A Slave is a Slave
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Henry Beam Piper >> A Slave is a Slave
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6 A SLAVE IS A SLAVE
BY H. BEAM PIPER
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| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact--Science |
| Fiction April 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any |
| evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was |
| renewed. |
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There has always been strong sympathy for the poor, meek,
downtrodden slave--the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and
overbearing masters. Could it possibly have been misplaced...?
Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, accepted the coffee cup and lifted it to his
lips, then lowered it. These Navy robots always poured coffee too hot;
spacemen must have collapsium-lined throats. With the other hand, he
punched a button on the robot's keyboard and received a lighted
cigarette; turning, he placed the cup on the command-desk in front of
him and looked about. The tension was relaxing in Battle-Control, the
purposeful pandemonium of the last three hours dying rapidly. Officers
of both sexes, in red and blue and yellow and green coveralls, were
rising from seats, leaving their stations, gathering in groups.
Laughter, a trifle loud; he realized, suddenly, that they had been
worried, and wondered if he should not have been a little so himself.
No. There would have been nothing he could have done about anything, so
worry would not have been useful. He lifted the cup again and sipped
cautiously.
"That's everything we can do now," the man beside him said. "Now we just
sit and wait for the next move."
Like all the others, Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak wore shipboard
battle-dress; his coveralls were black, splashed on breast and between
shoulders with the gold insignia of his rank. His head was completely
bald, and almost spherical; a beaklike nose carried down the curve of
his brow, and the straight lines of mouth and chin chopped under it
enhanced rather than spoiled the effect. He was getting coffee; he
gulped it at once.
"It was very smart work, Commodore. I never saw a landing operation go
so smoothly."
"Too smooth," Shatrak said. "I don't trust it." He looked suspiciously
up at the row of viewscreens.
"It was absolutely unnecessary!"
That was young Obray, Count Erskyll, seated on the commodore's left. He
was a generation younger than Prince Trevannion, as Shatrak was a
generation older; they were both smooth-faced. It was odd, how beards
went in and out of fashion with alternate generations. He had been
worried, too, during the landing, but for a different reason from the
others. Now he was reacting with anger.
"I told you, from the first, that it was unnecessary. You see? They
weren't even able to defend themselves, let alone...."
His personal communication-screen buzzed; he set down the coffee and
flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was
carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze
was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and
ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger. Lanze was now wearing the combat
coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet
with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his
shoulder. He grinned and executed an exaggeratedly military salute. He
chuckled.
"Well, look at you; aren't you the perfect picture of correct diplomatic
dress?"
"You know, sir, I'm afraid I am, for this planet," Degbrend said.
"Colonel Ravney insisted on it. He says the situation downstairs is
still fluid, which I take to mean that everybody is shooting at
everybody. He says he has the main telecast station, in the big building
the locals call the Citadel."
"Oh, good. Get our announcement out as quickly as you can. Number Five.
You and Colonel Ravney can decide what interpolations are needed to fit
the situation."
"Number Five; the really tough one," Degbrend considered. "I take it
that by interpolations you do not mean dilutions?"
"Oh, no; don't water the drink. Spike it."
Lanze Degbrend grinned at him. Then he snapped down the visor of his
helmet, unslung his carbine, and presented it. He was still standing at
present arms when Trevannion blanked the screen.
* * * * *
"That still doesn't excuse a wanton and unprovoked aggression!" Erskyll
was telling Shatrak, his thin face flushed and his voice quivering with
indignation. "We came here to help these people, not to murder them."
"We didn't come here to do either, Obray," he said, turning to face the
younger man. "We came here to annex their planet to the Galactic Empire,
whether they wish it annexed or not. Commodore Shatrak used the quickest
and most effective method of doing that. It would have done no good to
attempt to parley with them from off-planet. You heard those telecasts
of theirs."
"Authoritarian," Shatrak said, then mimicked pompously: "'Everybody is
commanded to remain calm; the Mastership is taking action. The
Convocation of the Lords-Master is in special session; they will decide
how to deal with the invaders. The administrators are directed to
reassure the supervisors; the overseers will keep the workers at their
tasks. Any person disobeying the orders of the Mastership will be dealt
with most severely.'"
"Static, too. No spaceships into this system for the last five hundred
years; the Convocation--equals Parliament, I assume--hasn't been in
special session for two hundred and fifty."
"Yes. I've taken over planets with that kind of government before,"
Shatrak said. "You can't argue with them. You just grab them by the
center of authority, quick and hard."
Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of
force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had
said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he
was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the
incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it
is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.
But, at the same time, he was opposed to authoritarianism, except, of
course, when necessary for the real good of the people. And he did not
like rulers who called themselves Lords-Master. Good democratic rulers
called themselves Servants of the People. So he relapsed into silence
and stared at the viewscreens.
One, from an outside pickup on the _Empress Eulalie_ herself, showed the
surface of the planet, a hundred miles down, the continent under them
curving away to a distant sun-reflecting sea; beyond the curved horizon,
the black sky was spangled with unwinking stars. Fifty miles down, the
sun glinted from the three thousand foot globes of the two
transport-cruisers, _Canopus_ and _Mizar_.
Another screen, from _Mizar_, gave a clearer if more circumscribed view
of the surface--green countryside, veined by rivers and wrinkled with
mountains; little towns that were mere dots; a scatter of white clouds.
Nothing that looked like roads. There had been no native sapient race on
this planet, and in the thirteen centuries since it had been colonized
the Terro-human population had never completely lost the use of
contragravity vehicles. In that screen, farther down, the four
destroyers, _Irma_, _Irene_, _Isobel_ and _Iris_, were tiny twinkles.
* * * * *
From _Irene_, they had a magnified view of the city. On the maps, none
later than eight hundred years old, it was called Zeggensburg; it had
been built at the time of the first colonization under the old Terran
Federation. Tall buildings, rising from wide interspaces of lawns and
parks and gardens, and, at the very center, widely separated from
anything else, the mass of the Citadel, a huge cylindrical tower rising
from a cluster of smaller cylinders, with a broad circular landing stage
above, topped by the newly raised flag of the Galactic Empire.
There was a second city, a thick crescent, to the south and east. The
old maps placed the Zeggensburg spaceport there, but not a trace of that
remained. In its place was what was evidently an industrial district,
located where the prevailing winds would carry away the dust and smoke.
There was quite a bit of both, but the surprising thing was the streets,
long curved ones, and shorter ones crossing at regular intervals to form
blocks. He had never seen a city with streets before, and he doubted if
anybody else on the Empire ships had. Long boulevards to give
unobstructed passage to low-level air-traffic, of course, and short
winding walkways, but not things like these. Pictures, of course, of
native cities on planets colonized at the time of the Federation, and
even very ancient ones of cities on pre-Atomic Terra. But these people
had contragravity; the towering, wide-spaced city beside this
cross-gridded anachronism proved that.
They knew so little about this planet which they had come to bring under
Imperial rule. It had been colonized thirteen centuries ago, during the
last burst of expansion before the System States War and the
disintegration of the Terran Federation, and it had been named Aditya,
in the fashion of the times, for some forgotten deity of some obscure
and ancient polytheism. A century or so later, it had seceded from or
been abandoned by the Federation, then breaking up. That much they had
gleaned from old Federation records still existing on Baldur. After
that, darkness, lighted only by a brief flicker when more records had
turned up on Morglay.
Morglay was one of the Sword-Worlds, settled by refugee rebels from the
System States planets. Mostly they had been soldiers and spacemen; there
had been many women with them, and many were skilled technicians,
engineers, scientists. They had managed to carry off considerable
equipment with them, and for three centuries they had lived in
isolation, spreading over a dozen hitherto undiscovered planets.
Excalibur, Tizona, Gram, Morglay, Durendal, Flamberge, Curtana,
Quernbiter; the names were a roll-call of fabulous blades of Old Terran
legend.
Then they had erupted, suddenly and calamitously, into what was left of
the Terran Federation as the Space Vikings, carrying pillage and
destruction, until the newborn Empire rose to vanquish them. In the
sixth Century Pre-Empire, one of their fleets had come from Morglay to
Aditya.
The Adityans of that time had been near-barbarians; the descendants of
the original settlers had been serfs of other barbarians who had come as
mercenaries in the service of one or another of the local chieftains and
had remained to loot and rule. Subjugating them had been easy; the Space
Vikings had taken Aditya and made it their home. For several centuries,
there had been communication between them and their home planet. Then
Morglay had become involved in one of the interplanetary dynastic wars
that had begun the decadence of the Space Vikings, and again Aditya
dropped out of history.
Until this morning, when history returned in the black ships of the
Galactic Empire.
* * * * *
He stubbed out the cigarette and summoned the robot to give him another.
Shatrak was speaking:
"You see, Count Erskyll, we really had to do it this way, for their own
good." He wouldn't have credited the commodore with such guile; anything
was justified, according to Obray of Erskyll, if done for somebody
else's good. "What we did, we just landed suddenly, knocked out their
army, seized the center of government, before anybody could do anything.
If we'd landed the way you'd wanted us to, somebody would have resisted,
and the next thing, we'd have had to kill about five or six thousand of
them and blow down a couple of towns, and we'd have lost a lot of our
own people doing it. You might say, we had to do it to save them from
themselves."
Obray of Erskyll seemed to have doubts, but before he could articulate
them, Shatrak's communication-screen was calling attention to itself.
The commodore flicked the switch, and his executive officer, Captain
Patrique Morvill, appeared in it.
"We've just gotten reports, sir, that some of Ravney's people have
captured a half-dozen missile-launching sites around the city. His
air-reconn tells him that that's the lot of them. I have an officer of
one of the parties that participated. You ought to hear what he has to
say, sir."
"Well, good!" Vann Shatrak whooshed out his breath. "I don't mind
admitting, I was a little on edge about that."
"Wait till you hear what Lieutenant Carmath has to say." Morvill seemed
to be strangling a laugh. "Ready for him, Commodore?"
Shatrak nodded; Morvill made a hand-signal and vanished in a flicker of
rainbow colors; when the screen cleared, a young Landing-Troop
lieutenant in battle-dress was looking out of it. He saluted and gave
his name, rank and unit.
"This missile-launching site I'm occupying, sir; it's twenty miles
north-west of the city. We took it thirty minutes ago; no resistance
whatever. There are four hundred or so people here. Of them, twelve, one
dozen, are soldiers. The rest are civilians. Ten enlisted men, a non-com
of some sort, and something that appears to be an officer. The officer
had a pistol, fully loaded. The non-com had a submachine gun, empty,
with two loaded clips on his belt. The privates had rifles, empty, and
no ammunition. The officer did not know where the rifle ammunition was
stored."
Shatrak swore. The second lieutenant nodded. "Exactly my comment when he
told me, sir. But this place is beautifully kept up. Lawns all mowed,
trees neatly pruned, everything policed up like inspection morning. And
there is a headquarters office building here adequate for an army
division...."
"How about the armament, Lieutenant?" Shatrak asked with forced
patience.
"Ah, yes; the armament, sir. There are eight big launching cradles for
panplanetary or off-planet missiles. They are all polished up like the
Crown Jewels. But none, repeat none, of them is operative. And there is
not a single missile on the installation."
Shatrak's facial control didn't slip. It merely intensified, which
amounted to the same thing.
"Lieutenant Carmath, I am morally certain I heard you correctly, but
let's just check. You said...."
He repeated the lieutenant back, almost word for word. Carmath nodded.
"That was it, sir. The missile-crypts are stacked full of
old photoprints and recording and microfilm spools. The
sighting-and-guidance systems for all the launchers are completely
missing. The letoff mechanisms all lack major parts. There is an
elaborate set of detection equipment, which will detect absolutely
nothing. I saw a few pairs of binoculars about; I suspect that that is
what we were first observed with."
"This office, now; I suppose all the paperwork is up to the minute in
quintulplicate, and initialed by everybody within sight or hearing?"
"I haven't checked on that yet, sir. If you're thinking of betting on
it, please don't expect me to cover you, though."
"Well, thank you, Lieutenant Carmath. Stick around; I'm sending down a
tech-intelligence crew to look at what's left of the place. While
you're waiting, you might sort out whoever seems to be in charge and
find out just what in Nifflheim he thinks that launching-station was
maintained for."
[Illustration]
"I think I can tell you that, now, Commodore," Prince Trevannion said as
Shatrak blanked the screen. "We have a petrified authoritarianism. Quite
likely some sort of an oligarchy; I'd guess that this Convocation thing
they talk about consists of all the ruling class, everybody has equal
voice, and nobody will take the responsibility for doing anything. And
the actual work of government is probably handled by a corps of
bureaucrats entrenched in their jobs, unwilling to exert any effort and
afraid to invite any criticism, and living only to retire on their
pensions. I've seen governments like that before." He named a few. "One
thing; once a government like that has been bludgeoned into the Empire,
it rarely makes any trouble later."
"Just to judge by this missileless non-launching station," Shatrak said,
"they couldn't even decide on what kind of trouble to make, or how to
start it. I think you're going to have a nice easy Proconsulate here,
Count Erskyll."
Count Erskyll started to say something. No doubt he was about to tell
Shatrak, cuttingly, that he didn't want an easy Proconsulate, but an
opportunity to help these people. He was saved from this by the buzzing
of Shatrak's communication-screen.
It was Colonel Pyairr Ravney, the Navy Landing-Troop commander. Like
everybody else who had gone down to Zeggensburg, he was in battle-dress
and armed; the transpex visor of his helmet was pushed up. Between
Shatrak's generation and Count Erskyll's, he sported a pointed mustache
and a spiky chin-beard, which, on his thin and dark-eyed face, looked
distinctly Mephistophelean. He was grinning.
"Well, sir, I think we can call it a done job," he said. "There's a
delegation here who want to talk to the Lords-Master of the ships on
behalf of the Lords-Master of the Convocation. Two of them, with about a
dozen portfolio-bearers and note-takers. I'm not too good in Lingua
Terra, outside Basic, at best, and their brand is far from that. I
gather that they're some kind of civil-servants, personal
representatives of the top Lords-Master."
"Do we want to talk to them?" Shatrak asked.
"Well, we should only talk to the actual, titular, heads of the
government--Mastership," Erskyll, suddenly protocol-conscious, objected.
"We can't negotiate with subordinates."
"Oh, who's talking about negotiating; there isn't anything to negotiate.
Aditya is now a part of the Galactic Empire. If this present regime
assents to that, they can stay in power. If not, we will toss them out
and install a new government. We will receive this delegation, inform
them to that effect, and send them back to relay the information to
their Lords-Master." He turned to the Commodore. "May I speak to Colonel
Ravney?"
Shatrak assented. He asked Ravney where these Lords-Master were.
"Here in the Citadel, in what they call the Convocation Chamber. Close
to a thousand of them, screaming recriminations at one another. Sounds
like feeding time at the Imperial Zoo. I think they all want to
surrender, but nobody dares propose it first. I've just put a cordon
around it and placed it off limits to everybody. And everything outside
off limits to the Convocation."
"Well thought of, Colonel. I suppose the Citadel teems with bureaucrats
and such low life-forms?"
"Bulging with them. Literally thousands. Lanze Degbrend and Commander
Douvrin and a few others are trying to get some sensible answers out of
some of them."
"This delegation; how had you thought of sending them up?"
"Landing-craft to _Isobel_; _Isobel_ will bring them the rest of the
way."
He looked at his watch. "Well, don't be in too much of a rush to get
them here, Colonel. We don't want them till after lunch. Delay them on
_Isobel_; the skipper can see that they have their own lunch aboard. And
entertain them with some educational films. Something to convince them
that there is slightly more to the Empire than one ship-of-the-line, two
cruisers and four destroyers."
Count Erskyll was dissatisfied about that, too. He wanted to see the
delegation at once and make arrangements to talk to their superiors.
Count Erskyll, among other things, was zealous, and of this he
disapproved. Zealous statesmen perhaps did more mischief than anything
in the Galaxy--with the possible exception of procrastinating soldiers.
That could indicate the fundamental difference between statecraft and
war. He'd have to play with that idea a little.
* * * * *
An Empire ship-of-the-line was almost a mile in diameter. It was more
than a battle-craft; it also had political functions. The grand salon,
on the outer zone where the curvature of the floors was less
disconcerting, was as magnificent as any but a few of the rooms of the
Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, the floor richly carpeted and the
walls alternating mirrors and paintings. The movable furniture varied
according to occasion; at present, it consisted of the bare desk at
which they sat, the three chairs they occupied, and the three
secretary-robots, their rectangular black casts blazened with the Sun
and Cogwheel of the Empire. It faced the door, at the far end of the
room; on either side, a rank of spacemen, in dress uniform and under
arms, stood.
In principle, annexing a planet to the Empire was simplicity itself, but
like so many things simple in principle, it was apt to be complicated in
practice, and to this, he suspected, the present instance would be no
exception.
In principle, one simply informed the planetary government that it was
now subject to the sovereignty of his Imperial Majesty, the Galactic
Emperor. This information was always conveyed by a Ministerial
Secretary, directly under the Prime Minister and only one more step down
from the Emperor, in the present instance Jurgen, Prince Trevannion. To
make sure that the announcement carried conviction, the presumedly glad
tidings were accompanied by the Imperial Space Navy, at present
represented by Commodore Vann Shatrak and a seven ship battle-line unit,
and two thousand Imperial Landing-Troops.
When the locals had been properly convinced--with as little bloodshed as
necessary, but always beyond any dispute--an Imperial Proconsul, in this
case Obray, Count Erskyll, would be installed. He would by no means
govern the planet. The Imperial Constitution was definite on that point;
every planetary government should be sovereign as to intraplanetary
affairs. The Proconsul, within certain narrow and entirely inelastic
limits, would merely govern the government.
Unfortunately, Obray, Count Erskyll, appeared not to understand this
completely. It was his impression that he was a torch-bearer of Imperial
civilization, or something equally picturesque and metaphorical. As he
conceived it, it was the duty of the Empire, as represented by himself,
to make over backward planets like Aditya in the image of Odin or Marduk
or Osiris or Baldur or, preferably, his own home world of Aton.
This was Obray of Erskyll's first proconsular appointment, it was due to
family influence, and it was a mistake. Mistakes, of course, were
inevitable in anything as large and complex as the Galactic Empire, and
any institution guided by men was subject to one kind of influence or
another, family influence being no worse than any other kind. In this
case, the ultra-conservative Erskylls of Aton, from old Errol, Duke of
Yorvoy, down, had become alarmed at the political radicalism of young
Obray, and had, on his graduation from the University of Nefertiti,
persuaded the Prime Minister to appoint him to a Proconsulate as far
from Aton as possible, where he would not embarrass them. Just at that
time, more important matters having been gotten out of the way, Aditya
had come up for annexation, and Obray of Erskyll had been named
Proconsul.
That had been the mistake. He should have been sent to some planet which
had been under Imperial rule for some time, where the Proconsulate ran
itself in a well-worn groove, and where he could at leisure learn the
procedures and unlearn some of the unrealisms absorbed at the University
from professors too well insulated from the realities of politics.
* * * * *
There was a stir among the guards; helmet-visors were being snapped
down; feet scuffed. They stiffened to attention, the great doors at the
other end of the grand salon slid open, and the guards presented arms as
the Adityan delegation was ushered in.
There were fourteen of them. They all wore ankle-length gowns, and they
all had shaven heads. The one in the lead carried a staff and wore a
pale green gown; he was apparently a herald. Behind him came two in
white gowns, their empty hands folded on their breasts; one was a huge
bulk of obesity with a bulging brow, protuberant eyes and a pursey
little mouth, and the other was thin and cadaverous, with a skull-like,
almost fleshless face. The ones behind, in dark green and pale blue,
carried portfolios and slung sound-recorder cases. There was a metallic
twinkle at each throat; as they approached, he could see that they all
wore large silver gorgets. They came to a halt twenty feet from the
desk. The herald raised his staff.
"I present the Admirable and Trusty Tchall Hozhet, personal chief-slave
of the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, Chairman of the Presidium of the
Lords-Master's Convocation, and Khreggor Chmidd, chief-slave in office
to the Lord-Master Rovard Javasan, Chief of Administration of
Management of the Mastership," he said. Then he stopped, puzzled,
looking from one to another of them. When his eyes fell on Vann Shatrak,
he brightened.
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