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28: The Prisoners

Thus in the highest position there is the least freedom of action.

—SALLUST, The War with Catiline

COUNTDOWN: ONE WEEK TO FOOTFALL

It was exhausting work. Jeri hated it. Machines can do this. They have machines to do it. Why us? The why didn't matter. She didn't know what the fithp would do if she refused to work, but she didn't want to find out.

Raztupisp-minz sent them out in groups, but no one objected if they separated. Jeri didn't think the fithp would ever understand the human need for privacy, simply to be alone some of the time, but they were beginning to accept it. They can watch us. Better work. Wearily she took up the cleaning materials and began.

"You are diligent."

The voice from behind startled her. "Oh. Hello, Commander Rogachev."

"Arvid. We have no rank here." He laughed cynically. "We have achieved an equality that Marx would have admired, although perhaps not in quite the way he envisioned."

"I thought you were a good communist."

He shrugged. "I am a good Russian. You work too hard. Take a short rest."

"But they—"

He lowered his voice. "Dmitri says, and I agree, that we must not show them our true strength. If you work hard, they will expect hard work always. You harm the others if you do too much work."

"Sounds like a good excuse—all right. Lord knows I'm tired." She stretched out in midair, letting the weak gravity slowly take her to the air-shaft walls. "Feels good to relax. I would kill for a cigarette."

Arvid snorted. "There is nothing to kill. There is nothing to smoke, either."

It wasn't that funny, but she wanted to laugh, and she did.

Playing up to the nearest hero?

Shut up.

"So. You are here with your daughter. Where is your husband?"

"Drowned."

"I am sorry."

"So am I. We hadn't lived together for a year, but—I was going to meet him, and the snouts blew up a dam, the first night, I guess the same time they captured you. His house was below it."

Arvid pointedly looked away.

He's nice. Or trying to be. "Are you married?"

"I do not know. I was. Like you, we had not lived together for some months, but that was not estrangement. I was in space. Now—so many have died. My wife was Russian; the base was in the Ukraine. John Woodward tells me he heard tales of revolt in the Soviet Union. The Moslem republics would see this invasion as the punishment of Allah. The Ukraine was never satisfied to be part of Russia either. Perhaps—" He shrugged. "So many have died."

"Doesn't it upset you? Not knowing?"

"Of course. We Russians are great sentimentalists. What should I do, mourn? To her I am dead, even if she lives. I am not likely to see her again in any case."

Jeri gasped. "I—I guess I never thought about it that way. We're none of us going to get back alive, are we?"

Arvid shrugged again. "The only way we will be taken to Earth is as part of their herd. That implies victory for them. I do not believe Russia will surrender easily. Or the United States. Americans are stubborn."

"Stubborn. Maybe that's it. We like to say we love freedom."

"Did you hear much of Russia?" Arvid asked seriously.

"No. There was a little on the radio, about how Russia was being attacked just like we were. I didn't see much of what they did to us. The dam, I saw that. And Harry told me about other dams and bridges. And they made a big crater on a main highway, right where two highways crossed. But I didn't see much until they landed."

"And that was the first attack," Arvid said. "The next time will be more serious."

"What will they do?"

"The ship is 'mated to a foot.' I do not think it will be long mated. Nikolai has seen it." He told her of Nikolai's report.

"So you think they'll throw the asteroid at Earth?"

"Why should they not?" Arvid asked seriously.

"No, of course it makes sense." She shuddered. "And we thought it was bad when they attacked the bridges and dams! Now's when it gets really bad."

"Yes. I must say it is pleasant not having to explain these things to you."

She made an irritated gesture. "Women aren't stupid, you know."

He shrugged. "Some are, some are not. As with men. Perhaps it is time to begin work again. Come, we can stay together. If you do not mind?"

"It's all right."

* * *

Fog lay across the Bellingham harbor, and rain drizzled from the skies. From the harbor area distant sounds of work drifted up to the Enclave: hammers, trucks, barge motors . . . something that buzzed . . .

"They're sure building a hell of a greenhouse," Isadore said. He laughed.

George Tate-Evans looked at their own efforts and joined the laughter. "Well, I guess it's more than we did." They went back into the house.

Kevin Shakes watched them go, then went back to work. "I thought we'd done pretty well," he said.

"Sure," Miranda answered. "Enough to send Mom up the walls." In fact they had done a lot. Where picture windows had surrounded the X-shaped house, now there were steel shutters. Where the tennis court had been, above the hidden bomb shelter, there stood the skeleton of a greenhouse. Kevin was nailing glass plates into place with exquisite care. He'd finished the bottom two rows. Now he must work on the ladder, with Miranda to hand him tools and panes and move the ladder on its wheeled base.

George Tate-Evans and Isadore Leiber came out carrying half a dozen sheets of glass, laughing as they came. Kevin heard: "—still isn't talking to you?"

"Vicki is ominously silent. Iz, I thought it was over once we got the shutters up. You know, 'The house feels like a prison! I never thought we'd be living in a prison—' And then she settled down. And then there was the President saying everyone should build greenhouses, and two days later you and Jack were saying that for once the fuzzy-headed liberal son of a bitch was probably right—Kevin, Miranda, how're you doing?"

"So far so good," Kevin said. "Maybe another two days. You could start planting now."

"Let's look it over, Iz."

The older men set the glass on a pair of sawhorses. Isadore followed George around the corner and into the greenhouse. They walked the imaginary aisles, avoiding the white chalk markings put down to show where the plants would go. There was no glass to diminish their voices.

George was saying, "Iz, by the time we got serious about the greenhouse, all the glass in Bellingham and most of the plastic was bought up. Where else were we going to get glass?"

"You can see their point, though."

"Clara too?"

"Damn straight."

"All right, so it's ugly. Why do we have to have all the women on our backs?"

"It's not just ugly. We took out the windows. That means we'll have these damn shutters till we can take down the greenhouse. If ever. Maybe we can put the windows back after the government job gets going."

From above their heads Kevin said, "What?"

Isadore looked up in surprise. George didn't bother. "Iz, you're nuts. Depend on the government for food? God knows what the government's going to do with the stuff it grows, but you can be sure we don't get any of it."

"Sure," Kevin said. "Why else would they build greenhouses at the harbor unless they were going to ship it all out? We'll never get any."

"What make you so sure it is a greenhouse?" George asked.

"Oh, come on, it's been all over the radio," Isadore said. "Anyway, what else could it be? They say they're setting up a whole regional grain belt. They'll renovate the harbor and dredge it because they need it to ship the grain out. Isn't that great? After all the trouble we spent finding ourselves a sleepy little backwater town. . ."

"Yeah, I suppose," George said.

Isadore nodded. "Another thing. Prices'll go up. That'll kill your dad, Kevin, but we can stand it. Rohrs should like it."

"Things'll get crowded. Tourists. Traffic jams."

"Kevin?" Miranda called.

"Yeah?"

"Let's take a break."

"But . . ." When his sister had that edge in her voice, there was something to it. Even their father knew that. "Be right with you." He slid down the ladder.

"What?" he asked when they got to the water bucket.

"I was out with Leigh last night. . ."

"Yeah, you sure were. You were out late enough to have Dad pacing the floor. Mother wasn't too happy, either. She kept saying you had to be safe, you were out with a policeman, but she didn't mean it. Something happen—something we need to tell them?" Did he propose? Are you pregnant?

"Well, maybe, but not that." She giggled. "No, Leigh told me something. He's seen an astronaut."

"Astronaut?"

"Gillespie. The one who commanded the last Shuttle, the flight that took that poor congressman up to the Russian space station. Gillespie's in charge of this big government project—and they're setting up all kinds of guard stations, fences, everything."

"For a greenhouse?"

"That's what I wondered. Leigh says they told him it's to protect the food—"

"That makes sense. Look at all the trouble Dad went to to protect ours!"

"Sure, maybe, but an astronaut? Why, Kevin?"

"I don't know, Randy."

"I don't either, and I think we should tell Dad."

 

Bill Shakes was toting up accounts with the help of his pocket computer. Kevin and Miranda waited until they saw him pause. Then Kevin said, "We've got an astronaut in Bellingham."

Shakes looked up. "So?"

"Major General Edmund Gillespie. He went up to Kosmograd with Dawson. Now he's here. Miranda found out about it yesterday." He was careful not to say last night.

Miranda took up the tale. "Leigh spent day before yesterday and part of yesterday taking him all over Bellingham. I asked him where he was, and he told me all about it."

"What's he want? I mean Gillespie."

"I don't know. Leigh says he looked over everything. He looked at the harbor, he looked at the railroad, he toured the whole town. All that, for a government greenhouse?"

Shakes scowled. "So we've got a real live astronaut scouting Bellingham. We're getting too damn conspicuous. The thing about being a survivalist is you keep your head down."

"We have to," Miranda said. "There's no gasoline, and Leigh says they're going to close off the highway except for essential traffic, to save maintenance."

"Hmm." It was easy to see what Bill Shakes was thinking. Bellingham lay between mountains and the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Restricting highway use was the same as not letting them leave town. "Not that there's anyplace better for us to go to," Shakes said carefully. "We've invested a lot here, and we can't take it with us."

"Well, we thought you should know," Kevin said.

"Yeah. Yeah . . . why an astronaut? I suppose he doesn't have much of anything better, with the snouts shooting spaceships out of the sky. Still . . . it doesn't fit." Shakes frowned. "You like this deputy sheriff, don't you?"

"Yes—"

"Good. See more of him."

Kevin suppressed an urge to giggle.

* * *

Jack Clybourne stood in the doorway, blocking the President's path. "No, sir," he said firmly.

"Mr. Clybourne," Admiral Carrell said mildly.

"No," Jack said firmly. "Before the President goes in there, you get that alien out, or you give me a hell of a lot more gun than this pistol, and that's final."

Admiral Carrell sighed.

"Jack—" Jenny stepped forward. How do I get him out of this? "Jack, will you agree if I bring in Sergeant Bonner and two MPs with military rifles?"

"You can't do that," Sherry Atkinson protested. "We can't make Harpanet feel that we don't trust him!"

"Damn it all. Mr. President!" Wade Curtis said.

"Yes, Mr. Curtis?" the President asked. He sounded as if he was suppressing a chuckle.

"Their top brass travel with armed guards. Harpanet won't see anything unusual in having the President escorted by soldiers."

"Do you think I will need them, Mr. Curtis?"

"No. But I see Jack's point. If Harpanet decided to take on the President, he'd be damned hard to stop. Incidentally, if you're going to do this, do it right. None of those dinky little Mattel toy rifles. Get a couple of thirty-ought-sixes."

"And where will we find those?" Jenny asked.

"There's one in my room. Ransom's got another," Curtis said.

 

"That's why, Mr. President." Joe Ransom finished his presentation. The room, filled with writers and engineers and soldiers stood in silence, so that the only sound was the heavy breathing of the alien captive.

"Impressive," President Coffey said. He looked bewilderedly around the room until his eyes met those of the alien. Harpanet stood thirty feet away, as far as Clybourne could put him, with four armed combat veterans between the alien and the President.

And still too close, Jenny thought.

"What do you call him? Has he a title?" the President asked.

"Just Harpanet, Mr. President," Robert Anson said. "Any title he might have had from his own people was lost when he surrendered, and we have not yet given him one."

"Harpanet," the President said quietly.

"Lead me."

"Have you understood what was said here?"

"Yes."

"Is it true? They will drop a large asteroid on the Earth?"

The alien spread his digits.

"He says he can't know," Sherry interpreted.

"But your ship was to be—mated with a foot?"

"Yes." The s sound fluttered.

"Is there anyone here who disagrees?" the President demanded.

There was only silence.

President Coffey began to pace. "We'll have to warn as many people as possible. Worldwide. God, I wish they hadn't made such hash of our communications. Yes, Admiral?"

"I think we don't dare."

"Dare what? Warn the world? We'd be condemning millions! Tidal waves, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, it'll be like a weeklong disaster movie festival!"

"And if we do issue a warning, we will certainly condemn thousands. Tens of thousands," Admiral Carrell said. "They will flee from the coasts. All the coasts."

"But it's better than doing nothing!"

"Mr. President." Robert Anson seemed to have aged ten years in months, but his voice was firm and insistent.

"Yes, Mr. Anson?"

"If you issue a warning, people will flee the coastal towns. Bellingham is a coastal town."

"But—"

"You dare not have people flee from every town except Bellingham," Anson said.

"He is certainly correct," Admiral Carrell said. "If you issue a warning, you will disrupt Project Archangel. Perhaps permanently."

"And Archangel is the only goddam chance we have," Curtis said.

The President sat heavily. His fingers drummed against the desk. After a few moments he looked up. "Thor, would you send Mrs. Coffey in, please? I'll speak with the rest of you later. Thank you for your advice."

* * *

Mrs. Carmichael had told Alice a story once. Later Alice had asked around, and everyone had heard it. The psychiatrists probably thought it did their patients good. Maybe it did.

A motorist finds himself with a flat tire on a back road, late at night. There's a fence. Someone is peering through it, not doing anything, just watching. The motorist sees a sign in the headlights. He's parked next to a mental institution.

He takes the flat tire off, putting the five nuts in the hubcap. The stranger watches. He pulls the spare tire out of the trunk. The stranger watches. Motorist is getting nervous. What's a maniac doing out so late at night? Why is he staring like that? Motorist rolls the tire around from the back and steps on the rim of the hubcap, which flips all of the nuts into tall weeds. Motorist goes after them. He finds one nut.

The mental patient speaks. "Take a nut off each of the other tires. Put them on the fourth wheel. Four nuts each. It'll get you to a gas station."

Motorist says, "That'll work." Then, "Hey, that's brilliant! What the hell are you doing here?"

Patient says, "I'm here for being crazy. Not stupid."

 

The air pipes were a little more than a yard across. There we no handholds. At first Alice had floundered, lost and nauseated and fighting the fear of falling. It was better now. Jeri and Melissa actually enjoyed the low gravity, and they'd shown Alice how.

Alice had always been thin. Pale face, fiery hair, slender body, vividly pretty, for whatever that was worth. Now she was gaunt. She tried to eat, but there was no appetite, and the horrors tried to foist nauseating alien plants and meat on her. The others accepted such treatment. They ate canned food and alien food, they ate the vitamins and protein powder and brewer's yeast she had supplied and they thrived.

Living wasn't worth the effort under these circumstances. Alice had slashed her wrists once, long ago, for reasons that seemed trivial now. Something sharp would presently come her way. Yet she was half sure she wouldn't use it.

After all, who would care?

The little girl, Melissa, treated her with something between fear and contempt. Jeri was nice, but she spent a lot of time with the Russians. I think she likes the big one. He does things for her. Brings her things. Got the blanket to put around the toilet pool; that was nice.

Nobody does things for me. They resent me—

With Wes Dawson it went far beyond resentment. He gave orders. He lectured. He taught the language of the horrors—and expected the women to use it. He was persuasive and smooth and condescending, like that first psychiatrist they had given her, the one who thought using Q-tips was a form of masturbation. She'd gotten along all right with the second one. Mrs. Carmichael had looked a little like Jeri Wilson. A little plumper, and not as scared, Alice thought.

The horrors were worse than Dawson. Anything short of instant obedience puzzled them. They solved the problem by prodding with their trunks or the butts of the twisted-looking guns. They wouldn't listen to anything she had to say. They treated her like a thing. If Alice McLennon slashed her wrists, it would be one less damn thing for the horrors to worry about.

This cleaning of air pipes: it was make-work, a way of keeping the prisoners busy, like picking tomatoes at Menninger's. Alice wasn't fooled. I'm here for being crazy, not stupid. The horrors were too big to fit in the pipes. What had they done before people turned up? Maybe they had Roto-Rooters, or maybe the pipes just never needed cleaning, or—she'd glimpsed something like a steel doughnut just the size of the pipe, with a glittering eye that watched her, from a distance. Robots?

And like the make-work at Menninger's, it served its purpose.

They'd pushed her into the ducts when she balked. Those rubbery split trunks were irresistibly strong. She floundered in there, disoriented and nauseated, and took the great wad of cloth and the plastic bag that were shoved in after her. Then she hadn't done anything for a while. Then . . . she started to clean the pipes.

Well, there was dust and rust, and it came off. There were wads of goop and soil and feathers in the filters. And, moving around in the pipes, she began to learn a kind of skill. There were no handholds; of course not, the horrors had never expected that living things would need them in here. She learned to move in a zigzag jumping style, swiping at the sides with the cloth. It worked.

It worked, and she was getting better at it, but it was make-work, and she couldn't wait to get back to the garden, with its open spaces.

* * *

Some of the plants were sprouting. Alice was afraid to touch them. Mrs. Woodward chuckled. "Rice. I might have known it would be rice. Rice likes it wet."

"What do we do now?"

"Nothing. There ain't any bugs here. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe we want to block off the water pipes that feeds some of the other stuff."

Alice nodded. She pushed herself back to look at the vegetable plot. Was that another tuft of green, where they'd planted corn and runner beans together? Alice belatedly realized that she was too far from a handhold.

It didn't bother her much. She was used to free-fall. She floated, waiting for Thuktun Flishithy's minuscule thrust to pull her someplace useful.

Something wrapped around her ankle. She jumped as if she'd been electrocuted, and looked down at a cluster of tentacles, a broad brown head, wrinkled with age, and recessed eyes. "Raztupisp-minz?"

"You have learned to recognize me? Good. How is your health, Alice?"

"I'm fine."

"Your plants are sprouting. I am pleased. I think our plants will grow in your world."

Alice held her face expressionless. Dawson had suggested if the plants grew well, Earth would become more desirable to the horrors—and she hadn't believed him. Should the plants die . . . easy enough, but she'd have to go on eating what they fed now.

"I want to explain something," the teacher said. "You may have noticed that some of the fithp are acting strangely. The mating season has started for one class of us, the sleepers, and it affects their behavior. They are not turning rogue, but do not irritate them."

"You're not a sleeper, are you? And Takpusseh is."

"Mating season goes with the females, the sleeper females are spaceborn, and so is Tashayamp. For most of the year, many days to come, you may see me as neuter."

She studied him, but there was nothing to be read in his alien face. Yet this was a teacher and a manipulator. "Can you hear thought?"

"Hear thought?" He snorted. "No! But I can see. You talk of mating with females. You shy from males when you can. You are thin in the hips, your breasts are flat. Sometimes there are fithp who are shaped like females but never come into season."

Alice leapt away, back to the seed plot, back to the company of the other prisoners. Nobody had ever suggested such a thing to her! They thought she was strange, yes, but a neuter? A freemartin? If she didn't like men, it was because men were—were—

She feared the teacher would follow, but in fact he was speaking to another fi'—to the other teacher, Takpusseh.

She remembered, now, that men had tried to tell her that she was strange, to put her on the defensive. Fuck me to prove you're a woman.

The thought of being raped by Raztupisp-minz was ludicrous and horrible . . . mostly ludicrous, she decided. No man had ever started by telling her to think of him as a neuter.

Tashayamp took her back to the cell, with Mr. and Mrs. Woodward and Wes Dawson. They were there long enough to eat and use the toilet. The only thing that could have made that tolerable to Alice was watching how it bothered the others.

An hour's rest, then fithp came to escort them to the ducts. None of the humans had noticed that she wasn't talking. Maybe they were glad.

Alice broke away from the others as soon as she could, and let the wind carry her away, farther than she'd ever gone before. She wasn't feeling sociable. Presently she braked herself and began desultorily to clean the walls.

The wind had grown cold. It matched her mood; she hardly noticed at first. But the wall was even colder, on one side. Here was a curve to mark a side channel in the duct, but it was blocked by a hatch. She passed it. Soon the wall warmed.

Alice went back.

She didn't like taking orders, and she didn't like knowing that things were hidden from her. The goddam psychiatrists always had something they weren't telling her.

There was a slot to house the hatch. Alice got her fingers into a crack and pushed, and the door moved back against springs, enough to let her through.

The air was terribly cold and still. She followed a short duct and found a grill.

Ten yards beyond was a peculiar surface, black and nearly smooth, but with undulations in it, like very dirty ice. With her face pressed to the grill Alice could see the curve of it, like the inner wall of a cylinder.

She studied it for a time. There was a bulge in the surface . . . like an unfinished raised relief painting. . . a frieze of one of the horrors. Dirty ice? Dawson had said . . . what? The horrors liked mud. It puzzled them that humans bathed in clean water. But frozen mud?

The grill was loose in her hands.

She pushed it aside and floated in.

It was frozen mud on one side, a ceiling of painted friezes on the other. The artwork was weird, alien, sometimes beautiful. Horrors—fithp—half hidden among weird trees; she recognized some from the Garden area. Here a good representation of one of the horrors faced a block covered with alien script. And sculpted into the opposing mudbank was a similar shape . . .

She'd freeze here. Alice backed into the duct, pulled the grill after her, and set it in place.

Alice didn't like secrecy. She would have to learn more. She found an exit from the air shaft.

This part of the ship was strange, and she didn't know how to get home. It was hard, stopping one of the horrors in the corridor. She said, "Raztupisp-minz," and followed it after it gave up trying to talk to her.

She was tired and she ached. The horrors on Earth had stopped her before she got around to collecting conveniences like cosmetics and liniment. Cleaning out air ducts was so much like flying! She hadn't noticed how hard she was working. She wanted Ben Gay. She wanted to curl up and wait for the pain to go away.

* * *

"Alice wants to tell you something," Melissa said.

Jeri stirred wearily. "How do you know?"

"She keeps looking at you. But she wants to see you alone. I know, Mom. I can tell. Alice is—"

"Yeah." Interesting. Can you read her mind? Or are you guessing? Or what? Jeri floated lazily over to grip the wall beside Alice.

"How'd it go?"

Words bubbled out quickly. "Jeri, I found a peculiar place. Cold enough to freeze your ass off. Locked off. Black ice everywhere, or something like it. A long way from here."

"Storage room? Anything stored there?"

"No, just ice, all along the one wall, the hull wall. Dawson said they like mud. Maybe it's their idea of a big spa. Why would they freeze their spa?"

"Let's ask Arvid."

Alice looked afraid again.

"He won't . . . he's a good man, Alice."

"Oh, all right . . ."

Rogachev frowned deeply. "Frozen solid?"

"I didn't touch it. It must have been. It was cold."

"No gravity. No spin, because we are mated to the foot. They cannot bathe in mud under those conditions, but from the pictures they showed us we know they enjoy that. They will have a place for mud, and they must keep it when there is no gravity. Da. So they froze it in place."

"That makes sense," Jeri said.

"Yeah," Alice agreed. "All right, explain this one. There was a shape in the mud, like a frieze—like one of those horrors under a blanket."

"How? As if it were lying on its side?"

"Yeah. Now, what was that?"

Wes Dawson was close enough to hear. "You're sure of this?"

"Yes."

"A frieze of a fi'?"

"I didn't say it was a frieze! I said it was like that," Alice said.

"Certainly." Dawson made his voice soothing. He made no move to come closer to her. "Arvid, what do you think?"

"I do not know."

"I think we should tell Raztupisp-minz."

"We will consider that," Arvid said. He turned to Dmitri. "You have heard?"

"Da."

They spoke rapidly, in Russian.

Jeri took Arvid's arm. "They learn languages quickly," she said. "They say they don't know any Russian."

Arvid smiled. "If they have learned rapidly enough to comprehend the accented dialect we are now speaking, nothing will defeat them." He turned back to the others. The liquid syllables continued. Finally Dmitri nodded. Arvid turned to the others. "Da. We will do it, then. Alice, you must tell your story to our masters."

* * *

The mudroom was warm enough for comfort, and the mud was thawing, by the time Pretheeteh-damb arrived.

Raztupisp-minz had told him that the red-haired human was certified rogue. She could be hallucinating . . . The comfort that gave Pretheeteh-damb vanished as he entered. There in the ceiling was a frieze of Thowbinther-thuktun, a half-legendary priest of two eight-cubeds of years ago. Opposite Thowbinther-thuktun was an entirely similar bulge.

Some fi' must have an odd sense of humor. He must have entered the mudroom after acceleration stopped; had shaped the mud into a ribald parody of the ancient discoverer of the Podo Thuktun. But Preetheeteh-damb was beginning to shiver, and it comforted him that his octuple were all spaceborn. "Remove the mud," he told one of his fithp, "carefully. But waste no time. We resume acceleration shortly."

This couldn't have happened at a worse time. Within hours they would release the Foot. Then there would be violent maneuvers as they placed Thuktun Flishithy in position to send down the digit ships.

The Invasion of Winterhome was about to begin, and now this!

The warrior scraped away softened mud with the back of his bayonet, and Fathisteh-tulk began to take shape.

* * *

The Herdmaster waited impatiently for the call. Then Pretheetel-damb came onto the screen. There was activity behind him.

"Report."

"It is indeed Fathisteh-tulk, Herdmaster. He was drowned. We find no breaks in the skin." By now the corpse was free from the ice, visible in the screen. It rotated slowly for inspection by the octuple's physician. "There's a deep groove in Fathisteh-tulk's trunk, above the nostril. It might have been made by a cord pulled very tight, but it wouldn't have killed him. Mud caked in the fi's mouth. It looks like a ritual execution. He was drowned."

"Thank you." Pastempeh-keph broke the connection. The tulk clan must be informed. The women will not be pleased. Murder! Murder was rare among the fithp. It was almost always the beginning of rebellion.

"We approach the final moments, Herdmaster," the Attackmaster said. "What shall we do?"

Run away. Drop the Foot to slow the humans. Confine them to their planet while we take the rest of their solar system, which is more valuable than the planet anyway.

Fathisteh-tulk would have given that advice. Gladly. Advisor Siplisteph will not. The sleeper women will never consent to that. Nor will Fistarteh-thuktun.

"Attackmaster."

"Lead me."

"Continue with the battle plan. You are in charge of Thuktun Flishithy."

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