I wondered about that.  Maybe the CC was leveling with me when he said he only spied into private spaces in circumstances as unusual as my own.  Or into minds, for that matter.  I certainly no longer doubted that he could easily become aware of illegal activities such as sabotage or head-busting by hired goon squads-the time-honored last resorts of labor and management, and even more in vogue these days among radical groups like the Earthists who, after all, couldn't call on their "membership" to go on strike.  What would a brontosaur do?  Stop eating?  The CC could certainly look into the places where the bombs were assembled, or could become aware, if he chose to do so, of the intent of the bomb-thrower through readings from his ubiquitous intercellular machines.  Every year there were calls to permit him precisely those powers, by the law-and-order types.  After all, the CC is a benevolent watchdog, isn't he?  Who has he ever hurt, except those who deserved it?  We could reduce crime to zero overnight if we'd only take the chains off the CC.

I'd even leaned that way myself, in spite of the civil libertarian objections.  After my sojourn on Scarpa Island, I found myself heartily on the other side of the question.  I suppose I was simply illustrating that old definition of a liberal:  a conservative that just got arrested.  A conservative, of course, is a liberal who just got mugged.

"You are cynical about this process," the CC was saying, "because you've only seen it from the commercial side, and between humans and creatures with a very basic brain structure.  It is much more interesting when the negotiations are conducted between higher mammals.  There have been some interesting developments in Kenya, where lion/antelope arbitration has been going on for five decades now.  The lions, in particular, have become quite adept at it.  By now they know how to chose the most skilled representative, a sort of shop steward, using the same instincts that drive them to dominance battles.  I really believe they've grasped the concept that there must be lean hunting times, that if all the antelope were killed they would get nothing but commercially prepared chow-which they like well enough, but is no substitute for the hunt.  There is one grizzled old veteran without any teeth who, year after year, gives the antelope as hard a time at the bargaining fire as he ever did on the savannah in his youth.  He's a sort of Samuel Gompers of the-"

I was spared any more details of this leonine Lenin's exploits by David Earth, who finally bestirred himself.  He got to his feet, and pronghead stood hastily, destroying the polite myth that he had anything to do with the proceedings.  David seldom attended contract talks with individual ranchers anymore, he was too occupied with appearances promoting his Earthist philosophy to the voters.  On television, of course; there would be no quicker way to disperse a political rally than to have David walk into it.