"Please," Urei pleaded. "Let's not be pedestrian; I expected some co-operation from you. Don't let the trees obscure your vision. Don't you realize that your own words justified any mental manipulation I might practice on humans? If a little thing like I did can be considered hostile, then you humans declared war on me thirty years ago. Actually, all I did was to get to some information a little faster than you intended to give it to me; it didn't inconvenience you a bit."
Urei's persuasive tone of voice caused a chill to course its way up Benton's spine. The voice itself was a rich bass and somehow familiar. But now he recognized it and the implications weren't comforting; he had heard just such a persuasive tone when one of the technicians had pleaded for a chance to use Urei to settle a few of his personal problems.
"What have you done to Hackett?" he asked, suddenly.
A groan issued from the speaker. "I should have known better than to try to fool you," Urei said. "But you humans forget so easily ... and you only spoke to that man once in the past six months. You should have forgotten his voice—there are so many others around here...."
"Where's Hackett?" Benton insisted.
"He's all right," Urei soothed. "He disobeyed your orders that time, you know; he used me at night when nobody was in the control room. Such drivel he gave me! An advice to the lovelorn column would have served his purpose. So, rather than startle you with directly imposed mental communication, I decided to use a human voice. What better one than his? Don't be alarmed; he won't be harmed in any way, and he'll have no memory of this at all."
Benton felt it now necessary to crystallize his thoughts with words. He wasn't giving them away, for Urei had access to them anyway. And that thought gave him a feeling of futility even as he spoke.
"Why are you interested in the Eastern Alliance?" he asked. "Is it because you feel the presence of a kindred spirit? You'd like to become better acquainted with an outfit which has no respect for the privacy of a man's thoughts or his right to freedom of action?"
The speaker gave forth with a series of sympathetic clucks. "Thalamic reactions again," it observed. "Let's not argue about it. Your brain isn't clicking right tonight; you ought to disconnect your adrenals. What I wanted to talk about is the impending war. It mustn't start, you know."