“Six hundred home-years is ten Years here.” After a moment Seiko Esmit went on, “You see, we don’t know all about the erkars and many other things that used to belong to our people, because when our ancestors came here they were sworn to obey a law of the League, which forbade them to use many things different from the things the native people used.
“Six hundred home-years is ten Years here.” After a moment Seiko Esmit went on, “You see, we don’t know all about the erkars and many other things that used to belong to our people, because when our ancestors came here they were sworn to obey a law of the League, which forbade them to use many things different from the things the native people used. This was called Cultural Embargo. In time we would have taught you how to make things—like wheeled carts. But the Ship left. There were few of us here, and no word from the League, and we found many enemies among your nations in those days. It was hard for us to keep the Law and also to keep what we had and knew. So perhaps we lost much skill and knowledge. We don’t know.”
“It was a strange law,” Rolery murmured.
“It was made for your sakes—not ours,” Seiko said in her hurried voice, in the hard distinct farborn accent like Agat’s. “In the Canons of the League, which we study as children, it is written: No Religion or Congruence shall be disseminated, no technique or theory shall be taught, no cultural set or pattern shall be exported, nor shall paraverbal speech be used with any non-Communicant high-intelligence life-form, or any Colonial Planet, until it be judged by the Area Council with the consent of the Plenum that such a planet be ready for Control or for Membership.… It means, you see, that we were to live exactly as you live. In so far as we do not, we have broken our own Law.”
“It did us no harm,” Rolery said. “And you not much good.”
“You cannot judge us,” Seiko said with that rancorous coldness; then controlling herself once more, “There’s work to be done now. Will you come?”
Submissive, Rolery followed Seiko. But she glanced back at the painting as they left. It had a greater wholeness than any object she had ever seen. Its somber, silvery, unnerving complexity affected her somewhat as Agat’s presence did; and when he was with her, she feared him, but nothing else. Nothing, no one.
