“The one with the weird ideas of what we’re like?

“Yes. One of the things they said was that we went around naked all the time. I was objecting to all the things they were saying. I wonder what I would have said if they’d been here to see you on the vid without even your socks on.”

“I suppose they would have thought they were right all along,” Jimmy said reasonably.

“Yes. But they weren’t.”

“I don’t know. I was naked, wasn’t I?”

“Sure, but that was in your own room. I go naked at home, too. They thought we never wear clothes.”

“Well,” Jimmy said brightly, “there’s no real reason we ought to, is there?” He started to pull his shirt off over his head. “We could be just what they think we are, and we wouldn’t be worse because of it, would we?”

“Don’t be perverse,” I said.

“What’s perverse about going naked?”

“I’m talking about your contrariness. Are you going to eat dirt just because they think we do? I shouldn’t have brought the subject up in the first place. It just struck me as something incongruous.”

“Incongruous,” Jimmy corrected, putting the accent on the second syllable where it belonged.

“Well, however you pronounce it,” I said. This comes of reading words and not having heard them pronounced. This also was a matter of talking about the wrong things to the wrong people. It seemed that I might do better just to leave Grainau out of my conversations completely. Just after I’d gotten back home, I’d made the mistake of saying what I really thought about the Mudeaters in front of Jimmy and Mr. Mbele.

“Do they really stink?” Mr. Mbele asked.

Jimmy and I were seated on the couch in Mr. Mbele’s apartment. I had my notebook with notes on my reading, subjects I wanted to bring up, and sOme book titles that Mr. Mbele had suggested. I realized that I’d just said something I couldn’t really defend, so I backtracked.

“I don’t know if they do. Everybody says they do. What I meant is that I didn’t like what I saw of them.”

“Why not?” Jimmy asked.

“Is that a serious question, or are you just prodding?”

“I’m interested, too, Mia,” Mr. Mbele said. In his case, I could tell that it was a seriously intended question, not just digging. Mr. Mbele never did any ganging up with either one of us against the other.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “We didn’t get along. Do I have to have a better reason than that?”

“Of course,” Jimmy said.

“Well, if you think so,” I said, “give me one good reason you have for being so antagonistic.”

Jimmy half shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

“You don’t have one,” I said. “I just said something you didn’t take to. Well, I didn’t take to the Mudeaters. I can doggone well say they stink if I want to.”

“I guess so,” Jimmy said.

“Hmm,” Mr. Mbele said. “What if it doesn’t happen to be true? What if what you say damages the other person, or if you are just building yourself up by tearing another person down?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Would you agree that it isn’t a good policy?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, it’s my personal opinion that saying the Colons stink is simply a self-justifying myth invented to make us feel morally superior and absolutely in the right. Your statement is likely to keep me from listening to any valid arguments that you might actually have. That certainly wouldn’t do you any good.”

Jimmy had been following the argument. He said, “How about this? It’s all right to dislike people for poor reasons, but not to call them names. You don’t have to justify your dislikes, but you have to justify your contentions.”

“That’s a little oversimplified,” Mr. Mbele said.

For the moment I was off the hook, and since I was struck by a thought, I brought it forward. “What about the people whom you ought to like — only you don’t? And the people you ought not to like that you do?”

“And what does all that mean?” Jimmy asked.

“Well, say you and I agree on everything, and I respect you, and you never do me any harm — like backbiting all the time for no good reason — and yet I can’t stand you. Or say there were somebody I ought to dislike — a total rat, somebody who’ll do anything if he sees advantage in it — and I like him. Can you separate liking from what a person does?”

Mr. Mbele smiled, as though the course of the conversation amused him. “Well, do you separate them?”

“I suppose I do,” I said.

“Jimmy?”

Jimmy didn’t say anything for a minute while he decided whether he did or whether he didn’t. I already knew the answer, having just worked it out myself. Everybody does, or there wouldn’t be charming sociallyaccepted bastards in the world.

Jimmy said, “I suppose I do, too.”

I said, “What I think I mean was should you separate them?”

“Isn’t it more to the point to ask whether it makes any difference if you do or not?”

“You mean, if you can’t help it anyway?”

“No,” Mr. Mbele said. “I meant do your emotions make a difference in your judgment of people that you like or dislike?”

Jimmy said, “Alicia MacReady? Everybody likes her, they say. Will that make any difference in what the Assembly decides?”

Alicia MacReady was the woman who was carrying an illegal baby. The question of what to do in the case had come up before the Council, but it hadn’t stayed there. She had apparently thought that she would get more lenient treatment if the Ship’s Assembly were to make the judgment, so before the Council could decide, she had opted to take the matter out of their hands. The Council had agreed, as in difficult or important cases they were likely to.

The Ship’s Assembly was a meeting of all the adults in the Ship, coming together in the amphitheater on Second Level, and voting. Since she was a popular person — I’d heard this only; until this had come up I had never heard of her or met her — the MacReady woman wanted to face the Assembly, hoping her friendships would count for more than they would in Council.

“That’s a good example,” Mr. Mebele said. “I don’t know if it will make a difference. I would suggest that since you can’t attend, you watch what goes on on your video. Then perhaps we can discuss the decision next time. This is just part of a larger problem, however: what constitutes proper conduct? That is, ethics. This is something an ordinologist” — a nod to Jimmy — “or a synthesist” — a nod toward me — “should be thoroughly familiar with. I’ll give you titles to start with. Take your time with them, and when you’re ready to talk, let me know.”

So he started us reading in ethics. He went to his book shelves and called off titles and authors for us to copy: Epicureans and Utilitarians; Stoics; Power Philosophers, both sophisticated and unsophisticated; and Humanists of several stripes. All these not to mention various religious ethical systems. If I’d known all this was to come out of my one simple, honestly prejudiced remarked, I would never have opened my mouth. Maybe there is a lesson in that, but if there is, I’ve never learned it; I still have an unbecoming tendency to open my mouth and get myself in trouble.

I saw Dr. Jerome on Wednesday, June I. I’d seen him once or twice a year ever since I could remember. He was of middle height, inclined to be portly, and like most doctors wore a beard. His was black. I’d asked him about it when I was much younger and he’d said, “It’s either to give our patients confidence or to give ourselves confidence. I’m not sure which.”

As he examined me, he talked as he always did, a constant flow of commentary directed half at me and half at himself, all given in an even, low-pitched voice. Its effect, and perhaps its intention, was to give reassurance in the same way that a horseman soothes a skittish colt with his voice. It was part of Dr. Jerome’s professional manner.

“Good enough, good enough. Sound. Good shape. Breathe in. Now, out. Good. Hmm-hum. Yes. Good enough.”