A Slave is a Slave Read online

suggested it if it hadn't been. The Constitution onlyforbids physical ownership of one sapient being by another; itemphatically does not guarantee anyone an unearned livelihood."

  * * * * *

  The Convocation committee returned to Zeggensburg to start preparing theservile population for freedom, or reasonable facsimile. Thechief-slaves would take care of that; each one seemed to have a list ofother chief-slaves, and the word would spread from them on aneach-one-call-five system. The public announcement would be postponeduntil the word could be passed out to the upper servile levels. Ameeting with the chief-slaves in office of the various Managements wasscheduled for the next afternoon.

  Count Erskyll chatted with forced affability while the departingcommitteemen were being seen to the launch that would take them down.When the airlock closed behind them, he drew Prince Trevannion aside outof earshot of their subordinates.

  "You know what you're doing?" he raged, in a hoarse whisper. "You'resimply substituting peonage for outright slavery!"

  "I'd call that something of a step." He motioned Erskyll into one of thesmall hall-cars, climbed in beside him, and lifted it, starting towardthe living-area. "The Convocation has acknowledged the principle thatsapient beings should not be property. That's a great deal, for oneday."

  "But the people will remain in servitude, you know that. The Masterswill keep them in debt, and they'll be treated just as brutally...."

  "Oh, there will be abuses; that's to be expected. This Freedmen'sManagement, nee Servile Management, will have to take care of that.Better make a memo to talk with this chief-freedman of Martwynn's,what's his name? Zhorzh Khouzhik; that's right, let Zhorzh do it.Employment Practices Code, investigation agency, enforcement. If hecan't do the job, that's not our fault. The Empire does not guaranteeevery planet an honest, intelligent and efficient government; just asingle one."

  "But...."

  "It will take two or three generations. At first, the freedmen will beexploited just as they always have been, but in time there will beprotests, and disorders, and each time, there will be some smallimprovement. A society must evolve, Obray. Let these people earn theirfreedom. Then they will be worthy of it."

  "They should have their freedom now."

  "This present generation? What do you think freedom means to them? _Wedon't have to work, any more._ So down tools and let everything stop atonce. _We can do anything we want to._ Let's kill the overseer. And:_Anything that belongs to the Masters belongs to us; we're Masters too,now._ No, I think it's better, for the present, to tell them that thisfreedom business is just a lot of Masterly funny-talk, and that thingsaren't really being changed at all. It will effect a considerable savingof his Imperial Majesty's ammunition, for one thing."

  He dropped Erskyll at his apartment and sent the hall-car back from hisown. Lanze Degbrend was waiting for him when he entered.

  "Ravney's having trouble. That is the word he used," Degbrend said. InPyairr Ravney's lexicon, trouble meant shooting. "The news of theEmancipation Act is leaking all over the place. Some of the troops inthe north who haven't been disarmed yet are mutinying, and there areslave insurrections in a number of places."

  "They think the Masters have forsaken them, and it's every slave forhimself." He hadn't expected that to start so soon. "The announcementhad better go out as quickly as possible. And I think we're going tohave some trouble. You have information-taps into Count Erskyll'snumerous staff? Use them as much as you can."

  "You think he's going to try to sabotage this employment programme ofyours, sir?"

  "Oh, he won't think of it in those terms. He'll be preventing me fromsabotaging the Emancipation. He doesn't want to wait three generations;he wants to free them at once. Everything has to be at once forsix-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age."

  * * * * *

  The announcement did not go out until nearly noon the next day. In termscomprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that allthis meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, thatthey could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they workedfaithfully and obeyed orders they would be given everything they werenow receiving. Ravney had been shuttling troops about, dealing with thesporadic outbreaks of disorder here and there: many of these had beenput down, and the rest died out after the telecast explaining thesituation.

  In addition, some of Commander Douvrin's intelligence people haddiscovered that the only source of fissionables and radioactives for theplanet was a complex of uranite mines, separation plants, refineries andreaction-plants on the smaller of Aditya's two continents, Austragonia.In spite of other urgent calls on his resources, Ravney landed troops toseize these, and a party of engineers followed them down from the_Empress Eulalie_ to make an inspection.

  At lunch, Count Erskyll was slightly less intransigent on the subject ofthe wage-employment proposals. No doubt some of his advisors had beentelling him what would happen if any appreciable number of Aditya'slabor-force stopped work suddenly, and the wave of uprisings that hadbroken out before any public announcement had been made puzzled him. Hewas also concerned about finding a suitable building for a proconsularpalace; the business of the Empire on Aditya could not be conducted longfrom shipboard.

  Going down to the Citadel that afternoon, they found the chief-freedmenof the non-functional Chiefs of Management assembled in a large room onthe fifth level down. There was a cluster of big tables andcommunication-screens and wired telephones in the middle, with smallertables around them, at which freedmen in variously colored gowns sat.The ones at the central tables, a dozen and a half, all worechief-slaves' white gowns.

  Trevannion and Erskyll and Patrique Morvill and Lanze Degbrend joinedthese; subordinates guided the rest of the party--a couple of Ravney'sofficers and Erskyll's numerous staff of advisors and specialists--todistribute themselves with their opposite numbers in the Mastership.Everybody on the Adityan side seemed uneasy with these strangehermaphrodite creatures who were neither slaves nor Lords-Master.

  "Well, gentlemen," Count Erskyll began, "I suppose you have beeninformed by your former Lords-Master of how relations between them andyou will be in the future?"

  "Oh, yes, Lord Proconsul," Khreggor Chmidd replied happily. "Everythingwill be just as before, except that the Lords-Master will be calledLords-Employer, and the slaves will be called freedmen, and any timethey want to starve to death, they can leave their Employers if theywish."

  Count Erskyll frowned. That wasn't just exactly what he had hopedEmancipation would mean to these people.

  "Nobody seems to understand about this money thing, though," ZhorzhKhouzhik, Sesar Martwynn's chief-freedman said. "My Lord-Master--" Heslapped himself across the mouth and said, "Lord-Employer!" five times,rapidly. "My Lord-_Employer_ tried to explain it to me, but I don'tthink he understands very clearly, himself."

  "None of them do."

  The speaker was a small man with pale eyes and a mouth like a rat-trap;Yakoop Zhannar, chief-freedman to Ranal Valdry, the Provost-Marshal.

  "Its really your idea, Prince Trevannion," Erskyll said. "Perhaps youcan explain it."

  "Oh, it's very simple. You see...."

  At least, it had seemed simple when he started. Labor was a commodity,which the worker sold and the employer purchased; a "fair wage" was onewhich enabled both to operate at a profit. Everybody knew that--excepthere on Aditya. On Aditya, a slave worked because he was a slave, and aMaster provided for him because he was a Master, and that was all therewas to it. But now, it seemed, there weren't any more Masters, and thereweren't any more slaves.

  "That's exactly it," he replied, when somebody said as much. "So now, ifthe slaves, I mean, freedmen, want to eat, they have to work to earnmoney to buy food, and if the Employers want work done, they have to paypeople to do it."

  "Then why go to all the trouble about the money?" That was an elderlychief-freedman, Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, whose Lord-Employer, Oraze Borztall,
was Manager of Public Works. "Before your ships came, the slaves workedfor the Masters, and the Masters took care of the slaves, and everybodywas content. Why not leave it like that?"

  "Because the Galactic Emperor, who is the Lord-Master of these people,says that there must be no more slaves. Don't ask me why," Tchall Hozhetsnapped at him. "I don't know, either. But they are here with ships andguns and soldiers; what can we do?"

  "That's very close to it," he admitted. "But there is one thing youhaven't considered. A slave only gets what his master