Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

“No need for the I-A to read minds,” Orne said. “We rely on superior mental prowess and the mistakes of others.”

“Two attack monitors are on their way,” Stetson’s voice hissed. “We’re coming in to get you. I’ll want to know how you figured this one out.”

“You are a weak fool like the others,” Tanub gritted.

“It’s too bad you formed your opinion of us by observing the low grades of R&R,” Orne said.

“Easy, easy,” Stetson cautioned. “Don’t pick a fight now. Remember he’s arboreal, probably as strong as an ape.”

“You ground-crawling slave,” Tanub grated. “I could kill you where you sit.”

“You kill your entire planet if you do,” Orne said. “I’m not alone, Tanub. Others listen to every word we say. There’s a ship above us that could split open your planet with one bomb—wash everything with molten rock. Your planet would run like the glass of your buildings. Your entire planet would be one big piece of ceramic.”

“You lie!”

“I’ll make you an offer,” Orne said. “We don’t want to exterminate you. We won’t unless you force our hand. We’ll give you limited membership in the Galactic Federation until you’ve proven you’re no menace to other…”

“You dare insult me,” Tanub growled.

“You’d better believe me,” Orne said. “We—”

Stetson’s voice interrupted: “Got it, Orne! They caught the Delphinus in a tight little mountain valley right where you said it’d be! Blew the tubes off it. We’re mopping up now.”

“It’s like this, Tanub,” Orne said. “We’ve already recaptured the Delphinus .”

Tanub’s gaze darted skyward. He returned his attention to Orne. “Impossible. We have your communications equipment and there has been no signal. The lights of our city still glow and you will not…”

“You’ve only the inferior R&R equipment,” Orne said, “not what we use in the I-A. Your people kept silent up there until it was too late. It’s their way, not that…”

Stetson demanded: “How’d you know that?”

Orne ignored Stetson, said: “Except for the captured armament you still hold, you obviously don’t have the weapons to meet us, Tanub. Otherwise you wouldn’t be carrying that rifle off the Delphinus .”

“If this is truth, then we shall die bravely,” Tanub said.

“No need,” Orne said. “We don’t—”

“I cannot take the chance that you lie,” Tanub said. “I must kill you.”

Orne’s foot on the air sled control pedal kicked downward. The sled shot upward, heavy G’s pressing its occupants into their seats. The gun was slammed into Tanub’s lap. He struggled to raise it.

For Orne, the weight still remained only about twice that of his native Chargon. He reached over, removed the rifle from Tanub’s grasp, found safety belts, bound the Gienahn with them. Then Orne eased off on the acceleration.

Tanub stared at him in teeth-bared fear.

“We don’t need slaves,” Orne said. “We have machines to do most of our work. We’ll send experts in here, teach you how to get into better balance with your planet, how to build good transportation, how to mine your minerals, how to…”

“And what do we do in return?” Tanub whispered. He appeared cowed by Orne’s strength.

“You could start by teaching us to make superior ceramics,” Orne said. As he spoke, a series of formative thoughts fled through his awareness—the peace-keeping function of the marketplace, the deliberate despecialization of manufacture with one village making the head of the hoe and the next village making the handle, the psychological security of guilds and castes…

Almost as an afterthought, he said: “I hope you see things our way. We truly don’t want to have to come down here and clean you out—although now we see that we could. But it’d be profoundly disturbing to us if we had to blast your city and send you back into the jungle for places to bear your young.”

Tanub wilted. “The city,” he whispered. Presently, he said: “Send me to my people. I will discuss what I have learned with… our… council.” He stared at Orne and there was respect in his manner. “You I-As are too strong… too strong. We did not suspect this.”

In the wardroom of Stetson’s scout cruiser, the lights were low, the chairs comfortable and close to a green-beige table set with crystalate glasses and a decanter of dark Hochar brandy.

Orne lifted his glass, sipped the liquor. He said: “For a while there I thought I’d never again be tasting anything as lovely as this.”

Stetson poured a glass of the brandy for himself, said: “ComGo heard the whole thing over the monitor net. D’you know you’ve been breveted to senior fieldman?”

“They’ve recognized my sterling worth at last,” Orne said. As he spoke, he found the bantering lightness of his own words disturbing. He tried to recapture an elusive memory—something about primitive gardening, about tools…

A wolfish grin spread over Stetson’s big features. “Senior fieldmen last about half as long as the juniors,” he said. “Very high mortality.”

“I might’ve known,” Orne said. He took another sip of the brandy, his thoughts going to the fate of the Gienahns, of the Hamalites: military occupation. Call it I-A necessity, call it preventative surveillance—it still spelled control-by-force.

Stetson flicked the switch of his cruiser’s master recorder system, said: “Let’s get it on record.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Who authorized you to offer the Gienahns limited membership in the Galactic Federation?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“But junior fieldmen do not originate such offers.”

“ComGo objects?”

“ComGo was telling me to authorize it when you jumped the gun. They weren’t on your net, were they?”

“No… no, they weren’t.”

“Tell me, Orne, how’d you tumble to where the hidden the Delphinus ? We’d already made a quick scan of the moon and it didn’t seem possible the try to hide it up there.”

“It had to be there. Tanub’s word for his people was Grazzi . Most sentients call themselves something meaning ‘The People.’ But in his tongue, that’s Ocheero . There was no such word as Grazzi on our translation list. I started working on it. There had to be a conceptual superstructure here with direct relationship to the animal shape, to the animal characteristics—just as there is with us. I felt that if I could get at the conceptual models for their communication, I had them. I was working under life-and-death pressure and, strangely, it was their lives and their deaths that concerned me.”

“Yes, yes, get on with it,” Stetson said.

“One step at a time,” Orne chided. “But on solid ground. By that time, I knew quite a bit about the Gienahns. They had wild enemies in the jungle, creatures much like themselves who lived in what might be enviable freedom. Grazzi. Grazzi . I wondered if it might not be a word adopted from another language. What if it meant ‘enemy?’”

“I don’t see where this is leading,” Stetson said.

“It is leading us to the Delphinus .”