Replacing "master" and "slave" terminology

[Karen Mulholland <kemulholland -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

When two similar things - circuits, devices,
mechanisms - are set up so that one controls the
other, it's often called a "master-slave"
relationship. For example, cars' brake systems have
master cylinders and slave cylinders. 

I've been on the geeky end of technical communication
for a long time, so I'm accustomed to this
terminology.
That doesn't necessarily mean I should use it, though;
frankly, it makes me a little queasy. 

Today as I walked an engineer through an edit session
on an application note that he's been writing, he
volunteered that although he had referred to elements
of his equipment setup as the "master" and "slave"
units, he was uncomfortable with those words. He asked
me what would be a better way to express the
relationship.

Here's the setup:
MagicBox A and MagicBox B both communicate with
BigDumbBox. 
The two MagicBoxes are identical. Their physical
placement is at the discretion of the person who
installs them. They might not even both be in the same
room.
BigDumbBox shouldn't be able to tell that there are
two MagicBoxes.
To keep BigDumbBox happy, MagicBox A controls MagicBox
B and makes it look like all communication is between
BigDumbBox and MagicBox A.

What would you call the unit that controls the other
one? What would you call the one that is under control
of the first one?
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