est disclaimer; that was nothing more
than the exact truth.

"Well, lieutenant, I see you have things in hand here." He glanced at
the line-up along the side of the oval plaza, and then at the selected
group in front of the khamdoo. The patriarchal village chieftain in a
loose slashed shirt; the shoonoo, wearing a multiplicity of amulets and
nothing else; four or five of the village elders. "I take it the word of
the swarming didn't get this far?"

"No, this crowd still don't know what the flap's about, and I couldn't
think of anything to tell them that wouldn't be worse than no
explanation at all."

He had noticed hoes and spades flying in the fields, and the cylindrical
plastic containers the natives bought from traders, dropped when the
troops had surprised the women at work. And the shoonoo didn't have a
fire-dance cloak or any other special regalia on. If he'd heard about
the swarming, he'd have been dressed to make magic for it.

"What time did you get here, lieutenant?"

"Oh-nine-forty. I just called in and reported the village occupied, and
they told me I was the last one in, so the operation's finished."

That had been smart work. He got the lieutenant's name and unit and
mentioned it into his memophone. That had been a little under five hours
since he had convinced General Maith, in Bluelake, that the mass
labor-desertion from the Sanders plantation had been the beginning of a
swarming. Some division commanders wouldn't have been able to get a
brigade off the ground in that time, let alone landed on objective. He
said as much to the young officer.

"The way the Army responded, today, can make the people of the Colony
feel a lot more comfortable for the future."

"Why, thank you, Mr. Gilbert." The Army, on Kwannon, was rather more
used to obloquy than praise. "How did you spot what was going on so
quickly?"

This was the hundredth time, at least, that he had been asked that
today.

"Well, Paul Sanders' labor all comes from neighboring villages. If
they'd just wanted to go home and spend the end of the world with their
families, they'd have been dribbling away in small batches for the last
couple of hundred hours. Instead, they all bugged out in a bunch, they
took all the food they could carry and nothing else, and they didn't
make any trouble before they left. Then, Sanders said they'd been
building fires out in the fallow ground and moaning and chanting around
them for a couple of days, and idling