provided internally, with no trade or commerce outside whatsoever. There
were merchants and stores still, yet they were not traders but
producers, each making their own wares as they sold ones they had
already made. Butchers sat in their shops with their blood-stained
aprons already donned, cobblers and tailors were busy with the day's
repairs and new creations, the milkmen paraded the streets slowly and
methodically, somehow getting their products to the citizens before 8
AM. The farmers and herdsmen were also at work in the fields that were
spread throughout the city, plowing and sowing, and being joined by
those who had just finished distributing the milk.

All was commonplace and normal, I thought, and I was surprised, for the
Zards were not at all martially minded, a great contrast to their
Canitaurian brethren. Of course, I had never actually met any of the
Canitaurian commoners. It seems to me that the only ones who really are
martially minded are the leaders and politicians, everyone else seems to
mind their own business, and sometimes I wonder if there would even be
any wars if there weren't any governments with the power to wage one.
There was a group of Zards by the government center, which was close to
my involuntary quarters, and they were leaning over an opening in the
aqueduct that ran down into the lake in the southern section of the
city, branching off from there into all the various sectors. They were
dumping a barrel of a fine, white powder into the water that was running
down into the lake, and after the first had been poured in, they added
another and another until they had put a good five barrels into the
water source. Once they had finished, they took the empty barrels to a
large cage that was down the road a bit, inside of a small grove of
trees and shrubs. Inside the cage was a multitude of little beetles that
crawled around every which way and were evidentially feasting on a large
chunk of glowing material. For a moment I was surprised, and wondered