"Now I want to know why my world has crumbled into a screaming madhouse of violence."
"Yes, I can understand all too well how you feel. It's really horrible when you have grown up in a society, learned about its every intricacy, its principles, and come to have faith in it—then see it suddenly disintegrate.
"You come to think of your society as the universe, nothing else is as permanent as your world, your people. You make plans and move through that society, believing in it with a faith stronger than any religious faith—for you can see and understand it constantly.
"Then something like this happens. The familiar still exists, but palled with suffering and horror. People you have known suddenly become beasts. Your world has collapsed. And even if you know the reason, it doesn't seem possible, the reason is out of a textbook and unreal, but the disillusionment and despair are all too real.
"And from such a disintegration, you learn one important thing—how abysmally ignorant you are of the society that you've lived in, and of people in general."
There was a long silence.
Finally she said, "I believe in you, and I believe you should know the reason."
It was a strange scene as the two people, dirty and tired, sat in the crude cabin by the moonlight and discussed the fate of a world.
"When this planet was colonized," Yma began, "everyone laughed at us, and said that our radical socio-economic system couldn't work. All types of people started here. Some were merely looking for a final refuge, some were criminals and confidence men out to 'take' this 'starry-eyed flock of crackpots'. Most of them, though, were solid citizens, who believed that this system of paying a man for his intelligence and virtue on a carefully regulated basis was the proper compromise between reality and altruism to achieve a Utopia.
"As you know, it did produce a peaceful, cultural world that has few if any equals in the galaxy. There was one dangerous element in the plan though. Men were paid for their ability and it was money that was used; and wherever there is money there is dishonesty and greed. We had security and precautions against such things disrupting us internally, but we never counted on outside interference.