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Updated: June 22, 2025
"Well thought of, Colonel. I suppose the Citadel teems with bureaucrats and such low life-forms?" "Bulging with them. Literally thousands. Lanze Degbrend and Commander Douvrin and a few others are trying to get some sensible answers out of some of them." "This delegation; how had you thought of sending them up?" "Landing-craft to Isobel; Isobel will bring them the rest of the way."
They weren't even able to defend themselves, let alone...." His personal communication-screen buzzed; he set down the coffee and flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger.
Lanze was now wearing the combat coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his shoulder. He grinned and executed an exaggeratedly military salute. He chuckled. "Well, look at you; aren't you the perfect picture of correct diplomatic dress?"
Beside Shatrak, Erskyll and himself, there were Lanze Degbrend, and Count Erskyll's charge-d'affaires, Sharll Ernanday, and Patrique Morvill and Pyairr Ravney and the naval intelligence officer, Commander Andrey Douvrin. Ordinarily, he deplored serious discussion at meals, but under the circumstances it was unavoidable; nobody could think or talk of anything else.
"And almost at once, they began appointing slave overseers, and the technicians would begin training slave assistants. Then there would be slave supervisors to direct the overseers, slave administrators to direct them, slave secretaries and bookkeepers, slave technicians and engineers." "How about the professions, Lanze?" "All slave. Slave physicians, teachers, everything like that.
Shatrak asked. "Masterly things," Degbrend replied. "I was only down there since noon, but from what I could find out, that consists of feasting, making love to each other's wives, being entertained by slave performers, and feuding for social precedence like wealthy old ladies on Odin." "You got this from the slaves? How did you get them to talk, Lanze?"
Lanze Degbrend summoned a robot, had it pour a highball, and gave it to the Proconsul. "Go ahead, Count Erskyll; drink it down. Medicinal," he was saying. "Believe me you certainly need it." Erskyll gulped it down. "I think I could use another, if you please," he said, handing the glass back to Lanze. "And a cigarette."
Lanze Degbrend, at the screen, twisted the dial again, and this time the screen flickered and cleared, and they were looking into the Convocation Chamber from the extreme rear, above the double doors. Far away, in front, Olvir Nikkolon was rising behind the gold and onyx bench, and from the speaker the call bell tolled slowly, and the buzz of over two thousand whispering voices diminished.
Of course, you meant legally, by constitutional and democratic means, but that seemed just a bit too tedious to them. They had them all together in one room, where they could be eliminated easily, and ... Lanze; see if you can get anything on the Citadel telecast." Degbrend put on another communication-screen and fiddled for a moment.
There are no more Masters." "The Employership?" Lanze Degbrend dead-panned. Erskyll looked at him angrily. "This is something," he told the chief-freedmen, "that should not belong to the Employers alone. It should belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That means something everybody owns in common." "Something everybody owns, nobody owns," Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected.
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