ot-real."

"They had all their emotional capital invested in this Always-Cool
Time," Travis told her. "They couldn't let Miles wipe that out for them.
So he shifted it from this world to the next, and convinced them that
they were getting a better deal that way. You saw how quickly they
picked it up. And he didn't have the sin of telling children there is no
Easter Bunny on his conscience, either."

"But why did you tell them that story about the Oomphel Mother?" she
insisted. "Now they'll go out and tell all the other natives, and
they'll believe it."

"Would they have believed it if I'd told them about Terran scientific
technology? Your people have been doing that for close to half a
century. You see what impression it's made."

"But you told them--You told them that Terrans have no souls!"

"Can you prove that was a lie?" Travis asked. "Let's see yours.
Draw--_soul_! Inspection--_soul_!"

Naturally. Foxx Travis would expect a soul to be carried in a holster.

"But they'll look down on us, now. They'll say we're just like animals,"
Edith almost wailed.

"Now it comes out," Travis said. "We won't be the lordly Terrans, any
more, helping the poor benighted Kwanns out of the goodness of our
hearts, scattering largess, bearing the Terran's Burden--new model, a
give-away instead of a gun. Now _they'll_ pity _us_; they'll think
_we're_ inferior beings."

"I don't think the natives are inferior beings!" She was almost in
tears.

"If you don't, why did you come all the way to Kwannon to try to make
them more like Terrans?"

"Knock it off, Foxx; stop heckling her." Travis looked faintly
surprised. Maybe he hadn't realized, before, that a boss newsman learns
to talk like a commanding officer. "You remember what Ramon Gonzales was
saying, out at Sanders', about the inferior's hatred for the superior as
superior? It's no wonder these Kwanns resent us. They have a right to;
we've done them all an unforgivable injury. We've let them see us doing
things they can't do. Of course they resent us. But now I've given them
something to feel superior about. When they die, they'll go to the Place
of the Gone Ones, and have oomphel in the sky, and they will live
forever in new bodies, but when we die, we just die, period. So they'll
pity us and politely try to hide their condescension toward us.

"And because they feel superior to us, they'll want to help us. They'll
work hard on the plantations, so that we can have plenty o