Warlord of Kor | Page 6

you exactly how unique it is," Manning said, leaning forward and setting down his glass with a bang. "It's just unique enough that I can make it sound important in my report to the Council. I can make myself sound a little impressive. That's how important it is; no more than that."
Rynason pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. The waiter arrived with his drink; he threw a green coin onto the table which was scooped up before it had finished ringing to a stop, and sat back with the glass in his hand.
"Is that your pitch to the Council?" he asked. "You're telling them that Hirlaj is an important archaeological area and that's why you should get the governorship?"
"Something like that," Manning nodded. "That, and my friend at Seventeenth Cluster headquarters. Incidentally, he's an idiot and a slob--turns on quadsense telemuse instead of working, drinks hopsbrau from his own sector. I can't stand him. But I did him a few favors, just in case, and they're paying off."
"I think it's marvelous the way our frontier policy caters to the colonists," Mara said quietly. She was still smiling, but it was an ironic smile which suddenly struck Rynason as characteristic of her.
He knew exactly what she meant. Manning's little push for power was nothing new or shocking in Terran frontier politics. With the rapid expansion of the Edge through the centuries, the frontier policy of the Confederation had had to adapt itself to comparatively slipshod methods of setting up governments in the newly-opened areas. Back in the early days they'd tried sending out trained men from each Cluster headquarters, but that had been foredoomed to failure: travel between the stars was slow, and too often the governors had arrived after local officialdoms had already been established, and there had been clashes. The colonists had almost always backed the local governments, and there were a few full-scale revolts when the system had been backed too militantly by Cluster headquarters.
So the Local Autonomy System had been sanctioned. The colonists would always support their own men, who at least knew conditions in the areas they were to govern. But since this necessarily limited the choice of Edge governorships to the roustabouts and drifters who wandered the outworlds, the resulting administrations were probably even more corrupt than they had been under the old system of what had amounted to centralized graft. The Cluster Councils retained the power of appointing the local governors, but aside from that the newly-opened worlds of the Edge were completely under their own rule. Some of the more vocal critics of the Local Autonomy System had dubbed it instead the Indigenous Corruption System; it was by now a fairly standard nickname in the outworlds.
The system made for a wide-open frontier--bustling, wild, hectic, and rich. For the worlds of the Edge were untamed worlds, raw and forbidding, and the policy of the Councils was calculated to attract the kind of men who not only could but would open these frontiers. The roustabouts, the low drifters of the spaceways ... men who were hard and strong from repeated knocks, who were looking for a way to work or fight their way up. The lean and hungry of the outworlds.
Rynason glanced across the table at Manning. He was neither lean nor hungry, but he had that look in his eyes. Rynason had been around the Edge for years--his father had travelled the spacers in the commercial lines--and he had seen that look on many men, in the fields and mines, in the spaceports, in the quickly-tarnished prefab towns that sprang up almost overnight when a planetfall was made. He could recognize it on Manning despite the man's casual, self-satisfied expression.
"You don't have to worry about the colonists here," Manning was saying to the girl. "I'll treat 'em decently. There'll be money to be made here, and I can make it without stepping on too many toes."
Mara seemed amused. "And what would happen if you had to step on them to make your money? What if Hirlaj doesn't turn out to have any natural resources worth exploiting--a whole civilization has been here for thousands of years? What if the colony here starts to falter, and the men move on?"
Manning frowned at her for a moment, then gave a grunting laugh. "No chance of that. It's like Lee was just saying--this planet is an important discovery--we've got tame aliens here, intelligent horsefaces that you can lead around with a rope on their necks. That alone will draw tourists. Maybe well set up an official Restricted Ground, a sort of reservation."
"A zoo, you mean," Rynason interrupted.
Manning raised an amused eyebrow at him. "A reservation, I said. You know what reservations are like, Lee."
Rynason glared at the heavier man, then subsided. There was no point in getting