'Why would the ET's race have thought that the bandersnatch was just a dumb animal? Why does he react so violently when we suggest that the thing might be sentient? Greenberg thinks he's the prisoner of aliens, he thinks his race is billions of years dead and his home lost forever, yet what is it that really interests him? Frumious bandersnatch. Did you see the way he looked when the dissection was going on?'
'No. I was too interested myself.'
'I get almost scared when I think of what's in Greenberg's brain the information he's carrying. Do you realize that Dr. Snyder may have to permanently repress those memories to cure him?
'Why would a race as sophisticated as the tnuctipun must have been' he pronounced the word as Kzanol/Greenberg had, badly- 'have worked for Greenberg's adapted race? Was it because of the telepathy? I'm just-'
'I can tell you that,' Kzanol/Greenberg said bitterly. He had drunk five cups of water, practically without a breath. Now he was panting a little.
'You've got good ears,' said Masney.
'No. I'm a little telepathic; just enough to get by on. It's Greenberg's talent, but he didn't really believe in it so he couldn't use it. I can. Much good may it do me.'
'So why did the tnuctipun work for you?' Masney messed up the word even worse than Garner had.
The question answered itself.
Everyone in the room jerked like hooked fish.
There was no fall. An instant after he put out his arms, Kzanol was resting on his six fingertips like a man doing pushups. He stayed there a moment, then got to his feet. The gravity was a little heavy.
Where was everybody? Where was the thrint or slave who had released him?
He was in an empty, hideously alien building, the kind that happen only on free slave worlds, before the caretakers move in. But… how had he gotten here, when he was aimed at a deserted food planet? The next sight he had expected was the inside of a caretaker's palace. And where was everybody? He badly needed someone to tell him what was going on.
He Listened.
For some reason, neither human nor Thrintun beings have flaps over their ears resembling the flaps over their eyes. The Thrintun Power faculty is better protected. Kzanol was not forced to lower his mental shield all at once. He chose to do so, and he paid for it. It was like looking into an arc lamp from a foot away. Nowhere in the Thrintun universe would the telepathic noise have been that intense. The slave worlds never held this heavy an overpopulation; and the teeming masses of the Thrintun worlds kept their mind shields up in public.
Kzanol reeled from the pain. His reaction was immediate and automatic.
STOP TRINKING AT ME! he roared at the bellowing minds of Topeka Kansas.
In the complex of mental hospitals still called Menninger's, thousands of doctors and nurses and patients heard the command. Hundreds of patients eagerly took it as literal and permanent. Some became stupid and cured. Others went catatonic. A few who had been harmlessly irresponsible became dangerously so. A handful of doctors became patients, a mere handful, but the loss of their services compounded the emergency when the casualties began pouring in from downtown. Menninger's was miles from Topeka Police Headquarters.
In the little room, everyone jerked like hooked fish.
Then, all but Kzanol/Greenberg, they stopped moving.
Their faces were empty. They were idiots.
In the first instant of the mental blast, Kzanol/Greenberg's mental shield went up with an almost auilible clang. A roaring noise reverberated through his mind for minutes. When, he could think again, he still didn't dare drop the mind shield.
There was a thrint on Earth.
The guards at the door now squatted or sat like rag dolls. Kzanol/Greenberg pulled cigarettes from a dark blue shirt pocket and lit one, from the burning butt between Masney's lips, incidentally saving Masney a nasty burn. He sat and smoked while he thought about the other thrint.
Item: That thrint would see him as a slave.
Item: He, Kzanol, had a working mind shield. That might convince the thrint, whoever he was, that he, Kzanol, was a thrint in a human body. Or it might not. If it did, would the other thrint help? Or would he regard Kzanol/Greenberg as a mere ptavv, a Powerless thrint?
In ugly fact, Kzanol/Greenberg was a ptavv. He had to get his body back before the other found him.
And with that, incredibly, he stopped thinking about the other thrint. There was every reason to wonder about him. What was he doing on Earth? Would he claim Earth as his property? Would he help Kzanol/Greenberg reach Thrintun (or whatever new planet passed for Thrintun these days)? Did he still look Thrintish, or had two billion years of evolution turned Thrintun into monsters? But Kzanol/Greenberg dropped the subject and began to think about reaching Neptune.
Perhaps he knew who the other thrint was, but wasn't ready to face the fact.
Cautiously he Listened. The thrint had left the building. He could find out nothing more, for the other's mind shield was up. He turned his Attention, such as it was, to the men in the room.
They were recovering, but very slowly. He had to Listen with excruciating concentration because of the limitations of Greenberg's brain, but he could feel their personalities reintegrating. The most advanced seemed to be Garner. Next was Masney.
Another part of the Greenberg memory was about to become useful. Greenberg had not lied about his dolphin-like sense of the practical joke. To implement it he had spent weeks learning a technique for what we shall charitably call a party trick.
Kzanol/Greenberg bent over Lloyd Masney. 'Lloyd,' he said, in a distinct, calm, authoritative voice. 'Concentrate on the sound of my voice. You will hear only the sound of my voice. Your eyelids are getting heavy. So heavy. Your fingers are becoming tired. So tired. Let them go limp. Your eyes wish to close; you can hardly keep them open…'
He could feel the Masney personality responding beautifully. It gave no resistance at all.
The gravity was irritating. It was barely enough to notice at first, but after a few minutes it was exhausting. Kzanol gave up the idea of walking after he had gone less than a block, though he didn't like the idea of riding in a slave cart.
I'm not proud, he told himself. He climbed into a parked Cadillac and ordered the slack-lipped driver to take him to the nearest spaceport. There was a fang-jarring vibration, and the car took off with a wholly unnecessary jerk.
These slaves were much larger than the average land-bound sentient being. Kzanol had plenty of head room. After a moment he cautiously took off his helmet. The air was a little thin, which was puzzling considering the heavy gravity. Otherwise it was good enough. He dropped the helmet on the seat and swung his legs over beside it; the seat was too wide for comfort.
The city was amazing. Huge and grotesque! The eye was faced with nothing but rectangular prisms, with here and there a yellow rectangular field or a flattish building with a strangely curved roof. The streets couldn't decide whether to be crooked or straight. Cars zipped by, buzzing like flying pests. The drone from the fans of his own car rasped on his nerves, until he learned to ignore it.
But where was he? He must have missed F124 somehow, and hit here. The driver knew that his planet- Earth? had space travel, and therefore might know how to find F124. And the eighth planet of its system.
For it was already obvious that he would need the second suit. These slaves outnumbered him seventeen billion to one. They could destroy him at any time. And would, when they knew what he was. He had to get the control helmet to make himself safe. Then he would have to find a Thrintun planet; and he might need a better spaceship than the humans had produced so far. They must be made to produce better ships.
The buildings were getting lower, and there were even gaps between them. Had poor transportation made these slaves crowd together in clumps? Someday he must spend the time to find out more about them. After all, they were his now.
But what a story this would make someday! How his grandchildren would listen and admire! When the time
