The older captain spread his hands. "If the Law can't cope with it, what can you and I do?"
"Make some changes, so that the Law can cope with it!"
Del scowled. "Now look here, Norvis! I don't have much use for that senile bunch of old Liturgy-chanters in Gelusar, but—change the Law? The Law? You can't do that; they'd have you hanging or stoned to death within a day after you started."
Norvis shook his head. "Listen to me; I didn't say anything about changing the Law. The changes I want to make are in applications of the Law.
"I remember you once said that anything could be proven by Scripture. Well, that's not absolutely true. You've got Scripture, the Ancestral Traditions, and the Law to worry about. But even so, changes in application can be made—they have been made before, except that they took so long that no one noticed them. The difference is that we need a lot of changes, all at once.''
"How do you propose to do it?"
"You pointed that out yourself. The merchants will be the next to get cut down with the peych-knife. But if all the merchants band together and demand changes—changes that will help the farmer, now, when they need it, we'll have the peasants on our side, too.
"You're a well-known, respectable merchant-seaman. When we get to Vashcor, you call all the merchants together and give them our proposals; they'll listen to you."
"But what are our proposals?" Del asked, puzzled.
"I'll write them out, and we can talk them over on the way. I think we can make the Council listen to us; they're in pretty bad odor right now because they backed this hormone business. It's a good thing we kept our names out of it, or we'd be in the same kettle.
"Don't you see it, Del? If we can get the merchants and the farmers behind us, we can have the Elders jumping to our tootling, instead of the Earthmen's!"
"What are you going to be doing while I'm organizing the merchants?" There was a light in Del's eye, now—a light of excitement. He was beginning to see what could be done.
"Me?'' Norvis grinned. "I'm going to be out buying up every bit of peych I can get my hands on."
"Peych? Are you crazy? What will you do with it?''
"Put it in warehouses, dump it in rented vacant lots—anyplace I can find."
Del looked dazed. "You've lost your mind. What are you going to do with all those beans?"
"Not just the beans, Del!" Norvis corrected. "Everything. Stalks, leaves, stems, chaff, hulls— everything."
"But they'll rot!"
"I hope so; they won't be much good if they don't."
"Norvis, dammit, don't sit there grinning like an overfed food-deest!! What in Darkness are you talking about?"
"Fertilizer, Del, fertilizer."
"Fertilizer?" Del slammed his palm down on the table. "What do you need fertilizer for?"
"Have you seen the new peych-bean crop?" Norvis asked softly. "It isn't even going to blossom. The soil is worthless. Do you know how farmers have fertilized their soil for thousands of years? They've raked up the muck from the bottom of the pond that every farm had. That muck came from hugl which died at the bottom after stuffing themselves with peych.
"To the muck, the farmer adds manure from his deest-barns, and other wastes are mixed in too. Then he plows the whole mess into the ground.
"But the muck has been poor lately because of the decrease in hugl; ever since Elder Brajjyd found a new way to use Edris, the muck has become more and more worthless.
"This hormone just did the final dirty work. The soil was overburdened—depleted of its organic content— when the fast-maturing, overabundant, hormone-treated peych was grown on it.
"Oh, we'll need fertilizer, all right. That's one of the things we're going to get passed by the Council of Elders—an order for the farmers to plow their old peych back into the ground."
Del finished his mug of beer and sat for several minutes staring at the empty container. Finally, he said: "I think we can do something, at least. Yes, I think we \can. Now, what proposals did you say you wanted to make?"
The sign on the door of the big building in Vashcor said: Merchants' Council Headquarters. It was an imposing looking building; it had stood for hundreds of years, and had been newly redecorated with an imposing symbolic facade.
Outside of the Great Temple of the Holy Light at the Holy City of Gelusar, it was probably the most important building on Nidor.
In an inner office, Norvis peKrin Dmorno, Secretary of the Merchants' Party, sat behind a wide bronze wood desk and folded his hands together. "As a manufacturer, Gasus peSyg," he said, "I think you can see the point. You make cloth from peych-fiber; if people have too little money, they can't buy clothing, no matter how cheap it becomes, because they will have even less. You've got to keep your purchases of the raw material down, and keep the prices up. That means that you shouldn't buy any more from a given supplier than you bought five years ago, and you have to pay the same amount.
"That, in turn, will discourage overproduction, at the same time keeping prices on an even keel."
The heavy-set man with the steel-gray facial hair nodded. "As long as I have the backing of the other merchants, Secretary Norvis, I'll comply with the rules." Norvis nodded. "You back them, they back you. That's what the Council is for."
"Actually," Gasus peSyg continued, "I'm not being offered too much really good fiber these days. A lot of the stuff that's brought in is fiber that's been laying around in storage since the Year of the Double Crop, and fiber that's two years old isn't good for much. I've just been buying the fresh fiber, and that comes in in about the same quantities as I used to get.''
Again Norvis nodded. "Things are evening up. You're doing exactly right; force them to sell the old stuff for fertilizer. The land is getting back into shape now, but there's still areas where work needs to be done."
The cloth manufacturer stood up. "Well, I'm glad we got that little bit straightened out. Thank you, Secretary Norvis."
Norvis smiled. "Not at all, Gasus peSyg; that's what we're here for—to help the merchant and the farmer— or rather to help them help themselves and see that their rights are protected. Thank you for coming."
The broad chested merchant headed for the door and almost collided with a tall young man who had hurriedly opened the door from the outside. They offered mutual apologies, and the young man waited until the merchant had closed the door after him before he said anything to Norvis.
"What is it, Dom?" Norvis asked.
"There's an acolyte out here to see you, sir!"
"An acolyte?"
"Yes, sir; he says he represents the Elder Danoy!"
"Show him in." Norvis leaned back in his chair and smiled as the young man went out.
Well, well, he thought to himself, what have we here?
The Elder Danoy was the oldest priest in the Council now, and therefore automatically Elder Leader. The merchants' Council had been putting pressure on the Council of Elders for over a year now, and each time, they had acquiesced to the merchants' demands—but only stubbornly and unwillingly. Was there, perhaps, a change in sight?
The door opened, and a broad-shouldered, yellow-robed acolyte stepped inside. "Secretary Norvis peKrin Dmorno?" he asked, as he closed the door behind him. "I am First Acolyte to Elder Grandfather Prannt peDran Danoy, Elder Leader of the Council of Elders of Nidor."