and their songs, stories, dances, games, festivals, solemnities, some of Keiki Moana origin, all special to the Lahui soul. The community did not try to wall itself off, but it did nothing to encourage casual visitation, and except for educational purposes children did not watch multiceiver programs before they had had their twelfth-year initiations. Afterward they might well go elsewhere for part of their schooling, as Aleka had done. Yet if their early lives had taken hold in them, upon returning they would want their beloved ethos to abide. Whoever grew discontented was free to move away. Increasingly many were doing so. This was not always gladly—for indeed the Lahui, human as well as nonhu-man, had grown beyond the numbers which their permitted stretches of ocean and their industries could support. Economic independence had been the aim, the two races joining their different abilities to win a living from the waters. Given robotics, biotics, energetics, nanotechnology, trained minds, skilled bodies, life went on with a beguiling appearance of simplicity for generations. The products were traded for manufactured goods from outside and a modest amount of luxury. But as the island population waxed, global demand waned; recycling and direct synthesis accommodated ever more of it. When mining and refining operations beyond Earth were dwindling, how should a few minor enterprises on her sea much longer endure?
“Oh, yes,” Aleka said. “We can live on our Federation credit. We’ll not starve or fall sick or go homeless. Gracias for that.”
Hakim overlooked the bitterness in her voice. His stayed mild. “No, any thanks are due modern productivity. Credit merely shares out the goods. What have your people been spending theirs on?”
Aleka shrugged. “Whatever a given person fancies. Not uncommonly, something for their ‘ohana. Keiki usually order toys, unless they save to buy a piece of capital equipment. I mean those who draw their credit. They’re the minority.”
“Who is to blame if most are unregistered?”
“I’m not blaming,” Aleka sighed. “I’m telling. When none of us have anything but credit payments, that will be the end of us. Lives will go on, no doubt, but the meaning, the heart will be out of them, and what we walking, swimming ghosts will do, I can’t foresee.”
“You shall have to change,” Delgado declared, his tone less brusque than the words. “It begins with your kauwa. We don’t want to hunt them down—robots, guns—and imprison them. But they threaten the regional balance of nature and it must stop. So must their unrestrained breeding. By compulsory inoculation, if nothing else will do.” He did not mention the historical precedents. He could rely on her to realize that the kind of popular opposition which several of those measures had had to overcome would not arise in this case.
“We will start by seeing what comes of the agreement you worked out today, Mamselle Tarn,” Hakim added. “It may lead to real progress, especially if your town cooperates. But the Lahui cannot continue as they are, either.”
“You’re asking us to transform ourselves faster than we can,” Aleka remonstrated. “I tell you again, we are not tribeless neonomads of the Ortho. Our ways are us. Give us time to adapt them. Give us enough scope, enough access to resources, that meanwhile we can at least produce for ourselves what we want, instead of depending on you and, and paying your price for it!”
Hakim’s look went stern. He too must be near the end of his patience. “I hear you again, Mamselle Tarn, and I repeat that what you ask for is not possible. It would infringe on existing ranges, ranches, extractive industries, which are marginal already. It would disrupt ecology throughout this part of the Pacific. It would be incompatible with plans for adjustment and conversion as those industries are phased out. These are considerations of planetary significance, mam-selle,” beside which the death of one little culture was a quantum fluctuation.
“This argument is foolish, pointless,” Delgado put in. “Dr. Hakim and I aren’t going to decide anything. We’ll report and recommend, along with hundreds of other investigators,” including sophotects and surveillance robots, “but the decision will come from Hiroshima. Bring your case into the public communications if you wish. Get your representatives to try convincing their delegates in the Assembly. Appeal to the High Court and the President.”