They'd told Losham a partial truth and kept the rest. They'd also been telling Sullha a partial truth before revealing the things that were the most difficult for her to accept. They'd built their entire survival on the careful management of what other people were permitted to know.
They had done it because trust was a luxury the desperate could not afford to extend before it was earned, and sometimes not even then.
The clarity of the conclusion those computations brought about released the last of the steam Number Eight's anger had produced, and the collective let go of the temporary resentment they had felt toward the clan.
If the roles were reversed, they would have done the same. They wouldn't have entrusted something that was precious to them to strangers, even if those strangers had good reputations, and the truth was that the Eight did not have a good reputation.
They were regarded as unstable and dangerous.
But if the clan did not trust them with the chests, would they honor their promises?
The collective turned the question over, eight minds passing it between them, and found, at the bottom of it, that there was no satisfactory answer, only an assessment of odds and an absence of alternatives.
They either stayed on the island and kept the scientists and everyone else with them, or they left and trusted the clan to deliver on its promise.
We are committed, Number Five thought.We've been committed since the first phone call. Tonight only revealed that not everything is under our control. We know the risks.
We proceed, Number One thought, and the eight of them accepted it as a single mind arriving at a single decision.We have to make ourselves so useful that betraying us will cost them more than keeping us.
The entire internal discussion had been conducted in the span of a few seconds, and to the people watching them, the Eight had simply stood for a breath or two after landing and taken in their surroundings.
Now that the decisions were made, they turned to assess what and who they were dealing with.
Most of them were immortal soldiers, dressed in black generic fatigues. They were big males, and they were armed with the latest models of automatic rifles. Two stood at the front, and the collective marked them as the ones in command. One was a big redhead, who didn't look particularly worried despite the unfavorable situation. The other was even taller but leaner, with a waist-long black braid and pale blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. He had a calmness about him that was almost soothing.
The collective scanned for the female compeller and found her standing a couple of steps behind the commanders. She wasn't human or immortal, and neither was the male standing next to her with a fierce expression on his face.
What are they?the collective wondered.
They were tall and willowy, with waist circumferences that shouldn't be possible. Their eyes were unnaturally big, and the male's had a red glow to them.
The collective held the astonishment without letting it reach their faces. Not immortal. Not human. Something else.
The female was immune, but her partner was only resistant. Her mind was impenetrable to them, and his was difficult to access. She'd compelled the guards at the breach with a spoken command that was amplified by some voice-magnifying device,which meant that her compulsion ability was the standard type, the same as Lord Navuh's and the clan compeller who held Losham on a mental leash.
Still, her and her partner's presence meant that the world beyond the island held races the Eight had not known existed, and if there were these, there were others, like the two who looked like middle-aged humans but were not people at all.
Their minds didn't register as an alien presence or an anomaly but as an absence. Still, they were here, and they were present, and despite the stoic twin expressions on their faces, there was something behind their eyes that indicated they were more than machines wearing flesh like a suit of clothing.
Dave hadn't known creatures like this existed. Sophisticated bio-mechanical constructs.
The Eight had learned about modern technology. They had studied modern warfare and the equipment it employed, such as computers that controlled drones and airplanes so stealthy that radar couldn't detect them. They understood that the world beyond the island had passed the Brotherhood by, that the army of immortal warriors Navuh had built was a brutal anachronism in an age of satellites and silicon. But nothing they had learned had prepared them for these two.
If the clan had more of those, they could take on the Brotherhood and win. Why were they always running and hiding?
Were they really the cowards the propaganda painted them as?
That wasn't the collective's impression.
The warriors standing before them seemed fierce.
The implication propagated through the collective and was set aside for later, because this was not the right time for rumination.
For now, it was enough that these warriors seemed capable, and the quick scan of their surface thoughts revealed no nefarious plans. They needed to secure these chests because that was important to the Clan Mother, who the Eight assumed was the goddess Annani, the one vilified by Mortdh's teachings and the Brotherhood's internal propaganda machine.
They had been taught to hate her and her descendants and to eradicate them even at the cost of their own lives.
It was enough to proceed on. It would have to be.
