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"Thing is, if it takes a decade or so to make the trip, better have the capacity to make the trip worthwhile, right?" the demon-jester demanded. "You think this ship is big?" Another wave of a double-thumbed hand, gesturing at the bulkheads. "Well, you're wrong. Lots of ships out there lots bigger than this one. Most of the guild ships, as a matter of fact, because it doesn't cost any more to run a really big ship than a little one like this. But that's the real reason for their stupid `Prime Directive.' "
"The size of your vessels?" Sir George made his tone puzzled and wrinkled his forehead ferociously, hoping the demon-jester had become sufficiently well versed in human expressions to recognize perplexity, although if his estimate of the other's condition was accurate it was unlikely the other would be noticing anything so subtle as an alien race's expressions. But whether or not the demon-jester recognized his expression, it was quickly clear that he'd asked the right question.
"Of course not," the demon-jester told him. "Not the size, the speed. Might be fifteen or twenty of your years between visits to most of these backwater planets. Maybe even longer. I know one planet that the guild only sends a ship to every two and a half of your centuries or so, and the Federation knows it, too. So they don't want to take any chances on having some bunch of primitives figure out we're not really gods or whatever between visits. Want to keep them awed and humble around us. That's why they passed their `Prime Directive' something like—" The demon-jester paused in thought for a few seconds, as if considering something. "Would have been something like thirty thousand of your years ago, I think. Give or take a century or two."
He made the alarming sound again, and Sir George was certain now that it was his kind's equivalent of laughter. For just a moment, that hardly seemed to matter, however. Thirty thousand years? His alien masters' civilization had existed for over thirty mille
"Even for us, that's a long time for a law to be in effect," the demon-jester said. His piping voice was less clear, the words begi
Another thump on the table. This time, it wouldn't have made any sound anyway, because the demon-jester missed the table top entirely, and Sir George began to wonder how much longer the creature would last before he passed out.
"So what did the Sharnhaishians do?" the alien continued. "I'll tell you what. They went out and found another primitive world, one the Council didn't even know about yet, and they bought their damned `Romans.' Never occurred to any of the rest of us. But the Prime Directive doesn't say we can't use force. All it says is that we can't use modern weapons. It just never occurred to any of us that there was anything we could do without using our weapons except negotiate and bribe."
He lowered his goblet and peered down into it for several seconds, then made a sound suspiciously like a human belch and returned his central eye to Sir George.
"Not the Sharnhaishians, though. If they want a primitive world, they just send in their Romans. Just as primitive as the local barbarians, so the Council can't complain, and I'll say this for the Romans. They're tough. Never run into anything they couldn't handle, and the Sharnhaishians've used them to take dozens of backwater worlds away from the other guilds. Whole trade nets, cut to pieces. Strategic commodities sewn up, warehousing and basing rights snatched out from under us, careers ruined. And all because the Sharnhaishians acquired a few thousand primitives in bronze armor."
He fell silent for a long time, swirling sludge in his goblet and peering down into it, then looked back up more or less in Sir George's direction.
"But they're not the only ones who can play that game. They thought they were. The other guilds got together to complain to the Council, and the Council agreed to take the matter under consideration. It may even decide the Sharnhaishians have to stop using their Romans entirely, but that may take centuries, and in the meantime, Sharnhaishian is shipping them from one strategic point to another and taking them away from the rest of us. And they slipped someone on the Council a big enough bribe to get your world declared off-limits for all the rest of us."
Sir George stiffened, and hoped the demon-jester was too drunk to notice. He wasn't surprised that the other guild could have bribed the Council the alien was yammering about. Bribing a few key rulers was often more efficient, and cheaper, than relying on armies. Although if His Majesty had spent a little more money on his army and a little less on trying to buy allies in his first French campaign he might have been on the throne of France by its end!
But if the demon-jester was telling the truth, if the Council to which he referred had the authority to declare that contact with Sir George's home world was no longer permitted and had done so, then the demon-jester's guild must have violated that decree in order to kidnap Sir George and his troops. And if that was the case—if their servitude was unlawful in the eyes of what passed for the Crown among these creatures—then they were in even more danger than he'd believed.
"It took me two or three of your centuries just to figure out where your world was," the demon-jester went on, and now Sir George seemed to sense an air of pride. "Some of the other guilds recruited their own primitive armies, like the Hathori. But none of them have been able to match the Romans. Course they couldn't! And the Sharnhaishians knew that before the rest of us did, too. Reason they went and bought their damned Romans in the first place. They'd already tried the Hathori 'n found out what the rest of us had t' learn the hard way. I still remember the first time we sent the Hathori in against a bunch of natives."
The alien stared down into his goblet, and his ears flattened.
"Damned aborigines cut them to pieces," he said after a long moment. "Cost them a lot of casualties at first, but then they swarmed right over the Hathori. Butchered them one by one. I doubt we got one in twenty back alive at the end, but that wouldn't have happened against the damned Romans. Those aren't just warriors—they're demons that carve up anything they run into. So it occurred to me that what we needed were Romans of our own, and I managed to convince my creche cousin to convince his sector commissioner to speak to the guild masters for me. I needed all the help I could get, thanks to the Sharnhaishians and their Romans. Course, it helped that by then they'd done the same thing to dozens of other guildsmen, and not just in our guild, either. So they gave me a chance to reclaim my career if I could find where the Romans came from, get past the Council ban, and catch us some Romans of our own. And I did it, too."
This time his slap managed to co
"But we're not Romans," Sir George pointed out after a moment. He was half afraid to say another word, for if the demon-jester remembered any of this conversation at a later date and realized all he was letting slip, there would be one very simple way to rectify his error.