shouted, as though that would do any good.

It did. Silence fell, bounced noisily, and then settled over the
crowd. Gofredo went on talking to them: "Take it easy, now; easy."
He might have been speaking to a frightened dog or a fractious
horse. "Nobody's going to hurt you. This is nothing but the great
noise-magic of the Terrans...."

"Get the presents unloaded," Meillard was saying. "Make a big show
of it. The table first."

The horn, which had started, stopped blowing. As they were getting
off the long table and piling it with trade goods, another lorry
came in, disgorging twenty Marine riflemen. They had their bayonets
fixed; the natives looked apprehensively at the bare steel, but
went on listening to Gofredo. Meillard pulled the (Lord Mayor?
Archbishop? Lord of the Manor?) aside, and began making sign-talk
to him.

When quiet was restored, Howell put a pick and shovel into a
wheelbarrow and pushed them out into the space that had been cleared
in front of the table. He swung the pick for a while, then shoveled
the barrow full of ground. After pushing it around for a while, he
dumped it back in the hole and leveled it off. Two Marines brought
out an eight-inch log and chopped a couple of billets off it with
an ax, then cut off another with one of the saws, split them up,
and filled the wheelbarrow with the firewood.

[Illustration: _We can't use the computer till we can tell it what
the data is data about!_]

The knives, jewelry and other small items would be no problem; they
had enough of them to go around. The other stuff would be harder to
distribute, and Paul Meillard and Karl Dorver were arguing about how
to handle it. If they weren't careful, a lot of new bowie knives
would get bloodied.

"Have them form a queue," Anna suggested. "That will give them the
idea of equal sharing, and we'll be able to learn something about
their status levels and social hierarchy and agonistic relations."

* * * * *

The one with the staff took it as a matter of course that he would
go first; his associates began falling in behind him, and the rest
of the villagers behind them. Whether they'd gotten one the day
before or not, everybody was given a knife and a bandanna and one
piece of flashy junk-jewelry, also a stainless steel cup and mess
plate, a bucket, and an empty bottle with a cork. The women didn't
carry sheath knives, so they got Boy Scout knives on lanyards. They
were all lavis