A Slave is a Slave
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Henry Beam Piper >> A Slave is a Slave
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"Are you," he asked, "the chief-slave of the chief Lord-Master of this
ship?"
Shatrak's face turned pink; the pink darkened to red. He used a word; it
was a completely unprintable word. So, except for a few scattered
pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions, were the next fifty words he
used. The herald stiffened. The two delegates behind him were aghast.
The subordinate burden-bearers in the rear began looking around
apprehensively.
"I," Shatrak finally managed, "am an officer of his Imperial Majesty's
Space Navy. I am in command of this battle-line unit. I am _not_"--he
reverted briefly to obscenity--"a slave."
"You mean, you are a Lord-Master, too?" That seemed to horrify the
herald even more that the things Shatrak had been calling him. "Forgive
me, Lord-Master. I did not think...."
"That's right; you didn't," Shatrak agreed. "And don't call me
Lord-Master again, or I'll...."
"Just a moment, Commodore." He waved the herald aside and addressed the
two in white gowns, shifting to Lingua Terra. "This is a ship of the
Galactic Empire," he told them. "In the Empire, there are no slaves. Can
you understand that?"
Evidently not. The huge one, Khreggor Chmidd, turned to the skull-faced
Tchall Hozhet, saying: "Then they must all be Lords-Master." He saw the
objection to that at once. "But how can one be a Lord-Master if there
are no slaves?"
The horror was not all on the visitors' side of the desk, either. Obray
of Erskyll was staring at the delegation and saying, "Slaves!" under his
breath. Obray of Erskyll had never, in his not-too-long life, seen a
slave before.
"They can't be," Tchall Hozhet replied. "A Lord-Master is one who owns
slaves." He gave that a moment's consideration. "But if they aren't
Lords-Master, they must be slaves, and...." No. That wouldn't do,
either. "But a slave is one who belongs to a Lord-Master."
Rule of the Excluded Third; evidently Pre-Atomic formal logic had crept
back to Aditya. Chmidd, looking around, saw the ranks of spacemen on
either side, now at parade-rest.
"But aren't they slaves?" he asked.
"They are spacemen of the Imperial Navy," Shatrak roared. "Call one a
slave to his face and you'll get a rifle-butt in yours. And I shan't
lift a finger to stop it." He glared at Chmidd and Hozhet. "Who had the
infernal impudence to send slaves to deal with the Empire? He needs to
be taught a lesson."
"Why, I was sent by the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, and...."
"Tchall!" Chmidd hissed at him. "We cannot speak to Lords-Master. We
must speak to their chief-slaves."
"But they have no slaves," Hozhet objected. "Didn't you hear the ... the
one with the small beard ... say so?"
"But that's ridiculous, Khreggor. Who does the work, and who tells them
what to do? Who told these people to come here?"
* * * * *
"Our Emperor sent us. That is his picture, behind me. But we are not his
slaves. He is merely the chief man among us. Do your Masters not have
one among them who is chief?"
"That's right," Chmidd said to Hozhet. "In the Convocation, your
Lord-Master is chief, and in the Mastership, my Lord-Master, Rovard
Javasan, is chief."
"But they don't tell the other Lords-Master what to do. In Convocation,
the other Lords-Master tell them...."
"That's what I meant about an oligarchy," he whispered, in Imperial, to
Erskyll.
"Suppose we tell Ravney to herd these Lords-Master onto a couple of
landing-craft and bring them up here?" Shatrak suggested. He made the
suggestion in Lingua Terra Basic, and loudly.
"I think we can manage without that." He raised his voice, speaking in
Lingua Terra Basic:
"It does not matter whether these slaves talk to us or not. This planet
is now under the rule of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. If this
Mastership wants to govern the planet under the Emperor, they may do so.
If not, we will make an end of them and set up a new government here."
He paused. Chmidd and Hozhet were looking at one another in shocked
incredulity.
"Tchall, they mean it," Chmidd said. "They can do it, too."
"We have nothing more to say to you slaves," he continued. "Hereafter,
we will speak directly to the Lords-Master."
"But.... The Lords-Master never do business directly," Hozhet said. "It
is un-Masterly. Such discussions are between chief-slaves."
"This thing they call the Convocation," Shatrak mentioned. "I wonder if
the members have the business done entirely through their slaves."
"Oh, no!" That shocked Chmidd into direct address. "No slave is allowed
in the Convocation Chamber."
He wondered how they kept the place swept out. Robots, no doubt. Or
else, what happened when the Masters weren't there didn't count.
"Very well. Your people have recorders; are they on?"
Hozhet asked Chmidd; Chmidd asked the herald, who asked one of the
menials in the rear, who asked somebody else. The reply came back
through the same channels; they were.
"Very well. At this time tomorrow, we will speak to the Convocation of
Lords-Master. Commodore Shatrak, see to it that Colonel Ravney has them
in the Convocation Chamber, and that preparations in the room are made,
so that we may address them in the dignity befitting representatives of
his Imperial Majesty." He turned to the Adityan slaves. "That is all.
You have permission to go."
They watched the delegation back out, with the honor-guard following.
When the doors had closed behind them, Shatrak ran his hand over his
bald head and laughed.
"Shaved heads, every one of them. That's probably why they thought I was
your slave. Bet those gorgets are servile badges, too." He touched the
Knight's Star of the Order of the Empire at his throat. "Probably
thought that was what this was. We would have to draw something like
this!"
"They simply can't imagine anybody not being either a slave or a
slave-owner," Erskyll was saying. "That must mean that there is no free
non-slave-holding class at all. Universal slavery! Well, we'll have to
do something about that. Proclaim total emancipation, immediately."
"Oh, no; we can't do anything like that. The Constitution won't permit
us to. Section Two, Article One: _Every Empire planet shall be
self-governed as to its own affairs, in the manner of its own choice,
and without interference._"
"But slavery.... Section Two, Article Six," Erskyll objected. "_There
shall be no chattel slavery or serfdom anywhere in the Empire; no
sapient being of any race whatsoever shall be the property of any being
but himself._"
"That's correct," he agreed. "If this Mastership intends to remain the
planetary government under the Empire, they will be obliged to abolish
slavery, but they will have to do it by their own act. We cannot do it
for them."
"You know what I'd do, Prince Trevannion?" Shatrak said. "I'd just heave
this Mastership thing out, and set up a nice tight military
dictatorship. We have the planet under martial rule now; let's just keep
it that way for about five years, till we can train a new government."
That suggestion seemed to pain Count Erskyll almost as much as the
existing situation.
* * * * *
They dined late, in Commodore Shatrak's private dining room. Beside
Shatrak, Erskyll and himself, there were Lanze Degbrend, and Count
Erskyll's charge-d'affaires, Sharll Ernanday, and Patrique Morvill and
Pyairr Ravney and the naval intelligence officer, Commander Andrey
Douvrin. Ordinarily, he deplored serious discussion at meals, but under
the circumstances it was unavoidable; nobody could think or talk of
anything else. The discussion which he had hoped would follow the meal
began before the soup-course.
"We have a total population of about twenty million," Lanze Degbrend
reported. "A trifle over ten thousand Masters, all ages and both sexes.
The remainder are all slaves."
"I find that incredible," Erskyll declared promptly. "Twenty million
people, held in slavery by ten thousand! Why do they stand for it? Why
don't they rebel?"
"Well, I can think of three good reasons," Douvrin said. "Three square
meals a day."
[Illustration]
"And no responsibilities; no need to make decisions," Degbrend added.
"They've been slaves for seven and a half centuries. They don't even
know the meaning of freedom, and it would frighten them if they did."
"Chain of command," Shatrak said. When that seemed not to convey any
meaning to Erskyll, he elaborated: "We have a lot of dirty-necked
working slaves. Over every dozen of them is an overseer with a big whip
and a stungun. Over every couple of overseers there is a guard with a
submachine gun. Over them is a supervisor, who doesn't need a gun
because he can grab a handphone and call for troops. Over the
supervisors, there are higher supervisors. Everybody has it just enough
better than the level below him that he's afraid of losing his job and
being busted back to fieldhand."
"That's it exactly, Commodore," Degbrend said. "The whole society is a
slave hierarchy. Everybody curries favor with the echelon above, and
keeps his eye on the echelon below to make sure he isn't being undercut.
We have something not too unlike that, ourselves. Any organizational
society is, in some ways, like a slave society. And everything is
determined by established routine. The whole thing has simply been
running on momentum for at least five centuries, and if we hadn't come
smashing in with a situation none of the routines covered, it would have
kept on running for another five, till everything wore out and stopped.
I heard about those missile-stations, by the way. They're typical of
everything here."
"That's another thing," Erskyll interrupted. "These Lords-Master are the
descendants of the old Space-Vikings, and the slaves of the original
inhabitants. The Space Vikings were a technologically advanced people;
they had all the old Terran Federation science and technology, and a lot
they developed for themselves on the Sword-Worlds."
"Well? They still had a lot of it, on the Sword-Worlds, two centuries
ago when we took them over."
"But technology always drives out slavery; that's a fundamental law of
socio-economics. Slavery is economically unsound; it cannot compete with
power-industry, let alone cybernetics and robotics."
He was tempted to remind young Obray of Erskyll that there were no such
things as fundamental laws of socio-economics; merely usually reliable
generalized statements of what can more or less be depended upon to
happen under most circumstances. He resisted the temptation. Count
Erskyll had had enough shocks, today, without adding to them by
gratuitous blasphemy.
"In this case, Obray, it worked in reverse. The Space Vikings enslaved
the Adityans to hold them in subjugation. That was a politico-military
necessity. Then, being committed to slavery, with a slave population who
had to be made to earn their keep, they found cybernetics and robotics
economically unsound."
"And almost at once, they began appointing slave overseers, and the
technicians would begin training slave assistants. Then there would be
slave supervisors to direct the overseers, slave administrators to
direct them, slave secretaries and bookkeepers, slave technicians and
engineers."
"How about the professions, Lanze?"
"All slave. Slave physicians, teachers, everything like that. All the
Masters are taught by slaves; the slaves are educated by apprenticeship.
The courts are in the hands of slaves; cases are heard by the chief
slaves of judges who don't even know where their own courtrooms are;
every Master has a team of slave lawyers. Most of the lawsuits are
estate-inheritance cases; some of them have been in litigation for
generations."
"What do the Lords-Master do?" Shatrak asked.
"Masterly things," Degbrend replied. "I was only down there since noon,
but from what I could find out, that consists of feasting, making love
to each other's wives, being entertained by slave performers, and
feuding for social precedence like wealthy old ladies on Odin."
"You got this from the slaves? How did you get them to talk, Lanze?"
* * * * *
Degbrend and Ravney exchanged amused glances. Ravney said:
"Well, I detailed a sergeant and six privates to accompany Honorable
Degbrend," Ravney said. "They.... How would you put it, Lanze?"
"I asked a slave a question. If he refused to answer, somebody knocked
him down with a rifle-butt," Degbrend replied. "I never had to do that
more than once in any group, and I only had to do it three times in all.
After that, when I asked questions, I was answered promptly and fully.
It is surprising how rapidly news gets around the Citadel."
"You mean you had those poor slaves beaten?" Erskyll demanded.
"Oh, no. Beating implies repeated blows. We only gave one to a customer;
that was enough."
"Well, how about the army, if that's what those people in the long
red-brown coats were?" Shatrak changed the subject by asking Ravney.
"All slave, of course, officers and all. What will we do about them,
sir? I have about three thousand, either confined to their barracks or
penned up in the Citadel. I requisitioned food for them, paid for it in
chits. There were a few isolated companies and platoons that gave us
something of a fight; most of them just threw away their weapons and
bawled for quarter. I've segregated the former; with your approval, I'll
put them under Imperial officers and noncoms for a quickie training in
our tactics, and then use them to train the rest."
"Do that, Pyairr. We only have two thousand men of our own, and that's
not enough. Do you think you can make soldiers out of any of them?"
"Yes, I believe so, sir. They are trained, organized and armed for
civil-order work, which is what we'll need them for ourselves. In the
entire history of this army, all they have done has been to overawe
unarmed slaves; I am sure they have never been in combat with regular
troops. They have an elaborate set of training and field regulations for
the sort of work for which they were intended. What they encountered
today was entirely outside those regulations, which is why they behaved
as they did."
"Did you have any trouble getting cooperation from the native officers?"
Shatrak asked.
"Not in the least. They cooperated quite willingly, if not always too
intelligently. I simply told them that they were now the personal
property of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. They were quite flattered
by the change of ownership. If ordered to, I believe that they would
fire on their former Lords-Master without hesitation."
"You told those slaves that they ... _belonged_ ... to the _Emperor_?"
Count Erskyll was aghast. He stared at Ravney for an instant, then
snatched up his brandy-glass--the meal had gotten to that point--and
drained it at a gulp. The others watched solicitously while he coughed
and spluttered over it.
"Commodore Shatrak," he said sternly. "I hope that you will take severe
disciplinary action; this is the most outrageous...."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," Shatrak retorted. "The colonel is to be
commended; did the best thing he could, under the circumstances. What
are you going to do when slavery is abolished here, Colonel?"
"Oh, tell them that they have been given their freedom as a special
reward for meritorious service, and then sign them up for a five year
enlistment."
"That might work. Again, it might not."
"I think, Colonel, that before you do that, you had better disarm them
again. You might possibly have some trouble, otherwise."
Ravney looked at him sharply. "They might not want to be free? I'd
thought of that."
"Nonsense!" Erskyll declared. "Who ever heard of slaves rebelling
against freedom?"
Freedom was a Good Thing. It was a Good Thing for everybody, everywhere
and all the time. Count Erskyll knew it, because freedom was a Good
Thing for him.
He thought, suddenly, of an old tomcat belonging to a lady of his
acquaintance at Paris-on-Baldur, a most affectionate cat, who insisted
on catching mice and bringing them as presents to all his human friends.
To this cat's mind, it was inconceivable that anybody would not be most
happy to receive a nice fresh-killed mouse.
"Too bad we have to set any of them free," Vann Shatrak said. "Too bad
we can't just issue everybody new servile gorgets marked, _Personal
Property of his Imperial Majesty_ and let it go at that. But I guess we
can't."
"Commodore Shatrak, you are joking," Erskyll began.
"I hope I am," Shatrak replied grimly.
* * * * *
The top landing-stage of the Citadel grew and filled the forward
viewscreen of the ship's launch. It was only when he realized that the
tiny specks were people, and the larger, birdseed-sized, specks
vehicles, that the real size of the thing was apparent. Obray of
Erskyll, beside him, had been silent. He had been looking at the
crescent-shaped industrial city, like a servile gorget around
Zeggensburg's neck.
"The way they've been crowded together!" he said. "And the buildings; no
space between. And all that smoke! They must be using fossil-fuel!"
"It's probably too hard to process fissionables in large quantities,
with what they have."
"You were right, last evening. These people have deliberately halted
progress, even retrogressed, rather than give up slavery."
Halting progress, to say nothing of retrogression, was an unthinkable
crime to him. Like freedom, progress was a Good Thing, anywhere, at all
times, and without regard to direction.
Colonel Ravney met them when they left the launch. The top landing-stage
was swarming with Imperial troops.
"Convocation Chamber's three stages down," he said. "About two thousand
of them there now; been coming in all morning. We have everything set
up." He laughed. "They tell me slaves are never permitted to enter it.
Maybe, but they have the place bugged to the ceiling all around."
"Bugged? What with?" Shatrak asked, and Erskyll was wanting to know what
he meant. No doubt he thought Ravney was talking about things crawling
out of the woodwork.
"Screen pickups, radio pickups, wired microphones; you name it and it's
there. I'll bet every slave in the Citadel knows everything that happens
in there while it's happening."
Shatrak wanted to know if he had done anything about them. Ravney shook
his head.
"If that's how they want to run a government, that's how they have a
right to run it. Commander Douvrin put in a few of our own, a little
better camouflaged than theirs."
There were more troops on the third stage down. They formed a procession
down a long empty hallway, a few scared-looking slaves peeping from
doorways at them. There were more troops where the corridor ended in
great double doors, emblazoned with a straight broad-sword diagonally
across an eight-pointed star. Emblematology of planets conquered by the
Space Vikings always included swords and stars. An officer gave a
signal; the doors started to slide apart, and within, from a
screen-speaker, came a fanfare of trumpets.
At first, all he could see was the projection-screen, far ahead, and the
tessellated aisle stretching toward it. The trumpets stopped, and they
advanced, and then he saw the Lords-Master.
They were massed, standing among benches on either side, and if anything
Pyairr Ravney had understated their numbers. They all wore black,
trimmed with gold; he wondered if the coincidence that these were also
the Imperial colors might be useful. Queer garments, tightly fitted
tunics at the top which became flowing robes below the waist, deeply
scalloped at the edges. The sleeves were exaggeratedly wide; a knife or
a pistol, and not necessarily a small one, could be concealed in every
one. He was sure that thought had entered Vann Shatrak's mind. They were
armed, not with dress-daggers, but with swords; long, straight
cross-hilted broadswords. They were the first actual swords he had ever
seen, except in museums or on the stage.
There was a bench of gold and onyx at the front, where, normally the
seven-man Presidium sat, and in front of it were thronelike seats for
the Chiefs of Managements, equivalent to the Imperial Council of
Ministers. Because of the projection screen that had been installed,
they had all been moved to an improvised dais on the left. There was
another dais on the right, under a canopy of black and gold velvet,
emblazoned with the gold sun and superimposed black cogwheel of the
Empire. There were three thrones, for himself, Shatrak, and Erskyll,
and a number of lesser but still imposing chairs for their staffs.
* * * * *
They took their seats. He slipped the earplug of his memophone into his
left ear and pressed the stud in the middle of his Grand Star of the
Order of Odin. The memophone began giving him the names of the Presidium
and of the Chiefs of Managements. He wondered how many upper-slaves had
been gunbutted to produce them.
"Lords and Gentlemen," he said, after he had greeted them and introduced
himself and the others, "I speak to you in the name of his Imperial
Majesty, Rodrik III. His Majesty will now greet you in his own voice, by
recording."
He pressed a button on the arm of his chair. The screen lighted,
flickered, and steadied, and the trumpets blared again. When the fanfare
ended, a voice thundered:
"_The Emperor speaks!_"
Rodrik III compromised on the beard question with a small mustache. He
wore the stern but kindly expression the best theatrical directors in
Asgard had taught him; Public Face Number Three. He inclined his head
slightly and stiffly, as a man wearing a seven-pound crown must.
"We greet our subjects of Aditya to the fellowship of the Empire. We
have long had good reports of you, and we are happy now to speak to you.
Deserve well of us, and prosper under the Sun and Cogwheel."
Another fanfare, as the image vanished. Before any of the Lords-Master
could find voice, he was speaking to them:
"Well, Lords and Gentlemen, you have been welcomed into the Empire by
his Majesty. I know, there hasn't been a ship in or out of this system
for five centuries, and I suppose you have a great many questions to ask
about the Galactic Empire. Members of the Presidium and Chiefs of
Managements may address me directly; others will please address the
chairman."
Olvir Nikkolon, the owner of Tchall Hozhet, was on his feet at once. He
had a loose-lipped mouth and a not entirely straight nose and pale eyes
that were never entirely still.
"What I want to know is; why did you people have to come here to take
our planet away from us? Isn't the rest of the Galaxy big enough for
you?"
"No, Lord Nikkolon. The Galaxy is not big enough for any competition of
sovereignty. There must be one and only one completely sovereign power.
The Terran Federation was once such a power. It failed, and vanished;
you know what followed. Darkness and anarchy. We are clawing our way up
out of that darkness. We will not fail. We will create a peaceful and
unified Galaxy."
He talked to them, about the collapse of the old Federation, about the
interstellar wars, about the Neobarbarians, about the long night. He
told them how the Empire had risen on a few planets five thousand
light-years away, and how it had spread.
"We will not repeat the mistakes of the Terran Federation. We will not
attempt to force every planetary government into a common pattern, or
dictate the ways in which they govern themselves. We will foster in
every way peaceful trade and communication. But we will not again permit
the plague of competing sovereignties, the condition under which war is
inevitable. The first attempt to set up such a sovereignty in
competition with the Empire will be crushed mercilessly, and no planet
inhabited by any sapient race will be permitted to remain outside the
Empire.
"Lords and Gentlemen, permit me to show you a little of what we have
already accomplished, in the past three hundred years."
He pressed another button. The screen flickered, and the show started.
It lasted for almost two hours; he used a handphone to interject
comments and explanations. He showed them planet after planet--Marduk,
where the Empire had begun, Baldur, Vishnu, Belphegor, Morglay, whence
their ancestors had come, Amaterasu, Irminsul, Fafnir, finally Odin, the
Imperial Planet. He showed towering cities swarming with aircars;
spaceports where the huge globes of interstellar ships landed and lifted
out; farms and industries; vast crowds at public celebrations;
troop-reviews and naval bases and fleet-maneuvers; historical views of
the battles that had created Imperial power.
"That, Lords and Gentlemen, is what you have an opportunity to bring
your planet into. If you accept, you will continue to rule Aditya under
the Empire. If you refuse, you will only put us to the inconvenience of
replacing you with a new planetary government, which will be annoying
for us and, probably, fatal for you."
Nobody said anything for a few minutes. Then Rovard Javasan, the Chief
of Administration and the owner of the mountainous Khreggor Chmidd,
rose.
"Lords and Gentlemen, we cannot resist anything like this," he said. "We
cannot even resist the force they have here; that was tried yesterday,
and you all saw what happened. Now, Prince Trevannion; just to what
extent will the Mastership retain its sovereignty under the Empire?"
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