The crew decided to use their new-found monopoly on potassium (which the novel discusses as an example of a hydraulic empire) to coerce the colonists into a new social order: they began traveling from town to town as mysterious and well-armed merchants, trading speckles for various goods and services—including sexual favors. Colonial women were impregnated by male merchants, and colonial men impregnated female merchants. By subjecting themselves to constant genetic scrutiny (to the point of charting their genealogies like horses), the merchants were thus able to eventually return the colony's gene pool to relative stability. By then, the merchants had become accustomed to the new social order, or to be more precise, their position at the top of it. What had been visualized as a temporary measure then became permanent.