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joint resource.
Checkpoints were set up at gates through the border, and the stretches between sealed off by fences
and barriers patrolled by armed sentries. Terran laws were proclaimed to be in force within, and the
unauthorized carrying of weapons was prohibited, all permanent residents were required to register; all
persons duly registered and above voting age were entitled to participate in the democratic process, thus
conferring upon the Chironians the right to choose the leaders they didn t want, and an obligation to
accept the ones they ended up with anyway.
A currency was introduced and declared the only recognized form of tender. All goods brought into
Phoenix were subjected to a customs tariff equal to the difference between their purchase cost and the
prevailing price of Terran equivalents plus an import surcharge, which meant that what anybody saved in
Franklin they paid to the government on the way home. Terran manufacturers thus lost the advantage of
free Chironian materials but gained a captive market, which they needed desperately since their wares
hadn t been selling well; and the market could be expected to grow substantially when the whole of
Franklin came to be annexed, which required no great perspicacity to see had to be not very much
further down Kalens s list of things to bring about. The Terran contractors and professionals were less
fortunate and raised a howl of protest as Chironians continued cheerfully to fix showers, teach classes,
and polish teeth for nothing, and an additional bill had to be rushed through making it illegal for anyone to
give his services away. In response to this absurdity the skeptical Terran public became cynical and
proceeded to deluge the courts, already brought to their knees by Chironians queuing up in grinning lines
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of hundreds to be arrested, with a flood of lawsuits against anyone who gave anyone a helping hand with
anything, and a group of lawyers wives staged their own protest by drawing up a list of fees for conjugal
favors.
Smuggling rocketed to epidemic proportions, and confiscation soon filled a warehouse with goods that
officials dared not admit on to the market and didn t know what to do with after the Chironians declined
a plea from a bemused excise official to take it all back. The Chironians outside Phoenix continued to
satisfy every order or request for anything readily; Terran builders who had commenced work on a new
residential complex were found to be using Chironian labor with no references appearing in their books;
every business became convinced that its competitors were cheating, and before long every session of
both houses of Congress had degenerated into a bedlam of accusations and counteraccusations of illegal
profiteering, back-door dealing, scabbing, and every form of skullduggery imaginable.
Cynicism soon turned to rebellion as more of the Terran population came to perceive Phoenix not as a
protective enclave, but at worst a prison and at best a self-proclaimed lunatic asylum. Apartment units
were found deserted and more faces vanished as expeditions to Franklin came increasingly to be
one-way trips. Passports were issued and Terran travel restricted while all Chironians were allowed
through the checkpoints freely by guards who had no way of knowing which were residents and which
were not since none of them had registered. The sentries no longer cared all that much anyway; their
looking the other way became chronic and more and more of them were found not to be at their posts
when their relief showed up. An order was posted assigning at least one SD to every guard detail. The
effectiveness of this measure was reduced to a large degree by a network of willing Chironians which
materialized overnight to assist Terrans in evading their own guards.
Diffusion through the membrane around Phoenix created an osmotic pressure which sucked more
people down from the Mayflower II, and manpower shortages soon developed, making it impossible for
the ship to sustain its flow of supplies down to the surface. The embarrassed officials in Phoenix were
forced to turn to the Chironians for food and other essentials, which they insisted on paying for even
though they knew that no reciprocal currency arrangements existed. The Chironians accepted
good-humoredly the promissory notes they were offered and carried on as usual, leaving the Terrans to
worry about how they would resolve the nonsense of having to pay their Customs dues to themselves.
Nobody talked any more about annexing Franklin. Howard Kalens s chances of being elected to
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