“But I am willing to take you to the city,” Skorta went on. “In fact, I am anxious to do so in order to prolong this contact with you, and to discover as much about your people and their civilization as I can before I am required officially to forget it. But I must warn you that the visit to the city could place you in great personal danger.”
“From the slaves or the Masters?” Martin asked. He was beginning to like this visually ferocious, four-armed nightmare that was glaring down at him. He could be certain of very little in the present situation, but he was sure that this being was honest and had a measure of concern for his safety.
“The slaves may restrain you if instructed to do so by the Masters,” the Teldin replied slowly, “but only the Masters bear weapons and only they may kill. Now, if you will climb into my carrier I shall transport you to the city.”
“Don’t go,” Beth said, and gave reasons.
“I have received information,” Martin said when she had finished talking, “that very shortly meteorite activity will increase in this area by a factor of three. I cannot be more specific because of ignorance regarding your units of time. According to the instruments in the orbiting vessel…”
“This is hearsay,” Skorta broke in.
“True,” Martin said quickly. “But the instruments are being read by my life-mate who is, naturally, anxious that no harm befalls me.”
“Then I understand why you attach so much importance to this information,” the Teldin said, “but I cannot. It comes through a device of your life-mate, through another device to you and then to myself. There are too many possibilities for cumulative error between the fact and the reported fact for me to accept this information as other than hearsay.
“Since you believe that the Scourge from the sky will be heavier soon,” Skorta went on, “do you wish to return to the safety of your vessel now?”
In his other ear Beth was saying much the same thing in more forthright language, adding that there would be another time and another Teldin to talk to. But Martin wanted to go on talking to this one, and the intensity of the feeling surprised him.
“If I returned to my vessel,” he said, choosing his words with care, “I could leave you a device which would enable us to continue our conversation. But this would be unsatisfactory for two reasons. I would not be able to visit your city, and you would consider any such conversation as untrustworthy hearsay. If, however, you can assure me from your own personal experience that this road is adequately protected, I would go with you to the city and continue to converse with you face to face.”
The Teldin exhaled loudly and said, “Stranger, at last you are thinking like a Teldin.” Martin boarded the tricycle and the Teldin began to pedal. Soon the protective wall was slipping past at a respectable rate of speed. Without taking its attention from the road, Skorta added, “I can also assure you that you can speak to me face to face while addressing the back of my neck.”
Chapter 7
ON only two occasions did the Teldin move briefly to the unprotected side of the road to let oncoming vehicles through on the inside. Right of way, it seemed, depended on the pennant flying on the approaching vehicle and on the size and position of the ownership badges being worn by the occupants.
A flag and distinctively colored vehicle driven by a Teldin wearing a large emblem on a shoulder sash indicated that it was a slave of the lower order, a public utility worker or such. Badges worn on armbands signified a much higher grade of slave, and emblems worn on the wrist indicated a person in the highest level of the hierarchy of Teldin slavehood.
Their road had detoured to utilize the natural protection provided by a small hill when there was a sharp, crashing detonation followed by a diminishing, hissing roar. Martin’s eyes jerked upward in time to see a large meteor trace an incandescent line across the sky below the cloud base, and a moment later he felt the shock of impact transmitted through the solid, upsprung structure of the tricycle as it struck ground somewhere behind a nearby rise. Then suddenly the stony landscape beyond the outer edge of the road was covered by tiny explosions of rock dust.
“This must be the heavier Scourge you spoke of,” Skorta said. “The Masters warn of such events, but even they cannot be accurate in their predictions.”
“Why do they refer to the meteorites as the Scourge?”
Beth asked. “Do they equate all forms of danger and pain with strokes from a Master’s whip?”
Martin waited until a large vehicle flying what he now knew to be the pennant of the Master of Agriculture squeezed past on the outside, then asked the question.
“The Masters say,” the Teldin replied, turning its head briefly to look at him, “that it is a continuing reminder that we cannot fully trust anything that is not experienced directly except, of course, the words of a Master.”
“Are slaves, particularly high-ranking slaves like yourself, ever rewarded with your freedom?” Martin asked.
“We have freedom,” the Teldin replied.
“But the Masters tell you what to do and think,” Martin protested. “They alone have weapons. They alone administer punishment and have the power of life and death.”
“Naturally, they are the Masters.”
Martin knew that he was getting into a sensitive area, but he needed the answers. “Is the death penalty administered often? And which crimes merit it?”
“Sometimes the Masters execute each other for Masters’ reasons,” the Teldin said, slowing as the road curved sharply and continued into a deep ravine. “With slaves it rarely happens, and only if there is destruction of valuable Living property. For less serious crimes slaves may be reduced in status or forced to work in unprotected areas of the surface for a time, or if the offense is venial, the peacekeeping slaves deal with it.
“An alert Master served by trusted and observant slaves,” the Teldin added, “is able to stop trouble before it develops to the point where damage to property occurs.”
For a few seconds Martin tried to control his revulsion at the picture of the Teldin culture which was emerging. If Skorta’s Master received a full report of everything he had said to its slave, then his next question was foolhardy indeed, but it had to be asked.
“Do you ever feel dissatisfied with your status, Skorta, and wish you were a Master?”
“Have you gone mad?” Beth began, and broke off because the Teldin was speaking.
“There have been times when I would have liked to be a Master,” it replied, and made another one of its untranslatable noises, “but good sense prevailed.”
The floor of the ravine had begun to rise, and as it pedaled up the grade, Skorta had no breath to spare for speech, giving Beth the chance to express herself at length.
“You’re taking too many risks,” she said angrily. “My advice is to pull out as soon as you can. Some of the things you’ve said to Skorta could be construed as attempted subversion of a highly-placed slave, and the Masters won’t like that. Besides, with all the surface sensor material we’ve collected that is still awaiting processing, plus your interview with Skorta, we should have enough information for our assessment…”
The picture which was emerging was clear but not at all pleasant, she continued. Teldi was essentially a slave culture, with the vast majority of the planetary population serving an elitist group of Masters who might be numbered in the thousands, or perhaps even hundreds. Their control of the slave population was such that the slaves themselves, with their minor graduations of responsibility and status, were, as a group, happy with the situation, although individuals like Skorta might occasionally have their doubts. So happy were they with their role that the slaves did not want to become Masters and helped maintain themselves in slavery by betraying any fellow slaves who looked like making trouble, while at the same time believing implicitly everything told to them by the Masters, even when this information contradicted first-hand knowledge. History was also vetted by the Masters so that the slaves had no way of knowing if there had been better times.
But the worst aspect of all was that the Masters held the power of life and death over their slaves and were the only people on Teldi allowed to bear weapons.
Beth went on, “You know how the Federation feels about slavery, or any other form of physical or
