Free Love's Labor's Won by Christopher Nuttall Page B

section. Years ago, she’d read Karl Marx. She hadn’t been impressed, either with the arguments or the verbiage; it had seemed to her that Marx had been trying to hide the weakness in his thinking behind a mountain of long and complicated words. But the writer who’d written the pamphlet seemed to be channeling the ideal of Marx...
    “Baroness Emily,” King Randor said. “Why don’t you read to us?”
    Emily looked down at the pamphlet. “Our society is shaped like a triangle,” she read. “The king and his aristocracy are on the top, peasants and slaves are at the bottom. This is the one truth we are taught right from birth, when we become aware of both society and our place in it. The higher up the triangle, the more power a person possesses over his inferiors. But the question we are taught never to ask is why? Why is our society so fixed?
    “We are told that peasants deserve to be peasants and slaves deserve to be slaves. We are told that peasants are slow, stupid, incapable of being anything more than grunt animals in the fields. And yet, when given the opportunity, peasants who escape the fields can make their own lives, earning wealth for themselves, rather than their owners. Is it true, therefore, that there is something inherently slavish about the peasants?
    “And if this is not true, and common sense tells us it isn’t, is there something inherently noble about the nobility? Why should they have power when they have done nothing to earn it, save being born lucky?”
    King Randor held up a hand. “These have been found everywhere,” he said. “Some argue that the nobility should be elected, or that real power should be placed in the hands of the Assembly. Others call for the total destruction of the aristocracy and a grand sharing out of the wealth and power we have built up over centuries. They are, of course, hideously subversive.”
    You would think that , Emily thought acidly. She couldn’t blame the king for wanting to protect his position, but she’d never liked the idea of an aristocracy. Why, indeed, should some people have the right to rule others, merely through having been born to the right families?
    “I have issued orders to ban these documents and discover the producers,” Randor continued. “I expect each and every one of you” — his gaze rested on Emily for a long moment — “to concentrate on finding the writer of these...these pieces of toilet paper and arresting him.”
    That wouldn’t be enough, Emily knew. The printing press ensured that thousands of copies could be produced very quickly, while English letters made sure just about anyone could read the subversive papers. It would be impossible to suppress them completely, not without completely destroying the printing presses and killing anyone who knew how to read English letters. And that would cripple the newborn economy beyond repair.
    And she wasn’t sure she wanted to catch the person or persons responsible. She’d seen too much of the nobility, mundane or magical, to have any faith in aristocracy as a basis for long-term government. Alassa had been a brat when they’d first met, a brat armed with magic, while half of her would-be suitors had been lecherous fools. And Melissa was a member of the magical aristocracy...
    “Change is coming to Our Kingdom,” Randor said, softly. “We cannot avoid it. But we can, we will, manage it so that all that is noble and good about our lands is not destroyed.”
    “Of course, your majesty,” Baron Gaunt said.
    “But there are other issues to be discussed,” Baron Silver said. “The broadsheets, for example. They should be controlled.”
    King Randor looked at Emily. “Can they be controlled? Should they be controlled?”
    Emily swallowed. It was hard, in all honesty, to actually answer the question. On one hand, she knew from Earth that freedom of the press was the cornerstone of a healthy democracy. But, on the other hand, Zangaria wasn’t exactly a democracy.