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Updated: May 14, 2025
"What do you think this Commonwealth will develop into, under Chmidd and Hozhet and Khouzhik and the rest?" Lanze Degbrend asked, to keep the lecture going. "Oh, a slave-state, of course; look who's running it, and whom it will govern. Not the kind of a slave-state we can do anything about," he hastened to add.
For twenty-four years before that, from the day of his birth, he had been taught, by his parents, his nurse, his governess, his tutors, what it meant to be an Erskyll of Aton and a grandson of Errol, Duke of Yorvoy. As he watched Khreggor Chmidd in the screen, he grew angrier, if possible. "Do you know what you blood-thirsty imbeciles have done?" he demanded.
"This thing they call the Convocation," Shatrak mentioned. "I wonder if the members have the business done entirely through their slaves." "Oh, no!" That shocked Chmidd into direct address. "No slave is allowed in the Convocation Chamber." He wondered how they kept the place swept out. Robots, no doubt. Or else, what happened when the Masters weren't there didn't count. "Very well.
Chmidd and Hozhet were looking at one another in shocked incredulity. "Tchall, they mean it," Chmidd said. "They can do it, too." "We have nothing more to say to you slaves," he continued. "Hereafter, we will speak directly to the Lords-Master." "But.... The Lords-Master never do business directly," Hozhet said. "It is un-Masterly. Such discussions are between chief-slaves."
Zhannar was delighted, and so were Chmidd and Hozhet. So, oddly, was Zhorzh Khouzhik. At the same time, the state of martial law proclaimed on the day of the landing was terminated. The days slipped by. There were entertainments at the new Proconsular Palace for the Masterly residents of Zeggensburg, and Erskyll and his staff were entertained at Masterly palaces.
Whoever ordered this, Citizen Chmidd and Citizen Hozhet and Citizen Zhannar and the rest of your good democratic citizens, are now the planetary government of Aditya. As long as they don't attack us, or repudiate the sovereignty of the Emperor, you'll have to recognize them as such." "A bloody-handed gang of murderers; recognize them?"
The Canopus was recalled from her station over the northern end of the continent and began sending down the proconsulate furnishings stowed aboard, including several hundred domestic robots. The skeleton caretaking staff Chmidd had mentioned proved to number five hundred. "What are we going to do about them?" Erskyll wanted to know.
"Well, just the same, I wish some reenforcements would get here from Odin," Shatrak said. Erskyll was busy, in the days before the Midyear Feasts, either conferring at the Citadel with the ex-slaves who were the functional heads of the Managements or at the Proconsular Palace with Hozhet and Chmidd and the chief-freedmen of the influential Convocation leaders and Presidium members.
"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.
"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.
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