The Recorder's tiny ship docked easily. The mother ship was an entire world, more than ten thousand kilometers in diameter, but it was a world inside-out. It took the Recorder almost four hours by shuttle from the surface spaceport where he had landed to reach the chambers of the Set.
The chambers themselves were modest, for the Dreel were an austere people with little use for art or creature comforts. It came from inhabiting another's body—the Dreel, safe and secure inside a body, cared little for it beyond that it be in excellent health and remain undamaged.
Thus the seat of Dreel power was a chamber no more than thirty meters square, furnished only with hard plastic benches and enclosed only by undecorated steel bulkheads. The Recorder expected nothing else; he sat on one of the benches and waited patiently, if a little nervously. All Dreel shared a desire for long life, and Dreel leaderhip had more than once been known to kill the bearer of unhappy tidings.
Still, The Recorder's concern was strictly for its own self; that the Dreel were here, that the great mother ship had brought them across the intergalactic void over an impossibly long time, was reassuring. That the Dreel might lose never crossed The Recorder's mind.
"Recorder, give your report." The voice echoed from the walls. Its suddenness startled him, but he recovered quickly. They already knew what he had to say—this was, as his title implied, strictly for the record, and in case questions were necessary.
"Subjects have an effective defensive force not realized in the early scouting reports," he told the Set. "Their weapons, while slow, are of an extremely high order and in many ways inconsistent with their past history. Obviously, the relatively static culture that we found was atypical of the races involved. Such weapons as these, and the highly unorthodox methodology employed—much of which had obvious nonmilitary applications not reflected in their technological level are quite obviously a product of a savage evolution. Although apparently at Level One evolution—peaceful, highly developed, relatively static, as we have found elsewhere—they are not so. We depended too much on past models. These are at least Level Three cultures—barbarians, if you will, wild animals—with a convincing veneer of Level One."
"Such a finding is inconsistent," the Set objected. "A Level Three culture would continually war, continually fight among itself. We are faced with an affront to the laws of nature if your information is correct—a pack of ferocious animals who have reached a working compromise. We could accept that of one race perhaps, but there are fourteen totally different types of lifeform.It is against the laws of historical evolution. Such a civilization as is represented by this 'Com' should be at the highest level, beyond wars or threats of wars; it should be as it observably is, in social stasis, at precisely the level where the only possible advancement is Dreel assumption of control."
"Nevertheless," The Recorder responded, "they have a stasis reality and yet did not destroy the weapons of their barbarian past—and, most incredibly, did not lose the knowledge or will to use them. This is a fact. More, it applies to all of them. Therefore the different races are cooperating with each other against us."
The Set remained silent for a moment. The Recorder waited, still patient, knowing that within the heart of the massive mother ship the Set—countless Dreel without body—were interacting, searching for answers, devising plans. It was a giant live, organic computer with billions of years of wisdom and experience accounted for among its myriad components.
One of the things the Dreel had learned in all those years was pragmatism; it was the last refuge of the puzzled, and it worked.
"Much work will be done to explain this anomaly," the Set announced at last. "It is possible that laws of historical evolution do not apply universally as they did to our birth-galaxy. Therefore, faced with a civilization technologically capable of detecting us, further passive infiltration is hereby ended. If it is a Level Three we are dealing with, then we must counter it as we would a Level Three culture anywhere, no matter its outward appearance."
"That is a dangerous road," The Recorder pointed out. "Although slower than we, they successfully destroyed twelve of our ships on the Madalin attack to no losses on their side. Our fleet numbers under forty thousand ships, our factory-ship capacity is limited, and we do not control sufficient worlds to use their own facilities."
The Set was actually shocked. "To suggest that the Dreel might lose to such evolutionary inferiors! . . . "
The Recorder became alarmed. "No, no! I mean nothing of the sort! Only that the most submissive pet might still bite, kick, or otherwise injure the master."
"We are aware of that," the Set replied coldly. "Know that superior numbers are not always the answer. They are on the defensive, not we. They must meet our threat. The twelve ships lost were lost because they had to face a preset gauntlet. The situation will be reversed. Be at ease, report to Medical. Go."
Even as The Recorder left, the Set was ordering that, while undergoing medical check, additional Dreel be added to his system to counterbalance the obvious alienation The Recorder had suffered while in the Com. The historical anomaly had obviously unhinged him. Recombination was needed. Never before had the Dreel faced this sort of society; never before had it been at such a disadvantage. The victory here would be all the greater for the difficulty the Com presented. A herd might trample a warder, but never the race of warders. Now was the time for the Dreel to show its true superiority, which was power.