A Slave is a Slave | Page 6

a herald. Behind him came two in
white gowns, their empty hands folded on their breasts; one was a huge
bulk of obesity with a bulging brow, protuberant eyes and a pursey
little mouth, and the other was thin and cadaverous, with a skull-like,
almost fleshless face. The ones behind, in dark green and pale blue,
carried portfolios and slung sound-recorder cases. There was a metallic
twinkle at each throat; as they approached, he could see that they all
wore large silver gorgets. They came to a halt twenty feet from the desk.
The herald raised his staff.
"I present the Admirable and Trusty Tchall Hozhet, personal
chief-slave of the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, Chairman of the
Presidium of the Lords-Master's Convocation, and Khreggor Chmidd,
chief-slave in office to the Lord-Master Rovard Javasan, Chief of
Administration of Management of the Mastership," he said. Then he
stopped, puzzled, looking from one to another of them. When his eyes
fell on Vann Shatrak, he brightened.
"Are you," he asked, "the chief-slave of the chief Lord-Master of this
ship?"
Shatrak's face turned pink; the pink darkened to red. He used a word; it
was a completely unprintable word. So, except for a few scattered
pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions, were the next fifty words he
used. The herald stiffened. The two delegates behind him were aghast.
The subordinate burden-bearers in the rear began looking around
apprehensively.
"I," Shatrak finally managed, "am an officer of his Imperial Majesty's
Space Navy. I am in command of this battle-line unit. I am not"--he
reverted briefly to obscenity--"a slave."

"You mean, you are a Lord-Master, too?" That seemed to horrify the
herald even more that the things Shatrak had been calling him. "Forgive
me, Lord-Master. I did not think...."
"That's right; you didn't," Shatrak agreed. "And don't call me
Lord-Master again, or I'll...."
"Just a moment, Commodore." He waved the herald aside and
addressed the two in white gowns, shifting to Lingua Terra. "This is a
ship of the Galactic Empire," he told them. "In the Empire, there are no
slaves. Can you understand that?"
Evidently not. The huge one, Khreggor Chmidd, turned to the
skull-faced Tchall Hozhet, saying: "Then they must all be
Lords-Master." He saw the objection to that at once. "But how can one
be a Lord-Master if there are no slaves?"
The horror was not all on the visitors' side of the desk, either. Obray of
Erskyll was staring at the delegation and saying, "Slaves!" under his
breath. Obray of Erskyll had never, in his not-too-long life, seen a slave
before.
"They can't be," Tchall Hozhet replied. "A Lord-Master is one who
owns slaves." He gave that a moment's consideration. "But if they
aren't Lords-Master, they must be slaves, and...." No. That wouldn't do,
either. "But a slave is one who belongs to a Lord-Master."
Rule of the Excluded Third; evidently Pre-Atomic formal logic had
crept back to Aditya. Chmidd, looking around, saw the ranks of
spacemen on either side, now at parade-rest.
"But aren't they slaves?" he asked.
"They are spacemen of the Imperial Navy," Shatrak roared. "Call one a
slave to his face and you'll get a rifle-butt in yours. And I shan't lift a
finger to stop it." He glared at Chmidd and Hozhet. "Who had the
infernal impudence to send slaves to deal with the Empire? He needs to
be taught a lesson."

"Why, I was sent by the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, and...."
"Tchall!" Chmidd hissed at him. "We cannot speak to Lords-Master.
We must speak to their chief-slaves."
"But they have no slaves," Hozhet objected. "Didn't you hear the ... the
one with the small beard ... say so?"
"But that's ridiculous, Khreggor. Who does the work, and who tells
them what to do? Who told these people to come here?"
* * * * *
"Our Emperor sent us. That is his picture, behind me. But we are not
his slaves. He is merely the chief man among us. Do your Masters not
have one among them who is chief?"
"That's right," Chmidd said to Hozhet. "In the Convocation, your
Lord-Master is chief, and in the Mastership, my Lord-Master, Rovard
Javasan, is chief."
"But they don't tell the other Lords-Master what to do. In Convocation,
the other Lords-Master tell them...."
"That's what I meant about an oligarchy," he whispered, in Imperial, to
Erskyll.
"Suppose we tell Ravney to herd these Lords-Master onto a couple of
landing-craft and bring them up here?" Shatrak suggested. He made the
suggestion in Lingua Terra Basic, and loudly.
"I think we can manage without that." He raised his voice, speaking in
Lingua Terra Basic:
"It does not matter whether these slaves talk to us or not. This planet is
now under the rule of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. If this
Mastership wants to govern the