“How?” she asked.
“Oh, along the present factional lines. About thirty percent to my Conservatives, maybe twenty to twenty-five to Gayner and her Militants, the rest to the Center group; the Center will pick up what’s left of the other parties, the Rationalists and so forth. Melinda”—she thought for a moment before realizing he must mean Melinda Shaversham, the present Archon—“hates the idea; she’ll probably end up with the rump, the Center, and try to hold things together. The Center have the largest numbers, but they’re short on organization an’ leadership. We’ll prob’ly have an unofficial Center-Conservative coalition, for a while at least. The long-term struggle will be fo’ the Center’s constituency.”
“Well, if you lookin’ fo’ my vote, Uncle Eric,” she began dubiously. He shook his head.
“Somethin’ far mo’ fundamental, Yolande.” He paused, looking down into his glass for a moment. “One thing the Militants don’t lack, it’s leadership: McLaren, Terreblanche, and Gayner. A thug, a loon, and a loony thug, but smart,”
“Call themselves Naldorists, don’t they?” she said.
Karl’s snort matched his father’s. “Naldorssen’s been dead since 1952,” he said decisively. “The Militants just wave her name, since we’ve all had her Will-to-Power philosophizing shoved down our throats in school.”
“Well, son, she did put it mo’ coherently than Nietzsche, even the formulations he made after he migrated to the Domination and calmed down,” Eric said charitably. “And the Militants do have a point. All that trans-human stage of evolution thing was mystical drivel when Naldorssen made it up, back when. With modern biocontrol, it could happen.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Under the adjustment to circumstances mealymouthin’, what the Militants have in mind is reorganizin’ the human race on a hive-insect specialization model.”
“Gahh,” Yolande said. Maybe I should have been following public affairs more carefully.
“Bad biology, too,” the professor said. “The hive insects haven’t changed an iota in seventy million years.”
Karl laughed sourly. “Precisely Gayner’s definition of success. Not surprising the ice bitch’s never had an original idea of her own, anyways.”
“But we live in a more challenging environment than insects do,” Snappdove mused. “And . . . intelligence doesn’t necessarily imply a self-conscious individual mind, y’know. Let the Militants get in control for three, four generations, and it’d be a positive disadvantage, even for the Race. We’d end up as empty of selfhood as ants.”
“Loki on ice,” Yolande said, alarmed. “I have been out of touch. Well, off Earth an’ busy. Don’t tell me the electorate is buyin’ this?”
“Not directly, but then the Militant inner circle aren’t spellin’ it out in those terms,” Eric said. “And it appeals to our national love of unchanging stasis, and the basic Draka emotion.” Yolande looked a question. “Fear.”
“Oh, come now, Uncle—”
“Why else would we have backed ourselves into this social cul de sac?” He rolled the liqueur glass between his hands. “Ever since the Landtaking, we’ve been in the position of a man runnin’ downhill on a slope too steep to stop; got to keep going, or we fall on our face an’ break our necks. Individual relationships aside, don’t delude youself that the serfs as a group like us as a group. They don’t. Why should they? We enslave them, drive them like cattle; because if we did any different, they’d overrun and butcher us.”
Yolande looked from side to side, not a conventional gesture but genuine alarm.
“Don’t worry,” her uncle said dryly. “This place is swept daily by technicians personally loyal to me. It works, or I’d be dead.”
“Well . . . ” Yolande gathered her thoughts. “It’s true, some aspects of the way serfs are treated is . . . unfo’tunate.” She remembered deeds of her own. “I gathah you’d like to increase the scope of those reforms you’ve introduced, the serf tribunals an’ such?”
Eric nodded. “Yes; but those are strictly limited. Administrative measures, really. They regularize the way serfs treat serfs . . . perhaps not so minor a mattah, since we use serfs fo’ most of our supervisory work. It’s certainly improved morale and efficiency, among the Literates . . . and they still provide the headhunters with the most of they work. An ex-slave in America once said that a badly-treated slave longed fo’ a good master, and a slave with a good master longed to be free . . . Not entirely true, thank Baldur the Good, or even mostly, but often enough to be worrisome. No, the long-term solution is to eliminate or reduce the fear. Do that, make the Citizen caste absolutely sure they’re not in danger from the serfs, an’ genuine reform becomes possible.
“You see,” he continued, leaning forward with hands on knees. The dim glowlight outlined the craggy bones of his face. “You see, an outright slave society like ours is a high-tension solution to a social problem. Extreme social forms are inherently unstable; ours is as unviable as actual democracy, because it’s as unnatural. It’s too far up the entropy gradient. We have to push, continually, to keep it there. Remove the motive of fear and necessity an’ the inherent human tendency to take the path of least resistance will modify it. Eventually—perhaps in a thousand years—we’d have . . . oh, a caste society, certainly, an authoritarian one, perhaps. But somethin’ mo’ livable fo’ everybody than this wolf-sheep relationship we have now. A better way out than Gayner’s bee-hive, fo’ certain. That’s almost as bad as annihilation.”
“Leavin’ us Citizens as sheepdogs instead?” Karl asked rhetorically.
Eric grinned at his son. “Don’t quote me back at mahself, boy. But yes, the human race will always need warriors and explorers, leaders even.”
Yolande paused, picked up a brandied chocolate truffle and nibbled on it. “Uncle, with all due respect, Ah don’t see how you could remove the necessity fo’ strict control. It’s been . . . well, the root of everythin’. Except by turnin’ the serfs into machinery o’ ghouloons.”
Eric’s grin became almost boyish. “We use go-with, on the Militants,” he said. Yolande frowned in puzzlement; that was an unarmed-combat term, a deception ploy which used an opponent’s weight and strength against themselves.
“You’ve been in contact with the Eugenics people, fo’ your daughter?” She nodded.
“The Militants thought they’d fought through a favorable compromise, a first step. We suckered them. Look—what are the biocontrollers removin’ from the serf population? It’ll take centuries more than the changes they’re making in the Race, but what? Not intelligence; they’re increasin’ that, by eliminatin’ the subnormal. Not creativity; Loki’s tits, we don’t know what causes that an’ I suspects we never will, same as we’ll never have a computer that does mo’ than mimic consciousness. We’re just removin’ . . . that extra edge of aggressiveness that makes a warrior, from the subject races. We all know serfs that be no menace however free we let them run, right?”
“And Draka who aren’t much mo’ dangerous,” Karl laughed.
Eric acknowledged it with a nod. “So, eventually . . . no fear. Not that the serfs would be without bargainin’ power; they’ll still outnumber us by eighty to one, and we’ll still be dependent on them . . . but we could let the balance shift without bein’ terrified it’d shift all the way. And think of what we could do if we didn’t have to keep such tight clamps on their education an’ such!”