Beyond clay, after paint, clearer than photography, more harmonious than music, more rigorous than science, more emotive than poetry: Life Shaping was the ultimate human endeavor, a marriage of art and skill to surpass any other.

The LaGrange colony was rechristened the Embassy (although the spacejacks kept calling it L2, as they always had), and the candidates were called Ambassadors (and the spacejacks called them weenies, as before). The Acturan puppets looked on with grand indifference, dangling the bait of unlimited knowledge before humanity, watching to see what would develop. Their patience seemed to be as inexhaustible as their determination. The Life Shapers were just as determined, and they set out to win the game the Acturans had started.

The primary tenet of the Institute was that humanity had a right to the stars, just as each human had a right to life and liberty. The Acturans deemed humanity “not ready.” Well, then, they’d jolly well get ready. Once again, the Ambassadors were the best and brightest the human race could offer. And under the Life Shapers, the best became better than ever. Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually—no natural human could compete with one who had been Shaped.

The Acturans broke their habit of silence to comment that they were impressed with the Institute’s work. Although they continued rejecting every Ambassador they received, this one positive sign that humanity was on the right track, after many hundreds of years of silence, was sufficient to make the Life Shapers like unto gods.

In the year 3118, mandatory pre-birth gene charting went into effect, and the tests for Marion Schultz’s upcoming third child were so good that they had little trouble convincing her to give the boy to the Institute. Shortly after the boy was born, she delivered him to the freezer where he would wait until the Institute had an opening.

Eventually, the child once known as Larry Schultz was unfrozen, decanted, assigned a permanent ID, massaged, fed, and presented to Pikaar Ng’s team for a pre-Shaping analysis. In due course, they deemed him appropriate for Ambassador training, just as the Life Shapers had predicted from the gene charts. They started the strict regimen of schooling and environmental conditioning that would last for the next ten years. Ng himself wouldn’t bother seeing the child until the test results from the first decade came in.

Marion Schultz always came on Birthday Day. The day had no particular meaning for the child now known as Jeremiah—he never even knew she was there. But for Marion, it was the one day each year when she was allowed to see her son, to verify that he was healthy and strong, that she had done the right thing by surrendering him the Life Shapers.

She was 130 years old, and for the tenth time now, she stood watching Jeremiah through the one-way glass and thought the same things she always thought. It was a mistake. It was wrong. Even though he was doing well, even though all the attendants said he was very likely to be chosen. It wasn’t worth it. She wanted to break the glass, leap through, sweep him up into her arms, and hug him, rock him, hold him forever. She shuddered, put one palm flat on the glass, then just stood there shivering.

Pikaar Ng stood in the back of the room, studying the behavior of the parents who came through. When Marion didn’t move after several minutes, he came up behind her, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, “You’re having trouble with this, aren’t you?”

“Look at him,” she said without turning away from the glass. “How can you look at him and not see what I see? He’s not human any more. What you’re doing is wrong.”

“Of course he’s human. He’s just better than most. He’s being Shaped. He’s heir to all of humanity’s greatness and none of its faults.”

“He never laughs, he doesn’t cry, he doesn’t even know I’m here, or that he has a mother who cares about him. He’s just a little boy, and you’re making him into a monster.”

“By keeping him from harm, by giving him the best education possible, by providing him with everything and anything he could possibly need or want?”

“You won’t let him have me.”

“Mrs. Shultz, I’ve had this same conversation with thousands of birth parents. In fact, I’ve had this conversation with you before. I remember your case very well. You have to accept that Jeremiah doesn’t want you. He doesn’t need you. You’re confusing your own desires with his. He’s perfectly well adjusted. If you’d been Shaped yourself, or even bothered to read the studies, you’d know this.”

Marion shook her head and brushed away a tear. She didn’t take her eyes from Jeremiah. On the other side of the glass, the boy tossed a ball up and down.

“I want him back,” she said. “He’s only ten years old.”

“I understand,” said Ng. “Unfortunately, they don’t stay that age. They grow up, don’t they? If there’s a brain malfunction or a hormonal imbalance, or any number of physical problems, we can usually fix those. Incorrect upbringing, however, is not so easily cured. All your careful nurturing can’t guarantee that you won’t raise a molester, a drug addict, a rights thief, a murderer, or an anarchist. The world’s seen enough of that kind of thing. We’ve grown beyond it. And we need the Ambassadors. Only the best of the best can qualify. You wouldn’t just be risking his career; you’d be risking making another Hitler. You don’t want to risk a Hitler, do you, Mrs. Schultz? Life Shapers are professionals, and they’re good at the job. For all your benign intentions, Mrs. Schultz, you’re just playing at being a parent. You aren’t equipped for it any more than a monkey would be.”

Marion turned, finally, to look at him. “I gave birth to three healthy babies!”

“Of course, physiologically you’re equipped. I meant that you don’t have the toolset for proper childrearing. If you’d gotten an advanced degree in parenting, maybe we could work something out—supervision at home, regular testing, that sort of thing, starting in his early twenties or so, when the chances of damage would be significantly reduced. Your first two were ruined—”

He waved his hand to forestall her angry response. “Ruined for Life Shaping, because it’s too late. Eighty years too late, if I remember your chart. Even if they’d qualified in the first place. I’m sure they’re perfectly good natural children who are happy and give you lots of joy. But giving birth to healthy children isn’t quite the same as having real parenting qualifications. It just means your reproductive organs are working properly. That’s not enough for this kind of boy. Letting you raise a child like Jeremiah by yourself would be like giving you an armed bomb with no instructions. It would be criminal, madam, for me to let you. Not to mention abusive to the child.”

Marion had looked away while he was talking, her eyes fastened once again on the boy beyond the window. But Ng’s last sentence caught her attention, made her angry again. “How could providing a loving home be abusive?”

“Because you would raise the child to be what you thought the child should be. You’d impose your morals, your standards, your religion, and your traditions...in short, you’d brainwash him, without even knowing what you’re doing. No matter how hard you tried to be objective—and I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you’d want to be objective—you’re a product of your own unShaped childhood, and you can’t separate your cultural conditioning from reality. No, I’m sorry, Mrs. Schultz, but it just won’t work. We can’t risk letting you ruin the boy just to gratify some sort of animalistic maternity whim of yours. Our children are our future.”

“Then we have no future,” she whispered. “Because, when you people are done with us, we’ll have no children—just little automatons. Perfect citizens. Robots.”

“Mrs. Schultz, look at me please. You know that’s not true. You were happy enough to turn Jeremiah over to us a hundred years ago.”

Marion didn’t turn from the window. Instead she said slowly, “I don’t understand you, Mr. Ng. You’re not Shaped, you’re a natural like me. How can you endorse this work here, be part of this?” She suddenly thought of something she hadn’t considered before and swung to face him. “Mr. Ng, do you have children?”

He nodded. “Several. Our youngest, Christa, is fourteen now.”

“Is she in there?”

He was silent for a moment, his face blank. “No, my wife and I didn’t qualify. Gene deficiencies. We’re raising Christa at home. She is the child of our middle years—we’re both well over 150 already—and I doubt we’ll have many more.”

“Then you know! You know what I want, why I want it. How can you...?”

“Because I want something else, Mrs. Schultz. Something more important than my feelings. Something that my Christa could never do, but your son might. Something not just for me, but for everyone, for all time to come. I want the stars, Mrs. Schultz, and your boy might be the one to give them to us.” He turned and put his palm on the glass, much the same way she had earlier. And the only word Marion knew to describe the emotion on Pikaar Ng’s face was hunger.

Jeremiah never doubted that he would be an Ambassador. His first interview with the chief Life Shaper had gone exactly the way he expected. Ng had reviewed his test results with him, evaluated his strengths and weaknesses, then asked if he thought he qualified.

“Of course,” said Jeremiah instantly. “I’m the best choice in my class.” He was only ten years old, but he saw no reason for false modesty. An incorrect analysis would be...incorrect.

Ng agreed, adjusted Jeremiah’s educational and social schedules to correct the few deficiencies shown by the tests, and sent him on his way. Only one other from Jeremiah’s class, a girl called Valia, was graduated with him. The others left the Shaping program but remained at the Institute to complete their schooling. All were given the option of rejoining their natural parents and living the life of a natural. There were no takers. Even at age ten, they knew that being Shaped was better than being a natural, even if they wouldn’t become Ambassadors.

Jeremiah and Valia continued taking the same classes, attending the same social functions, eating, sleeping, showering, playing, and learning with the others. They were accorded some slight respect for having been chosen, but no deference, no awe. The only real difference for them was that they saw Ng once a week from then on, whereas the others never saw the Life Shaper again.

Valia washed out two years later, when she and another girl, Wendy, got into a fight. Jeremiah was present when it happened, actually saw the blows struck. He understood theoretically why they had fought, but had no sympathy for them whatsoever. This was shame beyond any other. Both girls were sent from the Institute immediately, and their genetic lines were carefully examined. The Life Shaper found three other children, four classes below Jeremiah, whose heritage was dangerously close to Valia’s. They were allowed to stay, but it was understood that at their ten-year examination they’d be declined.

At his next meeting with the Life Shaper, Jeremiah expressed the opinion that all three should be dismissed now, rather than letting them continue to the point of failure.

“The science isn’t that exact,” said Ng. “If it were, Valia and Wendy wouldn’t have been accepted in the first place.”

“But why waste your time with them? The bloodline is clearly corrupted.”

Ng settled back in his chair. “If you can’t answer that for yourself, you’re the one wasting my time.”

At twelve, Jeremiah was under no illusions of invulnerability, but he was unused to reprimand. He suspected that the Life Shaper was being severe with him because of his disappointment with Valia. He didn’t say that, however. Instead he applied his abilities to the question and said, “You are not wasting your time. You are studying them in order to refine your screening techniques. You may learn as much from a mistake as from a success.”

“Correct. What have you learned from the mistake you just made?”

“Not to question your judgment when you are suffering from intellectual impairment due to emotional involvement. You feel shamed by Valia’s failure, and thus are somewhat irrational on the subject.”

“Also correct, but the wrong lesson.”

“That I should not jump to conclusions.”

“Too late, you just did it again. Your mistake was not in questioning me, or in concluding that the three students should be dismissed. Your mistake was that you did not study the problem first.”

“I did study the problem. I failed to take into account your chance to learn from studying them, and thus recommended a suboptimal course of action.”

“Wrong problem.”

“Sir?”

“The problem is not the bloodlines. Better scientists than you or I will study how the mistake happened. The problem is how, after twelve years of Shaping, Valia failed. Is the Shaping at fault, or the student? Nature or nurture? What if Shaping turns out to be nothing more than a gloss, and the real personality is unaffected? Of course the answer is neither, don’t bother answering. But the way the various factors interact to produce an unexpected result is of vital interest. Do you know why Valia and Wendy fought?”

“They disagreed about an emotional relationship they shared with Eric. Instead of resolving the disagreement, they allowed it to escalate until they were out of control.”

“How should they have resolved it?”

The boy was silent for a long time. “I cannot answer. I have studied, but never experienced, the types of emotions they claimed to feel. I am certain that I would resolve such a conflict by discussion, and without anger, but I cannot answer for them. The experience is inherently existential.”

Ng grunted and relaxed. “I watch you slightly more carefully than a nuclear scientist watches a live pile,” he drawled. Then he flung out his arm and pointed a finger at the boy’s face. “You have had more than one sexual relationship!”

Jeremiah nodded calmly, ignoring the trembling finger inches from his nose. “I was curious. The older kids seemed to think it was worth exploring.”

“Summarize your experiences.”

“Rubbery. The abrading of flesh against flesh stimulates nerve endings. Continued stimulus leads to the release of endorphins.”

“I meant emotionally.”

“An unwary individual could come to associate the sensation itself with his partner, via classical conditioning. This can lead to transference, or an irrational fondness for the partner.”

“I meant you.”

Jeremiah blinked. “I am not unwary.”

Ng drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. Then abruptly he came to a decision. “Your flaw is more serious than I thought, but I don’t know how to correct it. Perhaps I or one of my successors will think of something. I’m afraid it’s back into the box for you.”

Jeremiah wasn’t given the opportunity to protest. Aides hustled him down the corridor, popped him into the box, hit the actuator, and waited until the transparent cover frosted over and the lights blinked green. Jeremiah entered the long sleep with a very cross expression on his face.

For the next 200 years, more or less, Jeremiah scowled in frozen silence while the world continued spinning around the sun, the Acturans continued flunking every Ambassador, and the human race began to wonder if “being ready” meant anything at all.

Nations rose and fell. Life Shaping went out of, then back into, vogue several dozen times. Philosophers decided that the eternal verities probably were eternal, since thinkers had made no progress dissecting them since the dawn of history. The list of basic human rights was expanded to include not only life and liberty, but also food, water, clothing, gender, travel, personal space, shelter, drugs, entertainment, choice of occupation (including success therein), and sexual partners, such guarantees to kick in at birth and last life-long. And “life-long” was beginning to look as if it might mean forever. The oldest human alive would be soon be 604. Pikaar Ng himself was over 350, still the chief Life Shaper, and not showing signs of slowing down.

In reaction to the new laws, a woman named Jorjora Bujold started a short-lived fad by giving birth to a six-pound preemie by C-Section, and then giving a dinner party where the child was the main course. She and her followers were discouraged from continuing this practice by becoming “volunteer” spacejacks by court order. Jorjora successfully sued the world government for breach of her own rights, and the laws were subsequently adjusted to grant full human rights to all individuals from the moment of conception. Only an impassioned plea from the few remaining logicians kept the government from extending rights to individuals before they were conceived.

Mechanical and electronics engineers continued doubling their rate of progress every decade or two, but although everyone used the new gadgets, no one thanked the engineers. Jumpship technology remained beyond human science, as did FTL communications, and these were unforgiveable sins. But the toasters and coffee makers were both alive and intelligent. This last fact caused a bit of a problem when it came to disposing of old equipment. The high courts eventually ruled that manufactured beings had the same rights as natural beings, and engineering came to a complete standstill.

Life Shaping had stopped progressing, too. Pikaar Ng had made no advances for a century. He wished for the freedom to experiment the way he used to, but the new laws prevented it. Then one day he remembered Jeremiah. Despite all the time that had passed, Jeremiah’s test scores were still the highest on record. And, far more importantly, the new human rights weren’t grandfathered to those in deep-freeze. Jeremiah woke up in the year 3429, on a bright February morning, to find that although everything was different, very little had actually changed.

Jeremiah, either twelve years old or several hundred years old, depending on how you looked at it, stood before Pikaar Ng with his arms clasped across his chest. Ng said, “It will take you a year or two to catch up. I can’t authorize you to take the test before then.”

“What of my ‘flaw’? Have you decided on a course of treatment?”

“I have decided to ignore it. Your strengths may compensate. You may develop a soul eventually on your own. It may not even matter.”

“Right,” said Jeremiah. “Then let’s get started.”

“One other thing first,” said Ng. “Your mother died while you were in the box. A tragic accident. She lingered for almost a month, but in the end, the doctors couldn’t do anything more. I’m sorry.”

“My who?”

“Marion Schultz, your mother.”

Jeremiah frowned. “I didn’t know her.”

“You know the principle of motherhood, yes? Some students have been known to care.”

Shrugging, Jeremiah could only repeat, “I didn’t know her.”

Ng sighed. “She didn’t know you either. Don’t worry about it.”

Jeremiah didn’t plan to. There were too many more important things to do.

Some changes were harder to accept than others. Jeremiah had never been body-proud, so didn’t mind the universal nudity currently in fashion, especially since the unthanked engineers had long since made the entire surface of the world a uniform 72 degrees Fahrenheit all day long. But he was dismayed to find that people had stopped making history books. It was difficult to find out what had happened while he had slept. No one cared about history much, since so very little changed from year to year or decade to decade. And he almost got put back into the box when he inadvertently violated an unwritten rule by bumping into a fellow student while passing in the hall. Only fast talking by Ng, accompanied by much waving of Jeremiah’s test scores, kept the boy out of deep freeze or worse. Freedom of person included freedom from violence, and violence was whatever the injured partied claimed it to be.

Jeremiah discovered that if humanity was proud of anything, it was most proud of universal suffrage and universal human rights. Here real progress had been made; for all practical purposes, crime and warfare no longer existed. Basic human nature, thanks to untold generations of Life Shapers, had been remolded—or, if not really genetically encoded, at least so strongly conditioned from birth that violence was unheard of. No longer did every person struggle against unsocial instincts. Instead, the first impulse was to consider another’s rights, and to be courteous at all times. The basic social contract had been codified, bound, locked in place. For all practical purposes, babies were born with sophisticated sensibilities already learned.

But humanity was not satisfied. Although engineering had made scarcity a thing of the past, and although everyone had a right to just about everything, regardless of talent, effort, or ability, the race was denied the stars. Human legislation, and subsequent contempt citations, did not move the Acturans to agree that space travel was a basic right. Nor did human progress in other areas seem to impress them. While Jeremiah remained convinced he had a good chance to succeed as an Ambassador, he had only vague ideas about how he could do better than generations of prior candidates.

Jeremiah presented himself before Ng when he was fifteen, and sat in a nullo-chair without being asked. “I have learned all I can learn here, but it’s not enough,” he said. “I am going to travel for a while.”

Ng, who had been carefully controlling Jeremiah’s access to information, was somewhat less than sanguine about letting the young man roam unsupervised. However, he had to agree with Jeremiah’s assessment, so he assigned a floater for Jeremiah’s personal use and wished him well.

Jeremiah set out the very next morning. He travelled widely, stopping when the mood took him, either for a day or a month, to talk to the locals, examine their libraries, and hope for inspiration. He found each new area depressingly similar to the last he had visited, and while there were some small differences in culture from place to place, millennia of instantaneous worldwide communication had reduced the changes to mere curiosities. From time to time, he discovered small enclaves of learning maintained by the local Life Shapers, but most Earthlings were incurious about education, apathetic toward knowledge. Jeremiah concluded that the Acturans, quite contrary to stimulating the human race to become “ready,” had in fact fostered universal ennui. He wondered if this had been the plan all along.

He experimented with sex a bit, and changed his body gender to female for a year. He found that his mental image of himself remained male, so he switched back. For the next ten years, he soaked himself in humanity, sampled it, tried to squeeze the savor from each community he visited. And although new experiences helped a bit, he found himself gradually being drawn into the mindset of the people around him. Very little mattered to them. Only talk about the Acturans could raise a little heat, but even that soon died into mutters and shrugs. Jeremiah found himself losing hope, and his wanderings became aimless.

The Life Shapers in the region once known as Ohio had preserved a small museum in Zachary Herbert Wilson’s hometown. Nothing had been heard from Zach in thousands of years, but he was still revered in folklore as the only human to have passed the Acturan tests. The Life Shapers themselves had long since moved on, and the museum was abandoned. Jeremiah happened across it during his wandering, and decided to stay for a few days. Records, buildings, technological artifacts, and cultural items had been carefully preserved or recreated before the Life Shapers lost interest, all kept under a semistasis dome. Here squirrels raced among the trees, natural grass grew however it wanted, foxes hunted rabbits, dogs yapped in the streets, and the weather was unregulated. For the first time since being decanted again, Jeremiah found himself wishing for clothes. But the wonder of the ancient monument kept him too absorbed to worry. He remembered dogs, real paper books, and non-talking toasters, but had never thought to have an emotional attachment to them. He wondered at his own reaction now, because being surrounded by these simple things gave him an unexpected pleasure.

The sentience that operated the semistasis dome directed him to the replica of Zach’s house, and provided answers when Jeremiah asked about the various artifacts he found there. However, it was unable to heat the dome for Jeremiah, since that would interfere with the natural environment of the various biological forms that lived there. There were no food dispensers, and no nullobeds. Jeremiah decided that authentic ancient life was too harsh for more than a visit, and departed before nightfall.

He stayed in a nearby town and went to the museum in his little floater every day for almost a year, convinced somehow that something important lurked under the dome. He knew that generations of Ambassadors before him had studied Zach’s life in great detail, and he didn’t think he would find anything new. But something about the dome spoke to him at a level below consciousness. He watched the old vids, from when the Acturans first appeared, and read the old reports. He memorized every word humans had said to the Acturans, and every response they made. Nothing. Nothing. He read Zach’s high school term papers. He tried on replicas of Zach’s shoes. He rolled in the dirt with the dogs. Nothing.

Yet one morning, while lying in the grass and idly watching a pair of young squirrels squabble over a nut they’d found, his mind lazily reviewing everything he had seen, he suddenly sprang up and shouted, “Of course!”

He presented himself before Ng a few hours later and said, “I’m ready.”

“For the Acturan test?” asked Ng.

“That, too. But I mean I’m ready.”

Ng was silent for a moment. “Tell me what you have learned,” he said at last. “We have monitored your travels, and I saw nothing of import.”

Jeremiah shook his head. “I must see the Acturans at once.”

“How can you know you are ready?”

“Only one way—by passing the test.”

Jeremiah refused to say anything further, even though the excitement generated by his assertion spread throughout the world and he was begged by all of humanity to reveal his secret. Jeremiah just smiled and said, “You will see when you will see, and you will see what you will see, when I do what I will do. I’m either absolutely right or disastrously wrong. So just watch and see what happens.”

In the end, Ng had little choice but to send him up to the Acturan jumpship on the next available shuttle. The world watched while the young man entered the airlock. The doors closed behind him. There was a great silence as everyone held their breath. Then the doors opened, and Jeremiah emerged, his hands clasped above his head in the ancient sign of victory. Moments later, the Acturans confirmed that Jeremiah had indeed passed the test, and the world’s second human was given the keys to the universe—and, incidentally, the keys to a small jumpship for his personal use. Jeremiah returned to Earth triumphantly, and was showered with every honor ever known to mankind. He stunned the world into silence for the second time in one day by calmly informing everyone that he still wouldn’t tell his secret.

The riots began.

Jeremiah sat in Ng’s office, sipping from a drink and smiling enigmatically. Universal human rights were now only almost universal—the world’s governments had unanimously decided to rescind Jeremiah’s rights to life, liberty, privacy, and—most particularly—keeping information to himself.

The crowds beat on the door to the Institute. Most of the staff had fled long since. The rioters were not especially mindful of anyone’s rights at the moment, and violence had returned to the world. Millennia of conditioning disappeared overnight. “This,” everyone said, “was different.” As Jeremiah had suspected, the old ways weren’t gone—given sufficient motivation, the veneer of civilization could be stripped away.

Only Ng and Jeremiah remained in the Institute building, and the young man was secure because he knew his little jumpship, currently parked on the Institute’s roof, could take him far from outraged humanity with plenty of time to spare. Ng’s office had a private exit to the roof. Ng was still trying to get Jeremiah to tell the details of his examination.

Jeremiah shook his head and waved away Ng’s questions. “I watched the old vids,” he said. “If you watched them too, you’d know what I know.”

“But I have watched them!” Ng protested. “And so have millions, hundreds of millions, of others. There is nothing....”

“You watched, but you didn’t pay attention. Neither did I for the longest time. But the answer was there, of course, lying in plain sight.”

“Please,” said Ng, humbled beyond anything he thought possible. “Please tell me what they asked you, and how you answered.” He looked up at Jeremiah, his expression suddenly shrewd. “You must want to tell someone. It must be burning you. You are here because you want to tell me, aren’t you?”

Jeremiah laughed. “I’ll tell you, but it won’t do you any good. There were two Acturans behind the desk. The first one asked me my name.”

“Yes? And then...?”

“That was the only question. I didn’t bother answering it.”

“But...but....”

The rioters roared as they succeeded in breaking down the Institute’s front door. It had been a sentient door, and the rioters broke dozens of laws by forcing it open. By then, no one cared. They surged into the hall and swarmed up the stairs.

Jeremiah stood and set his drink carefully on the desk. “Time to go, I guess. You’ll be joining me soon enough.” He inclined his head toward the door, indicating the approaching crowd. “They already know the answer, they just don’t know that they know, and they don’t know that I’ve already shown them the secret. I’ll be seeing you soon, I think. Meet me on Acturas when you get a chance, and we’ll talk. I’d like to continue that nature versus nurture discussion we started before you had me frozen.”

Jeremiah left before Ng could say anything else. When the rioters broke into his office moments later, Ng mutely pointed at the door leading to the roof, and the crowd surged past him. Soon, their outraged howls of anger told him that Jeremiah had gotten away in time. Ng watched as the rioters swirled back through his office, breaking everything in sight, screaming, faces red, demanding access to the stars. A thought formed in the back of his mind, too terrible to be accepted, too simple to be real, too obvious to be overlooked.

Without a word, he swept past the rioters and scheduled himself on the next shuttle. Only his prestige as chief Life Shaper got him aboard. Millions had applied for seats after Jeremiah’s success, but the shuttle only held a few at a time.

At the space station, he went to the spacejack lockerroom and helped himself to a pair of overalls and a toolbelt. The cloth felt awkward and unfamiliar, and the tools were heavy. Except for dress-up parties, he hadn’t worn clothing in decades, and he had never lifted a hammer or used a screwdriver in his life. But he would need the disguise to get outside the space station. As Zachary Herbert Wilson had done so long before, Ng went where he was not supposed to be, did what no one had authorized him to do. He slipped out and floated through the nullotube to the Acturan ship, banged on the airlock door, and was admitted.

Two Acturans sat behind a plain desk, looking as human as ever. One of them gestured to a chair, and Ng sat. “I’m ready,” said Ng.

“We will judge that,” said the second Acturan.

Ng pulled a lugwrench from his toolbelt and whipped it overhand across the cabin. It plonked into the second Acturan’s head, dropping him immediately. The first Acturan looked at Ng carefully and held up his hands. “Sufficient,” he said. “You pass.”

Ng smiled. “I thought so. May I ask some questions?”

“You are now an Acturan citizen. We will endeavor to answer whatever questions you choose to ask.”

“How did Zach Wilson pass?”

“We told him he needed our permission to move into the galaxy, so he strangled one of us.”

“Ah! And what of the two ships you blew up?”

“Had they succeeded in getting past our quarantine, they would have gotten citizenship. They did not succeed.”

“And Jeremiah?”

“He just took the jumpship keys from the desk.”

Ng noticed a set of keys lying on the desk for the first time and laughed. “Brilliant lad.”

“Yes, we noticed that. He solved the problem without violence. This gives us hope for your race.”

Ng lost his smile. “Now I don’t understand. I thought that violence was the correct answer. You rewarded Jeremiah for theft, and Zach and me for assault. You punished everyone else for refraining from crime!”

The fallen Acturan straightened up and shook his head. He held a hand to his forehead to stanch the bloodflow and looked at Ng silently for a while before answering. “How is not giving you something of ours punishing you, unless you believe you have a right to our things? No, it’s simpler than that—”

“—And more complex, too—” added the first.

“We perceived a flaw in your mentation, an idea—”

“—One that might be contagious—”

“—So we had to quarantine your planet—”

“—Until you either overcame it, or it overcame you.”

Ng held up his hand. “One at a time, please. You’re talking about human rights, aren’t you?”

“No. All sentient races have similar concepts. The flaw was the assumption that rights are inherent instead of earned.”

“Earned how?”

“By taking them. You have the power you take. You keep the power you defend successfully, lose the power you fail to defend.”

“But that’s anarchy!” Ng was outraged.

“If you believe we are wrong,” said the first Acturan, “you may attempt to force us to change our beliefs. If you want our things, you may attempt to take them. If you want our technology, you may try to steal it from us. We will resist. But if you believe you have a right to these things, and you manage to convince the owners that the robbers are not criminals, you end up with domination of the strong by the weak, and soon no one has anything.”

“It is not how the universe works,” added the second. “You cannot learn to master the law of gravity by legislating yourselves free of the repercussions when you leap off a cliff. Once the moral poison of believing that all beings are equal takes hold, only stagnation and confusion can follow.”

“Now you’re saying that human rights are immoral?”

“No, but if you reward unequal work with the same pay, or try to pretend that the least talented finger-painter is worth as much as the best artist, or that a lazy being has the same right to eat as an industrious one, then your principles are corrupt. We could not bring ourselves to treat with such beings. What if your flawed ideas spread to our own culture? We could not withstand the injustice that would result.”

“Yet you advocate injustice,” said Ng. “You would let one person starve while another had plenty.”

“We might—”

“—Or we might not—”

“—That’s our choice—”

“—If you want to feed him—”

“—Then feed him!—”

“—But don’t make it mandatory for us. That’s not justice for anyone. A gift that is required is no longer a gift.”

The Acturans paused, looking at each other. Ng had the impression that they were considering their words carefully, and it was with a shock that he remembered he was only facing puppets, and that the real Acturans were lightyears away. Eventually, the first Acturan said, “Justice is falling when you jump off a cliff. Gravity is just. Justice is being hungry when you do not work for food. Hunger is just. Justice is honoring the makers in your culture above the consumers. It is not justice to elevate the consumers to the same level of worth as the creators.”

Ng waved his hands. “Yet when a being works for food, but doesn’t have enough anyway? How is it justice to let him starve?”

“How is it justice to take food away from the other being by force?”

Ng frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Neither do we—”

“—But this is a question—”

“—Worth studying, don’t you think?”

They paused, looking at each other again. Ng wondered if the remote operators were talking to each other. Had he given them something to think about, too? “If your philosophy were followed—” he began.

They turned back to him immediately. “It is followed, on every civilized planet we know—”

“—Except here.”

That set Ng back. “You mean violence rules everywhere? The strong take what they want, and the weak just suffer? What about the basic social contract, the agreement to refrain from clubbing each other so both can live? Doesn’t—?”

“Oh, no, you have misunderstood. We have very little violence.”

“You’re right, I don’t understand! You rewarded Zachary Wilson for murder, Jeremiah for theft, and me for assault. You punished everyone else for refraining from crime! How is that justice?”

“It’s not really murder, since we are just puppets—”

“—But think of it this way—”

“—We could have destroyed the Earth at any time—”

“—As easily as you would crush an ant—”

“—But we did not—”

“—We could have killed you for assaulting us—”

“—But we did not—”

“—Because we know both justice and mercy.”

Ng shook his head and picked up the jumpship keys. “I could steal this ship, study it to learn its secrets, and build a thousand more. With that fleet, I could attack Acturas and kill you all.”

“Yes.”

“And you’d let me?”

“Of course not.”

“Why? I have the power I take, remember?”

“You must actually take the power—”

“—We won’t give it to you—”

“—And you would fail in taking it—”

“—Because we would resist. You have the power you have the power to take.”

“So you would kill us to save yourselves?”

“Without—” said the first Acturan.

“—A second thought,” said the other.

“—And so we welcome you to civilization at last—”

“—It’s not a matter of rights at all, but of mutual respect.”

Ng felt understanding dawn. “You want something from us,” he said, crowing. “This is your way of culling the herd, of sifting through all of humanity for a certain few.”

The Acturans shook their heads in unison. “No, not that at all,” said the first. “Jeremiah understood better. Perhaps he can explain it to you. We have summoned him. He is waiting for you.”

“But I—”

“Go now. We have other things to do.”

Ng found Jeremiah’s little jumpship outside with a nullotube already connected. He climbed through the waiting hatch and made his way to the command deck. “Hello, citizen,” he said as he strapped into the copilot’s chair. “We both made it.”

“Made it, hell,” said Jeremiah. “That was just the entrance examination. Let’s go.”

“To Acturas?”

“Eventually. But we have to get ready first.”

Jeremiah gunned the little ship, shaped a trajectory that bring them back to earth. Ng waited until they were in the groove, then said, “Ready? What do you mean, ready?”

Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “If you have to ask....”