“It is this: we would like to bring our expertise back into play. We would like to be designated advisers in our specialities—which cover the gamut of those necessary to the operation of the Empire—and consulted when there are problems which the younger officers might have difficulty with.”
“To pull things out when they bungle.”
“I would not have put it that way.”
“You’re not an alien teenage pseudo-consort.”
He smiled. “Indeed I am not.”
“Let’s try it! Set me up with the detail and the arguments I’ll need, and make sure I have it straight, and I’ll tell him as if it’s my own idea. If we’re right, he’ll choose to believe that. We have today and tomorrow. Is that enough time?”
“It should be, as our desire is straightforward.”
They got to it, with a growing conviction that this was indeed what she had been sent here to do. Colene met a number of the other officers in person and by wall video, and rehearsed the arguments as carefully as she had done the protocol of the ball. When the time came, she would be ready.
IT happened as expected. It had obviously been choreographed as precisely as the ritual of the dance. Planet Kyvrn was officially designated as an Advisory Resource, and the residents were presumably encouraged and would feel more positive henceforth.
“You did so well!” Mare said enthusiastically as she gave Colene a massage. Her hands were so gentle and proficient that the lingering tension just faded away. Colene could appreciate how Darius, subjected to such treatment, could—but she shoved that hastily out of mind. She understood, but there was a tight knot of emotions that would have to be picked apart at another time.
She returned to the recent exhilaration of the successful mission. So Ddwng had programmed it to succeed; so it still had been fun. He had used her in a harmless way to justify his change of policy.
But something nagged, and her morbid aspect kept trying to sniff it out. She had never been one to accept things without question, especially when they were nice. She was always alert for the worm in the apple, and she liked to fathom the whole worm. Which reminded her of two things: the question about what it was better to find in an apple one was eating: a whole worm or half a worm? Where was the other half of the worm? She had once made a friend sick at lunch with that one. The other thing was a bit of verse her grandmother had told her once, and Colene’s beady little mental eye for the grotesque had fixed on it instantly. The verse was about a college professor who tended to transpose the first letters of words when he got excited. Once he had the unpleasant task of informing a prominent woman that she had taken the wrong pew in church: “Mardon me, madam, but you are spitting in the wrong stew. Please let me sew you to another sheet.” But the one about the worm was what Colene was after now. The prof was bawling out a bad student. “You have missed three of my mystery lectures. In fact you have tasted the whole worm!” Well, when the worm was some subtle flaw in a person’s understanding, it was indeed better to taste the whole thing.
Why had Ddwng used her for this task? Surely he could have used any beautiful, stupid consort for this purpose. The answer was reasonably plain: he was studying Colene, because if she was crazy underneath, and it was a genetic defect, he didn’t want those genes in the DoOon gene pool. But if he was studying her, did it make sense to turn her loose unsupervised? Surely he would want to have his machines taking her stats all the time, especially when she thought she was unobserved.
So had Rrllo been lying to her when he said he wouldn’t report on her indiscretion? No, because Seqiro had found the man true. But why should Rrllo report? He was just another actor in the play. There would be a monitor on Colene, maybe one Rrllo didn’t know about, so Seqiro couldn’t get it from his mind.
But there couldn’t be a camera following her around! So how could it be done?
“Will there be anything else?” Mare inquired, having completed the rubdown. She spoke through the translation ball, as always.
“No thanks,” Colene replied automatically. “I’ll just lie here and sag for a while.”
Mare let her be. Then an almost tangible light bulb flashed. The translation ball! She had worn a special one at the planet. That was the recorder.
So Ddwng knew what she had said, including the bit about lobotomy. He would know that no one had mentioned this to her. So he would have a direct question to ask her, and if she didn’t have a direct answer, she might face that lobotomy sooner than she had figured. That would ruin her plan for escape, not to mention her life.
Oh sweet Jesus! she thought. How am I going to get out of this one?
You will have to deceive him with a half-truth, Seqiro replied.
She realized it was true. She couldn’t tell Ddwng about Seqiro; that would ruin everything and get the horse destroyed. She couldn’t claim it was a lucky guess; he would never buy that.
She mulled it over, and finally came to something she hoped would work.
Sure enough, on the way back to Earth Ddwng had dinner with her, and after the amenities he put it to her directly. “You surprised me, Colene. I may have underestimated you. How did you know about the lobotomy?”
“I’m telepathic,” she replied without hesitation. That was the half-lie, flat out.
He gazed at her. “We regard such claims as without substance.”
“Yes. That’s why you had so much trouble with the monster of Yils. You just couldn’t believe it was possible to stun someone by pure mental force.”
“Darius is telepathic too?”
“Not exactly. He can receive and rebroadcast emotion, without being affected. He’s more like a catalyst. So the monster couldn’t mind-blast him. As you expected.”
“You are evidently well matched to Darius.”
“I evidently am. His mind, my mind—I think it’s going to be fun, when we finally get together and explore the interactions.”
“What am I thinking now?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Ddwng. It’s not like watching a program on the wall. Your mind is all guarded and complicated. You have to be unguarded and have a very strong thought, and even then I don’t necessarily get it. The lobotomy was so strong, and related to me so directly, that I picked it up. It was when we were eating, and you told me the three things you wanted of me—to be your consort, and such. I thought it was sex, but it was lobotomy. After that I decided to agree to your three things. You didn’t wonder what changed my mind?”
“I did wonder.”
He is concluding that it is true.
“Well, now you know. The only other thing I got was about genetics. But that wasn’t clear. What do genetics have to do with me?”
Now he believes he knows what you have been hiding from him. Your knowledge of some of his plans.
“Our gene pool is too limited. We have achieved perfect health and uniformity, but along with the liabilities of genetic diversity, we eliminated some of the strengths. You may have genes we can use.”
“So you’re going to breed me like an animal—” She broke off, fixing him with a carefully rehearsed stare. “Surgery! You intend to take my ovaries!”
“So you did receive that thought.”
“How could I miss it! You monster! You told me that you would let us go if we got you the Chip!”
Ddwng lifted his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “I will do that. If we achieve the other realities, there will be many gene sources, and you will be superfluous. It is only if we fail that we shall have to take whatever offers.”