Freedom's Challenge (3 page)

“They're also able to give us names for many of the people who no longer remember who they are.” Dorothy gave a little shudder. “I've dealt with amnesia patients before, of course, and accident shock trauma, but this is on so much larger a scale…and complicated by not only emotional but also physical shock and injury. We have established—thanks to Leon Dane's work with injured Catteni—that there are more points of similarity than differences between our two species since both are bipedal, pentadactyl, and share many of the same external features, like eyes, ears, noses. We can't of course cross-fertilize,” and to Kris' surprise, Dorothy ducked her head to hide a flush.

“As well,” Kris said dryly.

Dorothy flashed her an apology and continued. “Internally, though the Catteni have larger hearts, lungs, and intestinal arrangements, Leon says that the main difference is the density of the brain matter. It's also larger though similarly organized as ours are, as far as the position of the four major lobes is concerned. Leon was amazed at what damage a Catteni skull could take without permanent injury. I think,” and she paused, frowning slightly at what she did not voice, “that the initial injuries to the prisoners were attempts to recalibrate the instrument to human brains.”

“Initial injuries?” Kris asked.

“Yes,” and Dorothy seemed to wish to get over this
topic very quickly, “though they would have been dead before their nervous systems could register much.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, and leave it at that, Kris,” Dorothy went on briskly. “Will Seissmann should not dwell on the details although he seems to want to…a part of his trauma.”

“Will Seissmann?” Kris asked.

“Yes, he and Dr. Ansible…”

“Dr. Ansible?” Kris shot bolt upright. “But he's—was, rather—at the observatory. Only I think he was away on some sort of a conference when the Catteni took Denver.”

“Yes, he was and took refuge at Stamford,” Dorothy replied, nodding. “He tried to argue others he knew to follow Will's example. I don't know whether or not the dogmatic scientist has an innate martyr complex but only a few would resort to the trick to save themselves.” She broke off with a sigh. “At any rate, we are able to put names to most of the Victims. But I need to know whatever details you may have, Zainal. They will be so helpful in correcting the trauma…if, indeed, we can.”

Zainal shook his head. “I know little about such Eosi devices.” Then his expression changed into what Kris privately termed his “Catteni look,” cold, impassive, shuttered. “I do know—it is part of the Catteni history—that they have a device that increases and measures intelligence.”

“Oh?” Dorothy leaned forward across the table in her eagerness. “Then it could possibly extract information, too?”

Zainal blinked and his expression altered to a less forbidding one. He gave a slight smile. “It would seem likely since I only know of the one device. The Eosi used it on the primitive Catteni to make them useful as hosts.”

“Really?” Dorothy's expression was intensely eager as she leaned forward, encouraging Zainal to elaborate.

“Yes, really. Roughly two thousand years ago, the Eosi discovered Catten and its inhabitants. We were little more than animals, a fact the Eosi never let us forget. About a thousand years ago, my family started keeping its records for our ancestor was one of the first hundred to have…his brains stimulated by the device. Each family keeps its own records—how many males it has delivered to the Eosi as hosts and details of children and matings.”

“A thousand, two thousand years to develop into a space-going race? That's impressive,” Dorothy said.

“Humans did it without such assistance and
that
impresses me,” Zainal said with an odd laugh. “But that's how the Emassi were developed. To serve the Eosi.”

“They didn't use the mind thingummy on the Drassi?” Kris asked.

“To a lesser degree,” Zainal replied and turned to Dorothy. “There are three levels of Catteni now…Emassi,” and he touched his chest, “Drassi who are good at following orders but have little initiative or ambition: some were rejected for the Emassi ranks, but are able to be more than Drassi—ship captains and troop leaders. Then there're the Rassi, who were left as they are.”

“Rassi?” Kris echoed in surprise. “Never heard of them.”

“They do not leave Catten and are as we all were when the Eosi found us.”

“So you, as a species, did not evolve by yourselves? But had your intelligence stimulated?” Dorothy asked. She turned to Kris. “The Eosi evidently never heard of the Prime Directive.”

Kris giggled. A psychologist who was a Trekkie?

“The Prime Directive means an advanced culture is not supposed to interfere with the natural evolution of another species or culture,” Kris explained to Zainal.

“The anthropologists will have a field day with this,” Dorothy added, jotting down another note. “Was one…application
sufficient to sustain the higher level of intelligence?” she asked Zainal.

He shrugged. “I do not know that.” Abruptly his expression again changed to his “Catteni look,” impassive, expressionless, shuttered. “When I had my full growth, I had to be presented to the Eosi, to see if I was acceptable as a host. And what training I should be given.”

“And?” Dorothy prompted him when he paused.

“I was passed, and I was to be trained to pilot spaceships.” Then his grin became devilish and his “Catteni look” completely disappeared. “My father and uncles had worried that Eosi would find me too curious and unacceptable.”

“Too curious? Why would that make you unacceptable?” Dorothy asked.

“Eosi tell Emassi what they need to know. That is all they are supposed to know.”

“Before you start training? Surely you had basic schooling?” Dorothy asked, surprised.

Zainal gave a snort. “Emassi are trained, not schooled.”

“But didn't you learn to read, write, and figure before you were fourteen?” Dorothy was having difficulty with this concept. “Surely you've had to learn mathematics to pilot spaceships?”

Zainal nodded. “Emassi males are taught that much by their fathers…” He grimaced.

“The hard way?” Kris said, miming the use of a force whip.

“Yes, the hard way. One tends to pay strict attention to such lessons.”

“And yet you were curious enough to want to know more?” Dorothy asked.

“Because it was forbidden,” Zainal said, again with the twinkle in his eye. He must have been a handful as a youngster. Kris was also immensely relieved that his intelligence,
which she suspected was a lot higher than hers, was natural, rather than artificially stimulated.

“So the device assessed you. Can you give me any description of it?”

Zainal looked down at his clasped hands as he organized his response. “I was taken into a very large white room with a big chair in the center and two Eosi, one at a control desk. I was strapped into the chair and then the device came down out of the ceiling to cover my head.”

“Could you see what it looked like?” Dorothy asked, and Kris realized how eagerly she awaited details.

Zainal shrugged. “A large shape,” and he made a bell form with both hands, “with many wires attached to it and dials.”

“It covered your head or just your face?”

“My head down to my shoulders. It was heavy.”

“Did you see any blue lights?” Dorothy asked, scribbling again.

“I saw nothing.”

“And the sensations? What were they like?” She turned to Kris as Zainal once again considered his answer. “We're trying to establish if any invasive probe is used: Needles or possibly electrical shock. We need to know whether the brain itself has been entered and damaged: whether or not there has been physical damage—rather than just memory, emotional, and fact erasures.”

“There aren't any scars on the Victims?” Kris asked, and Dorothy shook her head.

“Not visible ones, certainly. Which is why Zainal's recollection is so vital to us.”

“Like electricity,” Zainal said, putting his hands to his temples and moving them up to the top of his broad skull. “And here,” and he touched the base of his cranium. “But no blood. No scar.”

“Oh, yes, that's interesting, very interesting,” and
Dorothy wrote hastily for a minute. “No pain in the temples?”

“Where?” Zainal asked.

“Here,” and Kris touched the points.

“Oh. Not pain, pressure.”

“Isn't that where lobotomies are done?” Kris apprehensively asked Dorothy.

She nodded. “Anywhere else? Pressure or pain or odd sensations? I'm trying to discover just which areas might have been…touched by this device. If they coincide with what factual, emotional, and memory centers humans have,” she added as an aside to Kris. “There are more parallels than you might guess.”

“A sort of stabbing, very quick, to the…” and Zainal put his hand to the top of his head, “inside of my head.”

“Quite possibly a general stimulation,” Dorothy murmured. Then, with a kind smile, went on. “So you were assessed and passed. Then what happened?”

“I was told who to report to for training.” Then he grinned. “I know that my uncles were disappointed that I was acceptable. My father was relieved. More glory for our branch of the family.”

“How old are you now?” Dorothy asked, a question which Kris had never bothered to ask.

Zainal hesitated and then with a grin and a shrug, “Thirty-five. I have been exploring this galaxy for sixteen years.”

“Sixteen?” Kris was surprised.

“That would make only four years of formal training? Of any sort?” Dorothy asked, surprised.

“Three. I have been here two years now. Two Catteni years.” And he grinned at Kris.

“Pilot training is all you had?”

“I learned what I needed to know to do the job which the Eosi ordered for me. I worked hard and learned well,” Zainal said with a touch of pride.

“Amazing,” Dorothy murmured as she made more notes.

“But you know a lot about a lot of things,” Kris protested.

Zainal shrugged. “Once I am officially a pilot,” and he gave Kris a mischievous look out of the corner of his eye, “it was no longer wrong for me to learn what I wish so long as I pilot well. The Eosi,” and his face slid briefly into Catteni impassivity again, “require their hosts to have been many places and seen many things.”

“Then you don't have any knowledge about your own body? No biology?” Dorothy asked.

“Bi-o-lo-gy?” Zainal repeated.

Dorothy explained, and he laughed.

“As long as my body does what I need it to do, I do not ask how it does it.”

Both Dorothy and Kris smiled.

“When I compare what our astronauts went through to qualify as space pilots…” and Dorothy raised one hand in amazement.

“The earliest aviators flew by the seat of their pants,” Kris remarked.

“Seat of their pants?” Zainal asked, frowning so Dorothy and Kris took turns explaining the meaning.

“I did that, too, when training did not cover all I needed to know. So I made those who build the spacecraft show me how everything worked,” Zainal said.

“And those…engineers…were also trained by families who were engineers?” Dorothy asked, and Zainal nodded. “Very restrictive educational system. Only a need to know. However did they manage?”

“The Eosi do the manage part,” Zainal said in a caustic tone. “Emassi follow orders just like Drassi and even the Rassi.”

“It's amazing even the Emassi can do what they do,” Kris remarked, regarding Zainal with even more respect.

“Yes, it is,” Dorothy agreed, “and we tend to rely on the educational process…or the genetic heritage,” and she gave Kris a look. “Depending on which school of thought you adhere to.” She gave another sigh and then said more briskly, including Kris, “Are there any special aptitudes which Catteni have which Humans do not? For example, the way the Deski can climb vertically and have extraordinary hearing?”

“Night vision,” Zainal said promptly. “Our hearing is more acute but not as good as the Deski. We can last longer eating poor food…or is that body difference, not brain?”

“Metabolic differences certainly,” Dorothy said, having written “eye” and “ear” on her pad. Kris could read such short words backwards. Then the psychologist spent a moment doodling. “Could you possibly draw me a sketch of the device used on you?” She turned to Kris in explanation. “Those that got a good look at it can't talk, and those who can talk didn't see it.”

“Zainal's very good at drawing devices,” Kris said, with a touch of pride.

“Yes,” and Zainal complied, using the pen with the quick, deft strokes that Kris had seen him use in delineating the mechanicals. “There!”

Dorothy regarded the neat sketch and hmmmed under her breath. “Hmmm, yes, well it looks like something an evil scientist would create.” She sighed. “Considering who the Eosi chose to brain-scan, they seem to have been on an information hunt. But why? Their level of technology is so much more sophisticated than ours. Or were they just trying to strip minds that could possibly help foment riot and rebellion? Or maybe reduce humans to the level of your Rassi?”

Zainal made a guttural noise and his smile, while it did not touch his eyes, was evil. “Ray Scott said that he recognized some of the people as scientists. So the Eosi are
looking for information. If they were wiping minds to make you like Drassi, they would start with children and block learning.” He grinned. “The Eosi look for ideas. They have had very few new ones over the past hundred or so years.”

“Really?” Dorothy remarked encouragingly.

“Maybe they need to stimulate their own brains,” Kris said. “Or would it work on them?”