Who started it?

[Donkey Hotay]

A shelf supported a dozen ceramic statues, each about sixteen inches high, representing monsters of the Tangting Forest. Glawen found them arresting, by reason both of superb workmanship and the impact of the subject matter, since they were the most hideous and disgusting objects of his experience.

Keebles seated himself at his desk. “Pretty things, are they not?”

Glawen turned away. “How can you bear to look at them?”

“I have no choice,” said Keebles. “If can’t sell them.”

“The tourists will take them off your hands,” said Glawen. “They will buy anything, the more horrifying the better.”

Keebles snorted. “A hundred thousand sols for the twelve?”

“That seems a high price.”

“Not so. One of the Tangting monsters is a freak. He models his fellows in clay for recreation. I will take them to Earth and describe them as fascinating works which pose a hundred psychological puzzles and sell them to a museum.”