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Inclusive Language Education And Digital Technology Elina Vilar Beltrn Editor Chris Abbott Editor Jane Jones Editor

Inclusive Language Education And Digital Technology Elina Vilar Beltrn Editor Chris Abbott Editor Jane Jones Editor Inclusive Language Education And Digital Technology Elina Vilar Beltrn Editor Chris Abbott Editor Jane Jones Editor Inclusive Language Education And Digital Technology Elina Vilar Beltrn Editor Chris Abbott Editor Jane Jones Editor

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Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Series Editor: Professor Viv Edwards, University of Reading, Reading, UK Series Advisor: Professor Allan Luke, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of iden- tity and power, community and culture. This series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.
Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology Edited by Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott and Jane Jones MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology/Edited by Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott and Jane Jones. New Perspectives on Language and Education: 30 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language and languages—Study and teaching—Technological innovations. 2. Language and languages—Computer-assisted instruction. 3. Children with disabilities—Education. I. Beltrán, Elina Vilar, editor of compilation. P53.855.I54 2013 418.0078–dc23 2013001854 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-973-2 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-972-5 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2013 Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott, Jane Jones and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable for- ests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, prefer- ence is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd., Salisbury, UK. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd. To Gabriela from Eli
v Contents Contributors vii Introduction xi Part 1: The Key Issues 1 Modern Foreign Languages as an Inclusive Learning Opportunity: Changing Policies, Practices and Identities in the Languages Classroom 3 Jane Jones 2 Technology Uses and Language – A Personal View 30 Chris Abbott 3 Meeting Special Educational Needs in Technology-Enhanced Language Teaching: Learning from the Past, Working for the Future 45 David Wilson Part 2: Case Studies 4 The 21st Century Languages Classroom – The Teacher Perspective 67 Elina Vilar Beltrán and Auxiliadora Sales Ciges 5 Using Technology to Teach English as a Foreign Language to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing 84 Ewa Domagała-Zys ´k 6 Information and Communication Technology – An Instrument for Developing Inclusive Practice in the Training of Modern Languages Teachers 103 Lynne Meiring and Nigel Norman
7 Foreign Languages for Learners with Dyslexia – Inclusive Practice and Technology 124 Margaret Crombie 8 Creative Engagement and Inclusion in the Modern Foreign Language Classroom 143 John Connor 9 Conflicts between Real-Time Resources and the Storage of Digitized Materials: Issues of Copyright 155 Andreas Jeitler and Mark Wassermann Conclusion 174 Index 176 vi Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
vii Contributors Chris Abbott is Reader in e-Inclusion at King’s College London. He taught in mainstream and special schools, mostly in the London area, for twenty years before becoming Director of the Inner London Educational Computing Centre. Since joining King’s College London, he has specialised in teaching and research around literacy, language and assistive technologies, especially with regard to students identified as having learning difficulties. He is the Programme Director of the MA Inclusive Education & Technology, and of the Foundation Degree/BA Education Studies. He has led a number of research projects on aspects of technology and disability, and is the author of ICT: Changing Education (2000) and SEN and the Internet: Issues for the Inclusive Classroom (2002). He is the Editor of the Journal of Assistive Technologies. Email: Chris.abbott@kcl.ac.uk John Connor A former head of a language faculty and local authority adviser, John worked for a time as a team inspector for OFSTED, specialising in modern languages and special educational needs in mainstream settings. He has worked on national languages projects, and latterly on developing languages in primary schools. He has led training and teaching and learning quality audits across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. He is an Assessor for the Advanced Skills Teacher programme for the Department for Education. Email: johnfconnor@aol.com Margaret Crombie is currently an Educational Consultant with a special- ism in Literacy Difficulties and Dyslexia. She is an Associate Lecturer with the Open University (Difficulties in Literacy Development course) and supervises a number of doctorate students. Margaret has considerable previous experience of working in the dyslexia field as a Specialist Teacher
and as a Manager and Lecturer. She has researched into dyslexia and the learning of a foreign language in schools in Scotland, and is co-author of the book, Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning (Schneider & Crombie, 2003). She has contributed to many other publications. She has chaired the Working Group for Dyslexia Scotland, which has produced an online Toolkit for the assessment and support of those with literacy difficulties in a Scottish school context – The Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit. Email: margaretcrombie@me.com Ewa Domagała-Zyśk, since 1998, has been working as a Researcher and Lecturer at the Pedagogy Department of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and at the Centre for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education at KUL. She was a pioneer of teaching English as a foreign language to deaf university students in Poland, starting her work in 1999. She is the author of more than 30 empirical papers on that issue, both in English and in Polish, a co-author (with K. Karpinska-Szaj) of Uczeń z wada ˛ słuchu w szkole ogólnodoste ˛pnej. Podstawy metodyki nauczania je ˛zyków obcych [Hearing impaired student in mainstream school. Basics of methodology of teaching English]. She partici- pated in more than 30 international conferences presenting papers on teach- ing English as a foreign language to deaf and hard of hearing students. Email: ewadom@kul.lublin.pl Andreas Jeitler has been a specialist in the field of universal accessibility at Klagenfurt University’s Library since 2004. Beside other tasks, he supports and trains students, teachers and other library users in the process of creating and understanding how to use digital-accessible learning materials. Owing to his own visual and hearing impairments, he knows and understands the barriers that arise for people with disabilities. Andreas is Chairman of the Advisory Board on the Equalisation of People with Disabilities of the city of Klagenfurt and also long term Chairman of Uniability, the workgroup for the equalisation of people with disabilities and chronicle illnesses at Austria’s Universities and colleges. Email: andreas.jeitler@uni-klu.ac.at Jane Jones is Senior Lecturer in MFL Teacher Education at King’s College London. She taught languages for many years in comprehensive schools. She is subject specialist in the Assessment for Learning Group at King’s. Her research interests include the development and embedding of effective formative assessment practices in language teaching and learning, especially viii Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
with student teachers, and the promotion of self-regulatory strategies by pupils of all abilities and all ages to manage their own learning. Jane has participated in many EU funded international research projects on language learning, assessment and inclusion as well as the management and leadership of schools and within these, has been interested to promote critical teacher research and the pupil voice. Email: jane.jones@kcl.ac.uk Lynne Meiring taught French and German in a range of secondary and Further Education colleges for 17 years. She has worked in Higher Education for 20 years, teaching on the PGCE programmes (primary and secondary) at University of Wales, Swansea and Swansea Metropolitan University. She has also taught on Masters’ programmes. She is an ESTYN section 10 inspector and has worked as a Modern Foreign Language Consultant in schools. Her research interests include developing literacy through modern foreign languages and the use of technology in the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages. She has several publications related to the teaching of modern foreign languages. Email: lynne.meiring@smu.ac.uk Nigel Norman was formerly Senior Lecturer in Education (Modern Foreign Languages) at Swansea Metropolitan University School of Education. His research interests include the methodology of language teaching, grammar and literacy, and information technology in languages. Previously he was Advisory Teacher in Wiltshire, where he was involved in curriculum develop- ment, in-service training and resources management. Prior to that he spent seven years as Head of Modern Languages in a comprehensive school and ten years in a boys’ grammar school, including a year’s exchange teaching in Germany. He has published course materials for German teaching and a vari- ety of book contributions and articles in academic journals. He is the Reviews Editor for Language Learning Journal. Email: nigel.norman@smu.ac.uk Auxiliadora Sales Ciges is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain. She is the coordinator of the research group MEICRI (Mejora Educativa y Ciudadanía Crítica). Her research focuses on intercultural and inclusive education, attitudes and values training and planning, developing and evaluating measures of attention to diversity in schools. Her latest projects examine teachers’ professional development Contributors ix
through action research and school change. Her research has resulted in pub- lications in national and international refereed journals. Email: asales@edu.uji.es Elina Vilar Beltrán is a language instructor at Queen Mary, University of London. Modern languages education and accessibility have been her main areas of study since she started her post-doctoral training at King’s College London. She held the Batista i Roca fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge for three years and was part of a Young Researchers Programme from the Spanish Ministry of Education at Universitat Jaume I; researching inclusive education policies in different countries and designing materials for practising and aspiring language teachers. Other areas of inter- est include digital literacies, intercultural communication and language development in the study abroad context. Email: e.vilar@qmul.ac.uk Mark Wassermann is Head of the Department for the Support of Students with Disability and Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities at the University of Klagenfurt. As a visually impaired person, he acts as Vice Chairman of the advisory board on accessibility for the city of Klagenfurt and Vice Chairman of the Independent Living Movement of Carinthia. As a member of the committee for the accessibility of vending machines at the Austrian Standard Institute, Mark represents the interests of blind and visually impaired persons. As an inde- pendent contractor he provides accessibility consulting and training for compa- nies and organisations with the focus of accessible information technology. Email: mark.wassermann@uni-klu.ac.at David R. Wilson, BA (Leeds), Grad.Cert.Ed., MA, MEd. (Newcastle), Adv.Dip. Ed in Special Needs in Education (Open), now retired, works voluntarily in the Equal Opportunities Department at Harton Technology College in South Shields in the North East of England, where, for 37 years, he taught French, German and latterly secondary school students with learning difficulties. His research interests and specialeducationalneeds.com website focus on school curriculum accessibil- ity, with particular reference to modern foreign languages, special educational needs and appropriate use of information and communications technology. He has published articles, delivered teacher-training workshops and presented papers at international conferences in Europe, Asia and North America. Email: davidritchiewilson@compuserve.com x Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
xi Introduction Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott and Jane Jones The Purpose of the Book Globalization of business, improved travel opportunities and ever grow- ing means of communication have made it even more necessary for people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to communicate with each other in a wide variety of contexts and for a wide variety of purposes. Communication is richer, culturally as well as linguistically and economi- cally, when it is possible in more than one language; having competence in languages is also personally enriching and generates enjoyment as well as growth; as has been shown by McColl (2000: 5): ‘foreign language learning, far from interfering with language development as was once thought, stimulates its devel- opment, and gains can be detected right across the curriculum’. This statement provides a very solid theoretical basis for the implementation of teaching languages to all pupils and a powerful rationale for the expansion of this activity within the context of special educational needs (SEN). Digital tech- nologies are ever more present in our lives and language-teaching contexts need to exploit the potential of these technologies in order to raise barriers to learning modern foreign languages (MFL). This book aims to show how this can be achieved with those individuals for whom language learning is more challenging, in a variety of contexts and from varying perspectives, and with a strong focus on the role of digital technologies. This is not an attempt to summarize developments worldwide, but a UK-based book with illumina- tive case studies from several European countries. Our exemplar chapters are not parochial, but carefully chosen to provide illuminative case studies within an area where very little has been published.
The book is aimed at teachers, advisers and researchers with an interest in the field of MFL teaching and learning, SEN and digital technologies. It may also be of interest to those studying the most effective approaches to inclusive language education. We also address postgraduate students looking for new and inclusive ways to teach MFL and heads and governors with responsibility for SEN/inclusion and for languages, as well as trainee teachers and teaching assistants. Outline of the Book The book is divided into two parts. The first part identifies and draws out the key issues of inclusive education, languages and digital technologies. These are not considered separately but are seen as inextricably interwoven, and each chapter takes a different emphasis and a different perspective. Part 2 comprises a set of case studies of current and emerging practices in a range of cultural contexts. The methods and the initiatives to meet those chal- lenges have clear international currency. Part 1: The Key Issues Jones, in the first chapter, reviews recent policy changes regarding SEN and MFL, and reminds readers how learners with SEN were, for a long time, excluded from language learning. While the development of the National Curriculum strongly promoted inclusion in MFL, a suitable pedagogy has been elusive and teachers have lacked the necessary training, knowledge and resources in terms of materials and specialist support staff, a situation that is only slowly being remedied. Drawing on the insights and practices of three experienced and committed language teachers, Jones discusses the scope for the inclusion of pupils in a new culture of collaborative classroom language learning, a community in which all can achieve something on an identifiable ‘can do’ basis. A formative approach to assessing and progressing learning is considered central to learning. It is argued that learners with SEN need to develop a new language learner identity that empowers them with a measure of self-agency in such a learning community. In Chapter 2, Abbott takes a personal view of the history of technology use by teachers of languages, first centred around audio and then in response to the availability of a wide range of digital technologies. Where once such technologies were found only in the classroom, learners now have access to mobile and other devices that offer sophisticated language tools. At the same xii Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
time, the rapid development of the semantic web and social networking has offered fertile contexts for genuine linguistic engagement. A central focus of this chapter is the response of teachers and schools to these developments. Wilson, in Chapter 3, identifies the challenges confronting teachers over recent years as they have differentiated their MFL lessons to include learners with SEN through information and communication technology (ICT). He argues for a more critical appraisal of the educational benefits of leading-edge technologies before their classroom adoption. SEN and ICT quite recently became priorities of MFL as a foundation subject within England’s first National Curriculum. While MFL, SEN and ICT experts collaborated in the early years to pioneer good practice, the onus moved to MFL teachers working alone or, more recently, with a learning support assistant (LSA). Outside the classroom, Wilson argues, some adults expect too little from some learners, while assum- ing too much about the potential of ICT. The chapter includes a set of 10 practical scenarios for the readers to give thought to possible solutions. Part 2: Case Studies Vilar Beltrán and Sales Ciges, in Chapter 4, explore the languages class- room of the 21st century in English and Spanish schools. Drawing on research in the field, the authors focus in particular on beliefs and practices of language teachers with regards to context, pedagogical approach and dif- ferentiation and modification in response to diversity. In addition to explor- ing language teachers’ perceptions, Vilar Beltrán and Sales Ciges analyse case studies of the implementation of digital technologies in language-teaching contexts. Digital technologies, they argue, not only form the reality for most students of this era but they could also be powerful tools that have the potential to enhance language teaching for all. Chapter 5, by Domagała-Zyśk, focuses on the use of technology for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to the deaf and hard of hear- ing. For such people, as with all others, online environments offer the poten- tial for building and maintaining social networks, enabling alternative communication without using speech. The internet has replaced previous modes of communication used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, such as letters, faxes or text telephones. Using computer technology often requires the ability to use English. Many of the students described in this chapter have to learn EFL in order to update their knowledge and skills, and to access technology. Domagała-Zyśk describes the ways in which ICT can support the process of learning EFL, including a case study of the author’s experience of using ICT during English classes for deaf students. Introduction xiii
In Chapter 6, Meiring and Norman advance a case for ICT as an instru- ment for developing inclusive practice in the training of MFL teachers. They cite recent changes in legislation in Wales that have led to stronger demands for learners with SEN to have access to language learning. Using this policy requirement as a starting point, the authors consider the role and benefit of ICT in the curriculum, whether for access or enhancement. They consider the extent to which there may be a case for a distinctive pedagogy for SEN learners within MFL lessons, and the implications of this for teacher educa- tion. Using examples from their own practice in initial teacher education, the authors explore issues of pedagogy and resourcing, providing several practical examples. The particular special needs of the learner with dyslexia are explored by Crombie in Chapter 7. In this chapter, Crombie, who has previously researched foreign language learning and dyslexia in schools in Scotland, considers a range of examples of inclusive practice. Building on her previous publications in this area, and her experience of working with teachers and learners, she considers how the use of technology in the foreign language classroom can benefit dyslexic and other learners. The chapter provides cur- rent and ready-to-use technologies for the classroom, and explains how these can be useful for language teachers. The focus of Chapter 8 is an investigation by Connor into the extent to which interactive, creative resources can be a way to engage and motivate children who find learning difficult in the languages classroom. According to the author, the availability of interactive Web 2.0 tools has opened up new dimensions in the motivation and engagement of pupils who find learning languages difficult for various reasons. He argues that certain tools can pro- vide students with an authentic purpose for their work, and if linked to a bespoke blog or wiki, can also provide them with an audience that could theoretically be global. Connor claims that blending digital technologies with other tried and tested approaches, such as making the learning active and kinaesthetic, affords students a much broader range of meaningful lan- guage learning opportunities. Wassermann and Jeitler reflect on the conflicts between real-time resources and the storage of digitized materials including issues of copyright. Universities and other higher education institutions have been dealing with the complexities of digital resources for some time, but this has now become an issue for schools. This is particularly the case for teachers of languages who may wish to use authentic materials from digital versions of journals and magazines. In some cases, particular issues have arisen for learners with disabilities, for example visually impaired young people who need access to raw text for screen-readers. Without changes in the law of the kind that has xiv Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
recently occurred in the UK, such processes risk infringing copyright. From their experiences of grappling with these issues at their own institution, the authors consider all aspects of digitizing, from proofing to publication and dissemination. They also consider different emerging and actual legal solu- tions to this important area of resource provision. Looking Forward In the conclusion, Vilar Beltrán, Abbott and Jones bring together the issues outlined in Part 1, which are detailed and exemplified in Part 2, to outline a blueprint for the immediate future. Here they balance the evident enthusiasm for technology-mediated language learning with a nuanced rec- ognition of the constraints that exist, whether these are related to the provi- sion of resources at a time of recession, the need for effective teacher education or the appropriate response to a socially networked learning com- munity. The challenges for teachers with often conflicting demands are not underestimated. Despite acknowledging these complex and challenging areas, the editors tentatively indicate a shift from an experimental to a mature phase of development as technology becomes an invisible but vital tool for the 21st century languages teacher. A Word About Terminology Our three areas of focus: technology, learning difficulty and language teaching, lead us into a complex field with regards to terminology. In a book with many contributors it would neither be appropriate nor helpful to insist on one standard terminology throughout, especially since many of the terms in use are not truly synonymous and may reflect varying understandings and policies. ICT – information and communication technology – is the name of a curriculum area in the UK and is widely used across Europe. However, this may be changing, and recent announcements in the UK sug- gest that the term may fall out of use in England, at least in the revised cur- riculum to be launched in 2014. Technology – and its component part digital technology – are in more general use and are used for this reason by several contributors. The term special educational needs (SEN) has been widely used in the UK since the late 1970s, although not often elsewhere. Those learners identified in the UK as having SEN may be given other designations in other contexts, with terms such as additional support needs (ASN), learning difficulties, learning disabilities and intellectual difficulties all in use. Introduction xv
Whatever the term used, our focus throughout is on those learners who need extra support to achieve and understand. Our curriculum context, of course, is the teaching of languages, and this has been traditionally named MFL in many curricula. Whether the term used is MFL or foreign language learning or simply language learning, our context remains the same. We would like to express our gratitude to all the educators and the schools who provided examples and participated in the case studies that follow. Acknowledgement Elina Vilar Beltrán is very grateful for the support and financial input from the Batista i Roca Fellowship, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge and the Young Researchers Programme from the Spanish Ministry of Education for giving her the opportunity to complete this work. Reference McColl, H. (2000) Modern Languages for All. London: David Fulton. xvi Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
Part 1 The Key Issues
3 1 Modern Foreign Languages as an Inclusive Learning Opportunity: Changing Policies, Practices and Identities in the Languages Classroom Jane Jones Introduction There has been a considerable change in attitude and in classroom prac- tices regarding the teaching of modern foreign languages (MFL) to children with special educational needs, also referred to as children with learning differences and those with additional support needs (ASN). Where exclusion for many from the opportunity to embrace fully a language learning experi- ence as part of regular school curriculum provision was widespread in previ- ous decades, nearly all children have been included in language learning at some stage of their school career in recent times. This change has taken place in the light of policy frameworks of inclusion, especially with mainstreamed education as the status quo, and with concurrent and interlinked changes in approaches to, and views about, teaching and learning of MFL. Recent devel- opments in MFL classrooms have proffered potential inclusive scenarios of many kinds. To explore these developments, this chapter is divided into two sections.
Section 1: • Identifies briefly important policy changes concerning inclusive practice that provide a backdrop for such developments. • Highlights key changes in approaches to languages teaching, learning and assessment, and the impact for children with learning differences. Section 2: • Proposes a language classroom collaborative learning community empha- sising personalised learning that would include digital technologies, and formative assessment as a way to transform the learning experience for learners. • Suggests redefining the language learner’s identity as empowered and with agency. In the conclusion, I discuss teacher training needs and the benefits of working in partnership, and I emphasise the need for leadership to support a whole school structure of effective provision for inclusive practices. I stress the importance of the wider goals of MFL learning for learners with special educational needs (SEN) and the need to monitor and research critically developing practice in MFL As part of a learning conversation about issues in this chapter in order to provide concrete examples for points raised, I incorporate at all junctures the views and suggestions of three MFL teachers selected for their avowed com- mitment to inclusion and MFL, their insights into the need to personalise learning and for the creative strategies they have developed for personalised learning. The term ‘SEN’ is ubiquitous in the English context as can be seen in the verbatim comments from the teachers, and also in European Union documentation cited. Section 1 Policies of inclusion The ‘Education for all’ (EFA) agenda asserted in the 1990 Jomtien Declaration provides an important backdrop to understand the approach to inclusion in the UK. EFA aims to support all children everywhere in accessing good quality, basic education in an environment where they feel safe and welcome. The EFA inclusive philosophy has framed international and national policy approaches to education, including the Salamanca Statement on Principles, Policy and Practices in Special Needs Education 4 Part 1: The Key Issues
(UNESCO, 1994). Within this framework, it is understood that the educa- tion of all children should take place within the mainstream where all learners with their diversity of needs, experiences and backgrounds, come together, not just within the four walls, but in the ‘putting into action values based on equity, entitlement, community, participation and respect for diversity’ (Booth et al., 2003: 1), thus breaking down barriers to learning and participation. The inclusive approach to education that is dominant in mainstream schools today has its origins in the Warnock Review of Special Education (1978), the ensuing Education Act of 1981 and the fundamental changes consequent to this Act, based on the concept of integration of learners with SEN into mainstream schools and social inclusion. The changes have been reflected in subsequent policy and iniatives that have sought to pro- mote education for all. The National Curriculum has been central to this aim in addressing broader concerns of inclusion, for the ‘gifted and tal- ented’, those for whom English is an additional language and those with SEN inter alia. The revised National Curriculum (QCA, 2007), emphasised personal development and well-being, and encouraged learners to become enterprising and responsible citizens as part of the broader concerns for the development of the whole child, physically, mentally and socially. These reflect the objectives of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning and Assessment (CEFR) that provide a framework for all languages teachers across Europe, aiming to: ‘promote mutual understanding and to learn respect for identities and cultural diversity through more effective communication’ (2001: 3), and emphasising the scope of the value of MFL learning. One teacher describes the scope thus: ‘MFL is an inclusive subject as it appeals to multiple skills – it is NOT exclusively about writing, speaking. It improves students’ abilities to develop social skills, comprehend others, look beyond the written word in front of them.’ It is a view that resonates with McColl’s (2005) perspective on language learning, inclusion and citizenship. Change in MFL teaching, learning and assessment policy and practice The teaching and learning of MFL extends far beyond the mere act of learning language, indeed, the centrality of language learning to promote social cohesion according to the CEFR (2001) and to build citizenship is strongly expressed in the executive summary of the report entitled ‘Languages for Life: A Strategy for England’, which states: ‘. . . language com- petence and intercultural understanding are not optional extras; they are an Modern Foreign Languages as an Inclusive Learning Opportunity 5
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This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Problem Makers Author: Robert Hoskins Release date: January 19, 2016 [eBook #50971] Most recently updated: October 22, 2024 Language: English Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROBLEM MAKERS ***
THE PROBLEM MAKERS By ROBERT HOSKINS Illustrated by MACK [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They had only one mission in the Galaxy, with its infinite problems—make more of 'em! I Clouds obscured the three moons as the men slipped into the village. They eased the double-bitted axes out of their belts and felt their way through the almost unrelieved blackness until their hands met the soft yieldings of the door hangings. Waiting until the whisper of leather gliding over the ground stopped, telling him everyone was in position, Luke Royceton drew in a deep breath, then suddenly screamed: "Aiieeeee!" At his banshee signal, the other men took up the cry. Somebody kicked the banked coals of the cooking fire into life and stuck in a handful of twisted grass torches, then moved from man to man, handing them out. The men screamed again, touched their torches to the over-hanging of the huts, then tore down the hangings and leaped through the doors, torches flaming a path. The interiors of the huts leaped to life. Forms hurtled by the men and into the night as the pitch-caulked thatching blazed into an inferno. The rightful inhabitants of the huts crashed into the tall grass of the surrounding plains, the sounds of their passage quickly dying away as fear lent wing to their rapidly fleeing heels. The fires quickly burned through the thatching, sending little fingers of flame dancing along the lashed saplings that supported the roofs. Luke took one last look around the interior of his hut and started to leave, when he spotted something wriggling under a pile of skins.
Crossing the room in three strides, he tore away the coverings and grabbed the native child by the scruff of its neck. He wheeled on one heel and retraced his passage. He got out of the door just as the saplings gave up the ghost and the fiery mass crashed to the ground. Luke whistled and wiped sweat from his brow. The bronze head of the axe caught and reflected the fires from its myriad beaten facets. Using the head, he beat out several sparks that had landed on his clothes, then turned his attention to the child who still dangled from his other hand. The child's eyes were rolled nearly into his head with his fright. Luke grinned, baring his teeth. He brought the child up until their noses were less than an inch apart. The fetid smell of the child's breath made him choke. Yelping, the child twisted free and ran after its already-departed parents. Luke laughed and turned his attention to his team. The men were all out now, watching the huts crack under the intense heat within. One shuddered, then collapsed inward, sending up choking clouds of dust as it smothered the flames. After a moment, Luke whistled. Half of the men melted into the grass and followed the natives, while the others gathered around him, squatting and resting their axes on the ground. Luke waited until the others returned to report no further sign of the villagers, then he squatted himself, and accepted a canteen from someone. He drank his fill, gasped, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and handed the canteen back. "It's hot," he said, conversationally. "It'll be hotter before we're done," said one of the team. They were all dressed in rough-cured skins and leather moccasins. The axes were the only tool they carried. Faces thick with war paint and grime, it was impossible to tell them from natives. "Anybody hurt?" asked Luke. Disclaimers came from the various members of the group. "Good." He stood up and stretched. "Well,
gentlemen, shall we be on our way?" "Might as well." Luke took his axe, twisted the unfinished handle a quarter-turn in his socket, then held the head to his lips. "Team B," he said. "Mission accomplished." He twisted the handle back and slipped the axe into his belt. A few moments later, the soft chatter of rotors cut through the air, and a copter dropped into the clearing by the cooking fire. The team mounted by the dying glow of the fires. As soon as the last man was in, the door swung shut and the copter took off into the night. Sam Carter eased the scratchy material of the ruffed collar away from his neck, then shot his cuffs to return them to the socially acceptable half-inch showing beyond his jacket sleeve. He sighed, placed his hands on his knees and glanced for the umpteenth time at the armored soldiers guarding the door between the anteroom and Prince Kahl's private chambers. The afternoon sun dipped below the level of the high window-slits, sending shadows scampering up the walls. Sam had been waiting since noon. His stomach was repeating its rumbled protests against that interrupted meal. Prince Kahl had sent word that Sam might wait upon his pleasure; quieting misgivings, Carter had rushed to do just that. He sighed again, and stifled a yawn. From the corner of his eye, he watched the shadow line marching up the wall. When it touched the cobwebby corner of the ceiling, a slave came in and lighted a pair of oil lamps. The soot-heavy smoke they gave off quickly had Sam wishing the room had been left in darkness. Another interminable hour passed, during which he several times repeated the operation with collar and cuffs, all the while envying
the guards their ability to remain in one position like frozen statues, seemingly carved from the living rock of the palace. At last, just when he had resigned himself to the probability of spending the night in the anteroom, the inner door swung open and a chamberlain beckoned. "Prince Kahl will grant you a moment now." Sam bowed his thanks, and followed the man into Kahl's chambers. "Ah, my friend from the southern kingdoms!" Prince Kahl was a lean, saturnine individual, uncomfortably aware that the prime of life was slipping through his grasp while his father obstinately held onto the throne. It was Kahl's considered opinion that the old man had lived long enough. It rankled him to realize that he had held the same opinions as a youth barely out of his teens. The thirty intervening years had been spent devising and trying methods to assure his succession; unfortunately his father had twenty years before that to safeguard his own rule. "How go the southern kingdoms, my friend?" Kahl waved a particularly enticing fruit as Carter stopped short, a dozen paces away. "Tolerably well, your graciousness." He neglected to add that it had been nearly a year since he had visited the supposed lands of his birth. Kahl was fully aware how long Carter had been kept cooling his heels. Palace protocol dictated how long foreign visitors might be kept waiting. But even visiting royalty could not hope for an audience in less than a month's time. In his role as ambassador, Carter was happy that a year was all he had been kept waiting. "Your lord and master's gifts were received," said Kahl. "You may inform him of my royal gratitude."
"My humble thanks, your graciousness." Sam's mouth watered as Kahl polished off the one fruit and selected another from a platter born by a manservant. Despite his now-long stay on the planet, Sam still could not understand why women were given no role at all in society, even as slaves. "Not at all, not at all," said Kahl. "Now tell me. What is it that brought you so far from your home lands to grace my humble presence?" "The usual business of politic, your graciousness," said Sam, growing weary of the necessity to repeat the title with every reply to Kahl's words. He also wished for a chair, despite the fact that he had been sitting all afternoon. He felt like a naughty schoolchild, standing always in the man's presence. "Trade treaties, mutual armament pacts, the like." "Ummm, so. You've discussed them with my ministers?" "They have permitted me this honor and, if I may be so bold, found a great deal to our mutual liking. Our countries are indeed far separated, and the journey between arduous. I find much in your provinces in the way of technology and armaments that we totally lack. By the same token, I have thought of a few inconsequential things which might serve to ease your royal burdens, if but brought from my lands." "Possible, possible," said Kahl. "Of course, I have a large college of tinkerers and mechanics who probably would have produced the little toys you speak of in their own good time. But why duplicate effort, eh? They are lazy dolts who grumble at my royal largesse as it is." He chortled lustily, although Sam could see nothing even remotely humorous in his statement. But he was well-schooled in the idiocies of diplomacy; he laughed dutifully. "But come!" said Kahl. "Enough of childish prattle! You carry another load in your thoughts, my southern friend. Have out with it!" "Your graciousness?"
"You needn't pretend," he said, chortling again. "My ministers are like the winds. They cannot keep a single thing to themselves, but instead need spread it over the far reaches of the entire world. You've been talking—foolishly perhaps—but I have perceived a certain sense within your nonsense, and I must confess that your words have aroused my interest. You have a plan to see me king. Now out with it, lest I make you a gift of you to my torturer. He can remove anything—including stubborn vocal cords!" "You do me undeserved honor, graciousness," said Sam. "Undoubtedly. And you begin to weary me." "Very well." Sam sighed. "I must admit that my tongue is too loose for my own general welfare. It is true that I once thought of something mildly amusing while passing long evening hours with one of your ministers. But it was mere idle dreaming, no more." "You prattle long, southerner." Kahl's eyelids lowered suspiciously. He picked up a silver knife and began paring his nails, scattering the shavings suggestively in Sam's direction. "Perhaps you do not want to see me king?" "There is none so deserving of the honor as you," said Sam. "But while you laugh at the utter childishness of my ideas, please remember that you insisted...." The Ehrlan delegate to the Central Worlds Conference was well past the entrance to the Park when the pudgy little man caught up with him, sides heaving from the unaccustomed strain of running. "Citizen Lund!" he cried, panting. "Please wait!" Lund turned and eyed the little man suspiciously. The fellow was a stranger, and therefore automatically under suspicion. "Yes?" "A moment of your valuable time, Citizen. Please? I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me. I am not a Yanoian." The name
spattered out acidly. "Indeed?" said Lund. "And just who, then, are you?" There was a vague sensation of familiarity troubling the back of his mind. The omnipresent watchdog in his subconscious pounced instantly on the feeling, magnifying it, turning it inside out and shaking it around, but drawing no satisfaction from the act. "A friend, Citizen. You must believe that. I can't explain further right now—time is too precious." He grabbed Lund's arm and started tugging him back towards the Park entrance. "Please? I beg you, come." "Oh—very well." He gave in ungraciously, following the man until they were just inside the Park. Then Lund stopped, digging his heels into the gravel of the walk. The man looked back at him. "Please, Citizen!" he urged. "We don't have much time!" "So far as I'm concerned, you don't have any time at all, unless you tell me right now who you are and what this is all about." "Not here!" he cried, aghast, as he glanced nervously around at the many people entering and leaving the Park. A pair of Conference monitors stopped just outside the gate, fingering their stun-beamers as they eyed the actions of the two men. They started to move into the violable hundred-foot circle this side of the gate. The little man moved quickly, grabbing Lund again and forcibly pulling him beyond the protection of the monitors. Their skins tingled as they went through the shimmering haze of the force screen. The monitors stopped just in time to avoid touching the screen, while Lund and the little man hurried down a path that wound into a copse of widdy trees from Lund's own homeworld, Ehrla. The widdy tendrils stopped their aimless flowing through the trees and curved down and around the two men, tips melting into the ground and tendrils broadening into wide blades that sheltered and shielded the pair from possible watchers.
"Now!" said Lund, shaking the other man's hand from his angrily. "Perhaps you will do me the honor of telling me who you are and just what in the name of the Seven Holy Suns this idiocy is all about?" "A matter of the gravest urgency, Citizen! You must not present your plans for redistribution of Sector protectorates to this Conference!" "What?" Lund stared at him in disbelief. "And just how did you learn of the plans I intend to present to the Conference—I will present, at this afternoon session? Something smacks of treachery!" "Never mind how I learned, Citizen. The important thing is the Yano delegation also knows! They plan to scuttle you before you have a chance to speak. After that, they'll cut you into little pieces and devour you!" "You're insane, man!" Lund started to reach for the widdy tendrils. "Don't! You must not present your plans to the Conference, Citizen." A new tone had crept into the man's voice: a strength that belied the pudginess and general clownishness of the figure. Lund turned slowly, and found himself staring at a stunner, the winking red of the telltale showing that it was set to lethal bands. "Wha...." He gulped his adam's apple back down into his throat. "How did you get that into the Park? The force screens aren't supposed to pass weapons." "There are ways, Citizen," the man said, grinning. No longer did he seem clownish. "Many so-called impossible things are quite simple, if only you have access to the proper people and controls." "What do you really want?" Lund tried to hide his fright, but he was uncomfortably certain that it was radiating out from him, broadcasting to the entire world that Citizen Lund was scared silly. "I told you, Citizen. You must not present your plans to the Conference." "But why?" he wailed, in frustration. "Give me a logical reason!"
"The greater good, Citizen." With those cryptic words, the man pressed the stud of the beamer. Lund gasped, as a giant hand closed around his heart, then collapsed to the ground in a strange dying parody of slow motion. Just before the clouds of eternity shut away his vision, he at last recognized the man. Himself! II John Reilly was tired, intensely tired, beyond any feeling of exhaustion he had ever known. The clock in his desk chimed once. He sighed and picked up his lecture notes, stuffing them into a scarred and battered case that he had been carrying since his student days at the Academy. He cast one weary glance around the cluttered office, then steeled himself into a passable imitation of military carriage as he left for the lecture hall. The Cadet Sergeant-Major outside his door leaped to attention only a little less quickly than his regular service counterpart. Reilly returned their salutes and fell in behind them. The lecture hall—gymnasium, really; the Academy was perennially overcrowded—was crowded, as usual. The eager young cadets filled the fifty rows of backless benches, while the overflow squatted and stood at the rear until it was impossible for a midget to find room to thread his way through the crowd. Reilly's class was well-tended for its honest popularity, not just because it was compulsory. There were many "compulsory" lectures in the curriculum that counted themselves proud to find half their audience in attendance. Reilly stopped in the wings of the stage, listening for a moment to the comfortable discordances of the student band tuning their instruments. The regular service non-com peered through the
hangings, catching the bandmaster's eye. The tuning stopped, and the band swung into a medley of old Academy drinking songs. Reilly smiled, as he remembered happier days when he had participated lustily in the drinking that went along with such music. From the drinking songs, the band struck up the National Anthem. The noise the cadets made in rising nearly drowned out the music. After the last strains had been permitted to fade away, the bandmaster raised his baton once more and the opening bars of Hail to the Chief! filled the hall. The Sergeants-Major stepped out onto the stage, Reilly following, case clasped loosely between elbow and side. They passed in front of the half-dozen visitors and moved to either side of the podium, turning until they were facing each other, the regular service man on the right. They snapped into a salute, followed by the entire audience. Reilly lay his case on the podium, turned and bowed to the visitors, then faced the audience again and returned the salute. Immediately two thousand arms dropped to their owners' sides and the cadets resumed their seats. Reilly unzipped his case and drew out his notes. He arranged them carefully on the podium, although he knew that at no time during the next hour would he so much as glance at them again. The case stowed away under the podium, he took a deep breath and placed his hands flat on the podium's surface. Technicians in the control booth over the far end of the hall trained parabolic mikes on his lips, waiting for him to begin the lecture as he had begun hundreds of other preceding lectures, before audiences much like this. The faces might change; the uniforms were the same, and so were the underlying feelings of the wearers of the uniforms, year in and year out. "The greater good for the greater number!" The cadets let out a mutual sigh, none aware that breath had been held.
"A motto, gentlemen: merely a motto. Like Ad Astra per Aspera, E Pluribus Unum or Through These Portals Pass the Most Wonderful Customers in the Galaxy." An appreciative titter ran through the audience. "But what is a motto?" continued Reilly, warming to his subject, overly familiar though it was. "It's more than just a snappy way of stringing words together. It has a meaning. Often the meaning, such as in the commercial example I just gave, is on the frivolous side. But more often there is something intently serious behind a motto. Ad Astra—'To the Stars.' For centuries this has been almost a religion for men, as our ancestors broke the bonds of a single planet and spread out into the galaxy. Libraries have been written of the heartbreaks and joys, the sorrows and jubilations that have been found in the far reaches of space. "E Pluribus Unum—'United We Stand.' Even older and, if possible, dearer to the hearts of men. Our very government is based on the essential concept contained in these three words from the past. "'The greater good for the greater number'. If government runs on one motto, then civilization is based on this!" Team B was dead on its feet when the copter finally returned to Base with the first rosy glow of dawn lightening the horizon. They stumbled to the ground, as sorry a looking group as Luke Royceton had ever seen. Their masquerade of grime and war paints was nearly obscured by an honest layer of general dirt. They filed into wardrobe and stripped off their clothes, leaving them in ragged piles on the floor. Then they hit the showers, luxuriating under the needle sprays and the caress of soap sliding over their skin. The discarded costumes were gone when they emerged, feeling closer to human, twenty minutes later. In place of the animal hides
were shorts, doublets and the calf-length boots of Base-centered personnel. All were more than happy to be back in uniform. Luke stopped outside wardrobe for a moment, then started towards Headquarters, a building distinguished from the dozen other prefabs of Base only by the pennant flying from the peak. The buildings were arranged in an irregular circle around the copter field, nestled in the most hidden valley of the planet's single range of hills high enough to be graced with the name of mountains. The highest peak in the range, visible over the one directly behind Headquarters, toward barely a thousand feet. On a world less primitive, the range would never have served its present duty. The world was primitive, however. Man had advanced but a few faltering steps beyond the level of the cave. Ecology had estimated the native human population not to exceed three million people over the entire globe, and cheerfully admitted that their estimate was made with every benefit of doubt given to the natives. Quite possibly not even half that number roamed the vast plains of the temperate zones, or breeded in the opulence of the equatorial jungles. As yet, population pressures had not driven men into the colder climes of the north and south. None had been spotted more than five hundred miles from the equator. Luke checked in with the Orderly Room before reporting on to the debriefing room. He slumped onto a couch and propped his feet on a low coffee table. The other four team commanders were there ahead of him. One brought him a cup of coffee. He accepted it with thanks, and inhaled the bitter smell of the brew before draining half of it. The fiery liquid burned into his stomach and scorched away some of the tensions built up during the night. "Rough night, Luke?" asked Andy Singer, sitting next to him. "The roughest. We hit seventeen villages between sunset and sunrise."
"That is a load. My team only hit seven. But you were working the big river stretch, weren't you?" Luke nodded, as he sipped again at his coffee. "I thought so. We were lucky. We had the west plains. There isn't too much water over there, couple little creeks and a few holes. These locals don't stray too far from water." "We hit half a dozen good-sized places," said Luke. "One of them must have had thirty-five families. For a minute, I thought we were going to have to kill a few of them, but it ended up okay. Nobody hurt, except for one of my boys who stayed a second too long in a hut." He chuckled. "Got the seat of his pants burned off—a new kid, just out from the Academy. The rest of the night, he was the fastest man I had." "Proves what I said about water. Biggest place I hit had seven houses, and most of them only had two or three." Luke started to say something more, but just then the door opened and the Base Commandant came in. The Team commanders stood up respectfully, but none had the energy to properly snap to attention. He smiled as he mounted the low platform to the front of the room. "At ease, gentlemen." Gratefully, the commanders sat back down and resumed their earlier positions of comfort. The Commandant poured himself a glass of water from a ready pitcher and drank it, then gave his full attention to the room. "First, gentlemen, let me congratulate you on a successful night's operation. I congratulate all of you, but particularly Commander Royceton and Team B. They rolled up the enviable total of seventeen villages destroyed." Luke flushed, feeling like a fresh-out-of-Academy Cadet as the others raised their coffee cups in his direction.
"None of you spent the evening slacking, of course," continued the Commandant. He was a middle-aged man; the empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder told why he had been booted out of field duty while men twenty years his senior were still leading teams. "Total score for the night: fifty-seven villages. Commander Royceton merely had more fertile area to work in. As we move out from the Base I know you will all have equal opportunities to prove your prowess with the torch." An appreciative murmur ran through the little group. "Now I know you're all tired, gentlemen, and anxious to hit the sack. I won't keep you much longer. I just want to emphasize the importance of our mission on this world. Many of your men don't like making these raids on the natives. They would rather be roaming the far starlanes, putting down pirates and other glorious deeds of derring-do. But you men are not cadets; there isn't a one of you without twenty years field service time. You know the real glory comes from satisfaction in a job well done. It is up to you to transfer that feeling of satisfaction to the malcontents within your ranks. Tonight you go out again; and you will continue to do so until every single village on this planet has been razed to the ground! If so much as one single village is permitted to escape, then we have failed. I do not like failure; you do not like failure. Working together, we can see to it that failure as a word disappears from the language. I thank you, gentlemen. Dismissed." He stepped down and strode rapidly from the room. Behind him the audience rose and burst into talk. III Sam Carter moaned silently. He tried for the hundredth time since the journey began to shift his legs into a position where the insides would not be rubbed raw by the rough hair of his horse-like mount. He resolved for the dozenth time that one of the "inventions" he
would import from the southern provinces would be a good, comfortable saddle. Another would be silk; the rough fabrics worn by Kahl's subjects were a fair substitute for the mount's hide. "Ho, southerner!" Prince Kahl wheeled his mount back from the head of the column and waited until Sam had caught up, then he fell in
beside him. "How goes it? Does my second favorite mount suit you well?" "Very well indeed, graciousness," said Sam. "I cannot in honesty recall when I've had a more—ouch!—instructive ride!" "Good!" Kahl leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be glad to know we've but three more hours to go before reaching the summer palaces." "Only, uh, three more hours?" The sinking sensation in Sam's stomach had nothing at all to do with the undulating motion of his beast. "Ah, that is good news, your graciousness. We'll be there almost before we know it." Sam wished Kahl would go away and leave him to his misery, but the prince seemed disposed to talk. "I think there will be many surprised faces in my father's court tonight. Eh, southerner?" He chuckled, and then burst into raucous laughter as he considered the idea further. "And to think, it will all be perfectly legal! You have the papers safe, my friend?" "Yes, your graciousness," said Sam, sighing and patting his saddlebags. "Good! Don't lose them—I'd hate to see you missing your head!" He laughed again, while Sam's stomach turned several more flipflops. "The sight of blood always did make me sick." There were sixteen men in the mounted party, including a dozen of Kahl's private guard, the captain of the troop and the High Priest of the Sun God, the nation's officially sponsored religion. The High Priest was a little old man, bent over more from age than from the discomforts of the journey. Originally Sam had planned for one more member, but that had become unnecessary when he learned that the High Priest was also President of the Royal College of Chirurgeons. The latter role was even more important to his plans than the former. Now all that worried Sam was the possibility that the priest might not live to the end of the journey. He was inflicted
with a hacking cough that sent chills racing up and down Sam's spine every time he went into a fit. Kahl grew weary of bantering small talk with a man really fit to come up with witty replies. He wheeled his horse again and dropped back to the end of the column for a moment, saying something to the High Priest, then he spurred his mount back to the head of the line, falling into his original position beside the Captain of the Guard. The two men were soon lost in reminiscences that had bored Sam to tears, every time he had been an unwilling audience. Another hour passed miserably, while the sun mounted to the zenith and began the long summer afternoon drop back down to the horizon. The members of the Guard and Kahl pulled short stubby loaves of bread and cheese from their saddle bags and munched as they rode on, washing the food down with vigorous pulls at the wine-skins that took the place of water canteens on the planet. Sam had first thought the constant imbibing of alcohol to be a national vice. Then he ran tests on half a dozen waterholes. Thereafter he drank wine himself. Now, however, he was completely without an appetite. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the priest was in the same boat. Suddenly, without knowing why, he pulled his mount up and waited until the priest caught up with him, then fell in at the end of the column. "How goes it, Reverence?" The priest looked up, watery eyes registering surprise at his company. "Oh, southerner." He broke into one of his coughing spasms. "Ahhh, not well, southerner. Not well at all. The Sun God does not ride with me this day—not that he's deserted me, you understand: he never rides with me. The Sun God has more sense than a foolish old man who should be staying home in the comfort of
his apartments, not galivanting around the country-side like a frisky kitten." "I wish he had imparted some of his wisdom to me," said Sam. "I confess I feel as you look, Reverence. No disrespect intended, believe me. It's just that the ardors of this journey have taken much toll from both of us. And I swear, by the Sun God himself, you are bearing up much better than I." "A man who has traveled as long and as far as you talking this, southerner?" "It's the way you travel, Reverence. The greatest part of my journey was by ship." It had been; Sam merely neglected to specify that it was a spaceship. "Ocean travel has its own peculiar discomforts, but for myself, I'll take it every time." "Tell me, southerner," said the priest, "why do you make this trip?" "Prince Kahl wished it," he replied. "Ah, but there is more to this than lies on the surface. Why should Kahl bring you, a stranger and a subject of another house, along on a venture that may well cast the future course of events for this entire nation?" "Prince Kahl seems to feel that, ah, I might, because of my experiences in other lands, serve him in some minor capacity of usefulness." Sam chose his words with care. The old man was entirely too observant for his liking. "Kahl is an astute man," said the priest. "However, he is also a hungry man, and such a man on the verge of starvation will eat things that in more normal circumstances he would pass up without so much as a first look. Ideas are much like food, southerner." "The philosophers of my country have a saying, Reverence. 'Man does not live by bread alone.'" "Much wisdom is afloat in the world, disguised in strange ways." With that, the priest went into another coughing spell, after which
he refused to pick up the threads of the conversation. Carter gave up, and spurred his mount back to his original place in the column. The rest of the trip passed in, for Sam, self-commiseration. The lower the sun sank, the hotter the temperature seemed to climb. Several times he found himself with wineskin raised to lips. The native beverage was little stronger than the plain water he would have preferred, but even so he found himself more than a little tipsy by the time they crested a low range of hills and saw the summer palaces nestled by the side of a lake in the valley below. The column dismounted in an inner courtyard, and Kahl, Carter and the High Priest strode past the protesting chamberlain into the King's private apartments. The King was lying on a couch, eating fruits served by a manservant and listening to poetry being read to him. He looked up when the trio came in. "My son! This is indeed an unexpected honor. What brings you from the city on a day so hot as this one?" He smiled, but his eyes were sharp. "Greetings, Father," said Kahl, bowing low. "I bring you important news from the Council of Priests. Reverence!" "Your Most Graciousness." The old man was already nearly doubled over. When he bowed, Sam half expected to hear his forehead crack the tiles of the floor. "Well, Reverence?" The king accepted another fruit and sucked on it, keeping a watchful eye on his son. He suspects something! Sam thought. The High Priest produced a scroll from his robes and ceremoniously broke the seal. Unrolled, it was short for the dynamite it contained. "Your Most Gracious Person," he read. "The Council of Priests, meet and determined in the Holy Temple of the Sun God this fifth day of
the seventh moon of the fifty-first year of the reign of Obar, King, announce to all and sundry within the domains of Obar, King, that he has incurred the wrath and displeasure of the Holy God, the Sun God, and henceforth from this day shall no more be known as Obar, King, but as father of Kahl, King." He let the scroll snap back into its cylinder, bowed again, then handed the scroll to Obar. "Your graciousness." Then he turned to Kahl. "Your Most Graciousness." One final return to Obar. "One more message from the Council, your graciousness. They hope you will accept their eternal pleasure and gratitude for the excellence of your reign." All during the reading, Obar had been staring at the High Priest, a ghost smile half-crinkling the corners of his mouth. The half-eaten fruit now fell to the pavement with a sodden plop! He licked his lips. "This.... This is some sort of a joke?" "No joke, Father," said Kahl, a little too heartily for Sam's liking. "But how?" Obar shook his head. "How dare you?" "I'm merely exercising my duty to our subjects, Father. You've grown old. You're no longer capable of carrying out the duties of king." "No." He refused to believe. "You ... you have no right. I am king! How can you.... How can you just walk in here and tell me that I'm not? What gives you this right?" "The same source that made you king in the first place," said Kahl. "The Sun God." "Nonsense! There is no Sun God!" The High Priest gasped and covered his eyes. "Blasphemy!" "Guards!" Obar pried himself up. "Guards! Arrest these maniacs!"
Feet clumped outside, then turned into the chamber. Sam relaxed, unaware that he had been holding his breath, knowing that his plans were going through after all. The men who came in were the same who had escorted them from the city, Kahl's own private guards. The captain turned to Kahl and bowed low. "You called, Your Most Graciousness?" "Yes. Take this blithering idiot away." The captain bowed again, and gestured. Two of his men grabbed the former king by the arms and carried him away, screaming. "Ho, southerner!" Kahl sat down on his father's couch and gestured. The manservants had been cowering in the background; they came forward now and touched their foreheads to the ground. Kahl took a fruit and bit into it, letting the juice trickle down his chin. "It worked," said Kahl, swallowing. "By the Sun God, it worked!" He slapped his knee. "I confess, southerner, when first I heard your plans, I thought you daft indeed. But it worked! I'm king!" "I felt certain it would," said Sam, carefully omitting the title of respect. It passed unnoticed. More sure of himself, he continued, "After all, the idea was inherent in the very structure and strictures of your government. Your divine position comes from the Sun God. He should be able to remove it as easily as he grants it." "True," said Kahl. "Howsomever, there shall be some changes made in that respect, once I have consolidated my position. Oh, I delude myself not in thinking that the battle is over, my friend. But the hardest part has been won." "I've been thinking," said Sam, slowly. "Well, keep it not to yourself!" said Kahl. "If any more of your ideas prove as useful to me as the last, then you have a glorious future indeed." "My thoughts are, I'm afraid, roaming rather far afield. But take them for what they might be worth. You are king of this nation now,
Kahl; and a very able king you shall be. Why limit the benefits of your rule to this one nation? Why not let the rest of the world know the joys of your rule?" "Ummm?" He squinted, one eye closed. "You think it might work out?" "Why not?" And the Sun God help us all! he added to himself. IV The chambers were crowded as the delegates, alternates and just plain onlookers poured in for the afternoon session of the Central Worlds Conference. Two hours before the meeting was due to begin, an astute member of the press, long used to such functions, observed that there would undoubtedly be a record broken before the day was over. And it was easy to see why: all eyes were trained on the spot low in the tiers with the Ehrlan pennant floating overhead. As yet, the central figure of all the interest had not arrived, although the rest of the Ehrlans were already in their seats and looking anxiously up the aisles towards the bank of elevators. An elevator would open from time to time, to disgorge a few late arrivals. But the man they expected was not yet among them. Below, on the chamber floor, the presiding secretary was mounting to the rostrum and arranging his papers. "Where the devil can he be!" said Citizen Evrett to Citizen Sterm, the second ranking member of the delegation. "God only knows! You don't suppose something has ... happened?" "How could it, here in the heart of the city? He only had to come one block from the hotel. You've been watching too many thrillers, Citizen—I hope!"
"Well, we have to do something. The session will be starting in a few minutes. If he isn't here, someone else will have to make the presentation." "Who?" "I don't know. How about you, Citizen?" "Now, wait a minute!" said Evrett. "What's the matter with you, Citizen? You're the logical choice. You rank second in the group." "I wouldn't dare," admitted Sterm. "What if I should bobble things? I'd never be able to live it down. I wouldn't even dare go home. My wife is Lund's half-sister, you know." "I'd forgotten. But somebody has to do it, if he doesn't get here. This is the only opportunity we'll have this decade. If we have to wait another ten years, we may as well forget the matter altogether." "We can't do that!" protested Sterm. "We've worked too long and too hard on this plan. It's the only fair solution anyway. The other worlds will never accept anything else." "Some of them may not want to accept this one, when they hear all of the details. You must admit, we haven't been too easy on some of your fellow members. They.... Here comes Arko. Maybe he found out something." A junior member of the delegation came panting down the aisle, shaking his head when he saw the others' eyes on him. "Sorry, Citizens," he said, as soon as he was within the Ehrlan area. "He left the hotel over an hour ago. No one has seen a sign of him since." "Well, that tears it," said Evrett, just as the presiding secretary struck his gavel on the little wooden block, announcing the opening of the session. "Who has the copy of the plans?"
"Here," said Sterm, digging the papers from his case. "I'll make the presentation myself...." "Just a minute, Citizen!" said Arko. "Look! Here he comes now!" They all turned and looked at the pudgy figure ambling slowly down the aisle, nodding to greetings that came from all sides. The missing man smiled and shook hands with a couple of the onlookers, before entering the area and taking his seat at the head of the delegation. "Citizen Lund!" cried Sterm, as though speaking to a wayward child. "Where in the name of the Seven Suns have you been?" "Why, it's a beautiful day, Citizens," explained Lund. "I thought I'd take a stroll in the Park. There's quite a large Ehrlan section, you know. Makes one quite homesick to hear the singing flowers serenading the passerby. I can't wait to get back home again." "If you hadn't shown up, none of us would have had the nerve to go home!" "Why, Citizen Sterm!" Lund seemed amused by some private joke. "Whatever made you think I wouldn't be here? This is an important day for Ehrla, remember?" "How could we forget?" said Evrett. The presiding secretary fiddled with his bank of microphones for a moment, in the manner of presiding secretaries throughout history since the invention of the public address system, then turned hopelessly to the technicians. A man came forward, made a simple adjustment, then retreated. The Secretary cleared his throat, sipped at a glass of water and spoke. "The fourth session of the Nineteenth Conference of the Central Worlds is open for business. The afternoon session will be devoted to the presentation and discussion of proposals by the membership. The Recording Secretary will call the roll of delegations." A short stubby man with five o'clock shadow came forward and leaned into the bank of microphones, and yelled: "Accryllia!"
Across the chamber a man stood up, holding his delegation's microphone. "The grand and sovereign system of Accryllia, long known throughout the galaxy for the excellence of its citrus fruit, the beauty of its maidens, the virtue of its honorable young men ... the grand and sovereign state of Accryllia passes." "Antares!" "Antares passes." "Bodancer!" "The system of Bodancer passes." "Buddington!" "Mr. Secretary, the proud system of Buddington yields to Ehrla!" "Ehrla!" Citizen Lund stood up, unclipped the mike from the railing, smiled around at a few more wellwishers and launched into his speech. "Mr. Secretary! Ehrla wishes to thank the proud and ancient system of Buddington for relinquishing its rightful order in these proceedings, so that Ehrla may present a plan that the citizens of Ehrla feel certain will meet with the full approval of this meeting. "For hundreds of years, the various peoples represented here today have been rightly concerned with the problems of new star systems being developed, new races being assimilated into the federation of free and lawful worlds. These new worlds need guidance, a guidance that only long experience can provide." Evrett looked at Sterm, uneasily. "What is this?" he whispered. "He isn't presenting the plan like this, I hope? He'll alienate half the delegations." "I don't know what he's doing," said Sterm. "I only hope he knows."
"In the past," continued Lund, "the various and varied members of this honored organization have provided the same guidance in wise and infinitely proper manner. It is the hope of Ehrla that they will continue to do so in the future. Therefore the ancient and honorable system of Ehrla proposes, to this effect, that the members of this organization continue as they have in the past." Pandemonium was breaking out in scattered sections of the chamber as various delegations realized that they were being snookered by the Ehrlans. Voices rose up here and there, trying to drown out Lund's words. Monitors moved up and down the aisles, trying to quell the disturbances. "Therefore," said Lund, "Ehrla, to the implementation of its plan, announces to this organization that this day they have annexed the systems of Phelimina, Trepidar and Scolatia." He sat down and turned to the rest of his delegation. "Gentlemen," he said, smiling, as he handed a sealed envelope to Sterm, "my resignation." Reilly slumped in his chair with a sigh. The lecture had gone well, but it had ended not a moment too soon to suit him. "I'm growing old," he said, unaware he was speaking out loud. "Pardon, sir?" The regular service Sergeant-Major closed the door and brought over his cup of coffee. "Did you say something, sir?" "What?" Reilly blinked. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all, Sergeant. Just an old man muttering to himself." "Begging the general's pardon, sir, I don't think you're an old man at all. At least, no older than myself." He cocked his head. "Although, to be perfectly honest with both of us, sir, there are times when I just can't seem to keep up with these children they keep sending us nowadays."
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Inclusive Language Education And Digital Technology Elina Vilar Beltrn Editor Chris Abbott Editor Jane Jones Editor

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    Inclusive Language GuideOxfam https://ebookbell.com/product/inclusive-language-guide-oxfam-49419090 Rewriting Language How Literary Texts Can Promote Inclusive Language Use Christiane Luck https://ebookbell.com/product/rewriting-language-how-literary-texts- can-promote-inclusive-language-use-christiane-luck-32298438 Inclusive Teaching Strategies For Disciplinebased English Studies Enhancing Language Attainment And Classroom Interaction In A Multicultural Learning Environment Hing Wa Helena Sit Auth https://ebookbell.com/product/inclusive-teaching-strategies-for- disciplinebased-english-studies-enhancing-language-attainment-and- classroom-interaction-in-a-multicultural-learning-environment-hing-wa- helena-sit-auth-6617676 The Speechlanguage Pathologists Handbook For Inclusive School Practice Julie Causton Chelsea Tracybronson Patrick Schwarz https://ebookbell.com/product/the-speechlanguage-pathologists- handbook-for-inclusive-school-practice-julie-causton-chelsea- tracybronson-patrick-schwarz-51309264 The Language Of Inclusion And Exclusion In Sports Stephanie Schnurr https://ebookbell.com/product/the-language-of-inclusion-and-exclusion- in-sports-stephanie-schnurr-53725190
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    NEW PERSPECTIVES ONLANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Series Editor: Professor Viv Edwards, University of Reading, Reading, UK Series Advisor: Professor Allan Luke, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of iden- tity and power, community and culture. This series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.
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    Inclusive Language Education andDigital Technology Edited by Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott and Jane Jones MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto
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    Library of CongressCataloging in Publication Data Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology/Edited by Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott and Jane Jones. New Perspectives on Language and Education: 30 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language and languages—Study and teaching—Technological innovations. 2. Language and languages—Computer-assisted instruction. 3. Children with disabilities—Education. I. Beltrán, Elina Vilar, editor of compilation. P53.855.I54 2013 418.0078–dc23 2013001854 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-973-2 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-972-5 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2013 Elina Vilar Beltrán, Chris Abbott, Jane Jones and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable for- ests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, prefer- ence is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd., Salisbury, UK. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd. To Gabriela from Eli
  • 9.
    v Contents Contributors vii Introduction xi Part1: The Key Issues 1 Modern Foreign Languages as an Inclusive Learning Opportunity: Changing Policies, Practices and Identities in the Languages Classroom 3 Jane Jones 2 Technology Uses and Language – A Personal View 30 Chris Abbott 3 Meeting Special Educational Needs in Technology-Enhanced Language Teaching: Learning from the Past, Working for the Future 45 David Wilson Part 2: Case Studies 4 The 21st Century Languages Classroom – The Teacher Perspective 67 Elina Vilar Beltrán and Auxiliadora Sales Ciges 5 Using Technology to Teach English as a Foreign Language to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing 84 Ewa Domagała-Zys ´k 6 Information and Communication Technology – An Instrument for Developing Inclusive Practice in the Training of Modern Languages Teachers 103 Lynne Meiring and Nigel Norman
  • 10.
    7 Foreign Languagesfor Learners with Dyslexia – Inclusive Practice and Technology 124 Margaret Crombie 8 Creative Engagement and Inclusion in the Modern Foreign Language Classroom 143 John Connor 9 Conflicts between Real-Time Resources and the Storage of Digitized Materials: Issues of Copyright 155 Andreas Jeitler and Mark Wassermann Conclusion 174 Index 176 vi Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
  • 11.
    vii Contributors Chris Abbott isReader in e-Inclusion at King’s College London. He taught in mainstream and special schools, mostly in the London area, for twenty years before becoming Director of the Inner London Educational Computing Centre. Since joining King’s College London, he has specialised in teaching and research around literacy, language and assistive technologies, especially with regard to students identified as having learning difficulties. He is the Programme Director of the MA Inclusive Education & Technology, and of the Foundation Degree/BA Education Studies. He has led a number of research projects on aspects of technology and disability, and is the author of ICT: Changing Education (2000) and SEN and the Internet: Issues for the Inclusive Classroom (2002). He is the Editor of the Journal of Assistive Technologies. Email: [email protected] John Connor A former head of a language faculty and local authority adviser, John worked for a time as a team inspector for OFSTED, specialising in modern languages and special educational needs in mainstream settings. He has worked on national languages projects, and latterly on developing languages in primary schools. He has led training and teaching and learning quality audits across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. He is an Assessor for the Advanced Skills Teacher programme for the Department for Education. Email: [email protected] Margaret Crombie is currently an Educational Consultant with a special- ism in Literacy Difficulties and Dyslexia. She is an Associate Lecturer with the Open University (Difficulties in Literacy Development course) and supervises a number of doctorate students. Margaret has considerable previous experience of working in the dyslexia field as a Specialist Teacher
  • 12.
    and as aManager and Lecturer. She has researched into dyslexia and the learning of a foreign language in schools in Scotland, and is co-author of the book, Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning (Schneider & Crombie, 2003). She has contributed to many other publications. She has chaired the Working Group for Dyslexia Scotland, which has produced an online Toolkit for the assessment and support of those with literacy difficulties in a Scottish school context – The Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit. Email: [email protected] Ewa Domagała-Zyśk, since 1998, has been working as a Researcher and Lecturer at the Pedagogy Department of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and at the Centre for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education at KUL. She was a pioneer of teaching English as a foreign language to deaf university students in Poland, starting her work in 1999. She is the author of more than 30 empirical papers on that issue, both in English and in Polish, a co-author (with K. Karpinska-Szaj) of Uczeń z wada ˛ słuchu w szkole ogólnodoste ˛pnej. Podstawy metodyki nauczania je ˛zyków obcych [Hearing impaired student in mainstream school. Basics of methodology of teaching English]. She partici- pated in more than 30 international conferences presenting papers on teach- ing English as a foreign language to deaf and hard of hearing students. Email: [email protected] Andreas Jeitler has been a specialist in the field of universal accessibility at Klagenfurt University’s Library since 2004. Beside other tasks, he supports and trains students, teachers and other library users in the process of creating and understanding how to use digital-accessible learning materials. Owing to his own visual and hearing impairments, he knows and understands the barriers that arise for people with disabilities. Andreas is Chairman of the Advisory Board on the Equalisation of People with Disabilities of the city of Klagenfurt and also long term Chairman of Uniability, the workgroup for the equalisation of people with disabilities and chronicle illnesses at Austria’s Universities and colleges. Email: [email protected] Jane Jones is Senior Lecturer in MFL Teacher Education at King’s College London. She taught languages for many years in comprehensive schools. She is subject specialist in the Assessment for Learning Group at King’s. Her research interests include the development and embedding of effective formative assessment practices in language teaching and learning, especially viii Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
  • 13.
    with student teachers,and the promotion of self-regulatory strategies by pupils of all abilities and all ages to manage their own learning. Jane has participated in many EU funded international research projects on language learning, assessment and inclusion as well as the management and leadership of schools and within these, has been interested to promote critical teacher research and the pupil voice. Email: [email protected] Lynne Meiring taught French and German in a range of secondary and Further Education colleges for 17 years. She has worked in Higher Education for 20 years, teaching on the PGCE programmes (primary and secondary) at University of Wales, Swansea and Swansea Metropolitan University. She has also taught on Masters’ programmes. She is an ESTYN section 10 inspector and has worked as a Modern Foreign Language Consultant in schools. Her research interests include developing literacy through modern foreign languages and the use of technology in the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages. She has several publications related to the teaching of modern foreign languages. Email: [email protected] Nigel Norman was formerly Senior Lecturer in Education (Modern Foreign Languages) at Swansea Metropolitan University School of Education. His research interests include the methodology of language teaching, grammar and literacy, and information technology in languages. Previously he was Advisory Teacher in Wiltshire, where he was involved in curriculum develop- ment, in-service training and resources management. Prior to that he spent seven years as Head of Modern Languages in a comprehensive school and ten years in a boys’ grammar school, including a year’s exchange teaching in Germany. He has published course materials for German teaching and a vari- ety of book contributions and articles in academic journals. He is the Reviews Editor for Language Learning Journal. Email: [email protected] Auxiliadora Sales Ciges is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain. She is the coordinator of the research group MEICRI (Mejora Educativa y Ciudadanía Crítica). Her research focuses on intercultural and inclusive education, attitudes and values training and planning, developing and evaluating measures of attention to diversity in schools. Her latest projects examine teachers’ professional development Contributors ix
  • 14.
    through action researchand school change. Her research has resulted in pub- lications in national and international refereed journals. Email: [email protected] Elina Vilar Beltrán is a language instructor at Queen Mary, University of London. Modern languages education and accessibility have been her main areas of study since she started her post-doctoral training at King’s College London. She held the Batista i Roca fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge for three years and was part of a Young Researchers Programme from the Spanish Ministry of Education at Universitat Jaume I; researching inclusive education policies in different countries and designing materials for practising and aspiring language teachers. Other areas of inter- est include digital literacies, intercultural communication and language development in the study abroad context. Email: [email protected] Mark Wassermann is Head of the Department for the Support of Students with Disability and Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities at the University of Klagenfurt. As a visually impaired person, he acts as Vice Chairman of the advisory board on accessibility for the city of Klagenfurt and Vice Chairman of the Independent Living Movement of Carinthia. As a member of the committee for the accessibility of vending machines at the Austrian Standard Institute, Mark represents the interests of blind and visually impaired persons. As an inde- pendent contractor he provides accessibility consulting and training for compa- nies and organisations with the focus of accessible information technology. Email: [email protected] David R. Wilson, BA (Leeds), Grad.Cert.Ed., MA, MEd. (Newcastle), Adv.Dip. Ed in Special Needs in Education (Open), now retired, works voluntarily in the Equal Opportunities Department at Harton Technology College in South Shields in the North East of England, where, for 37 years, he taught French, German and latterly secondary school students with learning difficulties. His research interests and specialeducationalneeds.com website focus on school curriculum accessibil- ity, with particular reference to modern foreign languages, special educational needs and appropriate use of information and communications technology. He has published articles, delivered teacher-training workshops and presented papers at international conferences in Europe, Asia and North America. Email: [email protected] x Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
  • 15.
    xi Introduction Elina Vilar Beltrán,Chris Abbott and Jane Jones The Purpose of the Book Globalization of business, improved travel opportunities and ever grow- ing means of communication have made it even more necessary for people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to communicate with each other in a wide variety of contexts and for a wide variety of purposes. Communication is richer, culturally as well as linguistically and economi- cally, when it is possible in more than one language; having competence in languages is also personally enriching and generates enjoyment as well as growth; as has been shown by McColl (2000: 5): ‘foreign language learning, far from interfering with language development as was once thought, stimulates its devel- opment, and gains can be detected right across the curriculum’. This statement provides a very solid theoretical basis for the implementation of teaching languages to all pupils and a powerful rationale for the expansion of this activity within the context of special educational needs (SEN). Digital tech- nologies are ever more present in our lives and language-teaching contexts need to exploit the potential of these technologies in order to raise barriers to learning modern foreign languages (MFL). This book aims to show how this can be achieved with those individuals for whom language learning is more challenging, in a variety of contexts and from varying perspectives, and with a strong focus on the role of digital technologies. This is not an attempt to summarize developments worldwide, but a UK-based book with illumina- tive case studies from several European countries. Our exemplar chapters are not parochial, but carefully chosen to provide illuminative case studies within an area where very little has been published.
  • 16.
    The book isaimed at teachers, advisers and researchers with an interest in the field of MFL teaching and learning, SEN and digital technologies. It may also be of interest to those studying the most effective approaches to inclusive language education. We also address postgraduate students looking for new and inclusive ways to teach MFL and heads and governors with responsibility for SEN/inclusion and for languages, as well as trainee teachers and teaching assistants. Outline of the Book The book is divided into two parts. The first part identifies and draws out the key issues of inclusive education, languages and digital technologies. These are not considered separately but are seen as inextricably interwoven, and each chapter takes a different emphasis and a different perspective. Part 2 comprises a set of case studies of current and emerging practices in a range of cultural contexts. The methods and the initiatives to meet those chal- lenges have clear international currency. Part 1: The Key Issues Jones, in the first chapter, reviews recent policy changes regarding SEN and MFL, and reminds readers how learners with SEN were, for a long time, excluded from language learning. While the development of the National Curriculum strongly promoted inclusion in MFL, a suitable pedagogy has been elusive and teachers have lacked the necessary training, knowledge and resources in terms of materials and specialist support staff, a situation that is only slowly being remedied. Drawing on the insights and practices of three experienced and committed language teachers, Jones discusses the scope for the inclusion of pupils in a new culture of collaborative classroom language learning, a community in which all can achieve something on an identifiable ‘can do’ basis. A formative approach to assessing and progressing learning is considered central to learning. It is argued that learners with SEN need to develop a new language learner identity that empowers them with a measure of self-agency in such a learning community. In Chapter 2, Abbott takes a personal view of the history of technology use by teachers of languages, first centred around audio and then in response to the availability of a wide range of digital technologies. Where once such technologies were found only in the classroom, learners now have access to mobile and other devices that offer sophisticated language tools. At the same xii Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
  • 17.
    time, the rapiddevelopment of the semantic web and social networking has offered fertile contexts for genuine linguistic engagement. A central focus of this chapter is the response of teachers and schools to these developments. Wilson, in Chapter 3, identifies the challenges confronting teachers over recent years as they have differentiated their MFL lessons to include learners with SEN through information and communication technology (ICT). He argues for a more critical appraisal of the educational benefits of leading-edge technologies before their classroom adoption. SEN and ICT quite recently became priorities of MFL as a foundation subject within England’s first National Curriculum. While MFL, SEN and ICT experts collaborated in the early years to pioneer good practice, the onus moved to MFL teachers working alone or, more recently, with a learning support assistant (LSA). Outside the classroom, Wilson argues, some adults expect too little from some learners, while assum- ing too much about the potential of ICT. The chapter includes a set of 10 practical scenarios for the readers to give thought to possible solutions. Part 2: Case Studies Vilar Beltrán and Sales Ciges, in Chapter 4, explore the languages class- room of the 21st century in English and Spanish schools. Drawing on research in the field, the authors focus in particular on beliefs and practices of language teachers with regards to context, pedagogical approach and dif- ferentiation and modification in response to diversity. In addition to explor- ing language teachers’ perceptions, Vilar Beltrán and Sales Ciges analyse case studies of the implementation of digital technologies in language-teaching contexts. Digital technologies, they argue, not only form the reality for most students of this era but they could also be powerful tools that have the potential to enhance language teaching for all. Chapter 5, by Domagała-Zyśk, focuses on the use of technology for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to the deaf and hard of hear- ing. For such people, as with all others, online environments offer the poten- tial for building and maintaining social networks, enabling alternative communication without using speech. The internet has replaced previous modes of communication used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, such as letters, faxes or text telephones. Using computer technology often requires the ability to use English. Many of the students described in this chapter have to learn EFL in order to update their knowledge and skills, and to access technology. Domagała-Zyśk describes the ways in which ICT can support the process of learning EFL, including a case study of the author’s experience of using ICT during English classes for deaf students. Introduction xiii
  • 18.
    In Chapter 6,Meiring and Norman advance a case for ICT as an instru- ment for developing inclusive practice in the training of MFL teachers. They cite recent changes in legislation in Wales that have led to stronger demands for learners with SEN to have access to language learning. Using this policy requirement as a starting point, the authors consider the role and benefit of ICT in the curriculum, whether for access or enhancement. They consider the extent to which there may be a case for a distinctive pedagogy for SEN learners within MFL lessons, and the implications of this for teacher educa- tion. Using examples from their own practice in initial teacher education, the authors explore issues of pedagogy and resourcing, providing several practical examples. The particular special needs of the learner with dyslexia are explored by Crombie in Chapter 7. In this chapter, Crombie, who has previously researched foreign language learning and dyslexia in schools in Scotland, considers a range of examples of inclusive practice. Building on her previous publications in this area, and her experience of working with teachers and learners, she considers how the use of technology in the foreign language classroom can benefit dyslexic and other learners. The chapter provides cur- rent and ready-to-use technologies for the classroom, and explains how these can be useful for language teachers. The focus of Chapter 8 is an investigation by Connor into the extent to which interactive, creative resources can be a way to engage and motivate children who find learning difficult in the languages classroom. According to the author, the availability of interactive Web 2.0 tools has opened up new dimensions in the motivation and engagement of pupils who find learning languages difficult for various reasons. He argues that certain tools can pro- vide students with an authentic purpose for their work, and if linked to a bespoke blog or wiki, can also provide them with an audience that could theoretically be global. Connor claims that blending digital technologies with other tried and tested approaches, such as making the learning active and kinaesthetic, affords students a much broader range of meaningful lan- guage learning opportunities. Wassermann and Jeitler reflect on the conflicts between real-time resources and the storage of digitized materials including issues of copyright. Universities and other higher education institutions have been dealing with the complexities of digital resources for some time, but this has now become an issue for schools. This is particularly the case for teachers of languages who may wish to use authentic materials from digital versions of journals and magazines. In some cases, particular issues have arisen for learners with disabilities, for example visually impaired young people who need access to raw text for screen-readers. Without changes in the law of the kind that has xiv Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
  • 19.
    recently occurred inthe UK, such processes risk infringing copyright. From their experiences of grappling with these issues at their own institution, the authors consider all aspects of digitizing, from proofing to publication and dissemination. They also consider different emerging and actual legal solu- tions to this important area of resource provision. Looking Forward In the conclusion, Vilar Beltrán, Abbott and Jones bring together the issues outlined in Part 1, which are detailed and exemplified in Part 2, to outline a blueprint for the immediate future. Here they balance the evident enthusiasm for technology-mediated language learning with a nuanced rec- ognition of the constraints that exist, whether these are related to the provi- sion of resources at a time of recession, the need for effective teacher education or the appropriate response to a socially networked learning com- munity. The challenges for teachers with often conflicting demands are not underestimated. Despite acknowledging these complex and challenging areas, the editors tentatively indicate a shift from an experimental to a mature phase of development as technology becomes an invisible but vital tool for the 21st century languages teacher. A Word About Terminology Our three areas of focus: technology, learning difficulty and language teaching, lead us into a complex field with regards to terminology. In a book with many contributors it would neither be appropriate nor helpful to insist on one standard terminology throughout, especially since many of the terms in use are not truly synonymous and may reflect varying understandings and policies. ICT – information and communication technology – is the name of a curriculum area in the UK and is widely used across Europe. However, this may be changing, and recent announcements in the UK sug- gest that the term may fall out of use in England, at least in the revised cur- riculum to be launched in 2014. Technology – and its component part digital technology – are in more general use and are used for this reason by several contributors. The term special educational needs (SEN) has been widely used in the UK since the late 1970s, although not often elsewhere. Those learners identified in the UK as having SEN may be given other designations in other contexts, with terms such as additional support needs (ASN), learning difficulties, learning disabilities and intellectual difficulties all in use. Introduction xv
  • 20.
    Whatever the termused, our focus throughout is on those learners who need extra support to achieve and understand. Our curriculum context, of course, is the teaching of languages, and this has been traditionally named MFL in many curricula. Whether the term used is MFL or foreign language learning or simply language learning, our context remains the same. We would like to express our gratitude to all the educators and the schools who provided examples and participated in the case studies that follow. Acknowledgement Elina Vilar Beltrán is very grateful for the support and financial input from the Batista i Roca Fellowship, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge and the Young Researchers Programme from the Spanish Ministry of Education for giving her the opportunity to complete this work. Reference McColl, H. (2000) Modern Languages for All. London: David Fulton. xvi Inclusive Language Education and Digital Technology
  • 21.
  • 22.
    3 1 Modern ForeignLanguages as an Inclusive Learning Opportunity: Changing Policies, Practices and Identities in the Languages Classroom Jane Jones Introduction There has been a considerable change in attitude and in classroom prac- tices regarding the teaching of modern foreign languages (MFL) to children with special educational needs, also referred to as children with learning differences and those with additional support needs (ASN). Where exclusion for many from the opportunity to embrace fully a language learning experi- ence as part of regular school curriculum provision was widespread in previ- ous decades, nearly all children have been included in language learning at some stage of their school career in recent times. This change has taken place in the light of policy frameworks of inclusion, especially with mainstreamed education as the status quo, and with concurrent and interlinked changes in approaches to, and views about, teaching and learning of MFL. Recent devel- opments in MFL classrooms have proffered potential inclusive scenarios of many kinds. To explore these developments, this chapter is divided into two sections.
  • 23.
    Section 1: • Identifiesbriefly important policy changes concerning inclusive practice that provide a backdrop for such developments. • Highlights key changes in approaches to languages teaching, learning and assessment, and the impact for children with learning differences. Section 2: • Proposes a language classroom collaborative learning community empha- sising personalised learning that would include digital technologies, and formative assessment as a way to transform the learning experience for learners. • Suggests redefining the language learner’s identity as empowered and with agency. In the conclusion, I discuss teacher training needs and the benefits of working in partnership, and I emphasise the need for leadership to support a whole school structure of effective provision for inclusive practices. I stress the importance of the wider goals of MFL learning for learners with special educational needs (SEN) and the need to monitor and research critically developing practice in MFL As part of a learning conversation about issues in this chapter in order to provide concrete examples for points raised, I incorporate at all junctures the views and suggestions of three MFL teachers selected for their avowed com- mitment to inclusion and MFL, their insights into the need to personalise learning and for the creative strategies they have developed for personalised learning. The term ‘SEN’ is ubiquitous in the English context as can be seen in the verbatim comments from the teachers, and also in European Union documentation cited. Section 1 Policies of inclusion The ‘Education for all’ (EFA) agenda asserted in the 1990 Jomtien Declaration provides an important backdrop to understand the approach to inclusion in the UK. EFA aims to support all children everywhere in accessing good quality, basic education in an environment where they feel safe and welcome. The EFA inclusive philosophy has framed international and national policy approaches to education, including the Salamanca Statement on Principles, Policy and Practices in Special Needs Education 4 Part 1: The Key Issues
  • 24.
    (UNESCO, 1994). Withinthis framework, it is understood that the educa- tion of all children should take place within the mainstream where all learners with their diversity of needs, experiences and backgrounds, come together, not just within the four walls, but in the ‘putting into action values based on equity, entitlement, community, participation and respect for diversity’ (Booth et al., 2003: 1), thus breaking down barriers to learning and participation. The inclusive approach to education that is dominant in mainstream schools today has its origins in the Warnock Review of Special Education (1978), the ensuing Education Act of 1981 and the fundamental changes consequent to this Act, based on the concept of integration of learners with SEN into mainstream schools and social inclusion. The changes have been reflected in subsequent policy and iniatives that have sought to pro- mote education for all. The National Curriculum has been central to this aim in addressing broader concerns of inclusion, for the ‘gifted and tal- ented’, those for whom English is an additional language and those with SEN inter alia. The revised National Curriculum (QCA, 2007), emphasised personal development and well-being, and encouraged learners to become enterprising and responsible citizens as part of the broader concerns for the development of the whole child, physically, mentally and socially. These reflect the objectives of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning and Assessment (CEFR) that provide a framework for all languages teachers across Europe, aiming to: ‘promote mutual understanding and to learn respect for identities and cultural diversity through more effective communication’ (2001: 3), and emphasising the scope of the value of MFL learning. One teacher describes the scope thus: ‘MFL is an inclusive subject as it appeals to multiple skills – it is NOT exclusively about writing, speaking. It improves students’ abilities to develop social skills, comprehend others, look beyond the written word in front of them.’ It is a view that resonates with McColl’s (2005) perspective on language learning, inclusion and citizenship. Change in MFL teaching, learning and assessment policy and practice The teaching and learning of MFL extends far beyond the mere act of learning language, indeed, the centrality of language learning to promote social cohesion according to the CEFR (2001) and to build citizenship is strongly expressed in the executive summary of the report entitled ‘Languages for Life: A Strategy for England’, which states: ‘. . . language com- petence and intercultural understanding are not optional extras; they are an Modern Foreign Languages as an Inclusive Learning Opportunity 5
  • 25.
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    The Project GutenbergeBook of The Problem Makers
  • 30.
    This ebook isfor the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Problem Makers Author: Robert Hoskins Release date: January 19, 2016 [eBook #50971] Most recently updated: October 22, 2024 Language: English Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROBLEM MAKERS ***
  • 32.
    THE PROBLEM MAKERS ByROBERT HOSKINS Illustrated by MACK [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
  • 33.
    They had onlyone mission in the Galaxy, with its infinite problems—make more of 'em! I Clouds obscured the three moons as the men slipped into the village. They eased the double-bitted axes out of their belts and felt their way through the almost unrelieved blackness until their hands met the soft yieldings of the door hangings. Waiting until the whisper of leather gliding over the ground stopped, telling him everyone was in position, Luke Royceton drew in a deep breath, then suddenly screamed: "Aiieeeee!" At his banshee signal, the other men took up the cry. Somebody kicked the banked coals of the cooking fire into life and stuck in a handful of twisted grass torches, then moved from man to man, handing them out. The men screamed again, touched their torches to the over-hanging of the huts, then tore down the hangings and leaped through the doors, torches flaming a path. The interiors of the huts leaped to life. Forms hurtled by the men and into the night as the pitch-caulked thatching blazed into an inferno. The rightful inhabitants of the huts crashed into the tall grass of the surrounding plains, the sounds of their passage quickly dying away as fear lent wing to their rapidly fleeing heels. The fires quickly burned through the thatching, sending little fingers of flame dancing along the lashed saplings that supported the roofs. Luke took one last look around the interior of his hut and started to leave, when he spotted something wriggling under a pile of skins.
  • 34.
    Crossing the roomin three strides, he tore away the coverings and grabbed the native child by the scruff of its neck. He wheeled on one heel and retraced his passage. He got out of the door just as the saplings gave up the ghost and the fiery mass crashed to the ground. Luke whistled and wiped sweat from his brow. The bronze head of the axe caught and reflected the fires from its myriad beaten facets. Using the head, he beat out several sparks that had landed on his clothes, then turned his attention to the child who still dangled from his other hand. The child's eyes were rolled nearly into his head with his fright. Luke grinned, baring his teeth. He brought the child up until their noses were less than an inch apart. The fetid smell of the child's breath made him choke. Yelping, the child twisted free and ran after its already-departed parents. Luke laughed and turned his attention to his team. The men were all out now, watching the huts crack under the intense heat within. One shuddered, then collapsed inward, sending up choking clouds of dust as it smothered the flames. After a moment, Luke whistled. Half of the men melted into the grass and followed the natives, while the others gathered around him, squatting and resting their axes on the ground. Luke waited until the others returned to report no further sign of the villagers, then he squatted himself, and accepted a canteen from someone. He drank his fill, gasped, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and handed the canteen back. "It's hot," he said, conversationally. "It'll be hotter before we're done," said one of the team. They were all dressed in rough-cured skins and leather moccasins. The axes were the only tool they carried. Faces thick with war paint and grime, it was impossible to tell them from natives. "Anybody hurt?" asked Luke. Disclaimers came from the various members of the group. "Good." He stood up and stretched. "Well,
  • 35.
    gentlemen, shall webe on our way?" "Might as well." Luke took his axe, twisted the unfinished handle a quarter-turn in his socket, then held the head to his lips. "Team B," he said. "Mission accomplished." He twisted the handle back and slipped the axe into his belt. A few moments later, the soft chatter of rotors cut through the air, and a copter dropped into the clearing by the cooking fire. The team mounted by the dying glow of the fires. As soon as the last man was in, the door swung shut and the copter took off into the night. Sam Carter eased the scratchy material of the ruffed collar away from his neck, then shot his cuffs to return them to the socially acceptable half-inch showing beyond his jacket sleeve. He sighed, placed his hands on his knees and glanced for the umpteenth time at the armored soldiers guarding the door between the anteroom and Prince Kahl's private chambers. The afternoon sun dipped below the level of the high window-slits, sending shadows scampering up the walls. Sam had been waiting since noon. His stomach was repeating its rumbled protests against that interrupted meal. Prince Kahl had sent word that Sam might wait upon his pleasure; quieting misgivings, Carter had rushed to do just that. He sighed again, and stifled a yawn. From the corner of his eye, he watched the shadow line marching up the wall. When it touched the cobwebby corner of the ceiling, a slave came in and lighted a pair of oil lamps. The soot-heavy smoke they gave off quickly had Sam wishing the room had been left in darkness. Another interminable hour passed, during which he several times repeated the operation with collar and cuffs, all the while envying
  • 36.
    the guards theirability to remain in one position like frozen statues, seemingly carved from the living rock of the palace. At last, just when he had resigned himself to the probability of spending the night in the anteroom, the inner door swung open and a chamberlain beckoned. "Prince Kahl will grant you a moment now." Sam bowed his thanks, and followed the man into Kahl's chambers. "Ah, my friend from the southern kingdoms!" Prince Kahl was a lean, saturnine individual, uncomfortably aware that the prime of life was slipping through his grasp while his father obstinately held onto the throne. It was Kahl's considered opinion that the old man had lived long enough. It rankled him to realize that he had held the same opinions as a youth barely out of his teens. The thirty intervening years had been spent devising and trying methods to assure his succession; unfortunately his father had twenty years before that to safeguard his own rule. "How go the southern kingdoms, my friend?" Kahl waved a particularly enticing fruit as Carter stopped short, a dozen paces away. "Tolerably well, your graciousness." He neglected to add that it had been nearly a year since he had visited the supposed lands of his birth. Kahl was fully aware how long Carter had been kept cooling his heels. Palace protocol dictated how long foreign visitors might be kept waiting. But even visiting royalty could not hope for an audience in less than a month's time. In his role as ambassador, Carter was happy that a year was all he had been kept waiting. "Your lord and master's gifts were received," said Kahl. "You may inform him of my royal gratitude."
  • 37.
    "My humble thanks,your graciousness." Sam's mouth watered as Kahl polished off the one fruit and selected another from a platter born by a manservant. Despite his now-long stay on the planet, Sam still could not understand why women were given no role at all in society, even as slaves. "Not at all, not at all," said Kahl. "Now tell me. What is it that brought you so far from your home lands to grace my humble presence?" "The usual business of politic, your graciousness," said Sam, growing weary of the necessity to repeat the title with every reply to Kahl's words. He also wished for a chair, despite the fact that he had been sitting all afternoon. He felt like a naughty schoolchild, standing always in the man's presence. "Trade treaties, mutual armament pacts, the like." "Ummm, so. You've discussed them with my ministers?" "They have permitted me this honor and, if I may be so bold, found a great deal to our mutual liking. Our countries are indeed far separated, and the journey between arduous. I find much in your provinces in the way of technology and armaments that we totally lack. By the same token, I have thought of a few inconsequential things which might serve to ease your royal burdens, if but brought from my lands." "Possible, possible," said Kahl. "Of course, I have a large college of tinkerers and mechanics who probably would have produced the little toys you speak of in their own good time. But why duplicate effort, eh? They are lazy dolts who grumble at my royal largesse as it is." He chortled lustily, although Sam could see nothing even remotely humorous in his statement. But he was well-schooled in the idiocies of diplomacy; he laughed dutifully. "But come!" said Kahl. "Enough of childish prattle! You carry another load in your thoughts, my southern friend. Have out with it!" "Your graciousness?"
  • 38.
    "You needn't pretend,"he said, chortling again. "My ministers are like the winds. They cannot keep a single thing to themselves, but instead need spread it over the far reaches of the entire world. You've been talking—foolishly perhaps—but I have perceived a certain sense within your nonsense, and I must confess that your words have aroused my interest. You have a plan to see me king. Now out with it, lest I make you a gift of you to my torturer. He can remove anything—including stubborn vocal cords!" "You do me undeserved honor, graciousness," said Sam. "Undoubtedly. And you begin to weary me." "Very well." Sam sighed. "I must admit that my tongue is too loose for my own general welfare. It is true that I once thought of something mildly amusing while passing long evening hours with one of your ministers. But it was mere idle dreaming, no more." "You prattle long, southerner." Kahl's eyelids lowered suspiciously. He picked up a silver knife and began paring his nails, scattering the shavings suggestively in Sam's direction. "Perhaps you do not want to see me king?" "There is none so deserving of the honor as you," said Sam. "But while you laugh at the utter childishness of my ideas, please remember that you insisted...." The Ehrlan delegate to the Central Worlds Conference was well past the entrance to the Park when the pudgy little man caught up with him, sides heaving from the unaccustomed strain of running. "Citizen Lund!" he cried, panting. "Please wait!" Lund turned and eyed the little man suspiciously. The fellow was a stranger, and therefore automatically under suspicion. "Yes?" "A moment of your valuable time, Citizen. Please? I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me. I am not a Yanoian." The name
  • 39.
    spattered out acidly. "Indeed?"said Lund. "And just who, then, are you?" There was a vague sensation of familiarity troubling the back of his mind. The omnipresent watchdog in his subconscious pounced instantly on the feeling, magnifying it, turning it inside out and shaking it around, but drawing no satisfaction from the act. "A friend, Citizen. You must believe that. I can't explain further right now—time is too precious." He grabbed Lund's arm and started tugging him back towards the Park entrance. "Please? I beg you, come." "Oh—very well." He gave in ungraciously, following the man until they were just inside the Park. Then Lund stopped, digging his heels into the gravel of the walk. The man looked back at him. "Please, Citizen!" he urged. "We don't have much time!" "So far as I'm concerned, you don't have any time at all, unless you tell me right now who you are and what this is all about." "Not here!" he cried, aghast, as he glanced nervously around at the many people entering and leaving the Park. A pair of Conference monitors stopped just outside the gate, fingering their stun-beamers as they eyed the actions of the two men. They started to move into the violable hundred-foot circle this side of the gate. The little man moved quickly, grabbing Lund again and forcibly pulling him beyond the protection of the monitors. Their skins tingled as they went through the shimmering haze of the force screen. The monitors stopped just in time to avoid touching the screen, while Lund and the little man hurried down a path that wound into a copse of widdy trees from Lund's own homeworld, Ehrla. The widdy tendrils stopped their aimless flowing through the trees and curved down and around the two men, tips melting into the ground and tendrils broadening into wide blades that sheltered and shielded the pair from possible watchers.
  • 40.
    "Now!" said Lund,shaking the other man's hand from his angrily. "Perhaps you will do me the honor of telling me who you are and just what in the name of the Seven Holy Suns this idiocy is all about?" "A matter of the gravest urgency, Citizen! You must not present your plans for redistribution of Sector protectorates to this Conference!" "What?" Lund stared at him in disbelief. "And just how did you learn of the plans I intend to present to the Conference—I will present, at this afternoon session? Something smacks of treachery!" "Never mind how I learned, Citizen. The important thing is the Yano delegation also knows! They plan to scuttle you before you have a chance to speak. After that, they'll cut you into little pieces and devour you!" "You're insane, man!" Lund started to reach for the widdy tendrils. "Don't! You must not present your plans to the Conference, Citizen." A new tone had crept into the man's voice: a strength that belied the pudginess and general clownishness of the figure. Lund turned slowly, and found himself staring at a stunner, the winking red of the telltale showing that it was set to lethal bands. "Wha...." He gulped his adam's apple back down into his throat. "How did you get that into the Park? The force screens aren't supposed to pass weapons." "There are ways, Citizen," the man said, grinning. No longer did he seem clownish. "Many so-called impossible things are quite simple, if only you have access to the proper people and controls." "What do you really want?" Lund tried to hide his fright, but he was uncomfortably certain that it was radiating out from him, broadcasting to the entire world that Citizen Lund was scared silly. "I told you, Citizen. You must not present your plans to the Conference." "But why?" he wailed, in frustration. "Give me a logical reason!"
  • 41.
    "The greater good,Citizen." With those cryptic words, the man pressed the stud of the beamer. Lund gasped, as a giant hand closed around his heart, then collapsed to the ground in a strange dying parody of slow motion. Just before the clouds of eternity shut away his vision, he at last recognized the man. Himself! II John Reilly was tired, intensely tired, beyond any feeling of exhaustion he had ever known. The clock in his desk chimed once. He sighed and picked up his lecture notes, stuffing them into a scarred and battered case that he had been carrying since his student days at the Academy. He cast one weary glance around the cluttered office, then steeled himself into a passable imitation of military carriage as he left for the lecture hall. The Cadet Sergeant-Major outside his door leaped to attention only a little less quickly than his regular service counterpart. Reilly returned their salutes and fell in behind them. The lecture hall—gymnasium, really; the Academy was perennially overcrowded—was crowded, as usual. The eager young cadets filled the fifty rows of backless benches, while the overflow squatted and stood at the rear until it was impossible for a midget to find room to thread his way through the crowd. Reilly's class was well-tended for its honest popularity, not just because it was compulsory. There were many "compulsory" lectures in the curriculum that counted themselves proud to find half their audience in attendance. Reilly stopped in the wings of the stage, listening for a moment to the comfortable discordances of the student band tuning their instruments. The regular service non-com peered through the
  • 42.
    hangings, catching thebandmaster's eye. The tuning stopped, and the band swung into a medley of old Academy drinking songs. Reilly smiled, as he remembered happier days when he had participated lustily in the drinking that went along with such music. From the drinking songs, the band struck up the National Anthem. The noise the cadets made in rising nearly drowned out the music. After the last strains had been permitted to fade away, the bandmaster raised his baton once more and the opening bars of Hail to the Chief! filled the hall. The Sergeants-Major stepped out onto the stage, Reilly following, case clasped loosely between elbow and side. They passed in front of the half-dozen visitors and moved to either side of the podium, turning until they were facing each other, the regular service man on the right. They snapped into a salute, followed by the entire audience. Reilly lay his case on the podium, turned and bowed to the visitors, then faced the audience again and returned the salute. Immediately two thousand arms dropped to their owners' sides and the cadets resumed their seats. Reilly unzipped his case and drew out his notes. He arranged them carefully on the podium, although he knew that at no time during the next hour would he so much as glance at them again. The case stowed away under the podium, he took a deep breath and placed his hands flat on the podium's surface. Technicians in the control booth over the far end of the hall trained parabolic mikes on his lips, waiting for him to begin the lecture as he had begun hundreds of other preceding lectures, before audiences much like this. The faces might change; the uniforms were the same, and so were the underlying feelings of the wearers of the uniforms, year in and year out. "The greater good for the greater number!" The cadets let out a mutual sigh, none aware that breath had been held.
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    "A motto, gentlemen:merely a motto. Like Ad Astra per Aspera, E Pluribus Unum or Through These Portals Pass the Most Wonderful Customers in the Galaxy." An appreciative titter ran through the audience. "But what is a motto?" continued Reilly, warming to his subject, overly familiar though it was. "It's more than just a snappy way of stringing words together. It has a meaning. Often the meaning, such as in the commercial example I just gave, is on the frivolous side. But more often there is something intently serious behind a motto. Ad Astra—'To the Stars.' For centuries this has been almost a religion for men, as our ancestors broke the bonds of a single planet and spread out into the galaxy. Libraries have been written of the heartbreaks and joys, the sorrows and jubilations that have been found in the far reaches of space. "E Pluribus Unum—'United We Stand.' Even older and, if possible, dearer to the hearts of men. Our very government is based on the essential concept contained in these three words from the past. "'The greater good for the greater number'. If government runs on one motto, then civilization is based on this!" Team B was dead on its feet when the copter finally returned to Base with the first rosy glow of dawn lightening the horizon. They stumbled to the ground, as sorry a looking group as Luke Royceton had ever seen. Their masquerade of grime and war paints was nearly obscured by an honest layer of general dirt. They filed into wardrobe and stripped off their clothes, leaving them in ragged piles on the floor. Then they hit the showers, luxuriating under the needle sprays and the caress of soap sliding over their skin. The discarded costumes were gone when they emerged, feeling closer to human, twenty minutes later. In place of the animal hides
  • 44.
    were shorts, doubletsand the calf-length boots of Base-centered personnel. All were more than happy to be back in uniform. Luke stopped outside wardrobe for a moment, then started towards Headquarters, a building distinguished from the dozen other prefabs of Base only by the pennant flying from the peak. The buildings were arranged in an irregular circle around the copter field, nestled in the most hidden valley of the planet's single range of hills high enough to be graced with the name of mountains. The highest peak in the range, visible over the one directly behind Headquarters, toward barely a thousand feet. On a world less primitive, the range would never have served its present duty. The world was primitive, however. Man had advanced but a few faltering steps beyond the level of the cave. Ecology had estimated the native human population not to exceed three million people over the entire globe, and cheerfully admitted that their estimate was made with every benefit of doubt given to the natives. Quite possibly not even half that number roamed the vast plains of the temperate zones, or breeded in the opulence of the equatorial jungles. As yet, population pressures had not driven men into the colder climes of the north and south. None had been spotted more than five hundred miles from the equator. Luke checked in with the Orderly Room before reporting on to the debriefing room. He slumped onto a couch and propped his feet on a low coffee table. The other four team commanders were there ahead of him. One brought him a cup of coffee. He accepted it with thanks, and inhaled the bitter smell of the brew before draining half of it. The fiery liquid burned into his stomach and scorched away some of the tensions built up during the night. "Rough night, Luke?" asked Andy Singer, sitting next to him. "The roughest. We hit seventeen villages between sunset and sunrise."
  • 45.
    "That is aload. My team only hit seven. But you were working the big river stretch, weren't you?" Luke nodded, as he sipped again at his coffee. "I thought so. We were lucky. We had the west plains. There isn't too much water over there, couple little creeks and a few holes. These locals don't stray too far from water." "We hit half a dozen good-sized places," said Luke. "One of them must have had thirty-five families. For a minute, I thought we were going to have to kill a few of them, but it ended up okay. Nobody hurt, except for one of my boys who stayed a second too long in a hut." He chuckled. "Got the seat of his pants burned off—a new kid, just out from the Academy. The rest of the night, he was the fastest man I had." "Proves what I said about water. Biggest place I hit had seven houses, and most of them only had two or three." Luke started to say something more, but just then the door opened and the Base Commandant came in. The Team commanders stood up respectfully, but none had the energy to properly snap to attention. He smiled as he mounted the low platform to the front of the room. "At ease, gentlemen." Gratefully, the commanders sat back down and resumed their earlier positions of comfort. The Commandant poured himself a glass of water from a ready pitcher and drank it, then gave his full attention to the room. "First, gentlemen, let me congratulate you on a successful night's operation. I congratulate all of you, but particularly Commander Royceton and Team B. They rolled up the enviable total of seventeen villages destroyed." Luke flushed, feeling like a fresh-out-of-Academy Cadet as the others raised their coffee cups in his direction.
  • 46.
    "None of youspent the evening slacking, of course," continued the Commandant. He was a middle-aged man; the empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder told why he had been booted out of field duty while men twenty years his senior were still leading teams. "Total score for the night: fifty-seven villages. Commander Royceton merely had more fertile area to work in. As we move out from the Base I know you will all have equal opportunities to prove your prowess with the torch." An appreciative murmur ran through the little group. "Now I know you're all tired, gentlemen, and anxious to hit the sack. I won't keep you much longer. I just want to emphasize the importance of our mission on this world. Many of your men don't like making these raids on the natives. They would rather be roaming the far starlanes, putting down pirates and other glorious deeds of derring-do. But you men are not cadets; there isn't a one of you without twenty years field service time. You know the real glory comes from satisfaction in a job well done. It is up to you to transfer that feeling of satisfaction to the malcontents within your ranks. Tonight you go out again; and you will continue to do so until every single village on this planet has been razed to the ground! If so much as one single village is permitted to escape, then we have failed. I do not like failure; you do not like failure. Working together, we can see to it that failure as a word disappears from the language. I thank you, gentlemen. Dismissed." He stepped down and strode rapidly from the room. Behind him the audience rose and burst into talk. III Sam Carter moaned silently. He tried for the hundredth time since the journey began to shift his legs into a position where the insides would not be rubbed raw by the rough hair of his horse-like mount. He resolved for the dozenth time that one of the "inventions" he
  • 47.
    would import fromthe southern provinces would be a good, comfortable saddle. Another would be silk; the rough fabrics worn by Kahl's subjects were a fair substitute for the mount's hide. "Ho, southerner!" Prince Kahl wheeled his mount back from the head of the column and waited until Sam had caught up, then he fell in
  • 48.
    beside him. "Howgoes it? Does my second favorite mount suit you well?" "Very well indeed, graciousness," said Sam. "I cannot in honesty recall when I've had a more—ouch!—instructive ride!" "Good!" Kahl leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be glad to know we've but three more hours to go before reaching the summer palaces." "Only, uh, three more hours?" The sinking sensation in Sam's stomach had nothing at all to do with the undulating motion of his beast. "Ah, that is good news, your graciousness. We'll be there almost before we know it." Sam wished Kahl would go away and leave him to his misery, but the prince seemed disposed to talk. "I think there will be many surprised faces in my father's court tonight. Eh, southerner?" He chuckled, and then burst into raucous laughter as he considered the idea further. "And to think, it will all be perfectly legal! You have the papers safe, my friend?" "Yes, your graciousness," said Sam, sighing and patting his saddlebags. "Good! Don't lose them—I'd hate to see you missing your head!" He laughed again, while Sam's stomach turned several more flipflops. "The sight of blood always did make me sick." There were sixteen men in the mounted party, including a dozen of Kahl's private guard, the captain of the troop and the High Priest of the Sun God, the nation's officially sponsored religion. The High Priest was a little old man, bent over more from age than from the discomforts of the journey. Originally Sam had planned for one more member, but that had become unnecessary when he learned that the High Priest was also President of the Royal College of Chirurgeons. The latter role was even more important to his plans than the former. Now all that worried Sam was the possibility that the priest might not live to the end of the journey. He was inflicted
  • 49.
    with a hackingcough that sent chills racing up and down Sam's spine every time he went into a fit. Kahl grew weary of bantering small talk with a man really fit to come up with witty replies. He wheeled his horse again and dropped back to the end of the column for a moment, saying something to the High Priest, then he spurred his mount back to the head of the line, falling into his original position beside the Captain of the Guard. The two men were soon lost in reminiscences that had bored Sam to tears, every time he had been an unwilling audience. Another hour passed miserably, while the sun mounted to the zenith and began the long summer afternoon drop back down to the horizon. The members of the Guard and Kahl pulled short stubby loaves of bread and cheese from their saddle bags and munched as they rode on, washing the food down with vigorous pulls at the wine-skins that took the place of water canteens on the planet. Sam had first thought the constant imbibing of alcohol to be a national vice. Then he ran tests on half a dozen waterholes. Thereafter he drank wine himself. Now, however, he was completely without an appetite. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the priest was in the same boat. Suddenly, without knowing why, he pulled his mount up and waited until the priest caught up with him, then fell in at the end of the column. "How goes it, Reverence?" The priest looked up, watery eyes registering surprise at his company. "Oh, southerner." He broke into one of his coughing spasms. "Ahhh, not well, southerner. Not well at all. The Sun God does not ride with me this day—not that he's deserted me, you understand: he never rides with me. The Sun God has more sense than a foolish old man who should be staying home in the comfort of
  • 50.
    his apartments, notgalivanting around the country-side like a frisky kitten." "I wish he had imparted some of his wisdom to me," said Sam. "I confess I feel as you look, Reverence. No disrespect intended, believe me. It's just that the ardors of this journey have taken much toll from both of us. And I swear, by the Sun God himself, you are bearing up much better than I." "A man who has traveled as long and as far as you talking this, southerner?" "It's the way you travel, Reverence. The greatest part of my journey was by ship." It had been; Sam merely neglected to specify that it was a spaceship. "Ocean travel has its own peculiar discomforts, but for myself, I'll take it every time." "Tell me, southerner," said the priest, "why do you make this trip?" "Prince Kahl wished it," he replied. "Ah, but there is more to this than lies on the surface. Why should Kahl bring you, a stranger and a subject of another house, along on a venture that may well cast the future course of events for this entire nation?" "Prince Kahl seems to feel that, ah, I might, because of my experiences in other lands, serve him in some minor capacity of usefulness." Sam chose his words with care. The old man was entirely too observant for his liking. "Kahl is an astute man," said the priest. "However, he is also a hungry man, and such a man on the verge of starvation will eat things that in more normal circumstances he would pass up without so much as a first look. Ideas are much like food, southerner." "The philosophers of my country have a saying, Reverence. 'Man does not live by bread alone.'" "Much wisdom is afloat in the world, disguised in strange ways." With that, the priest went into another coughing spell, after which
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    he refused topick up the threads of the conversation. Carter gave up, and spurred his mount back to his original place in the column. The rest of the trip passed in, for Sam, self-commiseration. The lower the sun sank, the hotter the temperature seemed to climb. Several times he found himself with wineskin raised to lips. The native beverage was little stronger than the plain water he would have preferred, but even so he found himself more than a little tipsy by the time they crested a low range of hills and saw the summer palaces nestled by the side of a lake in the valley below. The column dismounted in an inner courtyard, and Kahl, Carter and the High Priest strode past the protesting chamberlain into the King's private apartments. The King was lying on a couch, eating fruits served by a manservant and listening to poetry being read to him. He looked up when the trio came in. "My son! This is indeed an unexpected honor. What brings you from the city on a day so hot as this one?" He smiled, but his eyes were sharp. "Greetings, Father," said Kahl, bowing low. "I bring you important news from the Council of Priests. Reverence!" "Your Most Graciousness." The old man was already nearly doubled over. When he bowed, Sam half expected to hear his forehead crack the tiles of the floor. "Well, Reverence?" The king accepted another fruit and sucked on it, keeping a watchful eye on his son. He suspects something! Sam thought. The High Priest produced a scroll from his robes and ceremoniously broke the seal. Unrolled, it was short for the dynamite it contained. "Your Most Gracious Person," he read. "The Council of Priests, meet and determined in the Holy Temple of the Sun God this fifth day of
  • 52.
    the seventh moonof the fifty-first year of the reign of Obar, King, announce to all and sundry within the domains of Obar, King, that he has incurred the wrath and displeasure of the Holy God, the Sun God, and henceforth from this day shall no more be known as Obar, King, but as father of Kahl, King." He let the scroll snap back into its cylinder, bowed again, then handed the scroll to Obar. "Your graciousness." Then he turned to Kahl. "Your Most Graciousness." One final return to Obar. "One more message from the Council, your graciousness. They hope you will accept their eternal pleasure and gratitude for the excellence of your reign." All during the reading, Obar had been staring at the High Priest, a ghost smile half-crinkling the corners of his mouth. The half-eaten fruit now fell to the pavement with a sodden plop! He licked his lips. "This.... This is some sort of a joke?" "No joke, Father," said Kahl, a little too heartily for Sam's liking. "But how?" Obar shook his head. "How dare you?" "I'm merely exercising my duty to our subjects, Father. You've grown old. You're no longer capable of carrying out the duties of king." "No." He refused to believe. "You ... you have no right. I am king! How can you.... How can you just walk in here and tell me that I'm not? What gives you this right?" "The same source that made you king in the first place," said Kahl. "The Sun God." "Nonsense! There is no Sun God!" The High Priest gasped and covered his eyes. "Blasphemy!" "Guards!" Obar pried himself up. "Guards! Arrest these maniacs!"
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    Feet clumped outside,then turned into the chamber. Sam relaxed, unaware that he had been holding his breath, knowing that his plans were going through after all. The men who came in were the same who had escorted them from the city, Kahl's own private guards. The captain turned to Kahl and bowed low. "You called, Your Most Graciousness?" "Yes. Take this blithering idiot away." The captain bowed again, and gestured. Two of his men grabbed the former king by the arms and carried him away, screaming. "Ho, southerner!" Kahl sat down on his father's couch and gestured. The manservants had been cowering in the background; they came forward now and touched their foreheads to the ground. Kahl took a fruit and bit into it, letting the juice trickle down his chin. "It worked," said Kahl, swallowing. "By the Sun God, it worked!" He slapped his knee. "I confess, southerner, when first I heard your plans, I thought you daft indeed. But it worked! I'm king!" "I felt certain it would," said Sam, carefully omitting the title of respect. It passed unnoticed. More sure of himself, he continued, "After all, the idea was inherent in the very structure and strictures of your government. Your divine position comes from the Sun God. He should be able to remove it as easily as he grants it." "True," said Kahl. "Howsomever, there shall be some changes made in that respect, once I have consolidated my position. Oh, I delude myself not in thinking that the battle is over, my friend. But the hardest part has been won." "I've been thinking," said Sam, slowly. "Well, keep it not to yourself!" said Kahl. "If any more of your ideas prove as useful to me as the last, then you have a glorious future indeed." "My thoughts are, I'm afraid, roaming rather far afield. But take them for what they might be worth. You are king of this nation now,
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    Kahl; and avery able king you shall be. Why limit the benefits of your rule to this one nation? Why not let the rest of the world know the joys of your rule?" "Ummm?" He squinted, one eye closed. "You think it might work out?" "Why not?" And the Sun God help us all! he added to himself. IV The chambers were crowded as the delegates, alternates and just plain onlookers poured in for the afternoon session of the Central Worlds Conference. Two hours before the meeting was due to begin, an astute member of the press, long used to such functions, observed that there would undoubtedly be a record broken before the day was over. And it was easy to see why: all eyes were trained on the spot low in the tiers with the Ehrlan pennant floating overhead. As yet, the central figure of all the interest had not arrived, although the rest of the Ehrlans were already in their seats and looking anxiously up the aisles towards the bank of elevators. An elevator would open from time to time, to disgorge a few late arrivals. But the man they expected was not yet among them. Below, on the chamber floor, the presiding secretary was mounting to the rostrum and arranging his papers. "Where the devil can he be!" said Citizen Evrett to Citizen Sterm, the second ranking member of the delegation. "God only knows! You don't suppose something has ... happened?" "How could it, here in the heart of the city? He only had to come one block from the hotel. You've been watching too many thrillers, Citizen—I hope!"
  • 55.
    "Well, we haveto do something. The session will be starting in a few minutes. If he isn't here, someone else will have to make the presentation." "Who?" "I don't know. How about you, Citizen?" "Now, wait a minute!" said Evrett. "What's the matter with you, Citizen? You're the logical choice. You rank second in the group." "I wouldn't dare," admitted Sterm. "What if I should bobble things? I'd never be able to live it down. I wouldn't even dare go home. My wife is Lund's half-sister, you know." "I'd forgotten. But somebody has to do it, if he doesn't get here. This is the only opportunity we'll have this decade. If we have to wait another ten years, we may as well forget the matter altogether." "We can't do that!" protested Sterm. "We've worked too long and too hard on this plan. It's the only fair solution anyway. The other worlds will never accept anything else." "Some of them may not want to accept this one, when they hear all of the details. You must admit, we haven't been too easy on some of your fellow members. They.... Here comes Arko. Maybe he found out something." A junior member of the delegation came panting down the aisle, shaking his head when he saw the others' eyes on him. "Sorry, Citizens," he said, as soon as he was within the Ehrlan area. "He left the hotel over an hour ago. No one has seen a sign of him since." "Well, that tears it," said Evrett, just as the presiding secretary struck his gavel on the little wooden block, announcing the opening of the session. "Who has the copy of the plans?"
  • 56.
    "Here," said Sterm,digging the papers from his case. "I'll make the presentation myself...." "Just a minute, Citizen!" said Arko. "Look! Here he comes now!" They all turned and looked at the pudgy figure ambling slowly down the aisle, nodding to greetings that came from all sides. The missing man smiled and shook hands with a couple of the onlookers, before entering the area and taking his seat at the head of the delegation. "Citizen Lund!" cried Sterm, as though speaking to a wayward child. "Where in the name of the Seven Suns have you been?" "Why, it's a beautiful day, Citizens," explained Lund. "I thought I'd take a stroll in the Park. There's quite a large Ehrlan section, you know. Makes one quite homesick to hear the singing flowers serenading the passerby. I can't wait to get back home again." "If you hadn't shown up, none of us would have had the nerve to go home!" "Why, Citizen Sterm!" Lund seemed amused by some private joke. "Whatever made you think I wouldn't be here? This is an important day for Ehrla, remember?" "How could we forget?" said Evrett. The presiding secretary fiddled with his bank of microphones for a moment, in the manner of presiding secretaries throughout history since the invention of the public address system, then turned hopelessly to the technicians. A man came forward, made a simple adjustment, then retreated. The Secretary cleared his throat, sipped at a glass of water and spoke. "The fourth session of the Nineteenth Conference of the Central Worlds is open for business. The afternoon session will be devoted to the presentation and discussion of proposals by the membership. The Recording Secretary will call the roll of delegations." A short stubby man with five o'clock shadow came forward and leaned into the bank of microphones, and yelled: "Accryllia!"
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    Across the chambera man stood up, holding his delegation's microphone. "The grand and sovereign system of Accryllia, long known throughout the galaxy for the excellence of its citrus fruit, the beauty of its maidens, the virtue of its honorable young men ... the grand and sovereign state of Accryllia passes." "Antares!" "Antares passes." "Bodancer!" "The system of Bodancer passes." "Buddington!" "Mr. Secretary, the proud system of Buddington yields to Ehrla!" "Ehrla!" Citizen Lund stood up, unclipped the mike from the railing, smiled around at a few more wellwishers and launched into his speech. "Mr. Secretary! Ehrla wishes to thank the proud and ancient system of Buddington for relinquishing its rightful order in these proceedings, so that Ehrla may present a plan that the citizens of Ehrla feel certain will meet with the full approval of this meeting. "For hundreds of years, the various peoples represented here today have been rightly concerned with the problems of new star systems being developed, new races being assimilated into the federation of free and lawful worlds. These new worlds need guidance, a guidance that only long experience can provide." Evrett looked at Sterm, uneasily. "What is this?" he whispered. "He isn't presenting the plan like this, I hope? He'll alienate half the delegations." "I don't know what he's doing," said Sterm. "I only hope he knows."
  • 58.
    "In the past,"continued Lund, "the various and varied members of this honored organization have provided the same guidance in wise and infinitely proper manner. It is the hope of Ehrla that they will continue to do so in the future. Therefore the ancient and honorable system of Ehrla proposes, to this effect, that the members of this organization continue as they have in the past." Pandemonium was breaking out in scattered sections of the chamber as various delegations realized that they were being snookered by the Ehrlans. Voices rose up here and there, trying to drown out Lund's words. Monitors moved up and down the aisles, trying to quell the disturbances. "Therefore," said Lund, "Ehrla, to the implementation of its plan, announces to this organization that this day they have annexed the systems of Phelimina, Trepidar and Scolatia." He sat down and turned to the rest of his delegation. "Gentlemen," he said, smiling, as he handed a sealed envelope to Sterm, "my resignation." Reilly slumped in his chair with a sigh. The lecture had gone well, but it had ended not a moment too soon to suit him. "I'm growing old," he said, unaware he was speaking out loud. "Pardon, sir?" The regular service Sergeant-Major closed the door and brought over his cup of coffee. "Did you say something, sir?" "What?" Reilly blinked. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all, Sergeant. Just an old man muttering to himself." "Begging the general's pardon, sir, I don't think you're an old man at all. At least, no older than myself." He cocked his head. "Although, to be perfectly honest with both of us, sir, there are times when I just can't seem to keep up with these children they keep sending us nowadays."
  • 59.
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