“Ya, Hauptman—”
“Shut up. Now, there is an inherent limitation to this form of communication. You can only burn their houses down once—thereby reducing agricultural production in this vicinity by one hundred percent. You can only kill them once. Whereupon they cease to be potentially useful units of labor and become so much dead meat . . . and pork is much cheaper. Do you grasp my meaning, boy?”
“Nein, Hauptman.”
This time Gerta repressed the sigh. “Terror is an effective tool of control, but only if it is applied selectively. There is nothing in the universe more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose. If you flog a man to death for having two shotgun shells—loaded with birdshot, he probably simply forgot them—then what incentive is left to prevent them from active resistance?”
“Oh.”
The junior officer looked as if he was thinking, which was profoundly reassuring. No Chosen was actually stupid; the Test of Life screened out low IQs quite thoroughly, and had for many generations. That didn’t mean that Chosen couldn’t be willfully stupid, though—over-rigid, ossified.
“So. You must apply a graduated scale of punishment. Remember, we are not here to exterminate these animals, tempting though the prospect is.”
Gerta looked over at the villagers. It was extremely tempting, the thought of simply herding them all into the church and setting it on fire. Perhaps that would be the best policy: just kill off the Empire’s population and fill up the waste space with the natural increase of the Land’s Protégés. But no. Behfel ist behfel. That would be far too slow, no telling what the other powers would get up to in the meantime. Besides, it was the destiny of the Chosen to rule all the rest of humankind; first here on Visager, ultimately throughout the universe, for all time. Genocide would be a confession of failure, in that sense.
“No doubt the ancestors of our Protégés were just as unruly,” the infantry lieutenant said thoughtfully. “However, we domesticated them quite successfully.”
“Indeed.” Although we had three centuries of isolation for that, and even so I sometimes have my doubts. “Carry on, then.”
“What would you suggest, Hauptmann?”
Gerta blinked against the harsh sunlight. “Have you been in garrison here long?”
“Just arrived—the area was lightly swept six months ago, but nobody’s been here since.”
She nodded; the Empire was so damned big, after the strait confines of the Land. Maps just didn’t convey the reality of it, not the way marching or flying across it did.
“Well, then . . . let your troopers make a selection of the females and have a few hours’ recreation. Have the rest of the herd watch. From reports, this is an effective punishment of intermediate severity.”
“It is?” The lieutenant’s brows rose in puzzlement.
“Animal psychology,” Gerta said, drawing herself up and saluting.
“Jawohl. Zum behfel, Hauptman. I will see to it.”
Gerta watched him stride off and then vaulted into her waiting steamcar, one hand on the rollbar.
“West,” she said to the driver.
The long dusty road stretched out before her, monotonous with rolling hills. Fields of wheat and barley and maize—the corn was tasseling out, the small grains long cut to stubble—and pasture, with every so often a woodlot or orchard, every so often a white-walled village beside a small stream. Dust began to plume up as the driver let out the throttle, and she pulled her neckerchief up over her nose and mouth. The car was coated with the dust and smelled of the peppery-earthy stuff, along with the strong horse-sweat odor of the two Protégé riflemen she had along for escort.
Wealth, I suppose, she thought, looking at the countryside she was surveying for her preliminary report. Warm and fertile and sufficiently well-watered, without the Land’s problems of leached soil and erosion and tropical insects and blights. Room for the Chosen to grow.
“We’re in the situation of the python that swallowed the pig,” she muttered to herself. “Just a matter of time, but uncomfortable in the interval.” That was the optimistic interpretation.
Sometimes she thought it was more like the flies who’d conquered the flypaper.
* * *
“Mama!”
Young Maurice Hosten stumped across the grass of the lawn on uncertain eighteen-month legs. Pia Hosten waited, crouching and smiling, the long gauzy white skirts spread about her, and a floppy, flower-crowned hat held down with one hand.