Pretender

CHAPTER 18.

Impasse.

The host had at last united with his love, and the two would surely exist for many years in the rapturous and quarrelsome relationship that was native marriage. Both were scribes in a world that needed scribes.

DS-1 remained in control of Station A-10 and its galactic apparatus. The repair craft would soon arrive, but NK-2 would not be able to make contact, and DS-1 would let it think that the stranded galactic had perished before reaching the station.

Meanwhile the enemy TM-R remained, too powerful to eliminate individually, too dangerous to ignore. TM-R would discover the location of his craft and take it over and destroy it, if he attempted to return to send warning.

The natives were all too ready to interpret galactic and extra-galactic entities as deities. As if the situation wasn’t complicated enough already!

NK-2 paused and went over that thought again. He could not accomplish his purpose directly—but suppose he went at it indirectly, using that same deistic tendency of the natives? Building a real religion around Aten, the compassionate god—whose adherents would be bound to oppose the influences of the false god Ishtar, by whatever guise she appeared? Good against evil?

If it worked, TM-R might be destroyed. Then he could send his signal, and in a few more years he would be home. The enemy would have no base on this planet.

If it didn’t work… he would just have to keep trying. Even if it took centuries.

The first thing to do was change the orientation of Aten. Make him omnipotent, eager to assimilate all worshipers, even the unworthy. Set up prophets to spread his reputation, arrange for appropriate miracles.

Even if it took millennia…