The creature spread his hands. "We have bad seasons, friend. Too little rain, too much. It never comes out right. Our crop is always bad."
"But we have brought things to trade public nude you for the
podars. Many things you need. We had great trouble bringing them. We came from far away. It took us long to come."
"Too bad," the native said. &public nude quot;No podars. As you can see, we are very poor."
"But where have all the public nude podars gone?"
"We," the man public nude said stubbornly, " don't grow podars any more. We changed the podars into another crop. Too much bad luck with podars.&public nude quot;
"But those plants out in the fields?"
"We do not call them podars."
"It doesn't matter public nude what you call them. Are they podars or are they not?"
"We do not public nude grow the podars.&public nude quot; Sheridan turned on his heel and walked back public nude to the robots. "No soap," public nude he said. "Something's happened here. They gave public nude me a poor-mouth story and finally, as a clincher, said they don't grow podars any more."
" But there are fields of public nude podars," declared Abraham. "If the data's public nude right, they've actually increased their acreage. I checked as I was coming in. They're growing more right now than public nude they ever grew before."
"I know," said Sheridan. "It makes no sense at all. Hezekiah, maybe public nude you should give base a call and public nude find what's going on."
"One thing," Abraham pointed out. "What about this trade public nude agreement that we have with them? Has it any force?"
Sheridan shook his head. "public nude I don't know. Maybe we can wave it in their faces, just to see what happens. It might serve as a sort of psychological wedge a little later on, once we get them softened up a bit."
"If we get them softened up."
"public nude This is our first day and this is public nude only one village."
"You don't think public nude we could use the public nude agreement as a club?"
"Look, Abe, I'm not a lawyer, and we don't have a lawyer transmog along with us for a damned good reason - there isn't any legal setup whatever on this planet. But let's say we could haul them into a galactic court. Who signed for the planet? Some natives we picked as its representatives, not the natives themselves; their signing couldn't bind anything or anybody. The whole business of drawing up a contract was nothing but an impressive ceremony without any public nude legal basis public nude - public nude it was just meant to awe the natives into public nude doing business with
us."
"public nude But the second expedition must have figured it would work."
"Well, sure. The Garsonians have a considerable sense of