Not surprisingly, since the Jart had been highly stressed, the most prominent images were of its capture. Olmy saw what had to be the Way—quite flat and colorless—and brilliant objects in the foreground, picked out with amazing detail. The details changed frequently, making him wonder whether his partial was translating properly. The partial, anticipating the reactions to its primary, assured Olmy its interpretations were correct.

The Jart was perceiving objects from multiple and almost independent viewpoints, not in a Picasso-like Cubist fashion, but by processing the visual input through many different routines.

It then came to Olmy—and his partial independently concurred—that the Jart was using sensory interpreters adapted from other species. The Jart contained many visual “brains,” almost certainly patterned after those of non-Jart species.

During its capture, the Jart had apparently shuffled through these alternatives, trying to duplicate a human viewpoint by using routines from beings thought to be similar to humans.

Did this explain some of the confusion as to ego and motivation routines? Did Jarts literally engulf the mentalities of other species, carrying them around like tools in a kit?

How many intelligent species, how many cultures and societies had the Jarts conquered? What had happened to them?

Olmy worked for an additional hour, trying to make sense of the visual memories. Finally he was able to piece together a reasonably clear picture of the capture.

First level sense interpretation (perhaps the Jart’s natural routine):

The surround is pitchy black and cold, absent of sound. The foreground is occupied by hot and noisy objects moving very rapidly. The objects are machines, but the Jarts do not build machines like these (an image of seeding and virus-like development).

Second level sense interpretation (foreign?):

The background is filled with detail, sharp to the point of distraction; the foreground objects seem irrelevant, ignored. This routine simply cannot interpret machines or perhaps close objects at all.

(Is this an adapted sense routine, Olmy wondered, designed to augment or supplement the others? It seemed to have a minor place in the totality.) Olmy had no difficulty recognizing the Way. Tractor fields stretch across the vast expanse, brilliantly colored—purple and red.

Some fields recede in sparkling tatters from penetration beams. The beams pierce through and intersect—but again, this routine cannot interpret machines.

(An odd lack, Olmy thought; seeing was akin to thinking, however, and it was possible the species this routine had been “borrowed” from had no knowledge of technology.)

Third level (adapted Jart? Similar to the first):

The actions of the foreground objects are clearly understood, in the abstract. Each machine is sharply delineated.

Olmy recognized human armored physical penetrators (unmanned except by partials) and automated seek-and-destroy units, great and small—all nasty and black and seething with field energies. He shuddered. He had always disliked such weapons. They were simple and direct and unstoppable. They destroyed whatever they captured within their fields, reducing it to component atoms, pulses of heat and gamma rays.