nns, put them in Government schools, overload them with
information they aren't prepared to digest, teach them to despise their
own people, and then send them out to the villages, where they behave
with such insufferable arrogance that the wonder is that so few of them
stop an arrow or a charge of buckshot, instead of so many. And when that
happens, as it does occasionally, Welfare says they're murdered at the
instigation of the shoonoon."

"You know, Miss Shaw, this isn't just the roughneck's scorn for the
egghead," Travis said. "Miles went to school on Terra, and majored in
extraterrestrial sociography, and got a master's, just like you did. At
Montevideo," he added. "And he spent two more years traveling on a Paula
von Schlicten Fellowship."

Edith Shaw didn't say anything. She even tried desperately not to look
impressed. It occurred to him that he'd never mentioned that fellowship
to Travis. Army Intelligence must have a pretty good _dossier_ on him.
Before anybody could say anything further, a Terran captain and a native
sergeant of the First K.N.I. came in. In the screen, the four sepoys who
had been fussing around straightening things picked up auto-carbines and
posted themselves two on either side of a door across from the pickup,
taking positions that would permit them to fire into whatever came
through without hitting each other.

What came through was one hundred and eighty-four shoonoon. Some wore
robes of loose gauze strips, and some wore fire-dance cloaks of red and
yellow and orange ribbons. Many were almost completely naked, but they
were all amulet-ed to the teeth. There must have been a couple of miles
of brass and bright-alloy wire among them, and half a ton of bright
scrap-metal, and the skulls, bones, claws, teeth, tails and other
components of most of the native fauna. They debouched into the big
room, stopped, and stood looking around them. A native sergeant and a
couple more sepoys followed. They got the shoonoon over to the
semicircle of cushions, having to chase a couple of them away from the
single seat at front and center, and induced them to sit down.

The native sergeant in the little room said something under his breath;
the captain laughed. Edith Shaw gaped for an instant and said,
"_Muggawsh_!" Travis simply remarked that he'd be damned.

"They do look kind of unusual, don't they?" Miles said. "I wouldn't
doubt that this is the biggest assemblage of shoonoon in history. They
aren