Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  “And that’s happened here?” Saxon demanded. “What the hell is going on? Are you trying to recruit me into some kind of Galactic human conspiracy against the government?”

  Agzaral smiled.

  “I believe you may have selected the right person despite my misgivings,” he said. “Congratulations, Gregeral.”

  Lee smiled faintly in reply.

  “Of course, it isn’t quite that simple.” Agzaral said. “‘Conspiracy against the government’ is too strong a phrase. Neither is it entirely incorrect however.” He frowned for a moment, as if in thought. “Think rather that we aid one part of the government against another.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “The advancement of humanity,” Lee said.

  “A dramatic way to put it, but yes, something like that,” Agzaral said. “Our end goals are . . . several, but one of them—perhaps the most essential—is the admission of the human race to the Confederation. As equals, not as a recruiting ground for slaves.”

  “That’s noble enough,” Saxon said. “Assuming I can believe you. And your other goals?”

  “The survival of humanity,” Agzaral said flatly.

  Saxon looked at him for long, motionless seconds, then shook his head.

  “The survival of humanity isn’t your ‘most essential’ goal?” he asked incredulously.

  “The inspector didn’t say humanity’s admission was the most important goal, Bart,” Lee said quietly. “He said it was the most essential; the one without which survival may well become impossible.”

  “Impossible?! You just said this has been going on for thousands of years!”

  “It has,” Agzaral said. “And during those millennia we have seen at least four civilizations and eleven intelligent species exterminated by the Confederation.”

  Saxon looked at him in horror, and the inspector made the same shrugging gesture.

  “In three of those cases, it was human hands which carried out the murders, Mr. Saxon. We obeyed the orders of our masters. It is what we do.”

  “But . . . but why?”

  “The Confederation prizes stability above all other things. It is a civilization which has taken thousands upon thousands of years to evolve, the matrix upon which a dozen races, each with the technological capability to destroy worlds, interact in ways which preclude the use of those weapons upon one another. They will allow nothing to destabilize that matrix. Anything which seems likely to do so—anything which may do so—must be . . . neutralized.”

  “And—?” Saxon said, looking at him when he paused.

  “And certain factions of the Confederacy and of the High Commission are hardening in their belief that their human slaves threaten precisely that destabilization,” Agzaral said levelly.

  “Why?”

  “Because they fear, correctly, that at least some of us would refuse to obey their orders and destroy another civilization, another world . . . if that world were Earth.”

  “Earth? They want you to destroy Earth?!”

  “That decision has not yet been made. It may never be made. But Earth’s current rate of progress frightens them, although most of them would reject the use of the verb ‘fear.’ Yet whatever you may choose to call it, the factions to which I refer have grown progressively more anxious over the last fifty or sixty years of Earth’s history. In the past, Earth has been protected. A nature preserve, perhaps, because it is the home of our species and past Confederation policy has been to introduce occasional, carefully metered infusions of ‘wild’ human genes into their Janissaries. Despite that, there is evidence that the High Commission has, in the past, intervened to enormously reduce—to cull, perhaps—the population of Earth. The last such attempt occurred in your fourteenth century.”

  “What are you talking about? Nobody attacked Earth in the fourteenth century!”

  “No?” Agzaral cocked his head. “You have, perhaps, heard of the Black Death?” Saxon swallowed hard, and Agzaral’s hands shrugged again. “The most effective biological weapons are normally those developed from pathogens already present in the environment, Mr. Saxon.”

  “This Confederation did that? To Earth?”

  “It did,” Agzaral said. “This is something that we confirmed from the secret archives only recently. Within the last ten of your years.”

  “My God,” Saxon whispered.

  “Not all of the races of the Confederation are equally enamored of stability above all else,” Agzaral told him. “Several of the ‘younger’ members were forcibly compelled to accept the Confederation’s policies, the limitations set upon their technology and their own actions, when first they attained interstellar flight. It was one of those races which aided us in confirming the truth of the Black Death. Not out of altruism, of course, but because they hoped that we would join with them in . . . modifying the Confederation’s policy, shall we say.”

  “Why would they hope that if you’ve been these ‘Janissaries’ for so long?”

  “Because the High Commission used biological weapons to kill a quarter of Earth’s population in the Middle Ages, when your entire planet boasted perhaps four hundred and fifty million people, most of whom didn’t have even gunpowder. What do you think they might resort to when Earth’s population is over five and a half billion and it has attained nuclear weapons? Tell me, Mr. Saxon, are you familiar with the term ‘dinosaur killer’?”

  It was very, very quiet in the inspector’s office for several seconds. Saxon stared at the other two men, nausea rolling about in his belly.

  “Understand me,” Agzaral continued. “I and some of my fellow Janissaries were prepared to aid Earth, if we could, but we saw Tran as a place where humans could continue to grow and develop even if Earth was devastated. Even if the Confederation decided to exterminate all ‘wild humans’ once and for all. But there were also Janissaries who would agree with a decision to destroy Earth. Who see the thousands of years in which we, the human slave-soldiers of the Confederation, have preserved the peace of not billions but trillions upon trillions of sentient beings, as far more important than what might happen upon a single backwater world the vast majority of them have never seen.

  “But the factions on the High Commission and in the Confederation who favor what we might call a final solution to the Earth problem may very well not stop there. There is a reason the High Commission of six hundred of your years ago used biological means and hid it from the Janissaries of their own time.”

  He paused, and Saxon shook his head.

  “What reason?”

  “Fear,” Agzaral said. “Humans are ubiquitous throughout the Confederation’s worlds. They are not allowed to make policy, yet there are more humans in more star systems than any other single species, and they man the Confederation’s fleets, staff its police forces, administer its bureaucracies, and regulate its commerce. If those humans, or a sizable percentage of them, should turn upon their masters, the consequences could be catastrophic.”

  “That’s good, then. Right? I mean, if they depend on you that heavily, then they have to be more cautious about something that might drive you into rebellion.”

  “Unless they decide to reduce that dependency by eliminating those upon whom they depend.”

  “What?” Saxon shook his head again, feeling like a boxer who’d taken one punch too many.

  “It’s a serious policy proposal among the factions most concerned over potential destabilization, Bart,” Lee said quietly. “Exterminate humanity, the same way the Confederation has exterminated other races, and the ‘human problem’ goes away forever.”

  Saxon’s jaw clenched, and it was Agzaral’s turn to shake his head.

  “No decisions have been reached yet, Mr. Saxon, and there are factions on the High Commission who would strongly oppose any such policy. I think they would be unlikely to oppose the notion of ‘pruning’ Earth equally strongly, but some of them definitely would oppose that, as well. I personally suspect that some of those considering a ‘fina
l solution’ are less concerned about the danger humanity might present than they are about eliminating the police forces and regulatory agents who inhibit their actions in the name of the Confederation. From our perspective, however, their motivation matters rather less than their intention.”

  “Yeah, I can see how you might put it that way,” Saxon said bitterly, and Agzaral’s hands moved again.

  “I told you you would never fully understand Confederation politics, and I certainly have no time to explain their intricacies to you now. But what you do need to know is that an entire spectrum of strategies is in motion. The equation is so complex, its solution dependent upon so many variables, that we are forced to play for a hierarchy of possible outcomes, from most favorable to least favorable. And that is where you enter the lists, Mr. Saxon.”

  “Me? What’s my part in all this?”

  “We need science teachers,” Agzaral said. “Most of what Dr. Lee has told you is the exact truth. We need to transform a primitive world into a modern one. Modern not merely by your standards, but by ours.”

  “What do you mean by primitive?”

  “The dominant civilization is at a level comparable to Earth’s medieval period,” Agzaral said. “With some elements of the Renaissance.”

  “You want it to move from Renaissance to space travel,” Saxon said. “No, from Renaissance to interstellar travel. And how long to do that?”

  “It took five centuries for Earth humans to reach your moon," Agzaral said. “We won’t have that long. Our hope is that you and the knowledge you’re taking with you can shorten that process considerably.”

  Saxon frowned.

  “Knowledge is one thing. Building an industrial base to do something with that knowledge is— But of course you know that.”

  “We do,” Agzaral said. “We do, and that concerns us, but there’s nothing more we can do about it.”

  “I do point out,” Lee said, “that Earth went from mostly animal-drawn transportation in World War I to trucks and aircraft in the Second World War. A matter of thirty years. Twenty-five years after that they were on your Moon. Note also the progress of parts of your so-called Third World. With the right knowledge base, industrial development can be quite rapid.”

  “But what’s the point?” Saxon demanded. “You think you could build a bunch of primitives up into something with the firepower to take on this Confederation of yours? The one that’s already exterminated a bunch of other species?”

  “That is not precisely what we have in mind,” Agzaral said dryly.

  “Then what do you have in mind?”

  “At the moment Tran is primitive, even by your standards. If, however, it attains the level of interstellar flight, as a unified world, the Confederation’s own rules would require it to extend the possibility of membership in the Confederation to it.”

  Saxon looked from Agzaral to Lee and back again.

  “And there’s a reason these antihuman hardliners of yours wouldn’t just wipe this place—Tran, did you call it?—off the face of the universe instead of granting it membership?”

  “That is where our allies come into play,” Agzaral said. “Some of those other races which resent their subordinate positions, or who fear they might someday find themselves in humanity’s place, would agitate strongly against any such decision. They would insist that the Confederation honor its own long-standing law, and although they may be constrained by the limitations the Confederation imposed upon them at the time they became members, they are still voting members. They cannot simply be ignored, especially when at least one of the Confederation’s oldest races is prepared to stand with them, as well. The outcome would not be a certainty, but that is precisely the nature of our problem. There are no certainties.”

  “I see.” Saxon inhaled deeply. “Should I assume that Tran’s membership in the Confederation would constitute your best-case scenario?”

  “It would constitute one of our best-case scenarios. It is always possible that Earth will not be devastated, in which case it will almost certainly attain a qualifying level of technology well before Tran. It is certain, however, that Earth’s admission to the Confederation would be hedged about with far more restrictions and limitations than any other member race, and the Confederation’s long history with Earth would make that more acceptable to the potentially undecided factions on the High Commission. And Tran also represents our next-to-worst-case scenario: the world upon which our species may survive after it has been wiped out everywhere else in the galaxy.”

  Agzaral’s tone was calm, almost dispassionate, but an icicle ran down Saxon’s spine.

  “How much support can I expect?” he asked, dreading the response.

  “All of our plans require that we have minimal contact with Tran lest we draw the attention of the very factions whose attention we must, at all costs, avoid.”

  “‘Minimal contact,’” Saxon repeated. “I’m getting the impression that I’m about to be very much on my own.”

  “That’s pretty much it,” Lee agreed. “It’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to provide any additional support after you’ve reached Tran.”

  “Great.” Saxon sagged back in his chair.

  “There is another element in play,” Lee said after a moment, frowning slightly. “Another group of Earth humans recently arrived on Tran. A group of mercenary soldiers under a Captain Galloway of the United States Army. Inspector Agzaral permitted them to go to Tran, but they weren’t sent by us. We didn’t select them and they weren’t sent to transform or unify the planet, although Galloway seems to have adopted that mission. Or some of it, at least. He may even accomplish it. He’s proven quite capable.”

  “Wait a minute—wait a minute! If you didn’t send them, who did?”

  “They were sent by a race called the Shalnuksis,” Agzaral said, “who paid a great deal of money to transport Captain Galloway and his men to Tran in order to grow a highly valuable crop for them. The Shalnuksis are a commercial, trader race, and they expect to earn back their expenses with considerable profit. And while many of the Confederation’s races despise them, others admire them, and they have considerable influence with one powerful faction of the government. For historical reasons, they have commercial rights to exploit Tran. For political reasons, they choose not to openly assert those rights, but instead rely on keeping Tran, and its future, a very low-profile issue in Confederate politics so that they can exploit it ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ This situation has endured for several thousand of your years, and with Earth’s development of space travel and the new . . . uncertainty about humanity’s place in Confederation affairs, the most powerful Shalnuksi clan has even less desire for the other governing races to recall the existence of Tran.”

  “So they sent Galloway to grow this crop—I’m guessing we’re talking about something like opium—for them?” Saxon shook his head. “Sounds like a wonderful guy!”

  “Captain Galloway had even less choice about accepting his assignment than you did,” Agzaral said. “And there is indeed some hope that he will succeed, as Gregeral has just suggested. Moreover, through an accident—well, through a mistake no one could foresee—Galloway may shortly acquire significant additional capabilities. If he is successful, we expect you to work with him. On the other hand, he may fail, and while Gregeral is correct about his competence, the odds of his success are not high. Bluntly, Mr. Saxon, at this point you represent a low-profile insurance policy for the possibility—perhaps even the probability—that he will fail.”

  Agzaral hesitated, then went on.

  “Insurance or primary, it’s important work,” he said. “Out there is a planet of humans with no future. And here”—he gestured towards the image of Earth on the screen—“is a planet of humans with a totally unknown and unpredictable future. And in the Confederation is an entire species facing potential destruction. What you do on Tran will certainly change the lives of the people there, but you may also change not only what happens to
Earth, but what happens throughout the entire Confederation, as well.”

  “The fate of humanity rests with me.” Saxon tried to say it ironically.

  It didn’t come out that way.

  Agzaral’s hands moved in that shrugging gesture yet again, but his eyes were dark as they met Saxon’s.

  “So!” Saxon said after a long, silent moment. “What do I have to work with?”

  “What you’ve brought,” Agzaral said. “Understand that you already know more about the Confederation—and about our plans—than anyone on Tran. For our part, we will do what else we can. That may be a lot if certain plans mature, but as Gregeral has already suggested, it is far more likely that the most important thing we can do for you is to arrange for you to be forgotten. For Tran to vanish in bureaucratic records. We are unlikely to have the means to do much more for you, and possibly nothing at all. To be precise: given a choice between directly aiding you with technology and supplies, and assisting in hiding your existence from the Confederation, we will choose the latter. It’s for that reason that we have provided you with as much as we could now.”

  “Like Einstein’s papers,” Saxon said.

  “Precisely,” Lee said. “You may not be able to read them now, Bart, but that need not be true for you always. It certainly need not be true of your students, and I’ve tucked away what you might think of as a scientific Rosetta Stone for you, as well.”

  Saxon eyed him speculatively, but then Agzaral made a throat-clearing sound and Saxon’s gaze returned to him.

  “While it would be very tempting to provide additional support,” the inspector said, “every ship we send increases the probability that you will be detected.”

  “What about this other guy? This Army captain? Galloway?”

  “We are trying to aid Captain Galloway, but the fact remains that we can do little more for either of you.”

  “Aid Galloway. You approve of him, then?”

  “A difficult question,” Agzaral said. “In general, yes. He’s proven to be both capable and ethical, and a better teacher than his education would indicate. The fact remains, he and all his men were soldiers, not teachers. It will be part of your task to ascertain Galloway’s capabilities and intentions, and to decide whether or not to work with him. Of course, that must remain secret.”