Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak was also worried. He was wondering how long it would take for Pyairr Ravney to make useful troops out of the newly-surrendered slave soldiers, and where he was going to find contragravity to shift them expeditiously from trouble-spot to trouble-spot. Erskyll thought he was anticipating resistance on the part of the Masters, and for once he approved the use of force. Ordinarily, force was a Bad Thing, but this was a Good Cause, which justified any means.
They entertained the committee from the Convocation for dinner, that evening. They came aboard stiffly hostile—most understandably so, under the circumstances—and Prince Trevannion exerted all his copious charm to thaw them out, beginning with the pre-dinner cocktails and continuing through the meal. By the time they retired for coffee and brandy to the parlor where the conference was to be held, the Lords-ex-Masters were almost friendly.
“We’ve enacted the Emancipation Act,” Olvir Nikkolon, who was ex officio chairman of the committee, reported. “Every slave on the planet must be free before the opening of the next Midyear Feasts.”
“And when will that be?”
Aditya, he knew, had a three hundred and fifty-eight day year; even if the Midyear Feasts were just past, they were giving themselves very little time. In about a hundred and fifty days, Nikkolon said.
“Good heavens!” Erskyll began, indignantly.
“I should say so, myself,” he put in, cutting off anything else the new Proconsul might have said. “You gentlemen are allowing yourselves dangerously little time. A hundred and fifty days will pass quite rapidly, and you have twenty million slaves to deal with. If you start at this moment and work continuously, you’ll have a little under a second apiece for each slave.”
The Lords-Master looked dismayed. So, he was happy to observe, did Count Erskyll.
“I assume you have some system of slave registration?” he continued.
That was safe. They had a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies tend to have registrations of practically everything.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Rovard Javasan assured him. “That’s your Management, isn’t it, Sesar; Servile Affairs?”
“Yes, we have complete data on every slave on the planet,” Sesar Martwynn, the Chief of Servile Management, said. “Of course, I’d have to ask Zhorzh about the details. …”
Zhorzh was Zhorzh Khouzhik, Martwynn’s chief-slave in office.
“At least, he was my chief-slave; now you people have taken him away from me. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. For that matter, I don’t know what poor Zhorzh will do, either.”
“Have you gentlemen informed your chief-slaves that they are free, yet?”
Nikkolon and Javasan looked at each other. Sesar Martwynn laughed.
“They know,” Javasan said. “I must say they are much disturbed.”
“Well, reassure them, as soon as you’re back at the Citadel,” he told them. “Tell them that while they are now free, they need not leave you unless they so desire; that you will provide for them as before.”
“You mean, we can keep our chief-slaves?” somebody cried.
“Yes, of course—chief-freedmen, you’ll have to call them, now. You’ll have to pay them a salary. …”
“You mean, give them money?” Ranal Valdry, the Lord Provost-Marshal demanded, incredulously. “Pay our own slaves?”
“You idiot,” somebody told him, “they aren’t our slaves any more. That’s the whole point of this discussion.”
“But … but how can we pay slaves?” one of the committeemen-at-large asked. “Freedmen, I mean?”
“With money. You do have money, haven’t you?”
“Of course we have. What do you think we are, savages?”
“What kind of money?”
Why, money; what did he think? The unit was the star-piece, the stelly. When he asked to see some of it, they were indignant. Nobody carried money; wasn’t Masterly. A Master never even touched the stuff; that was what slaves were for. He wanted to know how it was secured, and they didn’t know what he meant, and when he tried to explain their incomprehension deepened. It seemed that the Mastership issued money to finance itself, and individual Masters issued money on their personal credit, and it was handled through the Mastership Banks.
“That’s Fedrig Daffysan’s Management; he isn’t here,” Rovard Javasan said. “I can’t explain it, myself.”
And without his chief-slave, Fedrig Daffysan probably would not be able to, either.
“Yes, gentlemen. I understand. You have money. Now, the first thing you will have to do is furnish us with a complete list of all the slave-owners on the planet, and a list of all the slaves held by each. This will be sent back to Odin, and will be the basis for the compensation to be paid for the destruction of your property-rights in these slaves. How much is a slave worth, by the way?”
Nobody knew. Slaves were never sold; it wasn’t Masterly to sell one’s slaves. It wasn’t even heard of.
“Well, we’ll arrive at some valuation. Now, as soon as you get back to the Citadel, talk at once to your former chief-slaves, and their immediate subordinates, and explain the situation to them. This can be passed down through administrative freedmen to the workers; you must see to it that it is clearly understood, at all levels, that as long as the freedmen remain at their work they will be provided for and paid, but that if they quit your service they will receive nothing. Do you think you can do that?”
“You mean, give them everything we’ve been giving them now, and then pay them money?” Ranal Valdry almost howled.
“Oh, no. You pay them a fixed wage. You charge them for everything you give them, and deduct that from their wages. It will mean considerable extra bookkeeping, but outside of that I believe you’ll find that things will go along much as they always did.”
The Masters had begun to relax, and by the time he was finished all of them were smiling in relief. Count Erskyll, on the other hand, was almost writhing in his chair. It must be horrible to be a brilliant young Proconsul of liberal tendencies and to have to sit mute while a cynical old Ministerial Secretary, vastly one’s superior in the Imperial Establishment
