The establishment of Confederation, and a belated recollection of and attention to the first home of man, found scarcely a remnant of the old status still remaining. Gone were the great cities, gone the great states and leagues of states. There might have remained even less than a little, had not the Kar-chee been perhaps more interested in the sea than in the land. In response to impelling plans and reasons known only to themselves, masses of land had been blasted and submerged; others had been heaved up out of the primordial muck. Rivers had been changed in their courses, mountains laid low, mountains raised high.
The old maps were of limited use, where useful at all; and Jon-Joras, gazing at the slow-turning, giant model globe in the lobby of the Lodge, was obliged to forget his ancient history. That done, it was no great feat to locate Peramis, Sartor, Hathis and Drogue, the four city-states which — nominally, at least — divided between themselves the land-mass (more than a peninsula, less than a subcontinent) most frequented these days by those bound on dragon-hunts. And beyond was the uninhabited terra incognita called “The Bosky.”
Aëlorix of Aëlorix had been right enough in his way. Dragon might perhaps not be the deadliest game, but they were the most prestigious. In ancient legends, preserved in richest form in the worlds of the Inner Circle, those first settled in the great wave of expansion, there were references to dragons. They did not seem to fit the present-day creatures at all. One theory had it that the dragons of the mythic cycles had retreated deep into forests and jungles (or, perhaps, the depths of the seas) and so escaped the attention of reputable historians, evolution… mutation… accounting for the apparent changes. Had the rupturing of the deeps, perhaps, brought them forth again? Jon-Joras wondered.
Others would insist that the Kar-chee brought the beasts with them, pointing to the existence in all their ruined “castles” of great sunken amphitheaters which the remnants of Man on Earth united in calling “dragon-pits.”
One thing alone seemed fairly certain despite all the several theories: Before the Kar-chee came, if there were dragons on Prime World, no one knew of it. And by the time the Kar-chee ceased to trouble, the presence of the dragons was one of the great realities of Terrene life. Somewhere, somewhen during the Kar-chee Reign and the chaos, the mystique of the dragon-hunts had developed. And by now, centuries after, it was the only resource of the despoiled planet. Whatever the explanation, it was all very strange, indeed.
“Odd to think we all came from there,” someone, pointing, said over Jon-Joras’s shoulder as he stood musing before the circling globe.
He nodded, half-turned. It was the Confederation archaeologist, a certain Dr. Cannatin, whom he had, from time to time, heard lamenting in bar-lounge or Lodge-lobby the effort involved (and the money!) in dredging up a single artifact of the ancient days — or rejoicing on the latest one he had nevertheless managed to find.
“How is your new dig coming along?” Jon-Joras asked politely.
Cannatin, middle-aged, and fat, and depilated according to the custom of his native world (wherever it was), looked rather like an ambulatory egg. His round mouth made a grimace. “Hardly getting anywhere at all. The plebs… that’s not what they call them here, is it? No matter. Dog-robbers? Doghunters. Free farmers, as they like to be called — hard people to deal with. They would rather dig potatoes than build sites. Hunt ruins? Rather hunt dogs. And I have to pay through the nose when I can get them, too.” He sighed.
“I’m thinking of giving up around here, setting up a base camp on the far side of the river, near Hathis.”
Jon-Joras asked if the lower class in Hathis was more amenable to archaeology, and Cannatin shook his naked head. “Not thinking of them, I’m thinking of the nomads. The tribespeople. There’s a few of their main trails converge over that way. Now, these people going wandering in and out and all around. They must know of sites nobody’s even heard of. So I’m moving. And soon—”
The sudden note of urgency surprised Jon-Joras, but before he could inquire, Cannatin, with a mumbled excuse, hurried away. Jetro Yi was not at the Lodge, so Jon-Joras thought he would look for him at the Hunt Company’s offices, seeing more of the “state” en route. A number of pony-traps in the road outside the spacious lodge grounds solicited his custom, but he preferred to walk. Usually the streets in this part of Peramis town were quiet, with few pedestrians; but scarcely had Jon-Joras crossed through the park at the next crossroads when he began to hear crowd noises.
A bend in the stately, tree-lined promenade brought him in sight of the throng, moiling around on the wide mall in front of an important-looking building with a white plastered portico. He had seen its picture in the Company’s travel brochures, reduced to miniature, clients not being much interested in the local architecture; but for a moment he could not recall what it was… the State Hall?… the Chamber of the Board of Syndics?
A blind beggar squatting on the pave lifted his head as Jon-Joras approached. “No room in the Court, your Big,” he croaked, raising his cupped palms and asking a donation. Jon-Joras gave him something and, wondering at the crowd, asked what was going on in court. The beggar canted his head as if to assure himself that no one else was near, said, “Ah, your Big, it’s that dirty Doghunter what killed the Gentleman. For why? Claims the Hunts people trampled his ’tato patch. Course they paid ’n for it, always does. But them Doghunters is mean greedy, never gives nothing to a blind man, wanted more, he done. Gentleman gives him a piece of stick to bite on, they fights and he kills ’n. Terrible thing, your Big…”
Jon-Joras left him whining and walked on to the mall. A small group of Gentlemen were standing close together in earnest talk; one of them, with repeated angry gestures towards a larger clot of plebs, seemed urging some sort of action. Jon-Joras’s path led him athwart the larger group, and he paused a ways away to listen.
“—dirt, less than dirt,” a burly man in a greasy buckskin which left half his broad, hairy chest exposed, was saying. “First comes their own kind, then comes their bloody dragons, then comes their damned servants what kisses their backsides, and then comes their pishy customers from out-worlds. Out-worlds! Did out-worlds help us when the Kar-chee come?” His hearers growled and shifted. “And as for us, ‘Less than dirt,’ I says. We is good enough to hunt the wild dogs in the woods to keep things safe, but no more’n that. ‘Free farmers,’ we calls ourselfs. Hah! How free c’n we be when our fields what we plants with sweat is no more to them than a path to run on or a wastegrounds to tromple on?”
Times there are when the much goes slow and the little, quick; but now it was that the much went quick — and quicker yet. A cry echoed down the mall, all heads turned, nearer, near, from the Court: “Guilty! Guilty! Death!” A shout, fiercely triumphant, from the Gentlemen — the man in the buckskin hurled himself upon them — in an instant the mall was a mass of bloody turmoil into which Jon-Joras felt himself carried away. He struck out, was struck back at.