World Of Ptavvs

'Do you doubt that a slave race in revolt would settle for nothing less than our total extinction?'

Tendrils writhed in battle at the corners of Kzanol's mouth. When he finally spoke, he said, 'I don't doubt it.'

'Then-'

'Certainly we'd take them with us into extinction! The sneaky, dishonorable lower-than-whitefoods, using our concessions of freedom to destroy us! I only desire that we got them all.'

Kzanol/Greenberg grinned. 'We must have. How else can we explain that none of our slaves are in evidence except whitefoods? Remember whitefoods are immune to the Power.

'Now, that other information. Have you looked for your second suit?'

Kzanol returned to the present. 'Yes, on the moons. And you searched Neptune. I'd have known if Masney found it. Still, there's one more place I'd like to search.'

'Go ahead. Let me know when you're finished.' Gyros hummed faintly as the Golden Circle swung around. Kzanol looked straight ahead, his Attention in the control room.

Kzanol/Greenberg lit a cigarette and got ready for a wait.

If Kzanol had learned patience, so had his poor man's imitation. Otherwise he would have done something foolish when the thrint blithely took over Masney, his own personal slave. He could have killed the thrint merely for using his own body- Kzanol/Greenberg's own stolen body, by every test of memory. And the effort of dealing with Kzanol, face to his own personal face!

But he had no choice.

The remarkable thing was that he was succeeding. He faced a full-grown thrint on the thrint's own territory. He had gone a long way toward making Kzanol accept him as another thrint mind, a ptavv at least. Kzanol still might kill him; he wished that the thrint would pay more attention to the disintegrator! But he had done well so far. And was proud of it, which was all to the good. Kzanol/Greenberg's self-respect had been very low.

There was no more to be done now. He had better stay out of Kzanol's way for a while.

Kzanol's first move was to radar Kzanol/Greenberg's ship. When that failed to turn up the suit, Kzanol took over Masney again and made him search it from radar cone to exhaust cone, checking the assumption that the shielded slave had somehow sneaked the suit aboard and turned off the stasis field. He found nothing.

But the other seemed so sure of himself! Why, if he didn't have the suit?

They searched Triton again. Kzanol/Greenberg could see Kzanol's uncertainty growing as the search progressed. The suit wasn't on Neptune, wasn't on either moon, positively wasn't on the other ship, couldn't have stayed in orbit this long. Where was it?

The drive went off. Kzanol turned to face his tormentor, who suddenly felt as if his brain was being squeezed flat. Kzanol was giving it everything he had: screaming sense and gibberish, orders and rage and raw red hate, and question, question, question. The pilot moaned and covered his head. The copilot squealed, stood up and turned half around, and died with foam on her lips. She stood there beside the gaming table, dead, with only the magnets in her sandals to keep her from floating away. Kzanol/Greenberg faced the thrint as he would have faced a tornado.

The mental tornado ended. 'Where is it?' asked Kzanol.

'Let's make a deal.' Kzanol/Greenberg raised his voice so that the pilot could hear. In the corner of his eye he saw that the thrint had gotten the point: the pilot was coming in from the control bubble to take the copilot's place as translator.

Kzanol took out his variable-knife. He treated the disintegrator with supreme disregard. Perhaps he didn't think of it as a weapon. In any case, nothing uses a weapon on a thrint except another thrint. He opened the variable-knife to eight feet and stood ready to wave the invisibly thin blade through the rebellious sentient's body.

'I dare you,' said Kzanol/Greenberg. He didn't bother to raise the disintegrator.

GET OUT, Kzanol told the pilot. Kzanol/Greenberg could have shouted. He'd won! Slaves may not be present at a battle, or a squabble, between thrint and thrint.

The pilot moved slowly toward the airlock. Too slowly. Either some motor area had been burned out in the mind fight, or the slave was reluctant to leave. Kzanol probed.

ALL RIGHT. BUT HURRY.

Very quickly, the pilot climbed into his spacesuit before leaving. The family of Racarliw had never mistreated a slave…

The airlock door swung shut. Kzanol asked, 'What kind of deal?'

He couldn't understand the answer. Feeling disgusted with himself, he said, 'We'll have to turn on the radio. Ah, here it is.' He bent his face against the wall so that a pair of eating tendrils could reach into the recess and flip a switch. Now the pilot could hear Kzanol/Greenberg speaking through his suit radio.

It never occurred to either that they were circling Robin Hood's barn. The slave couldn't be present in person.

'I repeat,' said Kzanol. 'What kind of deal?'

'I want a partnership share in control of Earth. Our agreement is not to be invalidated if we find other, uh, beings like you, or a government of same. Half to you, half to me, and your full help in building me an amplifier. You'd better have the first helmet; it might not fit my brain. I want your oath, your… Wait a minute, I can't pronounce it.' He picked up a bridge sheet and wrote, 'prtuuvl,' in the dots and curlicues of over-speak. 'I want you to swear by that oath that you will protect my half ownership to the best of your ability, and that you will never willingly jeopardize my life or my health, provided that I take you to where you can find the second suit. Swear also that we'll get humans to build me another amplifier, once we get back.'

Kzanol thought for a full minute. His mental shield was as solid as the door on a lunar fort, but Kzanol/Greenberg could guess his thoughts well enough. He was stalling for effect. Certainly he had decided to give the oath; for the prtuuvl oath was binding between thrint and thrint. Kzanol need only regard him as a slave…

'All right,' said Kzauol. And he gave the prtuuvl oath without missing a single syllable.

'Good,' Kzanol/Greenberg approved. 'Now swear to the same conditions, by this oath.' He pulled a bridge sheet from his breast pocket and passed it over. Kzanol took it and looked.

'You want me to swear a kpitlithtulm oath too?'

'Yes.' There was no need to spell it out for Kzanol, nor even to repress his dolphin grin. The kpitlithtulm oath was for use between thrint and slave. If he swore the kpitlithtulm oath and the prtuuvl oath he would be committed for keeps, unless he chose to regard Kzanol/Greenberg as a plant or a dumb animal. Which would be dishonorable.

Kzanol dropped the paper. His mind shield was almost flickering, it was so rigid. Then his jaws opened wide and his lips pulled back from the needle fangs in a smile more terrible than Tyrranosaurus rex chasing a paleontologist, or Lucas Garner hearing a good joke. Seeing Kzanol, who could doubt that this was a carnivore? A ravenous carnivore which intended to be fed at any moment. One might forget that Kzanol was half the weight of a man, and see instead that he was larger than one hundred scorpions or three wildcats or a horde of marchmg soldier ants or a school of piranha.

But Kzanol/Greenberg recognized it as a smile of rueful admiration, a laughing surrender to a superior adversary, the smile of a good loser. With his thrint memories he saw further than that. Kzanol's smile was as phony as a brass transistor.

Kzanol gave the oath four times, and made four invalidating technical mistakes. The fifth time he gave up and swore according to protocol.

'All right,' said Kzanol/Greenberg. 'Have the pilot take us to Pluto.'

'A-a-all right, everybody turn ship and head for three, eighty-four, twenty-one.' The man in the lead ship sounded wearily patient. 'I don't know what the game is, but we can play just as good as any kid on the block.'

'Pluto,' said someone. 'He's going to Pluto!' He seemed to take it as a personal affront.

Old Smoky Petropoulos thumbed the transmitter. 'Lew, hadn't one of us better stop and find out what's with the other two ships?'