The Far Shore of Time

He pulled his head back out again and regarded me crossly. “You are willful, Agent Dannerman,” he complained. “Did you not understand what I said about sleeping when we could?”

“I did, but I wanted to ask you something. Why do they have to torture us?”

That made him wrinkle up his little cat mouth in annoyance. “Because they want truthful answers, of course.”

“But can’t they just make us do whatever they want?” I touched the ribbed thing behind my ear. “By putting some kind of controller in with this language thing?”

He blinked the cat eyes at me. “Controller?”

“Like the one the Beloved Leaders implanted in you,” I explained. “So you would have to do whatever they wanted.”

He made an indignant noise and stood up straight on his tiny legs, glaring at me. “You are so stupid, Agent Dannerman! Why do you think I have a controller implanted in me by the Beloved Leaders?”

I looked at him in surprise. “Don’t you?”

“Of course not! There is no need for that! I am a rational being, as are all of my people, and so we know where our interests lie.” His pursy little mouth was twitching and his plume was angry red, but then he calmed down enough to explain. “The bearers which you call Docs do require such devices to be of value to the Beloved Leaders, because they are very willful beings. The warriors also need to be controlled. The reason for this is that in the course of their duties many of them must inevitably be dispatched to the Eschaton. Although they have been informed that this ‘death’ is actually a boon, not a tragedy, their natures prevail. They are not able to rid themselves of their instinct for self-preservation which would interfere with their duties. For the rest of us servants of the Beloved Leaders, my people included, self-interest takes a different form. We are glad to obey the Beloved Leaders, because we know what they can do to us if we fail them.” He didn’t seem sleepy anymore, just scared. His plume faded to a bilious green as he said, “You do not know the Beloved Leaders, Agent Dannerman. You have never even seen one. I have been more fortunate-not once, but three times. One even spoke to me, though not in person, of course. It was while I was monitoring your planet from the orbiter Starlab, and a Beloved Leader addressed me on a screen to give me an order. I was very frightened, Agent Dannerman. If you are not also frightened, it is because you do not understand the immensity of their power, or the consequences of their wrath. Do you really think your pitiful little planet can withstand the Beloved Leaders? It cannot. As I have told you, you are a fool. Their scout vessels found your Earth once. They will find it again, if indeed they have not already done so.

“It is true that these evil Horch and their machines are also extremely powerful. I do not think they will prevail against the Beloved Leaders, though. When the Eschaton comes, I believe it is the Beloved Leaders who will rule. Rule all of us. For eternity. And oh, Agent Dannerman, I have failed them, and so I am very, very frightened of what that eternity will be.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

That was the end of Dopey’s conversation. He put his head under his plume again and kept it there. I thought I heard him sobbing for a few moments, but then he was quiet.

I fell asleep then, too, not because I wanted to but because I couldn’t help it. When the green-glass machine woke me up Dopey was still in his corner, making the faint, muffled snickering sound that did him for snoring, and an idea was forming in my mind.

I didn’t have much time to think it out, because Greenie was already snaking one branch of its twiglets under my right arm to get me up, then hustling me back to the interrogation room. But on the way I remembered doctrine.

Basic Bureau tradecraft said that if you couldn’t get your interrogators to give you the information you wanted, perhaps you could at least lead the questioning in such a way that even the questions were informative. In practice sessions, back in my training days, it had seemed like something that might work. I’d never tried it in the field, but it was worth a shot. It was something to do, when the only alternative was simply to give up.

It seemed that the machines had heard all they wanted to hear about the Scuzzhawks. Now the topic of the day was sex. What did sexual intercourse feel like? If it was pleasurable, why did some human beings deprive themselves of it? How often had I had sexual intercourse, and under what circumstances, and with what persons, and why? Why was sexual intercourse with another person preferable to masturbation? What forms of sexual experience other than direct stimulation existed, and what did I mean by “fetishism” and “masochism”? How was it possible that some of my conspecifics could achieve sexual gratification just by inflicting pain on others?