Birthright

“I'm gratified to know that everything worked out,” said Consuela.

“I think you'll be further gratified to know that a team of three psychologists has been dispatched to Beelzebub to study the native population more thoroughly.” “Indeed I am,” said Consuela.

“While I'm here, may I take you to lunch, Mrs. Orta?” asked Tanayoka. “I'd love to, but I'm afraid I'm a bit late making my rounds today.” Consuela shook his hand, walked down the corridor, stopped at a faucet to fill a small pan with water, then sighed and opened a door.

Inside, the Madcap was happily munching on its tail. 5: THE MERCHANTS

...As these worlds were assimilated into the budding financial empire of the Republic, it became the duty of the merchants, and more specifically the Department of Commerce and Trade, to bring monied economies into being on these planets. Perhaps the most important single person in the galaxy during this period was Kipchoge Ngana, whose complicity in the death of the Republic has been debated for millennia....

—Man: Twelve Millennia of Achievement ...Foremost of these was Kipchoge Ngana (884- G.E.), a ruthless financial and organizational genius who studiously avoided all publicity. It was he who fought tooth and nail against granting the most basic rights to non-human races, and who probably kept the stagnant and decrepit Republic alive and running long past its life expectancy... —Origin and History of the Sentient Races, Vol. 8

Kipchoge Ngana leaned his chair back on two legs, put his feet on his desk, and sighed. Things had been going well, both for his department and the Republic. The Gross Galactic Product had doubled for the sixth decade in a row, the brief trade war with Darion III was over, and Man had never had it so good. It was a strange feeling. He should have been smug and complacent, but instead he felt like a man waiting for the other shoe to drop and not having the slightest idea where it would be dropping from. He glanced at his appointment calendar: two visits from minor officials in Cartography, a luncheon with a merchants’ organization from the newly settled Denebian colonies, and a planning conference within his own Department of Commerce and Trade. It was the last that was his specialty, and he was utterly convinced that no single facet of the Republic was quite so important. Certainly they needed the Cartographers to decide upon the patterns of expansion, and the Pioneer Corps and Navy to open the planets up, and of course Psychology had become the darling of the popularizers of science. But all those came before the fact; each science and parascience had a definite job to do, and once their function was fulfilled, they moved on to the next world. After that, after the planet was made habitable, after the alien contacts had been made, after the Republic had made a commitment to the new world, it was up to the merchants, under the expert guidance of the Department of Commerce and Trade, to move in, to graft the world onto the sprawling economic structure of the galaxy, and to bring it firmly within the Republic's sphere of financial influence. The Republic had long since learned that military force was a last resort, to be used only in the most