Vorgens nodded. “That’s right. My people are almost exactly like all the other people in the Empire. The old customs, the old beliefs—they’re only for teachers of ancient history, or museum keepers. I—I suppose it was inevitable. Unavoidable.”
“Was it?” Sittas asked.
“Yes,” Vorgens replied. “There are reasons . -.”
“Reasons?”
Vorgens looked at the old priest for a long moment. Then he began to explain to him what every servant of the Empire was expressly forbidden to tell a native.
He told Sittas of the Terrans’ gradual realization that, a million years earlier, a race of Terrans had reached into space, met a powerful alien race, and been smashed in a devastating war. He told the priest of the discovery of the ruins on Mars, of the machinery that had produced the Ice Ages that was found on Titan, of the remnants of the crumbled First Empire that the Terrans had found as they expanded into the stars once again.
“They are building their new Empire as solidly as they can,” Vorgens finished, “because they know that somewhere among the stars—perhaps in another galaxy, even—the Others still exist. They nearly exterminated the Terrans once, a million years ago. The Terrans are building an Empire that can exterminate the Others, if they show up again.”
“And for this reason Shinar must become a cog in their Imperial machine?”
Vorgens nodded.
“Are we not men? Would we not help to fight the Others?”
“I know,” the Star Watchman said. “My own people would, too. They wouldn’t have to be regimented by the Terrans. But now my homeworld is a planet of mines and factories. There are ten times more people there than we could possibly feed with our own resources. If, for some reason, the Empire should break down, nine people of every ten would starve.”