Birthright

day-to-day business of the Floating Kingdom. I shall certainly not interject myself into the even more

mundane daily affairs of the galaxy at large. My final directive is this: If any problem reaches proportions of great enough import to receive my personal attention, and if it is determined that said problem arose due to an absence of initiative, or the inability to make a decision, on the part of a bureaucrat of the Commonwealth, that bureaucrat will be summarily executed. Given the current state of affairs, I would prefer incorrect actions to inaction.”

“Is that all, Director?'’ asked Zenorra. “For the moment. When we see how these orders work we'll be better able to further modify the present system. I'm surprised,” he added, “that some such system hasn't been proposed by any of my predecessors.”

“It has been,” said Oberlieu.

“By each and every one of them,” said Zenorra. Vestolian glared coldly at them for a moment and then dismissed them. It would take time, he knew, for the orders to reach all concerned parties. He estimated two years, but admitted that it might well be a decade before the Commonwealth showed any noticeable change. Once it happened, though, he might even enjoy being Director. As it turned out, he was wrong on both counts: It didn't take ten years, and he very definitely didn't enjoy it.

Item: The insectoid population of Procyon II, suffering from the pangs of overpopulation, had found some pretext to go to war with the humanoids of Procyon III. The governors, unable to reach an agreement, had put the issue before the overseer, but before he could decide the merits of the case, the Navy had stepped into the picture, breaking up the war by bombarding Procyon II with deadly radiation. Not only were some ninety percent of the insectoids destroyed, but anti-human pogroms broke out spontaneously on seven of the other nine insectoid worlds in the Commonwealth. When Vestolian looked into the matter, he found that the governors had pursued his chain of command, and that the Navy had very definitely avoided any charge of inaction. Item: The Department of Microbiology had requested an appropriation of seventeen billion credits; the Department of the Budget had agreed to four billion. The Arbitration Board had settled on a figure of six billion, and the entire Microbiology Department went on strike pending a meeting with the Director. Since they produced most of the vaccines used by humans on alien planets, a strike was intolerable, so Vestolian was forced to hear their arguments. He upped the appropriation to nine billion, and since there was no higher authority to appeal to, the microbiologists willingly went back to work. In the meantime, three expeditionary forces on the frontier worlds died due to lack of vaccine. Item: The ambassador to Alioth XIV, a world not yet incorporated into the Commonwealth, had succeeded so well in imparting his notions of a utopian democracy into the minds of the populace at large that a bloody civil war was instigated, resulting in more than 29 million deaths before the totalitarian leadership beat and starved the opposition forces into submission. When brought before an enraged Vestolian, the ambassador protested that he was merely using his initiative as directed. Why had the problem not been reported in earlier, solvable stages? Because the Director had made it clear that he wanted to be consulted only when all other courses of action had failed—and by that time it was, regrettably, too late.