Jannisaries by Jerry Pournelle

“I probably would have. I’d do it now if I weren’t about to kill them anyway.” He drained his wine cup and cursed. “If I’d known before, maybe this war wouldn’t have to be. André can’t have any love for Sarakos.”

“You still don’t understand,” Gwen said. “You have to warn him now. Rick, no matter who wins tomorrow, we’ve got to be certain the victor has enough power to be sure of growing surinomaz.”

“The hell we do. You’ve just told me that dealing with the Shalnuksis isn’t very smart. So we just van­ish. Hide in the caves when they show up. Let them whistle for their drugs.”

“It’s not that simple,” Gwen said. “Rick, you said your university would be important to the people of Tran. You seemed to care.”

“Sure, I’d like to accomplish something worth­while,” Rick said.

“That surinomaz crop is more important than your university,” Gwen said. “And to far more people than just those on Tran. It’s important to the whole human race.”

2

Rick refilled his wine cup. “I think you’d better explain that last statement,” he said carefully. “You’ve told me often enough that this surinomaz crop isn’t worth that much to the Shalnuksis. How can it be important to the whole human race?”

“It’s a long story,” Gwen said.

Rick looked at his watch. “We’ve got between four and six hours before the gunpowder blows. That ought to be long enough. Only this time tell me the whole story. I’m tired of trying to operate in the dark.”

“You haven’t done too badly,” Gwen said. “All right. If the Shalnuksis send a ship and find out there’s not been a harvest and won’t ever be one, they won’t send another. But if they think there’ll be good harvests, they’ll arrange for ships to come every year the crop will be good. Eventually they’ll have to send Les.”

“Jesus Christ. Gwen, are you still in love with that S.O.B.?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I am. Not that it mat­ters.” She spoke defiantly. “Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking, and it’s wrong. Rick, he didn’t just throw me out. I could have gone with him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because they wouldn’t have let our baby live.”

“They? Who? And why not?”

“The Confederacy. They breed their human ser­vants. Even if they’d let my baby be born, they wouldn’t have let me raise it. All their human chil­dren grow up in a school.”

“Gwen, what the hell are you talking about? Breed humans?”

“For loyalty,” Gwen said. “But sometimes they breed in ‘wild’ humans from Earth to give the strain initiative. Les had a wild grandmother, and they won’t allow more wild genes in his line. Rick, I know it sounds fantastic.”

“Fantastic. That’s a good word,” Rick said. “How long has all this been going on?”

“At least five thousand years.”

Five thousand years. “And you believe that?”

“Yes. Everything I saw in the ship’s data banks is consistent with it. And look how long they’ve been coming to Tran.”

“But five thousand years? Gwen, all that time, and they’ve never made an official visit to any govern­ment on Earth. All that time they’ve been dealing with us without contact—”

“They can’t and they won’t,” Gwen said. “They don’t allow barbarians in their confederacy. They have a stable union of nearly a hundred races. Most of those never did have periods of unlimited growth.

When they run into an aggressively unstable race, there’s usually a war. They’ve exterminated some races they decided were hopelessly barbaric. As a result, they’ve achieved what human philosophers always wanted but no one really believes we’ll ever have: universal peace and order and stability.”

“If they’re so damned peace-loving, why have they kept raiding Tran? Why drop atom bombs on their last expedition?”

“The Shalnuksis aren’t peace-loving,” Gwen said. “They just don’t have any choices in the matter. They’re a long-lived race, and Tran is a—Les called it a family business. The Shalnuksis don’t want Tran industrialized, and the Confederacy doesn’t know about Tran.”

“There was a police inspector. Agzaral. He knew all about it,” Rick said.

“Agzaral and some of the other humans know. They’re keeping it secret from their government.”

Why wouldn’t there be corruption in a bureauc­racy five thousand years old? “And your friend Les is helping them keep it a secret?”

“Yes.” Gwen fought tears. “Rick it’s not what you think. It’s so hard to explain! Have you ever heard of janissaries?”

“Sure. Slave soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. Ad­ministrators, too. They pretty well ran the empire for the Turks. Taken in childhood as tribute from Christian subjects and brought up in schools, lived in barracks and forbidden to marry—God Almighty! Gwen, what are you driving at?”

“What you’ve guessed. Humans aren’t members of the Confederacy, but human soldiers and policemen and administrators like Inspector Ag­zaral enforce the Confederacy’s policies. That’s why Earth has a special status—not taken into the Con­federacy and not interfered with. They need a strain of wild humans to mix in with their tame janis­saries.”

“Slave soldiers. Bred for loyalty, and raised in creches—Gwen, do you believe all this?”

“Yes. Why would Les make it up? Why would he say he was a slave?” she demanded. “He was crying when he told me. He said he felt like a dog attacking his master, like a traitor—”

“If they’re that loyal, why was he betraying them? All because of you?”

“No. Oh, maybe partly,” Gwen said. “But that’s not the real reason. Rick, he said it was important that the Confederacy never learn about Tran because — he said the Confederacy’s governing council is worried, now that humans on Earth are going into space. Some of the Council wants to knock Earth back to the Stone Age. Agzaral thinks that may have happened once already. Don’t you see, the humans are being torn apart! They’re bred for loyalty to the Confederacy, but they’re humans, too. They don’t know what to do or.who to trust.”

“Does this council truly expect human soldiers to bomb Earth?” Rick asked.

“The Confederacy Council doesn’t know who to trust either,” Gwen said. “But there are humans who argue it’s the best thing. That wild humans simply can’t be allowed to get loose with their crazy ideas about unlimited growth and continuous progress. They’ve enforced the peace for thousands of years, and that’s more important to them than a planet they’ve never lived on. But other humans want to save Earth. The Council doesn’t know what to do, and neither do Agzaral and his people.

“Some of the janissaries—I may as well call them that,” she said. “Some of the janissaries want the Confederacy to force Earth into membership. It would mean that the Confederacy Council would interfere in Earth’s government. Humans would have to accept the Council’s policies. Stability. Lim­ited growth. The end of what we think of as prog­ress.”

“I see,” Rick said. “They call it ‘stability.’ But there’s another word for a society that hasn’t changed in thousands of years. Stagnant. Or deca­dent.”

“That’s almost exactly what Les said. His group wants to do more than just save Earth from destruc­tion. They want—Rick, it sounds trite, but they want humanity left free.”

“But where does Tran come in?” Rick asked.

“If they do bomb Earth, or even if they just make Earth into another decadent member of the Con­federacy, humans on Tran will still be free. With any luck, one of Agzaral’s people—probably Les him­self—will be sent here to collect the drugs. Only this time he won’t be leaving on such short notice. They can bring translations of their textbooks. Sci­entific equipment. And they’ve got the kind of bureaucracy you’d expect after five thousand years of stasis. Agzaral thinks they might even be able to lose a ship in the recordkeeping and send it here after the Shalnuksis have gone away.”

“Except that the Shalnuksis will be doing their best to kill off anyone who could help Tran progress beyond the Iron Age—”

“Yes. They will. They’ll almost certainly bomb the groups they’ve been trading with. But they might trust that mission to Les or one of his friends. They don’t like long journeys to out-of-the-way places. That’s one chance, anyway. And another is to hide. They won’t kill everyone on Tran. They can’t afford to, because they’ll want to do some more drug trad­ing six hundred years from now.”

Rick shook his head. “They’ve got the stars. Why do they traffic in drugs?”

“You don’t understand real decadence,” Gwen said. “Who are the heavy drug users on Earth? It’s not the poor and downtrodden who have big parties with bowls of cocaine.”

“And I suppose the Shalnuksis make a lot of—what? Money? Do they have money? Anyway, the drug trade profits them.”

“It must,” Gwen said. “But I wonder if they do it for profits at all. It must be a game to them. Excite­ment.” She thought for a moment. “Take the Mafia as an example. Surely the top dons are fabulously rich already. They could retire, go legitimate, but they don’t. It must be like that for the Shalnuksis.”