doing light work; some of these 'breeders' bore a baby annually for twenty or more years.
Rentspeople: On Werel, all assets were individually owned. (The Corporations of Yeowe changed this practice; the Corporations owned the slaves, who had no private masters.)
In Werelian cities, assets traditionally lived in their owners' households as domestics. During the last millennium it became increasingly common for owners of superfluous assets to rent them to businesses and factories as skilled or unskilled labor. The owners or shareholders of a company bought and owned individual assets individually; the company rented the assets, controlled their use, and shared the profits. An owner could live on the rental of two skilled assets. Thus rentsmen and rentswomen became the largest group of assets in all cities and many towns. Rentspeople lived in 'union compounds' — apartment houses supervised by hired gareot Bosses. They were required to keep curfew and check in and out.
(Note the difference between Werelian rentspeo-ple, rented out by their owner, and the far more autonomous Yeowan freedpeople, slaves who paid their owner a tithe or tax on freely chosen work, called 'freedom rental.' One of the early objectives of the Hame, the Voe Dean underground asset lib-
a 289 a
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
eration group, was to institute 'freedom rental' on
Werel.)
Most union compounds and all city households were gender-divided into azade and beza, but some private owners and some companies allowed their assets or rentspeople to live as couples, though not to marry. Their owners could separate them for any reason at any time. The mother's owner owned the children of any such asset couple.
In the conventional compound, heterosexual access was controlled by the owners, the Bosses, and the grandmothers. People who 'jumped the ditch' did so at their peril. The owner myth-ideal was of total separation of male and female assets, with the Bosses managing selective breeding, chosen stud asset males servicing the females at optimal intervals to produce the desired number of young. Female assets were mainly concerned, on exploitive farms, to avoid undesired breeding and yearly pregnancy. In the hands of benevolent owners, the grandmothers and cutfrees often could protect girls and women from rape, and even allow some affectional pairing. But bonding was discouraged both by the owners and the grandmothers;
and no form of slave marriage was admitted by law or custom on Werel.
Religions
The worship of Tual, a Kwan Yin-like maternal deity of peace and forgiveness, was the state religion of Voe Deo. Philosophically, Tual is seen as the most important incarnation of Ama the Increate or Creator Spirit. Historically, she is an amalgam of many local and nature deities, and locally often refragments into multiplicity. Nationally, enforcement of the national
•rAa 290 A-f
Notes on Werel and Yeowe
religion tended to accompany Voe Dean hegemony in other countries, although the religion is not inherently a proselytising or aggressive one. Tualite priests can and do hold high office in the government. Class:
Tualite images and worship were maintained by the owners in all slave compounds, both on Werel and Yeowe. Tualism was the owners' religion. The assets' practice of it was enforced, and while including
aspects of Tualite myth and worship in their rituals, most assets were Kamyites. By considering Kamye as 'the Bondsman' and a lesser aspect of Ama, the Tualite priesthood included and tolerated Kamyite practice (which had no official clergy) among slaves and soldiers (most veots were Kamyites).
The Arkamye or Life of Kamye the Swordsman (Kamye is also the Herdsman, a beastmaster deity, and the Bondsman, having been long in service to Lord Nightfall): a warrior epic, adopted about 3,000 years ago by the assets, pretty much worldwide, as the sourcebook of their own religion. It cultivates such warrior/slave virtues as obedience, courage, patience, and selflessness, as well as spiritual independence, a stoical indifference to the things of this world, and a passionate mysticism: reality is to be won only by letting the seeming-real go. Assets and veots include Tual in their worship as an incarnation of Kamye, himself an incarnation of Ama the Increate. The 'stages of life' and 'going into silence' are among the mystical ideas and practices shared by Kamyites and Tualites.
The First Envoy (EY 1724) was met with extreme suspicion. After a closely guarded deputa-
a-.® 291 -i-®
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
tion was allowed to land from the ship Hugum, alliance was rejected. Aliens were forbidden to enter the solar system by the Government of Voe Deo and its allies. Werel, led by Voe Deo, then entered on a rapid, competitive development of space technology and intensification of all techno-industrial development- For many decades, Voe Dean government, industry, and military were driven by a paranoid expectation of the armed return of conquering Aliens. It was this development that led within only thirteen years to the colonisation of Yeowe.
During the next three centuries the Ekumen made contact at intervals with Werel. An exchange of information was initiated at the insistence of the University of Bambur, joined by a consortium of universities and research institutions. Finally, after over three hundred years, the Ekumen was permitted to
send a few Observers. During the War of Liberation on Yeowe, the Ekumen was invited to send Ambassadors to Voe Deo and Bambur, and later Envoys to Gatay, the Forty States, and other nations. For some time nonobservance of the Arms Convention kept Werel from joining the Ekumen, despite pressure from Voe Deo on the other states, which insisted on retaining their weaponry. After the abrogation of the Arms Convention, Werel joined the Ekumen, 359 years after first contact and 14 years after the end of the War of Liberation.
As a property of the Corporations, having no government of its own, Yeowe Colony was considered by its Werelian owners to be ineligible for Ekumenical membership. The Ekumen continued to question the right of the Four Corporations to ownership of the planet and its people. During the last
<i*>® 292 3-f®
Notes on Werel and Yeowe
years of the War of Liberation, the Freedom Party invited Ekumenical observers to Yeowe, and the establishment of a regular Envoy there coincided with the end of the War. The Ekumen helped Yeowe negotiate an end to the economic control of the planet by the Corporations and the Government of Voe Deo. The World Party nearly succeeded in driving the Aliens as well as the Werelians off the planet, but when that movement collapsed, the Ekumen supported the Provisional Government until elections could be held. Yeowe joined the Ekumen in Year of Liberation 11, three years before Werel did.
Yeowe
Natural History
The third planet out from its sun, Yeowe has a warm-moderate climate with little seasonal variation.
Bacterial life is ancient and of normally vast complexity and adaptive variety. A number of microscopic marine Yeowan species are defined as animals;
otherwise, the native biota of the planet were plants.
On land there was a great variety of complex species, photosynthetic or saprophytic. Most were sessile, with some 'creepers,' colonial or individual
plants capable of slow movement. Trees were the principal large life-form. South Continent was almost entirely tropical jungle/temperate rain forest from the coastlines up to timberline in the Polar Range and to the taiga of the Antarctic Circle. Great Continent, forested in the extreme north and south, was a steppe and savannah landscape at the higher central altitudes, with immense areas of bog, marsh,
•sAs 293 a.s
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
and sea marsh on the coastal plains. In the absence of pollinating animals, the plants had many devices to use wind and rain to cross-fertilise and propagate:
explosive seeds, winged seeds, seednets that catch the wind and float for hundreds of miles, waterproof spores, 'burrowing' seeds, 'swimming' seeds, and plants with mobile vanes, cilia, etc.
The seas, which are warm and relatively shallow, and the vast sea marshes nourish a huge variety of sessile and floating plants, on the order of plank-
ton, algaes, seaweeds, coral-type and sponge-type plants forming permanent constructions (mostly of
