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similar lines because Thargos found me while the wreck of Delta's satellite.
And so you want me to you what the secret is. Have you ever considered that I
may
Korkal's jaw had dropped slightly. "What did they do to you?
different. Harder. What have you become?"
Fhey?. Who is they, Korkal? Everybody has done something to You're only the
latest. Now can you understand why I might to do something just because I
want to do it? And can you figure out why I don't intend ever to do anything
again
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I'm sure it's what I want to do?" Jim paused, feeling the in his cheeks. He
took a deep breath.
"Korkal, I think most people go through their whole lives in a of daze.
I think I did. But not any more. What they did to what you did to me--opened
my eyes. The only problem they are eyes I never knew I had.
So what you had better do is tell me everything you know or think or have a
hunch I have to decide what to do. But first I have to decide if I'm to do
anything at all."
"I didn't want to say this, Jim. Especially because of what I owe But
I also reminded you that my honor was not a suicide and so it isn't. If we
have to, we'll force you."
Jim smiled. He remembered how it had taken the full power the
Mindslaver Arrays to decipher the codes hidden in his genes, even after he'd
provided the key. The same Alba now needed so desperately because
Alba had good.
"No, Korkal, I don't think you can force me. Even to. And if you try, you
risk losing the very thing you're get. Keep that in mind." Jim paused,
trying to make the Alban understand. "Korkal," he said finally, "you're not
what I was. I really am something different now.
Korkal stared at him for a long time. Then he nodded "I can see that.
Well, we have three days, Jim. Let's work something out by then, or we'll
have to
"Even if you know it will fail? And if you know it's by your own standards?"
"It won't be my choice, Jim. It will be out of my "Yes, I- suppose so.
We're all trapped, aren't we?" "Yes."
"But we can still choose. If only for ourselves, we that. Context, Korkal.
It's all context."
"What does that mean?"
Jim smiled. "Let's start by letting my shipmates cage. A token of good
faith. Convince me it's necessary, pose we can all stay in this building,
wherever it is. start with that."
Korkal turned toward the doorway. "Go on back. know."
"You do that," Jim said. "And I'll think about the
" mrgos was well aware that by civilian standards was so tricky as to be
nearly incomprehensible. He came from living and working in an equally tricky
and prehensible world. But he had lived in that world and
15o
us peculiar thoughts so long that everyday reality now seemed bizarre to him.
i He suspected this had changed him irrevocably. Once he had thought of what
he did as a duty and a task that could eventually be put aside.
That when the time came he would be able to revert to what he'd been before,
his idealism intact. That he could become a normal Hunzzan citizen again,
whatever he'd once thought normal might be.
Now he knew it would never happen. He might someday quit doing what he did,
but he would never be able to stop being what he'd become, dust another of the
many prices he'd paid, possibilities he'd spent without examining what he'd
bought in return.
His mind grappled with the problems of his current world and finally came up
with this: the chunk of debris he'd recovered from Delta's ruin had contained
an extremely sophisticated set of designed to locate a particular genome. The
search had evidently been running for a long time, and it had found a match.
That match had been a boy named dim
Endicott, who was living on the Terran colony planet of Wolfbane.
That was the first piece of data, and it offered more in the way of
interesting questions than interesting answers. Why was Delta so interested
in that genome? Who was dim Endicott? How did the boy, or his genome, fit
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into the larger question of Delta him self, and how did
Delta fit into the largest question of Alba's peculiar protective relationship
with an otherwise uninteresting back-galaxy world?
So he'd gone looking for the boy and found him, only to lose him to one of
Alba's most effective agents, an old enemy named Korkal Emut Denai.
Denai must have been surprised to fred hs old opponent Thargos in the field,
and would know Thargos's presence indicated high-level Hunzzan interest, dust
as Thargos knew Denai's presence indicated similar Alban concern.
Sometimes you can only learn a thing's intrinsic worth by the apparent value
others place on it. He still didn't know what was o important about dim
Endicott, except that Alba thought he Was very important. So important he was
now hidden away in the bOWels of the Imperial Defense
Ministry, supposedly the most "Secure and impregnable structure on
Alba.
But Thargos knew that the building, nearly a mile square--and yet another
example of architecturally overblown as flimsy as Alba herself.
So his thoughts leaped through the arcane loops and high-level imperial
politics as he considered that Hith placed high value on both Jim
Endicott and Alba's tionship with Earth. Endicott was somehow a crucial link:
Alter regarded as a vital connection between Alba and someone wished to sow
maximum disarray in the Alban just prior to an all-out invasion attempt, then
one destroy Hith Mun Alter, Jim
Endicott, and the Terran with a single devastating blow. And if that blow
seemed suspicion on Terra, further muddying the waters, then it i be even more
destructive..
His technicians had told him that one of the Terran rated a hundred megatons.
Thargos knew little about weapons technology. But primitive or not, a hole in
the mile wide and a quarter of a mile deep sounded like its. accomplish most
of his immediate aims.
He would need to place the bomb in the Defense he knew how to do that.
He would need to know Endicott and Hith Mun Alter were both in the
Ministry same time. He thought he knew how to learn that.
And if by chance Korkal Emut Denai could also there, Thargos could savor the
savage satisfaction of defeating his greatest nemesis.
It was all a tissue of guesses and hopes and half
No normal being would have ever worked it out like that. Thargos's decidedly
abnormal world?
All in a day's work, he thought. And he hummed to some more.
, o, I should call you Highness, is that right?" Jim Tick blinked.
"Well, technically you should, but--" He
"I know. Listen. I, Tickeree, Prince of the House of Heestah, lame you royal
friend. How's that? It gives you the right to speak to me in the familiar
mode."
"You need a bath, royal friend. And a comb run through your facial hair. Is
that mode familiar enough?" "Are all Terries so disrespectful?" "Are all
Heestahns so pompous?"
"Hey! I'm not pompous." Tick paused. "Just aware of my own
Jim chuckled. "And so are we all. Tell you what. I name you Jim friend, and
you can call me a cockeyed butt-face. How about that?"
"You cockeyed butt-face."
"Now that sounds like a royal judgment," Jim said.
Both boys grinned, comfortable with themselves and each , other again.
They strolled shoulder to shoulder down a wide corridor lined with statues of
ancient Alban military heroes. Every once in a while Tick would stop and drag
Jim to some looming warrior and make him listen to a recorded account of
imperial heroics now long forgotten. After a while the stories began to blur.
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They all sounded alike. Alba always won.
"The winners get to write the histories," Jim said.
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