{You’ve checked his clothing?} Wandek asked.
{Thoroughly,} Jagged Nose confirmed. {It’s not here.}
Wandek eyed me, probably wondering if he should have the other Shonkla-raa search me again, just in case I had somehow teleported the comm out of Minnario’s pocket and into mine. But he merely shrugged. {He must have left it in his quarters,} he said. {Get to your main task.}
{As ordered.} Closing up the bags, Jagged Nose tied them to his own belt like saddlebags, then crossed to the desk. Casually shoving Hchchu’s body out of the chair onto the floor, he sat down and started typing on the desk computer. “But then, you already know the magnitude of the rewards we seek,” Wandek continued, coming around the end of the desk and settling himself on the corner facing me.
“You’ve got ambition to burn, I’ll give you that,” I said. “But if you’ll pardon the observation, your methods stink like three-day-old fish. What exactly do you think Chinzro Hchchu’s murder is going to gain you? Control of the station?”
Wandek gave what was probably supposed to be a chuckle. “We’ve badly overestimated your intelligence, Mr. Compton,” he said sadly. “Even now, with all you’ve learned, you still have no idea what we’re actually doing.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed, listening to my heartbeats count off the seconds. Even as we sat here talking, Hchchu’s blood would be coagulating along the well-defined curve Emikai had told me about yesterday. If I could keep the conversation going, the patrollers and techs who investigated the murder should be able to narrow down the time of death to the exact period when Wandek and his buddies were here in the room. I didn’t know how much that would help, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. “But I imagine you’re dying to tell me.”
“As it happens, I am,” Wandek agreed. “And since we have a few minutes to spare, I’ll indulge your curiosity. Do you have any idea why the Shonkla-raa left Earth alone two thousand years ago when they were busy conquering the rest of the galaxy?”
“No, and neither do you,” I said. “That’s why you’re experimenting with all those Humans in Building Twelve.”
“In point of fact, we do know why,” Wandek corrected. “We also know how to correct that deficiency. That’s why we brought the Human females here, so that we could turn their babies into our future servants.”
I stared at him. “Are you saying Building Twelve is full of pregnant women?”
“Building Twelve, and two of the others,” Wandek said. “You understand now why, after your confederates disabled the cameras and we realized you would soon be arriving, I ordered Isantra Kordiss to kill the first likely person he could find and leave him in your path. If you’d seen the other pregnant Humans, even you couldn’t have failed to realize what it was we wanted with Ms. German.”
He waved again, a more expansive gesture this time. “You see, Mr. Compton, we of the Shonkla-raa don’t rule the way Humans or even most Filiaelians do, by way of spoken orders and written contracts. We are telepathic. Not very strongly, admittedly, but strongly enough to impress our thoughts and commands on other beings.” He lifted a bloody finger like a college professor trying to underline an important point for a dull pupil. “But only if those other beings have some telepathic ability of their own. Reception and transmission.”
“Like the Modhri,” I murmured.
Wandek’s face brightened. The dull pupil had gotten one. “Exactly like the Modhri,” he agreed. “Except that the Modhri is much more telepathic than most species—designed that way, of course—which gives him a higher resistance to us than other species. That’s where this”—he tapped his throat—“or rather those,” he corrected, pointing at Kordiss’s and Jagged Nose’s oversized throats, “come in.”
“Let me guess,” I said. I knew perfectly well what the throats were for, having seen Muzzfor in action aboard the super-express. But I wasn’t ready yet to show him that particular card. “You sing grand opera to calm him down?”
“We sing a set of very specific notes, a tonic plus several of its harmonics,” he said. “All telepathic species can theoretically be reached with the proper tones, though so far we have only discovered the frequency necessary for bringing the Modhri and Modhran walkers under our control. Though it may be that the Modhran tone will also affect a Spider, at least enough to confuse it,” he added thoughtfully. “We still need to experiment with that. It’s possible we’ll need to engineer specific Shonkla-raa with different throat specifications to deal with them.”
“Is that why you haven’t had one of your own installed?” I asked, nodding toward his own normal-sized throat. “You’re waiting to get a Spider throat?”
“I was actually waiting for a Human one,” he said, his eyes glowing. “My plan was always to become the prince of your world once we were again the rulers of the galaxy.”
“Really,” I said. “Out of thousands of possible worlds, you chose our modest little split-level? We’re flattered.”
“You speak sarcastically,” he said. “But you really have no idea. Earth and its solar system have resources beyond anything you can imagine, simply because you in your ignorance haven’t known to look for them.” He smiled. “One of those resources being your people themselves. If all Humans are as effective at combat as you, I will soon have a force that even the other Shonkla-raa will look upon with respect.”
He gestured in the direction of the medical dome, a quarter of the way around the station. “And those unborn Humans in Building Twelve will be yet another step toward achieving that goal.”
“Thanks, I’d already figured that one out,” I growled. “You’re trying to graft some telepathic ability into them, aren’t you?”
“Not trying,” he corrected mildly. “Succeeding. Another few weeks and we’ll be sending all of them back to Earth, their mothers secure in the belief that their babies’ alleged medical problems have now been corrected.”
“Genetic engineering at its finest,” I said sourly. “No wonder you went ballistic when we suggested Terese might abort her baby.”
“What, you mean this?” he asked, pointing to his nose. Suddenly his blaze began to go mottled, seething with the indications of emotions that clearly weren’t there. “A toy I had the engineers install when they turned my hands into weapons,” he said offhandedly as the blaze faded back to its normal shade. “It adds an additional level of supposed emotional depth to my performances, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would indeed,” I agreed. “Good thinking, that. I’m not so impressed by your army of toddlers, though.”
Wandek shrugged. “We have time,” he assured me. “As to Ms. German, yes, we had originally brought her here to create another slave from her offspring. But shortly after your arrival, we realized we had a far bigger prize waiting for us.”
I raised my eyebrows politely. “Me?”
“Of course not,” Wandek said. “Bayta.”
My stomach tightened into a hard knot. “You must be joking,” I said as contemptuously as I could manage through the pulse pounding in my throat. “She’s barely competent to be my assistant, let alone one of your junior world-conquerors.”
“Please,” Wandek chided calmly. “Did you really think Dr. Aronobal hadn’t noticed on your journey that Bayta could communicate with the Spiders? And since we know Humans aren’t telepathic, it immediately follows that Bayta is something different. A hybrid of Human and Spider, perhaps, since her nucleics are indeed Human. Or perhaps she’s a member of a species we haven’t yet discovered, which has encased itself in a Human shell to avoid detection.” He eyed me closely. “Or possibly she’s one of the beings we’ve always suspected are quietly controlling the Spiders and the Quadrail.”