Birthright

everybody? The Oligarchy didn't act, but hell, since when do governments act because of books? I

founded a group to aid the aliens, and I know that literally hundreds of similar groups were initiated during the first rush ofThe Steel Boot's popularity. Some of them raised quite a lot of money, and began work on some pretty comprehensive plans. The depressing thing was that seven years later, my own group was the only one still in existence, and our income, which was derived solely from contributions, had dropped from forty million credits the first year to a mere sixty thousand credits the seventh. It was as if everybody had donated just enough time or money to clear his conscience and pay his dues, so to speak, and then, having done so, immediately forgot about the problem. The pity of it is that the problem is still with us, and it's not getting any better. THORRIN: What of the aliens themselves? I hate to sound melodramatic, but are there any insurrections or revolutions being plotted these days? NIIS: Against the Oligarchy? You must be kidding! How do you fight an attitude that spans a million worlds, or a Navy that could demolish half the galaxy in two years’ time? How do you fight an economic system that, through no fault or desire of your own, is all that stands between you and even greater squalor than already exists?

THORRIN: Then what's to become of them? NIIS: I don't know. I hope this creeping paternalism will begin creeping back the way it came, though I doubt that it will. In the meantime, they'll simply have to put up with things as they are, and as they threaten to become.

THORRIN: I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine their not getting up on their haunches one of these days and screaming “Death to the tyrants!” or some such thing. Didn'tthey read your book too? NIIS: Some of them did. Most couldn't understand it. THORRIN: Surely your publisher could have translated it— NIIS: I didn't say they couldn't read it; I said they couldn't understand it. You have to remember: They're aliens, with all that the word implies. Their hopes, dreams, goals, life-styles, their very thought processes arealien to our understanding. I had hoped my book would make this clear: that in some cases we had gone out of our way to subjugate them, but in most instances they thought and reacted on such different levels that there was never any conflict. We just moved in, did as we wanted, and they simply permitted—or, as was more often the case, ignored—us. THORRIN: It must be very frustrating to be the messiah of a people who want no salvation. NIIS: I've never set myself up as a messiah. As for the alien races’ wanting salvation, some of them—such as the Canphorites—very actively desire it; and who is to say that the others don't?The Steel Boot was about Man's inhumanity to his fellow beings, not their reaction to it. In other words, I'm

saying that we can be moral or immoral without reference to an alien's acceptance or rejection of his condition, merely because of our actions themselves. THORRIN: And yet, despite the book's fabulous success, your pleas have been rejected by one side and ignored by the other.

NIIS: True. My only hope, the only hope Men have ever had, from the first cavemen who couldn't handle fire to the last author who can't mobilize moral outrage, is for the next generation. Maybe the great