Steel said to the singleton, "Success is a matter of meeting a schedule. I remember you teaching me that," cutting it into me, in fact.
The member looked back at him, cocked its head. "As I remember, I said that success was a matter of adapting to changes in schedules." The words were perfectly articulated. There were singletons that could talk that well — but even the most verbal could not carry on intelligent conversation. Shreck had had no trouble convincing the troops that Flenser science had created a race of superpacks, that the cloaked ones were individually as smart as any ordinary pack. It was a good cover for what the cloaks really were. It both inspired fear and obscured the truth.
The member stepped a little closer — nearer to Steel than anyone had been except during murders and rapes and the beatings of the past. Involuntarily, Steel licked his lips and spread out from around the threat. Yet in some ways the dark-cloaked one was like a corpse, without a trace of mind sound. Steel snapped his jaws shut and said, "Yes. The genius is in winning even when the schedules have fallen down the garderobe." He looked all away from the Flenser member and scanned the red-shrouded southern horizon. "What's the latest estimate of Woodcarver's progress?"
"She's still camped about five days southeast of here."
"The damned incompetent. It's hard to believe she's your parent! Vendacious made things so easy for her; her soldiers and toy cannon should have been here almost a tenday past — "
"And been well-butchered, on schedule."
"Yes! Long before our sky friends arrived. Instead, she wanders inland and then balks."
The Flenser member shrugged in its dark cloak. Steel knew the radio was as heavy as it looked. It consoled him that the other was paying a price for his omniscience. Just think, in heat like this, to have every part of oneself muffled to the tympana. He could imagine the discomfort… Indoors, he could smell it.
They walked past one of the wall cannon. The barrel gleamed of layered metal. The thing had thrice the range of Woodcarver's pitiful invention. While Woodcarver had been working with Dataset and a human child's intuition, he had had the direct advice of Ravna and company. At first he'd feared their largesse, thinking it meant the Visitors were superior beyond need for care. Now… the more he heard of Ravna and the others, the more clearly he understood their weakness. They could not experiment with themselves, improve themselves. Inflexible, slow-changing dullards. Sometimes they showed a low cunning — Ravna's coyness about what she wanted from the first starship — but their desperation was loud in all their messages, as was their attachment to the human child.
Everything had been going so well till just a few days ago. As they walked out of earshot of the gunner pack, Steel said to the Flenser member, "And still no word from our 'rescuers'."
"Quite so," That was the other botched schedule, the important one, which they could not control. "Ravna has missed four sessions. Two of me is down with Amdijefri right now." The singleton jabbed its snout toward the dome of the inner keep. The gesture was an awkward abortion. Without other muzzles and other eyes, body language was a limited thing. We just aren't built to wander around a piece here, a piece there. "Another few minutes and the space folk will have missed a fifth talk session. The children are getting desperate, you know."
The member's voice sounded sympathetic. Almost unconsciously, Lord Steel sidled a little farther out from around it. Steel remembered that tone from his own early existence. He also remembered the cutting and death that had always followed. "I want them kept happy, Tyrathect. We're assuming communication will resume; when it does we'll need them." Steel bared six pairs of jaws at the surrounded singleton. "None of your old tricks."
The member flinched, an almost imperceptible twitch that pleased Steel more than the grovelling of ten thousand. "Of course not. I'm just saying that you should visit them, try to help them with their fear."
"You do it."
"Ah… they don't fully trust me. I've told you before, Steel; they love you."
