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Updated: September 29, 2025
No slave would have been able even to imagine a society without Lords-Master; you heard Chmidd and Hozhet, the first day, aboard the Empress Eulalie. A slave had to have a Master; he simply couldn't belong to nobody at all. And until you started talking socialization, nobody could have imagined property without a Masterly property-owning class.
He doubted if any of the Lords-Master he had seen were to be trusted, unassisted, to fix a broken mouse-trap. Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak was also worried. He was wondering how long it would take for Pyairr Ravney to make useful troops out of the newly-surrendered slave soldiers, and where he was going to find contragravity to shift them expeditiously from trouble-spot to trouble-spot.
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...."
"These Lords-Master are the descendants of the old Space-Vikings, and the slaves of the original inhabitants. The Space Vikings were a technologically advanced people; they had all the old Terran Federation science and technology, and a lot they developed for themselves on the Sword-Worlds." "Well? They still had a lot of it, on the Sword-Worlds, two centuries ago when we took them over."
If you start at this moment and work continuously, you'll have a little under a second apiece for each slave." The Lords-Master looked dismayed. So, he was happy to observe, did Count Erskyll. "I assume you have some system of slave registration?" he continued. That was safe. They had a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies tend to have registrations of practically everything.
If ordered to, I believe that they would fire on their former Lords-Master without hesitation." "You told those slaves that they ... belonged ... to the Emperor?" Count Erskyll was aghast. He stared at Ravney for an instant, then snatched up his brandy-glass the meal had gotten to that point and drained it at a gulp. The others watched solicitously while he coughed and spluttered over it.
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."
If this present regime assents to that, they can stay in power. If not, we will toss them out and install a new government. We will receive this delegation, inform them to that effect, and send them back to relay the information to their Lords-Master." He turned to the Commodore. "May I speak to Colonel Ravney?" Shatrak assented. He asked Ravney where these Lords-Master were.
An officer gave a signal; the doors started to slide apart, and within, from a screen-speaker, came a fanfare of trumpets. At first, all he could see was the projection-screen, far ahead, and the tessellated aisle stretching toward it. The trumpets stopped, and they advanced, and then he saw the Lords-Master.
In terms comprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that all this meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, that they could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they worked faithfully and obeyed orders they would be given everything they were now receiving.
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