haven't considered. A slave only gets what his master gives him. But a
free worker for pay gets money which he can spend for whatever he wants,
and he can save money, and if he finds that he can make more money
working for somebody else, he can quit his employer and get a better
job."
"We hadn't thought of that," Khreggor Chmidd said. "A slave, even a
chief-slave, was never allowed to have money of his own, and if he got
hold of any, he couldn't spend it. But now...." A glorious vista seemed
to open in front of him. "And he can accumulate money. I don't suppose a
common worker could, but an upper slave.... Especially a
chief-slave...." He slapped his mouth, and said, "Freedman!" five times.
"Yes, Khreggor." That was Ridgerd Schferts (Fedrig Daffysan; Fiscal
Management). "I am sure we could all make quite a lot of money, now that
we are freedmen."
Some of them were briefly puzzled; gradually, comprehension dawned.
Obray, Count Erskyll, looked distressed; he seemed to be hoping, vainly,
that they weren't thinking of what he suspected they were.
"How about the Mastership freedmen?" another asked. "We, here, will be
paid by our Lords-Mas- ... Lords-Employer. But everybody from the green
robes down were provided for by the Mastership. Who will pay them, now?"
"Why, the Mastership, of course," Ridgerd Schferts said. "My
Management--my Lord-Employer's, I mean--will issue the money to pay
them."
"You may need a new printing-press," Lanze Degbrend said. "And an awful
lot of paper."
"This planet will need currency acceptable in interstellar trade,"
Erskyll said.
Everybody looked blankly at him. He changed the subject:
"Mr. Chmidd, could you or Mr. Hozhet tell me what kind of a constitution
the Mastership has?"
"You mean, like the paper you read in the Convocation?" Hozhet asked.
"Oh, there is nothing at all like that. The former Lords-Master simply
ruled."
No. They reigned. This servile _tammanihal_--another ancient Terran
word, of uncertain origin--ruled.
"Well, how is the Mastership organized, then?" Erskyll persisted. "How
did the Lord Nikkolon get to be Chairman of the Presidium, and the Lord
Javasan to be Chief of Administration?"
That was very simple. The Convocation, consisting of the heads of all
the Masterly families, actually small clans, numbered about twenty-five
hundred. They elected the seven members of the Presidium, who drew lots
for the Chairmanship. They served for life. Vacancies were filled by
election on nomination of the surviving members. The Presidium appointed
the Chiefs of Managements, who also served for life.
At least, it had stability. It was self-perpetuating.
"Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked.
Hozhet was perplexed. "_Make_ laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have
laws."
There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an attitude
like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective
parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many
laws enacted during his term of office as possible.
"But this is dreadful; you _must_ have a constitution!" Obray of Erskyll
was shocked. "We will have to get one drawn up and adopted."
"We don't know anything about that at all," Khreggor Chmidd admitted.
"This is something new. You will have to help us."
"I certainly will, Mr. Chmidd. Suppose you form a committee--yourself,
and Mr. Hozhet, and three or four others; select them among
yourselves--and we can get together and talk over what will be needed.
And another thing. We'll have to stop calling this the Mastership. There
are no more Masters."
"The Employership?" Lanze Degbrend dead-panned.
Erskyll looked at him angrily. "This is something," he told the
chief-freedmen, "that should not belong to the Employers alone. It
should belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That means
something everybody owns in common."
"Something everybody owns, nobody owns," Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected.
"Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody," Khreggor Chmidd told him
earnestly. "But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody.
That," he added complacently, "will be you and me and the rest of us
here."
"I believe," Yakoop Zhannar said, almost smiling, "that this freedom is
going to be a wonderful thing. For us."
"I don't like it!" Mykhyl Eschkhaffar said stubbornly. "Too many new
things, and too much changing names. We have to call slaves freedmen; we
have to call Lords Master Lords-Employer; we have to call the Management
of Servile Affairs the Management for Freedmen. Now we have to call the
Mastership this new name, Commonwealth. And all these new things, for
which we have no routine procedures and no directives. I wish these
people had never heard of this planet."
"That makes at least two of us," Patrique Morvill said, _sotto voce_.
"Well, the planetary constitution can wait just a bit," Prince
Trevannion suggested. "We have a great many items on the agenda which
must be taken care of immediately. For instance, there's this thing
about finding a proconsular palace...."
* * * * *
A surprising amount of work had been done at the small tables where
Erskyll's staff of political and economic and technological experts had
been conferring with the subordinate upper-freedmen. It began coming out
during the pre-dinner cocktails aboard the _Empress Eulalie_, continued
through the meal, and was fully detailed during the formal debriefing
session afterward.
Finding a suitable building for the Proconsular Palace would present
difficulties. Real estate was not sold on Aditya, any more than slaves
were. It was not only un-Masterly but illegal; estates were all entailed
and the inalienable property of Masterly families. What was wanted was
one of the isolated residential towers in Zeggensburg, far enough from
the Citadel to avoid an appearance of too close supervision. The last
thing anybody wanted was to establish the Proconsul in the Citadel
itself. The Management of Business of the Mastership, however, had
promised to do something about it. That would mean, no doubt, that the
_Empress Eulalie_ would be hanging over Zeggensburg, serving as
Proconsular Palace, for the next year or so.
The Servile Management, rechristened Freedmen's Management, would
undertake to safeguard the rights of the newly emancipated slaves. There
would be an Employment Code--Count Erskyll was invited to draw that
up--and a force of investigators, and an enforcement agency, under
Zhorzh Khouzhik.
One of Commander Douvrin's men, who had been at the Austragonia
nuclear-industries establishment, was present and reported:
"Great Ghu, you ought to see that place! They've people working in
places I wouldn't send an unshielded robot, and the hospital there is
bulging with radiation-sickness cases. The equipment must have been
brought here by the Space Vikings. What's left of it is the damnedest
mess of goldbergery I ever saw. The whole thing ought to be shut down
and completely rebuilt."
Erskyll wanted to know who owned it. The Mastership, he was told.
"That's right," one of his economics men agreed. "Management of Public
Works." That would be Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, who had so bitterly objected
to the new nomenclature. "If anybody needs fissionables for a
power-reactor or radioactives for nuclear-electric conversion, his chief
business slave gets what's needed. Furthermore, doesn't even have to
sign for it."
"Don't they sell it for revenue?"
"Nifflheim, no! This government doesn't need revenue. This government
supports itself by counterfeiting. When the Mastership needs money, they
just have Ridgerd Schferts print up another batch. Like everybody else."
"Then the money simply isn't worth anything!" Erskyll was horrified,
which was rapidly becoming his normal state.
"Who cares about money, Obray," he said. "Didn't you hear them, last
evening? It's un-Masterly to bother about things like money. Of course,
everybody owes everybody for everything, but it's all in the family."
"Well, something will have to be done about that!"
That was at least the tenth time he had said that, this evening.
* * * * *
It came practically as a thunderbolt when Khreggor Chmidd screened the
ship the next afternoon to report that a Proconsular Palace had been
found, and would be ready for occupancy in a day or so. The
chief-freedmen of the Management of Business of the Mastership and of
the Lord Chief Justiciar had found one, the Elegry Palace, which had
been unoccupied except for what he described as a small caretaking staff
for years, while two Masterly families disputed inheritance rights and
slave lawyers quibbled endlessly before a slave judge. The chief
freedman of the Lord Chief Justiciar had simply summoned judge and
lawyers into his office and ordered them to settle the suit at once.
The settlement had consisted of paying both litigants the full value of
the building; this came to fifty million stellies apiece. Arbitrarily,
the stelly was assigned a value in Imperial crowns of a hundred for one.
A million crowns was about what the building would be worth, with
contents, on Odin. It would be paid for with a draft on the Imperial
Exchequer.
"Well, you have some hard currency on the planet, now," he told Count
Erskyll, while they were having a pre-dinner drink together that
evening. "I hope it doesn't touch off an inflation, if the term is
permissible when applied to Adityan currency."
Erskyll snapped his fingers. "Yes! And there's the money we've been
spending for supplies. And when we start compensation payments....
Excuse me for a moment."
He dashed off, his drink in his hand. After a long interval, he was
back, carrying a fresh one he had gotten from a bartending robot en
route.
"Well, that's taken care of," he said. "My fiscal man's getting in touch
with Ridgerd Schferts; the Elegry heirs will be paid in Adityan
stellies, and the Imperial crowns will be held in the Commonwealth Bank,
or, better, banked in Asgard, to give Aditya some off-planet credit. And
we'll do the same with our other expenditures, and with the
slave-compensation. This is going to be wonderful; this planet needs
everything in the way of industrial equipment; this is how they're going
to get it."
"But, Obray; the compensations are owing to the individual Masters. They
should be paid in crowns. You know as well as I do that this
hundred-for-one rate is purely a local fiction. On the interstellar
exchange, these stellies have a crown value of precisely
zero-point-zero."
"You know what would happen if these ci-devant Masters got hold of
Imperial crowns," Erskyll said. "They'd only squander them back again
for useless imported luxuries. This planet needs a complete
modernization, and this is the only way the money to pay for it can be
gotten." He was gesturing excitedly with the almost-full glass in his
hand; Prince Trevannion stepped back out of the way of the splash he
anticipated. "I have no sympathy for these ci-devant Masters. They own
every stick and stone and pinch of dust on this planet, as it is. Is
that fair?"
"Possibly not. But neither is what you're proposing to do."
Obray, Count Erskyll, couldn't see that. He was proposing to secure the
Greatest Good for the Greatest Number, and to Nifflheim with any
minorities who happened to be in the way.
* * * * *
The Navy took over the Elegry Palace the next morning, ran up the
Imperial Sun and Cogwheel flag, and began transmitting views of its
interior up to the _Empress Eulalie_. It was considerably smaller than
the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, but room for room the furnishings
were rather more ornate and expensive. By the next afternoon, the
counter-espionage team that had gone down reported the Masterly living
quarters clear of pickups, microphones, and other apparatus of servile
snooping, of which they had found many. The _Canopus_ was recalled from
her station over the northern end of the continent and began sending
down the proconsulate furnishings stowed aboard, including several
hundred domestic robots.
The skeleton caretaking staff Chmidd had mentioned proved to number five
hundred.
"What are we going to do about them?" Erskyll wanted to know. "There's a
limit to the upkeep allowance for a proconsulate, and we can't pay five
hundred useless servants. The chief-freedman, and about a dozen
assistants, and a few to operate the robots, when we train them, but
five hundred...!"
"Let Zhorzh do it," Prince Trevannion suggested. "Isn't that what this
Freedmen's Management is for; to find employment for emancipated slaves?
Just emancipate them and turn them over to Khouzhik."
Khouzhik promptly placed all of them on the payroll of his Management.
Khouzhik was having his hands full. He had all his top mathematical
experts, some of whom even understood the use of the slide-rule, trying
to work up a scale of wages. Erskyll loaned him a few of his staff. None
of the ideas any of them developed proved workable. Khouzhik had also
organized a corps of investigators, and he was beginning to annex the
private guard-companies of the Lords-ex-Master, whom he was organizing
into a police force.
* * * * *
The nuclear works on Austragonia were closed down. Mykhyl Eschkhaffar
ordered a programme of rationing and priorities to conserve the stock of
plutonium and radioactive isotopes on hand, and he decided that
henceforth nuclear-energy materials would be sold instead of furnished
freely. He simply found out what the market quotations on Odin were,
translated that into stellies, and adopted it. This was just a base
price; there would have to be bribes for priority allocations, rakeoffs
for the under-freedmen, and graft for the business-freedmen of the
Lords-ex-Masters who bought the stuff. The latter were completely
unconcerned; none of them even knew about it.
The Convocation adjourned until the next regular session, at the Midyear
Feasts, an eight-day intercalary period which permitted dividing the
358-day Adityan year into ten months of thirty-five days each. Count
Erskyll was satisfied to see them go. He was working on a constitution
for the Commonwealth of Aditya, and was making very little progress with
it.
"It's one of these elaborate check-and-balance things," Lanze Degbrend
reported. "To begin with, it was the constitution of Aton, with an
elective president substituted for a hereditary king. Of course, there
are a lot of added gadgets; Atonian Radical Democrat stuff. Chmidd and
Hozhet and the other chief-slaves don't like it, either."
"Slap your mouth and say, 'Freedmen,' five times."
"Nuts," his subordinate retorted insubordinately. "I know a slave when I
see one. A slave is a slave, with or without a gorget; if he doesn't
wear it around his neck, he has it tattooed on his soul. It takes at
least three generations to rub it off."
"I could wish that Count Erskyll...." he began. "What else is our
Proconsul doing?"
"Well, I'm afraid he's trying to set up some kind of a scheme for the
complete nationalization of all farms, factories, transport facilities,
and other means of production and distribution," Degbrend said.
"He's not going to try to do that himself, is he?" He was, he
discovered, speaking sharply, and modified his tone. "He won't do it
with Imperial authority, or with Imperial troops. Not as long as I'm
here. And when we go back to Odin, I'll see to it that Vann Shatrak
understands that."
"Oh, no. The Commonwealth of Aditya will do that," Degbrend said.
"Chmidd and Hozhet and Yakoop Zhannar and Zhorzh Khouzhik and the rest
of them, that is. He wants it done legitimately and legally. That means,
he'll have to wait till the Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation
assembles, and he can get his constitution enacted. If he can get it
written by then."
Vann Shatrak sent two of the destroyers off to explore the moons of
Aditya, of which there were two. The outer moon, Aditya-_Ba'_, was an
irregular chunk of rock fifty miles in diameter, barely visible to the
naked eye. The inner, Aditya-_Alif_, however, was an eight-hundred-mile
sphere; it had once been the planetary ship-station and shipyard-base.
It seemed to have been abandoned when the Adityan technology and economy
had begun sagging under the weight of the slave system. Most of the
installations remained, badly run down but repairable. Shatrak
transferred as many of his technicians as he could spare to the _Mizar_
and sent her to recondition the shipyard and render the underground city
inhabitable again so that the satellite could be used as a base for his
ships. He decided, then, to send the _Irma_ back to Odin with reports of
the annexation of Aditya, a proposal that Aditya-_Alif_ be made a
permanent Imperial naval-base, and a request for more troops.
Prince Trevannion taped up his own reports, describing the general
situation on the newly annexed planet, and doing nothing to minimize the
problems facing its Proconsul.
"Count Erskyll" he finished, "is doing the best possible under
circumstances from which I myself would feel inclined to shrink. If not
carried to excess, perhaps youthful idealism is not without value in
Empire statecraft. I understand that Commodore Shatrak, who is also
coping with some very trying problems, is requesting troop
reenforcements. I believe this request amply justified, and would
recommend that they be gotten here as speedily as possible.
[Illustration]
"I understand that he is also recommending a permanent naval base on the
larger of this planet's two satellites. This I also endorse
unreservedly. It would have a most salutary effect on the local
government. I would further recommend that Commodore Shatrak be placed
in command of it, with suitable promotion, which he has long ago
earned."
Erskyll was surprised that he was not himself returning to Odin on the
destroyer, and evidently disturbed. He mentioned it during pre-dinner
cocktails that evening.
"I know, my own work here is finished; was the moment the Convocation
voted acknowledgment of Imperial rule." Prince Trevannion replied. "I
would like to stay on for the Midyear Feasts, though. The Convocation
will vote on your constitution, and I would like to be able to report
their action to the Prime Minister. How is it progressing, by the way?"
"Well, we have a rough draft. I don't care much for it, myself, but
Citizen Hozhet and Citizen Chmidd and Citizen Zhannar and the others are
most enthusiastic, and, after all, they are the ones who will have to
operate under it."
The Masterly estates would be the representative units; from each, the
freedmen would elect representatives to regional elective councils, and
these in turn would elect representatives to a central electoral council
which would elect a Supreme People's Legislative Council. This would
not only function as the legislative body, but would also elect a
Manager-in-Chief, who would appoint the Chiefs of Management, who, in
turn, would appoint their own subordinates.
"I don't like it, myself," Erskyll said. "It's not democratic enough.
There should be a direct vote by the people. Well," he grudged, "I
suppose it will take a little time for them to learn democracy." This
was the first time he had come out and admitted that. "There is to be a
Constituent Convention in five years, to draw up a new constitution."
"How about the Convocation? You don't expect them to vote themselves out
of existence, do you?"
"Oh, we're keeping the Convocation, in the present constitution, but
they won't have any power. Five years from now, we'll be rid of them
entirely. Look here; you're not going to work against this, are you? You
won't advise these ci-devant Lords-Master to vote against it, when it
comes up?"
"Certainly not. I think your constitution--Khreggor Chmidd's and Tchall
Hozhet's, to be exact--will be nothing short of a political disaster,
but it will insure some political stability, which is all that matters
from the Imperial point of view. An Empire statesman must always guard
against sympathizing with local factions and interests, and I can think
of no planet on which I could be safer from any such temptation. If
these Lords-Master want to vote their throats cut, and the slaves want
to re-enslave themselves, they may all do so with my complete blessing."
If he had been at all given to dramatic gestures he would then have sent
for water and washed his hands.
* * * * *
Metaphorically, he did so at that moment; thereafter his interest in
Adityan affairs was that of a spectator at a boring and stupid show,
watching only because there is nothing else to watch, and wishing that
it had been possible to have returned to Odin on the _Irma_. The Prime
Minister, however, was entitled to a full and impartial report, which he
would scarcely get from Count Erskyll, on this new jewel in the Imperial
Crown. To be able to furnish that, he would have to remain until the
Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation would act on the new constitution.
Whether the constitution was adopted or rejected was, in itself,
unimportant; in either case, Aditya would have a government recognizable
as such by the Empire, which was already recognizing some fairly
unlikely-looking governments. In either case, too, Aditya would make
nobody on any other planet any trouble. It wouldn't have, at least for a
long time, even if it had been left unannexed, but no planet inhabited
by Terro-humans could be trusted to remain permanently peaceful and
isolated. There is a spark of aggressive ambition in every Terro-human
people, no matter how debased, which may smoulder for centuries or even
millennia and then burst, fanned by some random wind, into flame. To
shift the metaphor slightly, the Empire could afford to leave no
unwatched pots around to boil over unexpectedly.
Occasionally, he did warn young Erskyll of the dangers of overwork and
emotional over-involvement. Each time, the Proconsul would pour out some
tale of bickering and rivalry among the chief-freedmen of the
Managements. Citizen Khouzhik and Citizen Eschkhaffar--they were all
calling each other Citizen, now--were contesting overlapping
jurisdictions. Khouzhik wanted to change the name of his Management--he
no longer bothered mentioning Sesar Martwynn--to Labor and Industry. To
this, Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected vehemently; any Industry that was
going to be managed would be managed by his--Oraze Borztall was
similarly left unmentioned--management of Public Works. And they were
also feuding about the robotic and remote-controlled equipment that had
been sent down from the _Empress Eulalie_ to the Austragonia
nuclear-power works.
Khouzhik was also in controversy with Yakoop Zhannar, who was already
calling himself People's Provost-Marshal. Khouzhik had taken over all
the private armed-guards on the Masterly farms and in the factories, and
assimilated them into something he was calling the People's Labor
Police, ostensibly to enforce the new Code of Employment Practice.
Zhannar insisted that they should be under his Management; when Chmidd
and Hozhet supported Khouzhik, he began clamoring for the return of the
regular army to his control.
Commodore Shatrak was more than glad to get rid of the Adityan army, and
so was Pyairr Ravney, who was in immediate command of them. The Adityans
didn't care one way or the other. Zhannar was delighted, and so were
Chmidd and Hozhet. So, oddly, was Zhorzh Khouzhik. At the same time, the
state of martial law proclaimed on the day of the landing was
terminated.
The days slipped by. There were entertainments at the new Proconsular
Palace for the Masterly residents of Zeggensburg, and Erskyll and his
staff were entertained at Masterly palaces. The latter affairs pained
Prince Trevannion excessively--hours on end of gorging uninspired
cooking and guzzling too-sweet wine and watching ex-slave performers
whose acts were either brutal or obscene and frequently both, and, more
unforgivable, stupidly so. The Masterly conversation was simply stupid.