Fish and game have been scarce. The Tulat have gone hungry to serve the Cloud People. And now:
"'If we worked any more for the Mammoth Slayers, we would starve.'" (p. 206)
(The Cloud People slay mammoths.)
This issue, already implicit, has become explicit. There has to be a limit to how much the Tulat can be forced to give and Red Wolf, never having collected tribute before, cannot know, except by experience, what that limit is.
Ralph Corwin, the Time Patrol anthropologist, unable to intervene, except minimally, in social interactions, has advised the technologically more advanced masters to give their subjects:
"'...new hooks and spears...'" (ibid.)
- which help but are not enough. Millennia of class conflict begin here and, according to the future history revealed by the Patrol, will continue for many millennia into our future.
Eventually, there will be an Era of Oneness to be followed by the post-human Danellians. Meanwhile, Wanda Tamberly addresses the situation in 13,211 BC.
2 comments:
The Tulat are not credible, alas. Humans have been apex predators since before we were human.
Human beings have been apex predators - except maybe a few like the Tulat who did not survive and were forgotten?
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