sery and taken your baby--always
under two years old, according to the rules--then the Guildsman would
bring you an Amphib or, perhaps, the child of a Human Changeling
reared by the Seafolk.

You raised it and loved it as your own. How could you help loving it?

Your Skin told you that it was small and helpless and needed you and
was, despite appearances, as Human as any of your babies. Nor did you
need to worry about the one that had been abducted. It was getting
just as good care as you were giving this one.

It had never occurred to anyone to quit the stealing and voluntary
exchange of babies. Perhaps that was because it would strain even the
loving nature of the Skin-wearers to give away their own flesh and
blood. But once the transfer had taken place, they could adapt.

Or perhaps the custom was kept because tradition is stronger than law
in a peasant-monarchy society and also because egg-and-baby stealing
gave the more naturally aggressive and daring citizens a chance to
work off anti-social behavior.

Nobody but a historian would have known, and there were no historians
in The Beautiful Land.

Long ago the Ssassaror had discovered that if they lived meatless,
they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the
Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a
taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that
both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in
aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the
chins of the Humans. These, in turn, would have seemed short to a
Western European.

But Rastignac, an Earthman, and his good friend, Mapfarity, the
Ssassaror Giant, became taboo-breakers when they were children and
played together on the beach where they first ate seafood out of
curiosity, then continued because they liked it. And due to their
protein diet the Terran had grown well over six feet in height and the
Ssassaror seemed to have touched off a rocket of expansion in his body
with his protein-eating. Those Ssassarors who shared his guilt--became
meat-eaters--became ostracized and eventually moved off to live by
themselves. They were called Ssassaror-Giants and were pointed to as
an object lesson to the young of the normal Ssassarors and Humans on
the land.

* * * * *

If a stranger had landed shortly before Rastignac was born, however,
he would have noticed that all was