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knowledge. She sensed an undertone in the air of the archives vault, a humming that grew

louder. Before she could wonder about the strange background sensation, though, the next

footage showed the same laboratory complex in daylight. The building had burned to the

ground; only skeletal beams and blackened construction blocks remained.

Grim-faced workers sifted through the wreckage. Their cheeks were covered with soot,

their eyes irritated from smoke as they reported to the commander. “There are no further

bodies, sir. We’ve sifted the ashes. Dr. Lann must have been the only person inside the

building.”

“How could that be? We
know
the children were all in there. That’s why they made this

place into a fortress. They barricaded themselves so we couldn’t get in.”

“Commander! Over here!” one of the workers called.

The incident commander ran over to where three men wearing gloves and insulated jackets

shoved a smoldering wooden crossbeam aside to reveal a previously hidden metal hatch. “Is it

a safe room? Are they holed up in there?”

One of the firemen laughed scornfully. “It would have been a pressure cooker in there. We

might have a few well-done slans inside.”

They undogged the hatch, opened it—and the commander cursed to see a tunnel leading

down into a catacomb of passageways. “You two men—go down there. Follow it! See where it

leads.”

The excavators looked at each other in nervous concern. “But what if the slans blast our

brains?”

“Then shoot them before they have a chance.” The incident commander shook his head,

letting out a heavy sigh. “I doubt you’ll find them, though. The slans went through a lot of

trouble to build this barricade. They wouldn’t leave themselves with no escape.”

A few moments later, the men came back up looking defeated but oddly relieved. “Sorry,

Commander. The tunnel leads to several escape hatches that open directly into the city streets.

Those three slans are long gone by now.”

The commander chewed on his lip. “Then why didn’t Dr. Lann escape with them?” He

scratched his head. “He must have sacrificed himself so that we’d keep thinking the others

were inside. He bought time for his children to get away. Now those dangerous slans are

loose.” His eyes took on a far-off, frightened look. “Who can tell what they’ll do now?”

The tape ended, and Anthea was left with a strange sense of foreboding. Though those

events had occurred many centuries ago, they felt real to her.

Her baby was restless, perhaps reading her own mood. She realized that the bone-jarring

hum had grown louder and louder. The signal seemed to come from the back of her head, in

her ears, rattling her teeth. However, when she concentrated on it and tried to listen more

closely, she could hear nothing.

Anthea understood with a jolt that it wasn’t a tone any human could hear. A secret signal?

She turned, eyes widened, and looked at the baby. His fine tendrils were waving like antennae,

picking up a transmission meant only for slans—and passing it on to her.

Her son couldn’t move, but he transmitted his need. She had to follow that sound, find out

what was making it. She looked on the equipment shelves, found the strange and

indecipherable devices that had been confiscated and sealed so long ago. She was sure the

secret police had no idea what it was they had taken.

One of the stored devices turned out to be the source of the piercing hum. It was labeled as

“Unknown Slan Mind-Control Device—never tested.” The humans must have been too afraid

to toy with it.

Instinctively, Anthea understood which buttons she was supposed to push on the

long-quiescent device. The humming gadget began to vibrate in her fingers. Status lights

illuminated, and the needles on gauges swung over to their maximum markings. She saw a

fuzzy image form, but not with her own eyes. It was the face of a man, but it seemed distant,

coming to her in thoughts instead of visions.
Her baby
was doing it!

The man talking looked like Dr. Lann, but subtly different. His son, probably, one of the

first slans. “If you are receiving this, then I know you are a slan. For our own protection, we

have attuned this Porgrave recording so that only those with tendrils can receive it. Those

foolish humans who have caused us so much harm and pain will never know how much vital

information we transmit right under their noses. All slans, hear me—you must understand

who you are, know your destiny, and help gain revenge for the heinous crimes that have been

committed against our new race. It will be war.

“We do not know how our fight will proceed, whether or not we’ll be victorious, but we

must lay plans so that battle can continue for as long as necessary. Our father was the first to

see the potential in the race of slans, and he was murdered for his support of our cause. Blind

and prejudiced normals harassed him, interrogated him, and then they set his lab on fire. They

shot him down while we watched.”

The blurry face smiled. “But we all knew his conspicuous laboratory was primarily a sham.

A diversion. We did very little real work there, but all the humans were afraid of it. Our real

laboratory was a completely different complex, well-hidden. There, our father did his

ground-breaking work with mental enhancement, brain recordings, and studies of thought

processes. All of his real equipment remains there, a true fortress, a place where we slans can

build our defenses. In this recording we will implant the location of that secure hideout. The

machinery, records, and primary mind imprints of our great father are there. Use what you

find, if you can. Help us win this unjust war.”

Anthea suddenly knew where to go. The picture was clear in her mind. She couldn’t

explain any coordinates or directions, but she
knew
.

Even though this strange telepathic beacon had been made centuries before she was born,

she felt confident. She went over to her baby, smiling. “Thanks to you, we know of a place

now—a place where we can be safe.”

«
^
»

Kier Gray watched as Jommy packed up the armored vehicle and said his farewells. The

President admired the young man’s dedication and drive, though he was concerned about the

dangers he might encounter in the war-torn city.

“This is a great risk you’re taking, Jommy. We’re safe here for now, and we can start to

rebuild the government in exile with anything and anybody we can find. Are you sure it’s wise

to go back to Centropolis?”

“Mr. President, once I recover the disintegrator weapon, we can stand against this invasion.

We can’t just hide here.”

“Isn’t that what slans are good at? Hiding?” Petty said rudely, and Granny smacked him

across the back of his head. The slan hunter spluttered in surprise.

While Jommy prepared to depart, Petty had grudgingly admitted that his men had taken

the disintegrator weapon to a protected sealed vault for his researchers to study in safety.

“Why are you being so cooperative?” Jommy had asked suspiciously.

“I was always cooperative—just not too happy about it.” The slan hunter’s brows furrowed.

“With a weapon like that, we could withstand the tendrilless even if they track us down here

on the ranch. It just might save my skin.”

With the mind block he had learned over the years, Petty made it impossible for Jommy to

read his true thoughts. The secret police chief almost certainly meant to seize the disintegrator

for himself as soon as he had the chance, but Jommy would never let that happen.

Kathleen hugged him before he got into the car. “Be careful. I should be going with you—”

He was sorely tempted. “I can’t risk losing you again. Even if the immediate attack has

ended, it’ll be dangerous back in the city.”

“Then let me help!”

“I’ll do my work better and faster this way—but I’m not alone. We have a connection

through our tendrils. Your mind and my mind. You’ll know that I’m safe, and I’ll sense you

thinking about me.” Jommy climbed into his car and sealed the doors. When the engine roared

to life, he drove off, leaving his friends behind.

Gray watched him go, sent his hopes with the young man, then rounded up the others to

get down to work putting together the shreds of a government.

They monitored news reports using battery-powered radios and a short-wave transmitter in

Granny’s sitting room. Eyewitness accounts claimed that slans were behind the continued

bombings of Earth’s largest cities, even though the attacking armies had no tendrils that

anyone could see. No one challenged the claims, thanks to propaganda distributed for years by

tendrilless rebels. One account claimed that
John Petty
was himself a disguised slan and had

seized the presidency so that he could launch this attack upon all humanity. The timing

couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, the commentator observed.

Petty couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s absurd!”

“The public has been trained to believe absurd things,” Gray said. “You did it yourself.”

“Yes, my secret police were actually quite good at that,” Petty admitted. “Disinformation is

a simple and commonly used tactic. If you give people enough crazy stories, they won’t believe

the truth more than any other lie.”

“And now you’ve been beaten at your own game,” Kathleen said. “How are we going to

convince the population of the truth, that the
tendrilless
slans are their enemies and they should

rise up against them?”

“That would trigger another whole round of Slan Wars,” Petty said. “Do you want more

centuries of endless bloodshed? We’d never see the end of it.”

“
Or
,” Gray continued, “we can suggest a meeting with the tendrilless leaders. They have a

vendetta against slans, and there’s cause for grief on both sides, but maybe they’ll listen if we

tell them the true story. I doubt they even know their own origins. The only way we all win is if

we can work out a peace, a way for us to live together in prosperity.”

“Sounds like you’re dreaming,” Petty said.

“Jommy managed to make it work here in this valley,” Granny interrupted. “I’ve never

seen so many good neighbors.”

Kathleen sat next to her father. “But what
is
the true story of the tendrilless? Why do they

hate the slans so much? Where did they come from?”

Gray sighed and leaned back in his chair. “It’s a long story.”

“Oh, then I’ll make coffee.” The old woman came back in a few minutes with a reheated

pot of bitter old brew.

Petty slurped his coffee, then winced at the taste. “And what about yourself, Gray? You

don’t have tendrils, yet you seem to be on the side of the slans, not the tendrilless. You’re

obviously a spy, an infiltrator—but which side are you on?”

The President accepted a cup, thanked Granny, and searched in his mind for the proper

spot to begin. “During the long dark ages of the Slan Wars, slan geneticists decided that for the

survival of our race they had to breed a new offshoot that couldn’t be detected by outsiders,

slans that had no tendrils. But consequently, the tendrilless had none of the superior telepathic

abilities of true slans. They were sleepers, like dormant seeds planted in the recovering society.”

“What happened to all the other true slans?”

“They went into hiding somewhere. I don’t know the details, since it was so long ago. But

many more of them survived than was apparent.”

“Not after my men rooted out the ones you kept in the grand palace.” Petty chuckled.

“That diminished your numbers quite a bit! And my secret police are probably still hunting

them down.”

Granny poured more hot coffee into Petty’s cup … and onto his hand, and onto his lap. He

yelped. The old woman walked away with an innocent expression, which broke into a smile.

Gray continued, “As vigilante groups killed anyone with tendrils, my forefathers began to

create slans that still had the same mutant genes, the same physical strength, but genetically

designed to manifest no tendrils, not for several generations. Their telepathic abilities were

dormant. Originally, when we infiltrated them into human society, the tendrilless were

supposed to know what they were and what their mission was.”