect such attitudes.”
    “You crass Philistine, you!” sneered Kirwan. “By God, if I’d known what a dull, stupid, tedious fossil of a man was going to make my life hideous with boredom, I’d have waited for the next ship.”
    Bahr urbanely continued. “As I was about to explain, modern psychometry is not a theory but a well-tested body of fact. Also it is not anti-democratic, at least not more than the actual human race.”
    “How do you mean, the human race?” said Althea.
    “Well, after all these years of education and beautiful constitutions and world government, most human beings still regard public office as an excuse to enrich themselves, reward their friends, and exterminate their enemies. And anyway,