"Well," Festina said, still giving me the once-over (the twice-over by now), "you look damned terrific for a man who was poisoned yesterday. Are you ready to go?"

"Um." I leaned in, and whispered, "Is it okay if I bring some company?"

"Who?"

I pointed behind me. Counselor, Zeeleepull, and the workers were lined up looking freshly scrubbed and gleamy bright themselves… all except Nib, who’d tried to paint a BON VOYAGE sign and got smears of green paint all over its just-washed white hands. (Workers!) Naturally, Zeeleepull carried the luggage; most of the hive’s worldly possessions were strapped to his back, boxed up in a wooden crate labeled ONIONS.

Festina sighed deeply. "How many of them do you plan on bringing?"

"Five."

Counselor and the others waved gleefully — antennas as well as hands.

"Told you," Kaisho whispered to Festina.

"I could have guessed myself," Festina muttered back. "Are they all right?"

"They won’t cause trouble," I promised.

"That’s not what I meant." Festina motioned to Kaisho. "You and the Balrog check them out."

Kaisho’s wheelchair glided toward the five Mandasars… and all of a sudden, the rest of the crowd scrambled back, putting a good healthy distance between themselves and the woman’s mossy legs. I don’t know if they’d heard gossip about the Balrog since last night, or if they all just spontaneously decided they didn’t like the moss’s smell. Either way, they were doing their best to keep clear; and from the looks on their faces, Counselor and the others would have been turning tail too, if they didn’t think they’d hurt their chance of seeing Troyen.

"What’s Kaisho doing?" I whispered to Festina.

"The Balrog can supposedly determine whether a being is sentient. Don’t ask me how it works — maybe a killer gives off non-sentient psychic vibrations. The damned moss isn’t perfectly telepathic, thank God, but it can sometimes do an uncanny job of peeking into someone’s mind."

No kidding, I thought. Out loud, I said, "You really think the Mandasars are dangerous non-sentients?"

"No." Festina gave me an apologetic look. "But we have to make sure, Edward. Otherwise, we could end up like Willow — killed for not being careful enough. The League expects us to make our best efforts not to violate the law."

"So you don’t trust the kids, but you trust the Balrog?"

"In this particular instance, I trust the Balrog’s judgment. It doesn’t mean I trust the Balrog in general — that fuzzy-assed bastard scares the piss out of me. But on our upcoming trip, the Balrog’s life is at stake too."

"Why?"

"Kaisho’s coming with us to Troyen," Festina replied. "If one of your Mandasars is non-sentient and the Balrog lies to us about that, it’s the Balrog who’ll die when our ship crosses the line. We mere humans will be blameless; the League won’t fault us for being deceived by a superior species."

As she spoke, Festina had a grim little smile on her face… and for a second, I thought she might be hoping the Balrog would get executed by the League. If there was no other way to get rid of the creature — if you couldn’t scrape it off its host — then maybe you’d look for situations that’d kill the Balrog without hurting the human underneath.

A few seconds before, I was going to ask Festina why she wanted Kaisho to come with us to Troyen… but I decided I didn’t want to know.

The wheelchair drifted around each Mandasar in turn — Counselor trying to look composed, Zeeleepull trying to look tough, the workers trying to look so meekly unimportant they wouldn’t be worth eating — while Kaisho barely turned her head to give the kids a glance. Why would she? She couldn’t see for all the hair in front of her face, so why pretend to stare at anyone?

"Why does she wear her hair like that?" I asked Festina. "Does she have moss on her face? Is she really really…" I stopped. Considering the blotch on the admiral’s own cheek, there was no polite way to finish my question.

But Festina guessed what I was going to say. "Is she really really ugly?" Festina suggested. "Is she disfigured?" "Um. Sorry."

"No," the admiral said, "it’s a valid question. Especially since Kaisho used to be an Explorer. You know she must have had something wrong with her."

I felt myself blush. I couldn’t even look in the admiral’s direction.

"Kaisho did have… a facial condition," Festina said. "You don’t need to know the details. But when she got infected with the Balrog, the condition cleared up. The Balrog actually tinkered with Kaisho’s genes and hormones to cure the problem. I suppose the Balrog was trying to be nice; it could read Kaisho’s surface thoughts well enough to know how she hated the… blemishes. In a way, clearing up Kaisho’s face was like a wedding gift — a demonstration that being bonded to a Balrog wasn’t all bad.

"But from Kaisho’s point of view," Festina continued, "her face and its flaws were key parts of her life. Her identity. To have that identity casually erased by an alien parasite… well, imagine being subjected to cosmetic surgery till you didn’t look like yourself. It wouldn’t matter if you ended up more beautiful than you’d ever dared hope; you’d feel violated. Especially if your hideous old face was what made you feel like an Explorer, and that was the one thing in your life you felt proud of."

Festina suddenly sucked in a sharp breath and turned away from me. "Anyway," she muttered, "I’m sure that’s what Kaisho feels. Her mind gets more and more integrated with the Balrog every day, but still there’s a part of her, outraged and bitter over what the damned moss did to her face. Making her look ‘normal’ instead of like herself. So she hides behind her hair in shame — she doesn’t want to be seen as she is now."

Odd. Someone hiding and ashamed for being made better than she was to start with. Of course, "better" is always in the eye of the beholder… but if I were Kaisho, I’d cover my legs, not my face.

The Balrog’s inspection didn’t take long. One circuit around each Mandasar, then Kaisho announced, "They’re acceptable. No more homicidal than the rest of you."

Festina grimaced. "Not what I’d call an effusive recommendation."

"What do you expect?" Kaisho asked. "Humans and Mandasars are borderline at best. With luck in the gene lottery, and no crisis that stresses you past the breaking point, you can stay sentient all your life. If luck goes the other way… you flunk the sentience test. Nothing to be embarrassed about — both your species are still evolving in the right direction. You just have farther to go before you reach the exalted level of… oh, a certain mossy race that modesty forbids me to mention."

Zeeleepull muttered, "Evolve, evolve, evolve, and end up as moss? Stupid universe."

"Now you know how the dinosaurs felt," Festina told him.

"All right," the admiral announced, raising her voice to the assembled Mandasars, "as you probably know, my name is Festina Ramos and I… I’m heading for Troyen, where I hope I’ll find information to solve your recruiter problem." The kids gave a cheer, but short and polite… like they wanted to hear more before they got really enthusiastic.

"In the meantime," Festina said, "the recruiters should be lying low. Last night, they murdered one of your people as he bravely protected Consort Edward and me; as a result of Wiftim’s sacrifice, the police can’t ignore your problems the way they’ve done in the past. With luck, Mandasars all over Celestia will be able to demand better protection… and the cops will have to take them seriously."

That got a slightly bigger cheer. I could imagine how frustrated these kids must be, getting dismissed every time they complained to the Civilian Protection Office. Now, as Festina said, the police had no choice but to put the squeeze on recruiters.