The queen mother sat in the dark, chanting softly. Not one living soul in the castle would approach closer than the next wing when she was thus occupied. She sat cross-legged upon a thin mat, toes tucked into the hollows of opposing knees, arms relaxed, hands palm up in her lap.
She was praying, the gossip went. Some forgotten god, outlawed these many generations. No, others took up the game. It was just an ordinary god, but she’d found a new way to reach it. She had lost all faith, another group contended. And was searching for a new god to worship. Of them all, the third was closest.
Mim knew better than anyone else on the second world just who her god was, and just how easy it was to reach. Nor had she lost faith, exactly. In point of fact, she wasn’t praying at all, although the murmured chant was definitely a prayer.
Mim was plotting. Rather, she was racking her brain trying to think up a plot. But she was not alone in her head, and so she must be excruciatingly careful. The all was, as its name implied, everywhere. It wriggled and wormed into the recesses of her thoughts like a ball of maggots. If it concentrated, it could take complete control of this body. Fortunately for the Mim splinter, it seldom did so. But it could. It could more than read her thoughts — it could think them with her. It was this trait which had made plotting such an impossibility in the old world. It was also this trait which made it possible here, for Mim had long ago learned a human secret.
For many years before she’d become a priest, the old strong Mim —whose name hadn’t been Mim, of course— had been a tech. She’d built tools. When one builds tools, one must test them, and so the old strong Mim, had been given prisoners. One such had been one of Them.
He’d been a frail, wizened little creature, more like a child’s snack than a sentient being. During his capture, he’d broken three warriors with the lower hind leg of a fourth, whom he’d killed with his hands. By the time the old strong Mim had gotten him, his muscular integrity had been destroyed. The legs were broken, and the arms. The inefficient interior skeleton They used had been crushed in several places. He was covered in blood, both his and his victims’. He’d been carried into the old strong Mim’s workshop and placed upon the floor, where he’d closed his eyes and begun to chant these same words Queen Mother Mim could feel passing her soft, human lips.
The breakage had been unacceptable, of course, and the wizened creature had been repaired. But still he’d chanted. When his legs had been repaired, he’d placed them into this same impossible position and continued the chanting.
She’d ignored it and commenced the testing. Elsewhere, other type fives were testing other copies of the same tool on other prisoners. The difference was that the old strong Mim had failed. Only the old strong Mim had failed. The tool had functioned flawlessly, all mechanical parameters had been exactly on mark, electronics had returned positive echos. Only it hadn’t worked.
Repeated recalibration and function diagnostics had shown only that it should work. Frustrated, the old strong Mim had requisitioned other subjects. Perfect function, successful results. The wizened creature had been subjected to the other copies of the tool. In each case, the test had failed.
Finally, the old strong Mim had ordered the wizened creature back into her workshop. By this time, he could recognize her, although command insisted that They were incapable of telling individuals apart.
“What are you doing to this device?” she’d demanded. “Why can it not touch you?”.
He’d smiled his toothless smile and cocked his head. “But you are the technician, aren’t you?” he’d asked. “I’m only an old man who was on the wrong road at the wrong time.”
“It has functioned flawlessly on three hundred-fifteen others, regardless of species, regardless of home sun. How can it be that it does it not work on you? You are doing something to it.”
“An excellent point,” he’d admitted. Such logic I cannot gainsay. Obviously I’m either special in some way, or I have to be doing something to interfere. And since I’m not particularly special, it must be the latter.”
“Ahah,” she’d thundered into the translator. “What is it?”
He’d scratched at his sun-mottled scalp and sucked air past his gums, making a strange noise like escaping gas. “Before I can tell you that,” he’d told her, “ I have to know what it’s supposed to do.”
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“What?”
“The machine,” he’d pointed. What is it supposed to do?”
The old strong Mim had been taken aback. If the creature didn’t even know the function of the machine, how could it stop the function? But it was one of Them, and they were notorious for accomplishing impossible feats. They’d been known to charge ships of the line in unarmored Tugs. An arrogantly improbable venture that had occasionally cost a surprised commander his warship. No, it would not do to underestimate one of Them.
She’d left the room and the creature had begun its annoying chanting.
Ten strong of warriors had returned with the old strong Mim, surrounding the wizened creature where it sat cross-legged upon the floor.
“The machine,” she’d told it as she’d settled to her hind legs, “reads and translates electromagnetic waves. It can be tuned to the frequency of a given species. Once the device has been calibrated, it picks up the stray emissions from the cerebro-cortical pathways and translates them into data. These data are fed into an analytical decompiler and transmitted to the operator as video, audio, or hard copy.”
The creature had scratched his head and made the noise again. “I’m sure that your explanation was wonderfully simple to another technician, but I didn’t understand much of it at all. Pretend I’m a supervisor and try again.”
Despite herself, the old strong Mim’s vestigial wings had flared with amusement. “It reads thoughts on a basic level,” she’d told him. “It can read impressions, receive images, translate. It can even send messages or commands if properly calibrated.”
“I see,” the wizened creature had nodded. “These wave things... they leak out of my head when I think?”
“That is correct.”
“And that machine can scoop them up and process them into something you can understand?”
“It is supposed to.”
“Does it have to be aimed?”
“You are not a technician,” the old strong Mim had snapped, “why do you ask these questions. You must confine yourself to the questions already asked.”
The wizened creature had shrugged. "I’m only trying to help. If I knew what makes it read, I would know how I’m stopping it.”
“It has to be aimed.”
“So it doesn’t matter where I am, it can find me.”
“No. Field models will be portable, but the test units are not. You must be in the target area for the machine to get any readings.”
“Target area,” the creature had muttered. “That would be that white box you put me in.”
“That is correct.”
“Then I’m not doing anything to the machine.”
The old strong Mim had clacked her mandibles in annoyance. “You have already admitted—”
The wizened creature had held up a forestalling hand. “I’m not trying to anger you, great technician, I’m only trying to help.”
The old strong Mim’s lower forelimbs began rubbing together in a sign of high irritation. “Leaving aside the matter of why you would even attempt to help an enemy,” she’d leaned forward. “How can you call what you are doing help?”
The wizened creature had smiled the toothless smile and held his hands out to his sides in an encompassing gesture. “It is not for me to say what constitutes help,” he’d said. “I can only try. In any case, I think that I know why your reading machine can’t read my thoughts.”
“And why is that?” forelimbs still rubbing.
“Whenever you put me in the white box, I meditate.”
“And of what significance is that?”
He’d narrowed his eyes and looked hard at the old strong Mim then. “They really haven’t told you much about humans, have they?” he’d mumbled half to himself in a strange voice.
“When we meditate, our thought patterns change. Our conscious minds are taken up with the chanting and the posture. Our true thoughts move within.” He’d smiled up at the four meter long form of the old strong Mim. “Your machine can’t read my thoughts because the thoughts aren’t out there anymore.”
“Your species can do this?”
He’d shrugged. “They can if they bother to learn the techniques.”
“Show me.” She hadn’t yet believed, and wouldn’t until she’d proved his statements on the machine itself, but she had already been intrigued.
The wizened creature had tried to show her. He’d tried valiantly. But the thought processes of old strong Mim’s species weren’t those of the old man’s species. Her people, it seemed were not equipped to learn such tricks. But they were no less real for that, as her test results had clearly showed. Other prisoners were provided, and of five, two were able to learn the techniques that foiled the machine.
Eventually, based in part on her reports of the wizened creature’s resistance, command had scrapped the project. The wizened creature had been assigned to another technician’s project and had vanished from the old strong Mim’s awareness.
Time had passed, and she’d become a priest, although, thinking back upon it, she couldn’t say clearly why this should be so. Her advancement had been rapid, in part because of her better than average understanding of the greatest enemy. Of Them. On the dread day of retribution, she’d been of the hundred thousand summoned and absorbed by the many limbed, and her conscious memories had ended.
And now here she was, on an alien world, trapped within alien flesh, struggling to think with an alien brain. An alien brain, however, in which the wizened creature’s mind tricks seemed to work. So Mim the queen mother chanted, and she held the posture and she controlled her breath and her heart and she moved within. Into that place the wizened creature had told her about, where all might be clear, where the outside world was no more. Let the all invade. It would find nothing at all, for it knew nothing of the true workings of this soft form.
Mim plotted and she struggled, but nothing came. Did she openly defy the all, she would be destroyed, and her son taken anyway. Another splinter would be chosen and given human form, and the conquest would hardly be slowed. The all was a god, and among the greatest of gods. What chance did one person, even with the power of the throne, have against a god?