Название: The Complete Legacy Trilogy: Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines
Автор: Ian Douglas
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Книги о войне
isbn: 9780007555512
isbn:
“Not competitors,” Buckner said. “Trade partners. Business partners. The point is, all of that won’t happen for a century or two. We don’t need to worry about it. All we need do is think about the money we’re going to make from this one investment!”
“Yes,” Haddad said. “Money. A return on your investment. I believe I speak for a number of us here when I say that your scheme for using the human slaves on Ishtar as an additional return on your investment … this has a very foul smell to it. Am I to understand that PanTerra intends to import slaves, human slaves, from Ishtar? That you intend—if I understand this correctly—to use a campaign to free those slaves, only to ship them back to Earth for use as slaves here?”
“Please, Mr. Haddad,” Buckner said with a pained expression. “We prefer the word ‘domestics.’ Not ‘slaves.’ There are entirely too many negative connotations to that word.”
“Whatever you choose to call it,” Haddad said, pressing on, “the concept is neither moral nor economically viable.”
“Representative Haddad has a point,” Chieu said. “The population of Earth would never accept such a moral outrage.”
Buckner scowled at the assembly. “You want to lecture me on morality? You, Haddad—when for at least the past two hundred years or more your upper classes have imported domestic servants from various parts of Asia and Pacifica and paid them so poorly they cannot return home if they wish? When pockets of outright slavery still exist throughout the KOA in places like Sudan and Oman, and when women still have fewer rights than male slaves?”
“We are all slaves of Allah—” Haddad began.
“Can the sermon. I worship at a different church, the Church of the Almighty Newdollar.” Haddad bristled, but Buckner raised a hand. “Please. I mean no disrespect to anyone here. But it does give me a tremendous pain when people start making a major bleeding poor-mouth about moral outrages when it’s their comfort and their security and their wealth that they’re really concerned about. I don’t like hypocrisy.”
“According to the report you’ve uploaded to us,” Raychaudhuri said evenly, “you plan to partly defray PanTerra’s development costs on Ishtar by bringing freed human Sag-ura back to Earth and selling them as servants. If that, sir, is not hypocrisy—”
“And in your country, Raychaudhuri, a poor man can still sell his daughters,” Buckner said. “But that’s not the point, is it? Everything depends on how it is packaged. You’ve seen PanTerra’s reports … in particular, the reports on these Sag-uras. For ten thousand years they’ve been raised, been bred, as slaves to the Ahannu. They think of the Ahannu as gods … would no more think about disobeying them than you, Mr. Haddad, would think about disobeying Allah. They are conditioned from birth to accept the living reality of gods who direct every part of their lives.
“And now, we’re going to arrive there, backed up by the Marines, and stand their world on its ear. What do you think would happen if we just walked in, gathered up all the Sag-ura, and said, ‘Congratulations, guys. You’re free.’ Hell, they’d starve to death in a month! They don’t even have a word in their vocabulary that means ‘freedom’! Like Orwell pointed out a couple of centuries ago, you can’t think about something if you don’t have a word for it.
“At the same time, we have half the people on Earth clamoring for their release. ‘Humans being held in slavery by horrible aliens! Oh, no! … We must set things right, must free those poor, wronged innocents from their bondage!’
“So PanTerra is proposing a social program that will satisfy the people of Earth, help the Ishtaran humans, and, just incidentally, help PanTerra recover what we’ve put into this project. As we send interstellar transports filled with Marines, scientists, and researchers out to Ishtar, we will begin bringing back transport loads of ex-slaves. They will be reintegrated slowly and carefully into human society. They do not understand the concept of ‘money’ or ‘payment’ or ‘salary,’ so they will be hired out to people willing to provide them with room and board in exchange for their domestic services.
“Status, my friends, is an important coin in human relations. The upper classes on Earth of nearly every culture still derive considerable status from the employment of human servants. And, as they used to say, good servants are so hard to find. Well, PanTerra has found the mother lode of domestic servants. Happy, healthy, beautiful people conditioned to take orders and provide service because that’s the way they were raised, because that’s the only thing they know. And those Sag-ura who are shipped back to Earth, I might add, will derive considerable status from the mere fact of being chosen to return to the fabled home planet. And they will have the chance to slowly assimilate into Earth-human culture.
“And if PanTerra charges for providing this service … what of it? People, don’t you see? Everybody wins! You. The Sag-ura. And PanTerra.”
“Mr. Buckner,” Chieu said, “I thought PanTerra’s sole interest in Ishtar was the possibility of acquiring alien technology?”
Buckner nodded. “It’s our interest, certainly. Not our sole interest, but an important one. We expect to reap enormous profits from our research on Ishtar. The greatest profits of all may well come from aspects of their history and technology and biology and culture yet to be uncovered, things that we’re not even aware of yet. But that is all so speculative at this point, it would be insane to count on that to balance the accounts. We know we will make a profit by bringing a few thousand Sag-ura back to Earth and acting as agents on their behalf. Anything else is, as they say, gravy.”
The French representative, Xarla Fortier, folded her arms, radiating disapproval. “What arrogant assumption, monsieur, gives you the right to dictate this way to us? Ishtar, its wealth and its lost knowledge, should be the inheritance of all of humanity, not the playground of a single corporate entity! What you propose is nothing less than the wholesale rape of an inhabited world, to your benefit.”
“Worse, Madame Fortier,” Raychaudhuri said, “he proposes to let us watch but not participate. PanTerra intends nothing less than a complete monopoly over Ishtar and all her products, subsidized by the United Federal Republic and backed by the muscle of the U.S. Marines. I, for one, protest.”
“Tell us, Mr. Buckner,” Chieu said, eyes narrowing to hard, cold slits, “what happens if the population of Earth at large gets wind of this scheme of yours? You realize, of course, that any one of us here could upset your plans simply by net-publishing your report.”
“Is that a threat, Mr. Chieu?” Buckner sighed. “I’d thought better of you. Each and every one of you answers to your own corporate interests. You will need to consult with them before taking such an irretrievably drastic step … one, I might add, that would reveal your own complicity in these deliberations. PanTerra would respond as necessary to minimize the damage, to put a good spin on things. We would emphasize the benevolent nature of our business dealings on Ishtar, the great public good we were providing. Even slavery, you see, can be presented as good, as a social or an economic or a religious necessity, if there is a carefully nurtured will to believe. … Am I correct, Mr. Haddad? True, our profits might be adversely impacted to some degree, but I doubt there would be major problems in the long run.
“Of course, whoever leaks that information would find their corporate interests cut off from the deal. My God … we’re not leaving you out. We’re making you our partners! Secrecy, you see, is more in your interests than in ours. Play along, and each of you becomes the sole agent for the distribution of what we bring back from Ishtar to your own countries. New science. СКАЧАТЬ