A Slave is a Slave Read online

gives him. But afree worker for pay gets money which he can spend for whatever he wants,and he can save money, and if he finds that he can make more moneyworking for somebody else, he can quit his employer and get a betterjob."

  "We hadn't thought of that," Khreggor Chmidd said. "A slave, even achief-slave, was never allowed to have money of his own, and if he gothold of any, he couldn't spend it. But now...." A glorious vista seemedto open in front of him. "And he can accumulate money. I don't suppose acommon worker could, but an upper slave.... Especially achief-slave...." He slapped his mouth, and said, "Freedman!" five times.

  "Yes, Khreggor." That was Ridgerd Schferts (Fedrig Daffysan; FiscalManagement). "I am sure we could all make quite a lot of money, now thatwe are freedmen."

  Some of them were briefly puzzled; gradually, comprehension dawned.Obray, Count Erskyll, looked distressed; he seemed to be hoping, vainly,that they weren't thinking of what he suspected they were.

  "How about the Mastership freedmen?" another asked. "We, here, will bepaid by our Lords-Mas- ... Lords-Employer. But everybody from the greenrobes down were provided for by the Mastership. Who will pay them, now?"

  "Why, the Mastership, of course," Ridgerd Schferts said. "MyManagement--my Lord-Employer's, I mean--will issue the money to paythem."

  "You may need a new printing-press," Lanze Degbrend said. "And an awfullot of paper."

  "This planet will need currency acceptable in interstellar trade,"Erskyll said.

  Everybody looked blankly at him. He changed the subject:

  "Mr. Chmidd, could you or Mr. Hozhet tell me what kind of a constitutionthe Mastership has?"

  "You mean, like the paper you read in the Convocation?" Hozhet asked."Oh, there is nothing at all like that. The former Lords-Master simplyruled."

  No. They reigned. This servile _tammanihal_--another ancient Terranword, of uncertain origin--ruled.

  "Well, how is the Mastership organized, then?" Erskyll persisted. "Howdid the Lord Nikkolon get to be Chairman of the Presidium, and the LordJavasan to be Chief of Administration?"

  That was very simple. The Convocation, consisting of the heads of allthe Masterly families, actually small clans, numbered about twenty-fivehundred. They elected the seven members of the Presidium, who drew lotsfor the Chairmanship. They served for life. Vacancies were filled byelection on nomination of the surviving members. The Presidium appointedthe Chiefs of Managements, who also served for life.

  At least, it had stability. It was self-perpetuating.

  "Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked.

  Hozhet was perplexed. "_Make_ laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We havelaws."

  There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an attitudelike that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with electiveparliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as manylaws enacted during his term of office as possible.

  "But this is dreadful; you _must_ have a constitution!" Obray of Erskyllwas shocked. "We will have to get one drawn up and adopted."

  "We don't know anything about that at all," Khreggor Chmidd admitted."This is something new. You will have to help us."

  "I certainly will, Mr. Chmidd. Suppose you form a committee--yourself,and Mr. Hozhet, and three or four others; select them amongyourselves--and we can get together and talk over what will be needed.And another thing. We'll have to stop calling this the Mastership. Thereare no more Masters."

  "The Employership?" Lanze Degbrend dead-panned.

  Erskyll looked at him angrily. "This is something," he told thechief-freedmen, "that should not belong to the Employers alone. Itshould belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That meanssomething everybody owns in common."

  "Something everybody owns, nobody owns," Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected.

  "Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody," Khreggor Chmidd told himearnestly. "But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody.That," he added complacently, "will be you and me and the rest of ushere."

  "I believe," Yakoop Zhannar said, almost smiling, "that this freedom isgoing to be a wonderful thing. For us."

  "I don't like it!" Mykhyl Eschkhaffar said stubbornly. "Too many newthings, and too much changing names. We have to call slaves freedmen; wehave to call Lords Master Lords-Employer; we have to call the Managementof Servile Affairs the Management for Freedmen. Now we have to call theMastership this new name, Commonwealth. And all these new things, forwhich we have no routine procedures and no directives. I wish thesepeople had never heard of this planet."

  "That makes at least two of us," Patrique Morvill said, _sotto voce_.

  "Well, the planetary constitution can wait just a bit," PrinceTrevannion suggested. "We have a great many items on the agenda whichmust be taken care of immediately. For instance, there's this thingabout finding a proconsular palace...."

  * * * * *

  A surprising amount of work had been done at the small tables whereErskyll's staff of political and economic and technological experts hadbeen conferring with the subordinate upper-freedmen. It began coming outduring the pre-dinner cocktails aboard the _Empress Eulalie_, continuedthrough the meal, and was fully detailed during the formal debriefingsession afterward.

  Finding a suitable building for the Proconsular Palace would presentdifficulties. Real estate was not sold on Aditya, any more than slaveswere. It was not only un-Masterly but illegal; estates were all entailedand the inalienable property of Masterly families. What was wanted wasone of the isolated residential towers in Zeggensburg, far enough fromthe Citadel to avoid an appearance of too close supervision. The lastthing anybody wanted was to establish the Proconsul in the Citadelitself. The Management of Business of the Mastership, however, hadpromised to do something about it. That would mean, no doubt, that the_Empress Eulalie_ would be hanging over Zeggensburg, serving asProconsular Palace, for the next year or so.

  The Servile Management, rechristened Freedmen's Management, wouldundertake to safeguard the rights of the newly emancipated slaves. Therewould be an Employment Code--Count Erskyll was invited to draw thatup--and a force of investigators, and an enforcement agency, underZhorzh Khouzhik.

  One of Commander Douvrin's men, who had been at the Austragonianuclear-industries establishment, was present and reported:

  "Great Ghu, you ought to see that place! They've people working inplaces I wouldn't send an unshielded robot, and the hospital there isbulging with radiation-sickness cases. The equipment must have beenbrought here by the Space Vikings. What's left of it is the damnedestmess of goldbergery I ever saw. The whole thing ought to be shut downand completely rebuilt."

  Erskyll wanted to know who owned it. The Mastership, he was told.

  "That's right," one of his economics men agreed. "Management of PublicWorks." That would be Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, who had so bitterly objectedto the new nomenclature. "If anybody needs fissionables for apower-reactor or radioactives for nuclear-electric conversion, his chiefbusiness slave gets what's needed. Furthermore, doesn't even have tosign for it."

  "Don't they sell it for revenue?"

  "Nifflheim, no! This government doesn't need revenue. This governmentsupports itself by counterfeiting. When the Mastership needs money, theyjust have Ridgerd Schferts print up another batch. Like everybody else."

  "Then the money simply isn't worth anything!" Erskyll was horrified,which was rapidly becoming his normal state.

  "Who cares about money, Obray," he said. "Didn't you hear them, lastevening? It's un-Masterly to bother about things like money. Of course,everybody owes everybody for everything, but it's all in the family."

  "Well, something will have to be done about that!"

  That was at least the tenth time he had said that, this evening.

  * * * * *

  It came practically as a thunderbolt when Khreggor Chmidd screened theship the next afternoon to report that a Proconsular Palace had beenfound, and would be ready for occup
ancy in a day or so. Thechief-freedmen of the Management of Business of the Mastership and ofthe Lord Chief Justiciar had found one, the Elegry Palace, which hadbeen unoccupied except for what he described as a small caretaking stafffor years, while two Masterly families disputed inheritance rights andslave lawyers quibbled endlessly before a slave judge. The chieffreedman of the Lord Chief Justiciar had simply summoned judge andlawyers into his office and ordered them to settle the suit at once.The settlement had consisted of paying both litigants the full value ofthe building; this came to fifty million stellies apiece. Arbitrarily,the