Delegate Anse was unhappy, and Delegate Anse had good cause to be. This had been going on under his eyes and he had never seen it. Others, elsewhere, had suspected something of it — wherefore Jon-Joras arriving in all innocence to make arrangements for Por-Paulo’s hunt; Por-Paulo all the while acting on behalf of the Confidential Chiefs and their suspicions — but Anse had had no suspicions. It was well enough to say that this had all been going on for a long, long time before he had arrived to take up his residence on ConfedBase. This was true, and it was also true that in adhering to the policy of “non-interference in local ways, rules, and customs” he had only been carrying out Confederation practice. The truth is not always an absolute defense. Anse had been ignorant of what had been going on, and he ought not to have been ignorant. It is one thing to avoid gross interference and it was another thing entirely not even to know that something was going on which he might (and, then, might not) have been justified in not interfering with.
Anse had a problem. But in this particular respect it was all Anse’s problem.
“Companies have become corrupt before,” Por-Paulo said, in a sort of growl. “The temptation is always there, and when the place it operates in is both distant and primitive, the temptation is even greater. I don’t know if we can stick the whole Hunt outfit with responsibility for this rotten local scene. It may really be that the rest of it knows nothing about the local branch working hand and glove with the Kar-chee in keeping people out of The Bosky. Not much doubt as to why they were doing it, I suppose?”
Anse, still musing over his personal problem, had nothing to say. But Jon-Joras had. “Not much doubt in my mind,” he said. “If The Bosky had been wide open, the plebs — Doghunters or Free Farmers, call them what you like — the poor; there — they’d have abandoned the city-states in large numbers. And rightly so. Now, of course, the Gentlemen don’t want that. Nor does the Hunt Company. They want the rotten, picturesque pattern preserved, never mind at what terrible cost to the majority of the population. They want the Gentlemen on their estates and the archers and the bannermen and the musics and the beaters and the whole archaic and hypocritical rest of it. And they want it cheap, too. Package deals for rich officials and executives. They couldn’t have it at the price they want, which is the current price — the current price as paid by the Hunt Company, that is; if they raise their mark-up, that’s the Hunt Company’s business — but they couldn’t have it at the present price if the population dropped because of a migration into The Bosky. Sooner or later, those who’d be left would realize that there are no longer a hundred men eager and waiting and ready to step into their shoes. And they’d set a better sort of price on themselves and their services. They might even say, The Hell with it! and dispense with offering their services altogether.”
He pushed away his breakfast. His appetite was dulled, and he thought of the gray-haired “chick-boys” and the old “marky” with his fingers eaten into twisted stumps from decades of smearing acid into X-marks so that rich men could murder dragons and go and boast of it; this thought did nothing to restore his appetite. “I don’t know how long this blockade of The Bosky has been going on. I don’t know who it was who first got in touch with the Kar-chee and started it going. Or if there were more Kar-chee then and this is the last, or — well, any of that. It brings up a thousand questions. Was there a colony of them left behind? Do they live long, very, very long? I don’t know. Maybe with Dr. Cannatin working on the communications, we’ll be able to find out. Ohh, and — I did promise, while the Old Man was still alive (and there’s another strike against the Hunt Company, another black, black mark: giving those interpreters over to a life-long exile and a living death there. Locked up with beings so alien that gradually they became all but de-humanized. Why! This last one, Old Man, I mean, he had been brought all the way from Dondon-oluc! So someone there must have known about what was going on here…)
“But, as I say, I did promise that the Kar-chee would be taken back to the Kar-chee worlds, to the Ring Stars. I hope that my promise will be kept, sir?”
Por-Paulo shifted in his seat and nodded. Then he blew out his cheeks. “I don’t at the moment know how, boy. And its dragon, too? But I’m sure that it can be done. And so it will. Because — What—?”
“Oh,” said Jon-Joras, “the thought just came to me. It’s that the Hunt Company is the biggest rogue dragon of them all. What’s to be done about that?”
He had some notions, and he expressed them, about annulling its charters and disqualifying its officials. Por-Paulo grunted, muttered something about baby and bath-water. The best thing, he thought, was to do nothing and allow nothing to be done. Just let the word get around that the dragons in The Bosky were harmless, and nature — human nature — would take its course. “You just stated rather clearly what it was that the Hunt Company didn’t want to happen. Well, then. We’ve drawn their teeth. The mere fact that we know and that they’ll know that we know will see to that. And all those things will just go ahead and happen. And we’ll just let them. The Company and their gentlemanly allies will hurt. All right. Let them. They’ll adjust. It won’t happen overnight.”
The flower-scented, salt-scented breeze came in through the screens. Jon-Joras moved and stretched. He had a quick picture of sandy beeches and surfy waters and perhaps, probably, why not? female company. But first. “And meanwhile, sir? What of all those mismarked dragons wandering around? And all the trained rogues? Are we to allow the hunts to go on when they might turn into massacres? In a way, I suppose, we could say, if any over-ripe Commissioners get smeared all over Belroze Wood that it serves them right. Eh?”
His father pulled his nose and pulled his chin and said Mmph a few times. “Well, what do you suggest, damn it?” he demanded, after a while.
Promptly, Jon-Joras said, “That we not do nothing. That we do something. A ten-year moratorium, at least, on hunting. That will not only allow the marked and mis-marked dragons to die off, it will let the Company and the Gentlemen do their hurting now. That way the pain will fall on those who deserve it and not on their children and successors. In fact, I’m not sure that it might not be a bad idea to send trained crews to comb the woods and blow the heads off everything over hatchling size. That way would make sure. And I certainly wouldn’t let the movement into The Bosky and beyond go on haphazardly. What’s to stop some Gentleman who’s shrewd enough to see the handwriting on the wall from moving in there himself? With his servants and his little private army, I mean, and carving himself out another little feudal empire and getting ready to start the whole thing all over again?”
Again Por-Paulo grunted and fingered his face. And now Delegate Anse unexpectedly had something to say. Confederation, he suggested, could do more than continue its passive role. This was after all, Prime World, the birthworld of mankind. Confederation had many debts to pay here, and this was an excellent place to begin. “We have ample experience in helping settlements get started in proper fashion,” he pointed out. “We needn’t let this one go higgledy-pig-geldy, root-hog-or-die, and devil-take-the-hindmost. We can help those who want to move to help themselves in the most efficient fashion. And the same goes for those who want to stay. In fact, I rather think we’d better. There must be lots of the Hue sort around… men whose sufferings have unhinged them to the point where they’d rather burn the house down than see it cleaned up. I rather think we’d all rather see it cleaned up.”