Probably her clothes weren’t fabric at all… just a sweat sheen of nano paint, programmed to cling snugly to her body. (Also to lift what needed lifting, corset what needed corseting, and so on — my dad always wore tuck-and-tidy nano under his clothes to make himself look trim and muscular. This woman did the same, but without the clothes on top.)

"Gentlemen," Festina said softly to Zeeleepull and me, "this is Kaisho… who supposedly works for me as an informant, but is piss-poor at remembering who signs her paycheck." The admiral had lowered her fists, but her jaw was still clenched tight. "Are you out of your mind?" she asked the wheelchair-woman. "Didn’t I give you a direct order to stay someplace safe?"

"Dear simple Festina," Kaisho answered in a whisper, "we don’t do orders anymore. It’s not in the Balrog nature. We had a feeling you were heading for trouble…"

"You had a feeling, but you didn’t tell me?"

"One must never speak of feelings until they come true. The Mother of Time will pull out your tongue."

Zeeleepull nudged me. "Mad crazy hume," he muttered, in a voice he probably thought was too soft for the woman to hear.

"Wrong on all counts, young warrior," Kaisho said. "Not mad, not crazy, not hume. Very much not hume." I could see a brief smile flash under the cover of her long long hair: the whiteness of teeth in the darkness, disappearing quickly. Then she shook her head so the hair fell in and hid even more of her face — both eyes concealed completely, nothing more than a thin open strip down the middle, showing her nose and a tiny peek of lips. She probably couldn’t see much; I got the feeling she didn’t have to.

"Kaisho has an unusual condition," Festina murmured to Zeeleepull and me. "Twenty-five years ago, when she was an Explorer, she, uhh, had the honor to be chosen as the host for an advanced lifeform."

"To be precise," the woman said in her whispery voice, "I stepped on something I shouldn’t have. Simple red moss. Which immediately corroded through the soles of my boots and implanted itself in both feet." Her smile flashed again. "I have since christened it the Balrog — a creature of glowing flame that has locked me in its grapple. Which is to say, it’s slowly eating me."

I gulped hard. "Can’t doctors do anything?"

"No," Festina replied. "Detaching the Balrog would kill it. That’s not allowed because… well, the moss is sentient. Several rungs up the evolutionary ladder from both humans and Mandasars. Grossly intelligent… marginally telepathic and telekinetic… possibly precognitive…"

"Oh no," Kaisho whispered, "we avoid peering directly under Mother Time’s skirts. But compared to your species, we are more astute at guessing where things will lead."

I stared at her… which means I stared at the thick black hair covering her face. Was there moss on her face too: thick clots of red, fuzzed all over her cheeks… her forehead… her eyes? Was that why she used her hair as a veil? And was her voice stuck in that soft whisper because she had moss on her vocal cords, a layer of glowing red velvet coating all down her throat? I wanted to ask, but was afraid the answer would turn my stomach. Instead, I said, "How can this moss stuff be sentient if it’s eating you? Sentient beings don’t hurt other people."

"Sentient beings don’t murder other people," Kaisho corrected, "and the Balrog takes care not to threaten my life. At its current rate of digestion, I will happily live my allotted span… which alas is only another eighteen years, twenty-three days, six hours, and forty-two minutes. I have an untreatable liver condition. Or I will have by then. Or you could say I’ve been sick since the moment of my conception, and it will just take a hundred and thirty years for the disease to get down to business."

"You know that for sure?" I asked.

"The Balrog knows," Kaisho told me, "and therefore I do too."

"Stupid hume," Zeeleepull muttered, "believing true a parasite."

"Other people have parasites," Kaisho answered. "I have a highly beneficial symbiont." She chuckled softly. "Or rather, we have each other. We are now a human-Balrog synthesis. Not completely integrated yet, but we’re gradually coming to… a meeting of the minds."

"Eating you," Zeeleepull growled, "and corrupting your brain."

"Say rather, improving my brain."

Zeeleepull gave a dismissive sniff. "Heard I the same tale from recruiters: Smarter you happy when we get done."

Kaisho shrugged. "I recognize the parallels. If you’d asked me, ‘Would you like to have your mind and body mutated by an alien organism for its own secret ends, while it slowly consumes your flesh?’ — well, tempting though the offer sounds, I once might have said no. Now, it’s what I am. My identity, even if I never asked for it."

"Stupid identity then," Zeeleepull muttered.

"Are you any different?" Kaisho asked. "You think your brain is fine; but I’ve talked to warriors living in single-caste barracks, and they’re convinced you’re the one who’s been brainwashed. They like having hair-trigger tempers; they appreciate the simplicity of always following orders, without suffering pangs of conscience; and they claim you’ve been brainwashed by an unnatural human-biased upbringing that’s kept you a self-centered little boy instead of an honest-to-God warrior. You, naturally, disagree. Your current identity is precious to you, and you’ll fight any son-of-a-bitch recruiters who try to make you change.

"And what about you, dear Festina?" Kaisho said, turning to the admiral. "You’ve made no secret how much you despise the Admiralty: how they prevented you from leading a normal life and forced you into the Explorer Corps. You were methodically indoctrinated by behavior-mod programming into the permanent paranoia required for xeno-exploration… yet knowing all this, you’re still profoundly proud to be an Explorer. Isn’t that odd? When you were a girl, I’m sure you were furious at the people who were taking away your choices — I know I was — but now that you are an Explorer, it’s the very heart of your identity. You never wanted to be this, and now you can’t imagine being anything else. Just like me."

Festina turned slightly so her face was out of the light. Even Zeeleepull was sensitive enough not to stare at Festina while she… I don’t know, I wasn’t looking either, whether she was crying or angry or wistful or what. The silence got strained real fast, and Zeeleepull leapt in to break it. "Teelu then?" he growled, glaring at Kaisho. "Is just fine, Teelu. No brainwash him, no question his mind."

Kaisho turned to me. "What about it, Teelu?" she asked in a teasing whisper. "No one ever tampered with your head? You got to choose what you are, without anyone forcing an identity down your throat?"

Her hair hid her face, but I could imagine her eyes glittering — as if she’d just told a joke that only the two of us got, and only she found funny. Did she know I was a gene-engineering mistake with mixed-up chemicals in my brain? Could she read my mind and see my past? Or maybe, was the precognitive part of her seeing my future?

Kaisho’s lips opened, and for a second I got the feeling she was going to answer the questions I hadn’t spoken. The dull red glow on her legs flared brighter, like a warning, and she closed her mouth again.

"What?" I asked.

Kaisho shook her head. "Mother Time says it isn’t my secret to tell."

No matter how much I asked her to say more, her mouth stayed shut in a mysterious little smile.