“Yes, Joh. I never understood any of that.” “Well, understand this. As afraid as you were, this critter is even more afraid. Because to do to someone what the Khieevi did to you requires being a real lily-livered son of a gun at heart. Yessir, these Khieevi may look like bugs, but they’re all piles of pure cowardice with legs, if you ask me. Cowards and bullies, every one.” Becker threw his arms around and let his voice ring to make it heard above the piteous but irritating high-pitched sound the Khieevi was making. Aari had never heard the bug-like beings make that sound -while he was among them. Though perhaps he might have heard the sound, or a variant of it, coming from himself.
“Now, Aari, if you have any more “questions, ask away. Mac, you follow and see if you can fill in any blanks for him”What will you do. Captain?” Mac asked mildly. “I’ll be thinking up threats and-uh-persuasions, Becker said.
“Very well, Captain. Aari?” “Mac, ask it what it was doing here, how many others like it there are close by, where the main fleet is, and the location of the homeworld.”
Mac manufactured the klacking sound of the Khieevi, using his mouth alone. Aari was impressed.
The Khieevi let forth the high-pitched whining sound once more.
“Tell it we’ll stop the pain if it gives us the data,” Becker instructed Mac, his jaw clenched tightly, his teeth bared in what was an indisputable display of hostility-a hostility Becker seemed to be reveling in.
Aari, on the other hand, was not enjoying his position. He had certainly thought he -would enjoy giving back to a Khieevi what the Khieevi had done to him, but instead he felt filled with loathing-for himself. He was now doing a Khieevi thing. He might as -well be one. But the information was important. He put the thought on hold when he realized Mac -was speaking, and not in klacks this time.
“Theirs was a scout ship. The Khieevi have many such ships. Their mission was to locate a likely world with the proper atmosphere and nutrients for consumption by the horde. The horde’s main fleet has already been notified that this being’s ship had located a large number of suitable worlds, including this one, due to a lucky conquest of a scout ship of a twohorned race.”
Mac turned to Becker and said, “That -would be the Niriians, surely? You understand, please, that many of the concepts this creature expresses can be interpreted only loosely. Fortunately, because of the remaining programming from my former i^er, I am quite conversant with the basic content of this create s thought and language patterns and can assure you that “y interpretations are fairly accurate. The Khieevi have a lot l” common with Kisia Manjari.”
And so it -went. To minimize the misunderstanding or trance of lying on the part of the Khieevi, (“Well, for pity’s sake, Aari,” Decker said, “any critter who would do to you what these guys did is certainly not going to stop at a little ltŁ”) Becker insisted on asking the same questions over and over in many different ways.
Mac said, “You are very good at information extraction Captain Becker. Have you been in the business before yourself?”
“No, but my dad was great at giving pop oral exams on the subjects I was supposed to be learning when I was a kid ” Becker said. “I never could put anything over on him. Who knew it would come in so handy? So let’s go over it all one more time …”
Aari found himself sweating during the questioning, remembering himself in the Khieevi’s place and hearing the squeal ooze out of the creature along with the stench.
At some point during the questioning, Khornya stopped by. When she left, Aari noticed that RK was no longer in the room with them. By then, among them, they were trying to explain to the Khieevi that they wanted the coordinates of the horde fleet and of the Khieevi home planet, as well as the codes that would allow them to crack Khieevi communication devices.
The thing had just given them a useless string of babble that none of them could decipher when the stench suddenly became much worse, the klacking much more muffled, and the squeal thinner, higher, shriller. Then, suddenly, all was still.