Wright was tranquil, watching the meadow. "Whenever men put their chips on the other thing they always lost, didn't they? Repeatedly, for twenty or thirty thousand years? Did they ever create anything good except in a milieu of co-operation, friendship, forbearance? One of the oldest of commonplaces--the teachers all knew it. Lao-tse--Buddha--or stated negatively: 'He who lives by the sword....' And so on. Good is not the mere absence of evil, but the most positive of human forces. The instruments of good are charity, patience, courage, effort and self-knowledge, each unavailing without the others; remember that. And that's all the basic ethics I know. The rest is detail, solution of immediate problems as they arise. Even on Earth the good tended to win out in the long run: at least it did until the mechanical toys got out of hand. Then there was a century of living under a question mark. There was also the Collectivist Party. Yes, as a prime example of a part of my own philosophy totally perverted, I give you the Collectivist Party." Wright was talking to himself again, the bitterness of Earth's history goading him into soft-spoken monotone, drawling and dark, on a planet nearly five light-years distant from the ancient confusions. "The Collectivist Party, which turns 'co-operation' into the same sort of word fetish that 'democracy' was less than a hundred years ago--co-operation _without_ charity, without patience, without courage and always, always, without self-knowledge." Dorothy still watched him with sober upturned eyes. "Ed told me once his father was a pilot in the Collectivist Army during the Civil War." "I know." Wright smiled at her in bashful half apology. "Some of the old wounds still bleed too, I guess. I generally manage to keep my political mouth shut when he's listening, if I can. Not that Ed could be accused of still fighting the war that ended before he was born.... Relax: I think they're coming." Paul joined Wright and the giant at the barrier, but Dorothy stayed a moment with the sick, feeling their wrists, murmuring something close to Ann's ear, although the girl could not respond. "Past the fever stage, I believe," she said. "They're all breathing well. No chance they'll be out of it before night, I suppose...." The pygmies were still some distance away, slipping along the edge of the woods in plain sight. There were only three--the two women and one bowman; perhaps the others were paralleling their course inside the forest--perhaps a hundred others were. Wright whispered, "Have we anything that would make a respectable gift?" Mijok was rumbling in misery and fright. Dorothy came over holding a locket. "This--you remember, Doc--a matron at the Orphanage gave it to me. I used to imagine it could be a portrait of my mother--" "But my dear--"