ty or superiority. It just
means difference."

"Well, what are you trying to do, here?"

"I'm trying to find out a little more about the psychology back of
these frenzies and swarmings."

"It hasn't occurred to you to look for them in the economic wrongs these
people are suffering at the hands of the planters and traders, I
suppose."

"So they're committing suicide, and that's all you can call these
swarmings, and the fire-frenzies in the south, from economic motives,"
Travis said. "How does one better oneself economically by dying?"

She ignored the question, which was easier than trying to answer it.

"And why are you bothering to talk to these witch doctors? They aren't
representative of the native people. They're a lot of cynical
charlatans, with a vested interest in ignorance and superstition--"

"Miss Shaw, for the past eight centuries, earnest souls have been
bewailing the fact that progress in the social sciences has always
lagged behind progress in the physical sciences. I would suggest that
the explanation might be in difference of approach. The physical
scientist works _with_ physical forces, even when he is trying, as in
the case of contragravity, to nullify them. The social scientist works
_against_ social forces."

"And the result's usually a miserable failure, even on the
physical-accomplishment level," Foxx Travis added. "This storm shelter
project that was set up ten years ago and got nowhere, for instance.
Ramon Gonzales set up a shelter project of his own seventy-five hours
ago, and he's half through with it now."

"Yes, by forced labor!"

"Field surgery's brutal, too, especially when the anaesthetics run out.
It's better than letting your wounded die, though."

"Well, we were talking about these shoonoon. They are a force among the
natives; that can't be denied. So, since we want to influence the
natives, why not use them?"

"Mr. Gilbert, these shoonoon are blocking everything we are trying to do
for the natives. If you use them for propaganda work in the villages,
you will only increase their prestige and make it that much harder for
us to better the natives' condition, both economically and
culturally--"

"That's it, Miles," Travis said. "She isn't interested in facts about
specific humanoid people on Kwannon. She has a lot of high-order
abstractions she got in a classroom at Adelaide on Terra."

"No. Her idea of bettering the natives' condition is to rope in a lot of
young Kwa