“I know,” Tiberius said. His peers — the Family Heads — were older than him by several decades, at the very least. They wouldn’t care about the children, even if they understood that the children had been innocent victims. Their mother had to die — Tiberius couldn’t have changed that — but they didn’t have to join her. Or be sentenced to a penal colony. “Make sure they have something to rely on, if they go to a colony world. Maybe one of the ones founded by lesser family.”
Once, thousands of colonies had been settled by eccentrics from Earth. Rogue groups, religious factions, people who merely wanted to get away… but that had come to an end when the Empire had started tightening the screws. Now, the only people who founded colonies were the Thousand Families, most of them designed to start paying off as soon as possible. But a handful were designed to stand on their own. It wasn’t something Tiberius had ever approved of, but he could see the value. And besides, those worlds weren’t involved in the war.
It struck him, suddenly, that he had never met the children, that he had only seen their images when they were being threatened by the interrogators. And yet he still felt guilty for what he’d had done to them — and what would have been done to them, if their mother hadn’t talked. Sending them to a decent colony was the very least he could do.
“There’s a world founded by an idiot who fancies himself an artist,” he said, slowly. There were times when he envied that man, even though the decision to leave the High City seemed foolish. The artist had no responsibilities beyond his art. “Maybe they’d like to go there.”
He looked down at his hands. They were clean, perfectly manicured… and yet he knew they were covered with blood. Decisions made casually in the Families Council resulted in very real hardship for the people under his authority. He’d made those decisions without every worrying about the people, until now. But was he considering them now because he’d seen one of them tortured until she’d been stripped mentally naked — or because some of the victims had risen up against the Empire?
The Empire was necessary. He knew that for a fact. But was the suffering also necessary?
He looked up at Sharon. “Did I do the right thing?”
Sharon lifted her eyebrows. She was loyal — she had no choice, but to be loyal — but it was rare for Tiberius to ask her advice. And yet, who else could he ask? Admiral Wachter was at Morrison, a month away even in the fastest courier boat, while the other senior family members would always keep their eye on the prize. They’d want to see him weaken himself by asking for advice, or even reassurance. It was lonely up at the top.
“I think it doesn’t matter what happens to the children,” Sharon said, finally. “You could do far worse to them, innocent or not.”
She was right, Tiberius knew. The whole idea of law and justice was a joke when the Thousand Families were involved. No one would have said anything if he’d had the children killed, or thrown down to Earth to fend for themselves, or even thrown into the brothels despite their young age. There was no law for the Thousand Families, no matter what they did; there were no pleasures, no matter how perverse, denied to them. In the end, he realised, he was looking at the ultimate end result of untrammelled power. There was nothing that members of his family could not do.
There was no point in punishing the children. It wasn’t as if they could gain anything by punishing the children. But too many aristocrats would have done it anyway, because they could. Because no one would have told them no.
“Yeah,” he said, finally. “I know.”
Sharon leaned forward. “Is that really what you want to know?”
Tiberius hesitated, then lifted his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I think you were asking me about more than just the children,” Sharon said. “You were asking about the Empire as a whole. Is it right to keep such tight control over countless planets and settlements and uncounted trillions of people?”
“Good question,” Tiberius agreed. “And how can you even ask that question?”
Sharon snorted. “I cannot actively act against your interests, nor can I let something happen against your interests without trying to stop it,” she said. “The Mind Techs ensured that I would be loyal and obedient — and I’ve accepted that as perfectly normal, even though rationally I should be outraged. But that doesn’t stop me considering such questions, or bringing them to your attention should you ask. Because… I have to know what your interests actually are, before I act in them.”
Tiberius felt his eyes narrow. “Who defines my best interests?”
“You do,” Sharon said. She snorted, again. “The Mind Techs were not allowed to suggest that I — or someone else — might define your best interests for you.”
“Creepy,” Tiberius said.
“Exactly,” Sharon agreed. “Do you see the problem?”
“You volunteered,” Tiberius said. “I read your file. You were offered an excellent rate of pay and superb retirement package in exchange for accepting the conditioning.”
“I know that,” Sharon said. “But don’t you see the point? The Mind Techs and the people who recruited me treated me as an object. They thought I could be reprogrammed to suit their desires — even if all they gave me was loyalty, I wasn’t the same after I stood up from the machine. And if it wasn’t for the fact the treatment slowly wears down initiative and imagination, you’d do it to everyone. You already do to the Blackshirts. Wouldn’t you like to do the same to the Imperial Navy?”
Her face twisted into a smile. “If you could, you would,” she added. “Who would worry about a mutiny if everyone was conditioned into service? Oh, you’d have reason to worry if your conditioned pawns ever had to face a real emergency. But you tacitly assumed for centuries that there would never be another interstellar war. Why not seek to condition everyone?
“And where does it end? The entire human race turned into a ant colony, with only a handful of people still possessing free will?
“You’d love to wield such power. Even if you didn’t, the other Family Heads would want it. And why not? It would make them safe forever. All it would cost them is treating everyone like objects. And that’s why you have a rebellion on your hands now. You’ve been treating people as objects so long that they’ve finally had enough of it.”
Tiberius forced himself to remain calm, even though her words cut at him. “We wouldn’t do that…”
“You’ve been doing it all along,” Sharon said. “Loyalty training, promoting your clients ahead of the competent, even insisting on your personal servants being conditioned. Why wouldn’t you condition everyone in the Empire if you could work out the logistics?”
She sat back, then smiled again. “Think about it,” she said. “Those poor children. Their dead mother. The workers who aren’t promoted because they’re not seen as politically reliable. The starship crewmen who aren’t offered a chance to shine because they might try to take power for themselves, or because they won’t kiss the ass of people born to their rank and station. The miners who are left to starve because maintaining their colony is not cost-effective. The colonists who are dumped on a lethal world, expected to develop it into something liveable or die trying. All of them have hopes and dreams, aspirations and plans… and you destroy them casually, because it suits you. Because of a balance statement, or because of your fears, or even because you’re grouchy one morning.”
Tiberius stared at her. “I have never destroyed lives because I was grouchy one morning.”
Sharon met his eyes. “Are you sure of that?”