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Sir George smiled. It was amazing. The perpetually silent, completely alien dragon-man was no longer silent or alien. Or, rather, he remained alien, but unlike the demon-jester, his tone was as expressive as any human's, and his body language might have been that of Father Timothy or Rolf Grayhame. Was that because the "contact point" the dragon-man had mentioned somehow gave them an insight into how humans expressed emotions, so that they might do the same? Or was it some sort of natural consequence, a... translating effect of this "telepathy" the dragon-man had spoken of?
"If you find the notion pleasing, we'll no doubt continue to call you dragons," he said after a moment, putting aside his speculations until there was time to deal with them properly, and the dragon-man projected the sense of another fierce grin as he nodded.
"We would find that most acceptable," he said. "Yet the need for you to give us a name because we've never developed one is another example of the differences between your kind and us which result from the fact of our telepathy. Despite several of your mille
" `Nuclear-age'?" Sir George repeated, and the dragon-man shrugged again, this time impatiently.
"Don't worry about that now. It simply means that we were considerably more advanced technologically than your own world... although the Federation was even more relatively advanced compared to us than we would have been compared to your `Earth.'
"Unfortunately," the alien went on, and his "voice" turned cold and bleak, "we were too advanced for our own good—just enough to be considered a potential threat, yet not sufficiently so to defend ourselves—and the Federation declared our world a `protectorate.' They moved in their military units `for our own good,' to `protect' us from ourselves... and to insure that we never became any more advanced than we were at the moment they discovered us."
"Because they feared competition," Sir George said shrewdly.
"Perhaps," the dragon-man replied. "No, certainly. But there was another reason, as well. You see, the Federation is entirely controlled by species like the `Commander's.' All of them are far more advanced than our own race, or yours, and they regard that as proof of their inherent superiority."
"So I've noticed," Sir George said bitterly.
"We realize that, yet we doubt that you can have fully recognized what that means," the dragon-man said, "for you lack certain information."
"What information?" Sir George's voice sharpened and his eyes narrowed.
"Explaining that will take some time," the dragon-man replied, and Sir George nodded brusquely for him to continue.
"Life-bearing worlds are very numerous," the dragon-man began. "They're far less common, statistically speaking, than non-life bearing or prebiotic worlds, but there are so very many stars, and so very many of them have planets, that the absolute number of worlds upon which life has evolved is quite high."
The creature paused, and Sir George blinked as he realized he actually understood what the other was talking about. This wasn't at all like the explanations Computer had given him over the years. Then, he'd frequently required careful explanation of terms Computer had used, and even when the explanations were provided (which they often weren't), he was seldom certain he had fully grasped them. But this time, ideas and concepts he had never imagined, even after all his years in his masters' service, seemed to flood into his mind as the dragon-man spoke. He didn't fully comprehend them—not yet—but he grasped enough to follow what he was being told without fear of misunderstanding. It was as if the dragon-man wasn't simply telling him things but actually teaching him with impossible speed in the process, and he was vaguely aware that he should have been frightened by this. Yet he wasn't. That fundamental curiosity of his was at work once more, he realized, and something else, as well. Something the dragon-man had done, perhaps.
And perhaps not. He shook himself, gri
"While life-bearing worlds are numerous," the alien said after a moment, "intelligent life is very rare. Counting our own species, and yours, the Federation has encountered just over two hundred intelligent races with technologies more advanced than chipped stone tools. While this sounds like a great many, you must recall that the Federation has possessed phase drive and faster-than-light travel for more than one hundred and fifty thousand of your years. Which means that they have discovered a new intelligent species no more than once every seven hundred and fifty years."
Sir George swallowed hard. Computer's partial explanations of relativity and the distances between stars, coupled with the experiences of his people in the demon-jester's service had half-prepared him for such concepts, but nothing could have fully prepared him. Still, much of what the dragon-man was saying wasn't terribly different from concepts he and Matilda and Father Timothy had been groping towards for years. In fact, the priest had proved more ready in some ways than Sir George himself to accept that Computer's half-understood comments indicated that Mother Church's teachings and Holy Scripture's accounts of things such as the Creation stood in need of correction and revision. Not that even Father Timothy had been prepared to go quite so far as this!
"Of all the species the Federation has encountered, only twenty-two had developed the phase drive themselves, or attained an equivalent technological level, when they were encountered. Those races, more advanced than any others, are full members of the Federation. They sit on its Council, formulate its laws, and enjoy its benefits. The rest of us... do not.
"In the eyes of the Federation, less advanced races have no rights. They exist only for the benefit of the Federation itself, although the Council occasionally mouths a few platitudes about the `advanced race's burden' and the Federation's responsibility to `look after' us inferior races. What it means in practical terms, however, is that we are their property, to be disposed of as they will. As you and your people have become."
The dragon-man paused once more, and Sir George nodded hard. He could taste the other's emotions—his hatred and resentment, burning as hot as Sir George's own—and a distant sort of amazement filled him. Not that he could understand the other, but that under their utterly different exteriors they could be so much alike.
"Some of the subject species, however, are more useful to the `advanced races' than others," the dragon-man resumed after a long, smoldering moment. "Yours, for example, has proven very useful as a means to evade the letter of their Prime Directive, while ours—" the dragon-man seemed to draw a deep breath "—has proven equally valuable as bodyguards and personal servants."
"Why?" Sir George asked. The question could have come out harsh, demanding to know why the dragon-men should be so compliant and submissive, but it didn't. There was too much anger and hatred in the dragon-man's "voice" for that.
"Our species isn't like yours. We are not only telepaths, among ourselves, at least, but also empaths. While we aren't normally able to make other species hear our thoughts, nor able to hear their thoughts, we are able to sense their emotions, their feelings. This makes it very difficult for anyone who might pose a threat to anyone we've been assigned to guard to slip past us.