Visitors

Chapter 10 Lord of Walls

“So am I a Finder of Lost Things again here?” asked Rigg.

“Not in Gathuurifold, no.” Ram Odin chuckled. “No, for this wallfold you’re going to have to go back to the rich-young-man pose you carried off so well in O when you were just starting out.”

“I ended up in prison,” said Rigg.

“Because they believed you were a royal, not because they didn’t believe you were rich and educated.”

“But I’m not educated in Gathuurifold. I won’t know anything about their history or customs.”

“Gathuurifold is as large as any other wallfold. You can be from one part of it and know nothing about the other parts. Science you’ll know—more of it than they do—and ­mathematics. As for economics…” and here Ram Odin chuckled again, “they’ll have a bit to teach you, though I hope you don’t come away a true believer.”

“So I’m a rich young man.”

“No, you act like a rich young man. What you are, in terms they’ll understand, is this. You are my owner. And you, in turn, are directly the property of the Lord of Walls.”

“Property!” Rigg was appalled. “They have slavery here? That was done away with in Ramfold a thousand years ago. Long before the Sessamoto came out of the northwest.”

“Slavery was abolished fifteen separate times in the past eleven thousand years in Ramfold, though admittedly I’m rather proud of Ramfold that this last time it was the whole wallfold that got rid of it, and it hasn’t been reinvented yet. Though the People’s Revolutionary Council was getting close.”

“You’re saying slavery is one of those universals.”

“When you have wars, what do you do with the prisoners?” asked Ram Odin. “You can kill them all. Bloody work, that, and it encourages your enemies to fight to the death. You can send them all back home again as soon as the war is over, but in the meantime you have to feed them, and after they go home they’re a ready-made, fully-trained army.”

“I’m getting your point.”

“You can sacrifice them to your gods, which makes a difference only if they believe in the same gods. Or you can put them to work as forced labor, to earn their keep. Or, let’s see… keep them in prison camps, not working but having to be fed, until they die of old age. Which is the cruelest course?”

“You’ve made your point. So Gathuurifold is unusually warlike? So they’re constantly generating new slaves?”

“Not at all. In fact, I’d say Gathuurifold is unusually peaceful. War is quite rare. Because of all the things that slaves have been known to do, provoking wars is rarely one of them.”

Rigg thought about this for a moment. “You mean everybody in Gathuurifold is a slave?”

“Slavery became pervasive, with this wrinkle, that slaves could own property which did not belong to their owners. That meant that slaves can own slaves, who own slaves, who own slaves.”

“If you can own property, how are you a slave?” asked Rigg.

“Because your owner can move you to one place or another, can break up your marriage, can sell your children to some other owner, can decide how much education you’ll receive, and what work you’ll do, and what hours you’ll keep.”

“And this system persists?” asked Rigg.

“I’m not saying I like it,” said Ram Odin. “It’s just another way of organizing human life. It’s only been like this for fifteen hundred years or so, and Wall-to-Wall for only nine centuries. But in human terms, nine centuries might as well be forever. People here have little idea that society can be organized any other way.”

“Everybody owns everybody?” Rigg asked.

“Everybody is owned by somebody,” said Ram Odin. “There are plenty of people who don’t own anybody.”

“So who’s at the top of this pyramid? Who owns him?”

“I own him,” said Ram Odin. “Or, properly speaking, you do, since you are now the master of all ships. But since you didn’t know about this system, you haven’t been giving him any instructions. Therefore he continues to follow the last instructions I gave him. And for our purposes in Gathuurifold, you are posing as his slave.”

“Gathuuriex,” said Rigg. “The Lord of Walls is the expendable.”

“Who else?” said Ram Odin. “He never dies. He travels wherever he wants in his flying house, to make sure that his slaves are doing his will. I’ve instructed him to govern with a light hand. Whenever possible, he adjudicates disputes by making them work it out themselves, within certain parameters. He only goes after the Savages when they become particularly destructive, which he forestalls by making sure there are feeding stations in hard winters and droughts.”

“Savages? So not everyone is in this slave system?”

“No system is good for everybody,” said Ram Odin. “So yes, some people run away and escape into the wild. But most of them come back. The wild isn’t safe. Nobody knows who they belong to, and so there are no rules.”

“You make it sound like slavery is a good idea,” said Rigg.

“I think slavery is a terrible idea,” said Ram Odin. “But the whole idea of the wallfolds was to see what humans would do, what they would become with eleven thousand years of non­interference. Gathuuriex did absolutely nothing to promote slavery. He only stepped in to become the Lord of Walls—at my instructions—when there were getting to be too many murders among the top families.”

“How kind of you,” said Rigg. “Maybe that would have brought down the whole system, did you think of that?”

“I did,” said Ram Odin. “But this was only two hundred years ago, so I knew the end was coming, and these feuds had turned into wars before during the previous seven centuries of universal slavery. So I sent in Gathuuriex to become the owner of the top owners. He broke up the conspiracies, ended the feuds, arranged a few key divorces, dispersed the children who were the most tyrannical to learn some humility farther down the slave chain. I thought it wouldn’t hurt anything to have a few centuries of peace in this place.”

“Why not eleven thousand years of peace?”

“I didn’t create the slave system,” said Ram Odin. “For a long time I truly hated this place worse than any except Vadeshfold. I thought of it as a failure.”

“So you intervened.”

“No. It had already stopped being such an evil place a couple of thousand years ago. But no more talking about it, Rigg. I could have given you a history lesson about Gathuurifold and heard your tut-tuts and tsk-tsks back in Larfold. We have work to do.”

“Work?”

“There are certain responsibilities involved in being a slave directly owned by the Lord of Walls. Because everybody answers to someone who answers to someone who answers to the Lord of Walls, nobody can tell his slaves that they don’t have a right to travel wherever they want. But in return, such traveling Wallmen, which by the way is your official title, function as itinerant judges, auditors, inquisitors, and arbiters.”

“I have no idea how to do that!”

“Neither does any other human being, yet we do all those jobs, all the time, whenever we get the chance. Rigg, you’re the one who wanted to tour all the wallfolds. I can assure you that if you don’t travel as a Wallman, you don’t travel at all unless you have an owner who sends you on a specific errand. And since you don’t belong to anybody, you would only have two choices.”

“Become a Savage,” said Rigg.

“Which you would not like, and which would not tell you much about how the vast majority of the people in Gathuurifold live.”

“And the other choice?”

“Find somebody willing to take you on as his slave.”

“And who wouldn’t want a fine specimen like me?” asked Rigg.

“A self-assured, independent young man with a mouth on him? They would think your owner had done a bad job of training you and they wouldn’t want to bring trouble into their house.”

“I was being ironic,” said Rigg.

“I wasn’t,” said Ram Odin.

“Couldn’t I be your slave?”

“Nobody would send an old man like me out on extended errands. Much more convincing if you’re the Wallman, and I’m your old clerk and adviser. If you were the slave, then I’d have to treat you like one, and you would truly, truly hate that. No, if you want freedom of action, you have to be a Wallman, and that means you have to do a Wallman’s job. Suck it up, Rigg, and take it like a man.”

“But the decisions I make as a judge—”

“Are final. There is no appeal. And you’ll have this wise old adviser at your side. Trust me. You’ll do as well as any of the other Wallmen.”

They clattered along in a carriage. The vehicle was well-sprung, but the road was not in good condition, so there was a great deal of jouncing, and for all the clatter, they didn’t make that much forward progress. “I’m not impressed with the road maintenance,” said Rigg.

“You can take it up with the master of roads,” said Ram Odin. “I’m sure you can get a lot of road repair started while you’re in the area.”

“But it won’t continue after I’m gone.”

“The master of roads belongs to someone who isn’t you. If his master wanted him to fix this stretch of road, it would already be fixed.”

“And this system works well enough to be universal?”

“I could have taken you to one of the places where it works best,” said Ram Odin. “But then I’d be deceiving you, wouldn’t I? No system works well unless good people do their jobs with integrity, and then almost any system works well enough.”

“It’s the problem with authority, at all times,” said Ram Odin. “You only know what your subordinates tell you, and your commands are only carried out as long as your subordinates feel like it.”

Rigg couldn’t argue with that. He had seen enough of that already, and it was one of the principles Father had taught him.

Father. Lord of Walls. The same mechanical men, playing different roles in different places. What Ram Odin didn’t have to say was this: If you want a job to be done by someone you can trust, who won’t lie to you, who’ll persist in his obedience, get yourself a mechanical slave.

Of course, your mechanical slave will lie to everyone else, in order to achieve your purposes. But I am lying to everybody in Gathuurifold, in order to achieve my purposes. Purity is so hard to achieve.

So far Rigg had experienced only the privileges of Wallmen, and none of their duties. They had taken the Larfold flyer to a fairly remote city, where a carriage was waiting for them, along with letters of authority and a complete set of clothing for the journey. Wallmen, it seemed, wore an unbelievably silly style of clothing involving a puffy hat and intricately arranged bright-colored straps across the chest. It could not be put on without the help of a servant. And since Ram Odin had never arranged the straps either, they spent a good deal of time in the flyer, getting instructions from the ship’s computer, until they finally got it down.

“I’m too old to learn mechanical tasks like this,” said Ram Odin.

“I think this costume is a sort of safety valve,” said Rigg. “If they make the wielders of authority look ridiculous, it takes some of the sting out of their authority.”

“I don’t see how that would help,” said Ram Odin. “And you haven’t seen yet what the other people wear.”

Soon enough he saw that every job and every social level had its uniform. The messages were complicated, but the fundamental one was this: At what level of slavery were you, and how prestigious was your owner? A single band around your neck put you at the lowest level. But what was it made of? Leather? A thin red ribbon? A gold chain? A simple string? And when the straps moved away from the neck and onto the arms, then around the chest, it expressed such nuances as your years of education, and where you were schooled, and how highly your master esteemed you, and more, till Rigg’s eyes glazed over.

The rules were all so complicated that Ram Odin was now wearing a transmitter in his ear, allowing the ship’s computer to prompt him so he could “advise” Rigg. “We’ll tell anyone who dares to ask—and almost no one will—that it’s a device for delivering medicine very slowly, directly into my brain,” said Ram Odin. “This will be taken as a sign that you esteem me highly—thank you for the great honor, O Master—and that the Lord of Walls esteems you so highly that he allowed you to festoon your prize servant with such a rare and prized adornment.”

“Which no one else in the history of Gathuurifold has ever seen or heard of before.”

“That’s what makes it rare. But you can be sure that within six months, highly prized servants of very rich slaves will all be wearing intricately decorated ear-thingies. It will probably make them half deaf and give them headaches, but… anything for status.”

There were no roadhouses, because there were no travelers who were free to stay where they chose. Instead, there were relay stations for changing horses, which only those within a few levels of the Lord of Walls could use, and there were the large houses of the highest-status slave in any town. Rigg, as Wallman, would call upon this person, bring the greetings of the Lord of Walls, and then accept the offer of lodging for as long as he cared to stay. Of course he would be put in the master’s own bed and bedroom.

Meanwhile, Ram Odin would stay in the relay station, in a little room over the stable. He assured Rigg that this was very fine treatment for a personal servant, and he rather liked the smell of horses.

Thus they had made their way for a week from town to town, always on their way to somewhere else.

But even so, people were already bringing disputes to Rigg. So far they had all been of the sort where the solution is easy and obvious, but people’s egos and anger were so involved that the easy solution was the one that everyone hated most. Rigg’s job, in every case, was to impose the easy solution, but to find a way to phrase it so that nobody felt that they had been repudiated or that their arguments had not been heard. It was a game of language more than law. Nobody was necessarily happy, but everyone was mollified, and Ram Odin assured him that they would abide by the decision because, after all, it was the easy and obvious solution.

Ram Odin had almost never had to whisper into Rigg’s ear to tell him of some obscure point of law. In fact, the whispering had mostly been to tell him exactly how this or that person should be addressed. Titles were very important in this land of slaves.

Rigg wondered if they could really be called slaves anymore. He already had a pretty good idea that slavery was evolving into something else, without losing the name. People had so much freedom to make economic decisions—to buy whatever they liked, and to assign their slaves to manufacture whatever they wanted. Some masters hired out their slaves to others, for a fee; others allowed their slaves to make their own arrangements to serve here or there as they could find work.

It became much clearer when he began his conversations the next day. They were judicial proceedings, to be sure, but they were called conversations and in fact that’s how they were conducted. As slaves, they had no rights, but it was always legitimate for slaves to ask for a conversation with a nearby Wallman. If the Wallman then decided to make decisions in the name of the Lord of Walls, well, that was always his option. And if there were any reprisals against a slave whose conversation might have led to unhappy results for someone, then they could be sure that the wrath of the Lord of Walls would come down on them. For it was not right for one slave to take vengeance on another for merely bringing information before the Lord of Walls or his closest servants.

It was a system that begged to become corrupt, Rigg saw at once. He would have been surprised, though, if someone had come to him with the offer of a bribe. The Lord of Walls, after all, was completely incorruptible himself, and would not be susceptible to flattery or deception by his underlings. If someone was certified as a Wallman, it was because the expendable Gathuuriex had found him to be intelligent, morally decent, and completely honest. Rigg wondered if he would have measured up to Gathuuriex’s scrutiny, if he had attempted to reach this lofty office through the normal means.

But it was not only because Gathuuriex and his men could not be bribed—it’s that every single person would have to account to their owner for what they did with their money. Or so it was, at least, in theory. This first set of conversations was being held in a part of the land that was clearly not held to the same standards as the crisply tended fields and shops they had passed through at first. Everything was just a little raggedy. People moved with less of a hurry. Rigg wondered if they worked with a kind of laziness or carelessness, too. Presumably he had been given the owner’s bedroom, as at any of the relay stations. There was running water in the privy room, which Rigg had come to expect in Gathuurifold. But the hot-water knob merely spun, as if it were decorative.

Which it turned out to be. The owner explained that he didn’t feel much of a need for hot water in the washbasin in the privy room—only the bathroom needed it, and that was downstairs, a single tub to serve the household. “They make the faucets to fit the specifications of richer folk than we are, sir. So I could only buy one with a cold and a hot. But there’s nothing to connect the hot one to, so it spins.”

It all made perfect sense. It just felt… if not slovenly, then slapdash.

But when it came to the conversations, people took a great deal of care. Most plainants came in with their master, or a ­steward sent by the master. And there must be some kind of legal training, even if there was no written law—slaves having no rights, except the right to petition. Make sure you say this, the master would whisper. She really meant to say, not that, but this, a steward would explain, as the plainant sat there nodding. Yes, yes, that is what I meant.

After the plainant was done, Rigg could either send for the misbehaver—there was no presumption of innocence—or simply announce his decision. Sometimes he was tempted to decide against someone whose complaint sounded frivolous, or for someone who was clearly sincere in her grievance. But his expectations from the customs of Stashiland—laws and practices older than the Sessamids and certainly older than the People’s Revolution—made this impossible for him.

Every time, he learned something important from the misbehaver. Sometimes it became clear that the actual complaint was merely an excuse for bringing the misbehaver before the Wallman. One swaggering overseer was arrogantly dismissive of the complaint—that he was always rude to the woman in question, even though she tried to serve him well. “She’s clumsy, she’s stupid, and she doesn’t even try,” he said. “I’m wasting time I owe to my master, so she not only costs him what she eats without producing anything of worth, now she’s making me less productive.”

Rigg saw at once that the man was blustering to hide some kind of shame. There was something he didn’t want to get caught at. At first Rigg thought it might be that the man was unkind to many other servants, and only this one had the courage to come forward. But it would actually be strangely to his credit if he was equally rude to everyone, instead of singling this one out.

“If you don’t mind sitting here for a moment,” said Rigg, “I’d like to think about something.”

“No, no, I don’t mind,” said the overseer, because what else could he say to a Wallman?

Rigg kept his eyes calmly fixed on the overseer’s face, but in fact his attention was directed elsewhere. He followed the overseer’s path backward in time. The little factory that he managed was only half a kilometer away, and Rigg studied his pattern of movement through the past day. Two days. Three.

“You’re not a very hardworking man,” said Rigg. It had taken him only about a minute to do this examination, because the facemask made everything go so much more quickly.

“I work as hard as I should!”

“It seems to me that you hardly visit the factory floor.”

“What did she say about me!” the man said, outraged. “That’s not her business. She doesn’t own me, the master gave me charge over her.”

Rigg felt Ram Odin’s touch on his forearm. So instead of answering, he smiled and turned to Ram.

“My friend,” said Ram Odin, “do you think that Wallman Rigg came here without first inquiring of the Lord of Walls whether he had any concerns?”

The man settled down at once. “She only has a right to complain about how I treat her,” he muttered.

“Do you think Wallman Rigg doesn’t know that?” asked Ram Odin. “He knows what he knows—that slave only complained about your rudeness.”

“You’re not a hardworking man,” said Rigg. “You walk through the factory in the morning when you arrive—but work has already been going on for some time. If anyone tries to ask you anything or tell you anything, you brush them aside. Too busy for their problems, is that it?”

“They should do their work and not bother me with endless nothing.”

“But the slave who complained—she insisted, didn’t she? She came to your door and knocked.”

“My door is always unlocked.”

“But your rudeness is the same as a lock—designed to teach people to leave you alone. She complained that the equipment kept breaking, and some of it couldn’t be repaired. Three spinners are idle all the time, because their wheels don’t work.”

“Then they should call for the repairman!”

“He doesn’t answer to them, though, does he? When they send for him, he doesn’t come, because it isn’t you sending for him.”

The man opened his mouth to say something, then looked furtively away. He had been about to lie. “I didn’t realize it was so serious. You’re right, I should have summoned the repairman myself.”

“There are a lot of things you should have done yourself,” said Rigg. “What do you do, alone in your office, since you aren’t doing any of your work for the factory?”

The overseer seemed as if he wanted to protest, but again, he shied away from a quibbling lie. “I sleep,” he said.

“I know,” said Rigg. “Why don’t you sleep at home?”

The man leaned his elbows on the table, put his head in his hands, and began to weep.

“You walk up and down in your rooms. Your children are asleep—why aren’t you?”

The man finally mastered himself enough to speak. “She’s a good woman, my wife. My master chose very well for me.”

“I’m sure he did,” said Rigg. “Yet something keeps you from sleeping.”

The overseer leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes and rocking his head back as if he were looking for something on the ceiling. “She snores,” he said at last.

Rigg did not laugh. The man’s misery was so sincere that Rigg did not want to make light of it. And this much he knew was true: He was getting no sleep at night.

“Tell me about her snoring.”

“Great ronking snores, sir. As if she were calling to geese to come back from their migration. As if she were sawing through great trees. And then in mid-snore, she stops. Stops breathing. And I wait. Because if she doesn’t start soon I have to waken her. Then she starts, and the noise is horrible. If she’s breathing I can’t sleep, if she’s not breathing I can’t sleep.”

“Yet you’ve said nothing to anyone.”

“Because I know how my master will solve the problem,” the man said. “I’m not complaining, he’s a fair master, but he goes straight to the obvious solution.”

“Separate bedrooms so you can sleep?”

“That would be such a bad example!” he said. “If he gives me a separate bedroom because of snoring, every woman he owns will be asking for a separate bedroom because her husband snores. Too expensive.”

“And I think you don’t want to tell anyone about your wife for fear of shaming her.”

“I love her,” said the man. “My master would split us up if he knew.”

“Split you up?”

“She already has three children, which my master thinks is enough for any of his women. But not for his best men. He’ll give me to another woman who doesn’t snore, and put her in my wife’s place. Everyone will be taken care of, but he can’t have me become… an unproductive male. His policy is that his best men should make six babies.”

“That seems a little imbalanced,” said Rigg.

Ram Odin touched his arm.

“Not said as a criticism, just as an observation,” said Rigg.

“It’s actually very sensible,” said the overseer. “Women put their lives at risk with every baby they have. Each one weakens them. But a man puts nothing at risk. It’s good to have a father to help with the little ones, good to have a marriage where people care for each other. But when a woman wants to stop, any time after three, he lets them move out right away. Just like that.”

“Divorce at the wife’s option,” said Rigg.

“Most women that love their husband, they stay out the six,” said the overseer. “But some die, just as the master fears. His policy is a wise one.”

“So if you complain to him about the snoring, he’ll assume that you want a divorce.”

“He won’t care what I want, sir,” said the overseer. “Why should he?”

Rigg curbed his anger at this foolish system. “Why doesn’t her snoring keep the children awake?”

“The doors are good and solid, sir,” said the overseer. “And they sleep like babies, because they are. They had that snoring the whole time they were in the womb, sir.”

“And you don’t really want to sleep in a separate room because of the times she stops breathing.”

“I don’t want her to die, sir,” and he burst into tears again.

“My first decision,” said Rigg, “is that you must go immediately into the room where that spinner is waiting.”

“But she’ll see me like this,” he said.

“I want her to,” said Rigg. “Don’t you see that she’ll think I must have rebuked you severely, to reduce you to tears? That may satisfy her completely, don’t you think? Don’t show her your tears. Try to conceal them. She’ll see. Now go.”

The man got up at once and went through the door that led to the room where the woman was waiting.

“So you start with the illusion of having punished him,” said Ram Odin.

“I don’t have any idea what to do.”

“One thing you’ve done is quite remarkable,” said Ram Odin. “You got to the heart of the matter. The woman is going to feel remorseful for having made the overseer weep. It’s obvious she only complained about his rudeness because the factory is falling apart and she only has a right to complain about how he treats her.”

“I know that,” said Rigg. “This is a terrible system, you know?”

“Because in Ramfold, free workers and free managers are never in a situation where the employees are terrified to complain to the owner about how the manager is doing his job?”

Rigg rolled his eyes. “That’s different.”

“It’s the same,” said Ram Odin, “under different names. They are both owned by the same master. In Ramfold, they would both work for the same employer. But both would be terrified of losing their position.”

“In Ramfold, the owner of the factory can’t divorce a man from his wife because he complains about her snoring.”

“But in Ramfold,” Ram Odin said mildly, “the owner would demand that he explain why he’s sleeping during the hours he’s paying him to work. If he doesn’t fire him out of hand, he’ll demand that the manager find a way to sleep or quit his job. So the manager is right where this overseer is—does he act to protect his wife from her apnea? What good will it do her if he loses his position and can’t get a good recommendation? They’ll lose everything. Out on the street. Disaster. In all likelihood, reduced to poverty and—”

“I get the point. But it still doesn’t help me figure out what to do.”

“I think you should let me sit with the wife tonight. Let him sleep in my quarters. I’ll have the ship listen to her breathing and evaluate her medically and tell me whether the apnea is life-threatening.”

Rigg looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Apnea. Stopping breathing from time to time. It affects a lot of people but very, very few die of it. If we can tell him that she’s not going to die, he can go sleep in the children’s room.”

“Oh,” said Rigg.

“And if she really is in danger, then we tell the owner that the overseer is torn between protecting his property—the wife—and managing the factory.”

“The owner will still make them divorce,” said Rigg.

“Not if you forbid him to do that,” said Ram Odin. “Remember, the owner is also a slave, and his owner is owned by someone who is owned by the Lord of Walls.”

“I really hate Gathuurifold.”

“No, you’re just barely coming to understand it, that’s all. You’ll find that people are still people and find a way to carve out a life for themselves within whatever rules their culture imposes on them. This master’s rules about marriage are actually derived from his religion—the ship was telling me this while you were listening to the overseer. It’s a very practical religion, not a lot of ritual but plenty of rules of life and most of them make sense. But as with all rule sets, there are unintended consequences. Like the women who have six babies so they don’t have to leave their husbands.”

“You’re saying that the whole wallfold doesn’t have that rule.”

“Most people who practice the religion don’t actually follow that rule. My guess is that rather than obey you about not forcing a divorce on them, the owner will sell the factory to someone else.”

“Come on,” said Rigg. “Sell a factory because your overseer’s wife snores and the Wallman said you couldn’t split them up?”

“Remember that the factory’s in a bit of a mess. Broken equipment. Badly managed.”

“So the new owner will get rid of the overseer.”

“Probably sell him,” said Ram Odin. “He shouldn’t be in this line of work anyway. He’s a terrible manager.”

“Only because he doesn’t sleep at night!”

“Oh, Rigg, please. It would take him ten minutes to listen to the woman’s complaint and send for the repairman. He hates his job. Probably never asked for it. So yes, he’s desperate for sleep, but he’s also desperate not to do his job.”

“How do you know that?” asked Rigg.

“Experience, my lad,” said Ram Odin. “I’ve known plenty of managers like that. They hate their job, they hate their lives. If I owned the man, I’d make some effort to find out what he actually likes to do, and then find a way to let him earn his keep by doing it. But then, I’m probably too soft to be a really effective slaveowner.”

“You? Soft?” Rigg shook his head. “I know you better than that.”

Ram Odin didn’t argue. “Do you agree that I should offer to sit up with the wife tonight and listen to her breathe?”

“Don’t you need your sleep?” asked Rigg. “If you fall asleep during tomorrow’s conversations, I’ll have to sell you to somebody else.”

“Did you notice something else?” asked Ram Odin. “Something personal about their response to you?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “Nobody looks away from my face. I’m apparently much prettier here.”

“You’re a Wallman,” said Ram Odin. “Power and authority make any man handsome.”

“I liked being a Finder of Lost Things much better.”

Rigg went ahead and held the next conversation. He put in a full day and was exhausted by suppertime. He and Ram Odin ate a pretty good meal, considering that slaves normally didn’t have much choice about what they ate, so the culinary arts had no financial incentive to improve.

At breakfast, Ram Odin looked perfectly well rested. “She’s not in danger at all,” said Ram Odin. “Half an hour in, the ship gave me a full prognosis, and I went in to where the poor fellow was busily trying to sleep in the room with his two boys. I took him into the hall, told him the good news. Of course, I had to phrase it as your decision based on my medical expertise—that’s part of the reason you bring me along. Just in case anyone asks.”

“Now you’re a doctor.”

“I have been a doctor, more or less, when I started up the colony in Odinfold. Of course, with the ship’s equipment, anybody could be a doctor.”

“He believed you?”

“I didn’t leave till he was really asleep in the boys’ room.”

“Now if the wife dies of a heart attack…”

“He can’t complain,” said Ram Odin. “He’s a slave. And we did nothing wrong, because we had the best available medical advice. Did you have a better plan?”

“I had no plan at all,” said Rigg.

“So what are you thinking? How you ought to shut down the Wall and bring the rampaging Sessamoto legions to do away with this whole repulsive system?”

“Bad as this system is,” said Rigg, “I know enough about ­history—and about the Sessamids—to be skeptical about bringing about any actual improvement. As you pointed out, the system is no worse than the people running it, which is you.”

“Indirectly,” said Ram Odin.

“And there’s a serious danger of the Sessamids liking the idea of universal slavery and importing it to Ramfold.”

Ram Odin chuckled. “I hadn’t thought of that. They’d fail, but they’d be envious of the idea of owning everybody.”

“I think what matters here is that they’ve accommodated slavery to human proportions. They’ve adapted it so people can bear to live with it.”

Ram Odin gestured for him to go on.

“Slaves owning property, including other slaves. That means that nobody’s a pure owner—they’re all accountable to somebody above them. With the Lord of Walls and the Wallmen as a court of last appeal. It’s a check on the power of ownership.”

“But it’s still ownership,” said Ram Odin.

“Yes. People have surrendered a huge amount of personal choice. But not economic choice. They still decide what to spend their money on.”

“That’s why there’s still an economy,” said Ram Odin. “Very good.”

“Economic freedom means that relative prosperity is still ­possible—even for the slaves at the bottom of the ownership heap. They can aspire. And slavery itself appeals to people who don’t want the risks of freedom. If their lives go bad, there’s always someone else to blame. They don’t have to think and decide and bear the consequences of their own choices.”

“Very good,” said Ram Odin. “I think of slavery in Gathuurifold as a kind of climax feudalism. As feudalism was supposed to work but never did. And this system did not work well when there was a small ownership class and bribery was rampant. Corruption sapped all prosperity out of the system and the owners did what they wanted, spreading misery and havoc.”

“But that would have led to revolution, eventually,” said Rigg. “A revolution that you eliminated by instituting this benign Lord of Walls.”

“That’s true,” said Ram Odin. “And I would be duly ashamed of myself except that near-universal slavery persisted for centuries, corrupt and oppressive in the extreme, and there was no revolution. And then we were getting close enough to the end of the world that I decided that instead of letting millions die in a social upheaval that would not only mean bloody war but also economic dislocations that would lead to poverty and starvation and misery on a large scale, I would simply tidy things up and let all these ­people have what happiness was possible within this strange, oppressive system, until the Destroyers come and wipe them all out.”

“I don’t know if that was a good decision,” said Rigg. “You could just as easily have decided that since they were going to die anyway, you might as well let them die fighting for freedom as passively waiting like cattle in the slaughterhouse.”

“I’ll admit that I’m getting old,” said Ram Odin. “Struggling for a cause looks like a much better idea to the young than to the old.”

“Because you’re getting tired?”

“Because I’ve seen that reforms are never as transformative as the reformers imagine that they’ll be. Nothing works as planned. What I did definitely made a bad system better.”

“But if Noxon succeeds, and the Destroyers don’t come…”

“You want me to make the Lord of Walls go on a long vacation.”

“I think it’s time for you and the expendable Gathuuriex to have the Lord of Walls take a long vacation and let the former Wallmen fight it out among them until the people revolt and make whatever progress toward freedom they can.”

“Because Garden cannot survive one-nineteenth slave and eighteen-nineteenths free. A house divided against itself cannot stand!”

“It sounds like you’re making a speech.”

“Echoing one. So you’re thinking the Walls won’t come down?”

“I’m seeing reasons why they shouldn’t all come down.”

“You’ll see more reasons as we continue these tours.”

“I want to continue as a Wallman for a few more days.”

“Better than being an itinerant Finder of Lost Things?”

“It’s the same job,” said Rigg. “I go back into the past and find out what actually happened. Then I do something about it.”

“Ah, but what do you do.”

“Any complaints?”

“So far so good.”

“I get the idea,” said Rigg, “that while I’m judging the wallfolds, you’re judging me.”

“I already know the wallfolds. You I’m just starting to get acquainted with.”