"Julian May - The Pliocene Exiles 04 - The Adversary" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

Tanu and Firvulag constituted a dimorphic race--the former
metapsychically latent, and the latter possessed of operant
metafunctions, mostly limited in power. The Tanu, with their
higher technology, had long ago developed mind-amplifying
devices, called golden torcs, that raised them to operancy. Use
of the torcs had its price, however: A certain percentage of
Tanu children proved incompatible with it and died of the
"black-torc" syndrome, in spite of the efforts of the grieving
adults. These black-torc tragedies exacerbated the already
serious problem of low birthrate among the Tanu.

The Firvulag, tougher and cruder than their resplendent kin,
did not require torcs in order to exercise their metafunctions.
The leaders and great heroes among the Little People were the
mental equals of the Tanu; but most Firvulag were weaker.
Stubborn and conservative, for most of their stay on Earth they
had resisted the notion of acting in metaconcert--that is, using
a multimind operational mode. The Tanu had experimented
with this technique, although they never attained the efficiency
achieved by metapsychics in the Galactic Milieu.

For most of the thousand years that Tanu and Firvulag resided
on Pliocene Earth (which they called the Many-Coloured Land),
they were fairly evenly matched in the ritual wars fought as part
of their battle-religion. The greater finesse and technology of
the Tanu tended to counterbalance the superior numbers of the
ferociously obstinate Firvulag. The advent of time-travelling
humanity was to change the situation drastically.

Early on, the Tanu gained control of the fixed-focus time-gate
and took prisoner all the newly arrived humans, enslaving them.
The astounding discovery was made that human germ plasm
was compatible with that of the Tanu. The meaning behind this
paradox was immaterial to the Tanu; they were delighted to be
able to use their human slaves in breeding, since Tanu-human
hybrids tended to have unusual physical and mental strength.
The time-travellers also proved to be a valuable technological
resource, enhancing the rather decadent science establishment
of the Tanu by injecting the expertise of the greatly advanced
Galactic Milieu. It had been strictly forbidden for time-travellers
to carry sophisticated weaponry back to the Pliocene (a restric-
tion that was often honoured in the breach), and the Tanu were
conservative in the type of military hardware that they permitted
their human serfs to build. Nevertheless, it was human ingenuity
that eventually gave the Tanu almost complete ascendency over
the Firvulag--who never mated with humans and generally
despised them.

Most of the enslaved time-travellers actually lived quite well