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Updated: June 28, 2025
Vann Shatrak summoned a robot to furnish him with a cold beer and another cigar. Erskyll was drumming an impatient devil's tattoo with his fingernails on the gold-encrusted table in front of him. Lanze Degbrend began interpolating sarcastic comments. And finally, Pyairr Ravney, who came from Lugaluru, reverted to the idiom of his planet's favorite sport: "Come on, come on; turn out the bull!
Degbrend and Ravney exchanged amused glances. Ravney said: "Well, I detailed a sergeant and six privates to accompany Honorable Degbrend," Ravney said. "They.... How would you put it, Lanze?" "I asked a slave a question. If he refused to answer, somebody knocked him down with a rifle-butt," Degbrend replied.
No doubt he was about to tell Shatrak, cuttingly, that he didn't want an easy Proconsulate, but an opportunity to help these people. He was saved from this by the buzzing of Shatrak's communication-screen. It was Colonel Pyairr Ravney, the Navy Landing-Troop commander.
He borrowed a reconn-car from Ravney; he and Lanze Degbrend and, usually, one or another of Ravney's young officers, took long trips of exploration. They fished in mountain streams, and hunted the small deerlike game, and he found himself enjoying these excursions more than anything he had done in recent years; certainly anything since Aditya had come into the viewscreens of the Empress Eulalie.
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.
"You know, sir, I'm afraid I am, for this planet," Degbrend said. "Colonel Ravney insisted on it. He says the situation downstairs is still fluid, which I take to mean that everybody is shooting at everybody. He says he has the main telecast station, in the big building the locals call the Citadel." "Oh, good. Get our announcement out as quickly as you can. Number Five.
Commodore Shatrak, see to it that Colonel Ravney has them in the Convocation Chamber, and that preparations in the room are made, so that we may address them in the dignity befitting representatives of his Imperial Majesty." He turned to the Adityan slaves. "That is all. You have permission to go." They watched the delegation back out, with the honor-guard following.
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.
At the same time, Ravney was saying, into his own screen: "Plan Four. Variation H-3; this is a rescue operation. This is not, repeat, underscore, not an intervention in planetary government. You are to protect members of the Masterly class in danger from mob violence. That's anybody with hair on his head. Stay away from the Citadel; the ones there are all dead.
"They tell me slaves are never permitted to enter it. Maybe, but they have the place bugged to the ceiling all around." "Bugged? What with?" Shatrak asked, and Erskyll was wanting to know what he meant. No doubt he thought Ravney was talking about things crawling out of the woodwork. "Screen pickups, radio pickups, wired microphones; you name it and it's there.
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