Regretfully, Lopatin sent the poems back into the computer’s memory. He also sent a sharp glance back toward where Voroshilov was still working. Nobody with that unprepossessing an exterior had any business having all those fine words running around loose in his head. Lopatin doubted everyone on principle but felt real suspicion of anyone who concealed himself the way the chemist did.

Tried to conceal himself, the KGB man amended. If he ever needed one, he had a handle on Voroshilov, all right. He smiled. Katerina was a very nicely shaped handle, now that he thought of it.

The ball, a hide cover over soft teagfiber, flew past Lamra. She let out a frustrated squawk as she went after it. She had thought she had an arm in the right place to catch it, but somehow it got by her. It usually did.

She widened herself so she could pick up the ball. “Reatur always catches it,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

“Throw it back to me,” Peri said. When Lamra did not throw it back right away, the other mate’s voice got louder. “Throw it back to me! Throw it back to me!” Lamra still did not throw it. Peri came over and took it away from her. “Mine!”

Lamra snatched it back. She used a couple of free hands to hit Peri. She was older and bigger than the other mate, but that did not stop Peri from hitting her, too, and poking her with a fingerclaw. She yelled and threw the ball at Peri as hard as she could. She missed. The ball bounced away.

Neither mate cared about it anymore anyhow. They were too busy fighting with each other. Other mates came running to watch and to add their shouts to Lamra’s and Peri’s.

Lamra had taken control of the fight and was just about to tie three of Peri’s arms into a knot when the door to the outside world came open and Reatur walked in.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “What’s this racket all about?”

“She took my ball away,” Peri said, squirming away from Lamra and pointing at her with the arms that-too bad! she hadn’t got to knot up after all.

“Not your ball,” Lamra said. She gathered herself to grab Peri again and really give her what for. Reatur turned an extra eyestalk her way and pointed at her with an arm that did not seem to have anything better to do. Regretfully, she subsided. She might have known he would notice.

“Back to what you were doing, the rest of you,” Reatur told the crowd of mates around Peri and Lamra. They went, thoughalmost all of them kept an eyestalk on what was going on. Even so, Lamra wished they would do what she told them to like that.

Maybe being big like Reatur helped.

He had been talking to Peri. Filled with her own not quite happy thoughts, Lamra had paid no attention to whatever he was saying. She was a little surprised when Peri, after squeaking, “I will,” hurried away. Several of the other mates were playing a game of tag. Peri joined them. In a moment, her trouble with Lamra forgotten, she was frisking about.

“Now you,” Reatur said to Lamra. He had not forgotten, even if silly Peri had.

“It wasn’t her ball,” Lamra said.

“I know that,” Reatur said. “You all play with everything here in the mates’ chambers, so how could any of it belong especially to any one of you? That’s not what I wanted to talk with you about, Lamra.”

Then he did something Lamra had never seen him do with any other mate, though he had before with her, once or twice: he widened himself down very low, so that he was hardly taller than she. She still did not know what to make of that-she felt proud and nervous at the same time.

“You ought to know better than to squabble that way with Peri,” he said.

“It’s not fair,” Lamra said. “She squabbled with me, too.” She saw Reatur’s eyestalks start to wiggle, saw him make them stop. That was just one more thing she did not understand: Why would he want to make himself stop laughing? Laughing was fun.

“So she was,” he said. “But she”-he lowered his voice a little, so the others could not hear-“is just an ordinary mate, and you, I think, are something more. So I expect more from you.”

“Not fair,” Lamra said again.

“Maybe not. Would you rather I expected less from you than you are able to give?”

“Yes. No. Wait.” Lamra had to stop and work that one through. Reatur was talking to her as if she were another male. His words were as badly tangled as she had hoped to make Peri’s arms. “No,” she said at last.

“Good,” Reatur said. “So you’ll behave yourself, then?”

“Yes,” Lamra said. Then she wailed, “I don’t want to behave myself!” The world suddenly seemed a more complicated place than she wanted it to be.

“I know you don’t,” Reatur said gently. “Doing it anyway is the hard part. It’s called being responsible.”

“I don’t want to be whatever you said-responsible. It’s silly, like not laughing when you want to laugh.” Lamra turned an eyestalk away from Reatur to show she was not happy with him. “And like widening yourself so you’re so short and fat that you look like a toy nosver.”

“Do I?” Reatur laughed then, so hard that Lamra doubted he could see straight. He also resumed his regular height. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” Lamra said, though she could hear the doubt in her own voice.

“All right.” Reatur hesitated. “How are the buds?”

Lamra looked down at herself. She was beginning to have a swelling above each foot, but the buds did not inconvenience her yet, and so she did not think about them very much. “They’re just-there,” she said, which seemed to satisfy Reatur. “How are Biyal’s budlings?”

She saw that she had startled Reatur; his eyestalks drew in, then slowly extended themselves again. “One mate has died,” he said. “The others seem to be holding their own. It won’t be long before we bring them back to live in here. The male is doing well.”

“I miss Biyal. She was fun to play with-not like Peri, who squawks all the time,” Lamra added pointedly. She let air hiss out from her breathing pores in quite a good imitation of Reatur sighing. “I suppose the new ones will be even more foolish.”

“I suppose they will.” Reatur turned an extra eye her way. “I’ve hardly ever heard a mate say she missed another one after that one-after that one budded,” he said slowly. “You remember more than most, don’t you?”

“How can I tell that?” Lamra asked. There Reatur went, confusing her again. “I only know what I remember, not what anyone else remembers.”

“That’s true.” Reatur was trying not to laugh again, she saw. He stopped for a while, then went on in a musing tone. “What would you be like if you could hope for my years, or even Ternat’s?”

“Don’t be silly,” she told him. “Who ever heard of an old mate?”

“Who indeed?” he said, and gave a sigh so much like hers that she could not help wiggling her eyestalks. He reached out and awkwardly patted her between her eyestalks and her arms. “All I can tell you, Lamra, is that I hope the male you bear takes after you. Having such wits around to grow would be precious.”

Lamra thought about it. She was not used to taking such a long view; being as they were, mates did not have occasion to. Finally she said, “You know, that would be nice, but I’d rather it was me.”

Reatur looked at her with all six eyes at once for a moment, something he had never done before. “So would I, little one. So would I.” Then he said something she did not understand at all. “I’m beginning to envy humans, curse me if I’m not.”

He left the mates’ chambers very quickly after that.