And when the second one, the one called Synapo, had said, “Yas, wekkom to ah wuld, Miz Ahyahl Wilsh,” she had to turn away to suppress her laughter and an incipient sneeze caused by the tingling in her nose from the faint odor of ammonia they exuded.

She could hardly contain the delightful relief that came with the knowledge that these demons had a comic side. They were just naturally provincials of a Webster Grove persuasion. Wohler99 could not possibly have given them that accent.

She recovered quickly, however, and without sneezing, she turned and said, “I am pleased to meet you both,” and then she bowed. “This is an historic occasion, which we shall surely carry with us always. It saddens me that such an important meeting must be marred by discussion of the discordant incidents that have occurred before we can explore the great potential for harmony in the future relations of our two species.”

She steeled herself to put his reply in the framework he surely intended, and she found she could quite easily ignore the thick accent and concentrate on only the meaning.

“We are equally saddened,” Synapo replied.

“The protocol of my species in this situation suggests that you should select the first topic for discussion,” she said.

Immediately Synapo said, “Explain the square root of minus one.”

His reply seemed completely at odds with the discussion she thought was going to take place. She was not schooled in mathematics and was expecting more diplomatic double-talk. She hesitated for just a moment, and then turned toward Jacob and said, “Jacob?”

Immediately Jacob said, “The square root of minus one is a member of a class of numbers that cannot be given substance except in a specific context. In this case, one such context is the interrelationship of space and time, in which the measurements of time must be multiplied by the square root of minus one in order to properly relate them to the measurements of space.”

“Or the reverse,” Synapo said. “A quite satisfactory answer to a simple question, but then one must start simple and work toward the complex. And now what is your pleasure, Miss Ariel Welsh?”

That sort of drivel isn't going to get us anywhere,Ariel thought. Let's get right to it.

“Why have you isolated our city, enclosed it under this big dome?”

And as she gestured toward the dome, the first shimmer that morning-the first pass of the Myostrian construction-shot down the edge of the wall with a faint crackling and disappeared into the ground.

Ariel jumped, startled. With the edge of the dome off to her left and to the rear, she had turned slightly as she gestured and had caught the shimmer at the corner of her eye before the sound reached her ears. Being to her back, though, it had startled her more than if she had been facing the edge.

Sarco said, “Ah, my people have started work.”

Synapo said, “My colleague Sarco informed me yesterday that the node compensator-this dome-will be completed tomorrow, so that leaves us little time for negotiation. He further informs me that the dome is necessary in order to properly control meterological conditions. The particulate emissions and the radiation and convection of thermal energy from your creations are seriously disrupting the weather of our planet, and thereby disturbing our mental processes and our emotional equanimity.”

The source of Synapo's linguistic training came sharply into focus. He talked exactly like a Robot City supervisor. Only Wohler-9 could have downloaded all those big words.

What had he said about work on the dome? It escaped her as she zeroed in on his last sentence.

Jacob was right. The aliens were concerned about the weather and talked as though they were actually controlling it. Spacers and Settlers also talked about the weather a great deal, but so far had not been able to do much about it.

“You control the weather?” she said.

“Of course. It is essential that unruly airflow not disturb our cerebrations. How can one think when he is being bounced about in a turbulence? Your creations generate a puncture node of the worst sort.

“But now I believe it is our turn. And I suppose we must dispense with going methodically from the simple to the complex, as I had intended.

“What vital purpose do your creations serve? What ends justify the killing of two of our people-first, a Myostrian in legitimate pursuit of an assigned task, and then a Cerebron who was peacefully tethered and surely in no way interfering with your obscure endeavor?”

Ariel knew that, on balance, the destruction of a witness robot was hardly equal to the death of two intelligent beings. But she had heard that a good offense was the best defense.

“And in the pursuit of that task of questionable legitimacy,” Ariel replied, “your Myostrians created something that sliced one of my people in half.”

She didn't really think of a witness robot as people but the black bats-or as Wohler-9 termed them, the blackbodies-didn't need to know that.

“I respectfully remind you that it was your creations that caused the Myostrians to start construction of the compensator,” Synapo said. “I ask again: what purpose do those creations serve? What further threat to our equilibrium lies beyond the disturbance of our weather?”

It was a legitimate point, which caused her to reevaluate what was serious and what was not, who had provoked whom, and when, and how. Perhaps the weather was of equal importance to sentient life in their minds-perhaps the weather was their life.

That thought, coupled with the observation that, while he was talking, he had slued his hook around so that it pointed forward, like that of his companion, caused Ariel to reconsider the gravity of the situation. Even though she didn't know for sure what that rotation meant, it didn't seem to bode any good and might even be considered somewhat ominous, taken with the quiet way he had made his last pronouncement.

She had let their provincial accent distract her, which may have caused her to consider this confrontation less serious than it really was. She had known how serious the situation was well before the meeting, and her anxiety had steadily increased until the moment of confrontation. How had she let the circumstances of their meeting so distract and deceive her?

The shimmer at the corner of her eye at that moment and the crackling sound that accompanied it marked the pass of a Myostrian far above and brought her attention back to the construction of the dome. She noticed then that, while they had been talking, the edge of the dome had progressed toward the center of Main Street, closing the opening by at least two more meters on that one side, probably four meters considering both sides.

The city robots had extended Main Street into a road across the plain to facilitate their exodus. The two edges of the wall were not far from the edge of the road itself, four lanes wide where it exited the dome.

It was then Synapo's earlier comment came to the front of her mind: My colleague Sarco informed me yesterday that the node compensator - this dome - will be completed tomorrow, so that leaves us little time for negotiation.

She had not forgotten it. It had simply been overlaid by a surfeit of sensory stimuli. It was difficult to take in all the data and digest it in proper order. But clearly they were in the midst of a negotiation in which she had reasoned herself into a corner, a fact that she must honorably acknowledge in the presence of these aliens; and time was running out.

Perhaps that acknowledgement alone would buy her some time. A diplomat might have been duplicitous at that point, but Ariel had recognized earlier that she was no diplomat. You take in the data, you analyze it, and you proceed accordingly.

“Your argument is sound,” Ariel said. “It takes only a brief moment-having now all the facts-to recognize that we are the offenders and you are the offended. We ask for your patience. We ask that you stop construction of the dome while we consider how we may resolve this dilemma, leaving neither of our peoples with further injury and with harmonious relations restored.”