Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [296]
And Scotland had built a national cuisine on oats. Tonight they'd find out what haggis tasted like …
She went through the main hall, where women and children were putting up decorations, bright-colored drapes now used as wall hangings, whatever might add a festive air. The Mayor's office was through a door at the far end.
Her father, Al Hardy, Mayor Seitz and George Christopher were in there with Eileen Hamner. Their conversation stopped abruptly as she entered. Maureen greeted George and got an answer, but he seemed slightly nervous, somehow made to feel guilty in her presence. Or was she imagining it? She wasn't imagining the silence in the room.
"Go on with what you were doing," she said.
"We were just talking about … things," Al Hardy said. "I don't know if you'd be interested … "
Maureen laughed. "Don't worry about it. Go on." Because if you're going to treat me like a goddam princess, she thought, I can sure as hell learn what's going on.
"Yes. Well, it's a bit of an ugly subject," Al Hardy said.
"So?" She took a seat next to her father. He didn't look good. He didn't look good at all, and Maureen knew he wouldn't live through the winter. The doctors at Bethesda had told her he would have to take things a lot easier—and there was no way he could do that. She put her hand on his arm and smiled, and he returned it. "Tell Al I'll be all right," she said.
His smile broadened. "Sure about that, Kitten?"
"Yes. I can do my part."
"Al," Jellison said.
"Yes, sir. It's about the prisoners. What do we do with them?"
"There weren't many of their wounded in the hospital," Maureen said. "I'd have thought there would be more—oh."
Hardy nodded. "The rest are being … taken care of. It's the forty-one men and six women who surrendered that we've got to worry about." He held up his hand and ticked off points on his fingers. "I see the following alternatives. One. We can take them in as citizens—"
"Never," George Christopher growled.
"Two. We can take them in as slaves. Three, we can let them go. Four, we can kill them."
"We don't let them go, either," George said. "Let them go, they'll rejoin the Brotherhood. Where else would they go? And the Brotherhood is still bigger than we are. Don't forget that. They put up a good fight after the first ten or fifteen miles. They've still got leaders, some trucks, mortars … Sure, we captured a lot of their weapons, but they're still out there." He grinned wolfishly. "But I bet they don't ever stick their noses our way again." Then he looked thoughtful. "Slaves. I can think of a lot we could do with slaves."
"Yes." Hardy nodded agreement. "So can I. Brute labor. Turning compressor pumps so we can have refrigeration. Musclepower for hand lathes. Grinding lenses. Even pulling plows. There's a lot of work nobody wants to do—"
"But slavery?" Maureen protested. "That's horrible."
"Is it? Would you like it better if we call it imprisonment at hard labor?" Hardy asked. "Would their lives be so much worse than they were as part of the Brotherhood? Or worse than convicts in prisons before the Hammer?"
"No," Maureen said. "It's not them I'm thinking of. It's us. Do we want to be the kind of people who keep slaves?"
"Then let's kill 'em and get it over with," George Christopher said. "Because we're sure as hell not going to just turn them loose. Inside or outside."
"Why can't we just let them go?" Maureen demanded.
"I already told you," George said. "They'll go back to the cannibals—"
"Is the Brotherhood all that dangerous now?" Maureen asked.
"Not to us," Christopher said. "They won't come here again."
"And by spring there won't be many of them left, I suspect," Al Hardy added. "They don't have much organization for winter. Or if they do, the ones we captured don't know about it."
Maureen fought the feeling that threatened her. "It's all pretty horrible," she said.
"What