Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

“The worst sort of slavery is when the slave does not feel the collar.”

“Is it? I would have thought that the best sort.” Gidula raised a hand just so and the fey scurried over without the carafe.

“Yes, Law Gidula? How may I serve you?” The contralto would have served either man or woman. It was drawled, halting, uncertain. The face was ageless; the eyes were old.

Gidula smiled at him, patted his cheek, groomed his hair. “Tell me, Podiin. How long have you been in my service?”

“Sir? Aw my life. Seven years an’ fawty, each basking in the sun of my law’s ray-dee-ents.”

Gidula gathered both the fey’s hands and clasped them between his own. “You have served me well, Podiin. I have thought of freeing you.”

The fey’s mouth gaped open. He fell to his knees, grabbed Gidula’s left hand, and bestowed kisses on the back of it. “Please, Law Gidula! Do no do tha’ to me!” Tears coursed down his cheek, and he moaned. “Please, my law, have I naw serve’ you well? Don’ sen’ me ’way!”

“But you would be free, boy!”

The fey sobbed. “No, my law! Will freedom feed me? Will it care for me? Will it ensure me again’ sickness? No, Law Gidula, only your gen’rous and open han’ cares for me—as I care for you.”

Donovan noted to his own astonishment the tears wetting Gidula’s cheeks. “Ah, no, my boy, no,” the Old One said stroking the servant’s head. “I’ll not do such a thing to you. You will stay at my side; and when the gods call me, you alone will scatter my ashes.”

That sent the fey into further paroxysms, only the tears now were those of joy. He bubbled his thanks, covered Gidula’s hand with kisses. Gidula with his free hand produced a kerchief from a sleeve and dried first his own eyes, then the servant’s. “Here, now,” Gidula said, “stand up, boy.”

When the servant was once more erect, Gidula twisted a ring off his right hand and gave it to the servant. “Here, Podiin. Wear this with pride.” The fey might have collapsed once more into weak-kneed delight, but Gidula held him up. “With pride, I said.” And the fey nodded and visibly braced his shoulders.

“Now bring the Donovan and me a selection of fruits and light-meats. Hurry along.”

When the servant had vanished, Gidula sniffled, turned to Donovan, and spread his hands as if to say, There. You see?

“Trained from birth, was he?” Donovan said. “Small wonder freedom terrifies him. He’s known no-but else.”

“It’s not a bad life for his ilk. They are suited by nature to serve others.”

“His ilk … The feys?”

“What? No. Feys are no more servile than foxies or clappers or any other race of men. But they have their share of the mentally slow. Podiin can follow simple instructions, act on his own in familiar, structured environments, but he would be lost without the direction of others. What do you do with them out in the Periphery? Kill them at birth? Toss them on the street to fend for themselves?”

“It was a nice performance. I noticed he got a black pearl ring out of you.”

Gidula shrugged. “A man may be slow but nonetheless reach his destination. He is retarded, not stupid. But enough. I take it my point is made. You might not find Terra so eager to be ‘free.’ Our society is a tightly woven network of obligations.” He interlocked his fingers and tugged. “I am as much in Podiin’s service as he in mine. No, do not sneer, Gesh. You have lived too long among the Peripherals and their anarchies. A tightly woven web, I say, of beliefs, customs, tales, fealties, and the like. Our law books are thinner than the Peripheral’s because we are led by living words and not by dead legalities. When right action is needed, a parable is a surer guide than a statute. It is what gives us stability. It is why the Confederation is still what it always was, while the Periphery is constantly stumbling about.”

“‘Still what it always was…,’” said the Fudir. “But there was a Commonwealth, once.”

“Ah, the fabled Commonwealth of Suns. You Terrans look back at it misty-eyed, and I grant you it scaled greater heights than either the Confederation or the League has attained. But the Commonwealth was arrogance at the center, with the reins held loose. That is not a happy formula. If you value the lightly held leash, modest fellowship is best advised. But if you would strut your boots on other men’s faces, clench the reins tight and never relax.”

“The Commonwealth was not like that!”

“Were you there? Well, perhaps you are right—about her early days. But the Triangles did not rise up on a whim.”

Donovan tracked the fey as he returned with the refreshments. He hated servility in all its forms, and the Kabuki that Gidula had played with the fey sickened him; yet even he had to admit that there were gradations to the thing. Obedience need not be servile—and Gidula had wept true tears. The philosopher R. V. Ambigeshwari had spoken rightly in the autumn of the Commonwealth when she wrote: Every system works—after its own fashion; and every system fails—in its own way. Maybe so, but he didn’t have to like it.

Podiin proffered the tray first to Donovan, who saw that “light-meats” meant thin slices of fish or meat wrapped around vegetables and caked in rice. The scarred man let the Silky Voice make the selection. Inner Child noted that the boy now wore Gidula’s ring on a chain around his neck. Podiin favored Donovan with a smirk, as if this small boon had marked him a man among men. Donovan did not know whether to rejoice with him on this small victory or pity him for his larger defeat.

“A stable system, you say. Yet, you want to overthrow it.” Gidula was supposed to be a leader of the Revolution. There was a limit to how far he might plausibly go in defense of the status quo.

Gidula made his own selection, then waved the boy aside, to stand by the wall out of earshot. “A dead man is stable,” Gidula said. “Only living men stumble. But that our social fabric has frayed at the top does not mean that the tapestry must be burned entire. Poor Ravn understood that. You see, Those do not command our customs the way they command our laws—and custom is king of all. If it is our part to obey Those, it is their part to be worthy of obedience.”

Donovan, the Sleuth, and the Fudir considered this while the Silky Voice and the young man carefully studied Gidula. “And some of Those are not.”

“It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it. I believe you Terrans have a saying. ‘ Numpollyarky ’ something, something.”

“ Numpollyarky ysceala tattoo . ‘The act is unworthy of the person.’”

“You Terrans.…” Gidula laughed and shook his head. “You always have a great mouthful of words.”

“It gives us something to chew on.”

“Clever, too. I suppose with every man’s hand against you, the Fates have sharpened your wits, or you’d not have survived. Well, it’s been a long, hard time since the Commonwealth fell,” he continued. “Those were other days, and they worshiped other gods. The histories of the Late Commonwealth, while it was in power, were falsified through terror and sycophancy, and after its fall through the distortion of hatred. But the heat has gone out of it now; the coals are grown cold.”

Donovan looked at him oddly. “And so you enjoy,” he quoted, “‘the rare happiness of times, when you may think what you please, and express what you think.’”

Gidula shrugged and sipped from his drink. “When have there ever been such times? It is never too wise to express what you think. But our scholars now look back on the Commonwealth with neither the servility nor the enmity that once consumed men. We can begin, a little, to regard the age with dispassion.”