Authors: James White
"Having looked upon all this splendor," it said, and its four arms rose and its head bowed in a gesture which was like an act of worship, "how can I go on living as a slave?"
Martin was not surprised to find that the polar city was bitingly cold, that the level of technology apparent was much higher than that of the valley they had recently left, and that Skorta, who had been born here, was able to direct the lander to within a few meters of the entrance to the Hall of the Masters. What did surprise him was that the Hall was ablaze with artificial light.
"A courtesy extended to a highly placed slave of a strange Master," the Teldin said, "a slave with imperfect vision. It means nothing more."
The Hall itself was surprisingly small. He thought that the debating chamber of the legendary Camelot might have looked a little like this, except that the Teldin table was horseshoe shaped rather than round, and partially bridging the open end was a small, square table and a chair. At a slow, measured pace, Skorta led him toward them and, when they arrived, motioned for him to stand at one side of the chair while it stood at the other.
"You are in the presence of the Masters of Teldi," it announced, and bowed its head briefly. Martin did the same.
There were several unoccupied spaces around the horseshoe. Before every Master's chair, whether it was occupied or not, the richly embroidered flags were spread so that their emblems hung down from the inside edge of the table. Lying on the flags were the swords of the Masters who were present. All of the Masters were adult, some of them looked very old and, so far as Martin could see, they showed no physical signs of the usual self-indulgence and excesses of beings with ultimate authority over a planet's entire population. And these omniscient and all-powerful rulers of Teldi numbered only seventeen.
He stood silently as the teaching slave was questioned regarding Martin's arrival and his subsequent words and actions by a Teldin whose flag bore the emblem of the Master of Sea- and Land-borne Communications. He thought that the Master of Education would have been more appropriate until he remembered that that Mastership was vacant and its authority shared by two other Masters on a caretaker basis. This particular Master was about to experience a lesson in communication that it would not soon forget.
They continued to ignore Martin's presence while Skorta described the rockslide and the strange vessel's protective device which had saved the students from certain death.
It's trying to make a hero of me, Martin thought gratefully. But the interrogator was not impressed.
The master wanted to know where the students would normally have been had the invitation to see its vessel not been issued. It added, obviously for Martin's benefit, that Skorta was no doubt aware that a slave was the property and sole responsibility of its Master, and that any serious wrongdoing on the slave's part should result hi the punishment of that Master.
Martin smiled at the thought of these seventeen sword-carrying absolute rulers of Teldi trying to punish the Federation for negligence in his training. But the smile faded when he thought of the Federation's reaction to the news that Teldi held it culpable for his present misbehavior.
At times like these, he thought wryly, there was a lot to be said for the life of a happy and obedient slave.
Skorta was concluding its report. It said, "On being told of my instructions to report to the Hall of the Masters as quickly as possible, the stranger offered to bring me here in its ship. On the way we visited the larger vessel, which had been responsible for shielding the entire city from the Scourge while it was freeing the trapped students. There I spoke to the stranger's life-mate and looked down on Teldi, on all of Teldi, and at the stars."
"That experience," the interrogator said quietly, "we envy you. Do you feel friendship for this stranger?"
"I believe that we feel friendship for each other, Master," Skorta replied.
"Is this the reason why it accompanied you," the Master asked, "when you must have explained to it that the safer course would have been to leave this world and its Masters, whom it so grievously insulted?"
"It is," Skorta said. "This stranger also wanted to deliver a message to you from its Master and would not be dissuaded."
The interrogator made an untranslatable sound and said, "A staunch friend, perhaps, but undeniably a most presumptuous slave. Why is its Master not present?"
Quickly the teaching slave explained that the stranger's Master was of a different species which breathed an atmosphere noxious to Teldins, and could not speak face to face with any person not of its own species. Skorta ended, "This was the reason why the stranger was instructed to land on Teldi as an intermediary."
The interrogator recoiled, as if it had just heard a very dirty word, then went on, "Intermediaries are not to be trusted, ever. Their words are hearsay, untrustworthy, irresponsible, and cause misunderstanding and distress. Only a Master can be believed without doubt or question. That is the Prime Law."
Martin could remain silent no longer. "There were good reasons for the mistrust of hearsay, one thousand one hundred and seventeen of your years ago. But now the Prime Law has become a ritual and a means for enforcing-"
"You stupid, irresponsible slave!" Skorta broke in, shaking with what could only be anger. "Stranger, you insult the Masters as your own Master has already done by thrusting hearsay upon them. Be warned. You may not speak to a Master, but if you must speak to clarify some portion of my report you will do so only to me and with the Master's permission."
"No insult was intended," Martin said.
"An insult can be given without intent," the teacher replied more calmly, "because a slave, being a slave, does not properly consider all the results of its words or actions."
Martin let his breath out slowly and said, "There are mechanisms on the larger ship which are capable of measuring die individual movements of the pieces of rock and dust which make up the Scourge. I do not know the original reason for your Scourge, but these mechanisms tell me how and when it began, and from this information I have deduced-"
"Silence," the Master said quietly. It did not look at Martin as it went on, "We have no wish to listen to a slave's deductions from hearsay evidence. But I have in mind to discuss with you, teacher, matters which will instruct this stranger with complete accuracy..." It paused and, grasping the hilt of its sword, looked all around the table. ".. .regarding the Scourge. Since this will involve discussion of the Ultimate
Hearsay you, as a slave, may refuse."
The teacher replied slowly, as if performing a spoken ritual. It said, "No slave may know the Ultimate Hearsay. No slave, be it Tel din or other, may instruct a Master. The strange slave may not speak except to me, therefore I shall remain. I do this willingly, and henceforth I accept full responsibility for the results of my words and actions before the other Masters."
Martin almost lost the last few words, because suddenly everyone in the Hall was standing up and reaching for their swords, he wondered sickly whether his short, Earth-human legs could get him to the entrance before the longer Teldin limbs-including the ones swinging swords-could head him off. His own weapon was still in the backpack, and pitifully inadequate anyway. But the interrogator had swung round and was holding up all four hands palms outward.
"Hold!" it said. "This matter will be dealt with in proper form when its symbol has been brought to us. First must come the judgment and the ruling on this off-world slave."
"What's going on?" Beth said anxiously. "You said you knew what you were doing and now... I'm coming down."
"Wait," Martin said, switching out the translator. "The Masters can talk and listen to me through Skorta, and they will tell it things for nay benefit which slaves are forbidden to know, because it is just as curious about me as they are. The punishment for learning this forbidden knowledge must be severe, yet Skorta seems unafraid. There's something very odd going on here, and I'm beginning to wonder if..."
Martin broke off because the interrogator was talking again. In calm, emotionless tones it was fleshing out, adding depth and a human, or at least Teldin, dimension to the catastrophe which had smashed their technologically advanced culture flat and returned its people to their equivalent of the dark ages.
Up until one thousand one hundred and seventeen years ago, Teldi had had a satellite, an airless body rich in the mineral resources which had become so depleted on the mother world. The moon had been colonized many centuries earlier and, because it had been given the best that the mother world could provide in the form of its keenest young minds and technical resources, the colony became much more technologically advanced than its parent. Its people remade their lifeless world, scattering its surface with domed cities and farms, and burrowing deeply toward the still-hot core. They became self-sufficient, justifiably proud and independent, and, finally, an armed threat.
But it was not a nuclear preemptive strike which destroyed Teldi's moon, the Master insisted. It had been a catastrophe deep inside the moon itself, associated with experiments on a new power source, which had detonated the satellite like a gigantic bomb.
On Teldi they watched their moon fly slowly apart, and they knew that if one of those larger pieces were to crash into the mother planet it would tear through the crust into the underlying core, and in the resulting planetary upheaval all life on Teldi would be wiped out. However, they had maintained in a state of instant readiness a tremendous arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of reaching their newly disintegrated moon, and the majority of these were hastily reprogrammed to intercept the larger masses of lunar material heading toward them and blast them into smaller and much less devastating pieces.
Many of these relatively small pieces fell on Teldi, and in the resulting devastation, more than a quarter of the planetary population lost their lives. But the threat had been neutralized, for the time being.
Computations made on the paths of the remaining large pieces of the satellite clearly indicated that the mother world was still in danger. There was a very high probability that world-wrecking collisions would take place on an average of three times every century. The planet's long-term survival depended on the Teldins reducing the size of these future world-wreckers in the same way as they had dealt with the first ones.
In spite of the highest priority that was given to missile production and the development of more effective warheads, and the manned missions which visited the larger bodies to planet charges designed to blow them virtually to dust, progress was desperately slow. Large meteors continued to fall: all too often they demolished key missile production or launching installations.
For this reason it required close on fifty years for the project to reach completion, completion in that there were no longer any bodies in Teldi's path capable of destroying the planet, and no missiles left to send against them if there had been. The moon had been reduced and scattered into a nearly homogenous cloud of meteorite material, most of which circled the planet and fell steadily onto its surface.
The Scourge had come.
No fabrication or person could live on or above the surface of Teldi for more than a few dozen revolutions without the certainty of damage, injury, or death. The remnants of the technology which had survived long enough to save them were eroded away or hammered flat by the Scourge. Their once-great civilization was reduced to ruins, its population decimated and driven slowly back toward the level of their savage, cave dwelling prehistory-but not all the way back.
They had been able to survive in their caves, deep valleys, mines, and underground missile installations and extend them into subsurface cities. They had farmed because the Scourge could not kill every plant and tree, and they had built protected road systems and kept as much as was useful of the old knowledge alive and stored the rest. But the chief reason for their continued survival as a culture had been that increasing numbers of the frightened and despairing population placed themselves under the protection and orders of the senior military officers.
It was the nature of things that saviors became Masters, and it had been all too easy for the system to perpetuate itself when the Masters had the respect as well as the obedience of their slaves, as well as a large measure of control over their thinking-including the habit of distrust which was instilled from birth.