The second person with Gramm was quite different. Small, round-shouldered, the shape of her body was hidden by the severe cut of her black robe. Her skin was an odd weathered brown, as if she had been irradiated. All her features were small, her nose a stub, her mouth pinched, and her hair was just a gray scraping over her scalp. Pirius found it hard to judge her age. The smoothness of her skin had nothing to do with youth; it was as if her features had been worn by time. Indeed, it wasn’t until she spoke that Pirius was even sure this was a woman.

Nilis bustled forward to greet the Minister, his hand extended, his big bare feet slapping on the polished floor. But the small woman spoke first.

“So here are our young heroes from the Front.” She stood before Pirius. Her eyes were deep and dark, hidden in sockets that seemed to have receded into her head. “I wish I could smell you — you have about you the burned-metal stench of vacuum, no doubt.” She reached out a small hand, and made to brush his cheek. To his shock her fingers passed through his flesh and broke into a swarm of blocky pixels. “Yes, I’m a Virtual,” she said. “An avatar, actually. I’m too many light-minutes from here to be able to contribute. But I couldn’t miss this.”

To Nilis, Gramm said uncomfortably, “This is Luru Parz, Commissary. My… ah… consultant.”

Pirius had absolutely no idea who this woman was or what she wanted, and it baffled him that Gramm didn’t even seem to want her here.

But there was no time to think about that, for now Gramm was looming over Torec. “What an exotic little creature. The color of her uniform — the texture of her flesh — why, she’s like a little toy.” He reached out and laid his fat fingers on her shoulder.

Torec endured this, expressionless. But when his hand slid down her shoulder to her breast, she grabbed his finger and bent it back.

He recoiled, clutching his hand to his crotch. “Lethe. I think she broke it!”

Luru Parz was laughing. “No, she didn’t. You deserved that, you fat fool.”

Gramm glared up at Nilis. “I’ll hold you responsible, Commissary.”

Nilis was trembling with anger, Pirius saw. “Well, you have that right, sir. But I point out that it is exotic little creatures like these who are fighting and dying on our behalf, even as we speak, right across the Front. It has been difficult enough for me to persuade these two that Earth is more than a cesspit of decadence. They certainly deserve more respect than to be treated as playthings, even by a Minister.”

Luru Parz opened her mouth to laugh louder. Her teeth were quite black, Pirius saw. “He has you there, Gramm!”

Gramm glared at her. “Shut up, Luru; sometimes you go too far.”

The slim woman, Pila, watched all this with an air of detachment. “If the pleasantries are over, shall we start?”

Still cradling his hand, Gramm slumped in a chair. “Let’s get it over.”

Nilis bustled to the head of the room with his bot.

Pirius and Torec cautiously took their seats as far from the others as possible. Luru Parz sat, too, but Pirius saw that her Virtual wasn’t perfect, and she seemed to hover above her chair.

A servant appeared — not a bot, Pirius saw, wondering, a human servant — with drinks and a tray of some kind of hot, spicy food, which he set before the Minister. Gramm pushed the fingers of his uninjured hand into the food and began to eat steadily.

A glass of water, Virtually generated, materialized before Luru Parz, and she picked it up and sipped it gently. She saw the ensigns staring at her, and she smiled. “Here on Earth, children, there is even an etiquette for dealing with a Virtual guest. High culture, you see. Isn’t that something worth fighting for?”

Nilis was ready to make his presentation. “Minister, Madam Parz, Madam Pila, Ensigns—”

Gramm growled, “Get on with it, Nilis, you bumbling idiot.” The servant discreetly wiped grease from his mouth.

Nilis pointed dramatically at Pirius. “I brought these child soldiers back from the Front for two reasons. First they symbolize our endless war. All across the Front, bright young people are fighting — and dying in hordes. And it has been that way for three thousand years.”

Gramm asked, “Is this to be one of your interminable moral lectures, Nilis?”

Nilis said urgently, “Moral, you say? Don’t we at least have a moral responsibility to try to curtail this endless waste? Wouldn’t that be moral? And that’s the second reason I brought these two home. Because this one, Pirius, will — or would have, in an earlier timeline draft — would have found a new way to strike at the Xeelee. You can see the results in the derelict I brought home to Saturn. Minister, Pilot Officer Pirius showed that we can think differently about the war, even after all this time.”

“Tell me what you’re proposing, Commissary.” The Minister sounded languidly bored.

Nilis snapped his fingers. His bot unfolded a white screen, and produced a clutch of styluses with a kind of flourish. And above its hide, a Virtual of the Galaxy coalesced. The central bulge was bright enough to cast shadows on the polished surface of the conference table, and its paper-thin disc sparkled with supernova jewels.

“Here is the Galaxy, with its four hundred billion stars,” Nilis said. “I have consulted the archives of the Navy, the Green Army, and other military groups. And here are their current targets for military action.” He snapped his fingers again. A series of bright green specks lit up across the Galaxy’s image. “You can see there are still a few in the disc — pockets of resistance we’ve yet to clear out — and more in the halo, beyond the range of this image. But the main action is of course at the Front.” This was a sphere, emerald green, embedded in the Galaxy’s central bulge. “It’s an impressive disposition, the culmination of a grand military ambition. But our strategy is missing one crucial element.”

A new Virtual coalesced in the air, before the Galaxy image. It was another spiral, looking like a cartoon version of the star city behind it.

Pirius recognized it immediately. “That’s the Baby Spiral,” he said. “It’s inside the Front — the system at the very center of the Galaxy.”

Nilis said, “Quite right, Ensign. But look here…” The image magnified, until the center of the Baby Spiral loomed large and bright, and its crowded arms feathered off into the surrounding darkness. Nilis pointed to an unassuming speck of white light, just off-center from the spiral’s geometric heart. “Ensign Pirius, can you tell us what that is?”

“That’s Chandra. Sir, the Xeelee’s Galactic Prime Radiant is based at the three-million-stellar-mass black hole at the center of the Galaxy. The Xeelee seem to use it as their operational command post.”

Nilis nodded. “Good, good.”

“Yes,” said Luru Parz. “And a summary appropriately hedged with qualifications.”

Gramm glared at her. “What do you mean by that?”

“Seem to use it for this and that — Don’t you think it’s extraordinary, Minister, that after three thousand years of siege warfare around this Prime Radiant, we know so little about it, and indeed about our foe?”

Gramm turned away from her. “Make your point, Commissary.”

Nilis said, “My point is this.” He pointed dramatically to the display. “The Prime Radiant is surrounded by military targets, as you can see. But the Prime Radiant itself is not a target.” He looked at their faces, waiting for comprehension to dawn.

“And,” Gramm said around a mouthful of food, “you’re saying it should be.”

“Of course it should! The Prime Radiant is properly named, for it is in a real sense the source of the Xeelee presence in our Galaxy. And if we could strike at it—” He snapped his fingers again. Suddenly the center of the Baby Spiral glowed emerald green, and one by one the other lights went out. “Minister, take out the source, and all these other targets, which are downstream of it in a logical sense, are essentially taken out too. Why, it’s a question of economics. If you shut down the factory, you are saved the expense of picking off its products, one by one. Take out the power plant—”