The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [91]
"Only be a matter of seconds before the meta-cobalt bomb explodes, it must be," Albrellian cried, his eyestalks almost fully retracted in agitation. "All the pieces are assembled!"
"Not quite all." Braxiatel indicated the virtual screen. "According to the Doctor, there's a piece missing. Some kind of fuse, he said."
Albrellian perked up a bit. "Is it possible that to the island carrying the fuse did not make it the carrier?" he asked. "That could only have happened if the hypnotic controller had from the brain been removed. Perhaps a chance after all have we - but only if those carriers off the island can get we." He shot a venomous glance at the Jamarians. "But first with your revolutionary little clerks to deal have we."
Braxiatel turned to the Jamarians. "Tzorogol, there's obviously been some sort of-" He stopped abruptly when he became aware that the Jamarian was shaking its head firmly. "Tzorogol, what's got into you?"
"Power," Tzorogol snarled. "You took a race without any influence or prestige, you put them in charge of technology that it would have taken them millions of years to build for themselves, and you didn't expect them to take advantage of it? That sort of arrogance verges on stupidity." Tzorogol's little scarlet eyes flickered back and forth over the stunned group. "We know what other races say about us. We know the sort of snide jokes that are made behind our backs, and you're all wrong, do you hear me? Wrong! We're as intelligent as any of you!"
Braxiatel felt as if the ground was swaying beneath his feet, and he was having trouble distinguishing the Jamarian's diatribe over the sound of the blood rushing through his ears. How could he have been so... so monumentally stupid? "Look," he said finally, "this has gone far enough -" The words sounded fatuous as he said them, and he stopped in the middle of the sentence, rehearsing the possible conversations that could spool away from that point in time. None of them got him anywhere. The natural order of things had suddenly reversed, and the underdogs had the upper hand.
Nothing he could say would change that. He shrugged. "Yes," he said simply. "I've been arrogant and foolish."
"And not for the first time, hmm?" said the Doctor superciliously.
He stepped forward. "Now that you have this information," he said to Tzorogol, "you realize that it is useless? Your species has neither the infrastructure, the resources or the knowledge to exploit it. You're in the position of a child holding the blueprints of a house: you may understand them, but you can't do anything with them."
He clasped his hands behind his back and smiled. "It will still take generations of effort for you to climb out of your playpen. You may think that you have built yourselves an empire, but it is an empire of glass, a pretty bauble, too fragile to last."
Tzorogol's horn flicked downward, as if it was thinking about running the Doctor through, but a disturbance at the back of the hall distracted it. A group of Jamarians rushed up to Tzorogol, glaring at Vicki and Albrellian.
"They killed Szaratak!" one of them exclaimed. "We tried to catch them, but -"
"Did you get the information?" Tzorogol snapped.
The Jamarian nodded, and handed Tzorogol a small control unit made out of curved metal and green glass. "Every weapon has been dismantled and scanned, and every computer databank downloaded. All the information is in there."
"You underestimate us," Tzorogol snarled at the Doctor. "We're aware that it's knowledge we need, not information, so we're going to auction the information we've collected, sell it to the highest bidder - and we have all the potential bidders gathered here, at the Armageddon Convention." It held up the control unit. "Everything we've learned is in here - details of every weapon