the outposts of the commercial alliance that humanity had been `` persuaded '' to join by the silver enye ( much as admiral perry 's gunships had `` persuaded '' japan to open itself up for trade in a much earlier generation ) were wide-flung , some outposts falling out of contact for generations , some lost and forgotten or else put on a bureaucrat 's schedule of concerns to be addressed another generation hence by another bureaucrat as yet unborn .