“Couldn’t help myself.” He smiled as he started to reach for my hand but stopped, aware of the eyes and the ears still in the room. He stood and went to the counter where B’Oag stood. “We’d like another pitcher of cider, Oastkeeper. Is there a heating coil in the envoy’s room? If so, we’ll talk out our business there, rather than ruin your trade for the whole evening.”
“I thank you for your consideration,” said B’Oag, glancing around his nearly empty oasthall. He turned to his son. “Ojlin, be sure the steam coil is turned on full in the envoy’s room, and take up a pitcher of cider.”
“That’s all right, Oastkeeper,” Fernwold murmured. “Here’s your pay for our dinner tonight and for the room. I’ll carry the cider and set the coil myself.”
B’Oag, bewildered at the largess on the counter before him, made no objection to this at all.
I Am Ongamar/on Cantardene
On Cantardene, years had passed since I, that is, Miss Ongamar, had witnessed the sacrifice on the funeral hill. I had fed the thing with parts of that happening, fed it to such satiety that it hadn’t bothered me for several days. Then came rumors of the population crest on Earth and the accompanying restoration of the planet, fed day after day by statistics showing that Earth’s population was actually and consistently falling. Within a century, so it was whispered, the population would be reduced from eighteen billion to the tenth of that advised by Dominion as a sensible maximum human population for the foreseeable future. On hearing of this, the K’Famir threatened to sue for damages in the Interstellar Trade Organization. If Earth’s population fell, there would not be enough surplus humans to provide slave labor, and the K’Famir had contracted for slave labor!
Responding to the suit, the Dominion announced that humans would continue to be shipped as bondslaves into both Omniont and Mercan areas of influence for the term of the contract, which was fifty Earth years. The Mercan Combine, and its K’Famir representatives, immediately accused the Dominion of restraint of trade and threatened various unpleasant consequences, such as tariffs, raids on colony worlds, and the like if the downward trend were not immediately reversed. To all of these the Dominion replied that Dominion business was Dominion business, not subject to Combine or Federation demands.
The matter had then been appealed to the ISTO, who referred it to the IG Court of Justice, where the Dominion view had recently been unanimously sustained, the court holding that habitable planets, being few and extremely valuable, were more in need of protection than was the provision of cheap labor on planets with an enormous population of an idle elite, and further, that the welfare of the planet must always take precedence over the greediness of its inhabitants or, in this case, their purchasers; and, yet further, that a decline in the population of a previously highly proliferative species, if indeed this had happened, was more a matter for celebration than harassment.
The most recently circulated rumor was that Dominion Central Authority had recently disappeared from its usual seat on Mars and left no word as to its whereabouts, thus forestalling forcible retaliation by the Combine. Dominion had, at least for the time being, vanished in the smoke.
“What will we do for fitters?” Lady Ephedra demanded. “All our fitters are Earthian slaves. Tell me, Miss Ongamar! You are Earthian! What will we do for fitters?”
“I suppose you will have to pay them, madam,” I said, through a mouth full of pins. “There are always Earthians willing to work if the pay is good.”
“Pay fitters?” Lady Ephedra was shocked into silence. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Pay workers? Not for the next few lifetimes, at any rate,” I heard a K’Famir crew boss telling his friend. “They’re still bringing shiploads of them out from Earth. By the time we’ve used them all up, the Earth colonies will be overpopulating, just as Earthians always do, and we’ll buy up the excess. Just wait and see!”
I acknowledged to myself that it was selfish to feel so, but I was grateful that Earth had been struck by salvation, despite itself! Not that Earthians appreciated that fact, according to the K’Famir, though that may have been wishful thinking. All this babble continued to feed it, day after day, and thankful as I was, I detected something worrisome in the thing’s appetite, a nervous undercurrent that reminded me of a childhood time when I had stuffed myself with candy, each mouthful creating a need for another mouthful, so that no amount of the sweetness satisfied me. I had been very sick, very sorry, and so the thing in its stone closet seemed almost to sicken as it gorged on the talk about Earth.
Could one imagine that it felt anxiety? Or, more likely, that the creature or organism that directed the ghyrm and its appetites was feeling anxiety. Something I might turn to my advantage? Now that my contract as a fitter was drawing to a close, was there a way I could escape from it? Though the years on Cantardene were longer than Earth-years, I believed that less than half a year remained before my official enslavement would be over. I could look forward to being taken to one of the colony planets, and I had applied to go to Chottem, with B’yurngrad as a second choice. Even Thairy or Tercis would be acceptable. I had been twelve when I arrived on Cantardene, twenty-two when Adille had died, I was almost thirty-seven now, actually older than that, if one figured in the relative length of the years. If I could leave the planet without the thing, distance would surely attenuate its influence on me, or so I prayed. If I could not escape it, would it expect transport to an Earthian colony? I had not, myself,
