we need, and we can trade
with Beowulf and Amaterasu, and with Xochitl and Jagannath and Hoth,
if we can make any sort of agreement with them; everybody agrees to
let everybody else's trade-planets alone. It's too bad you couldn't
get some kind of an agreement with Marduk." Harkaman regretted that
for a few seconds, and then shrugged. "Our grandchildren, if any,
will probably be raiding Marduk."

"You think it'll be like that?"

"Don't you? You were there; you saw what's happening. The barbarians
are rising; they have a leader, and they're uniting. Every society
rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand
civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers.
The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others
have created for them, and who think civilization is something that
just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can
understand of it--luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work
for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have
a government for?"

Trask nodded. "And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about
the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to grab
the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he's the Leader." He
poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there
was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a
dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had
fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were
down to the peasant-village and handcraft-industry level. "I don't
understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler, on the way home.
I wouldn't be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about
Hitler, too. He's using all Hitler's tricks. But Hitler came to
power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat.
Marduk hasn't fought a war in almost two generations, and that one
was a farce."

"It wasn't the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that
the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running,
were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn't have
anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on
Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling
class that's ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A
ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as
good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class