"The units must access this data and begin construction. Once completed, you will use the craft to reach the mother world and make contact with the Danu. You will inform them that the task set for me is completed and the colony awaits habitation. You will then return the female to her people."
The nausea Kiel had been battling increased. "We are to take her back?" he repeated, knowing he had heard and understood the orders and still hopeful that he had not.
"Yes."
"What is to become of us?"
"The Danu will decide. That is not my prerogative."
Kiel frowned. "It we are to take her back to her people, are we to leave her there and return? Or consult her people as to whether to return or not?"
"They are at war. I merely suggest that you make the attempt to return her. The modifications in the craft may make that impossible. It may be considered an enemy craft, in which case I am certain they will destroy it. If they decide to capture it instead, then the crew will be considered prisoners of war and the decision of their disposition, naturally, will be with the humans.
"This is why it is imperative that the ship go directly to the Danu first. I cannot communicate with them. They must be informed that my mission was completed."
Kiel was not certain if that was a dismissal or not, but he turned away and strode from Manuta, struggling with the sickness churning in his belly, the anger that mixed generously with a myriad of emotions he could not decipher for the simple reason that he could not untangle them. He managed to master the urge to vomit after a time, but he discovered that he had left the settlement far behind before he was really aware of his surroundings.
Stunned to find himself on the banks of the river where he had sparred with Baen not many days before, he looked around a little blankly and finally, since he felt strangely weak, he dropped to the ground and sat staring blindly at the water as it flowed past him, watching the bobbing flotsam on its surface. He did not know how long he sat there, unaware of his surroundings and the passing time, but Baen distracted him after a time when he crouched beside him.
"You are behaving strangely," he commented brusquely.
Kiel dragged his gaze from the water and stared at Baen. "I am not in the mood to converse," he growled.
"We can always spar instead," Baen responded tightly.
Kiel considered it, but as angry as he was, as much as the idea of pounding on something appealed to him, it seemed he had no energy for it. "Later, mayhap. At the moment, it does not have that much appeal."
"It has a great deal of appeal to me!" Baen ground out, surging to his feet and beginning to pace along the bank. "Actually, I believe it would be far more appealing to take that gods damned machine apart!
"We are to be discarded now? We are no longer of any use beyond building the machines Manuta says that we need to fetch the Danu here?"
"He suggested that?" Kiel asked blankly. "He did not tell me that. He said that we would rebuild Danielle's craft and take it to the home world to inform them that his mission was completed."
"He told the rest of us that we must begin preparing to transport them. He has decided that that is a possible explanation for why they have not come, that some event has transpired since he was sent here and they are not able to follow as planned."
Kiel's belly tightened, but he did not see that that made a great deal of difference in the scheme of things. As Baen had pointed out, they were to be discarded, replaced by the parent race, which was now more desirable.
Truthfully, they had ever been aware that they were not the most desirable solution, merely the only one that Manuta had been able to come up with due to the limitations.
"We were designed and built to create our own society! To take mates and produce off-spring-to have family units as the Danu do!" Baen said angrily, almost as if he had read Kiel's thoughts. "Now we are of no use for that? Undesirable surrogates for our parent race?
"We are not machines! We do not need Manuta to think for us! To decide what is best for us! In point of fact, Manuta has not decided what is best for us at all! It is as if we are nothing and it does not matter what we want!"
Kiel stared at Baen blankly for several moments while that sank in. "You are suggesting … mutiny?"
Baen stopped abruptly, glaring at Kiel furiously. "Mutiny? Manuta is not our leader! In a sense, I suppose, being our creator makes it our parent, but only in the loosest sense! Manuta is nothing but a machine. We are not merely machines! In point of fact, we are no more machines than her people are who have cybernetic limbs to replace damaged ones! Where it counts, we are as real as any other living organism! Why can we not have what we were told we were created for? Only because Manuta has new data and has altered the plan accordingly?
"I feel the urge to mate, gods damn it! I am capable of it. I see no reason why I should not claim a mate and reproduce!"
Kiel surged to his feet angrily. "If you are thinking that Danielle will suit you, then you are defective in your logic circuits, not merely feeling the pull of your biological instincts! She will not have you-any of us-now that she knows how different the Danu are from her own species!"
"She did not say that she would not!"
"She has not allowed it either!" Kiel shot back at him. "Are you blind to the way she reacted to all of us when she had seen us?"
"That does not mean that she could not accustom herself to it!"
Kiel eyed him angrily. "You are not thinking like a rational being! We are not the same! Small differences would matter little, but this is no small difference and it is something we need to consider as well as she! Any offspring you had would only be half Danu. She cannot change forms as we do and that means that her offspring might also not be able to! Is that desirable to you?"
"It is acceptable," Baen ground out. "Even if we found mates among the Danu women the risk would be there that the offspring would not be as strong as we are because they would not have our cybernetics!"
"The Danu women would not consider us desirable mates for just that reason!" Kiel muttered. "There is no point in thinking in that direction!"
"You do not know that!" Baen argued.
Kiel sent him a level look. "It is logical to assume that," he responded. "Why would they choose what they must see as corruptions of their species when they have their own males? We know that we are stronger and faster than a completely natural being would be, but we cannot pass that to our offspring and therefore it is useless to consider it as an asset. They would not consider it an asset. Most likely, they would be as frightened of it as Danielle is!"
Baen frowned. "Danielle did not find that frightening," he said finally. "She may not have found that it appealed to her, but she was not afraid of us until she saw that we could change forms at will and since we only call upon the change when necessary there is no reason why she could not grow accustomed."
"Mayhap. I do not agree, but that is not the point. The female chooses the male most likely to produce strong, healthy offspring-but those traits they choose are of their own species, not another that would be seen as a corruption of their species. She would not want to risk the possibility that her offspring would inherent those traits when she is appalled by them!"
Baen studied him for a long moment and finally shrugged. "If that is the way you look at it I will certainly not try to dissuade you. For myself, I am satisfied that she will suit me. She is appealing in face and form. She is intelligent. She has excellent survival instincts and what she lacks in size, she more than makes up for in speed and ferocity. Until she says she will not consider it, I will pursue it. I do not give a fuck what Manuta's plans are."
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The Forgotten Three Page 4