his desk rang, Georges Alhamid scooped it up and
identified himself.

"This is Larry, George," said the governor's voice. "How are things so
far?"

"So far, so good," Alhamid said. "For the past week, Mr. Peter Danley
has been working his head off, under the tutelage of two of the
toughest, smartest anchor men in the business. But you should have seen
the looks on their faces when I told them they were going to have an
Earthman for a pupil."

The governor laughed. "I'll bet! How's he coming along?"

"He's learning. How are you doing with your pet?"

"I think I'm softening him, George. I found out what it was that got his
goat three years ago."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. On Ceres, where he went three years ago, he was treated as if he
weren't as good as a Belt man."

Alhamid frowned. "Someone was disrespectful?"

"No--that is, not exactly. But he was treated as if we didn't trust his
judgment, as though we were a little bit afraid of him."

"Oh-_ho_! I see what you mean."

"Sure. We treated him just as we would anyone who hasn't proved himself.
And that meant we were treating him the same way we treated our own
'lower classes', as he thought of them. I had Governor Holger get his
Ceres detectives to trace down everything that happened. You can read
the transcript if you want. There's nothing particularly exciting in it,
but you can see the pattern if you know what to look for.

"I'm not even certain it was fully conscious on his part; I'm not sure
he knew why he disliked us. All he was convinced of was that we were
arrogant and thought we were better than he is. It's kind of hard for us
to see that a person would be that deeply hurt by seeing the plain truth
that someone else is obviously better at something than he is, but
you've got to remember that an Earthman is brought up to believe that
every person is just exactly as good as every other--and no better. A
man may have a skill that you don't have, but that doesn't make him
superior--oh, my, no!

"Anyway, I started out by apologizing for our habit of standing up all
the time. I managed to plant the idea in his mind that the only thing
that made him think we felt superior was that habit. I've even got him
to the point where he's standing up all the time, too. Makes him feel
very superior. He's learned the native customs."

"I get you," Alhamid said. "I probably contributed to that inferiority
feeling of his myself."

"Didn't we all? Anyway, the next step was