"That's some satisfaction," I said, and Mack stared at us, baffled.
"Even now I don't know what it was all about."
"And you never will," I said for the hundredth time. "We've been over
this before. Nobody could understand it unless he'd lived in the
Dry-towns. Let's not talk about it. You talk, Juli. What brought you
here like this? What about the kid?"
"There's no way I can tell you the end without telling you the
beginning," she said reasonably. "At first Rakhal worked as a trader in
Shainsa."
I wasn't surprised. The Dry-towns were the core of Terran trade on Wolf,
and it was through their cooperation that Terra existed here peaceably,
on a world only half human, or less.
The men of the Dry-towns existed strangely poised between two worlds.
They had made dealings with the first Terran ships, and thus gave
entrance to the wedge of the Terran Empire. And yet they stood proud and
apart. They alone had never yielded to the Terranizing which overtakes
all Empire planets sooner or later.
There were no Trade Cities in the Dry-towns; an Earthman who went there
unprotected faced a thousand deaths, each one worse than the last. There
were those who said that the men of Shainsa and Daillon and Ardcarran
had sold the rest of Wolf to the Terrans, to keep the Terrans from their
own door.
Even Rakhal, who had worked with Terra since boyhood, had finally come
to a point of decision and gone his own way. And it was not Terra's way.
That was what Juli was saying now.
"He didn't like what Terra was doing on Wolf. I'm not so sure I like it
myself--"
Magnusson interrupted her again. "Do you know what Wolf was like when we
came here? Have you seen the Slave Colony, the Idiot's Village? Your own
brother went to Shainsa and routed out The Lisse."
"And Rakhal helped him!" Juli reminded him. "Even after he left you, he
tried to keep out of things. He could have told them a good deal that
would hurt you, after ten years in Intelligence, you know."
I knew. It was, although I wasn't going to tell Juli this, one reason
why, at the end--during that terrible explosion of violence which no
normal Terran mind could comprehend--I had done my best to kill him. We
had both known that after this, the planet would not hold the two of us.
We could both go on living only by dividing it unevenly. I had been
given the slow death of the Terran Zone. And he had all the rest.
"But he never told them anything! I tell you, he was one of the most
loyal--"