"I know," Festina sighed. "Captain" — she turned to Prope—"as soon as we go down, I’d like Jacaranda to broadcast a message on all radio bands, saying we’re a neutral party just retrieving a group of noncombatants. Peaceful and not allied with any faction."

"They’ll never believe it," Prope said. "It’s exactly the sort of ruse a group of invaders would try." (Prope sure seemed to have thought a lot about lies dishonest people might tell.)

"Even so," Festina told her, "we have to deliver the message. For the sake of sentience."

She glanced at the vidscreen. It still showed the two pictures side by side, Black Epaulettes and the palace guards, waiting uneasily. "When we go in," Festina said, "jittery soldiers are going to react from sheer nervous tension. We can hope they have enough discipline not to get carried away, but there’s no guarantee. If we can do anything to avoid triggering an all-out battle, we have to try. I admit the radio message is a weak idea — God knows, all their radios may have been eaten by Fasskister nanites. If anyone has a better suggestion, I’m happy to listen."

She looked around the room. No one spoke. Finally, Dade cleared his throat. "Uh… does it really matter?’

"What do you mean?" Festina asked.

"These guys," he said, waving at the soldiers on the vidscreen. "They’ve all been at war, killing each other, right? That makes ’em non-sentient. Even the people who aren’t on the front lines, the cooks and the baggage handlers and all — if they’re helping the armies, they’re knowingly abetting non-sentient activities, which makes them non-sentient too. So from the League’s point of view, why does it matter what happens to anybody in Unshummin? I don’t want those people to die, but if we do set off one bunch of non-sentients fighting another, the great and glorious League shouldn’t give a damn."

"Jesus, Benny," Tobit groaned, "it’s the first fucking rule of Exploration, always assume everything is sentient till proven otherwise."

"But it’s been proven otherwise," Dade said. "For twenty years, the armies have demonstrated just how non-sentient they are. Aren’t we justified in assuming—" "That there are no children in the palace?" I asked. "That while Queen Temperance lived there, she didn’t keep laying eggs every twelve weeks? That there aren’t other kids from all the warriors and gentles who’ve been thrown together with each other? That there isn’t a single Mandasar in the palace who just ran there for protection when the Black Army showed up? That there aren’t warriors and gentles and workers on both sides who firmly believe everything they’ve done was purely for the defense of their families, and others who may have been bloodthirsty once but now want peace more devoutly, more sentiently than any of us powder-puffs who’ve never gone through two decades of war? Is that what we’re justified in assuming?"

Dade blushed and lowered his gaze… while I pretty well did the same thing. I’d never spoken like that before; I half thought I was possessed again, and kind of stupidly, I tried to wiggle my fingers just to make sure I was still in control. They wiggled — the words had come from me. Just a part of me I didn’t know I had.

Festina patted me on the shoulder, then looked at the others. "Anything else?" she asked.

Prope opened her mouth to speak… but even she was careful not to meet anyone else’s eyes. "It’s my duty," the captain said, "to make official note of your analysis, Admiral. This landing may spark two hostile factions into battling each other; if that happens, the death count is bound to be enormous." She paused and made sure we were all listening — the normal bridge crew as well as us visitors. "It could be argued this landing constitutes a non-sentient act, since it runs the risk of provoking murder on a massive scale. The Outward Fleet will not force any of you to participate in the mission against your conscience."

I wondered if Willow’s captain had said the same to his crew. He might have — navy regs require starship commanders to recognize dicey situations and call them accordingly. But at the moment, I figured Prope wasn’t thinking about ethics so much as covering her butt… hoping this speech would get her off the hook with the League of Peoples. Even if the League killed the rest of us the next time we crossed the line, perhaps they’d let Prope pass because she’d spoken the right words. "Oh yes, I warned them it wasn’t smart…"

"Thank you, Captain," Festina said stiffly. "You’re perfectly correct. Anyone who considers this landing improper is encouraged to stay on the ship." She glanced at the screen again: the soldiers had flattened themselves in darkening shadows as the sun continued to set. "It’ll be full night down there in thirty minutes," she said. "We’ll begin suiting up then. If some of you don’t show up at the robing chambers, I won’t send anyone looking for you."

She nodded to nobody in particular and quietly left the bridge. For a long time, none of the rest of us moved.

We all showed up. In the little anteroom in front of Jacaranda’s four robing chambers, everyone I thought might come, did: Tobit, Dade, Kaisho, Counselor, Zeeleepull, Hib Nib Pib. And me, of course. I can’t say I’d thought long and hard about the morals of what we were doing. Mostly I’d been busy on the bridge. With a bit of persuasion (talk, not pheromones), I’d convinced Prope to let me record the message that would be broadcast when we landed: telling everyone I was the Little Father Without Blame, just coming down to Unshummin to pick up some friends. It wasn’t what you’d call a slick performance, especially not for something that would be heard all over the planet, on every radio band, looping again and again and again; but I didn’t think it was totally awful.

Besides, good or bad wasn’t the point. The point was to persuade Mandasars not to worry about a Sperm-tail coming in… and secretly to tell my sister I’d come back to Troyen. I didn’t know what effect I wanted that to have; maybe just to see what Sam would do.

All kinds of terrible suspicions lurked in the back of my mind. I needed to give Sam the chance to prove me wrong.

Back at the robing chambers, Festina was last to arrive. She tried not to smile too hard when she found the rest of us waiting. "Well," she said, "an embarrassment of volunteers." She gestured toward the four robing chambers. "Four seats, four Explorers. Me, Tobit, Dade, and York. The rest of you stay on Jacaranda, and I don’t want any bitching."

She got bitching anyway. Kaisho and the Mandasars argued and argued and argued why they should go with us… but anybody could see it was crazy to let them tag along. Kaisho was in a wheelchair — a wheelchair that could hover, but one that moved as slow as a constipated snail. If we wanted to get down and back in five minutes, we couldn’t afford her slowing us up.

No way for the Mandasars to come either. The whole city would reek of battle musk, even before our arrival got the troops heated up. One whiff would make Counselor and the workers freeze with terror. As for Zeeleepull, he could handle the musk (even if it put him in the mood for a fight), but he’d cause plenty of trouble if we met any palace guards. With an all-human party, we might convince the guards we were just there to pick up our friends — especially with Plebon and Olympia Mell to vouch for us. But if we had a Mandasar warrior along, one with a strange accent and no knowledge of palace-guard passwords, we’d be ten times more likely to get arrested as spies.

Zeeleepull and the others weren’t keen on listening to such logic. I’d warned them they might not be allowed to land but they still got all huffy, asking why I’d spent so much time teaching them how to act on Troyen when they’d never get to set foot on the planet. Eventually, Festina had to pull rank on them. She told them they could consider themselves reserves, in case the landing party called for help… but they simply weren’t going down in the first shot with us real Explorers.