“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.”
“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 stun-gun. 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
