The Highest Treason by Randall Garrett

Author:Randall Garrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

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“However,” the High Commander went on, gazing at the ceiling, “circumstances change. It would once have been thought vile that a machine should be allowed to do the work of a skilled man, and the thought that a machine might do the work with more precision and greater rapidity would have been almost blasphemous.

“This case must be viewed in the same light. As we are replacing certain of our workers on our outer planets with Earth animals simply because they are capable of doing the work more cheaply, so we must recognize that the same interests of economy govern in this case.

“A computing animal, in that sense, is in the same class as a computing machine. It would be folly to waste their abilities simply because they are not human.

“There also arises the question of command. It has been represented to this court, by certain officers who have been active in investigating the candidate animal, that it would be as degrading to ask a human officer to take orders from an animal as it would be to ask him to take orders from a commoner of the Unorganized Reserve, if not more so. And, I must admit, there is, on the surface of it, some basis for this reasoning.

“But, again, we must not let ourselves be misled. Does not a spaceship pilot, in a sense, take orders from the computer that gives him his orbits and courses? In fact, do not all computers give orders, in one way or another, to those who use them?

“Why, then, should we refuse to take orders from a computing animal?”

He paused and appeared to listen to the silence in the room before going on.

“Stand at ease until the High Commander looks at you again,” Tallis said in a low aside.

This was definitely the pause for adjusting to surprise.

It seemed interminable, though it couldn’t have been longer than a minute later that the High Commander dropped his gaze from the ceiling to MacMaine. When MacMaine snapped to attention again, the others in the room became suddenly silent.

“We feel,” the hard-faced old Kerothi continued, as if there had been no break, “that, in this case, we are justified in employing the animal in question.

“However, we must make certain exceptions to our normal procedure. The candidate is not a machine, and therefore cannot be treated as a machine. Neither is it human, and therefore cannot be treated as human.

“Therefore, this is the judgment of the Court of the Ingroup:

“The animal, having shown itself to be capable of behaving, in some degree, as befits an officer—including, as we have been informed, voluntarily conforming to our custom as regards superfluous hair—it shall henceforth be considered as having the same status as an untaught child or a barbarian, insofar as social conventions are concerned, and shall be entitled to the use of the human pronoun, he.

“Further, he shall be entitled to wear the uniform he now wears, and the insignia of a General of the Fleet. He shall

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