So time had passed? That wasn't surprising. But this other thing—
Makvern went on. "Don't you yet have it on your Earth, the technique of teaching arbitrary knowledge to a subject in his sleep?"
Wyatt began to get it now. "You mean, a recorded voice repeating facts over and over in a sleeping man's ear? Yes. We have that—but it's not good enough to teach a man a whole new language in sleep."
"With us," said Makvern, "it is good enough. We always use it, once we pick up the vocabulary and grammar from our first captives. Makes it easier to question them. Instead of all our intelligence officers, technicians and so on having to learn the captive's language, we give him our language."
It was still too much for Wyatt to take in. He lay looking at Makvern, and after a moment he said,
"You seem like a decent guy, not a butcher or a greedy conqueror type. Maybe you can tell me what gives your people the idea they've a right to go around acting like a bunch of goddamned bandits."
Makvern smiled faintly. "Probably," he said, "because that's exactly what we are. Uryx is still a young empire. I imagine you have learned on Earth how empires grow—starting from a small weak poverty-ridden state fighting for its existence and becoming, by the process of eating its neighbors, a tremendous power able to conquer everything in sight. When it does this it wants to gorge itself on all the things it never had before."
He made a sweeping gesture. "Wealth, beauty, techniques, cultures, knowledge, everything under a thousand suns that can enrich or entertain us. We are still in this stage of acquisitiveness."
Wyatt grunted. "That all sounds very philosophic, but it still doesn't make you anything but bandits."