Birthright

by Mike Resnick

  Mission accomplished. Any further instructions?

  Greeley

  And, moments later, he was once again in the Governor's, sumptuous office. “Suppose you tell me just what the hell is going on?” demanded Bellows. “Sir?”

  “Don't ‘sir’ me, Mel! The Canphor VI government is screaming bloody murder that we've blown away three of their cargo ships, and I can't get a straight answer out of Greeley. He keeps telling me to ask you about it.”

  “All I told Greeley was to keep his eyes peeled for pirate vessels,” said Hill. “There hasn't been a pirate ship within fifty parsecs of the Canphor system in a century, and you know it!” snapped Bellows. “I want an explanation and I want it quick!” “I have none to make until I look into the matter,” said Hill. “For the present, I'd suggest that we write a profusely apologetic note to Canphor VI immediately. I'll do it if you like, and send you a draft for your personal approval.”

  Bellows stared across the budge desk at his adviser. “I don't know what you're up to, Mel, but you're on very shaky ground at this moment. Past friendship aside, I won't hesitate to dump you if I find it necessary—and I'll find it necessary if there's one more incident like this.” Hill returned to his office, dictated the note of apology, and sent it to Bellows. It came back with the Governor's approval.

  “Okay,” he said to his secretary. “Send it off.” “In Galactic, sir?” she asked.

  “In Terran,” said Hill calmly.

  Within hours the government of Canphor VI sent back a message that the apology was unacceptable. “What will the Governor say to that one?” said one of Hill's aides, looking at the transcribed reply. “I haven't the slightest idea,” said Hill. “However, I don't think he'll say too much.” “Oh? Why?”

  “Because I've released copies of our apology and Canphor VI's answer to the media.” The intercom lit up, and Hill pressed a button. “Hill here.” “Mel, this is Josh. I don't know why Canphor VI turned your note down, but I've got a pretty good suspicion. Did you send it in Galactic?” “I can't recall,” said Hill.

  “That's it!” bellowed the Governor. “You've got two days to put your affairs in order and clear out.

  You're fired!”

  “I wouldn't release that to the press for a few hours yet, Josh,” said Hill. “And why not?”

  “It won't make the headlines until they're through running the story about Canphor VI turning down our apology.”

  The intercom flicked off without another comment from Bellows. “We haven't got much time,” said Hill to his aides. “Three hours from now every human in the Deluros system will be screaming for war, and by tomorrow morning the rest of the human worlds will be out for blood too. If Josh wants to keep his political scalp, he'll have to attack—and if I know Josh, he'll procrastinate until it's too late.”

  “I don't see that you can do anything about it,” volunteered one of the aides. “That's why I'm your boss instead of the other way around,” said Hill. “Send the following message to Greeley, unscrambled.'’ He paused, trying to get the words straight in his mind, and then began dictating. Admiral:

  The content of this message is of such import I that we've no time for code. The planned attack on

  the Canphor system will take place in five days’ time. The delay is regrettable, but the bulk of our

  fleet is engaged in maneuvers on the Rim. Do not—repeat, do not—move in until that time, as you

  can expect no assistance from Deluros VIII prior to the return of the fleet. Should there be any

  doubt whatsoever concerning your orders, return immediately to base at Deluros V.

  Melvyn Hill,

  Assistant to the Governor

  Hill looked up. “What's the latest frequency that Canphor VI has cracked?” “H57, about a week ago.”

  “Good. Send it on H57, but in Terran. We don't want to make it look too easy for them.” “What if Greeley attacks?” asked an aide. “He won't,” said Hill. “He doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, so he'll come racing back to base, just in time to help fend off the Canphor fleet.” Hill walked out his door and strolled casually over to Bellows's office. He smoked a cigar, checked his watch, decided that the message would have been sent and intercepted by now, and walked in. The security agents had already been instructed that he was no longer a member of the staff, and they barred his way. After sending through his formal request to see the Governor, he was kept cooling his heels in the outer office for another hour before he was finally ushered in. “I don't know why I'm wasting time like this,” began Bellows. “I've got nothing to say to you.” “But I've got a lot to say to you, Josh,” said Hill. “Especially since this is probably the last time we'll ever speak together. May I sit down?”

  Bellows stared hard at him, then nodded. “Why did you do it, Mel?”

  “I suppose I should say I did it for you,” said Hill, “and in a way I did. But mostly, I did it for Man,'’ He paused. “Josh, I don't want to startle you, but you're going to have a war on your hands in less than a day, and there's no way in hell you can get out of it, so you'd better make up your mind to win it.” “What are you talking about?” demanded Bellows. “Canphor VI,” said Hill. “And possibly Canphor VII too. They'll be attacking Deluros VIII very shortly. It'll take very little effort to beat them back, and not much more to defeat them. They're operating on the assumption that we're unprotected.” Bellows reached for his intercom panel, but Hill laid a hand on his arm. “No hurry, Josh. Greeley will be back ahead of them, and has probably got everybody in an uproar already. Let's talk for a few minutes first; then you can do anything you want to me.” Bellows sat back in his chair, glaring. “Josh, I'm not going to tell you how this came about. It's so simple you wouldn't believe me anyhow, and besides, you'll be able to speak with a little more forcefulness and moral outrage on the video if you don't know. But the thing is, it's started. Man's about to make his first move back up the ladder, and you're going to go down in history as the guy that did it. It won't be completed in your term, or your lifetime, or even in a millennium, but it's started now and nothing's going to stop it. “You've got the people behind you,” Hill continued, “plus the unswerving loyalty of the military. This battle won't amount to anything more than a minor skirmish, and knowing you, I'm sure you'll offer very generous terms to Canphor when it's over. But the very least the legislature will demand is that the Canphor system become a human protectorate. They'll want more than that, but I imagine you'll get them to compromise there. Whatever the result, the Canphor worlds will contribute their taxes to Deluros VIII, and our tariffs will reflect their change in status. “And once you find out just how easy this is, it'll occur again and again in some form or another. You're going to be riding a tidal wave of sentiment, and you're either going to steer it where it wants to go or get thrown out of the saddle within a month You'll be very careful and meticulous, and you'll always pay lip service to the Democracy. Perhaps it will even remain as a figurehead of galactic power, but the handwriting will be on the wall. Man's going to wind up calling the shots again.” “I don't know what you think you've done,” said Bellows, “but whatever it is, it can be undone. If there really is an alien attack force on the way from Canphor, I'll see to it that it's called back.” “Uh-uh, Josh,” said Hill. “They've heard what they've been expecting to hear, and they're not going to believe anythingyou tell them.”

  “They'll believe me when I tell them we're standing ready to repulse any attack.” “I'm afraid not,” said Hill. “There's no way you can turn it off, Josh. You'd better start thinking about how you're going to tell the people that you're the leader they've always wanted you to be.” Hill stood up and slowly walked out of the office. Bellows spent the next two hours confirming the truth of what he'd been told, and two more hours after that frantically but fruitlessly trying to avert the coming conflict.

  As night fell, the Governor of Deluros VIII sat alone in his semi-darkened office, his hands clasped in

  f
ront of him, staring intently at his fingers. He considered resigning, but realized that it wouldn't have any effect on the tide of events. He even considered having Hill make a full public confession, but knew even as the thought crossed his mind that the populace would approve of Hill's actions. Bellows was an essentially decent man. He didn't want to destroy anyone. At heart he believed that Man would emerge triumphant in the galactic scheme of things by virtue of his own endeavors. Furthermore, Man was still immensely outnumbered by the other races. The course Hill had charted would be so perilous, so fraught with danger at any misstep ... Man would have to divide and conquer on a scale never before imagined. He'd have to be quiet about it, too; would have to accomplish most of his plan before the galaxy awoke to what was happening, or everything would come down on his head, hard. And yet, if Man was capable of pulling it off, didn't he deserve to? After all, this wasn't exactly survival of the fittest so much as ascendancy of the fittest. The races of the galaxy would continue to function, and under Man's leadership they would very likely function all the more efficiently. Or was he just rationalizing? Man was capable of such splendid achievements, such generosity to other races, why did he have to have this aggressive, darker side of his nature? Or was it a dark side at all? Was Man, as Hill had said, merely making the most of every single one of his attributes, including this one?

  Bellows reached for the intercom button that would summon the press. As they filed into his office, he made his decision—or rather, he thought with a bemused detachment, he acknowledged the decision that had long since been made for him. For while he had many other qualities—goodness, judgment, integrity—all had failed him in this crisis, and he was left with the foremost quality that any politician possesses: survival.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, staring unblinking at them with his clear blue eyes, “it has come to my attention that a fleet of military ships has just left Canphor VI for the purpose of perpetrating a heinous sneak attack on Deluros VIII. Neither we nor any other world housing members of the race of Man will tolerate or yield to such an unprovoked action. Therefore, I have instructed the 7th, 9th, 11th, and 18th fleets to take the following steps...”

  SIXTH MILLENNIUM: OLIGARCHY

  11: THE ADMINISTRATORS

  (No mention of the Administrators, as such, can be found inMan: Twelve Millennia of Achievement or inOrigin and History of the Sentient Races. ) The Democracy did not die rapidly, nor did Man particularly want it to. From the instant that the fabled Joshua Bellows repulsed an abortive attack on Deluros VIII by the Canphor Twins and followed up by winning a quick series of battles and putting the entire Canphor system under martial law, the handwriting had been on the wall. For the second time in galactic history, the Cartography complex at distant Caliban became the most important single factor in Man's expansion, but this time it was a more mature Man, a Man who knew the bitter aftertaste of expanding too rapidly, who began gathering his empire about him. This was no hit-or-miss proposition, this expansion. There was no settling or winning of strategic systems and then moving parsecs away to new challenges. Man was more thorough this time, more methodical, more grimly efficient. Radiating out in all directions simultaneously from Deluros VIII, Earth, and Sirius V,

  Man took each world as it came. When a major military power stood in his way, such as Lodin XI, he

  leveled it; but by and large, he still preferred the more permanent and more devastating method of economic warfare to bring rebellious worlds into line. As the fourth millennium of Man's galactic influence drew to a close, he controlled almost half the sentient worlds in the galaxy, though the Democracy still stood. Another ten centuries saw him in possession, either militarily or economically, of some eighty percent of the populated planets, and the Democracy died without a whimper.

  In its place there appeared the seven-seat Oligarchy. Ostentatiously there were no restrictions on any of the seats, but all were held by Men, and had been thus held since their creation. Nor did the alien races suffer overmuch from this change, for Man was still a doer, a builder, a force for movement, and he took care of his possessions more meticulously than the alien-dominated Democracy had ever done. The administration of the Oligarchic empire was by no means an easy task. In point of fact, it redirected and sapped Man's energies for more than two centuries, as well it should have in view of the vastness of the undertaking.

  There were, at the dawn of the Oligarchic era, some l,400,000 inhabited planets in the galaxy; 1,150,000 were eagerly, or willingly, or tacitly, or resentfully, within the political and economic domain of the Oligarchy.

  The problems posed by such an empire were immense. For example, all member worlds paid taxes. Although the planetary governments were responsible for raising the revenues, they did so under the supervision of the Oligarchy, which supplied an average of twenty men to each nonhuman planet, and fifty to each planet populated primarily by Man. Thus, the Taxation Bureau employed more than twenty-five million field representatives, and another six million office workers. And like all the other agencies, it was woefully undermanned.

  The military bureaucracy quickly expanded to unmanageable proportions. The Oligarchy had inherited a standing task force of some twenty-five billion men. To have deactivated even half of them once the Democracy had breathed its last would have destroyed the economies of literally hundreds of thousands of worlds, and so they remained in the various branches of a service which numbered far more officers in peacetime than it ever had during its days of battle. Agriculture posed a special problem. There would never be a crop failure, not with more than fifty thousand agricultural worlds. But the creation of equitable tariffs and the channeling of certain goods to certain worlds were unbelievably complex. A side product was the reintroduction of widespread narcotics addiction, complicated by the fact that there was simply no way to outlaw the growth of plants. For example, the natives of Altair III found that wheat was a powerful stimulant and hallucinogen to their systems, while opium was the staple diet of the inhabitants of Aldebaran XIII. Before two decades had passed the bureaucracy had outgrown Sixth Millennium: Oligarchy 139 the confines of Deluros VIII, despite its 28,000-mile diameter. Cartography confirmed that while there were a handful of larger planets hospitable to human life, none were of sufficient size to warrant abandoning Deluros VIII.

  Ultimately a satisfactory solution was reached, and implementation began shortly thereafter. Deluros VI, another large world, though not quite so large as the Oligarchic headquarters, was ripped apart by a number of carefully placed and extremely powerful explosive charges. The smaller fragments, as well as the larger irregular ones, were then totally obliterated. The remaining forty-eight planetoids, each

  approximating the size of Earth's moon, were turned over to the largest departments of the Oligarchy.

  Domes were erected on each of the planetoids, construction of worldwide complexes was begun, and life-support systems were implemented. Within half a century almost the entire administrative bureaucracy had moved from Deluros VIII to one or another of the Deluros VI planetoids. The orbits had been adjusted, the planetoids circled huge Deluros millions of miles from each other, and tens of thousands of ships sped daily between the ruling world of the Oligarchy and its forty-eight extensions. Here floated Commerce, a massive red-brown rock reflecting the sunlight blindingly from its billions of steel-and-plastic offices; there raced the smallest of the planetoids, Education and Welfare, spinning on its axis every sixteen hours; on the far side of the sun was the massive Military complex, taking up four entire planetoids, and already choking for lack of room. And halfway between daytime and evening was the Investigations planetoid. With some 80 million bureaucratic appointments per year, plus the huge narcotics trade and the various alien acts of rebellion, it could hardly be said that the department lacked for work. None of the planetoids found their work easy. The Bureau of Communication was involved with implementing the first ruling passed by the first members of the Oligarchy: that Terran was to become the official
language. The Treasury planetoid was continually balancing tendencies toward inflation and depression, and was not abetted by the fact that with such a multiplicity of worlds in the Oligarchic empire, there was simply no single substance rare enough to back the currency with. Four-fifths of the Labor Department was devoted to keeping the miners happy without yielding too much power to them. No one knew exactly what occurred on the Science planetoid, but there were 122 vast buildings, each hundreds of miles long, devoted to the 122 major sciences, and no one seemed to be suffering from boredom.

  But as she looked out her window at the twinkling, shining mini-worlds, Ulice Ston knew that the Department of Alien Affairs was currently sitting on the biggest problem of all, and that she, as Director, was sitting on the Department of Alien Affairs. The bulk of her business concerned the legal wording, ratification recommendations, and enforcement of some half million treaties per year. All wars not involving humans were also in her domain. So were all complaints of mistreatment of aliens.

  And so, she sighed, was Bareimus.

  The Bareimus situation was, simply stated, a stinker. By rights it should have gone to Science, or perhaps some sector of the Military, but since it concerned aliens, the problem was all hers. And a hell of a problem it was.