attempt to force every planetary government into a common pattern, or
dictate the ways in which they govern themselves. We will foster in
every way peaceful trade and communication. But we will not again permit
the plague of competing sovereignties, the condition under which war is
inevitable. The first attempt to set up such a sovereignty in
competition with the Empire will be crushed mercilessly, and no planet
inhabited by any sapient race will be permitted to remain outside the
Empire.
"Lords and Gentlemen, permit me to show you a little of what we have
already accomplished, in the past three hundred years."
He pressed another button. The screen flickered, and the show started.
It lasted for almost two hours; he used a handphone to interject
comments and explanations. He showed them planet after planet--Marduk,
where the Empire had begun, Baldur, Vishnu, Belphegor, Morglay, whence
their ancestors had come, Amaterasu, Irminsul, Fafnir, finally Odin, the
Imperial Planet. He showed towering cities swarming with aircars;
spaceports where the huge globes of interstellar ships landed and lifted
out; farms and industries; vast crowds at public celebrations;
troop-reviews and naval bases and fleet-maneuvers; historical views of
the battles that had created Imperial power.
"That, Lords and Gentlemen, is what you have an opportunity to bring
your planet into. If you accept, you will continue to rule Aditya under
the Empire. If you refuse, you will only put us to the inconvenience of
replacing you with a new planetary government, which will be annoying
for us and, probably, fatal for you."
Nobody said anything for a few minutes. Then Rovard Javasan, the Chief
of Administration and the owner of the mountainous Khreggor Chmidd,
rose.
"Lords and Gentlemen, we cannot resist anything like this," he said. "We
cannot even resist the force they have here; that was tried yesterday,
and you all saw what happened. Now, Prince Trevannion; just to what
extent will the Mastership retain its sovereignty under the Empire?"
"To practically the same extent as at present. You will, of course,
acknowledge the Emperor as your supreme ruler, and will govern subject
to the Imperial Constitution. Have you any colonies on any of the other
planets of this system?"
"We had a shipyard and docks on the inner moon, and we had mines on the
fourth planet of this system, but it is almost airless and the colony
was limited to a couple of dome-cities. Both were abandoned years ago."
"Both will be reopened before long, I daresay. We'd better make the
limits of your sovereignty the orbit of the outer planet of this system.
You may have your own normal-space ships, but the Empire will control
all hyperdrive craft, and all nuclear weapons. I take it you are the
sole government on this planet? Then no other will be permitted to
compete with you."
[Illustration]
"Well, what are they taking away from us, then?" somebody in the rear
asked.
"I assume that you are agreed to accept the sovereignty of his Imperial
Majesty? Good. As a matter of form, Lord Nikkolon, will you take a vote?
His Imperial Majesty would be most gratified if it were unanimous."
Somebody insisted that the question would have to be debated, which
meant that everybody would have to make a speech, all two thousand of
them. He informed them that there was nothing to debate; they were
confronted with an accomplished fact which they must accept. So Nikkolon
made a speech, telling them at what a great moment in Adityan history
they stood, and concluded by saying:
"I take it that it is the unanimous will of this Convocation that the
sovereignty of the Galactic Emperor be acknowledged, and that we, the
'Mastership of Aditya' do here proclaim our loyal allegiance to his
Imperial Majesty, Rodrik the Third. Any dissent? Then it is ordered so
recorded."
Then he had to make another speech, to inform the representatives of his
new sovereign of the fact. Prince Trevannion, in the name of the
Emperor, delivered the well-worn words of welcome, and Lanze Degbrend
got the coronet out of the black velvet bag under his arm and the
Imperial Proconsul, Obray, Count Erskyll, was crowned. Erskyll's
charge-d'affaires, Sharll Ernanday, produced the scroll of the Imperial
Constitution, and Erskyll began to read.
Section One: The universality of the Empire. The absolute powers of the
Emperor. The rules of succession. The Emperor also to be Planetary King
of Odin.
Section Two: Every planetary government to be sovereign in its own
internal affairs.... Only one sovereign government upon any planet, or
within normal-space travel distance.... All hyperspace ships, and all
nuclear weapons.... No planetary government shall make war ... enter
into any alliance ... tax, regulate or restrain interstellar trade or
communication.... Every sapient being shall be equally protected....
Then he came to Article Six. He cleared his throat, raised his voice,
and read:
"_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._"
The Convocation Chamber was silent, like a bomb with a defective fuse,
for all of thirty seconds. Then it blew up with a roar. Out of the
corner of his eye, he saw the doors slide apart and an airjeep,
bristling with machine guns, float in and rise to the ceiling. The first
inarticulate roar was followed by a babel of voices, like a tropical
cloudburst on a prefab hut. Olvir Nikkolon's mouth was working as he
shouted unheard.
He pressed another of the row of buttons on the arm of his chair. Out of
the screen-speaker a voice, as loud, by actual sound-meter test, as an
anti-vehicle gun, thundered:
"SILENCE!"
Into the shocked stillness which it produced, he spoke, like a
schoolmaster who has returned to find his room in an uproar:
"Lord Nikkolon; what is this nonsense? You are Chairman of the
Presidium; is this how you keep order here? What is this, a planetary
parliament or a spaceport saloon?"
"You tricked us!" Nikkolon accused. "You didn't tell us about that
article when we voted. Why, our whole society is based on slavery!"
Other voices joined in:
"That's all right for you people, you have robots...."
"Maybe you don't know it, but there are twenty million slaves on this
planet...."
"Look, you can't free slaves! That's ridiculous. A slave's a _slave_!"
"Who'll do the work? And who would they belong to? They'd have to belong
to somebody!"
"What I want to know," Rovard Javasan made himself heard, is, "_how_ are
you going to free them?"
There was an ancient word, originating in one of the lost languages of
Pre-Atomic Terra--_sixtifor_. It meant, the basic, fundamental,
question. Rovard Javasan, he suspected, had just asked the sixtifor. Of
course, Obray, Count Erskyll, Planetary Proconsul of Aditya, didn't
realize that. He didn't even know what Javasan meant. Just free them.
Commodore Vann Shatrak couldn't see much of a problem, either. He would
have answered, Just free them, and then shoot down the first two or
three thousand who took it seriously. Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, had no
intention whatever of attempting to answer the sixtifor.
"My dear Lord Javasan, that is the problem of the Adityan Mastership.
They are your slaves; we have neither the intention nor the right to
free them. But let me remind you that slavery is specifically prohibited
by the Imperial Constitution; if you do not abolish it immediately, the
Empire will be forced to intervene. I believe, toward the last of those
audio-visuals, you saw some examples of Imperial intervention."
They had. A few looked apprehensively at the ceiling, as though
expecting the hellburners and planet-busters and nega-matter-bombs at
any moment. Then one of the members among the benches rose.
"We don't know how we are going to do it, Prince Trevannion," he said.
"We will do it, since this is the Empire law, but you will have to tell
us how."
"Well, the first thing will have to be an Act of Convocation, outlawing
the ownership of one being by another. Set some definite date on which
the slaves must all be freed; that need not be too immediate. Then, I
would suggest that you set up some agency to handle all the details.
And, as soon as you have enacted the abolition of slavery, which should
be this afternoon, appoint a committee, say a dozen of you, to confer
with Count Erskyll and myself. Say you have your committee aboard the
_Empress Eulalie_ in six hours. We'll have transportation arranged by
then. And let me point out, I hope for the last time, that we discuss
matters directly, without intermediaries. We don't want any more slaves,
pardon, freedmen, coming aboard to talk for you, as happened yesterday."
* * * * *
Obray, Count Erskyll, was unhappy about it. He did not think that the
Lords-Master were to be trusted to abolish slavery; he said so, on the
launch, returning to the ship. Jurgen, Prince Trevannion was inclined to
agree. He doubted if any of the Lords-Master he had seen were to be
trusted, unassisted, to fix a broken mouse-trap.
Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak was also worried. He was wondering how long
it would take for Pyairr Ravney to make useful troops out of the
newly-surrendered slave soldiers, and where he was going to find
contragravity to shift them expeditiously from trouble-spot to
trouble-spot. Erskyll thought he was anticipating resistance on the part
of the Masters, and for once he approved the use of force. Ordinarily,
force was a Bad Thing, but this was a Good Cause, which justified any
means.
They entertained the committee from the Convocation for dinner, that
evening. They came aboard stiffly hostile--most understandably so, under
the circumstances--and Prince Trevannion exerted all his copious charm
to thaw them out, beginning with the pre-dinner cocktails and continuing
through the meal. By the time they retired for coffee and brandy to the
parlor where the conference was to be held, the Lords-ex-Masters were
almost friendly.
"We've enacted the Emancipation Act," Olvir Nikkolon, who was ex officio
chairman of the committee, reported. "Every slave on the planet must be
free before the opening of the next Midyear Feasts."
"And when will that be?"
Aditya, he knew, had a three hundred and fifty-eight day year; even if
the Midyear Feasts were just past, they were giving themselves very
little time. In about a hundred and fifty days, Nikkolon said.
"Good heavens!" Erskyll began, indignantly.
"I should say so, myself," he put in, cutting off anything else the new
Proconsul might have said. "You gentlemen are allowing yourselves
dangerously little time. A hundred and fifty days will pass quite
rapidly, and you have twenty million slaves to deal with. If you start
at this moment and work continuously, you'll have a little under a
second apiece for each slave."
The Lords-Master looked dismayed. So, he was happy to observe, did Count
Erskyll.
"I assume you have some system of slave registration?" he continued.
That was safe. They had a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies tend to have
registrations of practically everything.
"Oh, yes, of course," Rovard Javasan assured him. "That's your
Management, isn't it, Sesar; Servile Affairs?"
"Yes, we have complete data on every slave on the planet," Sesar
Martwynn, the Chief of Servile Management, said. "Of course, I'd have to
ask Zhorzh about the details...."
Zhorzh was Zhorzh Khouzhik, Martwynn's chief-slave in office.
"At least, he was my chief-slave; now you people have taken him away
from me. I don't know what I'm going to do without him. For that matter,
I don't know what poor Zhorzh will do, either."
"Have you gentlemen informed your chief-slaves that they are free, yet?"
Nikkolon and Javasan looked at each other. Sesar Martwynn laughed.
"They know," Javasan said. "I must say they are much disturbed."
"Well, reassure them, as soon as you're back at the Citadel," he told
them. "Tell them that while they are now free, they need not leave you
unless they so desire; that you will provide for them as before."
"You mean, we can keep our chief-slaves?" somebody cried.
"Yes, of course--chief-freedmen, you'll have to call them, now. You'll
have to pay them a salary...."
"You mean, give them money?" Ranal Valdry, the Lord Provost-Marshal
demanded, incredulously. "Pay our own slaves?"
"You idiot," somebody told him, "they aren't our slaves any more. That's
the whole point of this discussion."
"But ... but how can we pay slaves?" one of the committeemen-at-large
asked. "Freedmen, I mean?"
"With money. You do have money, haven't you?"
"Of course we have. What do you think we are, savages?"
"What kind of money?"
Why, money; what did he think? The unit was the star-piece, the stelly.
When he asked to see some of it, they were indignant. Nobody carried
money; wasn't Masterly. A Master never even touched the stuff; that was
what slaves were for. He wanted to know how it was secured, and they
didn't know what he meant, and when he tried to explain their
incomprehension deepened. It seemed that the Mastership issued money to
finance itself, and individual Masters issued money on their personal
credit, and it was handled through the Mastership Banks.
"That's Fedrig Daffysan's Management; he isn't here," Rovard Javasan
said. "I can't explain it, myself."
And without his chief-slave, Fedrig Daffysan probably would not be able
to, either.
"Yes, gentlemen. I understand. You have money. Now, the first thing you
will have to do is furnish us with a complete list of all the
slave-owners on the planet, and a list of all the slaves held by each.
This will be sent back to Odin, and will be the basis for the
compensation to be paid for the destruction of your property-rights in
these slaves. How much is a slave worth, by the way?"
Nobody knew. Slaves were never sold; it wasn't Masterly to sell one's
slaves. It wasn't even heard of.
"Well, we'll arrive at some valuation. Now, as soon as you get back to
the Citadel, talk at once to your former chief-slaves, and their
immediate subordinates, and explain the situation to them. This can be
passed down through administrative freedmen to the workers; you must see
to it that it is clearly understood, at all levels, that as long as the
freedmen remain at their work they will be provided for and paid, but
that if they quit your service they will receive nothing. Do you think
you can do that?"
"You mean, give them everything we've been giving them now, and then pay
them money?" Ranal Valdry almost howled.
"Oh, no. You pay them a fixed wage. You charge them for everything you
give them, and deduct that from their wages. It will mean considerable
extra bookkeeping, but outside of that I believe you'll find that things
will go along much as they always did."
The Masters had begun to relax, and by the time he was finished all of
them were smiling in relief. Count Erskyll, on the other hand, was
almost writhing in his chair. It must be horrible to be a brilliant
young Proconsul of liberal tendencies and to have to sit mute while a
cynical old Ministerial Secretary, vastly one's superior in the
Imperial Establishment and a distant cousin of the Emperor to boot,
calmly bartered away the sacred liberties of twenty million people.
"But would that be legal, under the Imperial Constitution?" Olvir
Nikkolon asked.
"I shouldn't have suggested it if it hadn't been. The Constitution only
forbids physical ownership of one sapient being by another; it
emphatically does not guarantee anyone an unearned livelihood."
* * * * *
The Convocation committee returned to Zeggensburg to start preparing the
servile population for freedom, or reasonable facsimile. The
chief-slaves would take care of that; each one seemed to have a list of
other chief-slaves, and the word would spread from them on an
each-one-call-five system. The public announcement would be postponed
until the word could be passed out to the upper servile levels. A
meeting with the chief-slaves in office of the various Managements was
scheduled for the next afternoon.
Count Erskyll chatted with forced affability while the departing
committeemen were being seen to the launch that would take them down.
When the airlock closed behind them, he drew Prince Trevannion aside out
of earshot of their subordinates.
"You know what you're doing?" he raged, in a hoarse whisper. "You're
simply substituting peonage for outright slavery!"
"I'd call that something of a step." He motioned Erskyll into one of the
small hall-cars, climbed in beside him, and lifted it, starting toward
the living-area. "The Convocation has acknowledged the principle that
sapient beings should not be property. That's a great deal, for one
day."
"But the people will remain in servitude, you know that. The Masters
will keep them in debt, and they'll be treated just as brutally...."
"Oh, there will be abuses; that's to be expected. This Freedmen's
Management, nee Servile Management, will have to take care of that.
Better make a memo to talk with this chief-freedman of Martwynn's,
what's his name? Zhorzh Khouzhik; that's right, let Zhorzh do it.
Employment Practices Code, investigation agency, enforcement. If he
can't do the job, that's not our fault. The Empire does not guarantee
every planet an honest, intelligent and efficient government; just a
single one."
"But...."
"It will take two or three generations. At first, the freedmen will be
exploited just as they always have been, but in time there will be
protests, and disorders, and each time, there will be some small
improvement. A society must evolve, Obray. Let these people earn their
freedom. Then they will be worthy of it."
"They should have their freedom now."
"This present generation? What do you think freedom means to them? _We
don't have to work, any more._ So down tools and let everything stop at
once. _We can do anything we want to._ Let's kill the overseer. And:
_Anything that belongs to the Masters belongs to us; we're Masters too,
now._ No, I think it's better, for the present, to tell them that this
freedom business is just a lot of Masterly funny-talk, and that things
aren't really being changed at all. It will effect a considerable saving
of his Imperial Majesty's ammunition, for one thing."
He dropped Erskyll at his apartment and sent the hall-car back from his
own. Lanze Degbrend was waiting for him when he entered.
"Ravney's having trouble. That is the word he used," Degbrend said. In
Pyairr Ravney's lexicon, trouble meant shooting. "The news of the
Emancipation Act is leaking all over the place. Some of the troops in
the north who haven't been disarmed yet are mutinying, and there are
slave insurrections in a number of places."
"They think the Masters have forsaken them, and it's every slave for
himself." He hadn't expected that to start so soon. "The announcement
had better go out as quickly as possible. And I think we're going to
have some trouble. You have information-taps into Count Erskyll's
numerous staff? Use them as much as you can."
"You think he's going to try to sabotage this employment programme of
yours, sir?"
"Oh, he won't think of it in those terms. He'll be preventing me from
sabotaging the Emancipation. He doesn't want to wait three generations;
he wants to free them at once. Everything has to be at once for
six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age."
* * * * *
The announcement did not go out until nearly noon the next day. In terms
comprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that all
this meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, that
they could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they worked
faithfully and obeyed orders they would be given everything they were
now receiving. Ravney had been shuttling troops about, dealing with the
sporadic outbreaks of disorder here and there: many of these had been
put down, and the rest died out after the telecast explaining the
situation.
In addition, some of Commander Douvrin's intelligence people had
discovered that the only source of fissionables and radioactives for the
planet was a complex of uranite mines, separation plants, refineries and
reaction-plants on the smaller of Aditya's two continents, Austragonia.
In spite of other urgent calls on his resources, Ravney landed troops to
seize these, and a party of engineers followed them down from the
_Empress Eulalie_ to make an inspection.
At lunch, Count Erskyll was slightly less intransigent on the subject of
the wage-employment proposals. No doubt some of his advisors had been
telling him what would happen if any appreciable number of Aditya's
labor-force stopped work suddenly, and the wave of uprisings that had
broken out before any public announcement had been made puzzled him. He
was also concerned about finding a suitable building for a proconsular
palace; the business of the Empire on Aditya could not be conducted long
from shipboard.
Going down to the Citadel that afternoon, they found the chief-freedmen
of the non-functional Chiefs of Management assembled in a large room on
the fifth level down. There was a cluster of big tables and
communication-screens and wired telephones in the middle, with smaller
tables around them, at which freedmen in variously colored gowns sat.
The ones at the central tables, a dozen and a half, all wore
chief-slaves' white gowns.
Trevannion and Erskyll and Patrique Morvill and Lanze Degbrend joined
these; subordinates guided the rest of the party--a couple of Ravney's
officers and Erskyll's numerous staff of advisors and specialists--to
distribute themselves with their opposite numbers in the Mastership.
Everybody on the Adityan side seemed uneasy with these strange
hermaphrodite creatures who were neither slaves nor Lords-Master.
"Well, gentlemen," Count Erskyll began, "I suppose you have been
informed by your former Lords-Master of how relations between them and
you will be in the future?"
"Oh, yes, Lord Proconsul," Khreggor Chmidd replied happily. "Everything
will be just as before, except that the Lords-Master will be called
Lords-Employer, and the slaves will be called freedmen, and any time
they want to starve to death, they can leave their Employers if they
wish."
Count Erskyll frowned. That wasn't just exactly what he had hoped
Emancipation would mean to these people.
"Nobody seems to understand about this money thing, though," Zhorzh
Khouzhik, Sesar Martwynn's chief-freedman said. "My Lord-Master--" He
slapped himself across the mouth and said, "Lord-Employer!" five times,
rapidly. "My Lord-_Employer_ tried to explain it to me, but I don't
think he understands very clearly, himself."
"None of them do."
The speaker was a small man with pale eyes and a mouth like a rat-trap;
Yakoop Zhannar, chief-freedman to Ranal Valdry, the Provost-Marshal.
"Its really your idea, Prince Trevannion," Erskyll said. "Perhaps you
can explain it."
"Oh, it's very simple. You see...."
At least, it had seemed simple when he started. Labor was a commodity,
which the worker sold and the employer purchased; a "fair wage" was one
which enabled both to operate at a profit. Everybody knew that--except
here on Aditya. On Aditya, a slave worked because he was a slave, and a
Master provided for him because he was a Master, and that was all there
was to it. But now, it seemed, there weren't any more Masters, and there
weren't any more slaves.
"That's exactly it," he replied, when somebody said as much. "So now, if
the slaves, I mean, freedmen, want to eat, they have to work to earn
money to buy food, and if the Employers want work done, they have to pay
people to do it."
[Illustration]
"Then why go to all the trouble about the money?" That was an elderly
chief-freedman, Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, whose Lord-Employer, Oraze Borztall,
was Manager of Public Works. "Before your ships came, the slaves worked
for the Masters, and the Masters took care of the slaves, and everybody
was content. Why not leave it like that?"
"Because the Galactic Emperor, who is the Lord-Master of these people,
says that there must be no more slaves. Don't ask me why," Tchall Hozhet
snapped at him. "I don't know, either. But they are here with ships and
guns and soldiers; what can we do?"