“Experience, my lad,” said Ram Odin. “I’ve known plenty of managers like that. They hate their job, they hate their lives. If I owned the man, I’d make some effort to find out what he actually likes to do, and then find a way to let him earn his keep by doing it. But then, I’m probably too soft to be a really effective slaveowner.”

“You? Soft?” Rigg shook his head. “I know you better than that.”

Ram Odin didn’t argue. “Do you agree that I should offer to sit up with the wife tonight and listen to her breathe?”

“Don’t you need your sleep?” asked Rigg. “If you fall asleep during tomorrow’s conversations, I’ll have to sell you to somebody else.”

“Did you notice something else?” asked Ram Odin. “Something personal about their response to you?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “Nobody looks away from my face. I’m apparently much prettier here.”

“You’re a Wallman,” said Ram Odin. “Power and authority make any man handsome.”

“I liked being a Finder of Lost Things much better.”

Rigg went ahead and held the next conversation. He put in a full day and was exhausted by suppertime. He and Ram Odin ate a pretty good meal, considering that slaves normally didn’t have much choice about what they ate, so the culinary arts had no financial incentive to improve.

At breakfast, Ram Odin looked perfectly well rested. “She’s not in danger at all,” said Ram Odin. “Half an hour in, the ship gave me a full prognosis, and I went in to where the poor fellow was busily trying to sleep in the room with his two boys. I took him into the hall, told him the good news. Of course, I had to phrase it as your decision based on my medical expertise—that’s part of the reason you bring me along. Just in case anyone asks.”

“Now you’re a doctor.”

“I have been a doctor, more or less, when I started up the colony in Odinfold. Of course, with the ship’s equipment, anybody could be a doctor.”

“He believed you?”

“I didn’t leave till he was really asleep in the boys’ room.”

“Now if the wife dies of a heart attack . . .”

“He can’t complain,” said Ram Odin. “He’s a slave. And we did nothing wrong, because we had the best available medical advice. Did you have a better plan?”

“I had no plan at all,” said Rigg.

“So what are you thinking? How you ought to shut down the Wall and bring the rampaging Sessamoto legions to do away with this whole repulsive system?”

“Bad as this system is,” said Rigg, “I know enough about ­history—and about the Sessamids—to be skeptical about bringing about any actual improvement. As you pointed out, the system is no worse than the people running it, which is you.”

“Indirectly,” said Ram Odin.