“Yes. Well.” With the other hand, Thavé put zir tines down, took a cloth out of zir pocket, and mopped zir brow. Ze didn’t let go of Fift’s hand. “It was a difficult time. Or times. Hm.” Ze cleared zir throat. “In any event. The other school of thought, the Gardenist school . . . well, you’re living it. Firewall off each society via the disinclination to travel that you, Shria, summarized so eloquently. Get them stable, get them using resources wisely, get them out of the habit of large-scale war. Some people used to call it ‘tropical gathering’ as opposed to ‘temperate farming’: Keep a constant amount that’s always growing, instead of needing to till and sow and harvest.”

“So what’s wrong with that?” Shria said. “Isn’t that the right way?”

Thavé looked at the table for a while. Zir hand was warm and a little moist in Fift’s. “Firstly, you have a lot fewer sites than you would if you were doing it the Cyclic-Expansionist way, because your populations don’t do much exploring or expanding. So that makes you anxious. And second, well . . .” Ze sighed. “When you’re farming cultures, you know where they are in the cycle, at least as long as they don’t hit the catastrophic overlapping-culture scenario. If you’re managing them reasonably well, you know if it’s a safe time, a growing time, or if the cull is coming. And you’ve set it up so that most of the cultures will survive that cull. There will be a blaze of glory and destruction, lots for the poets to sing about next time around (the poetry in these places often runs to tragedy, not statistics). And then it’s time to rebuild.”

Ze looked up at them, frowning, then ze stared off across the pavilion. No one said anything.