Well, he thought, at least he'd given the old man his name on the star maps until Earthmen stopped roving.
Mead was looking at him. "I don't suppose we've got time to let him die in peace, have we?" he asked.
"I suppose we'll have to start breaking him immediately, won't we?"
_Dave!_ Does everyone have to hate me? Can't anyone understand? Even you, uh--Creed. Even you, Mead?
Dalish ud Klavan, stooped and withered, sat hopelessly, opposite Marlowe, who sat behind his desk like a grizzled polar bear, his thinning mane of white hair unkempt and straggling.
"Marlowe, my people are strangling," the old Dovenilid said.
"The Holliday Republic has signed treaty after treaty with us, and still their citizens raid our mining planets, driving away our own people, stealing the resources we must have if we are to live."
Marlowe sighed. "There's nothing I can do."
"We have gone to the Holliday government repeatedly," ud Klavan pleaded. "They tell us the raiders are criminals, that they are doing their best to stop them. But they still buy the metal the raiders bring them."
"They have to," Marlowe said. "There are no available resources anywhere within practicable distances. If they're to have any civilization at all, they've _got_ to buy from the outlaws."
"But they are members of the Union!" ud Klavan protested. "_Why_ won't you do anything to stop them?"
"We can't," Marlowe said again. "They're members of the Union, yes, but they're also a free republic. We have no administrative jurisdiction over them, and if we attempted to establish one our citizens would rise in protest all over our territory."
"Then we're finished. Dovenil is a dead world."
Marlowe nodded slowly. "I am very sorry. If there is anything I can do, or that the Ministry can do, we will do it. But we cannot save the Dovenilid state."
Ud Klavan looked at him bitterly. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for your generous offer of a gracious funeral.
"I don't understand you!" he burst out suddenly. "I don't understand you people! Diplomatic lies, yes. Expediency, yes! But this ... this madness, this fanatical, illogical devotion of the state in the cause of a people who will tolerate no state! This ... no, this I cannot understand."