Now that was news! Mayelna hit the hold button on her monitor and indicated for Valthyrra to bring her camera pod in a little closer. 'Do they seem to have reached an understanding?'
Valthyrra chuckled mischievously. 'That is an interesting way of putting it! Dveyella has moved her belongings into the cabin that Keth vacated a few days ago — the one adjacent to his own.'
Mayelna only stared with open amazement. 'Do you mean…?
'Their understanding appears to be a personal one,' the ship explained. 'As, I believe, I did warn you it would be. Sheesh! If I had had my wits about me, I would have planted a bug on that boy. Then we would have heard some very interesting conversations indeed.'
The result of that came as a surprise to them both.
'Son of a bitch!' Consherra, seated at her station on the middle bridge, declared. She gave her console a four-fisted thump that threatened to demolish it. 'Son of a bitch!'
Then, to the speechless astonishment of the entire bridge crew, she leaped from her seat and left the bridge in a cold rage.
'I must say that I do not care much for her choice of terms,' Mayelna remarked in the stunned sdence that followed. 'Makes it sound like I had something to do with it, and I do not like this any better than she does.'
Valthyrra's pod turned to face her so sharply that the boom rattied. 'What are you complaining about? You are only losing a son. I am losing the best would-be Commander this ship has ever had. When I think of how hard I worked to get that… girl on board. And if you had named him Commander-designate when I asked… '
'I wish I had! Great Spirit of Space, I wish I had!' Mayelna returned, then shook her head and sighed. 'Where did I go wrong?'
'Twenty-six years ago, when you thought you were too old to get pregnant,' Valthyrra offered. 'Quiet, now. Here they come.'
'Act natural,' Mayelna warned as she bent over her monitor. Valthyrra aimed her pod upward as if she were giving the ceiling a cursory inspection, and a whistling sound came from her speakers. Mayelna silenced her with a sharp rap on the underside of her camera pod.
'I want you to meet my mother,' they heard Velmeran say teasingly from the corridor outside the right wing of the bridge, speaking louder than he was aware.
'I have met your mother,' Dveyella teased in return, 'She is a real bitch.'
Valthyrra turned her camera pod to the frowning Commander. 'That would seem to make it unanimous.'
Velmeran and Dveyella marched into the bridge, well pleased with themselves and each other and totally oblivious to everything that had occurred prior to their arrival. Mayelna and Valthyrra both returned to their roles of complete innocence, the ship's cameras glancing about the bridge at everything except the approaching couple. But Valthyrra's impatience quickly got the better of her; she focused on the two Starwolves as if they had materialized out of the very air.
'Ah, Meran!' she exclaimed. 'Pack Leader Dveyella. Did you have a good time?'
'Excellent!' Dveyella agreed happily. Mayelna made a rude noise.
'There is something that I would like to know,' Velmeran said quickly. 'Have you kept any statistics on the genetic deterioration of the human race?'
'Genetic deterioration?' Valthyrra's lenses seemed almost to blink in confusion. 'Actually, it is hard for me to make any valid observations, but that does not change the fact of its reality. Our own human worlds are in slow decline, and there is every indication that the Union worlds are proceeding at a much greater pace. Especially the inner worlds — it is getting so bad that if all the machines were to suddenly stop, it is doubtful that they could ever get anything running again.'
'Why?' Velmeran asked.
'Because Mother Nature is a stern mistress,' she explained, the information analysis, storage and retrieval systems in her warming to the task. 'The one rule of all life is change, and the driving force is survival. But that is a game that modern, civilized man has not been forced to play in nearly sixty thousand years. Nature intended that only the best should thrive and multiply, but for so long now nearly everyone survives — and reproduces indiscriminately. Change continued, but in a random, ineffectual manner, and once begun the process accelerates itself.
'Which, mind you, is all theory to explain what we have been observing since before I came out of the construction bay. What the future holds is even more speculation. But if the race is protected so that these conditions go undisturbed, then the present deterioration will continue.'
'Which may very well happen,' Velmeran said. 'Since we are likely to take over the management of the human race in the very near future.'
'The Kelvessan cannot provide for the entire species,' Valthyrra answered. 'I have often thought, when considering the problem, that the best thing we could do for humanity is to systematically destroy its entire civdization. I have even wondered if our very purpose is self-defeating. The Union has existed for most of recorded history, and we have been a catalyst, a unifying force, acting to keep it alive. I do believe that, had it not been preoccupied fighting us, the Union would have split into its various sectors and reduced itself to smoking rubble within the first few hundred years of its existence.'
Velmeran brightened, seeing the logic in that. 'Of course they would have. They would even yet. And a collapse of their civilization, a return to the most primitive of conditions, would also mean a return to the old laws of survival and natural selection, and the species would rejuvenate itself.'
'Then you do understand,' Valthyrra said approvingly. 'That is our dilemma; wreck a civilization, and possibly save a species. But I already know that it is not our place to make that decision.'
'The Union itself seems to be of the opinion that there is little hope,' Velmeran offered. 'They believe that they are already doomed to extinction, except for a few mutant races that are no longer strictly human.'
'In a sense, there is very little of the race left that is strictly human,' Valthyrra said as she glanced at the main monitor. Then, realizing what he had said, she snapped her pod around to face him. 'And how is it, pray tell, that you are privy to what the Union thinks on the subject?'
Velmeran shrugged indifferently. 'Councilor Lake explained it to us last night over dinner.'
'Councilor Lake. The Councilor Lake, who runs this sector like he owns it — which he does?' Mayelna demanded. 'And how did it come to be that you had dinner with Councilor Lake?'
'He invited us,' Velmeran replied. 'Just the four of us, Dveyella and myself, the Councilor and his nephew Donalt, the Sector Commander. We dined on Vinthran follycrab.'
'But… why?' Mayelna demanded in exasperation.
'Apparently for the sole purpose of warning us. The Union knows that it is doomed, but it seems that the High Council intends to die fighting. Councilor Lake warned us to expect war the way we used to fight it, for as long as the Union's resources hold out. He said that we can expect two new, deadly weapons that will soon be used against us.'
'But why would he warn you about what must be the Union's most secret plans?' Valthyrra asked.
'Because he knows that the Union cannot win. And I believe that, for a number of reasons, he wants us to win. Most of all, he believes that we will prosper once the war is over, and we will gradually take over complete dominance of their own civilization. That way we will keep the machines running and, if the human race does face extinction, it will be a gentle, painless death.'
'Their civilization is more fragile than they might believe,' Valthyrra said. 'The heavily populated industrial planets are wholly dependent on off-world food supplies.
An interruption of that supply would starve those worlds in a matter of only a few short weeks. Eight-or nine-tenths of the Union's entire population would be destroyed before we could do a thing to stop it.'
'Lake trusts us not to strike at civilian targets,' Mayelna pointed out. 'According to his plan, I am sure, the Union will fight for as long as it has warships in space and then it would surrender.'
Velmeran nodded. 'That just might be his plan. But that is not our immediate problem. That warning of things to come is.'
Mayelna glanced up at him. 'Do you have any idea of what that is about?'
'No, we would just have to wait and see.' He shrugged helplessly. 'Forewarned is four-armed.'
Mayelna put her head in her hands and muttered a most dire obscenity. Then she lifted one hand to wave them away.
'Go away, children. All this business is simply beyond me, and I want no part of it.' She glanced up at
