see Jetta that morning. I told Spawn I was hoping to see
President Markes on my petroleum proposition. And at the proper hour I
took myself to the government house.

* * * * *

This Lowland village by daylight seemed even more fantastic than
shrouded in the shadows of night. The morning sun had dissipated the
overhead mists. It was hot in the rocky streets under the weird
overhanging vegetation. The settlement was quietly busy with its
tropical activities. There were a few local shops; vehicles with the
Highland domestic animals--horses and oxen--panting in the heat; an
occasional electro-automatic car.

But there were not many evidences of modernity here. The street and
house tube-lights. A few radio image-finders on the house-tops. An
automatic escalator bringing ore from a nearby mine past the government
checkers to an aero stage for northern transportation. Cultivated fields
in the village outskirts operated with modern machinery.

But beyond that, it seemed primitive. Two hundred years back. Street
vendors. People in primitive, ragged, tropical garb. Half naked
children. I was stared at curiously. An augmenting group of children
followed me as I went down the street.

The President admitted me at once. In his airy office, with safeguards
against eavesdropping, I found him at his desk with a bank of modern
instruments before him.

"Sit down, Grant."

* * * * *

He was a heavy-set, flabby man of sixty-odd, this Lowland President.
White hair; and an old-fashioned, rolling white mustache of the sort
lately come into South American fashion. He sat with a glass of iced
drink at his side. His uniform was stiffly white, and ornate with heavy
gold braid, but his neckpiece was wilted with perspiration.

"Damnable heat, Grant."

"Yes, Sir President."

"Have a drink." He swung a tinkling glass before me. "Now then, tell me
what is your trouble. Smuggling, here in Nareda. I don't believe it."
His eyes, incongruously alert with all the rest of him so fat and lazy,
twinkled at me. "We of the Nareda Government watch our quicksilver
production very closely. The government fee is a third."

I might say that the Nareda government collected a third on all the
mineral and agricultural products of the country, in exchange for the
necessary government concessions. Markes exported this share openly to
the world markets, paying the duty exactly like a private corp