He fidgeted, but he didn't shout at the teachers anymore. Just a little longer, and he and Puppies would really be talking. Just a little longer and Puppies could find out for him where Mom and Dad and Johanna were. Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all. Once Amdiranifani was fluent in the mantis language, Steel had him explain about the "tragic death" of Jefri's parents and brood-sibling. The Flenser Fragment had argued against it,
新建 文本文档 (15), but Steel wanted quick and unquestioned control. Now it seemed that the Fragment might have been right; at least he should have held out the hope that the brood-sibling lived. Steel looked solemnly at the Amdiranifani Experiment. "How can we help?" The young pack looked up trustingly. "Jefri is so terribly upset about his parents and sister." Amdiranifani was using mantis words a lot,
新建 文本文档 (120), often unnecessarily: sister instead of brood-sibling. "He hasn't been eating much. He doesn't want to play. It makes me very sad." Steel kept watch on the far balcony. The Flenser Fragment was there. It was not hiding, though most of its faces were out of the candlelight. So far its insights had been extraordinary. But the Fragment's stare was like old times, when a mistake could mean mutilation or worse. So be it. The stakes were higher now than ever before; if fear at Steel's throats could help him succeed, he welcomed it. He looked away from the balcony, and brought all his faces to an expression of tender sympathy for poor Jefri's plight. "You just have to make it -- him -- understand. No one can bring his parents or sister back to life. But we know who the murderers are. We're doing everything we can to defend against them. Tell him how hard this is. Woodcarvers is an empire that has lasted hundreds of years. In a fight, we are no match for them. That's why we need all the help he can give us. We need him to teach us to use his parents' ship." The puppy pack lowered a head. "Yes. I'll try, but ..." The three members by Jefri made low-pitched grunting noises at it. The mantis sat head bowed; it held its tentacled paws across its eyes. The creature had been like this for several days, and the withdrawal was getting worse. Now it shook its head violently, made sharp noises a little higher pitched than its normal register. "Jefri says he doesn't understand how things work in the ship. He's just a little ..." the pack searched for a translation. " ... he is really very young. You know,
MBT Sandals Sapatu, like me." Steel nodded understandingly. It was an obvious consequence of the aliens' singleton nature, but weird even so: Every one of them started out all a puppy. Every one of them was like Steel's puppy-pack experiments. Parental knowledge was transmitted by the equivalent of interpack speech. That made the creature easy to dupe, but it was a damned inconvenience now. "Still, if there's anything he can help explain." More grunting from the mantis. Steel should learn that language. The sounds were easy; these pitiful creatures used their mouths to talk,
复件 (7) air max, like a bird or a forest slug. For now he depended on Amdiranifani. For now that was okay; the puppy pack trusted him. Another piece of serendipity. With a few of his recent experiments,
复件 (77) air max2, Steel had tried love in place of Flenser's original terror/love combination; there had been a slim chance that it might be superior. By great good luck Amdiranifani fell into the love group. Even his instructors had avoided negative reinforcement. The pack would believe anything he said ... and so, Steel hoped,
新建 文本文档, would the mantis.
MBT Sandals Sapatu
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