Their road had detoured to utilize the natural protection provided by a small hill when there was a sharp, crashing detonation followed by a diminishing, hissing roar. Martin’s eyes jerked upward in time to see a large meteor trace an incandescent line across the sky below the cloud base, and a moment later he felt the shock of impact transmitted through the solid, upsprung structure of the tricycle as it struck ground somewhere behind a nearby rise. Then suddenly the stony landscape beyond the outer edge of the road was covered by tiny explosions of rock dust.
“This must be the heavier Scourge you spoke of,” Skorta said. “The Masters warn of such events, but even they cannot be accurate in their predictions.”
“Why do they refer to the meteorites as the Scourge?”
Beth asked. “Do they equate all forms of danger and pain with strokes from a Master’s whip?”
Martin waited until a large vehicle flying what he now knew to be the pennant of the Master of Agriculture squeezed past on the outside, then asked the question.
“The Masters say,” the Teldin replied, turning its head briefly to look at him, “that it is a continuing reminder that we cannot fully trust anything that is not experienced directly except, of course, the words of a Master.”
“Are slaves, particularly high-ranking slaves like yourself, ever rewarded with your freedom?” Martin asked.
“We have freedom,” the Teldin replied.
“But the Masters tell you what to do and think,” Martin protested. “They alone have weapons. They alone administer punishment and have the power of life and death.”
“Naturally, they are the Masters.”
Martin knew that he was getting into a sensitive area, but he needed the answers. “Is the death penalty administered often? And which crimes merit it?”
“Sometimes the Masters execute each other for Masters’ reasons,” the Teldin said, slowing as the road curved sharply and continued into a deep ravine. “With slaves it rarely happens, and only if there is destruction of valuable Living property. For less serious crimes slaves may be reduced in status or forced to work in unprotected areas of the surface for a time, or if the offense is venial, the peacekeeping slaves deal with it.
“An alert Master served by trusted and observant slaves,” the Teldin added, “is able to stop trouble before it develops to the point where damage to property occurs.”
For a few seconds Martin tried to control his revulsion at the picture of the Teldin culture which was emerging. If Skorta’s Master received a full report of everything he had said to its slave, then his next question was foolhardy indeed, but it had to be asked.
“Do you ever feel dissatisfied with your status, Skorta, and wish you were a Master?”
“Have you gone mad?” Beth began, and broke off because the Teldin was speaking.
“There have been times when I would have liked to be a Master,” it replied, and made another one of its untranslatable noises, “but good sense prevailed.”
The floor of the ravine had begun to rise, and as it pedaled up the grade, Skorta had no breath to spare for speech, giving Beth the chance to express herself at length.
“You’re taking too many risks,” she said angrily. “My advice is to pull out as soon as you can. Some of the things you’ve said to Skorta could be construed as attempted subversion of a highly-placed slave, and the Masters won’t like that. Besides, with all the surface sensor material we’ve collected that is still awaiting processing, plus your interview with Skorta, we should have enough information for our assessment…”
The picture which was emerging was clear but not at all pleasant, she continued. Teldi was essentially a slave culture, with the vast majority of the planetary population serving an elitist group of Masters who might be numbered in the thousands, or perhaps even hundreds. Their control of the slave population was such that the slaves themselves, with their minor graduations of responsibility and status, were, as a group, happy with the situation, although individuals like Skorta might occasionally have their doubts. So happy were they with their role that the slaves did not want to become Masters and helped maintain themselves in slavery by betraying any fellow slaves who looked like making trouble, while at the same time believing implicitly everything told to them by the Masters, even when this information contradicted first-hand knowledge. History was also vetted by the Masters so that the slaves had no way of knowing if there had been better times.
But the worst aspect of all was that the Masters held the power of life and death over their slaves and were the only people on Teldi allowed to bear weapons.
Beth went on, “You know how the Federation feels about slavery, or any other form of physical or psychological coercion in government. They will not be favorably impressed with this culture. But it’s still possible that the slaves could qualify for cititzenship if we could find a way of separating them from their Masters.”
“It isn’t as simple as that,” Martin said, instinctively lowering his voice even though the translator was switched off. “This fanatical distrust they display toward everyone and everything that is not experienced firsthand worries me. Trust between intelligent species is one of the most important requirements for Federation citizenship.”
“That could change if the influence of the Masters was removed,” Beth said. “But do you agree that the slaves must have the opportunity of deciding for themselves whether to leave this terrible world and join the Federation, or remain with their Masters? Our assessment, remember, should include recommended solutions to the problem here.”
“Let’s ask one of them now,” Martin said. Through the translator he went on. “Skorta, would you like to live on a world free of the Scourge, and where you could farm and build houses and travel on the surface without danger?”
“Stranger…” the Teldin began, and then fell silent for nearly a minute before it went on, “It is senseless and painful to consider such possibilities. The Masters disapprove of mental bad habits of this kind. They say that the Scourge is, and must be accepted.”
“Brainwashed!” Beth said disgustedly.
A few minutes later the ravine widened to become the head of a deep, fertile valley. Skorta pulled off the road and stopped to give Martin his first close look at a Teldin city.
The valley ran in a north-south direction and its heavily cultivated western slopes and bottomland were protected from the worst of the Scourge. Only when the meteorites slanted in from an angle of forty-five degrees or more, which they did very occasionally, was the city at risk. The city’s structures hugged the ground and varied in size from tiny, private dwellings with extensions underground to large buildings which spread themselves outward rather than upward. Regardless of size, every one of them had a thick, earth-banked west-facing wall, and what appeared to be important machinery and vehicles were housed inside deep slit trenches. Suddenly the Teldin pointed toward a high cliff further along the valley.
“That is my school,” it said.
There was a flat apron of crusted rock around the base of the cliff and a wide, cavernous opening which was obviously a vehicle entrance. His magnifier showed about fifty smaller openings, regular in shape, scattered across the cliff face.
“I would like to see inside,” Martin said.
The tricycle lurched across the verge and began picking up speed again.
“There aren’t many children about,” Martin said. “Are they at school? And the Masters, where do they live?”
Skorta overtook a structurally complex vehicle powered by four furiously pedaling Teldins before it replied. “If the children are to survive to adulthood they have much to learn from parents and teachers. And there are no Masters here. They live in the polar city, which is free from the worst of the Scourge, and only rarely do they visit our cities. We prefer it that way because the presence of a Master means grief for some and serious inconvenience for others. Believe me, stranger, while we are obliged to honor and obey our Masters, and we do, we much prefer them to leave us alone.”