If anything, Chief Slave had been a little overzealous. Many useful slaves had been destroyed lest they revert while Dnivtopun was helpless—but better to have to rein in the noble znorgun than to prod the reluctant gelding. The thought brought a stab of sadness; never again would Dnivtopun join the throng in an arena, shouting with mind and voice as the racing animals pounded around the track. . . .
Nonsense, he told himself. I will live thousands of years. There will be millions upon millions of thrintun by then. Amenities will have been reestablished. His species became sexually mature at eight, after all, and the females could bear a litter of six every year. And three-quarters of those were female. Back to the matter at hand.
“We have established control over a shielding device and an effective weapon system, Master,” the Chief Slave was saying. “With these, it should be no trouble to dispose of the kzinti ships which approach.” Markham bared his teeth; Dnivtopun checked his automatic counterstrike with the Power. That is an appeasement gesture. “In fact, I have an idea which may make that very simple.”
“Good.” Dnivtopun twisted with the Power, and felt the glow of pride/purpose/determination flow back along the link. An excellent Chief Slave, he decided, noting absently that Markham’s mind was interpreting the term with different overtones. Disciple? Dnivtopun thought.
The computer slave beside him swayed and the thrint frowned, drumming his tendrils against his chin. This was an essential slave, but harder than most to control. A little like the one that had slipped away during the disastrous experiment with the jury-rigged amplifier helmet, able to think without contemplating itself. He considered the structure of controls, thick icepicks paralyzing most of the slave’s volition centers, rerouting its learned reflexes . . . Yes, best withdraw this, and that— It would not do to damage him, not yet. Nothing had been harmed beyond repair so far. Damp him down to semiconsciousness for recovery.
Dnivtopun twitched his hump in a rueful sigh, half irritation and half regret. There were still sixty living human slaves around the Ruling Mind, and he had had to be quite harsh when he awoke. Trauma-loops, and deep-core memory reaming; most of them would probably never be good for much again, and many were little more than organic waldoes now, biological manipulators and sensor units with little personality left. That was wasteful, even perhaps an abuse of the Powergiver’s gifts, but there had been little alternative. Oh, well, there are hundreds of millions more in this system, he thought, and turned to go.
“Proceed as you think best,” he said to the Chief Slave. He cast another glance of longing and terror at the amplifier as he passed. If only— Aha! The thought burst into his mind like a nova. He could have one of his sons test the amplifier. The thrint headed toward the family quarters at a hopping run, and was almost there before he felt the nova die.
“This isn’t a standard unit,” he reminded himself. Ordinary amplifier helmets had little or no effect on an adult male thrint, able to shield. But the principles were the same as the gigantic unit the thrint clanchiefs had used to scour the galaxy clean of intelligent life, at the end of the Revolt. Perhaps it would enable his son to break Dnivtopun’s shield. He thought of an adolescent with that power, and worked his hands in agitation; better to wait.
* * *
Jonah gave a muffled groan and collapsed to the floor.
“Oh, Finagle, I hurt,” he moaned, around a thick dry tongue. His eyes blurred, burning; a hand held before his eyes shook, and there were beads of blood on the fingertips. Skin hung loose around the wrist, gray and speckled with ground-in dirt. He could smell the rancid-chicken-soup odor of his own body, and the front of his overall was stiff with dried urine.
“Come along, come along,” Markham said impatiently, putting a hand under his elbow and hauling him to his feet.
Jonah followed unresisting, looking dazedly at the crazy quilt of components and connectors scattered about the deck. This section had been stripped of the fibrous blue coating, exposing a seamless dull-gray surface beneath. It was neither warm nor cold, and he remembered—where?—that it was a perfect insulator as well.
“How . . . long?” he rasped.
“Two days,” Markham said, as they waited for the wall to thin so that they could transfuse through. “Zis way. We will put you in the Nietzsche’s autodoc for a few hours.” He sighed. “If only Nietzsche himself could be here, to see the true Over-Being revealed!” A rueful shake of the head. “I am glad zat you are still functional, Matthieson. To tell the truth, I haff become somewhat starved for intelligent conversation, since it was necessary to . . . severely modify so many of the others.”
“What . . . what are you going to do?” Jonah said. It was as if there was a split-screen process going on in his head; there were emotions down there, he could recognize them—horror, fear—but he could not connect. That was it . . . and as if a powered-down board was being reactivated, one screen at a time.
“Destroy t’kzinti fleet,” Markham said absently. “An interesting tactical problem, but I haff studied der internal organization for some time, and I think I haff the answer.” He sighed heavily. “A pity to kill so many fine warriors, when ve vill need them later to subdue other systems. But until the Master’s sons mature, no chances can ve take.”
Jonah groaned and pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead. Kzinti should be destroyed . . . shouldn’t they? Memories of fear and flight drifted through his mind: a hunching carnivore running through tall grass, the scream and the leap.
“I’m confused, Markham. Sir,” he said, pawing feebly at the other man’s arm.
The Chief Slave laid a soothing arm around Jonah’s shoulders. “Zer is no need for zat,” he said. “You are merely suffering the dying twitches of t’false metaphysic of individualism. Soon all confusion will be gone, forever.”
* * *
Harold glanced aside at Ingrid; her face was fixed on the screen.
“Why?” she said bluntly to the computer.
“Because it gives me the greatest probability of success,” the computer replied inexorably, and brought up a schematic. “Observe: the Slaver ship; the kzinti armada, closing to englobe and match velocities. We may disregard trace indicators of other vessels. My stealthing plus the unmistakable profile of the kzinti vessel will enable me to pass through the fleet with a seventy-eight percent chance of success.”
“Fine,” Harold said. “And when you get there, how exactly does the lack of a human crew increase your chances in a ship-to-ship action?” Somewhere deep within a voice was screaming, and he thrust it down. Gottdamn if I’ll leap with joy at the thought of getting out of the fight at the last minute, he told himself stubbornly. And Ingrid was there . . . How much courage is the real article, and how much fear of showing fear before someone whose opinion you value? he wondered.
“There will be no ship-to-ship action,” the computer said. Its voice had lost modulation in the last few days. “The Slaver vessel is essentially invulnerable to conventional weapons. Lieutenant Raines . . . Ingrid . . . I must apologize.”
“For what?” she whispered.
“My programming . . . there were certain data withheld, about the stasis field. Two things. First, our human-made copies are not as reliable as we led you and Captain Matthieson to originally believe.”
Ingrid came slowly to her feet. “By what factor?” she said slowly.
“Ingrid, there is one chance in seven that the field will not function once switched on.”
The woman sagged slightly, then thrust her head forward; the past weeks had stripped it of all padding, leaving only the hawklike bones. How beautiful and how dangerous, Harold thought, as she bit out the words:
“We rammed ourselves into the photosphere of the sun at nine-tenths lightspeed, relying on a Finagle-fucked crapshoot. Without being told! That’s the UNSN! That’s the tanj ARM for you—”
Harold touched her elbow, grinning as she whipped around to face him. “Sweetheart, would you have turned the mission down if they’d told you?”
She stopped for a moment, blinked, then leaned across the dark, blue-lit kzinti control cabin to meet his lips in a kiss that was dry and chapped and infinitely tender.
“No,” she said. “I’d have done it anyway.” A laugh that was half giggle. “Gottdamn, watching the missiles ahead of us plowing through the solar flares was worth the risk all by itself.” Her eyes went back to the screen. “But I would have appreciated knowing about it.”
“It was not my decision, Ingrid.”
“Buford Early, the Prehistoric Man,” she said with mock bitterness. “He’d keep our own names secret from ourselves, if he could.”