"I'm sure Yoke's no danger," said the King, taking the alla. "She was only trying to help her friend. As was Vaana, you were glad for an excuse to kill her, weren't you, Kennit? You and the guards have been waiting for--for--" The King's voice broke and he put his hand over his eyes. 'You can't understand this, Kennit, but I loved her." "Yis," said Kennit.

There was a minute of silence. At Yoke's feet lay the two halves of Vaana, inert in a reeking puddle of straw-colored moldie ichor. Onar was sitting woozily upright on the deck next to the dismembered moldie. It seemed as if the bad guys had won.

"If I give you back your alla, will you finish your work for me now, Yoke?" the King asked. He was fiddling with the alla as if desperate for a distraction from the sight of the shattered Vaana. "Curious," continued the King. "Just an empty tube, though if I look through it the world seems to be twirling." He knitted his brows as if willing something to happen, but nothing did. "It won't make anything for me. Yes yes, it really is keyed to you, Yoke. You're the goose who lays the golden eggs. A fine role."

"No eggs if the farmer mistreats the goose," said Yoke. "Unshackle me so I can take the leech-DIM off of Cobb. Until then I'm not making you anything more. Once you free us, I'll still keep my promise to fill your ship with imipolex and gold."

"Oh, but we can make her do much more than that, Bou-Bou," said Onar, his voice slurred. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the side of his head, gathering his forces. Moving slowly and carefully, he got to his feet and sneered down at Yoke with something like his old energy. "Yes, Bou-Bou, I have another trick up my sleeve. I can make little Miss Snooty Britches do anything I want her to. Look." Onar pulled a twitching piece of imipolex out of his pants pocket, a fat dark red slug of a thing.

"Be careful, that's a thinking cap!" exclaimed the horrified Yoke, who'd been warned about them many times before. "A moldie can make it crawl up a person's nose to take over their brain!"

"Yes, my dear," said Onar. "Up your nose. I'll use the leech-DIM to run Cobb, and Cobb will use the thinking cap to run you. A baroque little chain of command, no?" He paused and giggled. "I have an idea, Bou-Bou. Why don't I smear Yoke with Vaana's ichor and get her to have sex with you. Little Yoke's a rather good shag, don't you know."

"How revolting," said the King coldly. "I'm shocked at you, Onar. Set the girl free, Kennit. She's perfectly willing to finish filling our ship. And do something about having poor Vaana's body stored away. I'm going to give her a proper funeral."

"But Yoke was holding a knife, Your Majesty," said Kennit. "I have to protect you."

"Do you presume to disobey my direct command?" said the King, rising to his feet. Kennit temporized by continuing to talk, and the two of them went to stand over the remains of Vaana. Meanwhile Yoke was still sitting in the deck chair with her hands cuffed behind her back.

While Kennit and the King continued debating, Onar handed the nastily twitching thinking cap to Cobb -- who had no power to do anything but accept it. At the activating touch of Cobb's moldie fingers, the thinking cap bloomed like a blob of ink in a glass of water, sending out long, greedy feelers. Now Onar darted around behind Yoke and held her by the shoulders. The enslaved old Cobb shuffled forward, holding the excited thinking cap out toward Yoke's face.

"Help!" said Yoke, but her voice came out small and squeaky. Stupid Kennit and the King weren't even looking at her. It was like a dream where you try to run and your legs are knee-deep in molasses. Onar had her shoulders pinned in a grip of steel. The dark red thinking cap was coming closer. This was happening too fast!

It occurred to Yoke that perhaps she could control her alla even when she wasn't holding it. She reached out for mental contact with her alla and--yes! She alla-made a quick hydrogen-oxygen explosion at waist level between Kennit and the King.

The blast was encouragingly loud. The King bellowed, Kennit roared, and Onar and Cobb were so startled that Cobb dropped the writhing thinking cap onto Yoke's lap. Yoke quickly exploded a much bigger sphere of hydrogen and oxygen in a spot that she guessed to be behind Onar. He came tumbling onto her from over her right shoulder. The chair collapsed. With a quick twitch of her legs and torso, Yoke maneuvered Onar's head to be near the thinking cap. The thinking cap crawled onto Onar's face and shimmied into his left nostril. Onar screamed for Cobb to catch it, but he was too late. With a last filthy wriggle, the thinking cap had disappeared all the way into Onar's nose. Onar's limbs twitched as if in an epileptic fit.'

And now Cobb began twitching too. He and Onar were in a feedback control loop. Onar's leech-DIM was controlling Cobb, but Cobb's thinking cap was controlling Onar. They sprang together like wrestlers, like magnets. The Cobb-directed Onar tired to claw the leech-DIM out of Cobb's back and the Onar-directed Cobb probed into Onar's nose in search of the wily thinking cap. Yet at the same time, Onar was directing Cobb not to direct Onar to tear out the leech-DIM, and Cobb was telling Onar not to tell Cobb to try and get the thinking cap. Not to mention the fact that Cobb both was and wasn't trying to choke Onar. With all the contradictory impulses in the loop, nothing was accomplished, and the two could only flail about in chaos, their spastic motions cycling through a Wrestle-mania strange artractor.

Meanwhile Kennit had placed the muzzle of a pocket-size rail-gun against the side of Yoke's head. "If you make one more speck of trouble," he growled into her ear, "I'm going to blow off your head."

Now a new complication arrived. Moldies were flying in from every side, seemingly drawn by Vaana's distress cry. Up on the bridge the captain began using the whip-cannon to flail out metal pucks in every direction, and the two other bodyguards opened up automatic weapons fire. Kennit let go of Yoke and began firing his gun at the moldies as well. But there were too many moldies and they were too fast. A half dozen of them homed in on the whip-cannon and cut the thing off at its base. Yoke watched all this, sitting handcuffed on the deck. She'd scooted herself away from the flailing Onar and Cobb. The King still had her alla, and after Kennit's threat she was scared to use it again. As the whip-cannon fell into the sea, Tashtego and Daggoo suddenly arrived. They came running across the deck, teeth bared like joyful pirates.

"Hold your fire!" the King called to his bodyguards. "These are my best agents! Tashtego, Daggoo, can you revive Vaana?"

Instantly taking in the scene, the great Daggoo bent over Vaana, his rapid fingers beginning to splice the halves of her body together. Tashtego disappeared into the ship's hold.

There was a steady thud of more and more moldies landing on the deck. Each of them went immediately belowdeck and moments later flew back out of the hatch, two or three times as big as before. Most of the ship's crew had jumped overboard. Cobb and Onar continued to wrestle.

"Who dealt this mess?" said Kennit, looking around despairingly. He gave a shrill whistle and the two other bodyguards came down the companionway. "We're taking HRH back to the secure island," he told them. They started across the deck.

"Let's not leave quite yet, Kennit," implored the King. "I want to see if Daggoo can fix Vaana." Tashtego reappeared from below, much fattened, and carrying a spare slug of imipolex that he gave Daggoo to use on Vaana. From the water came the sound of the ship's motor launch starting up. One of the bodyguards yelled down that they should wait for the King.

"Take off my handcuffs," called Yoke. "And give me back my alla. I can use it to save Cobb."