The attack in force that followed captured the Central Palace and everyone in it, and surprised the legionnaires who were beginning to emerge from the secret passageway. Czinczar’s men poured all the oil in the large palace tanks into the downward sloping passageway and set it afire.
Thus died an entire legion of men.
That night a hundred reserve barbarian spaceships landed behind the Linnan soldiers besieging the gates. And in the morning, when the barbarians inside the city launched an attack, the two remaining legions were cut to pieces.
Of these events the Lord Adviser Tews knew nothing. His skull had been turned over the previous day to Czinczar’s favorite goldsmith, to be plated with Linnan gold and shaped into a goblet to celebrate the greatest victory of the century.
To Lord Clane Linn, going over his accounts on his country estate, the news of the fall of Linn came as a special shock. With unimportant exceptions, all his atomic material was in Liun. He dismissed the messenger, who had unwisely shouted the news as he entered the door of the accounting department. And then sat at his desk – and realized that he had better accept for the time being the figures of his slave bookkeepers on the condition of the estate.
As he glanced around the room after announcing the postponement, it seemed to him that at least one of the slaves showed visible relief. He did not delay, but called the man before him instantly. He had an inexorable system in dealing with slaves, a system inherited from his long – dead mentor, Joquin, along with the estate itself.
Integrity, hard work, loyalty, and a positive attitude produced better conditions, shorter working hours, more freedom of action, after thirty the right to marry, after forty legal freedom. Laziness and other negative attitudes such as cheating were punshed by a set pattern of demotions. Short of changing the law of the land, Clane could not at the moment imagine a better system in view of the existence of slavery. And now, in spite of his personal anxieties, he carried out the precept of Joqnin as it applied to a situation where no immediate evidence was available. He told the man, Oorag, what had aroused his suspicions and asked him if they were justifed. “If you are guilty and confess,” he said, “you will receive only one demotion. If you do not confess and you are later proven guilty, there will be three demotions, which means physical labor, as you know.”
The slave, a big man, shrugged and said with a sneer, “By the time Czinczar is finished with you Linnans, you will be working for me.” “Field labor,” said Clane curty, “for three months, ten hours a day.”
It was no time for mercy. An empire under artack did not flinch from the harshest acts. Anything that could be construed as weakness would be disastrous.
As the slave was led out by guards, he shouted a final insult over his shoulder. “You wretched mutation,” he said, “you’ll be where you belong when Czinczar gets here.”
Clane did not answer. He considered it doubtful that the new conqueror had been selected by fate to punish all the evildoers of Liun according to their desserts. It would take too long. He put the thought out of his mind and walked to the doorway. There he paused and faced the dozen trusted slaves who sat at their various desks.
“Do nothing rash,” he said slowly in a clear voice, “any of you. If you harbor emotions similar to those expressed by Oorag, restrain yourselves. The fall of one city in a surprise attack is not important.” He hesitated. He was, he realized, appealing to their cautious instincts, but his reason told him that in a great crisis men did not always consider all the potentialities.
“I am aware,” he said finally, “there is no great pleasure in being a slave, though it has advantages – economic security, free craft training. But Oorag’s wild words are a proof that if young slaves were free to do as they pleased, they would constitute a jarring, if not revolutionary factor in the community. It is unfortunately true that people of different races can only gradually learn to live together.”
He went out, satisfied that he had done the best possible under the circumstances. He had no doubt whatsoever that here, in this defiance of Oorag, the whole problem of a slave empire had again shown itself in miniature. If Czinczar were to conquer any important portion of Earth, a slave uprising would follow automatically. There were too many slaves, far too many for safety, in the Linnan empire.
Outside, he saw his first refugees. They were coming down near the main granaries in a variety of colorful skyscooters. Clane watched them for a moment, trying to picture their departure from Linn. The amazing thing was that they had waited till the forenoon of the second day. People must simply have refused to believe that the city was in danger, though, of course, early fugitives could have fled in other directions. And so not come near the estate.
Clane emerged decisively out of his reverie. He called a slave and dispatched him to the scene of the arrivals with a command to his personal guards. “Tell these people who have rapid transportation to keep moving. Here, eighty miles from Linn, we shall take care only of the foot-weary.”
Briskly now, he went into his official residence and called the commanding officer of his troops. “I want volunteers, “he explained, “particularly men with strong religious beliefs who on this second night after the invasion are prepared to fly into Linn and remove all the transportable equipment from my laboratory.”
His plan, as he outlined it finally to some forty volunteers, was simplicity itself. In the confusion of taking over a vast city it would probably be several days before the barbarian army would actually occupy all the important residences. Particularly, on there early days, they might miss a house situated, as his was, behind a barrier of trees.
If by some unfortunate chance it was afready occupied, it would probably be so loosely held that bold men could easily kill every alien on the premises and so accomplish their purpose.
“I want to impress upon you,” Clane went on “the importance of this task. As all of you know, I am a member of the temple hierarchy. I have been entrusted with sacred god metals and sacred equipment, including material taken from the very homes of the gods. It would be a disaster if these precious relics were to fall into unclean hands, I, therefore, charge you that if you should by some mischance be captured, do not reveal the real purpose of your presence. Say that you came to rescue your owner’s private property. Even admit you were foolish to sacrifice yourself for such a reason.”
Mindful of Tews’ guard unit, he finished his instructions. “It may be that Linnan soldiers are guarding the equipment, in which case give the officer in command this letter.”
He handed the document to the captain of the volunteers. It was an authorization signed by Clane with the seal of his rank. Since the death of Tews, such an authorization would not be lightly ignored.
When they had gone out to prepare for the mission, Clane dispatched one of his private spaceships to the nearby city of Goram and asked the commander there, a friend of his, what kind of counteraction was being prepared against the invader. “Are the authorities in the cities and towns,” he asked, “showing that they understand the patterns of action required of them in a major emergency? Or must the old law be explained to them from the beginning?”
The answer arrived in the shortest possible time, something under forty minutes. The general placed his forces at Clane’s command and advised that he had dispatched messengers to every major city on Earth in the name of “his excellency, Lord Clane Linn, ranking survivor on Earth of the noble Tews, the late Lord Adviser, who perished at the head of his troops, defending the city of Linn from the foul and murderous surprise attack launched by a barbarian horde of beastlike men who seek to destroy the fairest civilization that ever existed.”
There was more in the same vein, but it was not the excess of verbiage that startled Clane. It was the offer itself and the implications. In his name an army was being organized.
After rereading the message, he walked slowly to the full-length mirror in the adjoining bathroom and stared at his image. He was dressed in the fairly presentable reading gown of a temple scientist. Like all his temple clothing, the shoulder cloth folds of this concealed his “differences” from casual view. An observer would have to be very acute to see how carefully the cloak was drawn around his neck, and how it was built up to hide the slant of his body from the neck down, and how tightly the arm ends were tied together at his wrists.