"I’ll be nice," I told him. "Really."

The thing about Fasskisters is they’re all locked up inside those robots, so you can’t read the expressions on their faces. They don’t even have body language unless they deliberately make the robot shake its fist or something. Even so, just standing there like a lump, this Fasskister pretty well communicated he didn’t trust me a bit. "Good," said Festina, "we’re all just the peachiest of friends. So tell me now, one pal to another: where did this fucking moss come from?"

"Humans," he replied. "And one of the Gragguk."

Gragguk was a Fasskister word they considered so obscene, their language circuits never translated it. Gragguk was also the word they used for Mandasar queens. "How long ago?" Festina asked.

A pause. "Twenty-four of your standard days," the Fasskister answered. I did some calculations: I’d been on Willow ten days from Troyen to Celestia, then two days hanging off Starbase Iris, a day on Celestia, and another ten days coming back here… so Willow must have visited this orbital just before picking me up from the moonbase.

The Fasskister was still talking. "They came from over there," he said, gesturing toward the docking port with one of his smaller arms. "A Gragguk and four humans. All wearing uniforms of your navy."

"Black uniforms?" Festina asked.

"No. Two in dark blue, two in a shade of green."

Dark blue meant the Communications Corps; the "shade of green" was likely olive, for Security. Just the sort of party Willow would have sent to meet with aliens, if the ship’s Explorers had already been left behind on Troyen.

"What did the group want?" Festina asked.

"Revenge!" The English word came out calmly from the translation circuits, but I could hear a sort of shriek inside the robot. The real Fasskister had screamed the word in his native tongue. "The Gragguk claimed she was the last of her caste, and she wished to apologize for the trouble caused by Verity’s old regime. What she really wanted was to infect us with this!"

He spread all his arms at once, waving toward the moss surrounding us. "It appeared as soon as the Gragguk left. Her blatant attempt to destroy us."

Probably true: your average queen is more keen on smiting her enemies than apologizing to them. If that Queen Temperance was leaving the Troyen system and thought she might never come back, she could have given Willow some story about wanting to make peace with the Fasskisters; then she’d dumped some Balrog spores on the ground when neither humans nor Fasskisters were watching.

"Where do you think the queen got the spores?" I whispered to Festina.

"From Kaisho herself," Festina answered. "Our beloved companion stepped on the Balrog twenty-five years ago, before the war started. When human doctors couldn’t help her, the navy brought in a Mandasar team — the best medical experts available. They took spore samples back home with them, so they could research ways of separating the Balrog from its host… not that they ever came up with any answers. The samples must have stayed in some test tube on Troyen, till the queen from Willow got her claws on them."

"If she only planted the spores twenty-four days ago," I said, "the stuff grew pretty fast."

"Like lightning," the Fasskister told me. He began to walk toward one of the crystal huts. Grudgingly, the Balrog slipped out of his path; Festina and I followed along behind.

"The plague swept over us without warning," the Fasskister said. "Tendrils of it spread through the grass, so thin they were practically invisible. When you took a wrong step the moss would suddenly sweep upward, covering your shell and shutting down all movement systems. It left life support intact, and even seemed to be providing basic food through our nutrient ports; but I’ve been frozen for days!"

"Do you think it’s the same everywhere?" Festina asked.

The Fasskister let his arms go slack. "I don’t know. Our village is closest to the docking port, where the plague was released. We were taken by surprise. Perhaps others had time to prepare…"

"And perhaps not," Festina finished. "When our ship came to call, no one was answering the radio."

The Fasskister pulled in its arms and passed through a door into the hut. There was plenty of light inside, diffused straight through the dome’s crystal. I could see a clutter of moss-covered bulges on the floor, but didn’t know if they were machines, furniture or people. The Balrog wouldn’t let any of us get close enough to tell — the moss let us inside the door, but wouldn’t yield any farther.

"Your family?" I asked sympathetically, looking at the bulges.

"My vidscreen and sound system!" the Fasskister answered. "I swear I’ll sue that Gragguk till she screams."

"That’ll be a good trick," Festina told him. "She’s dead." The admiral pursed her lips and thought for a moment. "You were one of the people who met the humans and the queen?"

"Yes." The Fasskister was still waving his arms, turning the eyes on his hands to survey the great mossy mess. "The bastards came straight to our village."

"Because it’s closest to the docking port," Festina murmured. "I don’t suppose you planted any of your own nano on them… the way the queen planted spores on you."

"What do you mean?" the Fasskister asked.

"Nano shaped like little eyeballs," I told him. "Well… like human eyeballs anyway." I slipped out the door to bare ground, then knelt and drew a picture in the dirt: a nanite’s big head, the long dangling tail. "They were programmed to sneak into a queen’s venom sacs, steal a bit of venom, then run off before they were caught."

"Yes," Festina said. "If you made the nano, what for? Why would you want to steal venom? And even if you did want venom, how did you think you’d ever retrieve the nanites when Willow was headed to a different star system?"

For a second, the Fasskister said nothing. Then, from inside the robot shell came a high-pitched cluttering sound, like a squirrel scolding someone for disturbing its nest. Mechanical arms lurched and bounced as if they were having spasms… or as if the Fasskister inside was rocking back and forth hysterically, bumping into control switches at random.

From the robot’s speakers, the language circuits drily pronounced, "Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha." The Fasskister was laughing his amps off.

"What’s so funny?" Festina demanded.

"You think… ha ha ha… we could make… ha… nanotech like that… ha ha… in so little time? The Gragguk was only here… ha… for an hour. Your little eyeballs… ha ha… took a team ages to develop."

Festina and I just stared bug-eyed. After a while, she said, "So you know about those nanites?"

"Of course. They were a major commission. Almost all of us on this orbital worked on the project."

"How long ago?"

"Many of your years. It’s gratifying to know they’re still operational."

"Why did you make them?"

"For a client," the Fasskister said. "I don’t know who. The business office said it was top secret — no name on the specifications."

"What did the specifications call for?" Festina asked.

"An integrated nanotech system," the Fasskister replied. "For secret entry, secret exit, some independent decision making, plenty of built-in evasion strategies… all standard requirements. We get a lot of orders for nanites that can sneak in and out of places without being noticed."

"I’ll bet," Festina muttered.

"The real trick was keying it to his DNA." The Fasskister pointed at me.

I yelped. "Me?"

"Yeah."

Festina’s jaw had dropped. "Edward? The nano was keyed to Edward?"

"Yeah," the Fasskister said. "The high Gragguk’s pretty-boy gigolo."

I swallowed hard. "What were the nanites supposed to do?"