“Like ants?” 12-Upjohn said slowly. “I don’t see how an advanced technology … but no, I do see. And if it’s so, it means that any Callean we run across could be their chief of state, but that no one of them actually is. The only other real individual is next door, on the fourth planetanother hive ego.”
“Maybe not,” Robin said. “Don’t forget that he thinks we’re part of one, too.”
12-Upjohn dismissed that possibility at once. “He’s sure to know his own system, after all… . What alarms me is the population figure he cited. It’s got to be at least clusterwide and from the exactness with which he was willing to cite it, for a given instant, he had to have immediate access to it.
An instant, effortless census.”
“Yes,” Robin said. “Meaning mind-to-mind contact, from one to all, throughout the whole complex. That’s what started me thinking about the funny way he used pronouns.”
“If that’s the case. Robin, we are spurlos versenkt. And my pronoun includes the Earth.”
“They may have some limitations,” Robin said, but it was clear that he was only whistling in the dark. “But at least it explains why they butchered the Dragon’s crew so readily and why they’re willing to let us wander around their planet as if we didn’t even exist. We don’t, for them. They can’t have any respect for a single life. No wonder they didn’t give a damn for the sergeant’s gun!”
His initial flush had given way to a marble paleness; there were beads of sweat on his brow in the dry hot air, and he was trembling harder than ever. He looked as though he might faint in the next instant, though only the slightest of stutters disturbed his rush of words. But for once the Consort of State could not accuse him of agitation over trifles.