Part 7 (1/2)

At least, it had stability. It was self-perpetuating.

”Does the Convocation make the laws?” Erskyll asked.

Hozhet was perplexed. ”_Make_ laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have laws.”

There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an att.i.tude like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many laws enacted during his term of office as possible.

”But this is dreadful; you _must_ have a const.i.tution!” Obray of Erskyll was shocked. ”We will have to get one drawn up and adopted.”

”We don't know anything about that at all,” Khreggor Chmidd admitted.

”This is something new. You will have to help us.”

”I certainly will, Mr. Chmidd. Suppose you form a committee--yourself, and Mr. Hozhet, and three or four others; select them among yourselves--and we can get together and talk over what will be needed.

And another thing. We'll have to stop calling this the Masters.h.i.+p. There are no more Masters.”

”The Employers.h.i.+p?” 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, n.o.body owns,” Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected.

”Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody,” Khreggor Chmidd told him earnestly. ”But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody.

That,” he added complacently, ”will be you and me and the rest of us here.”

”I believe,” Yakoop Zhannar said, almost smiling, ”that this freedom is going to be a wonderful thing. For us.”

”I don't like it!” Mykhyl Eschkhaffar said stubbornly. ”Too many new things, and too much changing names. We have to call slaves freedmen; we have to call Lords Master Lords-Employer; we have to call the Management of Servile Affairs the Management for Freedmen. Now we have to call the Masters.h.i.+p this new name, Commonwealth. And all these new things, for which we have no routine procedures and no directives. I wish these people had never heard of this planet.”

”That makes at least two of us,” Patrique Morvill said, _sotto voce_.

”Well, the planetary const.i.tution can wait just a bit,” Prince Trevannion suggested. ”We have a great many items on the agenda which must be taken care of immediately. For instance, there's this thing about finding a proconsular palace....”

A surprising amount of work had been done at the small tables where Erskyll's staff of political and economic and technological experts had been conferring with the subordinate upper-freedmen. It began coming out during the pre-dinner c.o.c.ktails aboard the _Empress Eulalie_, continued through the meal, and was fully detailed during the formal debriefing session afterward.

Finding a suitable building for the Proconsular Palace would present difficulties. Real estate was not sold on Aditya, any more than slaves were. It was not only un-Masterly but illegal; estates were all entailed and the inalienable property of Masterly families. What was wanted was one of the isolated residential towers in Zeggensburg, far enough from the Citadel to avoid an appearance of too close supervision. The last thing anybody wanted was to establish the Proconsul in the Citadel itself. The Management of Business of the Masters.h.i.+p, however, had promised to do something about it. That would mean, no doubt, that the _Empress Eulalie_ would be hanging over Zeggensburg, serving as Proconsular Palace, for the next year or so.

The Servile Management, rechristened Freedmen's Management, would undertake to safeguard the rights of the newly emanc.i.p.ated slaves. There would be an Employment Code--Count Erskyll was invited to draw that up--and a force of investigators, and an enforcement agency, under Zhorzh Khouzhik.

One of Commander Douvrin's men, who had been at the Austragonia nuclear-industries establishment, was present and reported:

”Great Ghu, you ought to see that place! They've people working in places I wouldn't send an uns.h.i.+elded robot, and the hospital there is bulging with radiation-sickness cases. The equipment must have been brought here by the s.p.a.ce Vikings. What's left of it is the d.a.m.nedest mess of goldbergery I ever saw. The whole thing ought to be shut down and completely rebuilt.”

Erskyll wanted to know who owned it. The Masters.h.i.+p, he was told.

”That's right,” one of his economics men agreed. ”Management of Public Works.” That would be Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, who had so bitterly objected to the new nomenclature. ”If anybody needs fissionables for a power-reactor or radioactives for nuclear-electric conversion, his chief business slave gets what's needed. Furthermore, doesn't even have to sign for it.”

”Don't they sell it for revenue?”