"Helped with? Or were one? Do you not know by now that these Thassa consider themselves above the rest of us?"
"Commander." Again it was Quanhi who dared to interrupt. "This one helped in taking back the ship – "
The leader gave a single bark of laughter that was more like a burst of oath. "A mighty opponent indeed. I wonder that you acknowledge his part in that."
"Commander." The man refused to be silenced. "He speaks with thoughts like those others."
"Yes, as you have said before several times. Well, Dung, can you read my thoughts now in your twisted head?"
"You are protected, Lord-One," Farree answered with the truth.
"Just so – protected. But so were the two aboard that ship and yet they fell into a Thassa trap. However, as you are not Thassa, we need not take the precaution of silencing you. In fact it is better not. Seek your friends – your masters – whatever those witch people are to you, and beg for their help. I will wager that such a call will bring nothing, but one can always hope, and these Thassa are ridiculously mindful of their own – even their animals. Now" – he leaned a little farther across the table – "let us get to the matter of what Dung knows about his betters. Why did Vorlund and the woman come here?"
"I do not know." Farree barely got the words out of his mouth when a heavy-handed blow from Quanhi sent him forward to come up against the table edge with bruising force.
"Let me fry a finger from him. Commander. Such a reminder – "
The man at the table held up a hand which instantly silenced the other. Farree might not now be able to read minds but he could feel the emotions heating in this room and that from Quanhi was a tinge of fear.
"Dung, do you know what these Thassa do with those they take?" inquired the same low and level voice. "They change people – men – into animals and animals into men. Do you wish to find all that is you behind the hide and fleas of, say, a zinder?"
He spoke of a mound of foul oozelike flesh which fed and crawled and was an abomination in the eyes of all unfortunate enough to meet it. Parree shivered. Not that he believed that he – that anyone – would be so treated by those he had met wearing the name of Thassa, but the picture of the creature in his mind made him ill.
Apparently his shiver informed them that such a fear did lie deep in him. But how wrong they were. To be an animal – a swift, beautiful runner such as Yazz, a mound of strength and courage like Bojor – to him who was Dung – what could be a more welcome change?
"I see you understand me. Did you not know that they would not keep such an abomination as you with them? You would find yourself furred or feathered or caged soon enough. Now, let us ask again: Why did Vorlund and the woman come here? The Thassa have no ships, and that one which brought you is too small to carry many. But only a few recruits and they could cause us a problem – a small problem. Did they ever mention the planet Sehkmet to you, humpback?"
Farree considered quickly. He could well pretend that the fear of the animal transformation governed any answer. And what did he have, in truth, to say? He was not sure why they had come to Yiktor – save that the Lady Maelen was moved by a pressing desire to set down here when the three-ringed moon swung in the sky and that that had something to do with her powers. He was having to think faster than he had ever been pressed to do before, weighing one fact against a supposition and a guess against a fact.
"They said only that there had been a great find there and that they had something to do with it. It was a matter in the past which they spoke little of."
"A matter of the past reaching well into the future – which is now. Yes, something was found on Sehkmet, and they had a hand in it – those two." Though there was no change in the Commander's set expression of half boredom and flagging interest, still there was a note in his voice which suggested that he might not be broadcasting fear now but rather anger.
"You read minds, I am told." He leaned forward a fraction to look down into Parree's face only inches above the top of the table. "Therefore you could know what they did not say as well as what they said. Now what of that?"
The hunchback shook his head. "Lord-One, those can cut off their thought by will even as you are shielded. I could read only what they willed me to – the small things that they thought it needful for me to know."
For a very long moment the other simply observed him. The dark eyes were expressionless and there seemed to be no surface life in them. It was as if the Guild leader could shutter them at will.
"That could almost be the truth. Dung. Only I cannot be sure, can I? We shall do some probing when Isfahan gets here with the reader. There is nothing human which can hide a thought from that. So you will share our hospitality for a time. If you wish to bespeak your friends – "
Farree had already made a decision, the best he could summon in the here and now.
"Lord-One, when that summoned" – he pointed at the box the fat man still so jealousy guarded – "did I not come? They did not, but saved themselves by their own ways. Therefore why should I believe that they care now what happens to such as me?"
"The truth again. The Thassa do not fight, nor war even when they are attacked, but always withdraw. They will be in no haste to rescue one who is as you – a misshapen thing out from the slime, which they might have taken merely for an experiment."
Perhaps that was the truth. Now that he was not near the Lady Maelen or the Lord-One Krip, how could he be sure that it was not? He need only look down at what he could see of himself and think a bitter truth or two. On Grant's World he had had some value. What was he here but some refuse swept up during their escape – of less worth than Yazz or Bojor?
"I see that I have given you something to think about. Consider it carefully. Return him into keeping."
Return him to the tower room they did, though they shoved into his hands a roll of nearly stone-hard ration crisp and a canteen of water. He ate slowly, chewing at the hard stuff with caution lest he break a tooth. It would have been easier to put some drug in that scant ration of water than in the roll of hardened nutrient. There could be no sleep gas here, but neither had they rebound him. It might be well that they thought him so safely caged that they need take no such precautions anymore.
He could not put his back against the wall; his hump was still tender. Now he sat cross-legged in a comer of the room farthest from the door and tried to think.
What he had gained when Lord-One Krip had told him of the past and other hints garnered along the way – even what his present captors had said – all linked together. There had been a find – doubtless a big Forerunner one (such could make the finder wealthy beyond dreams) on a world named Sehkmet. The Guild had been busied with looting it when in some way Krip Vorlund and the Lady Maelen had spoiled their action. Now the Guild (and he did not doubt that the Commander here was truly a Guild Veep of some standing) had a double reason for wanting to lay hands on the two Thassa again: once for retribution and once to learn if there were more such finds to be uncovered.
Nor did he doubt that the Guild controlled that which would win their desires – first from him and then from the Thassa. It was a well-known fact that the Guild was ever on the search for new weapons – or old ones of lost and forgotten races – which could be used with effect. This one which had brought him into their hands was surely such. Yet Lord-One Krip had been able to withstand its demanding call.