“During my own tenure, however, that situation has changed, not so much because of trade with the Medusans as because of the growing volume of traffic through the terminus here. I suppose it was inevitable that an orbital warehousing and distribution network should spring up, particularly since cargoes can be transshipped here without paying the higher duties and wages incurred in Manticore. There are, of course, other incentives,” she added dryly, and Honor’s lips twitched unwillingly.

“At any rate, quite a few merchant houses started establishing local planet-side offices to manage their part of the network as it grew. That’s where most of the enclaves came from, and most of what they need has to be shipped in from offworld, so a lot of the local space-to-surface activity is a matter of servicing those needs.

“At the same time, merchants being merchants, there’s been growing pressure to establish trade with the Medusans as a sideline to help defray their operating expenses. It’s mostly very small scale—precious stones, native art, tillik moss for the spice trade, an occasional bekhnor hide or ivory shipment, that sort of thing—but the Medusans’ needs are so limited that trade goods can be extremely cheap. The Medusans are only just learning how to forge decent iron and wretched steel, so you can imagine how they value duralloy knives or axeheads, and modern textiles are equally prized. In fact, the poor devils are being robbed blind by most of the factors; they have no concept of how little the goods they’re trading for cost the importers. Nor do they realize how easily they could become utterly dependent on those goods and the traders who supply them. We’ve tried to limit the dependency syndrome by slapping fairly tough ceilings on the levels of technology we’ll let anyone introduce, but both the Medusans and the off-worlders resent our interference.”

She paused, and Honor nodded again.

“The really frustrating part of it,” Dame Estelle went on more forcefully, “is that Manticoran merchants are specifically restricted by Act of Parliament from trading anything more advanced than muscle-powered technology to the natives lest we make them dependent upon us. Mind you, I think there’s some wisdom to that, but it means our own people are at least as irked with us as some of the other off-worlders, possibly even more so, since our proximity would give them a major competitive edge. That makes it hard for us to get an accurate reading on the entire process. Not even Manticorans go out of their way to cooperate with us, so the NPA and I are virtually outsiders on a planet nominally under our protection. Worse, I’m pretty sure the ‘native trade’ is being used as a cover for covert exchanges of illegal goods between off-worlders—including Manticorans—but I can’t stop it, I can’t prove it, and I can’t even seem to get the powers that be back home to care about it!”

She paused and unclenched the hands which had tightened on her knee, then gave a wry chuckle.