“No fear that,” Hansen said as he obeyed.
He grinned at the lizardmen. He’d poke the spiky end of his reed in the face of the first to come for him, grab away the creature’s staff, and do a quick right and left with the points on the other pair. . . .
Of course, even if the move went precisely as planned, that left the third lizardman chewing Hansen’s throat out with teeth made for nothing else.
Half a dozen narrow, jointed pseudopods grew past Hansen’s face from the helmet. They were crystal, and it was easy to guess who—rather than what—had extended them.
The glittering tips prodded at the casing. Harsh light spluttered from a miniature laser cutter; then the faceplate lifted in the grip of one pseudopod while the others probed beneath.
The Lomeri backed another step away.
“Pft!” clicked the voice in Hansen’s ears. “Junk, only junk.”
Hansen’s mind split between two realities. He could still see the lizardmen flicking their tongues in nervous pulses, but they seemed to be projected on a flat screen. The forepart of his vision filled with lines and shadows which Hansen’s instinct told him were representations, not forms—but were closer to the concept of a Platonic ideal than anything his own senses could show him.
“Walker,” he asked, “how does this unit work?”
The vision sharpened. Blotches of shadow broke into fans of lines or vanished.
“It transmits a signal to the collars of the edaphosaurs,” Walker replied. “The dial controls the frequency—badly, but I’ll improve that. And the joystick determines the amplitude of the signal which the creature’s collar feeds to it as pain induced in the main nerve trunk. A goad of sorts, badly made and underpowered.”
Hansen licked his own lips. Funny how dry your mouth could get, even in a saturated atmosphere like this.
“Walker?” he said. “Can you boost the power and expand the range that the unit covers?
“I’m tapping it into the Matrix as a powersource,” Walker said. “And yes, Kommissar, while I’m at it I’m adjusting the frequencies so that the unit will also control the collars the herdsmen themselves wear.”
There was another electronic chuckle. Hansen’s vision returned to normal. The pseudopods resealed the unit and withdrew.
Hansen tossed the unit back to its owner. “Try it,” he said. “But watch the power—and if you get to the end of the dial, it’ll work on your buddies, too.”
The lizardman toyed with the joystick. There was an agonized bellow from deep in the swamp. The Lomeri’s finger released the stick.
Distant splashing continued for thirty seconds, then slowed. A second prod was followed by another bellow, much closer. An edaphosaur—the one whose wandering had brought the herdsman to Hansen to begin with—reappeared.
“It never worked like that on the cattle,” the lizardman muttered in delight.
“Next?” said Hansen.
The Lomeri played with the first sending unit while Hansen worked on the second. Edaphosaurs seemed to have no herd instinct and a tendency to wander. Bleats of pain echoed in all directions as the lizardfolk drove the beasts closer—and, when they were in sight, tortured the sluggish sailbacks for the pleasure of watching them bleat and squirm.
“Now there’s only one thing . . . ,” Hansen said as he returned the second unit.
Two lizardmen grabbed for it. When one snatched it away, the other jabbed his staff toward his comrade’s belly.
Both of the creatures straightened up in screaming pain. The third Lomeri had twitched first the dial, then the joystick of his repaired unit. His laughter had the brittle cruelty of a brick shattering stained glass.
Hansen took the remaining unit as its owner hopped on one leg, trying to raise his head even higher as his clawed hands plucked at the collar which controlled him. The third lizardman threw his joystick back to zero and let both his fellows collapse gasping in the mud.
“The only thing is,” Hansen resumed while crystal limbs as angularly misshapen as those of a spider crab reached past his face, “is that in this swamp, the units are going to degrade again. This atmosphere—”
He waved his hand through the miasma of humidity and rotting vegetation “—is going to crud up what it doesn’t eat, so you’ll need to find somebody to fix your hardware again.”