Six or eight brains? Well, Mink, I wouldn't argue, but I think you are confusing certain functions of one brain with—oh, do go on!
Let me see that gun. My Lord, what a concoction! Blunderbuss muzzle, shells, yet no breech-loading; ramrods to shove in shells! My sainted aunt! A fantastic combination....
He eats dandelions, parsley, grass, eh ... chlorophyll, obviously. And the globe rests on his chest and puts tentacles into his mouth and nostrils. It's feeding, sure; look at the title of this book you've got here. This is a bastard English but close enough. Certainly your father wrote it, Miss. Some of your gentry must have preserved the art as a secret.
Look here: I'll make it as plain as I can. The globes are from another world. They came here for diamonds to run their buttons with. Got that?
Now here's what I deduce from the little I've read here. Talk about Pepy's Diary! Hadn't anything on this chronicle. Your father and the other gentry have to feed the globes periodically. Evidently they draw nourishment out of the human bodies—all that chlorophyll makes me think it's a definitely physical nourishment, rather than a psychic one. That's what your people pay for being privileged powers in the land. They stand the disgrace and the pain, if there is any, the draining of their energies, in return for plain old magnetic power.
So that's the source of life, strength, what-have-you, of the aliens! They must have gotten pretty frantic out in the space wastes, looking for a planet that could afford them a life form that was tap-able.
Evidently it has to be voluntary, from these books. I guess the ancestors of the ruck had their crack at the honor and declined, thus dooming themselves and their offspring to servitude; while those that assented became the gentry. What a—Judas Priest! What a sordid state of affairs for poor old Earth!
Let me have that line from the Globate Credo again: They came from the sky before our grandfathers were born, to a world torn by war; they settled our differences and raised us from the slime—there's a bitter laugh, gentlemen—giving us freedom. All we have we owe to the globes. There's the whole tale in a nutshell. God!
Orbish language, Orbuary, Orbsday—nice job they did of infiltrating. I wonder what books they left you. I'd like a look at your father's library. Alice in Wonderland, I suppose, or Black Beauty, or something equally advanced.
Now listen, lads, and you, Lady Nirea. I came from a world that may have had its rugged spots, but it was heaven and Utopia compared with this one. You disinterred me at the damndest most vital moment of your history, and probably of Earth's as well—we've had conquerors aplenty, but always of this world, not from out of it. It seems to me that if your rebellion fails, you're due for worse treatment than ever. You've got to win, and win fast. Any entity that has atomic weapons is going to be no easy mark, and the gentry have guns. How about you people? Ten? Ten guns altogether? Oohh....