silicon), and unique plants such as the 'sailers' and the 'mirrorweed.' Vast connected 'lily mats' were harvested by the Corporations so efficiently as to render the species extinct within thirty years.
Heedless introduction of Werelian plant and animal species killed off or crowded out about 3/5 of the native species, aided by industrial pollution and war. The owners brought in deer, hunting dogs, hunting cats, and greathorses for their hunts. The deer thrived and destroyed a great deal of native habitat. Most introduced animal species failed in the long run. Werelian animal survivors other than humankind on Yeowe include:
birds (domestic fowl brought in as game or as poultry; songbirds were released, and a few species adapted and survived) foxdogs and spotted cats (pets) cattle (domestic; many wild in abandoned districts)
deer (wild, called fendeer, adapted to the marsh
regions)
hunting cats (feral, rare, in marshlands)
s-s.® 294 s»a>
Notes on Werel and Yeowe
The introduction of some fish species in the rivers was disastrous to the native plant life, and what fish survived were destroyed by poison. All attempts to introduce ocean fish failed.
Horses were slaughtered during the War of Liberation, as symbolic possessions of the owners;
none remain.
The Colony: The Settlement
Early Werelian rockets reached Yeowe 365 years BP. Exploration, mapping, and prospecting were eagerly pursued. The Yeowe Mines Corporation, owned principally by Voe Dean investors, was given sole right to prospecting. Within twenty-five years, larger and more efficient ships made mining profitable, and the YMC began regular shipments of
slaves to Yeowe and ores and minerals to Werel.
The next major company established was the Second Planet Forest Woods Corporation, cutting and shipping Yeowan timber to Werel, where industrial and population expansion had reduced forests drastically.
Exploitation of the oceans became a major industry by the end of the first century, the Yeowan Shippers Corporation harvesting the lily mats with immense profit. Having used up that resource, the YSC turned to the exploitation and processing of other sea species, especially the oil-rich bladder-weed.
During the Colony's first century, the Agricultural Plantation Company of Yeowe began systematic culture of introduced grains and fruits and of native species such as the oe-reed and the pini fruit. The warm, equable climate of most of Yeowe and the
,-rtea 295 A-s
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
absence of insect and animal pests (maintained by scrupulous quarantine regulations) permitted an enormous expansion of agriculture.
The individual enterprises of these four Corporations and the regions where they operated, whether in mining, forestry, mariculture, or agriculture, were catted 'Plantations.'
The four great Corporations maintained absolute control over their respective products, though there were over the decades many battles (legal and physical) over conflicting rights to the exploitation of an area. No rival company was able to break the Corporations' monopoly, which had the full, active support — military, political, and scientific — of the Government of Voe Deo, a major beneficiary of Corporation profits. The principal investment of capital in the Corporations was always from the government and capitalists of Voe Deo. A powerful country at the time of the Settlement, after three centuries of the Colony Voe Deo was by far the richest country on Werel, dominating and controlling all the others. Its control over the Corporations on Yeowe, however, was nominal. It negotiated with
them as with sovereign powers.
Population and Slavery
For the first century only male slaves were exported to Yeowe Colony by the Corporations, whose monopoly on slave shipment, via the Interplanet Cartel, was complete. In the first century, a high proportion of these slaves were from the poorer nations of Werel; later, as slave-breeding for the Yeowan market became profitable, more of them were sent from Bambur, the Forty States, and Voe Deo.
af»@ 296 •s''®
Notes on Werel and Yeowe
During this period, the population grew to about 40,000 of the owner class (80% male) and about 800,000 slaves (all male).
There were several experimental 'Emigration Towns,' settlements of gareots (owner-class people without slaves), mostly mitts and service communities. These settlements were first tolerated, then abolished, by the Corporations, who induced the
Werelian governments to limit emigration to Corporation personnel. The gareot settlers were shipped back to Werel and the services they had set up were staffed by slaves. The 'middle class' of townsfolk and tradespeople on Yeowe thus came to be composed of semiindependent slaves (freedpeo-ple) rather than gareots and rentspeople as on Werel.
Prices on bondsmen kept going up, as the Mining and Agricultural Corporations in particular squandered slave life (a mine slave during the first century was expected to have a 'worklife' of five years). Individual owners increasingly often smuggled in female slaves as sexual and domestic servants. The Corporations, under these pressures, changed their rule and permitted the importation of bondswomen (238 BP).
At first bondswomen, considered as breeding stock, were restricted to the compounds on the plantations. As their usefulness for all kinds of work became evident, these restrictions were eased by the owners on most plantations. Slave women, however, had to fit into the century-old social system of slave men, which they entered as inferiors, slaves' slaves.
On Werel. all assets were personally owned,
A-e' 297 a-s
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
except the makils (bought from their owners by the Entertainment Corporation), and asset-soldiers (bought from their owners by the government). On Yeowe, all slaves were Corporation-owned, bought by the Corporation from their Werelian owners. No slave on Yeowe could be privately owned. No slave on Yeowe could be freed. Even those brought in as personal servants, such as maids of plantation owners' wives, had their ownership transferred to the Corporation that owned the plantation.
Though manumission was not allowed, as the slave population increased very rapidly, causing a surplus on many plantations, the status of freedper-son became increasingly common. Freedpeople found work for hire or independently and 'rented freedom,' paying one or more Corporations monthly or annually whatever fee (usually about 50%) was levied on them as a tax on their independent work. Most freedpeople worked as sharecroppers, shopkeepers, or mill hands, and in service industries;
during the Colony's third century a professional class of freedpeople became well established in the cities,
By the end of the third century, when the population growth had slowed somewhat, the total population of Yeowe was about 450 million; the proportion of owners to slaves was less than one to one hundred. About half the slave population were freedpeople. (The population 20 years after Liberation was again 450 million, all free.)
On the plantations, the original all-male social structure set the pattern of slave society. Work gangs early developed into social groups (called gangs), and gangs into tribes, each with a hierarchy of power:
a-*® 298 A-s
Notes on Werel and Yeowe
Tribesmen under a slave Headman or Chief, under the Boss, under the owner, under the Corporation. Bonding, competition, rivalry, homosexual privileges, and adoptive lineages became institutionalised and often elaborately codified. The only safety for a slave was membership in a tribe and strict adherence to its rules. Slaves sold away from their plantation had to serve as slaves' slaves, often for years, before they were accepted into membership of the local tribe.
As women slaves were brought in, most of them became tribal, as well as Corporate, property. The Corporations encouraged this. It was to their advantage to have slave women controlled by the tribes, as the tribes
