PUBLIC OPINION SIX
From A Cultural Record of Fruyling's World
Personal Histories of the Natives (called Alberts)
As Dictated and Preserved on Tape by Historical Commission HN3-40-9
Subject (called) Cadnan
... Dara is dead in the returning, when new masters come to us and say the fighting is over. It is an accident which kills her, a stumble, they say, against a plant which is dangerous to animal life and to our kind. The accident is over and Dara is dead, and we return.
I find Marvor after the fighting, once only, and I ask him what it is that is so important about this fighting. The Confederation—the masters we now have—are only masters like the ones we know. Marvor looks at me with a look as if he, too, is a master.
"Freedom is that important," he says. "Freedom is the most important thing."
I know that Marvor is not right, because I know the most important thing: it is the dead. For me Dara is most important, and I remember Puna, who is dead in the fighting: the rest does not matter. I say this now, knowing that the talk-machine hears me and that the Confederation hears me.