“Indeed?” said Jean, faintly alarmed. “I think they’re a lot of cranks.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out. I intend to go and see them in the next fortnight. I must say that the literature they put out looks perfectly sane. And they’ve got some very good men there.”
“If you expect me to start cooking over a wood fire, or learning to dress in skins, you’ll have—”
“Oh, don’t be silly! Those stories are just nonsense. The Colony’s got everything that’s really needed for civilized life. They don’t believe in unnecessary frills, that’s all. Anyway, it’s a couple of years since I visited the Pacific, It will make a trip for us both.”
“I agree with you there,” said Jean. “But I don’t intend Junior and the Poppet to grow up into a couple of Polynesian savages.”
“They won’t,” said George. “I can promise you that.”
He was right, though not in the way he had intended.
“As you noticed when you flew in,” said the little man on the other side of the veranda, “the Colony consists of two islands, linked by a causeway. This is Athens, the other we’ve christened Sparta. It’s rather wild and rocky, and is a wonderful place for sport or exercise.” His eye flickered momentarily over his visitor’s waistline, and George squirmed slightly in the cane chair. “Sparta is an extinct volcano, by the way. At least the geologists say it’s extinct, ha-ha!
“But back to Athens. The idea of the Colony, as you’ve gathered, is to build up an independent, stable cultural group with its own artistic traditions. I should point out that a vast amount of research took place before we started this enterprise. It’s really a piece of applied social engineering, based on some exceedingly complex mathematics which I wouldn’t pretend to understand. All I know is that the mathematical sociologists have computed how large the Colony should be, how many types of people it should contain — and, above all, what constitution it should have for long-term stability.
“We’re ruled by a Council of eight directors, representing Production, Power, Social Engineering, Art, Economics, Science, Sport, and Philosophy. There’s no permanent chairman or president. The chair’s held by each of the directors in rotation for a year at a time.