“But—”

“I know,” Slightman said. “It’s a hard decision. Some empty-brained’s maybe better than all dead.” He paused. “Or all taken instead of just half.”

Cries of Hear him and Say thankee as Ben Slightman sat down.

“They always leave us enough to go on with, don’t they?” asked a smallhold farmer whose place was just west of Tian’s, near the edge of the Calla. His name was Louis Haycox, and he spoke in a musing, bitter tone of voice. Below his mustache, his lips curved in a smile that didn’t have much humor in it. “We won’t kill our children,” he said, looking at the Manni. “All God’s grace to ye, gentlemen, but I don’t believe even you could do so, came it right down to the killin-floor. Or not all of ye. We can’t pull up bag and baggage and go west—or in any other direction—because we leave our farms behind. They’d burn us out, all right, and come after the children just the same. They need em, gods know why.

“It always comes back to the same thing: we’re farmers, most of us. Strong when our hands are in the soil, weak when they ain’t. I got two kiddies of my own, four years old, and I love em both well. Should hate to lose either. But I’d give one to keep the other. And my farm.” Murmurs of agreement met this. “What other choice do we have? I say this: it would be the world’s worst mistake to anger the Wolves. Unless, of course, we can stand against them. If ’twere possible, I’d stand. But I just don’t see how it is.”

Tian felt his heart shrivel with each of Haycox’s words. How much of his thunder had the man stolen? Gods and the Man Jesus!

Wayne Overholser got to his feet. He was Calla Bryn Sturgis’s most successful farmer, and had a vast sloping belly to prove it. “Hear me, I beg.”

“We say thankee-sai,” they murmured.

“Tell you what we’re going to do,” he said, looking around. “What we always done, that’s what. Do any of you want to talk about standing against the Wolves? Are any of you that mad? With what? Spears and rocks, a few bows and bahs? Maybe four rusty old sof’ calibers like that?” He jerked a thumb toward Eisenhart’s rifle.

“Don’t be making fun of my shooting-iron, son,” Eisenhart said, but he was smiling ruefully.

“They’ll come and they’ll take the children,” Overholser said, looking around. “ Someof em. Then they’ll leave us alone again for a generation or even longer. So it is, so it has been, and I say leave it alone.”

Disapproving rumbles rose at this, but Overholser waited them out.

“Twenty-three years or twenty-four, it don’t matter,” he said when they were quiet again. “Either way it’s a long time. A long time of peace . Could be you’ve forgotten a few things, folks. One is that children are like any other crop. God always sends more. I know that sounds hard. But it’s how we’ve lived and how we have to go on.”