“I know the regulations. You’re getting your grain from Outside trade. Outsiders.”
“We’ve held off rationing. We’ve kept the peace. We’re able to feed everyone.”
“We’ve tried to find other alternatives.” Merek Eln said. “We can’t find surplus anywhere within the Reach. We can’t get it from Inside. We’ve tried, Kont’ Raen.”
“Your trip to Meron.”
“Part of it, yes. That. A failure.”
“Ser Eln, there’s one obvious question. If you’re buying Outsider grain . . . what do you use to pay for it?”
It was a question perhaps rash to ask, on a beta vessel, surrounded by them, in descent to a wholly beta world.
“Majat,” one of the others said hoarsely, with a nervous shift of the eyes in Warrior’s direction. “Majat jewels. Softwares.”
“Kontrin-directed?”
“We—pad out what the Cerdin labs send. Add to the shipments.”
“Kontrin-directed?”
“Our own doing,” the man beside him said. “Kontrin, it’s not forbidden. Other hive-worlds do it.”
“I know it’s legal; don’t cite me regulations.”
“We appealed for help. We still abide by the law. We would do nothing that’s not according to the law.”
According to the law . . . and disruptive of the entire trade balance if done on a large scale: the value of the jewels and the other majat goods was upheld by deliberate scarcity.
“You’re giving majat goods to Outsiders to feed a world,” Raen said softly. “And what do majat get? Grain? Azi? You have that arrangement with them?”
“Our population,” sera Kest said faintly, “even now is not large—compared to inner worlds. It’s only large for our capacity to produce. Our trade is azi. We hope for Kontrin understanding. For licenses to export.”
“And the hives assist you in this crisis—sufficient to feed all the excess of your own population, and the excess of azi, and themselves. Your prices to the majat for grain and azi must be exorbitant, sera Kest.”
“They—need the grain. They don’t object.”
“Do you know,” Raen said, ever so softly, “I somehow believe you, sera Kest.”
There was a sudden stomach-wrenching shift as the shuttle powered into entry alignment. They were downward bound now, and the majat moved, boomed a protest at this unaccustomed sensation; then it froze again, to the relief of the betas and the guard azi.
“We’re doing an unusual entry,” Raen observed, feeling the angle.
“We don’t cross the High Range. Fad weather.”
She looked at the beta who had said that, and for that moment her pulse quickened—a sense that, indeed, she had to accept their truths for the time. She said nothing more, scanning faces.
They were coating in still nightside, at a steeper angle than was going to be comfortable for any reason. There might be quite a bit of buffeting. Jim, unaccustomed to landings even of the best kind, was already looking grey. So were the Eln-Kests.
Two corporations: ITAK onworld and ISPAK, the station and power corporation overhead. ISPAK was a Kontrin agency, that should be in direct link with Cerdin. So were all stations. They were too sensitive, holding all a world’s licensed defense; and in any situation of contest, ISPAK could shut Istra down, depriving it of power. With any choice for a base of operations, ITAK onworld was not the best one, not unless the stakes were about to go very high indeed.
No licenses, no answer to appeals: the fink to Cerdin should have had an answer through their own station. No relief from taxes; other worlds had such adjustments, in the presence of Kontrin. Universal credit was skimmed directly off the tax; majat were covered after the same fashion as Kontrin when they dealt through Kontrin credit; but they could, because they were producers of goods, trade directly in cash, which Kontrin in effect could not. Throughout the system, through the network of stations and intercomp, the constant-transmission arteries which linked all the Reach, there were complex-formulae of adjustment and licensing, the whole system held in exact and delicate balance. A world could not function without that continual flow of information through station, to Cerdin.
Only Istra was supporting a burden it could not bear, while inner worlds as well were swollen with increased populations, with no agricultural surpluses anywhere to be had. Council turned a deaf ear to protests, after readjusting population on a world where arable land was scarce.
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