“Only officially,” Siflot said.
“Very good,” Allouene said. “Yes, there was still a tiny but constant stream of communication with Terra and its richer colonies—unofficial, clandestine, technically illegal, but carefully protected by wealth and privilege at both ends of the line. It sent not only money, but also every luxury the Terran planets could boast, and every new one that was invented. This even included a few items of state-of-the-art technology, but not many.”
“I thought they wanted every luxury they could think of,” Ragnar said.
“Perhaps,” Magnus murmured, “but they did not want to have to look at the technology that produced it.”
Allouene looked up sharply. “You sound as though you know, Gar.”
Magnus felt the tension, so he shrugged very casually. “I’ve seen people like that.”
“Well, you’re right.” Allouene was eyeing him in a new light. “The founding families had decided that the most graceful and elegant age of Terra’s history had been the late Seventeenth Century, the age of Charles the Second and Louis the Fourteenth, of the Drury Lane Theater and the Three Musketeers, and had devoted themselves to living with all the luxuries of that age but none of the inconveniences. They dressed in their own versions of 1670’s clothing, took the waters at spas, attended reproductions of Restoration theaters, rode horses and drove in carriages, flocked to each other’s balls, and paraded in their own court masques.”
“Very pretty,” Magnus murmured. “I understand the real seventeenth century had its share of filth and sickness, though.”
“Let us not be too historically accurate,” Siflot said softly.
Allouene laughed with them, then nodded. “Yes, they wanted limits—renovation, not restoration. Modern medicine banished the specter of disease that had so ravished the real Seventeenth Century, and modern building materials prevented a recreation of the Great Fire of London. Their carriages rode on hidden anti-gravity units that cushioned the jarring of springless iron wheels, and modern weapons guaranteed their safety.”
“Safety?” Magnus frowned. “From whom? Are there ferocious animals you have not told us about?” Allouene shook her head, and her golden mane swirled prettily, almost making Magnus miss the next few words. “Anything that looked like a dangerous predator had been annihilated when they first arrived, except for a few specimens kept in zoo-parks as curiosities.”
“What else was there to fear?” Lancorn demanded, but she looked as though she didn’t want to know. “What else?” Allouene repeated, with a grim smile. “What was the Restoration without Nell Gwyn? Who was going to perform in their theaters? Who would warm their beds when they wished to be naughty, who would shift the scenes …?”
“Who would grow the food?” Magnus murmured. “Robots could do that,” Ragnar protested.
“Of course,” Lancorn agreed, “but who would cook it?”
“Again, robots!”
Allouene nodded. “Robots could have done it—but it was so much more satisfactory to have a living cook to scold and threaten. In fact, when you really get right down to it, one of the greatest pleasures of the aristocracy has always been having peasants to lord it over and kick around, and wait upon you hand and foot.”
Magnus sat immobile. He couldn’t quite claim innocence, but he had always been angry with lords who mistreated their people. He’d even done something about it, once or twice—personally.
“The ladies needed maids to help them dress and undress, after all,” Allouene went on, “and the men needed valets. The land needed tenants to care for it, and living human beings were so much more aesthetic than soulless robots.”
“So they brought slaves,” Lancorn growled. “Serfs,” Allouene corrected. “They’re tied to the soil—even if the land changes hands, they don’t. They stay on the estate. The one good thing about it is that they can’t be bought and sold.”
“The only good thing,” Lancorn snorted. “Where did they get them?” Ragnar growled. “The original would-be aristocrats each recruited a hundred ordinary people who badly needed money,” Allouene told them. “Some were horribly in debt to the founders, some were chronic gamblers, some were alcoholics and drug addicts, some were poor, some wanted enough money to have families. All were seduced by the offer of a lifetime’s income in return for five years’ service on a new world, the salary to be held in a Terran bank for them, earning interest until their return. A hundred recruits for each plutocrat, a hundred who gladly agreed to come along—or sometimes reluctantly, not that it mattered.”
“A hundred thousand serfs in the making,” Lancorn said, paling.
Magnus sat frozen. Was this how the peasants of his own world of Gramarye had been recruited—with lies and coercion? But no—he remembered; Father Marco Ricci had left records, and Magnus’s parents had gone back in time and talked with people who had been there. The ancestors of Gramarye’s people had volunteered, and gladly—they had been trying to escape the depersonalized society that had evolved with high technology. No doubt they hadn’t realized how their descendants would live—but people seldom thought things through to the end. Including himself?
For the first time, Magnus wondered what he was getting himself into.
“Why didn’t they leave when their five years were up?” Siflot asked, but from the tone of his voice, he had already guessed.
“Because they couldn’t,” Ragnar snorted.
“They never came back, of course,” Lancorn agreed. “How could they, if their lords didn’t want them to? Who owned the spaceships, who controlled the police?” She looked to Allouene for confirmation.
The lieutenant nodded. “The hundred thousand were immediately locked into serfdom, and never came out of it. Moreover, the lords demanded that they have families, and there weren’t very many of them who had the strength to risk the punishments waiting for anyone who disobeyed. The few who held out were tortured, and caved in quickly—especially since the very few who refused to give in in spite of the pain, died in the process.”
“So the lords were sure they wouldn’t run out of servants,” Lancorn said, her face stony.
“The next generation was guaranteed,” Allouene said, “and the first batch of rebellious genes had been weeded out. The second generation of serfs grew up with the habit of obedience, and learned how to swallow their anger—and outrage and rebellion.”
“Weren’t there any who couldn’t quench the fires?” Siflot asked softly.
“Of course,” Allouene said. “In every generation a few rebelled—and were hanged, or drawn and quartered, or killed in battle. No matter which way, over the generations, their genes were weeded out.”
“But other genes were reinforced.”
Ragnar frowned, puzzled; Lancorn cocked her head to the side, finger to her cheek; but Magnus just sat rigidly, and Siflot stared in horror. “Of course!” he cried. “Only a hundred thousand! Inbreeding!”
Allouene nodded. “A hundred thousand isn’t a very large gene pool, after all, and after a few generations, no matter who you married, he or she was probably related to you, one way or another. By the tenth generation, they definitely were, no ‘probably’ about it—and recessive gene reinforced recessive gene. The consequences of inbreeding began to appear: loss of intelligence, dwarfism, gigantism, hemophilia—and mental illness. Coupled with genius sometimes, other times with idiocy, sometimes all by itself—but madness nonetheless.”
“They had to have known,” Ragnar growled. “The original lords must have known what they were doing to the future generations.”
But Magnus shook his head. “Why should they have thought it through? They didn’t care.”
“But they should have cared about their own descendants!” Lancorn turned to Allouene. “It hit them too, didn’t it?”