But then there was the stress of the flight...
"Old fool, wake up!" It was Tchai Howard bellowing in his ear. "I was not asleep," Manyface said instinctively, in the honest lie that every drowser tells when caught. But he had been. Behind him the assault team was muttering among themselves while their captain methodically went through the checklist of his weaponry; on the screen before him was a confusing pattern of bright spots.
"What are they?" demanded Tchai, waving a free arm toward the screen.
Manyface could not answer. Whatever they were, there were a lot of them—a dozen solid blips at least, maybe a hundred if you counted the fainter ones. The radar could not reach far enough to see details. But his inner voices could see enough to scare some of them and anger the others. Said the voice of Angorak-the-warrior, glumly, "It looks like a fleet!"
"A fleet is impossible!" cried Tchai, glowering; Many-face realized that Angorak's voice had spoken aloud, through his lips. Well, a fleet was impossible. But the blips were real enough. Manyface peered at the radar, trying to make sense of what he saw, trying even harder to quiet the shouting within his brain. All the voices were talking at once. He could not make them stop. Worse, they couldn't stop themselves, so that all ten of them were yammering at once, and sometimes the words leaked through Fung's own lips. "Stop it!" roared Tchai, wriggling to thrust his face into the swollen face of Fung. "Old man, you endanger the mission if you cannot get a grip on yourself!"
Well, that was what Fung most desired! At least there was unanimity in that respect. All the concern and fear and anger of his implants found a new direction, and together, in half a dozen voices, they cursed Tchai Howard, so that the assault team lifted their heads from their rests to admire. When the committee's anger was spent, reason returned. A whisper from one of Manyface's implants, a consequence drawn from another; Manyface, speaking again with a single voice, said coldly, "They are not a fleet, Tchai. They are simply drones. A great many of them, but none is the alien ship itself. Study the ranging data! They are too small to be dangerous."
Tchai Howard glared at the old man, then turned his attention to the screen. "You are right," he said reluctantly. "But where is the big ship?"
Manyface said with disdain, "It is you who are supposed to be the pilot and navigator. Find it, Tchai!"
"And when I do?" Tchai demanded. "Will you be able to carry out your task?"
Manyface said cuttingly, "My task is to communicate with them. I cannot do that until you establish a communications link."
"The question is," Tchai snarled, "whether you can do it at all. Was it a mistake to bring you, after all? Is that freak's brain of yours really under control?"
"Oh, Tchai," said Manyface sorrowfully, "you speak of endangering the mission, but what else are you doing now?" It was taking all of his effort to keep the parts of his mind focused on the same task. Rage made them hard to control; rage was what Tchai Howard produced so easily.
For Manyface, even to answer a simple question was sometimes not simple at all. No question was simple when eleven complicated persons—or scraps of persons—each heard it and invested it with the overlay of attitudes and habits of thought that modify every received message in the mind of everyone. The committee gabbled back and forth, in the quick communication that was possible within a single skull. It took no time at all, really, for communication took the form of a kind of shorthand—sometimes, really, only a sort of feeling. In this present confrontation, for example, Potter, Shum, and Dien responded only with a general outpouring of consent and support. Sometimes, though, the communications were articulate, explicit, even furious: "Do it, damn it!" ordered Corelli in a rage. "I'll speak if you don't want to," offered Su. And, "Tell that ass Tchai that we, after all, are in charge of this vessel," commanded Angorak; and what came out of the single mouth held in joint tenancy by the fragmented minds of Manyface was "Shut up, Tchai. Of course I'll speak to the alien."
He loosened his retaining straps and glanced around the cabin. The assault team lay still, but their straps were loose, too. Tchai Howard had freed himself completely of his cocoon, all but a single belt to keep him from flying away; their vessel was without acceleration now, and therefore they were all without weight. Manyface leaned forward and turned on the communications mike to say, "Unidentified alien vessel, please respond. What have you done with the president of the United States?"
Then they waited for an answer.
It was a long wait, and out of the corner of his eye, Manyface saw Tchai Howard's fingers busy on the armaments board. "Stop that, Tchai!" he commanded. "First we must find out what has happened and what their intentions are—remember, we may want their help against the Indians!"
Tchai opened his mouth to reply, but the radio preempted him. A familiar voice: "This is the President. What do you want?"
Puzzlement. Consternation. Even the assault team lost discipline enough to mutter among itself. "How can that be the boy," demanded Tchai, "when his ship was destroyed by their energy weapon?" Manyface did not answer at once. He could not, because the dialogue in the ship was echoed by the debate in his own head. "We will ask," he said at last. And, to the microphone: "Where are you, Mr. President?"
Pause. Then the voice of the jumped-up houseboy: "I am safe, Manyface." Manyface! The voices inside Manyface's head gasped in shock and anger; no one dared call Manyface by that name in his hearing! Even the assault team giggled.
Then, "Keep them talking," ordered Tchai Howard, his hands busy on the armaments board again, and Many-face was angry enough, this time, not to order him to stop. And, all in all, the parley went well, thought Many-face in all eleven of his parts—
Until he heard Tchai Howard groan and a moment later gasps and cries from the assault team—
And until he felt, more than saw, a curtain of violet fire rush toward him, and envelop him, and pass beyond him—
And until he looked out the window before him and saw that the Sun that had been to the right of the window, striking fiery reflections off the sharp angles of the alien ship, had been replaced by a smaller, redder sun on the left—
And then the panic currents poured forth again, and Manyface, all eleven of Manyface, screamed at once in the certain knowledge that they had been overwhelmed by something they could neither comprehend nor control.
Manyface was not surprised that they were captured. He had warned against it in the first place. Had told the Generalissimo of Missilery and the Deputy Chief of the People's Militia, his equals in those last days of briefing before the takeoff from Hainan-ko, that these aliens were far better prepared than anyone in China could possibly be—had had fifty years to get ready and plan surprises. They could not catch up in a matter of months. He told Tchai Howard the same, and the assault team. It was true that in the excitement of the takeoff, he had forgotten his own warnings, but he had even told his own brainmates the same, when they were not telling him. "But don't hurt my son-in-law," said Potter Alicia, and Manyface sighed—all the other parts of Manyface sighed—and said,
"He is not your son-in-law. He has divorced your daughter. But anyway," he added, in that quick internal flash between tissues, "we are not likely to hurt anyone. The big problem is to keep anyone from hurting us, very badly." And when they were in fact captured, ripped out of this new orbit around this new planet and dragged by force down to its surface, even in the violent jerks and fears of the reentry Manyface shouted to Tchai Howard, "I told you this would happen! Now be still! Do nothing! Let me plan for all of us, and I will issue orders!"