Shigehero nodded slowly, then gave a rueful smile. “I confess to hubris,” he said. “We will launch an immediate attack. If nothing else, we may force the alien back into its stasis field.” He turned to give an order.
Woof, Early thought, keeping his wheeze of relief purely mental. He felt shock freeze him as Shigehero turned back.
“The, ah, the . . .” The oyabun coughed, cleared his throat: “The asteroid . . . and the alien ship . . . and, ah, Markham’s ships . . . they have disappeared.”
* * *
“Full house,” the slave on the right said, raking in his pile of plastic tokens. “That’s the south polar continent I’m to be chief administrator of, Master. Your deal.”
Dnivtopun started to clasp his hands to his head, then stopped when he remembered the bandages. Fear bubbled up from his hindbrain, and the thick chicken-like claws of his feet dug into the yielding deck surface. Training kept it from leaking out, a mental image of a high granite wall between the memory of pain streaming through his mind and the Power. Instead he waved his tendrils in amusement and gathered in the cards. Now, split the deck into two equal piles, faces down. Place one digit on each, use the outer digit to ruffle them together—
The cards flipped and slid. With a howl of frustration, Dnivtopun jammed them together and ripped the pack in half, throwing them over his shoulder to join the ankle-deep heap behind the thrint’s chair.
He rose and pushed it back, clattering. “This is a stupid game!” The humans were sitting woodenly, staring at the playing table with expressions of disgust.
“Carry on,” he grated. They relaxed, and one of them produced a fresh pack from the box at its side. “No, wait,” he said, looking at them more closely. What had the Chief Slave said? Yes, they did look as if they were losing weight: one or two of them had turned gray and their skin was hanging in folds, and he was sure that the one with the chest protuberances had had fur on its head before. “If any of you have gone more than ten hours without food or water, go to your refectory and replenish.”
The slaves leaped to their feet in a shower of chips and cards, stampeding for the door to the lounge area; several of them were leaking fluid from around their eyes and mouths. Remarkable, Dnivtopun thought. He called up looted human memory to examine the concept of full. A thrint who ate until he was full would die of a ruptured stomach . . . and these humans needed to drink large quantities of water every day. Remarkable, but then, their waste-disposal organs were even stranger.
“I am bored,” Dnivtopun muttered, stalking toward the coreward exit. There was nothing to do, even now while his life was in danger. No decisions to be made, only work—and the constant tendril-knotting itch of having to control more slaves than was comfortable. His Power seemed bruised, had since he awoke. He leaned against the wall and felt his body sink slowly forward and down, through the thinning pseudomatter. There had been one horrible instant when he regained consciousness . . . he had thought that the Power was gone. Shuddering, the thick greenish skin drawing itself into lumps over the triangular hump behind his head, he made a gesture of aversion.
“Powerloss,” he said. A common thrintish curse, but occasionally a horrible reality. A thrint without Power was not a thrint: they were a ptavv. Sometimes males failed to develop the power; such ptavvs were tattooed pink and sold as slaves . . . in the rare instances when they were not quietly murdered by shamed relatives.
Wasn’t there a rumor about Uncle Ruhka’s third wife’s second son? he mused, then dismissed the thought. Certain types of head injury could result in an adult thrint losing the Power, which was even worse.
Now he did feel at the thin, slick, almost-living surface of the bandages. Chief Slave said the amplifier had been fully repaired, and Chief Slave believed it. But he had believed the first attempt would succeed, too. No. Not yet, Dnivtopun decided. He would wait until it was absolutely necessary, or until they had captured the planetary system by other means and more qualified slaves had worked on the problem. I will check on Chief Slave, he decided. It was a disgrace to work, of course, but there was no taboo against giving your slaves the benefit of your advice.
* * *
“Joy,” Jonah Matthieson said.
Equipment was spread out all around him; interfacer units, portable comps, memory cores ripped out of Markham’s ships. Lines webbed the flame-scorched surface of the tnuctipun computer, thread-thin links disappearing into the machine through clumsy sausage-like improvised connectors. He ignored the bustle of movement all around him, ignored everything but the micromanipulator in his hands. The connections had been built for tnuctipun, a race the size of raccoons, with two thumbs and four fingers, all longer and more flexible than human digits.
“Ah. Joy.” He took up the interfacer unit and keyed the verbal receptor. “Filecodes,” he said.
A screen on one of the half-rebuilt Swarm-Belter computers by his foot lit. Gibberish, except— The pure happiness of solving a difficult programming problem filled him. It had never been as strong as this, just as he had never been able to concentrate like this before. He shuddered with an ecstasy that left sex showing as the gray, transient thing it was. But I wish Ingrid were here, he thought. She would be able to appreciate the elegance of it.
“You haff results?”
Jonah stood up, dusting his knees. Somewhere, something went pop and crackle. He nodded, stiff cheeks smiling. Not even Markham could dampen the pleasure.
“It was a Finagle bitch,” he said, “but yes.”
Something struck him across the side of the face. He stumbled back against the console’s yielding surface, and realized it was Markham’s hand. With difficulty he dragged his eyes back to the Wunderlander’s face, reminding himself to blink; he couldn’t focus properly on the problem Master had set him unless he did that occasionally. Absently, he reached to his side and attempted to thrust a three-fingered palm into the dope-stick container. Stop that, he told himself. You have a job to do.
“Zat is, yes, sir,” Markham was saying with detached precision. “Remember, I am t’ voice of Overmind among us.”
Jonah nodded, smiling again. “Yes, sir,” he said, kneeling again and pointing to the screen. “The operational command sections of the memory core were damaged, but I’ve managed to isolate two and reroute them through this haywired rig here.”
“Weapons?” Markham asked sharply.
“Well, sort of, sir. This is a . . . the effect is a stabilizing . . . anyway, you couldn’t detect anything around here while it’s on. Some sort of quantum effect, I didn’t have time to investigate. It can project, too, so the other ships could be covered as well.”
“How far?”
“Oh, the effect’s instantaneous across distance. It’s a subsystem of the faster-than-light communications and drive setup.”
Markham’s lips shaped a silent whistle. “And t’other system?”
“It’s a directional beam. Affects on the nucleonic level.” Jonah frowned, and a tear slipped free to run down one cheek. He had failed the Master . . . No, he could not let sorrow affect his efficiency. “I’m sorry, but the modulator was partially scrambled. The commands, that is, not the hardware. So there’s only a narrow range of effects the beam will produce.”
“Such as?”
“In this range, it will accelerate solid-state fusion reactions, sir.” Seeing Markham’s eyebrows lift, he explained: “Fusion power units will blow up.” The Herrenmann clapped his hands together. “At this setting, you get spontaneous conversion to antimatter. But”—Jonah hung his head—”I don’t think more than one-half percent of the material would be affected.” Miserably: “I’m sorry, sir.”
“No, no, you haff done outstanding work. The Master vill—” He stopped, drawing himself erect. “Master! I report success!”
The dopestick crumbled between the thrint’s teeth as he looked at the wreckage of the computer and the untidy sprawl of human apparatus. The sight of it made his tendrils clench; hideous danger, to trust himself to unscreened tnuctipun equipment. He touched his hands to the head-bandages again, and looked over at the new amplifier helmet. This one had a much more finished look, on a tripod stand that could lower it over his head as he sat in the command chair. His tendrils knotted tight on either side of his mouth.
Markham had followed his eye. “If Master would only try—”
“SILENCE, CHIEF SLAVE,” Dnivtopun ordered. Markham shut his mouth and waited. “ABOUT THAT,” the thrint amplified. The Chief Slave was under very light control, just a few Powerhooks into his volitional system, a few alarm-circuits set up that would prevent him from thinking along certain lines. He had proved himself so useful while the thrint was unconscious, after all, and close control did tend to reduce initiative.