Manneran would have asked such questions as you have been asking.”
“Maybe so. One lacks a native’s training in self-repression. These questions about your philosophy of religion, then—do they intrude on your privacy of soul, your grace? Are they offensive to you?”
“One has no objections to talking of such things,” I said, without much conviction.
“But it’s a taboo conversation, isn’t it? We weren’t using naughty words, except that once when one slipped, but we were dealing in naughty ideas, establishing a naughty relationship. You let your wall down a little way, eh? For which one is grateful. One’s been here so long, years now, and one hasn’t ever talked freely with a man of Borthan, not once! Until one sensed today that you were willing to open yourself a bit. This has been an extraordinary experience, your grace.” The manic smile returned. He moved jerkily about the office. “One had no wish to speak critically of your way of life here,” he said. “One wished in fact to praise certain aspects of it, while trying to understand others.”
“Which to praise, which to understand?”
“To understand your habit of erecting walls about yourselves. To praise the ease with which you accept divine presence. One envies you for that. As one said, one was raised in no system of belief at all, and is unable to let himself be overtaken by faith. One’s head is always full of nasty skeptical questions. One is constitutionally unable to accept what one can’t see or feel, and so one must always be alone, and one goes around the galaxy seeking for the gateway to belief, trying this, trying that, and one never finds—” Schweiz paused. He was flushed and sweaty. “So you see, your grace, you have something precious here, this ability to let yourselves become part of a larger power. One would wish to learn it from you. Of course, it’s a matter of cultural conditioning. Borthan still knows the gods, and Earth has outlived them. Civilization is young on this planet. It takes thousands of years for the religious impulse to erode.”
“And,” I said, “this planet was settled by men who had strong religious beliefs, who specifically came here to preserve them, and who took great pains to instill them in their descendants.”
“That too. Your Covenant. Yet that was—what, fifteen hundred, two thousand years ago? It could all have crumbled by now, but it hasn’t. It’s stronger than ever. Your devoutness, your humility, your denial of self—”
“Those who couldn’t accept and transmit the ideals of the first settlers,” I pointed out, “were not allowed to remain among them. That had its effect on the pattern of the culture, if you’ll agree that such traits as rebelliousness and atheism can be bred out of a race. The consenters stayed; the rejecters went.”
“You’re speaking of the exiles who went to Sumara Borthan?”
“You know the story, then?”
“Naturally. One picks up the history of whatever planet one happens to be assigned to. Sumara Borthan, yes. Have you ever been there, your grace?”
“Few of us visit that continent,” I said.
“Ever thought of going?”
“Never.”
“There are those who do go there,” Schweiz said, and gave me a strange smile. I meant to ask him about that, but at that moment a secretary entered with a stack of documents, and Schweiz hastily rose. “One doesn’t wish to consume too much of your grace’s valuable time. Perhaps this conversation could be continued at another hour?”
“One hopes for the pleasure of it,” I told him.
THIRTY
“THIS TABOO ON SELF-EXPRESSION,” Schweiz asked me when we were together another time. “Can you explain it, your grace?”
“You mean the prohibition against saying ‘I’ and ‘me’?”
“Not that, so much as the whole pattern of thought that would have you deny there are such things as ‘I’ and ‘me,’ ” he said: “The commandment that you must keep your private affairs private at all times, except only with bond-kin and drainers. The custom of wall-building around oneself that affects even your grammar.”
“The Covenant, you mean?”
“The Covenant,” said Schweiz.
“You say you know our history?”
“Much of it.”
“You know that our forefathers were stern folk from a northern climate, accustomed to hardship, mistrustful of luxury and ease, who came to Borthan to avoid what they saw as the contaminating decadence of their native world?”
“Was it so? One thought only that they were refugees from religious persecution.”
“Refugees from sloth and self-indulgence,” I said. “And, coming here, they established a code of conduct to protect their children’s children against corruption.”
“The Covenant.”
“The Covenant, yes. The pledge they