For Love of Mother-Not

Now there's a scrawny, worthless-looking little runt," Mother Mastiff thought. She cuddled the bag of woodcarvings a little closer to her waist, making certain it was protected from the rain by a flap of her slickertic. The steady drizzle that characterized Drallar's autumn weather fled from the water-resistant material.

Offworlders were hard pressed to distinguish any difference in the city's seasons. In the summer, the rain was warm; in autumn and winter, it was cooler. Springtime saw it give way to a steady, cloying fog. So rare was the appearance of the sun through the near-perpetual cloud cover that when it did peep through, the authorities were wont to call a public holiday.

It was not really a slave market Mother Mastiff was trudging past. That was an archaic term, employed only by cynics. It was merely the place where labor-income adjustments were formalized.

Drallar was the largest city on the world of Moth, its only true metropolis, and it was not a particularly wealthy one. By keeping taxes low, it had attracted a good number of offworld businesses and, trading concerns to a well-situated but mostly inhospitable planet. It compensated by largely doing away with such annoying commercial aggravations as tariffs and regulations. While this resulted in considerable prosperity for some, it left the city government at a loss for general revenue.