In the abstract, this sounds like an easy decision — few persons would openly say, "I must decline the chance to see the galaxy; I prefer the option of slaughtering whomever I choose." But in concrete terms, the situation was more controversial… because the Divians would be requited to leave all lethal weapons on their homeworld, thus traveling to the stars unarmed. The Shaddill claimed that consciously equipping yourself with the means to kill other beings was direct evidence you were not sentient; those who refused to lay down their guns were not "civilized" enough to join the League.

(At this point, I asked Lajooli’e what was wrong with carrying, say, a shiny silver ax, if one only intended to use it on bad people who truly deserved what they got? But she told me the League did not view it that way… and the League did not engage in debate, they simply executed those who did not Play Along. That is the problem with aliens — their heads are so full of alien thought processes, they will not see reason.)

So each Divian of those long-ago days had to make a decision: either to hold on to his or her weapons and stay home, or to lay down arms and go to the stars. The Shaddill promised that those who chose disarmament would be granted pleasant tracts of land in another star system, on a planet specially prepared to mimic the Divian homeworld. The Shaddill also offered excellent enticements as "Welcome to the League" gifts: breeding seeds for Zarett spaceships, making it possible to fly from one star to another; a chemical called YouthBoost that helped people live twice their normal lifespan, without growing weak or shriveled; and new tricks of gene-splicing that allowed the Divians to engineer their offspring into specialized forms — huge muscular women, for example, or talkative little men whose skin automatically turned dark to block out radiation.

Despite these incentives, many Divians were not eager to accept the Shaddill offer. They did not trust aliens who said, "We will take you someplace nice, except you must leave behind all means to resist us." Indeed, the only ones who embraced the deal were wild optimists or people with nothing to lose — those trapped in terrible poverty or under murderous regimes, not to mention persons afflicted with fatal illnesses who threw themselves at the mercy of the Shaddill’s superior medical technology. Oddly enough,Lajoolie told me, there were many many people enduring precisely such desperate conditions: living in fear of war, facing death by famine, or growing sick from poisons in the air, water, and soil.

Anyone wanting to escape simply had to call upon the Shaddill. A few soft words would do… and even if there were killers breaking down your door or you were locked in a hideous torture chamber, you would be teleported instantly to the safety of a Shaddill carrier ship. In some regions of the Divian homeworld, this possibility of escape only increased the local brutality, as ruling authorities attempted to purge Unwanted Elements by scaring them into flight. Terrifying people into leaving the solar system was virtually as good as killing them…

…except that a few years later, many of those people came back. Looking healthy and prosperous. Flying wonderful Zaretts. Showing off gene-spliced babies who were more beautiful and intelligent than anyone who stayed behind, not to mention that these children were expected to live hundreds of years without suffering the infirmities of age.

That is when a number of stay-at-homes said, "Holy shit indeed!"

For one thing, most who had stayed on the Divian homeworld were suffering difficult times. Their planet had lost a goodly percentage of its underclass — the poor who worked at unappealing jobs for a pittance a day, the sick who fueled the economy by requiring expensive medical treatments, and the persons of despised background who served as scapegoats for those in power. With these people gone, the economy tottered, and the rich had to cast around for new underlings to grease the wheels of industry with their life-blood… but the new underlings were just as likely to jump ship as the old ones. The Shaddill were still around; their offer was still open. At the end of a bad day, anyone could decide that her boss was a fool, her lovers unworthy, her family more trouble than it was worth, and poof! Away she went to a new life, in a place where no one was hungry and no one had guns.

When the first wave of emigrants came back to say how wonderful their life was, a second wave of departures went flooding out. Those who were bored. Those whose lives had grown harder since the first wave left. Those who would have gone the first time but feared the Shaddill would butcher them for meat. Young people who could not get jobs, old people who despised the jobs they had, curiosity seekers, petty animals running from the law, faithless paramours abandoning unwanted commitments, unappreciated homemakers storming out of the house, scientists wishing to learn advanced Science things, farmers who could not face one more drought, women cornered by would-be rapists, teenagers whose parents could not understand True Love, get-rich-quick gamblers who were certain they could Make It Big if only they got a fresh start on a planet where the system did not work against you… all of them called or screamed or whispered to the Shaddill, and were swept off to a place of second chances.

The more people who left, the more chaos for those who stayed behind — and the more incentive for the hangers-on to get out too. Lajoolie said her own ancestors had lived in a large city on a tropical coast, a major port and shipment center. One summer ten years after the Shaddill arrived, a hurricane struck the city, killing or crippling many car-creatures and house-creatures. By the time the storm passed, half the populace had decided rebuilding would be too much trouble, so they disappeared into space. Within a week, eighty percent of the remainder had also flown away: the half-empty city was turning dangerous with gangs and looters, not to mention that hundreds of businesses were forced to close due to lack of customers.

Then, after all those people departed, there were not enough workers to unload the boats docked in the harbor. Far inland, other cities began to suffer because they did not receive shipments of food and imported goods. People of the inland cities also called on the Shaddill when the hardships grew too severe, making further breaks in the chain of production and supply. For twenty years then, the Shaddill left their offer open: twenty years during which the old Divian economy collapsed. (Scientific civilizations are so spindly and weak, if you take away too many people, the whole system breaks down. Hah!) The homeworld became a dog-eat-dog ruin, abandoned by everyone except those who were too stubborn to leave or too fond of violence to accept the League’s law.

"So it seems," said I, "the Shaddill were great villains who used divisive handouts to destroy your cultural infrastructure."

"No, no," Lajoolie protested, "they helped us. They improved us… not just by giving us Zaretts and all, but by weeding out the most vicious elements of our species, Those who left the homeworld were the peaceful, intelligent members of society — not perfect, of course, but we’re much better off, now that a big strain of brutality has been removed from our breeding pool."

"But what will you do if an occasion arises when you need to be brutal?"

"That won’t happen," Lajoolie said. "The League makes sure no one can hurt anyone else."

"No. The League kills certain people under certain conditions; that is all they do. They still permit a great deal of hurting to take place: I can attest to that. You can attest to it too — where was the League when the Shaddill shot you with their weapon ray?"

She had no answer… perhaps because she was descended from people who had been insufficiently suspicious of gifts that were too good to be true. Mistrust did not come naturally to persons of her ancestry; I wondered if that was pure accident, or if the Shaddill had deliberately created a situation where people would breed for gullibility.