Space Viking
Page 19
XIX
Prince Trask of Tanith and Prince Simon Bentrik were dining togetheron an upper terrace of what had originally been the mansion house ofa Federation period plantation. It had been a number of other thingssince; now it was the municipal building of a town that had grownaround it, which had, somehow, escaped undamaged from the Dunnanblitz. Normally about five or ten thousand, the place was now jammedwith almost fifty thousand homeless refugees from half a dozen othertowns that had been destroyed, overflowing the buildings andcrowding into a sprawling camp of hastily built huts and shelters,and already permanent buildings were going up to accommodate them.Everybody, locals, Mardukans and Space Vikings, had been busy withthe work of relief and reconstruction; this was the first meal thetwo commanders had been able to share in any leisure at all. PrinceBentrik's enjoyment of it was somewhat impaired by the fact thatfrom where he sat he could see, in the distance, the sphere of hisdisabled ship.
"I doubt we can get her off-planet again, let alone into hyperspace."
"Well, we'll get you and your crew to Marduk in the _Nemesis_,then." They were both speaking loudly, above the clank and clatterof machinery below. "I hope you didn't think I'd leave you strandedhere."
"I don't know how either of us will be received. Space Vikingshaven't been exactly popular on Marduk, lately. They may thank youfor bringing me back to stand trial," Bentrik said bitterly. "Why,I'd have anybody shot who let his ship get caught as I did mine.Those two were down in atmosphere before I knew they'd come out ofhyperspace."
"I think they were down on the planet before your ship arrived."
"Oh, that's ridiculous, Prince Trask!" the Mardukan cried. "Youcan't hide a ship on a planet. Not from the kind of instruments wehave in the Royal Navy."
"We have pretty fair detection ourselves," Trask reminded him."There's one place where you can do it. At the bottom of an ocean,with a thousand or so feet of water over her. That's where I wasgoing to hide the _Nemesis_, if I got here ahead of Dunnan."
Prince Bentrik's fork stopped half way to his mouth. He lowered itslowly to his plate. That was a theory he'd like to accept, if hecould.
"But the locals. They didn't know about it."
"They wouldn't. They have no off-planet detection of their own. Comein directly over the ocean, out of the sun, and nobody'd see the ship."
"Is that a regular Space Viking trick?"
"No. I invented it myself, on the way from Seshat. But if Dunnanwanted to ambush your ship, he'd have thought of it, too. It's theonly practical way to do it."
Dunnan, or Nevil Ormm; he wished he knew, and was afraid he would goon wishing all his life.
Bentrik started to pick up his fork again, changed his mind, andsipped from his wineglass instead.
"You may find you're quite welcome on Marduk, at that," he said."These raids have only been a serious problem in the last fouryears. I believe, as you do, that this enemy of yours is responsiblefor all of them. We have half the Royal Navy out now, patrolling ourtrade-planets. Even if he wasn't aboard the _Enterprise_ when youblew her up, you've put a name on him and can tell us a good dealabout him." He set down the wineglass. "Why, if it weren't so utterlyridiculous, one might even think he was making war on Marduk."
From Trask's viewpoint, it wasn't ridiculous at all. He merelymentioned that Andray Dunnan was psychotic and let it go at that.
* * * * *
The _Victrix_ was not completely unrepairable, although quite beyondthe resources at hand. A fully equipped engineer-ship from Mardukcould patch her hull and replace her Dillinghams and her Abbotlift-and-drive engines and make her temporarily spaceworthy, untilshe could be gotten to a shipyard. They concentrated on repairingthe _Nemesis_, and in another two weeks she was ready for the voyage.
The six hundred hour trip to Marduk passed pleasantly enough. TheMardukan officers were good company, and found their Space Vikingopposite numbers equally so. The two crews had become used toworking together on Audhumla, and mingled amicably off watch,interesting themselves in each other's hobbies and listening avidlyto tales of each other's home planets. The Space Vikings weresurprised and disappointed at the somewhat lower intellectual levelof the Mardukans. They couldn't understand that; Marduk was supposedto be a civilized planet, wasn't it? The Mardukans were just assurprised, and inclined to be resentful, that the Space Vikings allacted and talked like officers. Hearing of it, Prince Bentrik wasalso puzzled. Fo'c'sle hands on a Mardukan ship belonged definitelyto the lower orders.
"There's still too much free land and free opportunity on theSword-Worlds," Trask explained. "Nobody does much bowing andscraping to the class above him; he's too busy trying to shovehimself up into it. And the men who ship out as Space Vikings arethe least class-conscious of the lot. Think my men may have troubleon Marduk about that? They'll all insist on doing their drinking inthe swankiest places in town."
"No. I don't think so. Everybody will be so amazed that Space Vikingsaren't twelve feet tall, with three horns like a Zarathustra damnthingand a spiked tail like a Fafnir mantichore that they won't even noticeanything less. Might do some good, in the long run. Crown Prince Edvardwill like your Space Vikings. He's much opposed to class distinctionsand caste prejudices. Says they have to be eliminated before we canmake democracy really work."
The Mardukans talked a lot about democracy. They thought well of it;their government was a representative democracy. It was also ahereditary monarchy, if that made any kind of sense. Trask's effortsto explain the political and social structure of the Sword-Worldsmet the same incomprehension from Bentrik.
"Why, it sounds like feudalism to me!"
"That's right; that's what it is. A king owes his position to thesupport of his great nobles; they owe theirs to their barons andlandholding knights; they owe theirs to their people. There arelimits beyond which none of them can go; after that, their vassalsturn on them."
"Well, suppose the people of some barony rebel? Won't the king sendtroops to support the baron?"
"What troops? Outside a personal guard and enough men to police theroyal city and hold the crown lands, the king has no troops. If hewants troops, he has to get them from his great nobles; they have toget them from their vassal barons, who raise them by calling outtheir people." That was another source of dissatisfaction with KingAngus of Gram; he had been augmenting his forces by hiringoff-planet mercenaries. "And the people won't help some other baronoppress his people; it might be their turn next."
* * * * *
"You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous.
"Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised."Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free onsufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they'reworthless. Who has the arms on your planet?"
"Why, the Government."
"You mean the King?"
Prince Bentrik was shocked. Certainly not; horrid idea. That wouldbe ... why, it would be _despotism_! Besides, the King wasn't theGovernment, at all; the Government ruled in the King's name. Therewas the Assembly; the Chamber of Representatives, and the Chamber ofDelegates. The people elected the Representatives, and theRepresentatives elected the Delegates, and the Delegates elected theChancellor. Then, there was the Prime Minister; he was appointed bythe King, but the King had to appoint him from the party holding themost seats in the Chamber of Representatives, and he appointed theMinisters, who handled the executive work of the Government, onlytheir subordinates in the different Ministries were career-officialswho were selected by competitive examination for the bottom jobs andpromoted up the bureaucratic ladder from there.
This left Trask wondering if the Mardukan constitution hadn't beendevised by Goldberg, the legendary Old Terran inventor who alwaysdid everything the hard way. It also left him wondering just how inGehenna the Government of Marduk ever got anything done.
Maybe it didn't. Maybe that was what saved Marduk from having a realdespotism.
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"Well, what prevents the Government from enslaving the people?The people can't; you just told me that they aren't armed, andthe Government is."
He continued, pausing now and then for breath, to catalogue everytyranny he had ever heard of, from those practiced by the TerranFederation before the Big War to those practiced at Eglonsby onAmaterasu by Pedrosan Pedro. A few of the very mildest were pushingthe nobles and people of Gram to revolt against Angus I.
"And in the end," he finished, "the Government would be the onlyproperty owner and the only employer on the planet, and everybodyelse would be slaves, working at assigned tasks, wearingGovernment-issued clothing and eating Government food, theirchildren educated as the Government prescribes and trained for jobsselected for them by the Government, never reading a book or seeinga play or thinking a thought that the Government had notapproved...."
Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusinghim of being just too utterly ridiculous.
"Why, the people _are_ the Government. The people would notlegislate themselves into slavery."
He wished Otto Harkaman were there. All he knew of history was thelittle he had gotten from reading some of Harkaman's books, and thelong, rambling conversations aboard ship in hyperspace or in theevenings at Rivington. But Harkaman, he was sure, could havefurnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over tencenturies of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn'tknown what they were doing, even after it was too late.
* * * * *
"They have something about like that on Aton," one of the Mardukanofficers said.
"Oh, Aton; that's a dictatorship, pure and simple. That PlanetaryNationalist gang got into control fifty years ago, during the crisisafter the war with Baldur...."
"They were voted into power by the people, weren't they?"
"Yes; they were," Prince Bentrik said gravely. "It was an emergencymeasure, and they were given emergency powers. Once they were in,they made the emergency permanent."
"That couldn't happen on Marduk!" a young nobleman declared.
"It could if Zaspar Makann's party wins control of the Assembly atthe next election," somebody else said.
"Oh, then Marduk's safe! The sun'll go nova first," one of thejunior Royal Navy officers said.
After that, they began talking about women, a subject any spacemanwill drop any other subject to discuss.
Trask made a mental note of the name of Zaspar Makann, and tookoccasion to bring it up in conversation with his shipboard guests.Every time he talked about Makann to two or more Mardukans, he heardat least three or more opinions about the man. He was a politicaldemagogue; on that everybody agreed. After that, opinions diverged.
Makann was a raving lunatic, and all the followers he had were ahandful of lunatics like him. He might be a lunatic, but he had adangerously large following. Well, not so large; maybe they'd pickup a seat or so in the Assembly, but that was doubtful--not enoughof them in any representative district to elect an Assemblyman. Hewas just a smart crook, milking a lot of half-witted plebeians forall he could get out of them. Not just plebes, either; a lot ofindustrialists were secretly financing him, in hope that he wouldhelp them break up the labor unions. You're nuts; everybody knew thelabor unions were backing him, hoping he'd scare the employers intogranting concessions. You're both nuts; he was backed by themercantile interests; they were hoping he'd run the Gilgameshersoff the planet.
Well, that was one thing you had to give him credit for. He wantedto run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in favor of that.
Now, Trask could remember something he'd gotten from Harkaman.There had been Hitler, back at the end of the First CenturyPre-Atomic; hadn't he gotten into power because everybody wasin favor of running out the Christians, or the Moslems, or theAlbigensians, or somebody?