Zainal looked down at his clasped hands as he organized his response.
"I was taken into a very large white room with a big chair in the center and two Eosi, one at a control desk. I was strapped into the chair and then the device came down out of the ceiling to cover my head."
"Could you see what it looked like?" Dorothy asked, and Kris realized how eagerly she awaited details.
Zainal shrugged. "A large shape/' and he made a bell form with both hands, "with many wires attached to it and dials."
"It covered your head or just your face?"
"My head down to my shoulders. It was heavy."
"Did you see any blue lights?" Dorothy asked, scribbling again.
"I saw nothing."
"And the sensations? What were they like?" She turned to Kris as Zainal once again considered his answer. "We're trying to establish if any invasive probe is used: Needles or possibly electrical shock. We need to know whether the brain itself has been entered and damaged: whether or not there has been physical damage-rather than just memory, emotional, and fact erasures."
"There aren't any scars on the Victims?" Kris asked, and Dorothy shook her head.
"Not visible ones, certainly. Which is why Zainal's recollection is so vital to us."
"Like electricity," Zainal said, putting his hands to his temples and moving them up to the top of his broad skull. "And here;' and he touched the base of his cranium. "But no blood. No scar."
"Oh, yes, that's interesting, very interesting;' and Dorothy wrote hastily for a minute. "No pain in the temples?"
"Where?" Zainal asked.
"Here," and Kris touched the points.
"Oh. Not pain, pressure."
"Isn't that where lobotomies are done?" Kris apprehensively asked Dorothy.
She nodded. "Anywhere else? Pressure or pain or odd sensations? I'm trying to discover just which areas might have been… touched by this device.
If they coincide with what factual, emotional, and memory centers humans have," she added as an aside to Kris. "There are more parallels than you might guess."
"A sort of stabbing, very quick, to the…" and Zainal put his hand to the top of his head, "inside of my head."
"Quite possibly a general stimulation," Dorothy murmured. Then, with a kind smile, went on. "So you were assessed and passed. Then what happened?"
"I was told who to report to for training." Then he grinned. "I know that my uncles were disappointed that I was acceptable. My father was relieved.
More glory for our branch of the family."
"How old are you now?" Dorothy asked, a question which Kris had never bothered to ask.
Zainal hesitated and then with a grin and a shrug, "Thirty-five. I have been exploring this galaxy for sixteen years:'
"Sixteen?" Kris was surprised.
"That would make only four years of formal training? Of any sort?"
Dorothy asked, surprised.
"Three. I have been here two years now. Two Catteni years." And he grinned at Kris.
"Pilot training is all you had?"
"I learned what I needed to know to do the job which the Eosi ordered for me. I worked hard and learned well," Zainal said with a touch of pride.
"Amazing," Dorothy murmured as she made more notes.
"But you know a lot about a lot of things," Kris protested.
Zainal shrugged. "Once I am officially a pilot," and he gave Kris a mischievous look out of the corner of his eye, "it was no longer wrong for me to learn what I wish so long as I pilot well. The Eosi," and his face slid briefly into Catteni impassivity again, "require their hosts to have been many places and seen many things."
"Then you don't have any knowledge about your own body? No biology?"
Dorothy asked. '.
"Bi-o-lo-gy?" Zainal repeated.
Dorothy explained, and he laughed.
"As long as my body does what I need it to do, I do not ask how it does it."
Both Dorothy and Kris smiled.
"When I compare what our astronauts went through to qualify as space pilots…" and Dorothy raised one hand in amazement.
"The earliest aviators flew by the seat of their pants," Kris remarked.
"Seat of their pants?" Zainal asked, frowning so Dorothy and Kris took turns explaining the meaning.
"I did that, too, when training did not cover all I needed to know. So I made those who build the spacecraft show me how everything worked," Zainal said.
"And those… engineers… were also trained by families who were engineers?"
Dorothy asked, and Zainal nodded. "Very restrictive educational system. Only a need to know. However did they manage?"
"The Eosi do the manage part;' Zainal said in a caustic tone. "Emassi follow orders just like Drassi and even the Rassi:'
"It's amazing even the Emassi can do what they do," Kris remarked, regarding Zainal with even more respect.
"Yes, it is," Dorothy agreed, "and we tend to rely on the educational process… or the genetic heritage," and she gave Kris a look. "Depending on which school of thought you adhere to." She gave another sigh and then said more briskly, including Kris. "Are there any special aptitudes which Catteni have which Humans do not? For example, the way the Deski can climb vertically and have extraordinary hearing?"
"Night vision," Zainal said promptly. "Our hearing is more acute but not as good as the Deski. We can last longer eating poor food… or is that body difference, not brain?"
"Metabolic differences certainly," Dorothy said, having written "eye" and "ear" on her pad. Kris could read such short words backwards. Then the psychologist spent a moment doodling. "Could you possibly draw me a sketch of the device used on you?" She turned to Kris in explanation.
"Those that got a good look at it can't talk, and those who can talk didn't see it."
"Zainal's very good at drawing devices," Kris said, with a touch of pride.
"Yes," and Zainal complied, using the pen with the quick, deft strokes that Kris had seen him use in delineating the mechanicals. "There!"
Dorothy regarded the neat sketch and hmmmed under her breath.
"Hmmm, yes, well it looks like something an evil scientist would create."
She sighed. "Considering who the Eosi chose to brain-scan, they seem to have been on an information hunt. But why? Their level of technology is so much more sophisticated than ours. Or were they just trying to strip minds that could possibly help foment riot and rebellion? Or maybe reduce humans to the level of your Rassi?"
Zainal made a guttural noise and his smile, while it did not touch his eyes, was evil. "Ray Scott said that he recognized some of the people as scientists.
So the Eosi are looking for information. If they were wiping minds to make you like Drassi, they would start with children and block learning."
He grinned. "The Eosi look for ideas. They have had very few new ones over the past hundred or so years."
"Really?" Dorothy remarked encouragingly.
"Maybe they need to stimulate their own brains," Kris said. "Or would it work on them?"
Zainal shrugged.
"Will Seissmann and Dr. Ansible felt that the Eosi were taking a vicious revenge on humans by destroying minds in a wholesale fashion/' Dorothy said in an expressionless voice. "There seemed to be no reason to include some of the individuals-TV reporters and anchor men… and women…
"Really? Who?" Kris asked in astonishment.
"Who? Anchor men and women?" Zainal didn't understand the term.
"Oh/' he said, when Kris explained, and added, "information would be the first thing Eosi want to control. All your satellites and communication networks were destroyed in the initial phase of the invasion."
"Did you know they were choosing Earth?" Dorothy asked.
Zainal shook his head with a rueful grin. "I am exploring on the far side of this galaxy. I had stopped at Barevi for supplies and fuel when…"
And then he shrugged as if both women knew his history from then on.