Birthright

beyond your realm of experience. May I respectfully suggest that you leave it to your Brain Trust?”

“Meaning you?”

“Meaning me and my staff. You can modify our solution to suit the political and diplomatic and administrative necessities of the moment, but I'll get a lot more accomplished by returning to my own office than by jawboning here with you.” “You know what I hate about you, Kip?” said Renyan. “What?”

“You can be the politest sonofabitch in the world when you're trying to prove a point to me, but when we both know you're right you can become one of the most distasteful individuals I've ever met.” Ngana flashed him a smile and returned to his office. He assembled four senior members of his extensive staff, explained the problem to them, and set them to work coordinating various details of the plan he had devised. That done, he had Psychology give him a thumbnail sketch on the characteristics of each race he would be dealing with. Some were loyal to Man, some were unable to summon the emotional independence to offer the Republic an ultimatum, and some simply didn't care. What remained were worlds that could and would do all within their power to gain enfranchisement. Enfranchisement, of course, was merely a word, a harbinger of things to come. But its meaning was absolutely clear: the ultimate passing of political power from Man to non-Man. It was a knotty problem, and full of political obstacles. The Republic had no desire to keep the alien worlds in line through overt military force. After all, there were well over a billion suns in the galaxy; almost half of them possessed planets, and an average of one out of every twenty planets held life forms that were either sentient or someday would be. That was a lot of life forms to have massed against you. Also, there were the 2,500 sentient races that had not yet accepted commerce with the Republic; throttling their brother creatures in too obvious a manner wouldn't exactly entice them into joining the Republic's economic fraternity.

And, finally, there were the potential Fifth Columnists, the humans who felt that the alien worlds had every legal and moral right to enfranchisement and a say in the political future of the galaxy. They would be the most bothersome obstacle, for Man needed to keep his exclusive little fraternity tightly knit at this point in his history; there were just too many outside interests picking away at him to allow internal strife to weaken his infant primacy in the galaxy. Yes, the solution must definitely handle the sympathetic humans with tender kid gloves. The brass knuckles, he decided, would remain hidden for the time being. Reports began coming back to him. Gamma Leporis IV couldn't make any trouble they were still entirely aquatic and could be cut off from all communication with the rest of the races. The Denebian Colonies were a trouble spot; it was suspected that they had nuclear weapons, and the capacity to deliver them. Binder VI's economy depended on atomics, but they possessed no native fissionable material; an embargo would probably bring them into line. Canphor VI and VII could withstand an embargo for more than a decade; they had a viable political system, and the last two governors had run on a platform of enfranchisement. And so it went, planet after planet, race after race, economy after economy. By the end of the week the truth began to manifest itself to Ngana: There was indeed no way to keep the 845 worlds, and very likely all of them, from their share of the spoils. It was possible on a short-term