'Equally,' said the Cetian, 'can the native inhabitants stick it out for three and a half Earth-years more?'
'Yes,' said the Colonel. 'No/'saidLyubov. He had been,watching Davidson's face, and a kind of panic had taken hold of him.
'Colonel?' said Lepennon, politely.
'We've been here four years now and the natives are flourishing. There's room enough and to spare for all of us, as you can see the planet's heavily underpopulated and the Administration wouldn't have cleared it for colonisation purposes if that hadn't been as it is. As for if this entered anyone's head, they won't catch us off guard again, we were erroneously briefed concerning the nature of these natives, but we're fully armed and able to defend ourselves, but we aren't planning any reprisals. That is expressly forbidden in the Colonial Code, -though I don't know what new rules this new government may have added on, but we'll just stick to our own as we have been doing and they definitely negative mass reprisals or genocide. We won't be sending any messages for help out, after all a colony 27 lightyears from home has come out expecting to be on its own and to in fact be completely self- sufficient, and I don't see that the ICD really changes that, due to ship
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and men and material still have to travel at near light speed. We'll just keep on shipping the lumber home, and look out for ourselves. The women are in no danger.'
'Mr. Lyubov?' said Lepennon.
'We've been here four years. I don't know if the native human culture will survive four more. As for the total land ecology, I think Gosse will back me if I say that we've irrecoverably wrecked the native life-systems on one large island, have done great damage on this subcontinent Sornol, and if we go on logging at the present rate, may reduce the major habitable lands to desert within ten years. This isn't the fault of the colony's HQ or Forestry Bureau; they've simply been following a Development Plan drawn up on Earth without sufficient knowledge of the planet to be exploited, its life-systems, or its native human inhabitants.'
'Mr. Gosse?' said the polite voice.
'Well, Raj, you're stretching things a bit. There's no denying that Dump Island, which was overlogged in direct contravention to my recommendations, is a dead loss. If more than a certain percentage of the forest is cut over a certain area, then the fibreweed doesn't reseed, you see, gentlemen, and the fibreweed root-system is the main soil-binder on clear land; without it the soil goes dusty and drifts off very fast under wind-erosion and the heavy rainfall. But I can't agree that our basic directives are at fault, so long as they're scrupulously followed. They were based on care-
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ful study of the planet. We've succeeded, here on Central, by following the Plan: erosion is minimal, and the cleared soil is highly arable. To log off a forest doesn't, after all, mean to make a desert—except perhaps from the point of view of a squirrel. We can't forecast precisely how the native forest life-systems will adapt to a new woodland-prairie-plowland ambiance foreseen in the Development Plan, but we know the chances are good for a large percentage of adaptation and survival.'
'That's what the Bureau of Land Management said about Alaska during the First Famine,' * said Lyubov. His throat had tightened so that his voice came out high and husky. He had counted on Gosse for support.' 'How many Sitka spruce have you seen in your lifetime, Gosse? Or snowy owl? or wolf? or Eskimo? The survival percentage of native Alaskan species in habitat, after 15 years of the Development Program, was .3% It's now zero.—A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for* forest. I submit, Commander Yung, that though the colony may not be in imminent danger, the planet is —' 'Captain Lyubov,' said me old Colonel, 'such submissions are not properly submitted by staff specialist officers to officers of other branches of the service but should rest on the judgment of the senior officers of the Colony, and
I cannot tolerate any further such attempts as this to give advice without previous clearance.' Caught off guard by his own outburst, Lyubov apologised and tried to look calm. If only he didn't lose his temper, if his voice didn't go weak and husky, if he had poise. . . .
The Colonel went on.' 'It appears to us that you made some serious erroneous judgments concerning the peacefulness and non-aggressiveness of the natives here, and because we counted on this specialist description of them as non-aggressive is why we left ourselves open to this terrible tragedy at Smith Camp, Captain Lyubov. So I think we have to wait until some other specialists in hilfs have had time to study them, because evidently your theories were basically erroneous to some extent.'
Lyubov sat and took it. Let the men from the ship see them all passing the blame around like a hot brick: all the better. The more dissension they showed, the likelier were these Emissaries to have them checked and watched over. And he was to blame; he had been wrong. To hell with my selfrespect so long as the forest people get a chance, Lyubov thought, and so strong a sense of this own humiliation and self-sacrifice came over him that tears rose to his eyes.
He was aware that Davidson was watching him. He sat up stiff, the blood hot in his face, his temples drumming. He would not be sneered at by that bastard Davidson. Couldn't Or and Lepennon
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see what kind of man Davidson was, and how much power he had here, while Lyubov's powers, called 'advisory,' were simply derisory? If the colonists were left to go on with no check on them but a super-radio, the Smith Camp massacre would almost certainly become the excuse for systematic aggression against the natives. Bacteriological extermination, most likely. The Shackleton would come back in three and a half or four years to * 'New Tahiti,'' and find a thriving Terran colony, and no more Creechie Problem. None at all. Pity about the plague, we took all precautions required by the Code, but it must have been some kind of mutation, they had no natural resistance, but we did manage to save a group of them by transporting them to the New Falkland Isles in the southern hemisphere and they're doing fine there, all sixty-two of them. ...
The conference did not last much longer. When it ended he stood up and leaned across die table to
Lepennon. 'You must tell the League to do something to save the forests, the forest people,'' he said almost inaudibly, his throat constricted, 'you must, please, you must.'
The Hainishman met his eyes; his gaze was reserved, kindly, and deep as a well. He said nothing.
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Four
IT was unbelievable. They'd all gone insane. This damned alien world had sent them all right round the bend, into byebye dreamland, along with the creechies. He still wouldn't believe what he'd seen at that 'conference' and the briefing after it, if he saw it all over again on film. A Starfleet ship's commander bootlicking two humanoids. Engineers and techs cooing and ooing over a fancy radio presented to them by a Hairy Cetian with a lot of sneering and boasting, as if ICD's hadn't been predicted by Terran science years ago! The humanoids had stolen the idea, implemented it, and called it an 'ansible* so nobody would realize it was just an ICD. But the worst part of it had been the conference, with that psycho Lyubov raving and crying, and Colonel Dongh letting him do it, letting him insult David-son and HQ staff and the whole Colony; and all the time the two aliens sitting and grinning, the
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little grey ape and the big white fairy, sneering at humans.
It had been pretty bad. It hadn't got any better since the Shackieton left. He didn't mind being sent down to New Java Camp under Major Muhamed. The Colonel had to discipline him; old Ding Dong might actually be very happy about that fire-raid he'd pulled in reprisal on Smith Island, but the raid had been a breach of discipline and he had to reprimand Davidson. All right, rules of the game. But what wasn't in the rules was this stuff coming over that overgrown TV set they called the ansible—their new little tin god at HQ.
Orders from the Bureau of Colonial Administration in Karachi: Restrict Terran-Athshean contact to occasions arranged by Athsheans. In other words you couldn't go into a creechie warren and round up a work-force any more. Employment of volunteer labor is not advised; employment of forced labor is forbidden. More of same. How the hell were they supposed to get the work done? Did Earth want this wood or didn't it? They were still sending the robot cargo ships to New Tahiti, weren't they, four a year, each carrying about 30 million new-dollars worth of prime lumber back to Mother Earth. Sure the Development people wanted those millions. They were businessmen. These messages weren't coming from them, any fool could see that.
The colonial status of World 41—why didn't they call it New Tahiti any more?—is under con-
