“Oh?” Jonah said coldly.
Early smiled grimly. “Like an irresistible aphrodisiac?” he said. “Conditioning pills that make you completely loyal forever to the first person you see after taking them? Things that would have made it impossible not to legalize murder and cannibalism? Damned right we sit on things. Even if there weren’t aliens on that ship, it would have to be destroyed; there’s neither time nor opportunity to take it apart and keep the results under wraps. If the pussies get it, we’re royally screwed.” Jonah remained silent. “Don’t look so apprehensive, Captain. You’re no menace, no matter what you learn.”
“I’m not?” Jonah said, narrowing his eyes. He had suspected . . .
“Of course not. What use would a system of secrecy be, if one individual leak could imperil it? How do you think we wrote the Sea Statue out of the history books as anything but a curiosity? Slowly, and from many directions and oh, so imperceptibly. Bit by bit, and anyone who suspected”—he grinned, and several of the others joined him—”autodocs exist to correct diseases like paranoia, don’t they? In the meantime, I suggest you remember you are under military discipline.”
“Uncle, that established the limits of control,” the technician said to Shigehero Hirose.
Silent, the oyabun nodded, watching the multiple displays on the Murasaki’s bridge screens. There were dozens of them; the Murasaki was theoretically a passenger hauler, out of Tiamat to the major Swarm habitats and occasionally to Wunderland and its satellites. In actuality, it was the Association’s fallback headquarters, and forty years of patient theft had given it weapons and handling characteristics equivalent to a kzinti Vengeful Slasher-class light cruiser. He reflected on how much else of the Association’s strength was here, and felt a gripping pain in the stomach. Still water, he thought, controlling his breathing. There were times when opportunity must be seized, despite all risk.
“Attempt communication on the hailing frequencies,” he said, as the latest singleship stopped in its elliptical path around the asteroid and coasted in to assume a station among the others under Markham’s control. Or the alien’s, Hirose reminded himself. “But this time, we must demonstrate the consequences of noncompliance. Execute East Wind, Rain.”
The points of light on the screens began to move in a complicated dance, circling the asteroid and its half-freed alien ship.
“Ah,” the Tactics officer said. “Uncle, see, Markham is deploying his units without regard to protecting the artifact.”
Pale fusion flame bloomed against the stars, a singleship power core deliberately destabilized; it would be recorded as an accident, at Traffic Control Central on Tiamat. If that had been a human or kzinti craft, everyone aboard would have been lethally irradiated.
“But,” the oyabun observed, “notice that none of his vessels moves beyond a certain distance from the asteroid. This is interesting.”
“Uncle . . . those dispositions are an invitation to close in, given the intercept capacities we have observed.”
“Do so, but be cautious. Be very cautious.”
* * *
“Accelerating,” Jonah Matthieson said. “Twenty thousand klicks and closing at three hundred kps relative.”
The asteroid was a lumpy potato in the screen ahead. Acceleration pressed him back into the control couch. It was an almost unfamiliar sensation; this refitted singleship had no compensators. But it did have a nicely efficient fusion drive, and he was on intercept with one of Markham’s boats, ready to flip over and decelerate toward it behind the sword of thermonuclear fire.
“Hold it, you cow,” he muttered to the clumsy ship. His sweat stank in his nostrils. Show your stuff, Matthieson, he told himself. Singleships no better than this had cut the kzinti First Fleet to ribbons, when the initial attack on the Solar system had been launched.
“Ready for attack,” he said. “Five seconds and—”
Matching velocities, he realized. It would be tricky, without damaging Markham’s ship. That would be very bad. Markham’s ship must not be damaged; the asteroid must be kept safe at all costs. His hands moved across the control screens and flicked in the lightfield sensors. The communicator squawked at him, meaningless noises interrupting the essential task of safely killing velocity relative to the asteroid. He switched it off.
* * *
“HURRY,” Dnivtopun grated. The human and fssstup slaves redoubled their efforts on the components strung out across the floor of the Ruling Mind’s control chamber.
Markham looked up from the battle-control screens. “Zey are approaching the estimated control radius, Master,” he said coolly. “I am prepared to activate plans A or B, according to ze results.”
The thrint felt for the surface of the Chief Slave’s mind; it was . . . machine-like, he decided. Complete concentration, without even much sense of self. Familiar, he decided. Artist-slaves felt like that, when fulfilling their functions. Almost absentmindedly, he reached out and took control of a single slave-mind that had strayed too close; it was locked tight on its purpose, easy to redirect.
“Secure that small spacecraft,” he said, then fixed his eye on the helmet. “Will it work?” he asked, extending his tendrils towards the bell-shape of the amplifier helmet in an unconscious gesture of hungry longing. It was a cobbled-together mess of equipment ripped out of the human vessels and spare parts from the Ruling Mind. Square angular black boxes were joined with the half-melted-looking units salvaged from the thrintun control components.
“Ve do not know, Master,” Markham said. “The opportunity will not last long; this formation ve use is tactically inefficient. If they were pressing home their attacks, or if they dared use weapons with signatures visible to kzin monitors, ve would have been overwhelmed already.” A sigh. “If only ze Ruling Mind were fully operational!”
Dnivtopun clenched all six fingers in fury, and felt his control of the command-slaves of the space vessels falter. They were at the limits of his ability; it was like grasping soap bubbles in the dark. Nothing complicated, simply: OBEY. Markham had thought of the coded self-destruct boxes fixed to their power cores, to keep the crews from mutiny. Markham was turning out to be a most valuable Chief Slave. Dnivtopun reached for another dopestick, then forced his hand away. Their weapons cannot harm this ship, he told himself. Probably.
“Ready, Master,” one of the fssstup squeaked, making a last adjustment with a three-handed micromanipulator.
“Thanks to the Powergiver!” Dnivtopun mumbled, reaching for it. The primitive metal-alloy shape felt awkward on his head, the leads inside prickled. “Activate!”
Ah, he thought, closing his eyes. There was a half-audible whine, and then the surface of his mind seemed to expand.
“First augment.”
Another expansion, and suddenly it was no longer a strain to control the vessels around the asteroid that encompassed his ship. Their commanders sank deeper into his grip, and he clamped down on the crews. He could feel their consciousnesses writhing in his grip, then quieting to docility as ice-shards of Power slipped easily into the centers of volition, memory, pleasure-pain. LOYALTY, he thought. SELFLESS ENTHUSIASM. DEDICATION TO THE THRINT.
“This is better than the original model!” he exulted. But then, the original was designed by tnuctipun. “Second augment.”
Now his own being seemed to thin and expand, and the center of perception shifted outside the ship. The wild slave-minds were like lights glowing in a mist of darkness, dozens . . . no, hundreds of them. He knew this species now, and he ripped through to the volition centers with careless violence. AWAIT INSTRUCTION. Now, to find their herdbull; quickest to control through him. Oyabun. The name slipped into his memory. Ah, yes.
“How interesting,” he mumbled. Beautifully organized and disciplined; it even struggled for a moment in his grasp. There. Paralyze the upper levels, the threshold-censor mechanism that was awareness. Ah! It had almost slipped away! “Amazing,” he said to himself. “The slave is accustomed to nonintrospection.” It was very rare to find a sentient that could operate without contemplating its own operation, without interior discourse. Deeper . . . the pleasurable feeling of a mind settling down under control. Now he could add this flotilla to his; they would free the Ruling Mind more quickly, and go on to seize the planet.
There was a frying sound, and suddenly the sphere of awareness was expanding once more, thinning out his sense of self.
“No more augmentation,” he said. But it continued; he could hear shouts, cries. His eyes opened, and there was a stabbing pain in his head as visual perception was overlaid on mental, a fssstup flying across the bridge with its belly-pelt on fire. His hands were moving slowly up toward his head, so slowly, and he could sense more and more, he was spinning out thinner than interstellar gas, and he was
SwarbelterARMkzinwunderlandernothingnothing
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—” the thrint shrieked, with his voice and the Power. PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN—
Blackness.
* * *
Ulf Reichstein-Markham raised his head from the console before him, tried to inhale and choked on the clotted blood that blocked his throbbing and broken nose.