up. Or, for
up. Or, for that matter—given the surprise—why she invited him in the first place."
"Oh. It's because he doesn't look like High Ridge by accident. He's part of that whole Conservative Association bunch of lousy—well. The crowd I don't like, let's put it that way. Cathy hates them with a passion. He's related to the Queen—distantly—on his father's side, but his mother is High Ridge's second cousin. As his looks ought to tell anyone who lays eyes on him!"
Du Havel nodded, the picture becoming clearer in his mind. He was more familiar with Manticore's politics than that of most star systems, naturally. Even leaving Catherine Montaigne aside, Manticore played a far more prominent role in the Anti-Slavery League than its sheer weight of population would account for. He understood the nature and logic of the Conservative Association well enough, certainly. It was an old and familiar phenomenon, after all, as ancient as any political formation in human affairs. A clique of people with a very prestigious and luxurious position in a given society, who reacted to anything which might conceivably discommode them with outrage and indignation—as if their own privileges and creature comforts resulted from laws of nature equal in stature to the principles of physics. Very fat pigs in a very plentifully supplied trough, basically, who attempted to dignify their full stomachs by oinking the word "conservative."
Given that W.E.B. Du Havel considered himself, by and large, to be a conservative political theorist—using the term "conservative" loosely—he found the phenomenon not only understandable but detestable.
"Bunch of lousy swine will do nicely, Helen. But you can't confuse the individual with the group. Does Oversteegen himself belong to the Conservative Association? And, if so, why did Cathy invite him? And, if so—and having invited him nonetheless—why did he choose to come?" He gave the large crowd a quick overview. Diehard members of the Liberal Party, for the most part—and the ones who weren't, with not more than a handful of exceptions, departed from the Liberals to the left of the political spectrum. "I'd have thought that as likely as a Puritan agreeing to attend a witches' Sabbath."
"What's a 'Puritan'?" she asked. "And why would witches—silly notion, that—hold a soirée on— Never mind." Cathy
"Oh. It's because he doesn't look like High Ridge by accident. He's part of that whole Conservative Association bunch of lousy—well. The crowd I don't like, let's put it that way. Cathy hates them with a passion. He's related to the Queen—distantly—on his father's side, but his mother is High Ridge's second cousin. As his looks ought to tell anyone who lays eyes on him!"
Du Havel nodded, the picture becoming clearer in his mind. He was more familiar with Manticore's politics than that of most star systems, naturally. Even leaving Catherine Montaigne aside, Manticore played a far more prominent role in the Anti-Slavery League than its sheer weight of population would account for. He understood the nature and logic of the Conservative Association well enough, certainly. It was an old and familiar phenomenon, after all, as ancient as any political formation in human affairs. A clique of people with a very prestigious and luxurious position in a given society, who reacted to anything which might conceivably discommode them with outrage and indignation—as if their own privileges and creature comforts resulted from laws of nature equal in stature to the principles of physics. Very fat pigs in a very plentifully supplied trough, basically, who attempted to dignify their full stomachs by oinking the word "conservative."
Given that W.E.B. Du Havel considered himself, by and large, to be a conservative political theorist—using the term "conservative" loosely—he found the phenomenon not only understandable but detestable.
"Bunch of lousy swine will do nicely, Helen. But you can't confuse the individual with the group. Does Oversteegen himself belong to the Conservative Association? And, if so, why did Cathy invite him? And, if so—and having invited him nonetheless—why did he choose to come?" He gave the large crowd a quick overview. Diehard members of the Liberal Party, for the most part—and the ones who weren't, with not more than a handful of exceptions, departed from the Liberals to the left of the political spectrum. "I'd have thought that as likely as a Puritan agreeing to attend a witches' Sabbath."
"What's a 'Puritan'?" she asked. "And why would witches—silly notion, that—hold a soirée on— Never mind." Cathy