World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

Kzanol/Greenberg cocked his head; his lips pursed slightly, and the skin puckered between his eyebrows. Judy would have recognized the gesture. He had suddenly realized what made the intelligent whitefood so terrible.

A thiint was master over every intelligent beast. This was the Powergiver's primal decree, made before he made the stars. So said all of the twelve Thrintun religions, though they fought insanely over other matters. But if the whitefood was intelligent, then it was immune to the Power. The tnuctipun had done what the Power-giver had forbade!

If the tnuctipun were stronger than the Powergiver, and the Thrintun were stronger than the tnuctipun, and the Powergiver were stronger than the Thrintun-

Then all priests were charlatans, and the Powergiver was a folk myth.

A sentient whitefood was blasphemy.

It was also very damned peculiar.

Why would the tnuctipun have made an intelligent food animal? The phrase had an innocuous sound, like «overkill» or "euthanasia," but if you thought about it-

Thrintun were not a squeamish race. Power, no! But-

An intelligent food animal! Hitler would have fled, retching.

The tnuctipun had never been squeamish, either. The lovely simplicity of their mutated racing viprin was typical of the way they worked. Already the natural animal had been the fastest alive; there was little the tnuctipun could do in the way of redesigning. They had narrowed the animal's head and brought the nose to a point, leaving the nostril like a single jet nacelle, and they had made the skin almost microscopically smooth against wind resistance, but this had not satisfied them. So they had removed several pounds of excess weight and replaced it with extra muscle and extra lung tissue. The weight removed had been all of the digestive organs. A mutated racing viprin had a streamlined sucker of a mouth which opened directly into the bloodstream to admit predigested pap.

The tnuctipun were always efficient, but never cruel.

Why make the whitefood intelligent? To increase the size of the brain, as ordered? But why make it immune to the Power?

And he had eaten whitefood meat.

Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head hard. Masney needed attention, and he had planning to do. Didn't he?

Planning, or mere worrying?

Would the amplifier work on a human brain? Could he find the suit in time?

"'Find him, " Garner quoted. "That could fit. He's looking for something he believes he needs badly."

"But you already knew that. It doesn't help."

"Mrs. Greenberg, what I really came for is to find out everything you can tell me about your husband.