"Well, as a matter of fact I haven't seen it before. Some of the shops do look intriguing."

"Then enjoy it, dear lady. No reason not to mix pleasure with business. Which brings us to business, I suppose. I have been talking with your son."

"Mr. Kiku..."

"Indulge me, I will be brief. We are sending an extensive cultural and scientific mission to the home planet of the Hroshii. I want to send your son as a special aide. He has agreed to go." He waited for the explosion.

"Utterly unthinkable! Out of the question!"

"Why, Mrs. Stuart?"

"Mr. Kiku, what sort of inhuman beast are you? I know what you mean... you plan to turn my son, my only son, over to those monstrosities as a hostage. Unspeakable!"

He shook his head. "Ma'am, you have been misled by a wild newspaper story. Have you seen the later story? The Secretary's speech before the Council?"

"No, but..."

"I will supply a copy. It explains how that nonsense got into print. It also affirms the ancient policy of the Federation, 'All for One'... against the Galaxy if necessary. In this case your son is that 'one'; he has many planets behind him. But no such issues arises; your son will join a peaceful mission to a friendly people. He will help build a cultural bridge between two civilized but very different races."

"Hmmph! The paper said that these Hroshii demanded that you turn my son over to them. Explain that if you can!"

"Difficulties of translation. They asked for your son by name, but on behalf of that Hroshia which was for years part of your own household, Lummox. Because Lummox is deeply attached to your son. This friendship between these two, transcending form and kind and source and mind, is one of the greatest fortunes which has happened to our race since our people first discovered that we were not sole heirs of the Almighty. This unlikely circumstance will let us bridge in one leap a chasm of misunderstanding ordinarily spanned by years of trial and tragic error." He paused. "One is tempted to think of them as children of destiny."

Mrs. Stuart snorted. "'Destiny'! Fiddlesticks!"

"Can you be sure, ma'am?"

"I can be sure of this: my son is not going to the other side of nowhere. In another week he is entering college, which is where he belongs."

"Is it his education which worries you, ma'am?"

"What? Why, of course. I want him to get a good education. His father set up a trust fund for it; I intend to carry out his wishes."

"I can put your mind at rest. In addition to an embassy, we will send a cultural mission, a scientific mission, an economics and trade mission, and many specialists, all topflight minds. No single college could hire such an aggregation of talent; even the largest institutions of learning would be hard put to match it. Your son will be taught, not casually but systematically. If he earns a degree, it will be awarded by, uh... by the Institute of Outer Sciences." He smiled. "Does that suit you?"

"Why, I never heard of such a silly arrangement. Anyway, the Institute isn't a college."

"It can bestow a degree. Or, if not, we will have its charter amended. But degrees are unimportant, ma'am, the point his that your son will have an unparalleled higher education. I understand that he wishes to study xenic science. Well, not only will his teachers be the finest possible, but also he will live in a new field laboratory of xenology and take part in the research. We know little of the Hroshii; he will labor on the frontiers of science."

"He's not going to study xenology."

"Eh? He told Mr. Greenberg that he meant to."

"Oh, he has that silly idea but I have no intention of indulging him. He will study some sound profession-the law, probably."

Mr. Kiku's brows went up. "Please, Mrs. Stuart," he said plaintively. "Not that. I am a lawyer-he might wind up where I am."

She looked at him sharply. He went on, "Will you tell me why you plan to thwart him?"

"But I won't be... No, I see no reason why I should. Mr. Kiku, this discussion is useless."

"I hope not, ma'am. May I tell a story?" He assumed consent and went on, "These Hroshii are most unlike us. What is commonplace to us is strange to them, and vice versa. All we seem to have in common is that both races are intelligent

"To us they seem unfriendly, so remote that I would despair, were it not for one thing. Can you guess what that is?"

"What? No, I can't"

"Your son and Lummox. They prove that the potential is there if we will only dig for it. But I digress. More than a hundred years ago a young Hroshia encountered a friendly stranger, went off with him. You know our-half of that story. Let me tell you their side, as I have learned it with the help of an interpreter and our xenologists. This little Hroshia was important to them; they wanted her back very badly. Their patterns are not ours; they interweave six distinct sorts of a genetic scheme we will be a long time understanding.

"This little Hroshia had a role to play, a part planned more than two thousand years ago, around the time of Christ. And her part was a necessary link in a larger planning, a shaping of the race that has been going on, I am told, for thirty-eight thousand of our years. Can you grasp that, Mrs. Stuart? I find it difficult. A plan running back to when Cro-Magnon man was disputing with Neanderthals for the prize of a planet... but perhaps my trouble lies in the fact that we are ourselves the shortest-lived intelligent race we have yet found.

"What would we do if a child was missing for more than a century? No need to discuss it; it in no way resembles what the Hroshii did. They were not too worried about her welfare; they did not think of her as dead... but merely misplaced. They do not die easily. They do not even starve to death. Uh, perhaps you have heard of flatworrns? Euplanaria?"

"I have never taken any interest in xenobiology, Mr. Kiku."

"I made the same error, ma'am; I asked, 'What planet is it from?' Euplanaria are relatives of ours; there are many more flatworms on Earth than there are men. But they have a characteristic in common with Hroshii; both breeds grow when fed, shrink when starved and seem to be immortal, barring accidents. I had wondered why Lummox was so much larger than the other Hroshii. No mystery... you fed Lummox too much."

"I told John Thomas that repeatedly!"

"No harm done. They are already shrinking her down. The Hroshii were not angry, it seems, over the theft or kidnapping or luring away of their youngster. They knew her-a lively, adventuresome disposition was part of what had been bred into her. But they did want her back and they searched for her year after year, following the single clue that she must have gone off with a certain group of visitors from space; they knew what those visitors looked like but not from what part of the sky they came.

"It would have discouraged us... but not them. I have a misty impression that the century they spent chasing rumors, asking questions, and checking strange planets was-to them-about what a few months would be to us. In time they found her. Again, they were neither grateful nor angry; we simply did not count.

"That might have been our only contact with the noble Hroshii had not a hitch developed; the Hroshia, now grown big but still young, refused to leave without her monstrous friend-I speak from the Hroshian viewpoint This was terrible to them, but they had no way to force her. How bitter a disappointment it was I ask you to imagine... a mating planned when Caesar fought the Gauls all now in readiness, with the other strains matured and ready... and Lummox refuses to go home. She shows no interest in her destiny... remember, she is very young; our own children do not develop social responsibility very early. In any case she won't budge without John Thomas Stuart." He spread his hands. "You see the predicament they are in?"