"Independently
hired free workers can make themselves rich, by native standards, in a
couple of seasons; many of the serfs pick up enough money from us in
incentive-pay to buy their freedom after one season."
"Well, if the Company's doing so much good on this planet, how is it
that this native, Rakkeed, the one you call the Mad Prophet, is able
to find such a following?" Paula demanded. "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 Uller,
we found a culture roughly like that of Europe during the Seventh
Century Pre-Atomic, or, more closely, like that of Japan before the
beginning of the First Century P. A. 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.
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