Kaisho soon got tired of being badgered for answers.

She pointedly turned her chair away from me and glided over to the admiral. "Festina dear," Kaisho said in her whisper, "if you’re finished your little cry…"

Festina lifted her head immediately, and it sure didn’t look like she’d been crying. "What do you want?" she said, all tightly controlled.

"Just to tell you I noticed something back in the woods. Or perhaps the Balrog noticed it — it’s hard to tell where I stop and the Balrog begins. I’m not sure I remember what it’s like to see with ordinary eyes."

Zeeleepull squinched up his whiskers the way Mandasars do when something turns their stomachs. He was clearly squeamish about the Balrog-brainmeld thing… and I think Kaisho got a kick out of making him squirm.

Festina didn’t have an ounce of squirm in her. With a no-nonsense voice, she asked Kaisho, "What did you see?"

Kaisho gave a meaningful glance toward the police, still puttering nearby. "Maybe I’d just better show you."

After a moment, Festina nodded. "All right. Lead on."

The police paid no attention as we headed off through the trees. Maybe they were happy to get rid of us: easier for them to get their work done without noncop observers.

Kaisho took the lead, her chair moving slow as molasses. I found myself looking down at her glowing legs, all limp and useless under that moss. Were they moss clear through? Was that how the Balrog ate her, replacing human muscle and bone with its own fuzzy self? Or was the moss just a coating and there was still a woman underneath, maybe all paralyzed and sucked dry of nutrients, but recognizable as flesh and blood no matter how withered? I imagined putting my fingertips against her glowing thigh and pushing down, my nails squishing through the damp fuzz, deeper and deeper till they touched raw bone… or maybe going all the way through to the leather seat of the chair without touching anything solid…

A hand patted my own thigh, right where I’d imagined touching Kaisho. I nearly jumped out of my skin. When I looked up, Kaisho was obviously staring at me from behind her veil of hair. "Don’t be embarrassed," she whispered. "I don’t mind people looking at my legs. I know they’re magnificent."

"Oh," I said. "Um."

"And," she went on, "many people have an irresistible urge to touch."

"Does the stuff rub off on them?"

She shook her head. "I stepped on the Balrog when it was in a dispersal phase — actively looking for a new host. Now, it’s happily bonded to me and reproductively dormant. Entirely. Almost. It would only spread to someone else if the chance was too promising to pass up: a host so superior, the Balrog had to seize the opportunity, for the greater good of the universe." Her smile flashed under the cover of her hair. "Do you consider yourself that superior, Teelu"?

"No," I said. But I kept well clear of the moss. Kaisho was kind of daring me to touch her… and Samantha trained me when we were kids, never ever ever take a dare.

Kaisho’s wheelchair stopped beside a clump of scrawny trees. The trees didn’t look much different from any others we’d passed — almost like Earth trees, except for the blackish leaves and a light puffiness to their trunks, as if their bark was wooden foam — but Kaisho cut her chair’s skimmer engine so the chair settled down on its big solid wheels.

Apart from the starlight and those three confetti moons, we only had the glow of Kaisho’s legs to see by. Still, it was easy to tell the soil had been trampled half to mire by the Mandasar militia; they’d come through here chasing Mr. Clear Chest.

"There," Kaisho said, pointing to the ground between four close-growing trees. Festina and I leaned our heads in; Zeeleepull tried to look too, but the trees were rooted too near each other for him to get his wide shoulders into the gap. I guess that’s why the dirt here didn’t get mucked up as the warriors stampeded past — they had to go around the trees instead of between.

Imprinted in the soft mud was a sharp-edged circular outline… like a big heavy can had been set down long enough for it to settle its weight into the soil. As far as I could tell, there was nothing else to see; but Festina made a soft, "Hah!" sound and grabbed a little thread caught on one of the tree trunks.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Black fiber," the admiral answered. "Probably off that recruiter’s pants. They were black, right?"

I couldn’t remember. I’d been so busy gawking at his exposed heaving lungs, I hadn’t noticed much else. "You think he was doing something here?" I asked.

"He tucked himself between these trees for a while," Kaisho said. "A good place to hide — his shadow would blend in with the tree trunks." She turned to Festina. "Do you recognize that outline on the ground?"

The admiral nodded. "It’s exactly the size of a Bumbler."

"Bumbler?" Zeeleepull asked. "Bumbler what is?"

"Equipment from the navy’s Explorer Corps," I told him. Too bad Festina’s Bumbler had been destroyed, or I could have showed him. "It’s like a medium-sized cooking pot," I said, "only the lid is a vidscreen. It’s got cameras and sensors and things, so it can show you an IR scan of the area, or work like a telescope or microscope…"

"Not to mention reading and recording the entire EM spectrum from gamma waves to radio," Kaisho put in.

"So the recruiter… Explorer is? Navy hume Explorer?" His voice was going huffy with outrage.

"Of course not," Festina answered, just as huffy. "I’ve read the files on every Explorer in the fleet, and not one has a see-through thorax. That recruiter might have carried Explorer equipment, but he doesn’t belong to the corps." She turned to Kaisho. "Do you think it really was a Bumbler? All we’ve got is a circle in the mud…"

"The Balrog assures me it was a genuine Bumbler," Kaisho replied. "It left a characteristic metallic taste on the dirt. As distinctive as a fingerprint."

I stared at her a moment, trying to think how the Balrog could taste the soil. Had Kaisho touched her mossy legs against the ground? Or could Balrogs taste things from long distance, the way you can sometimes taste campfire smoke, or the vinegar in strong pickles before you actually lift them to your mouth?

"My guess," Kaisho said, "is the recruiter set down his Bumbler while he was busy with something else. Probably he had some gadget for monitoring the Laughing Larry as it homed in on our dear Festina. He stayed till he heard the Mandasar militia coming toward him…" She looked at Zeeleepull. "Following his scent, correct?"

"Smelled him we," Zeeleepull agreed proudly. "First the loud laugh-laugh that drew us across the water. Then the stink of hume on the ground. Chased him we. Harried him we."

Kaisho nodded. "The recruiter snatched up his Bumbler and ran, with the warriors on his heels. He headed for that other clearing, where his skimmer waited to pick him up."

Festina frowned. "I saw him on the rope ladder," she said. "No Bumbler then. Which means," she went on, suddenly eager, "he must have lost it as he ran from the warriors. Either he dumped it deliberately so he could sprint faster, or he got the carrying strap snagged on something and he didn’t have time to work it free." She gave a wry smile. "When I think how often I’ve caught my own Bumbler on bushes… well, finally, some poetic justice."

"You really were an Explorer?" I asked. "With a Bumbler and everything?" The first time Festina had mentioned being an Explorer, the Larry showed up before I could ask any questions. Now… I still found it hard to believe an Explorer could ever make admiral. When I was young, the Explorer Corps was stuck off to one side, out of the chain of promotion for the regular navy. Explorers couldn’t become ship captains or admirals or anything. That was one reason Dad made me wear the black uniform — to be sure I’d never get put in charge of anything. (Or maybe just because the High Council had no Admiral of the Black to tell Dad I wasn’t wanted.)