"There must be something
wrong somewhere."
"That's a fair question," Blount replied, inverting a cocktail jug
over his glass to extract the last few drops. "When we came to Ullr,
we found a culture roughly like that of Europe during the Seventh
Century Pre-Atomic. We initiated a technological and economic
revolution here, and such revolutions have their casualties, too. A
number of classes and groups got squeezed pretty badly, like the
horse-breeders and harness-manufacturers on Terra by the invention of
the automobile, or the coal and hydroelectric interests when direct
conversion of nuclear energy to electric current was developed, or the
railroads and steamship lines at the time of the discovery of the
contragravity-field. Naturally, there's a lot of ill-feeling on the
part of merchants and artisans who weren't able or willing to adapt
themselves to changing conditions; they're all backing Rakkeed and
yelling '_Znidd suddabit!_' now. But it is a fact, which not even
Rakkeed can successfully deny, that we've raised the general living
standard of this planet by about two hundred per cent."
* * * * *
Both jugs were empty. Colonel O'Leary, as befitted his junior rank,
picked them up; after a good-natured wrangled with von Schlichten,
Blount handed the colonel his credit-key.
"The merchants in the North don't like us; beside spoiling the
caravan-trade, we're spoiling their local business, because the
landowning barons, who used to deal with them, are now dealing
directly with us.
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