"Irritating, wasn't it, Conru? Humiliating. Of course, these lads
will be reconditioned to civilization when they finish their military
service and prepare for more specialized work. Yes, treating all
Earthlings alike is the solution. We put restrictions on these
colonials; they can't hold top jobs, and so on. And we encourage wild
stories about brutality on our part. Not enough to make everybody mad
at us, or even a majority--the rumored tyranny has always happened to
someone else. But there's a certain class of beings who'll get fighting
mad, and that's the class we want."
"The leaders," I chimed in. "The idealists. Brave, intelligent,
patriotic. The kind who probably wouldn't be a part of this racial
bickering, anyway."
"Right," said the Coordinator. "We'll give them the ammunition for
their propaganda. We've _been_ doing it. Result: the leaders get mad.
Races, religions, nationalities, they hate us worse than they hate each
other."
* * * * *
The way he painted it, I was hardly needed at all. I told him that.
"Ideally, that would be the situation, Conru. Only it doesn't work
that way." He took out a soft cloth and wiped his forehead. "Even the
leaders are too involved in this myth of differences and they can't
concentrate all their efforts. Luron, of course, would be the other
alternative--"
That was a very logical statement, but sometimes logic has a way of
making you laugh, and I was laughing now. Luron considered itself our
arch-enemy. With a few dozen allies on a path of conquest, Luron
thought it could wrest Empire from our hands. Well, we let them play.
And each time Luron swooped down on one of the more primitive planets,
we let them, for Luron would serve as well as ourselves in goading
backward peoples to unite and advance. Perhaps Luron, as a social
entity, grew wiser each time. Certainly the primitive colonials did.
Luron had started a chain reaction which threatened to overthrow the
tyranny of superstition on a hundred planets. Good old Luron, our
arch-enemy, would see the light itself some day.
The Coordinator shook his head. "Can't use Luron here. Technologies are
entirely too similar. It might shatter both planets, and we wouldn't
want that."
"So what do we use?"
"You, Conru. You get in with the revolutionaries, you make sure that
they want to fight, you--"
"I see," I told him. "Then I try to stop it at the last minute. Not so
soon that the rebellion doesn't help at all--"
The Coordinator put his hand down flat. "Nothing of the sort. They
_must_ fight. And they must be defeated, again and again, if necessary,
until they are ready to succeed. That will be, of course, when they are
_totally_ against us."