Terence couldn’t cross his arms any tighter
across his chest even as he pretended boredom, watching the unfolding
drama on the edge of the continent. *Agador… your argument is invalid.*
*No.
The child has all the codes, stolen from Prime a thousand years
ago. I checked everything she’d show
me. It matches the data base that
Station has access to and I don’t anymore.
You need her with you on the moon shot.*
*I don’t want her on the moon shot. It’s going to be perilous enough without this…
baby monsterling, death-building, bone-loving, barbarous…*
*--- If I might interrupt you,* Agador
sounded almost stuffy. *That is a
baseless, emotional rant. I do understand
that you don’t like her and that she makes you nervous even if she is only a
child. First of all she is female,
secondly she is completely ‘spoiled’ as I believe you said. Thirdly she is
ghoulish in your eyes, correct?*
Terence chewed on the inside of his cheek
as the Immoderate on the screen berated the Illiterate boy standing before
him. *Correct.*
*That’s all emotional. I am not as powerful a system as Mom or One,
but even I recognize the human reaction.
It is not logical or sensible.*
Terence’s answer was a mental sniff. Kyrus turned away from where the Illiterate
was being ordered to his knees in the road.
“Terence… might it be possible to see these men as prisoners to be
rescued from Prime rather than invaders and our enemies?”
“I don’t know. They’re Illiterates and I have no idea how an
Illiterate thinks. You would be better
off asking Mom… I suppose there would be discontented lower classes, just as my
brother and I were. The problem is
finding out which ones are fanatically faithful and which ones would run to you
with open arms.”
His Radiance looked at him, mildly
disapproving. “I’m sorry. I’m not an Illiterate. I truly don’t know!” He found himself
blushing and stammering as if he were defending an oral examination to a
professor. “I never thought about it.”
“That’s all right,” Kyrus said,
quietly. “I do want you to think about
it. My son? I have another job for you. You fitted yourself into Milar life… perhaps
you should explain this cultural feat to Terence? Hara, and Shashi… please see if we can get
more recording devices into their settlement.
If we can subvert them, I’d rather do that, than kill them. But not using those toxins Prime used on one
of our own.”
Terence bowed in the face of command. It wasn’t as if he would have to talk to the
over-muscled boy for long… the moon-shot attempt would be in only two
days. He found himself glad that the
protocol that Gerald had developed for Prime, to modify people’s loyalty, wasn’t
going to be used by Lainz. The boy spy
was still recovering and had lost a noticeable portion of his intelligence.
“Of course, Your Radiance.” The look on Kyrus the younger’s face was
clear as a bell. He didn’t want to do
this anymore than Terence did.
On the screen, the Immoderate turned his
horse’s head and road back toward the settlement, cavalierly riding through the
flock of sheep, scattering it once more. The men on the ground couldn’t even
protest as their dirt and blood-caked animals broke and ran again. The boy on
his knees didn’t get up immediately and when he did it was slow. He searched for a rock on the ground and
tossed it into the pitter field, flinching at the sudden emergence of clashing
jaws.
“Two Hundred, can you get a bee or a beetle
onto the boy they left?”
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