I returned shaken and stirred from my experience in the mountain. The conference was on a half-hour break and many of the attendees were intoxicated. An orgy was in progress. Debra laughed at my expression.

“You were expecting something else?” Debra asked.

Over the noise I heard the noise of two men fighting. There was the crackle of automatic stingers and the sound of two bodies hitting the floor. Silly me. I was right there. Bettie was curled up in a sobbing ball. Debra signaled that she would deal with Bettie. The men were my problem.

I scanned the surveillance video, then threw up the video replay at normal speed for the rest of the crowd. An alarm went off—someone in the crowd had accessed an unauthorized weapon but that wasn’t important right now—he was covered.

“I need the second in command of the Indian contingent and the leader of the Chinese delegation,” I announced. “I’m going to give you two choices for abusing my hospitality. I can handle the matter and both will die. Or you can handle things. Hurry up, I’m on a tight schedule.”

What I did next was surrender the head of the Indian delegation to the Chinese and the second in command of the Chinese was surrendered to the Indian contingent. This caused consternation.

“Think about what you want for your people,” I said. “If you refuse, I’ll toss them in the recycler and reduce them to component chemicals—they won’t wake up. They’ll be out of it for at least another twenty minutes. That’s Confederacy justice—they’ve stepped outside of the protection afforded to guests by attacking other guests. I’m offering to hand you the person who injured your delegation to this conference so that you can get justice. The Indian criminal will go to China for Chinese justice and the Chinese criminal will go to India for Indian justice. Your two governments can hash out the circumstances. Now, will you take your prisoners and bring back replacements so that we can get our work done, or do I get rid of their corpses? Your call.”

It took all of twenty minutes for replacements to return. Meanwhile, I had surrounded the illegally-armed man.

“Allow me to make introductions, Senor Guevara,” I pointed out three dogs and two wolves and one lion. “The lion is Kimba. The wolves are Calgary and Fenster. These dogs are King, Bruno and Nana.”

“Why are you talking to me like that?” the man snapped. “This is outrageous!”

“These six are very sensitive to hostility, sir,” I continued. “If I were to discover that you had taken hostile actions—such as bringing a weapon where weapons are prohibited—you would be swarmed before you could sneeze. Right now, I don’t see any weapon. Dogs and wolves and lions can smell the unique signatures of a Bersa Thunder Plus .380 automatic loaded with Aguila hollow point ammunition. All 16 of them. I’m trying to get everybody on board to protect Earth. I don’t have time to seek vengeance for every wrong. You are under my protection until you blatantly misbehave, and when you do, I am compelled to act. Do you know our current altitude?”

“You don’t scare me!”

“Do you respect these animals?” I asked. “Despite appearances, they are not cuddly pets.”

“Attention, guests,” Lilith’s amplified voice carried over the crowd noise. “My husband, the Lord of Arc Dios, and Battle Captain is constantly thinking up new ways to defend Earth. Tomcat, give us an assessment of the greatest danger Earth faces.”

“We humans are our own worst enemies,” I said. “The Sa’arm will pile on and on and on, and we are something they cannot dream of—we are the most formidable fighters they have ever faced. Their first few colonization fleets will be smashed, but they will keep coming on. The second or third wave will reach through the Confederacy Navy and have to deal with Earth Defense Forces with spacecraft and ground defenses.

“I have a confession to make. I may have destroyed a scouting fleet that was going to find out if Earth was worthwhile. Another, larger scouting fleet will soon investigate what happened to the first scouting fleet. Eventually a full-fledged colony fleet will be dispatched and if there’s any survivors, the next fleet may include thousands of very large Sa’arm star ships. Here’s what we know of them.”

I had only guesswork. Oh, well! Intelligence work was based on rumor and gossip and myths and outright lies, with more than a little guesswork. I didn’t even have the latest Confederacy Navy intelligence on the Sa’arm—and wouldn’t have been permitted to give it out to Earth. I don’t know which was worse, the lies I told or my guesses. I explained how the world’s navies would be more or less unmolested—but the Sa’arm would probably hit major land masses, mostly North America, South America, Africa and Asia. I was expecting at least nine colony ships and an estimated nine BILLION Sa’arm, every individual Sa’arm unit capable of fighting as infantry. I could have been off and the landing force be only nine hundred million—we humans still were ignorant of the foe. On land we had massive tank fleets that the Sa’arm had not experienced.

“The key to success is a layered defense. Earth isn’t the only planet being protected. We are in combat in several other star systems at the moment. What we can spare will form the second layer. The first layer is Confederacy offensive operations and blockades. Third layer is Earth’s Space Force, and I’m trying to organize that now. The Confederacy will permit spacecraft from Earth to operate out to the moon’s orbit if and only if I can persuade you to play nice together. Should I fail, that layer of defense will be gone. After that, there’s the anti-landing batteries installed around the globe. There’s no time for a complete defense, but I’ve made progress and the orbital and ground based defenses will probably cut the invasion forces in half. You’ll still have the most devastating conflict in Earth’s history.”

“I have something to show you,” Lilith announced. “In just a few years Tom will be able to do these things.”

Utter devastation of Planet Earth was displayed due to asteroid collisions, reversing Earth’s spin, shifting the continental plates and other feats I didn’t know how to do—yet. If ever. After six quick disasters, Lilith revealed that my ability to communicate with animals was a weakness. In a few years I would be vulnerable to take-over by the Sa’arm gestalt.

“The Sa’arm communicate by telepathy. They form a hive mind. What one Sa’arm unit knows, the entire Sa’arm world knows. Eventually, Tom will be able to dominate a gestalt. That may be a century away. You probably already know that Tom is our alpha male. What you may not realize is that the alpha male who lacks compassion and empathy is a failure. Most so-called leaders are narcissistic and brutal.”

“What’s stopping Major Lawrence from taking over the human race?” Senor Guevara asked.

“That is a fair question,” I added. “Right now, I don’t know.”

“That’s not very encouraging,” Solomon said. “Honest, but we humans follow strong men. You’re not appearing very strong. Oh, I don’t doubt you, Son-in-law. I’ve already seen the Swarm in the dungeon. Perhaps if you show the rest how well you can control them?”

That suggestion was really an order. Minutes later the conference convened in an amphitheater that resembled a Roman coliseum. I strolled out among the six Sa’arm units who were feeding and getting ready to lay eggs and repeat the cycle again. If not monitored closely, these Sa’arm would quickly form a large enough gestalt to take over Arc Dios—and there were several captured Sa’arm on Earth that could cause problems.

I simply lined up the Sa’arm in two ranks of three and did drill and ceremonies with them. I then got a basketball and we played—until one of the Sa’arm popped the basketball. Okay, nobody’s perfect! The Sa’arm responded to hand signals—much like snakes did. Sometimes I imagined that I could plant pictured in their minds. Obviously I was deluded.

“I’m not as good at this as four other people on this station,” I claimed. “Lilith and Debra make me look totally incompetent. Branimira and Dawn are very good. Here’s a secret to herding cats—if the cats want to please you, they’ll do anything.”

“Right now they’re watching Tarzan,” Debra smirked. “I warned you!”

“Cats watching movies?” Senor Guevara sneered. “Cat’s can’t see television.”

“They’re watching something,” I said. “They’re purring. It might just be proximity to Dawn and Branimira. Or they may be seeing something on the screen. Want to watch them watching movies?”

“That sounds stupid!” Senor Guevara said.

“You’re right.” I admitted.

“How did you control those things?” Senor Guevara asked.

“Talent.” Lilith claimed.

Arguing with a goddess is counterproductive.

“It would be easier if you just took control over humans,” Solomon pointed out. “Why not just do that?”

“Several reasons,” I improvised. “Free will is important. I can’t think of everything and I need to sleep sometimes. When I leave you on your own, it’s possible that some or all of you would rebel—and you’d be right. Most of this conference doesn’t like me—I have my animals smelling the hostility, the sensors reading your bios. And when the Sa’arm arrive, they might be able to take over the entire Earth because I have imposed my will on the rest of you. That’s assuming, of course, that I am able to control more than a few humans at one time. No, the easy way won’t work.”

Not that I believed in the easy way. I was still painting by the numbers in the animal/human interface game. This I did know—the human Dunbar number is also known as the Rule of 150—that’s the average cognitive limit for meaningful personal relationships. The full theory has six numbers: 1500 (recognizable), 500 (acquaintances), 150 (personal networks), 50 (close networks), 15 (sympathy group), and 5 (support clique). Those six levels approximate military organizations—regiments, battalions, companies, platoons, squads and fire teams. These numbers are AVERAGES and some humans exceed those averages—some individuals can only handle a personal network of a dozen people. I think that the support clique number is related to short term memory—humans can generally keep from three to nine items in short term memory--

“There’s a quality called charisma,” the speaker was Anton Monk, the person who had stashed the pistol now carried by Senor Guevara. Lieutenant Monk was another Confederacy Navy officer assigned as liaison to Earth Defense Forces—and he had beaten Bettie prior to a fight breaking out between Earth Defense Force delegates from India and China. “Is that a factor in controlling humans?”