Which had to be Counselor talking, or one of her hive-mates. Someone so naive, she thought I was smart enough to save people.

When I woke for real, the dining room was dark and quiet. I just lay there woozy for a while, trying to collect my thoughts. The Mandasar kids had left me on my own… but probably they were lying close by in the next room. If I made the slightest noise, they’d come running to tend their "prince."

Not that I’d acted like a prince so far. All I’d done was rough up Zeeleepull, tell the others why I couldn’t help against the recruiters, then pass out on their dining-room floor. Pretty pathetically awful, even by my normal useless-dummy standards.

But at least the kids hadn’t tossed me out of the house. I was lying almost exactly where I’d fallen — they’d just shifted me onto a dining pallet. When I reached out, I could touch the table… with its big glossy picture of Queen Wisdom…

That reminded me of the water bowl, the one I’d used for splashing Counselor’s face. My mouth was dust-dry, probably because I’d been sweating buckets while I was unconscious. (You don’t want to know how soaked and sodden my clothes were.) I sat up and edged my way over to the table, hoping maybe the kids had left the bowl full overnight. On Troyen, a lot of families did that in case someone wanted a drink.

The bowl was still there, but flipped upside down. The glossy table surface had puddles everywhere, as if someone had knocked the bowl over and not bothered to mop up the wet.

Odd.

The room was almost coal-mine black, just a tiny bit of starshine coming through the ceiling; the kids had adjusted the environment dome so a wee patch of roof was transparent like a skylight. I could just barely see the outlines of things close up… nothing distinct, nothing that would tell me what was wrong.

"House-soul, attend," I whispered. "Can you give me some light?"

Nothing happened: the dome’s computer didn’t want to take commands from me. No big surprise; why would the kids reprogram their house so I could boss it around? But in a lot of homes, the computer lets anyone turn on the lights. Most house-souls have a set of instructions considered safe to obey, even from strangers. Flushing the toilet. Telling what time it is. Letting you wash your hands. But maybe the Mandasars were so worried about recruiters, they’d adjusted their system to "total noncooperation" mode.

I leaned against the table, wondering what to do. One thing about venom poisoning: both times after the delirium broke, I felt pretty good. Relatively speaking, anyway — I was thirsty and hungry, and not even Queen Verity would think I smelled delicious, but I was strong enough to stand without wobbling too much. After being unconscious so long, I felt wide-awake too. The polite thing might be to go back to bed till the Mandasars got up in the morning, but at the moment I wasn’t sleepy.

What to do? If I wandered around in the dark, I’d probably break something. On the other hand… I thought about that knocked-over water bowl. There must be plenty of harmless explanations, but it still made me edgy.

I was standing there, thinking hard and chewing my knuckle in the dark, when my wrist started squealing.

It had been twenty years since I’d heard that squeal: a personal Mayday from someone close by. A navyish someone. When you joined the fleet, you got a tiny beeper embedded under the skin of your wrist, so if you got caught in some terrible disaster, you could call for help. The beeper sent out a radio beam that activated everyone else’s beeper within a few kilometers — a shrieky shrill signal that said, "Come running, shipmate in trouble."

The last time my beeper went off was on Troyen: Sam desperately trying to reach me.

I’d got there too late.

"Counselor!" I yelled into the darkness. "Sorry to disturb you, but this is important. Can you turn on the lights and open the door? Counselor? Counselor?"

No answer.

"Hey!" I shouted louder. "Hey!"

Nothing.

"Can anybody hear me? Anybody there?"

It was only a small dome: two rooms. And Mandasars are light sleepers. In fact, experts get into arguments whether Mandasars ever truly sleep, or just go into a resting doze where they’re always half-conscious. Either way, Counselor and the others would never snooze through me calling, let alone the squealing from my wrist.

That squeal was making me jumpy. I told the implant, "Shut off," and the beeper stopped its noise, leaving behind a thick stuffy silence. No sound of moving or breathing anywhere close by; I was all alone in the dome.

Why did that worry me? There’d been two other domes beside this one. The kids probably ate here, and slept next door. Nothing strange about that… but it was surprising they’d left me alone, me being sick and all. Before I’d passed out, they were giving me the royal treatment. Did they change their minds once I went delirious? Or had they been watching over me, till something big and important drew everybody away?

I could imagine Counselor dozing on a pallet beside me when suddenly some crisis struck. Maybe one of her hive-mates yelled from outside. Counselor ran to help, knocking over the water bowl and not even stopping to clean up.

But what could cause such a fuss? Recruiters on a raid?

I thought about my wrist beeper again… and suddenly, it all made sense. Someone had come from the navy. A recovery team had picked up the escape pod’s homing beacon and followed the signal here. Maybe they’d decided to look around a bit, to see if anyone had been inside the pod.

What would the Mandasars think when they spotted humans wandering about in the dark? Every warrior in the valley would come howling for blood, believing recruiters were on the march.

No wonder the poor navy people fired off a Mayday.

I blundered across the room and banged my fist against the wall. The dome field didn’t budge. "House-soul, attend!" I yelled. "Can you open a door? Please."

The house-soul ignored me. For all it knew, I could be a burglar trying to make a getaway. The computer would keep me locked in here, unable to help the navy folks till some recognized member of the hive came to let me out.

"House-soul!" I yelled again. "This is an emergency. The warriors might kill someone innocent."

No response. I took a breath, then drove my heel into the wall with a hard side-kick. The impact knocked me backward, but it didn’t make any impression on the dome. A typical dome field is strong enough to withstand a hurricane or lightning bolt; my strongest kick just wasn’t an irresistible force of nature.

"House-soul, come on! Listen to me! It’s a matter of life and death. Don’t you have any overrides for when sentient lives are threatened?"

Still nothing. I could be speaking a foreign language for all this computer cared about me…

Oh.

Three seconds later, the house-soul had popped open a door right in front of my face. Counselor must have authorized the computer to take orders from me. All I had to do was ask in Mandasar.

The weather had turned spring-night cool, with a starry sky and three yellow moons the size of confetti. I lifted my wrist, and whispered to the implant, "Find Mayday source." Then I held out my arm and turned in a slow circle till the implant gave a beep. At that second, my arm pointed up the road and along the canal, in the direction the escape pod had been floating when I left it.

That made sense. If the Mayday had come from a navy recovery team, the team would be close to the evac module.

I told my wrist implant to switch to silent mode, so it wouldn’t squeal no matter what. You don’t want your beeper going off when you’re trying to sneak around in the dark… especially not within earshot of Mandasar warriors, ready to gut any human they met.