"Certainly. Earth is a rich planet, Conru, and a fairly crowded one at
the same time. Bickering is inevitable. It's a part of their culture,
as much as cooperation has been a part of ours."
I nodded. "We learned the hard way. The old Valgol was a poor planet
and we had to unite to conquer space or we could not have survived."
The Coordinator sniffed again at his silver box. "Of course. And we're
trying to help these people unite. They don't have to make the same
mistakes we did, long ago. They don't have to at all. Get them to hate
us enough, get them to hate us until all their own clannish hatreds
don't count at all.... Well, you know what happened on Samtrak."
I knew. The Samtraks are now the entrepreneurs of the Empire, really
ingenious traders, but within the memory of some of our older men they
were a sore-spot. They didn't understand the meaning of Empire any more
than Earth does, and they never did understand it until we goaded them
into open rebellion. The very reverse of divide and rule, you might
say, and it worked. We withdrew trading privileges one by one, until
they revolted successfully, thus educating themselves sociologically in
only a few generations.
* * * * *
Vorka said, "The problem of Earth is not quite that simple." He leaned
back, made a bridge of his fingers, and peered across them at me. "Do
you know precisely what a provocateur job is, Conru?"
I said that I did, but only in a hazy way, because until now my work
had been pretty much restricted to social relations on the more
advanced Empire planets. However, I told him that I did know the idea
was to provoke discontent and, ultimately, rebellion.
The Coordinator smiled. "Well, that's just the starter, Conru. It's a
lot more complex than that. Each planet has its own special problems.
The Samtraks, for example, had a whole background of cutthroat
competition. That was easy: we eliminated that by showing them what
_real_ cutthroat competition could be like. But Earth is different.
Look at it this way. They fight among themselves. Because of their
mythical distinctions, not realizing that there are no inferior races,
only more or less advanced ones, and that individuals must be judged as
individuals, not as members of groups, nations or races. A planet like
Earth can be immensely valuable to the Empire, but not if it has to be
garrisoned. Its contribution must be voluntary and whole-hearted."
"A difficult problem," I said. "My opinion is that we should treat all
exactly alike--_force_ them to abandon their unrealistic differences."
"Exactly!" The Coordinator seemed pleased, but, actually, this was
pretty elementary stuff. "We're never too rough on the eager lads
who come here from Valgol and kick the natives around a bit. We even
encourage it when the spirit of rebelliousness dies down."