Conquerors' Heritage

"No, I suppose not," the Prime murmured. "Very well. You've presented the problem. Have you likewise prepared a solution?"

"We have," the Sixteenth rumbled. "The problem arises not because of what this Thrr-pifix-a wants but because of what she is: a common, reasonable, respectable person. As you yourself said, there are crazed fanatics all the time who don't want Eldership."

"Yes," the Prime said grimly. He saw where this was going now, all right. "And therefore what we need to do is prove Thrr-pifix-a to be as crazed as any of the rest of them."

"I take it from your voice that you don't approve," the Twenty-eighth suggested.

The Prime looked him square in the face. "No, Father, I don't," he said bluntly. "I don't like using the office of Overclan Prime this way. It feels far too much like an abuse of the power I've been granted."

"Then perhaps you should resign," the Twelfth snapped. "An Overclan Prime who's afraid of his power is of no use at all to the Zhirrzh people."

"Or perhaps he's all the more valuable to them," the Prime snapped back. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the abuse of personal power that has led to most of our wars?"

"Well stated," the Eighteenth said approvingly. "But as it happens, the abuse of personal power—not yours—is a second problem that you're currently facing. Our proposal is that you solve both of these problems with the same knife."

The Prime frowned at him. "I'm listening."

"It's really quite simple," the Twelfth said. "You have on the one side Thrr-pifix-a of the Kee'rr clan, who wishes to decline Eldership. On the other side you have Speaker Cvv-panav of the Dhaa'rr, whose ambition is clearly to build his clan's power beyond even the height of its old political dominance." He eyed the Prime. "This latter, I presume, is not news to you."

"Hardly," the Prime assured him sourly. "Cvv-panav sees himself as the head of a new Dhaa'rr empire."

"And because of that he must be made to stumble," the Twelfth said. "Not to fall, but to stumble. Here is what we propose."

The twenty-nine of them talked long into the latearc... and in the end the Prime reluctantly gave in. At the least, he told himself, it would reduce the distractions that were being created by Speaker Cvv-panav's drive for power, allowing all of them to concentrate more fully on their war of survival.

And if it hurt an old, harmless female... well, perhaps that was the price that had to be paid.

11

Good luck was with him: it was the Human called Doctor-Cavan-a. A Human who, bearing a Zhirrzh female-style name, ironically enough did indeed seem to be a female. The Humans had been doing a lot of rearranging in this room lately, moving the shelves around and changing what was being stored on them, and as a result Doctor-Cavan-a hadn't been around much. To Prr't-zevisti's a

But at any rate, she was back. Now, with a little more good luck, maybe she'd stay put for a while.

Doctor-Cavan-a went to one side of the room and pushed a small box a half stride farther into a corner, then turned and gestured a hand toward the door. "All right," she said. "Bring it in."

There was a grunted response, a clink of metal on metal, and the front end of a large tablelike slab with thick side supports appeared in the doorway. A very different sort of table from the ones the two Zhirrzh bodies had been dissected on, Prr't-zevisti noted. This one had several indentations and clamps scattered around its upper surface, apparently deliberately positioned. The rear edge flowed up into a ridge with small apertures and various controllike devices set into it. Not an autopsy examination stand, this, but more like some alien version of a searcher's laboratory table.

Abruptly, a twinge of low-level pain lanced through him. Prr't-zevisti tensed, forcing himself to keep quiet. An Elderdeath weapon again, its beam impinging on his fsss cutting sitting there in its box on one of the shelves. It had been happening more and more frequently lately, and Prr't-zevisti still hadn't decided whether it was a deliberate attack against him or merely a side effect of some general weapons testing.

One thing was certain, though. Despite Supreme Ship Commander Dkll-kumvit's efforts at the begi

Assuming, of course, the attack ever came. Prr't-zevisti had heard disturbing rumors before his capture that Warrior Command was preparing expeditionary forces against more of the Human worlds, forces that were supposedly going to be launched before the current beachheads were anything but minimally secured.

It was a strategy that made no sense at all to Prr't-zevisti, even given how admittedly out-of-date his own warrior training and experience were. But if true, it might explain why Thrr-mezaz hadn't yet moved against the Humans' stronghold. The warriors had lost both of their heavy air-assault craft and several of their Stingbirds in the initial invasion, and without adequate reinforcements an attack would be nothing less than lunacy cubed.

The two other Humans finished rolling the table into the room and left, leaving the female Human alone inside. The door swung shut behind them, and as it did so, the nearby Elderdeath weapon stopped.

Doctor-Cavan-a opened a drawer in one of the table's thick side supports and withdrew two unfamiliar pieces of equipment, setting them side by side on the table. One had a thin cable attached; taking the end of the cable, she inserted it into one of the apertures in the raised edge and flicked a switch. There was a soft hum; and with it came a new low-intensity flicker of Elderdeath sensation.

Prr't-zevisti tensed, expecting the worst. But the level stayed where it was, a sort of mental humming well below any sort of pain threshold. More like the sun-sense he remembered from childhood, now that he thought about it: the ability to locate the sun even through heavy clouds.

A sense that, like all Zhirrzh children, he'd lost the fullarc after his tenth birth a

Impatiently, he sliced away the thought. He was there to study the Humans, not to sit around endlessly reminiscing like some old Elder with nothing better to do. The Human female was making some adjustments to the device, but though the sun-sense altered subtly, it never approached anything remotely painful. Perhaps the Humans had miscalculated the threshold of Elderdeath pain. Or perhaps they thought they could a

The Human female touched the small black box, at its customary place on one corner of the table. "Doctor-Cavan-a," she said. "(Something) eighteenth, twenty-three-oh-three."