This was the day of complete control…

Garomma, the Servant of All, the World’s Drudge, the Slavey of Civilization, placed delicately scented finger-tips to his face, closed his eyes and allowed himself to luxuriate in the sensation of ultimate power, absolute power, power such as no human being had ever dared to dream of before this day.

Complete control. Complete…

Except for one man. One single ambitious maverick of a man. One very useful man. Should he be strangled at his desk this afternoon, that was the question, or should he be allowed a few more days, a few more weeks, of heavily supervised usefulness? His treason, his plots, were unquestionably coming to a head. Well, Garomma would decide that later. At leisure.

Meanwhile, in all other respects, with everyone else, there was control. Control not only of men’s minds but of their glands as well. And those of their children.

And, if Moddo’s estimates were correct, of their children’s children.

“Yea,” Garomma muttered to himself, suddenly remembering a fragment of the oral text his peasant father had taught him years ago, “yea, unto the seventh generation.”

What ancient book. burned in some long ago educational fire, had that text come from?, he wondered. His father would not be able to tell him, nor would any of his father’s friends and neighbors; they had all been wiped out after the Sixth District Peasant Uprising thirty years ago.

An uprising of a type that could never possibly occur again. Not with complete control.

Someone touched his knee gently, and his mind ceased its aimless foraging. Moddo, the Servant of Education, seated below him in the depths of the vehicle, gestured obsequiously at the transparent, missile-proof cupola that surrounded his leader down to the waist.

“The people,” he stated in his peculiar half-stammer. “There. Outside.”