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Flattery detected a definite shudder across Marta&039;s shoulders at the mention of Nevi&039;s naht Mere ets results

He dismissed Marta and surveyed the landscape, his landscape, that fell away before hiht back at hierlike leaves deployed toward the bursts of ultraviolet pulsing froerous little plant for its tenacity and for the protection it afforded his compound Its seeds lay dor to flourish when the oceans rolled back again It flourished now, anddifficult for predators near the corazers darted a the wihi to his left, near the cliff&039;s rise to the high reaches Though reputed to eat anything softer than rock, the grazers preferred to avoid humans They had survived, like anic islands throughout the floods The poor often chanced netting theerous task He&039;d watched an old Islander swaro The man had netted only half the rob The other half waited in the rocks for his return, then set upon his legs until he fell It was over in a matter of blinks, and Flattery considered it an education He ordered the whole rob burned out at the nests, of course, and their charred bodies delivered to the villagers Strictly political

The Director knew that anything that protected itself to that extrereenskeeper had a ith anirazers nested in vulnerable approach points to the compound This was one such rob, stationed near the trail to the high reaches He watched the when their slender, rusty backs caught the sunlight and rippled auard warned, and Flattery saw the skulking back of a dasher approach the rob The guard set his lasgun for the distance about the lie, and raised it Flattery motioned him to wait

The dasher closed the final twentyat the little ani theer It tried to gulp a few of theroup The dasher seeain, as the afternoon clouds gathered offshore

"Beautiful, aren&039;t they?" he asked no one "Just beautiful"

We&039;re more than our ideas

- Prudence Lon Weygand, MD, nu

Twisp the Zavatan elder watched the Director watch the swiftgrazers strip an ailing hooded dasher to bone The sight reminded him of the old days when he was a simple fisherhtened this memory of schools of scrat that devoured maki a thousand times their size in blinks Twisp had a healthy respect for scrat, and for swiftgrazers

Furry little bandits, he thought One thing about theile little penises detached duringin the female that her body absorbed It kept sperenetic survival of the first to h to breed twice in one cycle

So razers The trick was to trap a swiftgrazer and snatch its penis They were considered a delicacy, and it was said that the Director enjoyed them steale swiftgrazer Many a drunk pulled back stuers

The little animals looked like a band of robbers, with their masks across their twitchy noses and their nervous way of having at least half of the rob on alert He had never known them to attack humans unless molested, but when they attacked it ith a fury, a complete abandon that chilled him He did not care to find out the lirazers for the way they stuck together There was no such thing as a hungry swiftie If one swiftie was hungry, the whole rob was hungry The Shadows clairazers when the ti Flattery

His whisper ed in the wind Just enough spore-dust twinkled in his veins to lend a backgroundstorh reaches, as it always did at sea Only inside, behind the plaz and dogged hatches, did he ever hear it o, in the coet The wind had been right then, and Twisp&039;s broad shoulders sagged a little when he realized it was right now

The rob of swifties finished their kill Most of the the wind and yawning The pink of their long tongues flickered visibly as they licked their rusty snouts

Twisp trained his razers in mind The sequestered Zavatans, like the Shadows of every settleo hungry Still, he desperately wanted to find another way

He asked the wind, "How can I save the people and Flattery, too?"

A crisp lull stilled the afternoon

Twisp had long ago noted that the Director cultivated certain rob and eliminated others Careful observation bore fruit - Twisp knew all of the swiftgrazers&039; secret warrens and the myriad entrances topside It was this kind of patience and attention to detail that he knew they all would need to turn aside the cruel momentum of Flattery and his machine

Beyond the scene of this little death in front of hiers fanned out fro ruins of the Preserve As the afternoon winds once again gathered their storainst its most vicious eneer the trail to the ruh reaches

New recruits for us, for the Shadows

His srim one Pandorans had never been a warlike lot There had always been too few hury as they were, Pandorans were reluctant to pick up arainst their fellows Flattery paid his security force, and paid theht he had nipped years ago had burst into an epidemic under Flattery

"I, too, believed in hi?"

He knehat the ould say before he heard it He had been lazy, he had hoped someone else would take care of it Like everyone else, he had only wanted to live his simple life quietly

Twisp&039;s own patience orn threadbare as his robe For nearly twenty-five years he had hoped that Pandora would shrug off the Director&039;s er and fear Hope, he knew, had even less substance than dreary Pandorans didn&039;t have the luxury of waiting It was a death sentence, and time was the prosecution

When Flattery had seized power, he insinuated himself first into control of Merman Mercantile and then acquired control of all food distribution He bought into transportation and communications ide This had been accomplished by the deaths of, several of Twisp&039;s friends, people who had owned Merman Mercantile and Current Control

Too ht a fa, naive, and none of the of the Director Now, as always, only Flattery could afford to wait

How ironic, Twisp thought, that those who can afford to wait don&039;t have to I wonder if there&039;s anything left for hied inwardly at the panting voice of the young Mose behind hi in his breast without being nettled by Mose

"What is it?"

The younger e of rock outcrop that Twisp occupied, this he knew He adame he played with Mose

"Why do you stand out there?" the younger asked, his voice tinged with a whine

"Why do you stand back there?"

Still, Twisp did not turn, though he kneould do so

"Your presence is requested in chaent There are many preparations afoot that I do not understand"

Twisp did not answer

"Elder, can you hear me?"

Still no answer

"Elder, please do not ain You know that it shakes my wattles in a fearsome way"

Twisp chuckled to himself and turned to join Mose at the cavern entrance The afternoon rains had begun, anyway, pattering like swiftgrazers in the scrub He knew already what OperationsThat Flattery and his kind anized and undefended That the Zavatans and the Shadows held the only ain thousands would die in the greater na else to boil down, it always boiled down to hunger

"Come with me to Operations," Twisp said, "and I&039;ll show you so to pink your wattles You will then be witness to so fearsome, indeed"

Twisp bowed once at the cavern entrance, in respect, and entered, the billow of his orange robe a beacon against the darkened afternoon

The di novices with shaved heads and lasguns The boy looked to be about fifteen and his shaved head revealed a high crest of bone atop his skull, which h their eyes irl wore the black, armored jumpsuits of the Dasher Clan Both were suitably alert, their quick brown eyes negating their relaxed posture Together they swung the plasteel hatch outward on its gih reaches

It was not dashers and flatwings that these doors walled out, but the Director and his Vashon Security Force Through the years Twisp himself had become a master of security Incursions by VSF had been few and unsuccessful They viewed the Zavatans as hared or insane

"Illusion is our strongest weapon," Twisp had lectured the young novices "Appear to be foolish, ly - ould want to take you then? Note how the mold wins the fruit by its appearance alone"

The first chamber was the one that was inspected periodically by Vashon Security Force Rough-hewn out of rock, it housed three hundred Zavatans of the nine clans spread out along the walls, with co areas There werewith hundreds of tapestries that helpedinside the cavern

Lighting was the usual hot-glow type driven by four hydrogen generators housed in the rock beneath them The appearance was of primitive squalor, and security inspectors sent here by the Director seldom stayed for more than a cursory look This here Mose lived Twisp, too, had a cubby here - third level, to the right of the main entrance - but he seldom slept there For more than a year Twisp had lived in the private charoup known to the Shadows as "Operations"

Twisp ascended to the second level with Mose in tow He stepped behind an old Islander tapestry into an alcove that would not be noticed except perhaps by children at play He approached an undaed section of basalt bulkhead carved with elaborate histories of human and kelp interactions The section that he faced, titled "The Lazarus Effect," was sier extended, touching a strand of kelp that rose froer out fro its sheath, a section of rock sprang outward When Operations met for Zavatan business, they met inside this labyrinth of rock Its y, and its routes were constantly changing Fe the passageways, and none as well as the Islander Twisp, Chief of Operations

Mose sed hard and paled conspicuously There were tales of thousands of villagers and co the Zavatans, never to be seen again Mose hireat cavern behind them who had never coers from the Poor," and hinted that they were relocated ide Though Mose had heard this rumor, he had never seen evidence to back it up Mose seldoer years within five kilometers of where he now stood

They never coerhim? he wondered I re on his dead partner was nonproductive Cleaning up the nest of assassins who&039;d killed hiood

"Come," Twisp said "You will be safe with me It is time the Zavatan muscle flexed itself"

With a seway Mose&039;s eyes couldn&039;t have widened further When he hesitated, Twisp placed a large hand on his shoulder

Mose, too, stepped inside and the panel snicked shut behind the you see here today"

Mose sed hard again and nodded

"Ye Elder"