Jack Chalker - The Return of Nathan Brazil

And then she was still, breathing hard but otherwise quiet. He went over to his clothes and took out a plain white box inside of which were a number of thick, chewy cakes. He brought them to her and offered them wordlessly.

She sat up unsteadily and reached out, took one of the cakes, and ate it greedily. In a very short time she’d consumed the whole box. There wouldn’t always be time to replace the metabolized materials quickly, but the key transfer had to be in the best shape. The others—well, that was the risk of being a soldier.

Finally she finished and looked up at him. “We are in complete control,” she assured him in language the woman Roza had never known much less heard before, a language so alien it seemed hardly possible to be coming out of a human throat.

“It is good,” he responded in the same tongue, then turned and dressed. In a moment she did likewise. He watched her critically, trying to detect any flaws, any differences, but there were none to his eye. Her walk, her manner, all were down pat. Nor would she slip in more personal ways. The personality, the psyche, the spirit or whatever you call it of Roza was dead; but her memories, locked in the protein molecules of her brain, were still there. She knew everything that Roza had known, yet more, for the Dreel had ready access to all of the brain.

He started to leave but she stopped him. “Best to wait another ten minutes,” she cautioned in her old, human tongue. Even the accent was perfect. “Podi and the others would get suspicious if we pulled that fast a ‘quickie’.”

He nodded understandingly. “You know best,” he admitted and sat down on the side of the bed.

It was a deadly slow way to conquer a world, but it was most effective.

The hot sun beat down on the body of Har Bateen as he left the little bar. He was oblivious to heat, oblivious to anything that did not cause permanent harm to the host and habitat of the Dreel. He walked toward the spaceport, noting with satisfaction the large crowds of dockworkers gathering with their machines to unload as the first of the big ships came in. The large freighter shuttles sat humming on the pads, waiting for word that a mother ship was in orbit and ready to unload.

It was tempting to wade into the crowd, to get close, to try some air contact spreading, but it would be too obvious and the takeover itself would attract too much attention, even stop the unloading. The Dreel didn’t want to do that, not at all.

The pattern had worked for a long, long time. Slowly, with deliberation and infinite patience, a world—world after world—could be taken over without anyone even knowing until it was too late, often without a single alarm being sounded. The Dreel were immortal through their inherited memories passed on to each new generation, but they were not physically immortal nor uncaring about life. If they had been, they would hardly have bothered to take over other places and races at all. Militarily, this was the most life-efficient method they’d ever developed IN their nearly forty thousand years of glorious, unimpeded conquest. And yet each species was different, each race a new challenge. The Dreel loved the challenge of it all more than anything, and each victory was further proof of their superiority to all other lifeforms.

With time to kill, Har Bateen noticed a small crowd gathering curiously around a pair of creatures only one of whom was “human.”

The man was tall and thin and looked as if he’d been through a pretty rough life; baggy trousers and well-worn shoes, a tattered vest over a thin, hairy bare chest; a long, almost triangular face that hadn’t been shaved in a week. His thick, black hair was wrapped in a crude bandana of some sort, almost turban-like.

A true Gypsy, Har Bateen noted with surprise. It was there in the preliminary scouting reports that such a group existed, but just about no one had ever seen one. Not even any of those people gathering around him, Bateen felt sure.

As Bateen wandered closer, curiosity and boredom drawing him to the show just as it had drawn the human beings waiting for the freighters, the Gypsy took an odd sort of reed flute from his pocket and began to play an odd, almost hypnotic tune that caused the other with him to begin a dance.

His companion was strange indeed—about half the man’s height, no more than a meter high, surely—with shimmering blue-green scales along a reptilian body. Two thick legs ending in long, nasty claws supported the torso. He stood upright, although leaning slightly forward, and had two long, spindly arms that ended in tiny, clawed hands. The face was also lizard-like, although it held none of the rigidity of a reptilian head; it was as if a giant lizard had the muscular facial mobility of a human.

Perhaps most incongruously it was clothed in the same sort of baggy garments as the Gypsy, though shoeless, of course—no shoe made could fit those odd, oversized feet. It was as agile as a monkey, and it danced wildly to the haunting melody of the flute, faster, ever faster as the tempo picked up, its long tail acting almost as a third leg in a multi-limbed dance.

But this was only the beginning; it was moving so fast that the sunlight reflected from tens of thousands of scales giving it the appearance of sparkling with as many rhinestones; the effect was brilliant and added to the hypnotic power of the alien music. And now the crowd stood back, awed in spite of itself, appreciating the strange scene.

The lizard now formed an oval with his mouth, an incredible sight on such a serpentine face, and there was the sound of a great amount of air rumbling about somewhere inside. Now it came out in a steady whoosh, and the watchers gasped. Fire! He was exhaling fire and forming patterns with it! Circles, whirls, shapes odd and familiar appeared and vanished in split seconds while the lizard yet danced, a sparkling blur.

The Gypsy continued to play, but as he did his steel-gray eyes rested not on his lizard companion but on the crowd, looking at them one by one. Studying them, analyzing them.

Even the Dreel who were camouflaged inside the body and mind of Har Bateen were captivated. This was beyond their experience and they shared its alien grace and beauty with the others.

And now it was over suddenly, without fanfare, the last note and the last blazing sparkles faded into the hot, dry air so that only memory remained of the haunting, strange performance.

The crowd stood there, transfixed, still stunned by this performance, not saying a word, or acting in any way until, suddenly, one, then more snapped out of his trance and applauded. The applause quickly rose to a crescendo of cheers and whistles as well as clapping.

The Gypsy bowed slightly, acknowledging the tribute, and even the lizard-creature seemed to nod toward each one in the audience in turn. The strange man put his flute away and waited for the appreciation to subside. Finally he said, in a clear but oddly accented low tenor, “Citizens, we thank you, both my friend and I.”

“Do it again!” somebody shouted, and there were nods and murmurs. “Yeah, more! More!” others called out, adding to the din.

The Gypsy smiled. “Thank you, my friends, we would be delighted to do so—but we must eat, and my friend here has a bigger appetite than do I. Some token of appreciation—Marquoz!—would be most gratifying.”

At the name “Marquoz” the little dragon snorted, looked up at the man, and seemed to smile—a grotesque smile that revealed the nastiest set of teeth anybody there ever remembered—and then picked up a bag and advanced slowly on the crowd. They started moving nervously back.

The Gypsy laughed. “My friends, do not fear Marquoz! He will not eat you. He wishes only what I wish, money to purchase some more civilized food. Just a coin in his little bag, one coin, gentle citizens, and perhaps we shall have our eats and you another dance, hey?”