“It is most easily detected by the manifestation of the following symptoms: incurable addiction to literal truth in the transmission of information, and an unshakable conviction that the method of success is the commission of as many genuinely altruistic favors as possible to as many individuals as possible. The altruism is coupled with the expectation of genuinely reciprocal action on the part of other individuals.”
“Thank you, Henlo,” Miranid said, as if chuckling at some secret joke. “I just wanted to hear it again.”
Henlo ended the conversation with a few neutral conclusion-formula phrases, and left to plan his battle.
His battle, not Miranid’s. It was obvious, now, that Miranid knew that there was something strong and sinister upwind. But he only knew it in the same manner that Henlo was cognizant of something similar planned for himself. Logic dictated that no man as powerful as either of them had become could be permitted to live.
But while Henlo could be almost certain that none of his subordinates would dare take the risk, Miranid must, this near the end of his extraordinary appointment, be trying desperately to determine who it was that had been given the orders for his assassination.
Come to think of it, Miranid had just as many reasons— just as many identical reasons—for believing that none of his subordinates would dare… Including Henlo…
Including Henlo!
Suddenly, Henlo found himself wondering desperately who his unobtrusive executioner might be. And very shortly thereafter realized just how shrewd and sharp a parallel Miranid had drawn between them. For there could be no doubt that Miranid understood completely that his own sudden promotion could only result in assassination, once his usefulness had come to an end.
He realized, too, the significance of Miranid’s request for the definition of paranoia. Only the insane could expect anything else. And both he and Miranid were eminently sane men. Too sane, perhaps, to let themselves be murdered and murdered murderer in turn?
Miranid had wondered how close to death he had stepped, and then had stepped safely away, by expressing his conclusion that this might not be the last battle.
And he had been right. It would be the last against the Vilks, perhaps, but not their last. Not their last together.
Cold logic drove Henlo to the conclusion that he could not let Miranid die, if he himself hoped to live.
He began to reason accordingly. Once more he spent his allotted nap-time in thought, but the sacrifice was worth the price. By the time he was ready to begin particularizing Miranid’s general plan for the conquest of Vilkai, the far more important plan was carefully drawn up and filed safely in his brain.
VIII
The lesser plan worked perfectly. While the lighter part of the Farlan fleet chopped at one side of the tight Vilk sphere, Miranid, with Henlo on his bridge, led the stabbing force that hissed toward Vilkai.
They met no serious opposition. With every solar system their forces left behind them, their fleet grew in groups of eight ships, twelve, or twenty, each led by a fierce-visaged nominal Vilk who was actually a Ganelash, or Diran, or Tylhean, or whatever other kind of Vilk by adoption he might racially be.
A few of them stayed with their ships, but most of them turned command over to the fleet’s general control, and came to Miranid’s flagship. There they and the admiral and Henlo stood and plotted out each new contact with each successive race of ‘Vilks,’ each of whom, of course, were convinced that in their people rested true Vilk destiny.
Still, they got along well enough together aboard the ship. They and the Farlan admiral seemed to understand each other, despite the language barriers. Henlo appraised them all for first-class fighting men, as good as anything Farla was likely to turn up, and in far greater numbers.
He suspected strongly that Miranid’s quoted theory might well have proven correct in the case of the Vilks, at least. And he made the first move of the greater battle. Somehow, in the course of an otherwise unimpressive battle, Torener, still fighting with Henlo’s old executive officer still commanding, was “accidentally” caught in the flagship’s gunfire and completely destroyed.
Henlo felt easier in his stomach. But, of course, it had only been a move directed by the logic of probabilities, which had never yet in the history of man been so acted upon as to produce more than a probable certainty.
“Most regrettable,” Miranid had commented when Henlo reported the accident to him. His whiskers had twitched, and Henlo felt sure that, though there had been no actual exchange of plans between them, Miranid’s own moves would mesh neatly with his own, once they had been decided on.
To guard against the outside contingency that they might, at this point, mesh too neatly, he took every possible precaution against being so far physically from Miranid as the battle progressed that any accident to himself might not be mutual.
More and more, Henlo realized, the pressure of events and actions was welding them together into a tacit alliance—an alliance that was not so much the product of mutual desire as the result of their sharing a common, deadly danger.
They were well-matched, but they were, nevertheless, peculiar bedfellows.
“Odd people, these, to be working together,” Miranid commented casually one day when he and Henlo were standing some distance away from the allied chiefs. Henlo, of course, saw the actual meaning behind the parallel, and nodded.
“And yet, similar,” Miranid went on. “Nature seems to have chosen the symmetrical quadruped as the basic form with which to supplement most of her intelligences. Some of them she has turned into bipeds by making them walk erect, and others she has tilted onto their forelimbs. But they are all basically the same, and one intelligence is basically capable of understanding another.”
“I see your meaning exactly, sir,” Henlo replied, and Miranid grinned his trademark laugh…
Vilkai was almost an anti-climax. It fell without serious opposition to half the spearheading segment, while the remainder of the heavy fleet formed a sphere around the system and then expanded outward, relentlessly crushing Vilk ships against the bottom of the hollow globe which the lighter ships had formed from outside.
The formation was, of course, extremely porous. But the surviving Vilks were successfully scattered and thus broken up into the small tribes which Miranid desired—to trouble whatever king sat on the sham throne at Vilkai.
Now, Henlo knew, he and Miranid had been set free to fight their personal war with the Farlan ministries. Taut, keyed-up to fighting pitch, he hurried down the companionway to Miranid’s quarters.
IX
“Well, Henlo, the fleet celebrates,” the admiral said drily while the sounds of men savagely drunk with joy and victory, glory and alcohol, according to their weaknesses, echoed through the ship’s gaping metal corridors.
Henlo smiled. “Sir, I compliment you on your evident and continued good health,” he said.
“And I you on yours,” Miranid replied. “So it was you they detailed.” He grinned. “A poor choice,-as they’ll find out.” He took a small flask of amber fluid out of a cabinet, poured it into a cup, and stood looking at it thoughtfully.
“I’d offer you some of this, Henlo, but I don’t think you’d like it. It’s an acquired taste, for all the merchants say. For that matter, I don’t even know if I’ll like it, with these taste buds.”