by Larry Niven
"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 small vessel that had strayed close enough; the mind controlling 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.
"We do not know, Master," Markham said. "The opportunity will not last long; this formation is tactically inefficient. If they were pressing home their attacks, or if they dared use weapons with signatures visible to kzinti monitors, ve vould 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 micro–manipulator.
"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 consciousness 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 non-introspection." 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 eye opened, and there was a stabbing pain in his head as visual perception overlaid on mental, a fssstup flying across the bridge with its belly-pelt on fire. His hands were moving slowly up towards his head, so slowly, and he could sense more and more, he was spinning out thinner than interstellar gas, and he was Swarm belter ARM kzin Wunderlander nothing nothing
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—" The thrint shrieked, with his voice and the Power. PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN 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.
Where am I, he thought, looking around with crusted eyes. The drilling rig had suddenly disappeared, and then the alien had come floating up and "Hrrrg," he said, staggering erect. "Hrrrgg."
Blood leaked through scabs on his tongue and pain lanced through his mouth. Bite, he realized. I bit myself. Cold wetness in the seat and legs of his flightsuit; he realized that he must have lost bowel and bladder control. Somehow that was not shameful; it was a fact, just as the distant crystal clarity of the alien bridge was a fact, like things seen through the wrong end of Mutti's antique optical telescope. He could taste the brass smell of it.
Nobody else was stirring. Some of the humans looked dead, very dead, slumped in their chairs with tongues lolling and blood leaking from their noses and ears. Some of the aliens, too.
"Master!" he cried blurrily, spurting out blood.
The squat greenish form was slumped in its chair, the helmet half-off the bullet dome of its head. He tried to walk forward, and fell himself. The skin of his face and thighs tingled as the blue pseudolife of the floor cleansed them. He waited while the kaleidoscope shards of reality fell into place around him again; the inside of his head felt more raw than his tongue. Once in a skirmish he had been trapped in a wrecked singleship, with his arm caught between two collapsed struts. When the rescuers cut him free, the pain of blood pouring into the dry flesh had been worse than the first shock of the wound itself. He could feel thought running through sections of his consciousness that had been shut down for weeks, and he wept tears of pain as he had never wept in action.
Certainty, he thought. Never have I known certainty before. "Mutti," he whispered. Mother, in the tongue of truth and love. English was common, Belter. Father spoke English, and Mutti had married him when the kzinti chased her away from the home he had never seen. Mother was certainty, but he, he could never be certain. Never do enough. Love might be withheld. Markham screamed with the terror of it, colder than space. Worse than death.
"I will be strong, Mutti," he whispered, through blood and tears and mucus that the floor drank. "Stronger than Father." Rage bit him, as he remembered tall slim beautiful Mutti stiffening at the touch of hated grubby commoner hands. You must be all mine, myn sohn, the voice whispered in a child's ear. Prove yourself worthy of the blood. The tears flowed faster. I am not worthy. My blood is corrupt, weak. I fear in battle. No matter how much I purge weakness, treason, their faces come back to me, I wake in the night and see them bleeding as we put them out the airlocks, Mutti , hilfe me.
His eyes opened again, and he saw his hand. The shock broke reality apart again; it was a skeleton's hand, starved yellow claw-hand. He touched himself, feeling the hoop of ribs and then hunger struck his belly, doubling him over.
"Master," he whispered. Master would make it right. With Master there was no weakness, no doubt, no uncertainty. With Master he was strong. A keening escaped him as he remembered the crystalline absoluteness of the Power in his mind. "Don't leave me, Master!"
Markham crawled, digging his fingers into the yielding surface until his hand touched the cable of the amplifier helmet. He jerked, and it tumbled down; he drew himself erect by the command chair, put a hand to the thrint's face to check. The bunched tendrils by the mou
th shot out and gripped his hand, like twenty wire worms, and he jerked it back before they could draw it into the round expanding maw and the wet needles of the teeth.
"Survival," he muttered. The Master's race vrasfit to survive and dominate. Overman … is demigod, he remembered. No more struggle, the Power proved whose Will must conquer.
Now he could stand. Some of the others were stirring. With slow care he walked back to his seat, watching the screens. Analysis flowed effortlessly through his head; the enemy vessels had made parking trajectories… and Catskinner was accelerating away… Brief rage flickered and died; there was nothing that could be done about that now. He sat, and called up the self-destruct sequences.
"Tightbeam to all Free Wunderland Space Navy units, task force Zarathustra," he wheezed; his throat hurt, as if he had screamed it raw. "Maintain… present positions. Any… shift will be treated as mutiny. Admiral… Ulf Reichstein-Markham… out."
He keyed it to repeat, then tapped the channel to the von Seekt , his fast courier. Adelman was a reliable type, and a good disciplinarian. The communicator screen blanked, then came alive with the holo image of the other man; a gaunt skull-like face, staring at him with dull-eyed lack of interest. A thread of saliva dangled from one lip.
" Hauptmann Adelman!" Markham barked, swallowing blood from his tongue. I must get to an autodoc , he reminded himself. Then, with a trace of puzzlement: Why has none been transferred to the Ruling Mind? No matter, later. "Adelman!"
The dull blue eyes blinked, and expression returned to the muscles of the face. Jerkily, as if by fits and starts, like a 'cast message with too much noise in the signal.
" Gottdamn," Adelman whispered. "If, what's been…" he looked around, at the areas of the courier's life-bubble beyond the pickup's range. "Myn Gott, Ulf! Smythe is dead! Where-what—" He looked up at Markham, and blanched.
"Adelman," Markham said firmly. "Listen to me." A degree of alertness. "Zum befhel , Admiral!"
"Good man," Markham replied firmly. "Adelman, you will find sealed orders in your security file under code Ubermensch. You understand?"
"Jahwol."
"Adelman, you have had a great shock. But everything is now under control. Remember that, under control. We now have access to technology which will make it an easy matter to sweep aside the kzinti, but we must have those parts listed in the file. You must make a minimum-time transit to Tiamat, and return here. Let nothing delay you. You… you will probably note symptoms of psychological disorientation, delusions, false memories. Ignore them. Concentrate on your mission."
The other man wiped his chin with the back of his hand. "Understood, Admiral," he said.
Markham blanked the screen, putting a hand to his head. Now he must decide what to do next. Pain lanced behind his eyes; decision was harder than analysis. Scrabbling, he pulled the portable input board from his waist belt. He would have to program a deadman switch to the self-destruct circuits. Control must be maintained until the Master awoke; he could feel the others would be difficult. Only I truly understand, he realized. It was a lonely and terrible burden, but he had the strength for it. The Master had filled him with strength. At all costs, the Master must be guarded until he recovered.
Freeing the Ruling Mind is taking too long, he decided. Why had the Master ordered a complete uncovering of the hull? Inefficient… We must free some of the weapons systems first , he thought. Transfer some others to the human-built ships. Establish a proper defensive perimeter.
He looked over at the Master where he lay leaking brown from his mouth onto the chair. The single eye was still covered by the vertical slit of a closed lid.
Suddenly Markham felt the weight of his sidearm in his hand, pointing at the thrint. With a scream of horror, he thrust it back into the holster and slammed the offending hand into the unyielding surface of the screen, again and again. The pain was sweet as justice. My weakness , he told himself. My father's weak sub-man blood. I must be on my guard.
Work. Work was the cure. He looked up to establish the trajectory of the renegade Catskinner, saw that it was heading in-system towards Wunderland.
Treachery, he mused. "But do not be concerned, Master," he muttered. His own reflection looked back at him from the inactive sections of the board; the gleam of purpose in his eyes straightened his back with pride. "Ulf Reichstein-Markham will never betray you."
Chapter VII
"Here's looking at you, kid," Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann said, raising the drinking bulb.
Home free, he thought, taking a suck on the maivin; the wine filled his mouth with the scent of flowers, an odor of violets. Ingrid was across the little cubicle in the cleanser unit, half visible through the fogged glass as the sprays played over her body. Absurd luxury, this private stateroom on the liner to Tiamat, but Claude's fake identities had included plenty of valuata. Not to mention the considerable fortune in low-mass goods in the hold, bought with the proceeds of selling Harold's Terran Bar.
He felt a brief pang at the thought. Thirty years. It had been more than a livelihood; it was a mood, a home, a way of life, a family. A bubble of human space in München… A pseudo-archaic flytrap with rigged roulette , he reminded himself ironically. What really hurts is setting it to that fat toad Suuomalisen , he realized, and grinned.
"What's so funny?" Ingrid said, stepping out of the cleanser. Her skin was dry, the smooth cream-white he remembered; it rippled with the long muscles of a zero-G physique kept in shape by exercise. The breasts were high and dark-nippled, and the tail of her Belter crest poured half-way down her back.
God, she looks good, he thought, and took another sip of the maivin. "Thinking of Suuomalisen," he said.
She made a slight face and touched the wall-control, switching the bed to .25 G, the compromise they had agreed on. Harold rose into the air slightly as the mattress flexed, readjusting to his reduced weight. In-grid swung onto the bed and began kneading his feet with slim strong fingers.
"I thought you hated him," she said, rotating the ankles.
"No, despised," Harold said. The probing traveled up to his calves.
She frowned. "I… you know, Hari, I can't say I like the thought of leaving Sam and the others at his mercy."
He nodded and sipped; tax and vagrancy laws on Wunderland had never been kind to the commonfolk. After two generations of kzinti overlordship and collaborationist government, things were much worse. Tenants on the surviving Herrenmann estates were not too bad, but urban workers were debt-peons more often than not.
"I know something that Suuomalisen doesn't," Harold said, waiting for her look of enquiry before continuing. "Careful on that knee, sweetheart, the repair job's never really taken… Oh, the pension fund. Usually it's a scam, get the proles more deeply in debt, you know? Well, the way I've got it jiggered the employee nonvoting stock-that's usually another scam, interest-free loans from the helpcontrols the pension fund. The regular employees all owe their debts to the pension fund… to themselves. In fact, the holding company turns out to be controlled by the fund, if you trace it through."
Ingrid's hands stopped stroking his thighs as she snorted laughter. "You sold him a minority interest?" she choked. "You teufel" Her hand moved up, kneading. "Devil," she repeated, in a different tone. "Open up!" A fist hammered at the door.
"Go away!" they said in chorus, and collapsed laughing. A red light flashed on the surface of the door. "Open up! There's a ratcat warship matching trajectories, and it wants you two by name!" "Two hundred and fifty thousand crowns!" Suuomalisen said, looking mourtifully about.
He was a vague figure in bulky white against the backdrop of Harold's Terran Bar, looking mournfully down at his luncheon platter of wurst, egg-and-potato salad, breads, shrimp on rye, gulyas soup… His hands continued to shovel the food methodically into his mouth, dropping bits onto the flowing handkerchief tucked into his collar; the rest of his clothing was immaculate white natural linen and silk, the only color jet links at his cuffs. It was rumored that he had his sh
irts handmade, and never wore one for more than a day. Claude Montferrat-Palme watched the light from the mirror behind the long bar gleaming on the fat man's bald head and reflected that he could believe it.
Only natural for a man who wolfs down fastmetabol and still weighs that much. It was easy to control appetite, a simple visit to the autodoc, but Suuomalisen refused; he enjoyed being a pig. Wunderland's .61 G made it fairly easy to carry extra weight, but the sight was still not pleasant.
"Not a bad price for a thriving business," he said politely, leaning back at his ease and letting smoke trickle out his nostrils. He was in the high-collared blue dress uniform of the München Polezi; the remains of a single croissant lay on the table before him, with a cup of espresso. Their table was the only one in use. The bar was a nightspot and rarely opened before sundown. Just now none of the staff were in the main area, a raised L-shape of tables and booths around the lower dance floor and bar; he could hear mechanical noises from the back room, where the roulette wheels and baccarat tables were. There was a sad, empty smell to the nightclub, the curious daytime melancholy of a place meant to be seen by darkness.
"A part interest only," Suuomalisen continued. "I trusted Hari!" He shook his head mournfully. "We should not steal from each other… quickly he needed the cash, and did I quibble? Did I spend good money on having lawyers follow his data trail?"
"Did you pay anything like the going-rate price for this place?" Claude continued smoothly. "Did you pay three thousand to my late unlamented second-in-command Axelrod-Bauergartner to have the health inspectors close the place down so that Hari would be forced to sell?"
"That is different, simply business," the fat man said in a hurt tone. "But to sell me a business actually controlled by employees… 't" His jowls wobbled, and he sighed heavily. "A pity about Herrenfrau Axelrod-Bauergartner." He made a tsk sound. "Treason and corruption."
