usually, one or another of Ravney's young officers, took long trips of
exploration. They fished in mountain streams, and hunted the small
deerlike game, and he found himself enjoying these excursions more than
anything he had done in recent years; certainly anything since Aditya
had come into the viewscreens of the _Empress Eulalie_. Once in a while,
they claimed and received Masterly hospitality at some large farming
estate. They were always greeted with fulsome cordiality, and there was
always surprise that persons of their rank and consequence should travel
unaccompanied by a retinue of servants.
He found things the same wherever he stopped. None of the farms were
producing more than a quarter of the potential yield per acre, and all
depleting the soil outrageously. Ten slaves--he didn't bother to think
of them as freedmen--doing the work of one, and a hundred of them taking
all day to do what one robot would have done before noon. White-gowned
chief-slaves lording it over green and orange gowned supervisors and
clerks; overseers still carrying and frequently using whips and knouts
and sandbag flails.
Once or twice, when a Masterly back was turned, he caught a look of
murderous hatred flickering into the eyes of some upper-slave. Once or
twice, when a Master thought his was turned, he caught the same look in
Masterly eyes, directed at him or at Lanze.
The Midyear Feasts approached; each time he returned to the city he
found more excitement as preparations went on. Mykhyl Eschkhaffar's
Management of Public Works was giving top priority to redecorating the
Convocation Chamber and the lounges and dining-rooms around it in which
the Masters would relax during recesses. More and more Masterly families
flocked in from outlying estates, with contragravity-flotillas and
retinues of attendants, to be entertained at the city palaces. There
were more and gaudier banquets and balls and entertainments. By the time
the Feasts began, every Masterly man, woman and child would be in the
city.
There were long columns of military contragravity coming in, too;
troop-carriers and combat-vehicles. Yakoop Zhannar was bringing in all
his newly recovered army, and Zhorzh Khouzhik his newly organized
People's Labor Police. Vann Shatrak, who was now commanding his
battle-line unit by screen from the Proconsular Palace, began fretting.
"I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry to terminate martial rule," he
said, once. "And I wish Pyairr hadn't been so confoundedly efficient in
retraining those troops. That may cost us a few extra casualties, before
we're through."
Count Erskyll laughed at his worries.
"It's just this rivalry between Citizen Khouzhik and Citizen Zhannar,"
he said, "They're like a couple of ci-devant Lords-Master competing to
give more extravagant feasts. Zhannar's going to hold a review of his
troops, and of course, Khouzhik intends to hold a review of his police.
That's all there is to it."
"Well, just the same, I wish some reenforcements would get here from
Odin," Shatrak said.
Erskyll was busy, in the days before the Midyear Feasts, either
conferring at the Citadel with the ex-slaves who were the functional
heads of the Managements or at the Proconsular Palace with Hozhet and
Chmidd and the chief-freedmen of the influential Convocation leaders and
Presidium members. Everybody was extremely optimistic about the
constitution.
He couldn't quite understand the optimism, himself.
"If I were one of these Lords-Master, I wouldn't even consider the
thing," he told Erskyll. "I know, they're stupid, but I can't believe
they're stupid enough to commit suicide, and that's what this amounts
to."
"Yes, it does," Erskyll agreed, cheerfully. "As soon as they enact it,
they'll be of no more consequence than the Assemblage of Peers on Aton;
they'll have no voice in the operation of the Commonwealth, and none in
the new constitution that will be drawn up five years from now. And that
will be the end of them. All the big estates, and the factories and
mines and contragravity-ship lines will be nationalized."
"And they'll have nothing at all, except a hamper-full of repudiated
paper stellies," he finished. "That's what I mean. What makes you think
they'll be willing to vote for that?"
"They don't know they're voting for it. They'll think they're voting to
keep control of the Mastership. People like Olvir Nikkolon and Rovard
Javasan and Ranal Valdry and Sesar Martwynn think they still own their
chief-freedmen; they think Hozhet and Chmidd and Zhannar and Khouzhik
will do exactly what they tell them. And they believe anything the
Hozhets and Chmidds and Zhannars tell them. And every chief-freedman is
telling his Lord-Employer that the only way they can keep control is by
adopting the constitution; that they can control the elections on their
estates, and hand-pick the People's Legislative Council. I tell you,
Prince Trevannion, the constitution is as good as enacted."
Two days before the opening of the Convocation, the _Irma_ came into
radio-range, five light-hours away, and began transmitting in taped
matter at sixty-speed. Erskyll's report and his own acknowledged; a
routine "well done" for the successful annexation. Commendation for
Shatrak's handling of the landing operation. Orders to take over
Aditya-_Alif_ and begin construction of a permanent naval base.
Notification of promotion to base-admiral, and blank commission as
line-commodore; that would be Patrique Morvill. And advice that one
transport-cruiser, _Algol_, with an Army contragravity brigade aboard,
and two engineering ships, would leave Odin for Aditya in fifteen days.
The last two words erased much of the new base-admiral's pleasure.
"Fifteen days, great Ghu! And those tubs won't make near the speed of
_Irma_, getting here. We'll be lucky to see them in twenty. And
Beelzebub only knows what'll be going on here then."
* * * * *
Four times, the big screen failed to respond. They were all crowded
into one of the executive conference-rooms at the Proconsular Palace,
the batteries of communication and recording equipment incongruously
functional among the gold-encrusted luxury of the original Masterly
furnishings. Shatrak swore.
"Andrey, I thought your people had planted those pickups where they
couldn't be found," he said to Commander Douvrin.
"There is no such place, sir," the intelligence officer replied. "Just
places where things are hard to find."
"Did you mention our pickups to Chmidd or Hozhet or any of the rest of
the shaveheads?" Shatrak asked Erskyll.
"No. I didn't even know where they were. And it was the freedmen who
found them," Erskyll said. "I don't know why they wouldn't want us
looking in."
Lanze Degbrend, at the screen, twisted the dial again, and this time the
screen flickered and cleared, and they were looking into the Convocation
Chamber from the extreme rear, above the double doors. Far away, in
front, Olvir Nikkolon was rising behind the gold and onyx bench, and
from the speaker the call bell tolled slowly, and the buzz of over two
thousand whispering voices diminished. Nikkolon began to speak:
"Seven and a half centuries ago, our fathers went forth from Morglay to
plant upon this planet a new banner...."
It was evidently a set speech, one he had recited year after year, and
every Lord Chairman of the Presidium before him. The splendid
traditions. The glories of the Masterly race. The all-conquering Space
Vikings. The proud heritage of the Sword-Worlds. Lanze was fiddling with
the control knobs, stepping up magnification and focusing on the
speaker's head and shoulders. Then everybody laughed; Nikkolon had a
small plug in one ear, with a fine wire running down to vanish under his
collar. Degbrend brought back the full view of the Convocation Chamber.
Nikkolon went on and on. Vann Shatrak summoned a robot to furnish him
with a cold beer and another cigar. Erskyll was drumming an impatient
devil's tattoo with his fingernails on the gold-encrusted table in front
of him. Lanze Degbrend began interpolating sarcastic comments. And
finally, Pyairr Ravney, who came from Lugaluru, reverted to the idiom of
his planet's favorite sport:
"Come on, come on; turn out the bull! What's the matter, is the gate
stuck?"
If so, it came quickly unstuck, and the bull emerged, pawing and
snorting.
"This year, other conquerors have come to Aditya, here to plant another
banner, the Sun and Cogwheel of the Galactic Empire, and I blush to say
it, we are as helpless against these conquerors as were the miserable
barbarians and their wretched serfs whom our fathers conquered seven
hundred and sixty-two years ago, whose descendants, until this black
day, had been our slaves."
He continued, his voice growing more impassioned and more belligerent.
Count Erskyll fidgeted. This wasn't the way the Chmidd-Hozhet
Constitution ought to be introduced.
"So, perforce, we accepted the sovereignty of this alien Empire. We are
now the subjects of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. We must govern
Aditya subject to the Imperial Constitution." (Groans, boos; catcalls,
if the Adityan equivalent of cats made noises like that.) "At one
stroke, this Constitution has abolished our peculiar institution, upon
which is based our entire social structure. This I know. But this same
Imperial Constitution is a collapsium-strong shielding; let me call your
attention to Article One, Section Two: _Every Empire planet shall be
self-governed as to its own affairs, in the manner of its own choice and
without interference._ Mark this well, for it is our guarantee that this
government, of the Masters, by the Masters, and for the Masters, shall
not perish from Aditya." (Prolonged cheering.)
"Now, these arrogant conquerors have overstepped their own supreme law.
They have written for this Mastership a constitution, designed for the
sole purpose of accomplishing the liquidation of the Masterly class and
race. They have endeavored to force this planetary constitution upon us
by threats of force, and by a shameful attempt to pervert the fidelity
of our chief-slaves--I will not insult these loyal servitors with this
disgusting new name, freedmen--so that we might, a second time, be
tricked into voting assent to our own undoing. But in this, they have
failed. Our chief-slaves have warned us of the trap concealed in this
constitution written by the Proconsul, Count Erskyll. My faithful Tchall
Hozhet has shown me all the pitfalls in this infamous document...."
Obray, Count Erskyll, was staring in dismay at the screen. Then he began
cursing blasphemously, the first time he had ever been heard to do so,
and, as he was at least nominally a Pantheist, this meant blaspheming
the entire infinite universe.
"The rats! The dirty treacherous rats! We came here to help them, and
look; they've betrayed us...!" He lost his voice in a wheezing sob, and
then asked: "Why did they do it? Do they want to go on being slaves?"
Perhaps they did. It wasn't for love of their Lords-Master; he was sure
of that. Even from the beginning, they had found it impossible to
disguise their contempt....
Then he saw Olvir Nikkolon stop short and thrust out his arm, pointing
directly below the pickup, and as he watched, something green-gray, a
remote-control contragravity lorry, came floating into the field of the
screen. One of the vehicles that had been sent down from the _Empress
Eulalie_ for use at the uranium mines. As it lifted and advanced toward
the center of the room, the other Lords-Master were springing to their
feet.
[Illustration]
Vann Shatrak also sprang to his feet, reaching the controls of the
screen and cutting the sound. He was just in time to save them from
being, at least temporarily, deafened, for no sooner had he silenced the
speaker than the lorry vanished in a flash that filled the entire room.
When the dazzle left their eyes, and the smoke and dust began to clear,
they saw the Convocation Chamber in wreckage, showers of plaster and
bits of plastiboard still falling from above. The gold and onyx bench
was broken in a number of places; the Chiefs of Management in front of
it, and the Presidium above, had vanished. Among the benches lay
black-clad bodies, a few still moving. Smoke rose from burning clothing.
Admiral Shatrak put on the sound again; from the screen came screams and
cries of pain and fright.
Then the doors on the two long sides opened, and red-brown uniforms
appeared. The soldiers advanced into the Chamber, unslinging rifles and
submachine guns. Unheeding the still falling plaster, they moved
forward, firing as they came. A few of them slung their firearms and
picked up Masterly dress swords, using them to finish the wounded among
the benches. The screams grew fewer, and then stopped.
Count Erskyll sat frozen, staring white-faced and horror-sick into the
screen. Some of the others had begun to recover and were babbling
excitedly. Vann Shatrak was at a communication-screen, talking to
Commodore Patrique Morvill, aboard the _Empress Eulalie_:
"All the Landing-Troops, and all the crewmen you can spare and arm. And
every vehicle you have. This is only the start of it; there'll be a
general massacre of Masters next. I don't doubt it's started already."
At another screen, Pyairr Ravney was saying, to the officer of the day
of the Palace Guard: "No, there's no telling what they'll do next.
Whatever it is, be ready for it ten minutes ago."
He stubbed out his cigarette and rose, and as he did, Erskyll came out
of his daze and onto his feet.
"Commodore Shatrak! I mean, Admiral," he corrected himself. "We must
re-impose martial rule. I wish I'd never talked you into terminating it.
Look at that!" He pointed at the screen; big dump-lorries were already
coming in the doors under the pickup, with a mob of gowned civil-service
people crowding in under them. They and the soldiers began dragging
bodies out from among the seats to be loaded and hauled away. "There's
the planetary government, murdered to the last man!"
"I'm afraid we can't do anything like that," he said. "This seems to be
a simple transfer of power by _coup-d'etat_; rather more extreme than
usual, but normal political practice on this sort of planet. The Empire
has no right to interfere."
Erskyll turned on him indignantly. "But it's mass murder!"
"It's an accomplished fact. Whoever ordered this, Citizen Chmidd and
Citizen Hozhet and Citizen Zhannar and the rest of your good democratic
citizens, are now the planetary government of Aditya. As long as they
don't attack us, or repudiate the sovereignty of the Emperor, you'll
have to recognize them as such."
"A bloody-handed gang of murderers; recognize them?"
"All governments have a little blood here and there on their hands;
you've seen this by screen instead of reading about it in a history
book, but that shouldn't make any difference. And you've said,
yourself, that the Masters would have to be eliminated. You've told
Chmidd and Hozhet and the others that, repeatedly. Of course, you meant
legally, by constitutional and democratic means, but that seemed just a
bit too tedious to them. They had them all together in one room, where
they could be eliminated easily, and ... Lanze; see if you can get
anything on the Citadel telecast."
Degbrend put on another communication-screen and fiddled for a moment.
What came on was a view, from another angle, of the Convocation Chamber.
A voice was saying:
"... not one left alive. The People's Labor Police, acting on orders of
People's Manager of Labor Zhorzh Khouzhik and People's Provost-Marshal
Yakoop Zhannar, are now eliminating the rest of the ci-devant Masterly
class, all of whom are here in Zeggensburg. The people are directed to
cooperate; kill them all, men, women and children. We must allow none of
these foul exploiters of the people live to see today's sun go down...."
"You mean, we sit here while those animals butcher women and children?"
Shatrak demanded, looking from the Proconsul to the Ministerial
Secretary. "Well, by Ghu, I won't! If I have to face a court for it, all
well and good, but...."
"You won't, Admiral. I seem to recall, some years ago, a Commodore
Hastings, who got a baronetcy for stopping a pogrom on Anath...."
"And broadcast an announcement that any of the Masterly class may find
asylum here at the Proconsular Palace. They're political fugitives;
scores of precedents for that," Erskyll added.
Shatrak was back at the screen to the _Empress Eulalie_.
"Patrique, get a jam-beam focussed on that telecast station at the
Citadel; get it off the air. Then broadcast on the same wavelength;
announce that anybody claiming sanctuary at the Proconsular Palace will
be taken in and protected. And start getting troops down, and all the
spacemen you can spare."
At the same time, Ravney was saying, into his own screen:
"Plan Four. Variation H-3; this is a rescue operation. This is not,
repeat, underscore, _not_ an intervention in planetary government. You
are to protect members of the Masterly class in danger from mob
violence. That's anybody with hair on his head. Stay away from the
Citadel; the ones there are all dead. Start with the four buildings
closest to us, and get them cleared out. If the shaveheads give you any
trouble, don't argue with them, just shoot them...."
Erskyll, after his brief moment of decisiveness, was staring at the
screen to the Convocation Chamber, where bodies were still being heaved
into the lorries like black sacks of grain. Lanze Degbrend summoned a
robot, had it pour a highball, and gave it to the Proconsul.
"Go ahead, Count Erskyll; drink it down. Medicinal," he was saying.
"Believe me you certainly need it."
Erskyll gulped it down. "I think I could use another, if you please," he
said, handing the glass back to Lanze. "And a cigarette." After he had
tasted his second drink and puffed on the cigarette, he said: "I was so
proud. I thought they were learning democracy."
"We don't, any of us, have too much to be proud about," Degbrend told
him. "They must have been planning and preparing this for a couple of
months, and we never caught a whisper of it."
That was correct. They had deluded Erskyll into thinking that they were
going to let the Masters vote themselves out of power and set up a
representative government. They had deluded the Masters into believing
that they were in favor of the _status quo_, and opposed to Erkyll's
democratization and socialization. There must be only a few of them in
the conspiracy. Chmidd and Hozhet and Zhannar and Khouzhik and Schferts
and the rest of the Citadel chief-slave clique. Among them, they
controlled all the armed force. The bickering and rivalries must have
been part of the camouflage. He supposed that a few of the upper army
commanders had been in on it, too.
A communication-screen began making noises. Somebody flipped the switch,
and Khreggor Chmidd appeared in it. Erskyll swore softly, and went to
face the screen-image of the elephantine ex-slave of the ex-Lord Master,
the late Rovard Javasan.
"Citizen Proconsul; why is our telecast station, which is vitally needed
to give information to the people, jammed off the air, and why are you
broadcasting, on our wavelength, advice to the criminals of the
ci-devant Masterly class to take refuge in your Proconsular Palace from
the just vengeance of the outraged victims of their century-long
exploitation?" he began. "This is a flagrant violation of the Imperial
Constitution; our Emperor will not be pleased at this unjustified
intervention in the affairs, and this interference with the planetary
authority, of the People's Commonwealth of Aditya!"
Obray of Erskyll must have realized, for the first time, that he was
still holding a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
He flung both of them away.
"If the Imperial troops we are sending into the city to rescue women and
children in danger from your hoodlums meet with the least resistance,
you won't be in a position to find out what his Majesty thinks about it,
because Admiral Shatrak will have you and your accomplices shot in the
Convocation Chamber, where you massacred the legitimate government of
this planet," he barked.
So the real Obray, Count Erskyll, had at last emerged. All the
liberalism and socialism and egalitarianism, all the Helping-Hand,
Torch-of-Democracy, idealism, was merely a surface stucco applied at the
university during the last six years. For twenty-four years before that,
from the day of his birth, he had been taught, by his parents, his
nurse, his governess, his tutors, what it meant to be an Erskyll of Aton
and a grandson of Errol, Duke of Yorvoy. As he watched Khreggor Chmidd
in the screen, he grew angrier, if possible.
"Do you know what you blood-thirsty imbeciles have done?" he demanded.
"You have just murdered, along with two thousand men, some five billion
crowns, the money needed to finance all these fine modernization and
industrialization plans. Or are you crazy enough to think that the
Empire is going to indemnify you for being emancipated and pay that
money over to you?"
"But, Citizen Proconsul...."
"And don't call me Citizen Proconsul! I am a noble of the Galactic
Empire, and on this pigpen of a planet I represent his Imperial Majesty.
You will respect, and address, me accordingly."
Khreggor Chmidd no longer wore the gorget of servility, but, as Lanze
Degbrend had once remarked, it was still tattooed on his soul. He
gulped.
"Y-yes, Lord-Master Proconsul!"
They were together again in the big conference-room, which Vann Shatrak
had been using, through the day, as an extemporised Battle-Control. They
slumped wearily in chairs; they smoked and drank coffee; they anxiously
looked from viewscreen to viewscreen, wondering when, and how soon, the
trouble would break out again. It was dark, outside, now. Floodlights
threw a white dazzle from the top of the Proconsular Palace and from the
tops of the four buildings around it that Imperial troops had cleared
and occupied, and from contragravity vehicles above. There was light and
activity at the Citadel, and in the Servile City to the south-east; the
rest of Zeggensburg was dark and quiet.
"I don't think we'll have any more trouble," Admiral Shatrak was saying.
"They won't be fools enough to attack us here, and all the Masters are
dead, except for the ones we're sheltering."
"How many did we save?" Count Erskyll asked.
Eight hundred odd, Shatrak told him. Erskyll caught his breath.
"So few! Why, there were almost twelve thousand of them in the city this
morning."
"I'm surprised we saved so many," Lanze Degbrend said. He still wore
combat coveralls, and a pistol-belt lay beside his chair. "Most of them
were killed in the first hour."
And that had been before the landing-craft from the ships had gotten
down, and there had only been seven hundred men and forty vehicles
available. He had gone out with them, himself; it had been the first
time he had worn battle-dress and helmet or carried a weapon except for
sport in almost thirty years. It had been an ugly, bloody, business; one
he wanted to forget as speedily as possible. There had been times, after
seeing the mutilated bodies of Masterly women and children, when he had
been forced to remind himself that he had come out to prevent, not to
participate in, a massacre. Some of Ravney's men hadn't even tried.
Atrocity has a horrible facility for begetting atrocity.
"What'll we do with them?" Erskyll asked. "We can't turn them loose;
they'd all be murdered in a matter of hours, and in any case, they'd
have nowhere to go. The Commonwealth,"--he pronounced the name he had
himself selected as though it were an obscenity--"has nationalized all
the Masterly property."
That had been announced almost as soon as the Citadel telecast-station
had been unjammed, and shortly thereafter they had begun encountering
bodies of Yakoop Zhannar's soldiers and Zhorzh Khouzhik's police who had
been sent out to stop looting and vandalism and occupy the Masterly
palaces. There had been considerable shooting in the Servile City;
evidently the ex-slaves had to be convinced that they must not pillage
or destroy their places of employment.