Birthright

your position.”

They agreed with everything he said. The Bureau would make the task of contacting other races infinitely easier, and certainly they had nothing against Man, who had freed them, ages ago, from the tyrannical yoke of the Lemm. But, on the other hand, those few other races they had been in contact with felt that a gesture must be made against Man's ironfisted control of the galaxy, and while they personally had only the highest regard for Man, they would not go against the will of the majority, especially in a situation such as this, where they were physiologically prohibited from gaining a full appreciation of the problem. They intended no offense, but under the circumstances... And so it went, on world after world, with race after race. By the time he visited the twentieth alien planet, he found out that he was far from the only emissary of the Commonwealth trying to persuade the aliens to reconsider their stand. He struck paydirt on the twenty-seventh planet, Balok VII, only to have his work undone when the Commonwealth began putting economic sanctions on all alien worlds that had not yet come back into the fold. The Balokites, who had been all set to rejoin the Bureau, dug in their heels and again withdrew their support. The Setts actually went to war with the Navy, and held their own for almost a month before they were totally exterminated. As failure after failure greeted Man's efforts, work nonetheless proceeded on the Bureau. Foundations were laid, walls and facades erected, environmental systems laid in, communication and translation systems set up, food synthesis laboratories installed, medical centers created, decorations and furniture imported.

Within a decade the Bureau was complete, a huge, proud, unbelievably complex monolith of a building, towering many thousands of feet above the rocky surface of Deluros IV, visible for miles in every direction, all of its internal systems functioning smoothly, its exterior a paean to the art of a thousand sentient races.

Thus it stood. And thus, Mallow knew, it would stand for all eternity, an empty, unused monument both to Man's brilliance and his shortcomings, an edifice so mature and farsighted in its conception and execution that neither Man nor his neighbors in the galaxy would ever be ready for it. The night it was completed Mallow got rip-roaring drunk and stayed that way for a week. When he finally sobered up he resigned his position, left the Deluros system, set up shop some forty thousand light-years away, and made a fortune designing inexpensive but highly efficient group housing for the colonists of Delta Scuti II.

21: THE COLLECTORS

...With the Commonwealth entering a period of severe unrest, it was primarily the duty of the planetary governors to hold their native populations in check. They were a remarkable lot, these governors, charged with the responsibility of speaking for the Commonwealth on their respective worlds. One of the greatest of them was Selimund (6888- G.E.), who, in addition to his political abilities, founded the Museum of Antique Weaponry on Deluros VIII...

—Man: Twelve Millennia of Achievement (No mention can be found of either Selimund, his fabled

collection, or collectors and collections in general inOrigin and History of the Sentient Races. ) Being a governor had its advantages, reflected Selimund, even when one was sitting on a powder keg like Mirzam X. For one thing, damned near all the alien worlds were powder kegs these days, and since Mirzam X was a little bigger than most, the job held a little more prestige than most. For another, the