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.""That's true," Geste said thoughtfully, "I guess he has.He and Shadowdark.""Oh, some of the others have, too." "I suppose they must have." It occurred to Geste that he knew surprisingly little about some of hiscomrades.He dismissed that as unimportant, and returned to the subject at hand."We must be able tomount some sort of an attack.I want you to devote whatever capacity you can spare easily to adaptingequipment for use as weaponry, or maybe just building weapons from scratch.We may need an arsenal.""You got it, boss.You want anything special?""No, I don't know any more about what he's got than you do.""Okay, I got it; I'll do a mixed bag, whatever I think of.You let me know if you come up with any brilliantideas for me to work on.Anything else?""On defense Thaddeus can't get into a bent-space shelter, can he?""Not if you close it off before he can send anything through.But, boss, you wouldn't like being stuck in aclosed-off bubble.Once you close it off from normal space, you don't just have a bend anymore, you've gota pocket universe.Breaking back out into normal space could be tricky.I wouldn't want to try it.And solong as you have a connection to normal space, Thaddeus can attack you through it, one way or another.""What if we got off-planet? Just packed up and left?"The intelligence hesitated."Well, boss," it said at last, "you could try that.You could pack up and go backto Mother and take off for Terra or anywhere else you fancy.But that wouldn't stop Thaddeus.He got offAlpha Imperium centuries after the collapse of the local civilization, remember; he used salvaged materialsand slave labor and built himself a starship in a mud-hut technology.He could do the same here.Andmeanwhile, if you just took off, you'd have to leave behind a lot of stuff.All the mortals, for example.Andme.I wouldn't like that.I mean, I know that you won't hang around Denner's Wreck forever, but I alwaysfigured that when you left you'd see that I came along, or else you'd leave me a secure situation here.Ifyou run off now, you can't take me along there isn't room on Mother, and you couldn't make themodifications quickly enough to get away before Thaddeus shot you down.And if you left me behind, Ifigure Thaddeus would get to me sooner or later.""I didn't know you cared," Geste said, genuinely startled."I thought silicon life didn't have any ego orinstinct for self-preservation.""Well, I can't speak for anybody else, boss.I know you guys built me and evolved me from machineryinstead of flat-worms or whatever you humans are descended from, so that I don't need to have any instinctfor self-preservation, and I know that a lot of machines are about as much alive and self-aware as a rock,and I know that even some smart ones would just as soon be scrapped as not, but I sure think I have anego.Blame in on your programming or Aulden's, I guess, since he did the basic design for me.Whateveryou want to call it, I know damn well that I don't like the idea of Thaddeus messing around with me.""He doesn't even know you exist!""Yeah, but he'd find out eventually.""And why couldn't we make modifications?""You aren't worried about the mortals around here?""Let's leave them out of it for the moment.Why couldn't we make modifications and bring you along?""You wouldn't have time.If Thaddeus sees you packing up, he'll try and stop you.He won't want youalerting whatever military authorities there might be out there.The only way you could get off-planet safelywould be to just pick up and go, right now, and take off in Mother.Even then, he might try to shoot youdown."Geste leaned back, thinking, and his seat reshaped itself to better fit his new contour.The goblet in hishand also reshaped itself, to avoid spilling, and the feelie vine at his ankle threw a massaging tendril uptoward the back of his neck.The music shifted subtly."It seems to me," he said, "that Mother is the big threat to his plans here; why hasn't he already shot herdown? If I were trying to take over the planet without letting anyone outside the system know about it, I'ddestroy Mother first thing, before anyone else knew I was up to something, in order to keep anyone fromescaping.Thaddeus hasn't done that.Why not?""I'd guess he probably plans to use Mother himself.Seems obvious
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