He told them of Earth, of its wonders, of the wide meadows he remembered, of the wind, brisk in spring, which brought the sweet-scented rain, of summer and the big harvest moon which followed, of a hundred other things.
Clair! Clair! Did you marry, have children? There was that Lou Somebody who you'd flirt with to make me jealous, but we both knew he loved you. I wonder.
He spoke of the planners, of the proud day when all the world had seen them off, the video jets flashing by, circling, to send their pictures to the waiting millions.
The planners, he told them, had a vision. It was the same vision which had first taken man—an ape with a brain that held curious half-formed thoughts that gave him a headache—down from the trees. A vision which would carry him one day to the farthest stars and beyond.
They shouted. They stamped on the floor. They laughed.
"What about us? We didn't have any say, did we? Who wants to spend his whole life in this tin can?"
"I don't know—" One of them at least was dubious, but the crowd stilled him. What of Laurie and her Cult? He did not see the girl anywhere in the great hall.
"We've had enough, Captain. Too much, I'd say!"
Larkin looked smug. Lindquist was grinning. No one did anything to stop them as the crowd surged forward, threatened.
Watching them, only now beginning to realize the whole thing, Eric remembered history. Mock-kinghood was nothing new in the scheme of primitive cultures. In ancient Babylonia, in Assyria—elsewhere—the mock king ruled for a day and the people came to him with their troubles. The king, cowering on his throne-of-a-day could perhaps see his executioner waiting. The real king had nothing to lose: the pent up dissatisfaction of his people would drown the mock-ruler like a wave, and after it was all over the king would return to his throne with more power than before.