what's his name? Zhorzh Khouzhik; that's right, let Zhorzh do it.
Employment Practices Code, investigation agency, enforcement. If he
can't do the job, that's not our fault. The Empire does not guarantee
every planet an honest, intelligent and efficient government; just a
single one."

"But...."

"It will take two or three generations. At first, the freedmen will be
exploited just as they always have been, but in time there will be
protests, and disorders, and each time, there will be some small
improvement. A society must evolve, Obray. Let these people earn their
freedom. Then they will be worthy of it."

"They should have their freedom now."

"This present generation? What do you think freedom means to them? _We
don't have to work, any more._ So down tools and let everything stop at
once. _We can do anything we want to._ Let's kill the overseer. And:
_Anything that belongs to the Masters belongs to us; we're Masters too,
now._ No, I think it's better, for the present, to tell them that this
freedom business is just a lot of Masterly funny-talk, and that things
aren't really being changed at all. It will effect a considerable saving
of his Imperial Majesty's ammunition, for one thing."

He dropped Erskyll at his apartment and sent the hall-car back from his
own. Lanze Degbrend was waiting for him when he entered.

"Ravney's having trouble. That is the word he used," Degbrend said. In
Pyairr Ravney's lexicon, trouble meant shooting. "The news of the
Emancipation Act is leaking all over the place. Some of the troops in
the north who haven't been disarmed yet are mutinying, and there are
slave insurrections in a number of places."

"They think the Masters have forsaken them, and it's every slave for
himself." He hadn't expected that to start so soon. "The announcement
had better go out as quickly as possible. And I think we're going to
have some trouble. You have information-taps into Count Erskyll's
numerous staff? Use them as much as you can."

"You think he's going to try to sabotage this employment programme of
yours, sir?"

"Oh, he won't think of it in those terms. He'll be preventing me from
sabotaging the Emancipation. He doesn't want to wait three generations;
he wants to free them at once. Everything has to be at once for
six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age."

* * * * *

The announcement did not go out until nearly noon the next day.