World without Stars by Poul Anderson Page B

to, but my arm wouldn’t obey. It was as
     if the muscles had gone to sleep. With a curse, I focused myself on the task. My hand moved, jerkily, to clasp the butt.
    Rallying nerve, I said: “Are you trying to control me? That is no friendly act. And you can’t, you see. Our minds are too
     unlike.”
    A part of me thought they must also have tried this on the Yonderfolk, and failed so completely against brains based on hydrogen
     and ammonia that the attempt wasn’t noticed. Otherwise we’d have been warned. Then the Ai Chun dissembled, hid their real
     nature like the hidden part of an iceberg, gave the impression of being harmless primitives. A telpathic folk with a unified,
     planet-wide culture could do that.
    In our case, they didn’t bother. They knew far too well that no one would avenge us. The dwarfs monotone said:
    “We dismissed the former visitors, and we shall not let you run free in the world. Have no fear. Your potential usefulness
     is admitted. While you obey, you shall not be harmed. And when you grow old you will be cared for like any aged, faithful
     Niao.”
    Rorn and I moved until we stood back to back. The scribes edged off into a dark corner. One downdevil raised himself higher,
     so that the lamplight gleamed on him. The dwarf spoke:
    “We have pondered what reason we might have had in the beginning to bring forth creatures like you and those others. Where
     we do not supervise it, life on shore often develops in curious ways. Perhaps you do not yourselves know your ancestral history.
     However, you are ordered at least to desist from telling falsehoods. For we believe now that your existence is not accidental
     but intended.”
    Rorn whimpered. “They’re in my mind. I can feel them, they’re in my mind.”
    “Shut up and keep ready to shoot,” I told him.
    I felt it myself, if “felt” is the right word. Unbidden images, impulses, bursts of terror and anger and bliss and lust, a
     stiffness in my body, my clothes drenched and stinking with perspiration. But the impressions were not intense—about like
     a mild drunkenness, as far as their power to handicap me went. I told myself, over and over:
These beasts are projecting energies of a type that’ve been known to our scientists for hundreds of years. They want to stimulate
     corresponding patterns in my brain. But I belong to another species. My neurones don’t work like theirs. I won’t give them
     a chance to find out how I do work. And remember always, in spite of the horror stories, nobody can be “taken over” who keeps
     his wits about him. It’s physically impossible. You’recloser to your own nervous system, and better integrated with it, than anyone else can he
.
    I clamped my teeth for a moment, then started asking questions.
    Abruptly the disturbances in my head stopped. Maybe simply because of the contrast, I felt more in possession of myself than
     ever before in my life. So for hours I stood talking. All the while, Rorn was silent at my back.
    The downdevils responded to me with cold candor. No use trying to reproduce our discussion as such. I don’t remember the details.
     And naturally our conference was often interrupted by explanations of some new term, by arguments, by cogitation until a meaning
     became clear. They didn’t press me, these two in the pool. They weren’t in the habit of hurrying. Besides, I slowly saw, they
     were quite fascinated. They didn’t hate us any more than we would hate a pair of wild beasts we had captured for study and
     possible taming.
    At least, there was no conscious hatred. Down underneath, I don’t know. We threatened their whole existence.
    You see, they were gods.
    It was not just that their Niao worshiped them. I doubt the Niao did, anyway, in the human-like sense in which you could say
     the Azkashi worshiped the galaxy. The Niao were devoted to the Ai Chun as a dog is to a man; they’d been bred for that trait;
     but aside from a few gestures of respect, they