*I was just busy crying in the fetal position, or something. Well, better now, and writing.- SAH*
It’s Just A Step To The Left
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I knew the mission to Dragha had gone seriously wrong when I saw the slave.
One of those things written in unerasable letters on the walls of IDS buildings was “Slave societies cannot join Free Humanity.”
Now there was a ton of argument – as about everything else – about what “slave societies” meant, ranging from very subtle shadings on the power of a central state, to people who insisted ours was a slave society since we had a Queen and nobility of birth. It probably will surprise no one that this later didn’t gain much acceptance in Britannia or in the Star Empire itself.
Me? All those shadings were too subtle for me. Surely, I could see how a society with hereditary noblemen and a quiescent and obedient p +opulation would become a tyranny. Everyone could see. It had happened several times in the history of mankind. But it was not that clear cut. Sure, at our level, where the Queen and the nobility mostly existed to perform unenviable diplomatic and administrative tasks and – sometimes – to lead war, should it be needed, or have the power of ultimate decision in complex cases, I was fairly sure that royalty worked for freedom. On the other hand there was the Quan empire where eventually their sovereign and nobility would decide they no longer needed citizens of any kind.
Edge cases? Ask me. Show me the documentation. I’ll know it when I see it.
What wasn’t an edge case was a society with the existence of actual, for-real chattel slaves. As in people who had no right of self-determination at any level, and could be used and abused at will, and bought and sold as things.
The Star Empire would accept no slave societies.
Not because slavery was uniquely evil, but because slavery corrupted. Once the habit of thinking of some people as things set in, coming out the other side with a free society was difficult.
And yes, I’m aware every human society was a slave society at the onset. It was often a necessity in pre-industrial societies, simply because there are jobs so difficult and so stupidly bad for you that no free human would do them willingly. And that eventually they redeemed themselves, and came out as non slave societies. But on the way there lay the terrific wars of the 19th and 20th century, and socio-psychologists see them as related.
Note that slavery reappeared in space for the same reason it first appeared on Earth: human workers were hard to find, and sometimes had to be forced to tasks largely beneficial to the community that no one wanted to do. Also, it reappeared as an extreme form of integrating two warring societies, arguably towards the more viable. As in the loser was forced into the culture of the winner.
But that didn’t make it justifiable, nor did it make the infection benign.
The Star Empire – Britannia on High -- would not accept societies where some portion of the population was kept as chattel. That was the beginning and the end of it. And though some cases might need to be brought to the attention of the socio-psychologists, the case in Dragha wasn’t one of those.
One entire section of our training – three months of it – was in identifying slaves when we saw them.
So, to recap for those not following along at home: my first assignment after graduation was to Dragha.
I was to be sent out alone. While it was unusual to be sent out alone on your first mission, it wasn’t unheard of. The team there before me – whose names I was never given – had prepared everything to admit Dragha, a level two monarchy – barely industrial, in early stage of individual rights assertion attempting to liberalize with mixed success -- into the Star Empire.
The day after my graduation, I was sent a dossier, detailing several years of investigation and visits by envoys, depicting a monarchic society, fairly wealthy, which could be made modern with the use of our technology.
Look, from where I stand now? There were holes in that case history that could have hidden entire herds of elephants. Which at one time I thought is why they sent a newby, fresh off training. Of course, now—
Anyway, from where I stood the mission was a lot like Valhalla, only not as fun. Sure, Dragha didn’t have feigleire, but I went almost entirely vegetarian while there, because all the meat dishes were strange.
However I didn’t go hungry. I was always dressing up in some very specific costume to go to banquets, or to watch some dance extravaganza.
I was told the culture was so old – ten thousand years or so since the lost ship – that there were no traces of earth customs or culture. Because lost colonies often lose tech and therefore culture. And some deliberately set out to forget Earth.
But the entire thing tasted middle eastern to me, with big men, dark haired and dark eyed, of the kind that looked like they would as easily pull a knife on you as poison your drink, and women who were covered up all but the eyes or sometimes the face and who scurried out of sight when barely glimpsed: unless they were whores or dancers. I wasn’t sure there was a difference between whores and dancers, either.
Work got done around me, from food being served, to my room being cleaned/clothing cleaned and put away, but I never saw servants. Even the banquets had all the food laid out by the time we arrived. That should have tipped me off to something being off also, and the only excuse I have for not realizing earlier is that I was green as grass and twice as stupid.
So, I stumbled from banquet to party, and party to another banquet, and eventually stumbled into my bed. I had early on refused the girl in my bed, and then the boy in my bed. This was per protocol, but also because when I say the boy in my bed, I’m not using it in a colloquial sense, and I never had any interest in children. Also even had he been older, I couldn’t tell to what extent being in bed was compelled, and I never had any interest in rape by any other name.
And then – when the official signing ceremony was supposed to happen that would bring Dragha into the Star Empire as a probationary member and let me go home – I forgot the documents for signing. It was a special paper, not only non-decaying but impregnated with something or other, likely nanites, same as the translator thingies that worked with my brain to make me understand any language. These were essential because they recorded the DNA of any person who touched the papers. Which was important for the obvious legal reasons.
So I forgot them in my room.
I know, that is a freshman blunder of the type not even I as a freshman should have been able to commit. Except of course I did.
It’s entirely possible that my father was right when he said sometimes we know things we don’t know, and that our subconscious causes accidents or forgetfulness in ways that are needed to save us, while our rational brain refuses to catch the signals.
Maybe it was that, or maybe I was sick and tired of Dragha, and of feeling like I was always watched, and always in peril even though, rationally, that made no sense.
So, I forgot the documents, and I went to my room for them.
Honestly, I don’t know why they let me go unescorted, except that I turned around unexpectedly, then I got lost, and wandered off into something that might have been the women’s bathing room, and it’s probable whoever was watching me had some cultural taboo about entering that space.
I swore – in Valhallian, because it seemed appropriate – with “Thor’s rusty hammer” and turned and got out, by another door, though I didn’t realize that, until I noticed the corridor was not the overly ornate space I’d come to know, but a lot simpler: stuccoed stone, and just worn stone underfoot. But I knew I was on the third floor, and my room was on the fourth, and I headed for the stairs.
And stopped.
Because I saw the slave. He was young, and for a moment, I thought he was a she, given the angelic, beardless face. But the body was all he, at least as much as was visible, between the slave collar and the linen kilt. And the legs below were male too, and the bare feet sure looked it, though both looked larger than I’d expect from a beardless youth.
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