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This section cannot end on that question. There is more. But you do not need to hear Adama's voice to understand it. I will tell the tale briefly:207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgBxw6KnduQ
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Adama was accepted as a postulant in the Benevolent Order. I have the notes made by the Magistra who accepted him and that lady comments on the fire that seemed to burn within him. She mentions his quickness and the candor with which he confessed. He talked about his home far, the man he had killed, life in prison and the vision he'd seen. The Magistra had some doubts about Adama mainly, it seems, concerned with his youth but she was also taken aback by his strangeness. The Benevolent Order absorbed the fact that Adama had killed a fellow mortal. They absorbed it in the sense that they did not hold that a man's Life should be forever marred by one mistake. In their view, as is made clear by the Magistra's notes, Adama had accepted his crime and was set on a new path. Was it not true that the gentle St. Dionysos himself had once aspired to be a warrior? And was not Ta once Sa and the passionate Ustine of Cortus a philanderer before a Saint? Most men seem to need a shock to push them into their spiritual vocation. Even so Adama was watched closely especially as he took the sacred oath of the Benevolent Order, vowing to protect Life.207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFQFYh00Wxo
Adama went to the training school on Assi Central and there trained as a pilot. He specialized also in land contact. This means that in the course of a Mercy Mission he was one of the pilots who physically went to the surface of a planet either to pick up or to deliver a sick or dying life-form. He was not a contact specialist, but he showed himself to possess contact skills. That is rare and special. It was in this part of his training that he learned the stealth I mentioned when Serpentine came a-calling.207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYmCWQ0xVH4
When Adama was convalescing in Serpentine's Garden he would sometimes sit for centons talking about the days when he was a contact pilot. Extraordinary stories. Occasionally a colleague from those days would visit the Great Caprican Monastery and the two of them would sit together, merry as space pirates, swapping yarns while the sun went down.207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdrKY9nWSUY
Adama relished excitement and difference. He liked the glamour of being a pilot and he had the energy of two men when it came to dealing with hardship. He must have found the simple life of Shuttle Pilot boring, despite the fact that he rationalized his experience as necessary servitude. The trouble was that he saw himself, as he states, as someone special. That need not be a bad thing in itself for it seems to me that individual human beings should see themselves as special: they are unique lifeforms. But Adama believed he had a destiny to fulfill. Thus in his mind, the strange event when he was a child and was saved after falling near the shore, and the fact of his selection to command the Galactica, were linked. Destiny, if you prefer.207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUMsCOCfRzK
We can say of his marriage to Ila, the Callrine woman, that it satisfied his lust for the curious and his desire to serve. He discovered the peaceful family man within the brave daredevil. Ila satisfied (say) 90% of him.207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLaJejIUJTZ
This story is about the remaining 10%.207Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyvKQUEUa5C
