“Don’t talk dirty,” boomed Twisted-tree. “You talk like that, somebody’ll hear you.”
“Somebody’s already heard me,” she snorted. “The Celosians don’t care if I talk population limitation for the Pooacks. The Pooacks don’t care if I talk population limitation for the Schrinbergians. So long as I don’t mean them, they don’t care. Sometimes, late at night, I have these dreams about all the animals … ”
“Animals?” asked the Procurator. “What animals?”
“All of them. The ones in pattern storage. In the files. Whales. Elephants. Grampuses. Winged things, some of them. I have these dreams. The souls of all the animals are speaking to me, condemning mankind as the greatest beast of the field. They make a kind of hollow roar, like the sound of the sea.”
“This is no time to be fanciful!” Twisted-tree announced. “Besides, I find your words offensive. Man is not an animal.”
She made a rude gesture. “You Firsters have been top-aheap ever since you came up with that ‘universe made for man’ claptrap.”
Twisted-tree snarled, “Fastigats are not Firsters, madam, any more than kings are commoners. As kings and commoners may share pride of identity while being otherwise unlike, so we and Firsters share certain opinions. Neither they nor we are the first to have those opinions, and the Firsters are saying no more than we have always said. The universe was made for man.”
The Procurator said, “Firsters are oversimplifying, of course. ‘Humanity first’ leaves certain refinements unaccounted for. Still, their numbers are growing.”
The big woman grumbled, “They’re making their politics sense-able, that’s why. Have you seen their sensurrounds?”
The Procurator shook his head, making a little moue of distaste.
She went on: “They portray exciting journeys to newly homo-normed planets where the senser lives happily ever after with no shortages, lots of room, plenty of food, and a couple of dozen live, healthy children.”
The Procurator laughed knowingly. “Sensing is believing!”
Poracious Luv gave him an indignant look. “Once they’ve sensed the Firster version, they don’t want to hear anything about your so-called refinements. They don’t want to know the ordinary Firster has about as much chance of going to the frontier as he has of surviving once his world hits—what did you call it?—crit-popple? And, of course, you Fastigats may continue in your ivory-tower opinions because it won’t happen here.”
Twisted-tree flushed slightly. Thunder-man looked offended. The Procurator, through long practice, ignored what she had said. Alliance Central wasn’t officially a “world.” It was a government. Freedom-of-procreation laws that applied to Alliance worlds could not apply here. The administration would not remain in power if Alliance Central ever hit crit-popple. There were ways to assure that it did not. Required emigration for larger families. Shadowhood for overactive males. A little something in the water supply. A little something else in the air.
Poracious Luv’s hand twitched toward her cup. Snark moved like invisible lightning, taking away the used cup, filling a clean one, putting it where the avid hand could fall upon it. Poracious drew in the hot fragrant brew as though breathing it, half emptying the cup. It was time to change the subject.
“Is there any news from Dinadh?” she asked.
“Lutha Tallstaff is on her way there now,” said the Procurator. “It will be some time before we hear anything from there. How about the recorders we had hidden all through Hermes Sector? Did they function properly? Did we get anything useful?”
Twisted-tree growled, “They functioned well, yes. We have excellent records of thousands of colonists going about their business. Then we get deterioration of the audio segment, then brief exclamations, drawn breaths, yes. We see people staring fearfully around themselves. Then we see a gray veil, and the next moment we have good views of a planet without human life.”
“That quickly?”
“More quickly than I can tell it. Subsequently, the recorders stop functioning.”
Twisted-tree said gloomily, “They stopped functioning on Mandalay and Jerome’s System, yes.”
Silence once more except for the almost surreptitious inhalation of tea.
After a time the Procurator offered, “If they are taking the people first, perhaps some kind of device implanted in the people themselves would give us useful information.”
“Political suicide,” hissed Poracious. “If it were ever found out we’d used workers or colonists … ”