Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online
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A SLAVE IS A SLAVE
BY H. BEAM PIPER
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| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact--Science |
| Fiction April 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any |
| evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was |
| renewed. |
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There has always been strong sympathy for the poor, meek,
downtrodden slave--the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and
overbearing masters. Could it possibly have been misplaced...?
Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, accepted the coffee cup and lifted it to his
lips, then lowered it. These Navy robots always poured coffee too hot;
spacemen must have collapsium-lined throats. With the other hand, he
punched a button on the robot's keyboard and received a lighted
cigarette; turning, he placed the cup on the command-desk in front of
him and looked about. The tension was relaxing in Battle-Control, the
purposeful pandemonium of the last three hours dying rapidly. Officers
of both sexes, in red and blue and yellow and green coveralls, were
rising from seats, leaving their stations, gathering in groups.
Laughter, a trifle loud; he realized, suddenly, that they had been
worried, and wondered if he should not have been a little so himself.
No. There would have been nothing he could have done about anything, so
worry would not have been useful. He lifted the cup again and sipped
cautiously.
"That's everything we can do now," the man beside him said. "Now we just
sit and wait for the next move."
Like all the others, Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak wore shipboard
battle-dress; his coveralls were black, splashed on breast and between
shoulders with the gold insignia of his rank. His head was completely
bald, and almost spherical; a beaklike nose carried down the curve of
his brow, and the straight lines of mouth and chin chopped under it
enhanced rather than spoiled the effect. He was getting coffee; he
gulped it at once.
"It was very smart work, Commodore. I never saw a landing operation go
so smoothly."
"Too smooth," Shatrak said. "I don't trust it." He looked suspiciously
up at the row of viewscreens.
"It was absolutely unnecessary!"
That was young Obray, Count Erskyll, seated on the commodore's left. He
was a generation younger than Prince Trevannion, as Shatrak was a
generation older; they were both smooth-faced. It was odd, how beards
went in and out of fashion with alternate generations. He had been
worried, too, during the landing, but for a different reason from the
others. Now he was reacting with anger.
"I told you, from the first, that it was unnecessary. You see? They
weren't even able to defend themselves, let alone...."
His personal communication-screen buzzed; he set down the coffee and
flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was
carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze
was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and
ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger. Lanze was now wearing the combat
coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet
with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his
shoulder. He grinned and executed an exaggeratedly military salute. He
chuckled.
"Well, look at you; aren't you the perfect picture of correct diplomatic
dress?"
"You know, sir, I'm afraid I am, for this planet," Degbrend said.
"Colonel Ravney insisted on it. He says the situation downstairs is
still fluid, which I take to mean that everybody is shooting at
everybody. He says he has the main telecast station, in the big building
the locals call the Citadel."
"Oh, good. Get our announcement out as quickly as you can. Number Five.
You and Colonel Ravney can decide what interpolations are needed to fit
the situation."
"Number Five; the really tough one," Degbrend considered. "I take it
that by interpolations you do not mean dilutions?"
"Oh, no; don't water the drink. Spike it."
Lanze Degbrend grinned at him. Then he snapped down the visor of his
helmet, unslung his carbine, and presented it. He was still standing at
present arms when Trevannion blanked the screen.
* * * * *
"That still doesn't excuse a wanton and unprovoked aggression!" Erskyll
was telling Shatrak, his thin face flushed and his voice quivering with
indignation. "We came here to help these people, not to murder them."
"We didn't come here to do either, Obray," he said, turning to face the
younger man. "We came here to annex their planet to the Galactic Empire,
whether they wish it annexed or not. Commodore Shatrak used the quickest
and most effective method of doing that. It would have done no good to
attempt to parley with them from off-planet. You heard those telecasts
of theirs."
"Authoritarian," Shatrak said, then mimicked pompously: "'Everybody is
commanded to remain calm; the Mastership is taking action. The
Convocation of the Lords-Master is in special session; they will decide
how to deal with the invaders. The administrators are directed to
reassure the supervisors; the overseers will keep the workers at their
tasks. Any person disobeying the orders of the Mastership will be dealt
with most severely.'"
"Static, too. No spaceships into this system for the last five hundred
years; the Convocation--equals Parliament, I assume--hasn't been in
special session for two hundred and fifty."
"Yes. I've taken over planets with that kind of government before,"
Shatrak said. "You can't argue with them. You just grab them by the
center of authority, quick and hard."
Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of
force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had
said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he
was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the
incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it
is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.
But, at the same time, he was opposed to authoritarianism, except, of
course, when necessary for the real good of the people. And he did not
like rulers who called themselves Lords-Master. Good democratic rulers
called themselves Servants of the People. So he relapsed into silence
and stared at the viewscreens.
One, from an outside pickup on the _Empress Eulalie_ herself, showed the
surface of the planet, a hundred miles down, the continent under them
curving away to a distant sun-reflecting sea; beyond the curved horizon,
the black sky was spangled with unwinking stars. Fifty miles down, the
sun glinted from the three thousand foot globes of the two
transport-cruisers, _Canopus_ and _Mizar_.
Another screen, from _Mizar_, gave a clearer if more circumscribed view
of the surface--green countryside, veined by rivers and wrinkled with
mountains; little towns that were mere dots; a scatter of white clouds.
Nothing that looked like roads. There had been no native sapient race on
this planet, and in the thirteen centuries since it had been colonized
the Terro-human population had never completely lost the use of
contragravity vehicles. In that screen, farther down, the four
destroyers, _Irma_, _Irene_, _Isobel_ and _Iris_, were tiny twinkles.
* * * * *
From _Irene_, they had a magnified view of the city. On the maps, none
later than eight hundred years old, it was called Zeggensburg; it had
been built at the time of the first colonization under the old Terran
Federation. Tall buildings, rising from wide interspaces of lawns and
parks and gardens, and, at the very center, widely separated from
anything else, the mass of the Citadel, a huge cylindrical tower rising
from a cluster of smaller cylinders, with a broad circular landing stage
above, topped by the newly raised flag of the Galactic Empire.
There was a second city, a thick crescent, to the south and east. The
old maps placed the Zeggensburg spaceport there, but not a trace of that
remained. In its place was what was evidently an industrial district,
located where the prevailing winds would carry away the dust and smoke.
There was quite a bit of both, but the surprising thing was the streets,
long curved ones, and shorter ones crossing at regular intervals to form
blocks. He had never seen a city with streets before, and he doubted if
anybody else on the Empire ships had. Long boulevards to give
unobstructed passage to low-level air-traffic, of course, and short
winding walkways, but not things like these. Pictures, of course, of
native cities on planets colonized at the time of the Federation, and
even very ancient ones of cities on pre-Atomic Terra. But these people
had contragravity; the towering, wide-spaced city beside this
cross-gridded anachronism proved that.
They knew so little about this planet which they had come to bring under
Imperial rule. It had been colonized thirteen centuries ago, during the
last burst of expansion before the System States War and the
disintegration of the Terran Federation, and it had been named Aditya,
in the fashion of the times, for some forgotten deity of some obscure
and ancient polytheism. A century or so later, it had seceded from or
been abandoned by the Federation, then breaking up. That much they had
gleaned from old Federation records still existing on Baldur. After
that, darkness, lighted only by a brief flicker when more records had
turned up on Morglay.
Morglay was one of the Sword-Worlds, settled by refugee rebels from the
System States planets. Mostly they had been soldiers and spacemen; there
had been many women with them, and many were skilled technicians,
engineers, scientists. They had managed to carry off considerable
equipment with them, and for three centuries they had lived in
isolation, spreading over a dozen hitherto undiscovered planets.
Excalibur, Tizona, Gram, Morglay, Durendal, Flamberge, Curtana,
Quernbiter; the names were a roll-call of fabulous blades of Old Terran
legend.
Then they had erupted, suddenly and calamitously, into what was left of
the Terran Federation as the Space Vikings, carrying pillage and
destruction, until the newborn Empire rose to vanquish them. In the
sixth Century Pre-Empire, one of their fleets had come from Morglay to
Aditya.
The Adityans of that time had been near-barbarians; the descendants of
the original settlers had been serfs of other barbarians who had come as
mercenaries in the service of one or another of the local chieftains and
had remained to loot and rule. Subjugating them had been easy; the Space
Vikings had taken Aditya and made it their home. For several centuries,
there had been communication between them and their home planet. Then
Morglay had become involved in one of the interplanetary dynastic wars
that had begun the decadence of the Space Vikings, and again Aditya
dropped out of history.
Until this morning, when history returned in the black ships of the
Galactic Empire.
* * * * *
He stubbed out the cigarette and summoned the robot to give him another.
Shatrak was speaking:
"You see, Count Erskyll, we really had to do it this way, for their own
good." He wouldn't have credited the commodore with such guile; anything
was justified, according to Obray of Erskyll, if done for somebody
else's good. "What we did, we just landed suddenly, knocked out their
army, seized the center of government, before anybody could do anything.
If we'd landed the way you'd wanted us to, somebody would have resisted,
and the next thing, we'd have had to kill about five or six thousand of
them and blow down a couple of towns, and we'd have lost a lot of our
own people doing it. You might say, we had to do it to save them from
themselves."
Obray of Erskyll seemed to have doubts, but before he could articulate
them, Shatrak's communication-screen was calling attention to itself.
The commodore flicked the switch, and his executive officer, Captain
Patrique Morvill, appeared in it.
"We've just gotten reports, sir, that some of Ravney's people have
captured a half-dozen missile-launching sites around the city. His
air-reconn tells him that that's the lot of them. I have an officer of
one of the parties that participated. You ought to hear what he has to
say, sir."
"Well, good!" Vann Shatrak whooshed out his breath. "I don't mind
admitting, I was a little on edge about that."
"Wait till you hear what Lieutenant Carmath has to say." Morvill seemed
to be strangling a laugh. "Ready for him, Commodore?"
Shatrak nodded; Morvill made a hand-signal and vanished in a flicker of
rainbow colors; when the screen cleared, a young Landing-Troop
lieutenant in battle-dress was looking out of it. He saluted and gave
his name, rank and unit.
"This missile-launching site I'm occupying, sir; it's twenty miles
north-west of the city. We took it thirty minutes ago; no resistance
whatever. There are four hundred or so people here. Of them, twelve, one
dozen, are soldiers. The rest are civilians. Ten enlisted men, a non-com
of some sort, and something that appears to be an officer. The officer
had a pistol, fully loaded. The non-com had a submachine gun, empty,
with two loaded clips on his belt. The privates had rifles, empty, and
no ammunition. The officer did not know where the rifle ammunition was
stored."
Shatrak swore. The second lieutenant nodded. "Exactly my comment when he
told me, sir. But this place is beautifully kept up. Lawns all mowed,
trees neatly pruned, everything policed up like inspection morning. And
there is a headquarters office building here adequate for an army
division...."
"How about the armament, Lieutenant?" Shatrak asked with forced
patience.
"Ah, yes; the armament, sir. There are eight big launching cradles for
panplanetary or off-planet missiles. They are all polished up like the
Crown Jewels. But none, repeat none, of them is operative. And there is
not a single missile on the installation."
Shatrak's facial control didn't slip. It merely intensified, which
amounted to the same thing.
"Lieutenant Carmath, I am morally certain I heard you correctly, but
let's just check. You said...."
He repeated the lieutenant back, almost word for word. Carmath nodded.
"That was it, sir. The missile-crypts are stacked full of
old photoprints and recording and microfilm spools. The
sighting-and-guidance systems for all the launchers are completely
missing. The letoff mechanisms all lack major parts. There is an
elaborate set of detection equipment, which will detect absolutely
nothing. I saw a few pairs of binoculars about; I suspect that that is
what we were first observed with."
"This office, now; I suppose all the paperwork is up to the minute in
quintulplicate, and initialed by everybody within sight or hearing?"
"I haven't checked on that yet, sir. If you're thinking of betting on
it, please don't expect me to cover you, though."
"Well, thank you, Lieutenant Carmath. Stick around; I'm sending down a
tech-intelligence crew to look at what's left of the place. While
you're waiting, you might sort out whoever seems to be in charge and
find out just what in Nifflheim he thinks that launching-station was
maintained for."
[Illustration]
"I think I can tell you that, now, Commodore," Prince Trevannion said as
Shatrak blanked the screen. "We have a petrified authoritarianism. Quite
likely some sort of an oligarchy; I'd guess that this Convocation thing
they talk about consists of all the ruling class, everybody has equal
voice, and nobody will take the responsibility for doing anything. And
the actual work of government is probably handled by a corps of
bureaucrats entrenched in their jobs, unwilling to exert any effort and
afraid to invite any criticism, and living only to retire on their
pensions. I've seen governments like that before." He named a few. "One
thing; once a government like that has been bludgeoned into the Empire,
it rarely makes any trouble later."
"Just to judge by this missileless non-launching station," Shatrak said,
"they couldn't even decide on what kind of trouble to make, or how to
start it. I think you're going to have a nice easy Proconsulate here,
Count Erskyll."
Count Erskyll started to say something. No doubt he was about to tell
Shatrak, cuttingly, that he didn't want an easy Proconsulate, but an
opportunity to help these people. He was saved from this by the buzzing
of Shatrak's communication-screen.
It was Colonel Pyairr Ravney, the Navy Landing-Troop commander. Like
everybody else who had gone down to Zeggensburg, he was in battle-dress
and armed; the transpex visor of his helmet was pushed up. Between
Shatrak's generation and Count Erskyll's, he sported a pointed mustache
and a spiky chin-beard, which, on his thin and dark-eyed face, looked
distinctly Mephistophelean. He was grinning.
"Well, sir, I think we can call it a done job," he said. "There's a
delegation here who want to talk to the Lords-Master of the ships on
behalf of the Lords-Master of the Convocation. Two of them, with about a
dozen portfolio-bearers and note-takers. I'm not too good in Lingua
Terra, outside Basic, at best, and their brand is far from that. I
gather that they're some kind of civil-servants, personal
representatives of the top Lords-Master."
"Do we want to talk to them?" Shatrak asked.
"Well, we should only talk to the actual, titular, heads of the
government--Mastership," Erskyll, suddenly protocol-conscious, objected.
"We can't negotiate with subordinates."
"Oh, who's talking about negotiating; there isn't anything to negotiate.
Aditya is now a part of the Galactic Empire. If this present regime
assents to that, they can stay in power. If not, we will toss them out
and install a new government. We will receive this delegation, inform
them to that effect, and send them back to relay the information to
their Lords-Master." He turned to the Commodore. "May I speak to Colonel
Ravney?"
Shatrak assented. He asked Ravney where these Lords-Master were.
"Here in the Citadel, in what they call the Convocation Chamber. Close
to a thousand of them, screaming recriminations at one another. Sounds
like feeding time at the Imperial Zoo. I think they all want to
surrender, but nobody dares propose it first. I've just put a cordon
around it and placed it off limits to everybody. And everything outside
off limits to the Convocation."
"Well thought of, Colonel. I suppose the Citadel teems with bureaucrats
and such low life-forms?"
"Bulging with them. Literally thousands. Lanze Degbrend and Commander
Douvrin and a few others are trying to get some sensible answers out of
some of them."
"This delegation; how had you thought of sending them up?"
"Landing-craft to _Isobel_; _Isobel_ will bring them the rest of the
way."
He looked at his watch. "Well, don't be in too much of a rush to get
them here, Colonel. We don't want them till after lunch. Delay them on
_Isobel_; the skipper can see that they have their own lunch aboard. And
entertain them with some educational films. Something to convince them
that there is slightly more to the Empire than one ship-of-the-line, two
cruisers and four destroyers."
Count Erskyll was dissatisfied about that, too. He wanted to see the
delegation at once and make arrangements to talk to their superiors.
Count Erskyll, among other things, was zealous, and of this he
disapproved. Zealous statesmen perhaps did more mischief than anything
in the Galaxy--with the possible exception of procrastinating soldiers.
That could indicate the fundamental difference between statecraft and
war. He'd have to play with that idea a little.
* * * * *
An Empire ship-of-the-line was almost a mile in diameter. It was more
than a battle-craft; it also had political functions. The grand salon,
on the outer zone where the curvature of the floors was less
disconcerting, was as magnificent as any but a few of the rooms of the
Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, the floor richly carpeted and the
walls alternating mirrors and paintings. The movable furniture varied
according to occasion; at present, it consisted of the bare desk at
which they sat, the three chairs they occupied, and the three
secretary-robots, their rectangular black casts blazened with the Sun
and Cogwheel of the Empire. It faced the door, at the far end of the
room; on either side, a rank of spacemen, in dress uniform and under
arms, stood.
In principle, annexing a planet to the Empire was simplicity itself, but
like so many things simple in principle, it was apt to be complicated in
practice, and to this, he suspected, the present instance would be no
exception.
In principle, one simply informed the planetary government that it was
now subject to the sovereignty of his Imperial Majesty, the Galactic
Emperor. This information was always conveyed by a Ministerial
Secretary, directly under the Prime Minister and only one more step down
from the Emperor, in the present instance Jurgen, Prince Trevannion. To
make sure that the announcement carried conviction, the presumedly glad
tidings were accompanied by the Imperial Space Navy, at present
represented by Commodore Vann Shatrak and a seven ship battle-line unit,
and two thousand Imperial Landing-Troops.
When the locals had been properly convinced--with as little bloodshed as
necessary, but always beyond any dispute--an Imperial Proconsul, in this
case Obray, Count Erskyll, would be installed. He would by no means
govern the planet. The Imperial Constitution was definite on that point;
every planetary government should be sovereign as to intraplanetary
affairs. The Proconsul, within certain narrow and entirely inelastic
limits, would merely govern the government.
Unfortunately, Obray, Count Erskyll, appeared not to understand this
completely. It was his impression that he was a torch-bearer of Imperial
civilization, or something equally picturesque and metaphorical. As he
conceived it, it was the duty of the Empire, as represented by himself,
to make over backward planets like Aditya in the image of Odin or Marduk
or Osiris or Baldur or, preferably, his own home world of Aton.
This was Obray of Erskyll's first proconsular appointment, it was due to
family influence, and it was a mistake. Mistakes, of course, were
inevitable in anything as large and complex as the Galactic Empire, and
any institution guided by men was subject to one kind of influence or
another, family influence being no worse than any other kind. In this
case, the ultra-conservative Erskylls of Aton, from old Errol, Duke of
Yorvoy, down, had become alarmed at the political radicalism of young
Obray, and had, on his graduation from the University of Nefertiti,
persuaded the Prime Minister to appoint him to a Proconsulate as far
from Aton as possible, where he would not embarrass them. Just at that
time, more important matters having been gotten out of the way, Aditya
had come up for annexation, and Obray of Erskyll had been named
Proconsul.
That had been the mistake. He should have been sent to some planet which
had been under Imperial rule for some time, where the Proconsulate ran
itself in a well-worn groove, and where he could at leisure learn the
procedures and unlearn some of the unrealisms absorbed at the University
from professors too well insulated from the realities of politics.
* * * * *
There was a stir among the guards; helmet-visors were being snapped
down; feet scuffed. They stiffened to attention, the great doors at the
other end of the grand salon slid open, and the guards presented arms as
the Adityan delegation was ushered in.
There were fourteen of them. They all wore ankle-length gowns, and they
all had shaven heads. The one in the lead carried a staff and wore a
pale green gown; he was apparently a herald. Behind him came two in
white gowns, their empty hands folded on their breasts; one was a huge
bulk of obesity with a bulging brow, protuberant eyes and a pursey
little mouth, and the other was thin and cadaverous, with a skull-like,
almost fleshless face. The ones behind, in dark green and pale blue,
carried portfolios and slung sound-recorder cases. There was a metallic
twinkle at each throat; as they approached, he could see that they all
wore large silver gorgets. They came to a halt twenty feet from the
desk. The herald raised his staff.
"I present the Admirable and Trusty Tchall Hozhet, personal chief-slave
of the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, Chairman of the Presidium of the
Lords-Master's Convocation, and Khreggor Chmidd, chief-slave in office
to the Lord-Master Rovard Javasan, Chief of Administration of
Management of the Mastership," he said. Then he stopped, puzzled,
looking from one to another of them. When his eyes fell on Vann Shatrak,
he brightened.
"Are you," he asked, "the chief-slave of the chief Lord-Master of this
ship?"
Shatrak's face turned pink; the pink darkened to red. He used a word; it
was a completely unprintable word. So, except for a few scattered
pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions, were the next fifty words he
used. The herald stiffened. The two delegates behind him were aghast.
The subordinate burden-bearers in the rear began looking around
apprehensively.
"I," Shatrak finally managed, "am an officer of his Imperial Majesty's
Space Navy. I am in command of this battle-line unit. I am _not_"--he
reverted briefly to obscenity--"a slave."
"You mean, you are a Lord-Master, too?" That seemed to horrify the
herald even more that the things Shatrak had been calling him. "Forgive
me, Lord-Master. I did not think...."
"That's right; you didn't," Shatrak agreed. "And don't call me
Lord-Master again, or I'll...."
"Just a moment, Commodore." He waved the herald aside and addressed the
two in white gowns, shifting to Lingua Terra. "This is a ship of the
Galactic Empire," he told them. "In the Empire, there are no slaves. Can
you understand that?"
Evidently not. The huge one, Khreggor Chmidd, turned to the skull-faced
Tchall Hozhet, saying: "Then they must all be Lords-Master." He saw the
objection to that at once. "But how can one be a Lord-Master if there
are no slaves?"
The horror was not all on the visitors' side of the desk, either. Obray
of Erskyll was staring at the delegation and saying, "Slaves!" under his
breath. Obray of Erskyll had never, in his not-too-long life, seen a
slave before.
"They can't be," Tchall Hozhet replied. "A Lord-Master is one who owns
slaves." He gave that a moment's consideration. "But if they aren't
Lords-Master, they must be slaves, and...." No. That wouldn't do,
either. "But a slave is one who belongs to a Lord-Master."
Rule of the Excluded Third; evidently Pre-Atomic formal logic had crept
back to Aditya. Chmidd, looking around, saw the ranks of spacemen on
either side, now at parade-rest.
"But aren't they slaves?" he asked.
"They are spacemen of the Imperial Navy," Shatrak roared. "Call one a
slave to his face and you'll get a rifle-butt in yours. And I shan't
lift a finger to stop it." He glared at Chmidd and Hozhet. "Who had the
infernal impudence to send slaves to deal with the Empire? He needs to
be taught a lesson."
"Why, I was sent by the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, and...."
"Tchall!" Chmidd hissed at him. "We cannot speak to Lords-Master. We
must speak to their chief-slaves."
"But they have no slaves," Hozhet objected. "Didn't you hear the ... the
one with the small beard ... say so?"
"But that's ridiculous, Khreggor. Who does the work, and who tells them
what to do? Who told these people to come here?"
* * * * *
"Our Emperor sent us. That is his picture, behind me. But we are not his
slaves. He is merely the chief man among us. Do your Masters not have
one among them who is chief?"
"That's right," Chmidd said to Hozhet. "In the Convocation, your
Lord-Master is chief, and in the Mastership, my Lord-Master, Rovard
Javasan, is chief."
"But they don't tell the other Lords-Master what to do. In Convocation,
the other Lords-Master tell them...."
"That's what I meant about an oligarchy," he whispered, in Imperial, to
Erskyll.
"Suppose we tell Ravney to herd these Lords-Master onto a couple of
landing-craft and bring them up here?" Shatrak suggested. He made the
suggestion in Lingua Terra Basic, and loudly.
"I think we can manage without that." He raised his voice, speaking in
Lingua Terra Basic:
"It does not matter whether these slaves talk to us or not. This planet
is now under the rule of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. If this
Mastership wants to govern the planet under the Emperor, they may do so.
If not, we will make an end of them and set up a new government here."
He paused. Chmidd and Hozhet were looking at one another in shocked
incredulity.
"Tchall, they mean it," Chmidd said. "They can do it, too."
"We have nothing more to say to you slaves," he continued. "Hereafter,
we will speak directly to the Lords-Master."
"But.... The Lords-Master never do business directly," Hozhet said. "It
is un-Masterly. Such discussions are between chief-slaves."
"This thing they call the Convocation," Shatrak mentioned. "I wonder if
the members have the business done entirely through their slaves."
"Oh, no!" That shocked Chmidd into direct address. "No slave is allowed
in the Convocation Chamber."
He wondered how they kept the place swept out. Robots, no doubt. Or
else, what happened when the Masters weren't there didn't count.
"Very well. Your people have recorders; are they on?"
Hozhet asked Chmidd; Chmidd asked the herald, who asked one of the
menials in the rear, who asked somebody else. The reply came back
through the same channels; they were.
"Very well. At this time tomorrow, we will speak to the Convocation of
Lords-Master. Commodore Shatrak, see to it that Colonel Ravney has them
in the Convocation Chamber, and that preparations in the room are made,
so that we may address them in the dignity befitting representatives of
his Imperial Majesty." He turned to the Adityan slaves. "That is all.
You have permission to go."
They watched the delegation back out, with the honor-guard following.
When the doors had closed behind them, Shatrak ran his hand over his
bald head and laughed.
"Shaved heads, every one of them. That's probably why they thought I was
your slave. Bet those gorgets are servile badges, too." He touched the
Knight's Star of the Order of the Empire at his throat. "Probably
thought that was what this was. We would have to draw something like
this!"
"They simply can't imagine anybody not being either a slave or a
slave-owner," Erskyll was saying. "That must mean that there is no free
non-slave-holding class at all. Universal slavery! Well, we'll have to
do something about that. Proclaim total emancipation, immediately."
"Oh, no; we can't do anything like that. The Constitution won't permit
us to. Section Two, Article One: _Every Empire planet shall be
self-governed as to its own affairs, in the manner of its own choice,
and without interference._"
"But slavery.... Section Two, Article Six," Erskyll objected. "_There
shall be no chattel slavery or serfdom anywhere in the Empire; no
sapient being of any race whatsoever shall be the property of any being
but himself._"
"That's correct," he agreed. "If this Mastership intends to remain the
planetary government under the Empire, they will be obliged to abolish
slavery, but they will have to do it by their own act. We cannot do it
for them."
"You know what I'd do, Prince Trevannion?" Shatrak said. "I'd just heave
this Mastership thing out, and set up a nice tight military
dictatorship. We have the planet under martial rule now; let's just keep
it that way for about five years, till we can train a new government."
That suggestion seemed to pain Count Erskyll almost as much as the
existing situation.
* * * * *
They dined late, in Commodore Shatrak's private dining room. Beside
Shatrak, Erskyll and himself, there were Lanze Degbrend, and Count
Erskyll's charge-d'affaires, Sharll Ernanday, and Patrique Morvill and
Pyairr Ravney and the naval intelligence officer, Commander Andrey
Douvrin. Ordinarily, he deplored serious discussion at meals, but under
the circumstances it was unavoidable; nobody could think or talk of
anything else. The discussion which he had hoped would follow the meal
began before the soup-course.
"We have a total population of about twenty million," Lanze Degbrend
reported. "A trifle over ten thousand Masters, all ages and both sexes.
The remainder are all slaves."
"I find that incredible," Erskyll declared promptly. "Twenty million
people, held in slavery by ten thousand! Why do they stand for it? Why
don't they rebel?"
"Well, I can think of three good reasons," Douvrin said. "Three square
meals a day."
[Illustration]
"And no responsibilities; no need to make decisions," Degbrend added.
"They've been slaves for seven and a half centuries. They don't even
know the meaning of freedom, and it would frighten them if they did."
"Chain of command," Shatrak said. When that seemed not to convey any
meaning to Erskyll, he elaborated: "We have a lot of dirty-necked
working slaves. Over every dozen of them is an overseer with a big whip
and a stungun. Over every couple of overseers there is a guard with a
submachine gun. Over them is a supervisor, who doesn't need a gun
because he can grab a handphone and call for troops. Over the
supervisors, there are higher supervisors. Everybody has it just enough
better than the level below him that he's afraid of losing his job and
being busted back to fieldhand."
"That's it exactly, Commodore," Degbrend said. "The whole society is a
slave hierarchy. Everybody curries favor with the echelon above, and
keeps his eye on the echelon below to make sure he isn't being undercut.
We have something not too unlike that, ourselves. Any organizational
society is, in some ways, like a slave society. And everything is
determined by established routine. The whole thing has simply been
running on momentum for at least five centuries, and if we hadn't come
smashing in with a situation none of the routines covered, it would have
kept on running for another five, till everything wore out and stopped.
I heard about those missile-stations, by the way. They're typical of
everything here."
"That's another thing," Erskyll interrupted. "These Lords-Master are the
descendants of the old Space-Vikings, and the slaves of the original
inhabitants. The Space Vikings were a technologically advanced people;
they had all the old Terran Federation science and technology, and a lot
they developed for themselves on the Sword-Worlds."
"Well? They still had a lot of it, on the Sword-Worlds, two centuries
ago when we took them over."
"But technology always drives out slavery; that's a fundamental law of
socio-economics. Slavery is economically unsound; it cannot compete with
power-industry, let alone cybernetics and robotics."
He was tempted to remind young Obray of Erskyll that there were no such
things as fundamental laws of socio-economics; merely usually reliable
generalized statements of what can more or less be depended upon to
happen under most circumstances. He resisted the temptation. Count
Erskyll had had enough shocks, today, without adding to them by
gratuitous blasphemy.
"In this case, Obray, it worked in reverse. The Space Vikings enslaved
the Adityans to hold them in subjugation. That was a politico-military
necessity. Then, being committed to slavery, with a slave population who
had to be made to earn their keep, they found cybernetics and robotics
economically unsound."
"And almost at once, they began appointing slave overseers, and the
technicians would begin training slave assistants. Then there would be
slave supervisors to direct the overseers, slave administrators to
direct them, slave secretaries and bookkeepers, slave technicians and
engineers."
"How about the professions, Lanze?"
"All slave. Slave physicians, teachers, everything like that. All the
Masters are taught by slaves; the slaves are educated by apprenticeship.
The courts are in the hands of slaves; cases are heard by the chief
slaves of judges who don't even know where their own courtrooms are;
every Master has a team of slave lawyers. Most of the lawsuits are
estate-inheritance cases; some of them have been in litigation for
generations."
"What do the Lords-Master do?" Shatrak asked.
"Masterly things," Degbrend replied. "I was only down there since noon,
but from what I could find out, that consists of feasting, making love
to each other's wives, being entertained by slave performers, and
feuding for social precedence like wealthy old ladies on Odin."
"You got this from the slaves? How did you get them to talk, Lanze?"
* * * * *
Degbrend and Ravney exchanged amused glances. Ravney said:
"Well, I detailed a sergeant and six privates to accompany Honorable
Degbrend," Ravney said. "They.... How would you put it, Lanze?"
"I asked a slave a question. If he refused to answer, somebody knocked
him down with a rifle-butt," Degbrend replied. "I never had to do that
more than once in any group, and I only had to do it three times in all.
After that, when I asked questions, I was answered promptly and fully.
It is surprising how rapidly news gets around the Citadel."
"You mean you had those poor slaves beaten?" Erskyll demanded.
"Oh, no. Beating implies repeated blows. We only gave one to a customer;
that was enough."
"Well, how about the army, if that's what those people in the long
red-brown coats were?" Shatrak changed the subject by asking Ravney.
"All slave, of course, officers and all. What will we do about them,
sir? I have about three thousand, either confined to their barracks or
penned up in the Citadel. I requisitioned food for them, paid for it in
chits. There were a few isolated companies and platoons that gave us
something of a fight; most of them just threw away their weapons and
bawled for quarter. I've segregated the former; with your approval, I'll
put them under Imperial officers and noncoms for a quickie training in
our tactics, and then use them to train the rest."
"Do that, Pyairr. We only have two thousand men of our own, and that's
not enough. Do you think you can make soldiers out of any of them?"
"Yes, I believe so, sir. They are trained, organized and armed for
civil-order work, which is what we'll need them for ourselves. In the
entire history of this army, all they have done has been to overawe
unarmed slaves; I am sure they have never been in combat with regular
troops. They have an elaborate set of training and field regulations for
the sort of work for which they were intended. What they encountered
today was entirely outside those regulations, which is why they behaved
as they did."
"Did you have any trouble getting cooperation from the native officers?"
Shatrak asked.
"Not in the least. They cooperated quite willingly, if not always too
intelligently. I simply told them that they were now the personal
property of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. They were quite flattered
by the change of ownership. If ordered to, I believe that they would
fire on their former Lords-Master without hesitation."
"You told those slaves that they ... _belonged_ ... to the _Emperor_?"
Count Erskyll was aghast. He stared at Ravney for an instant, then
snatched up his brandy-glass--the meal had gotten to that point--and
drained it at a gulp. The others watched solicitously while he coughed
and spluttered over it.
"Commodore Shatrak," he said sternly. "I hope that you will take severe
disciplinary action; this is the most outrageous...."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," Shatrak retorted. "The colonel is to be
commended; did the best thing he could, under the circumstances. What
are you going to do when slavery is abolished here, Colonel?"
"Oh, tell them that they have been given their freedom as a special
reward for meritorious service, and then sign them up for a five year
enlistment."
"That might work. Again, it might not."
"I think, Colonel, that before you do that, you had better disarm them
again. You might possibly have some trouble, otherwise."
Ravney looked at him sharply. "They might not want to be free? I'd
thought of that."
"Nonsense!" Erskyll declared. "Who ever heard of slaves rebelling
against freedom?"
Freedom was a Good Thing. It was a Good Thing for everybody, everywhere
and all the time. Count Erskyll knew it, because freedom was a Good
Thing for him.
He thought, suddenly, of an old tomcat belonging to a lady of his
acquaintance at Paris-on-Baldur, a most affectionate cat, who insisted
on catching mice and bringing them as presents to all his human friends.
To this cat's mind, it was inconceivable that anybody would not be most
happy to receive a nice fresh-killed mouse.
"Too bad we have to set any of them free," Vann Shatrak said. "Too bad
we can't just issue everybody new servile gorgets marked, _Personal
Property of his Imperial Majesty_ and let it go at that. But I guess we
can't."
"Commodore Shatrak, you are joking," Erskyll began.
"I hope I am," Shatrak replied grimly.
* * * * *
The top landing-stage of the Citadel grew and filled the forward
viewscreen of the ship's launch. It was only when he realized that the
tiny specks were people, and the larger, birdseed-sized, specks
vehicles, that the real size of the thing was apparent. Obray of
Erskyll, beside him, had been silent. He had been looking at the
crescent-shaped industrial city, like a servile gorget around
Zeggensburg's neck.
"The way they've been crowded together!" he said. "And the buildings; no
space between. And all that smoke! They must be using fossil-fuel!"
"It's probably too hard to process fissionables in large quantities,
with what they have."
"You were right, last evening. These people have deliberately halted
progress, even retrogressed, rather than give up slavery."
Halting progress, to say nothing of retrogression, was an unthinkable
crime to him. Like freedom, progress was a Good Thing, anywhere, at all
times, and without regard to direction.
Colonel Ravney met them when they left the launch. The top landing-stage
was swarming with Imperial troops.
"Convocation Chamber's three stages down," he said. "About two thousand
of them there now; been coming in all morning. We have everything set
up." He laughed. "They tell me slaves are never permitted to enter it.
Maybe, but they have the place bugged to the ceiling all around."
"Bugged? What with?" Shatrak asked, and Erskyll was wanting to know what
he meant. No doubt he thought Ravney was talking about things crawling
out of the woodwork.
"Screen pickups, radio pickups, wired microphones; you name it and it's
there. I'll bet every slave in the Citadel knows everything that happens
in there while it's happening."
Shatrak wanted to know if he had done anything about them. Ravney shook
his head.
"If that's how they want to run a government, that's how they have a
right to run it. Commander Douvrin put in a few of our own, a little
better camouflaged than theirs."
There were more troops on the third stage down. They formed a procession
down a long empty hallway, a few scared-looking slaves peeping from
doorways at them. There were more troops where the corridor ended in
great double doors, emblazoned with a straight broad-sword diagonally
across an eight-pointed star. Emblematology of planets conquered by the
Space Vikings always included swords and stars. An officer gave a
signal; the doors started to slide apart, and within, from a
screen-speaker, came a fanfare of trumpets.
At first, all he could see was the projection-screen, far ahead, and the
tessellated aisle stretching toward it. The trumpets stopped, and they
advanced, and then he saw the Lords-Master.
They were massed, standing among benches on either side, and if anything
Pyairr Ravney had understated their numbers. They all wore black,
trimmed with gold; he wondered if the coincidence that these were also
the Imperial colors might be useful. Queer garments, tightly fitted
tunics at the top which became flowing robes below the waist, deeply
scalloped at the edges. The sleeves were exaggeratedly wide; a knife or
a pistol, and not necessarily a small one, could be concealed in every
one. He was sure that thought had entered Vann Shatrak's mind. They were
armed, not with dress-daggers, but with swords; long, straight
cross-hilted broadswords. They were the first actual swords he had ever
seen, except in museums or on the stage.
There was a bench of gold and onyx at the front, where, normally the
seven-man Presidium sat, and in front of it were thronelike seats for
the Chiefs of Managements, equivalent to the Imperial Council of
Ministers. Because of the projection screen that had been installed,
they had all been moved to an improvised dais on the left. There was
another dais on the right, under a canopy of black and gold velvet,
emblazoned with the gold sun and superimposed black cogwheel of the
Empire. There were three thrones, for himself, Shatrak, and Erskyll,
and a number of lesser but still imposing chairs for their staffs.
* * * * *
They took their seats. He slipped the earplug of his memophone into his
left ear and pressed the stud in the middle of his Grand Star of the
Order of Odin. The memophone began giving him the names of the Presidium
and of the Chiefs of Managements. He wondered how many upper-slaves had
been gunbutted to produce them.
"Lords and Gentlemen," he said, after he had greeted them and introduced
himself and the others, "I speak to you in the name of his Imperial
Majesty, Rodrik III. His Majesty will now greet you in his own voice, by
recording."
He pressed a button on the arm of his chair. The screen lighted,
flickered, and steadied, and the trumpets blared again. When the fanfare
ended, a voice thundered:
"_The Emperor speaks!_"
Rodrik III compromised on the beard question with a small mustache. He
wore the stern but kindly expression the best theatrical directors in
Asgard had taught him; Public Face Number Three. He inclined his head
slightly and stiffly, as a man wearing a seven-pound crown must.
"We greet our subjects of Aditya to the fellowship of the Empire. We
have long had good reports of you, and we are happy now to speak to you.
Deserve well of us, and prosper under the Sun and Cogwheel."
Another fanfare, as the image vanished. Before any of the Lords-Master
could find voice, he was speaking to them:
"Well, Lords and Gentlemen, you have been welcomed into the Empire by
his Majesty. I know, there hasn't been a ship in or out of this system
for five centuries, and I suppose you have a great many questions to ask
about the Galactic Empire. Members of the Presidium and Chiefs of
Managements may address me directly; others will please address the
chairman."
Olvir Nikkolon, the owner of Tchall Hozhet, was on his feet at once. He
had a loose-lipped mouth and a not entirely straight nose and pale eyes
that were never entirely still.
"What I want to know is; why did you people have to come here to take
our planet away from us? Isn't the rest of the Galaxy big enough for
you?"
"No, Lord Nikkolon. The Galaxy is not big enough for any competition of
sovereignty. There must be one and only one completely sovereign power.
The Terran Federation was once such a power. It failed, and vanished;
you know what followed. Darkness and anarchy. We are clawing our way up
out of that darkness. We will not fail. We will create a peaceful and
unified Galaxy."
He talked to them, about the collapse of the old Federation, about the
interstellar wars, about the Neobarbarians, about the long night. He
told them how the Empire had risen on a few planets five thousand
light-years away, and how it had spread.