Impossible Dreamers

Chapter 4 (que): Thought-scanner

       Sleech was always tired after an audience with the Greatest of Great Masters, but today he was doubly tired. If there had only been a way to avoid telling Tyro about these stupid Grabblers. What did it matter if they lived out their separate lives? Would it do anybody any harm? Were they worth bothering with? Really? They were primitive people, cut off from civilisation for thousands of years. It was all very well conquering them, but once they were under the control of Great Bartyronis, would they really be of any use? Barbarians like that?

Still, Sleech had lost no time in letting the inventors know that they had to get the flying machine across the mountain and through the smoke. It was no good them telling him it was impossible. There was no such thing as impossible for Tyro.

Once you found a new lot of people, you really had to conquer them. Tyro knew that, very well. The Bartyronians had to defeat the whole world, and make it like Bartyronis. It was possible that in that strange land between the mountains there were things of value, apart from the people. Mountains were often good places to find valuable rocks, rare metals, or stuff to burn. Yes, that had happened many times. By conquering strange lands, Bartyronis had become rich. Not as rich as the lands in ancient legends, but those were not true. It was a nuisance that people still believed them. A new rule was needed.

It was hard work, conquering people. Such very hard work. Making sure they stayed conquered was harder. And now, just when it looked like the work might be ending, these Grabblers appeared. Why couldn't they just keep their thoughts to themselves?

If it weren't for the thought-scanner, nobody would be aware of these people. But the scanner was such a useful thing. It had made it easy to conquer so many people. And once they were conquered, to keep them under control. The machine frightened people so much that just the threat of its use got them to do what you wanted. This was just as well, because it actually wasn't really possible to use it all that much. To start with, it needed an enormous amount of power. Everything needed power. Sleech didn't really care where the power came from, but he knew that to make it, you needed to conquer more and more people. You had to get stuff from them that you could burn. And burning the stuff made things work. That was the science that Bartyronis had discovered. But now there wasn't all that much stuff left to burn. So we should conquer the Grabblers.

The problem with the thought-scanner was that it actually didn't work very well. It would usually tell you something about what people were thinking. But it was difficult to know what it meant. Most people thought you just aimed it at someone's brain, and immediately knew exactly what was going through their head. That's what people were supposed to think, but it wasn't like that at all. Certainly, it showed you pictures from inside people's brains, but that didn't mean that you could really know their thoughts. What Sleech really wanted was a machine that just printed a stream of thoughts that you could easily understand. Words like 'I love Bartyronis'. Or more likely, 'I am afraid of Tyro'. But apparently that wasn't possible. Thoughts didn't work like that. They didn't come in straight lines and clear paragraphs. Not with most people. They jumped about from one idea to another, throwing up pictures and scraps, phrases and sounds which then had to be worked into some sort of meaning.

Still, even if it didn't work all that well, it certainly was very useful. It could tell you where somebody was thinking, even if it couldn't say what they were thinking. So it could find people who were hiding. Even if, like the Grabblers, they were behind mountains.

The most important function of the thought-scanner was to keep people frightened. Frightened of thinking the wrong thoughts, and of what would happen to them if they did.

The Grabblers were not yet afraid. They didn't yet know what to be afraid of.

Sleech tried to think of pleasant things, but his thoughts returned again and again to the irksome people. It was no use. He couldn't sleep. He needed to do something.