Dignity.

Instead, here was this shabby girl with her flavorless food…

He asked Berg, "Who do the Qax get a good price from?"

She turned to him with a thin, strained smile. "You’ve a lot to catch up on, Michael. It’s a big galaxy out there. A jungle. Dozens, hundreds of races competing for resources."

Poole put his plate down beside him on the rug, and faced Shira calmly. "I’m full of questions," he said. "And the fragments Miriam has learned have only added to my questions. I know you’re reluctant to share what you know, but—"

"I won’t deny that," Shira said, graciously enough. Her eyes were warm. "But you are a scientist, Michael Poole; and the skill of a scientist is in asking the right question." She gestured, indicating the teepee, her fragment of world. "From all you have seen today, what is the right question, do you think? Ask it and I shall try to answer you."

Harry, a blur of pixels, murmured: "The right question? But how—"

Poole shut out Harry’s voice and tried to focus, to find the key in all this teeming strangeness, a way into the girl’s bizarre world. "All right," he said. "Shira — what are the walls of the teepee made of?"

Shira nodded, a faint smile on her thin lips. "Xeelee construction material," she said.

"And who," asked Poole carefully, "are the Xeelee?"

Shira sipped her wine and, thoughtfully, answered him.

The Xeelee owned the universe.

When humans emerged from the Solar System, limping along in the first sublight GUT-drive ships, they entered a complex universe peopled by many intelligent races. Each race followed its own imperatives, its own goals.

When humans dealt with humans, in the days before interstellar flight, there had always been a residual bond: humans all belonged to the same species, after all. There had always been a prospect one day of communicating, of sharing, of settling down to a mutually acceptable system of government.

Among the races men encountered, as they peered in awe about their suburb of the Galaxy, there was no bond; there was no law, save the savage laws of economics.

Not two centuries after Poole’s time, Earth had been captured and put to work by the group-mind aquatic creatures humans called the Squeem.

Harry whistled. "It’s a tough place out there."

"Yes," Shira said seriously. "But we must regard junior races like the Squeem — even the Qax — as our peers; The key advantage held over us by the Squeem, in those first years, was hyperdrive technology." But the hyperdrive, like many other of the key technological components of the local multispecial civilization — if it could be called that — was essentially Xeelee in origin.

Wherever men, or any of the races men dealt with, had looked, the Xeelee were there, Shira said. Like gods, aloof from the rest: all-powerful, uncaring, intent on their own vast works, their own mysterious projects.

"What are those projects?" Poole asked.

Nobody knew, Shira said. It was hard to be sure, but it seemed that the other junior races were just as ignorant.

Berg leaned forward. "Are we sure the Xeelee exist, then?"

"Oh, yes," said Shira with certainty.

The Xeelee were aloof… but a little careless. They left fragments of their technology around for the junior races to turn up.

"We think this stuff is trivial for the Xeelee," said Shira. "But a single artifact can be enough to galvanize the economy of a race — perhaps give it a significant advantage over its neighbors." Her face, in the uneven light of the hovering globes, looked still more drawn and tired. "Michael, we humans are new to this; and the other species are hardly open to questioning. But we believe that wars have been fought — genocides committed — over artifacts the Xeelee must regard as little more than trinkets."

Shira gave him some examples:

Hyperdrive. Poole’s mouth watered.

The construction material: monomolecular sheets, virtually indestructible, which, in the presence of radiant energy, would grow spontaneously from the fist-sized objects known as "Xeelee flowers."

Instantaneous communication, based on quantum inseparability -

"No," Poole protested. "That’s not possible; you can’t send information down quantum-inseparability channels."

Shira smiled. "Tell the Xeelee."

Innovation among the junior races was nearly dead, Poole learned. It was a waste of effort, it was universally felt, trying to reinvent something the Xeelee probably developed a billion years ago. And besides, while you devoted your resources to researching something, your neighbor would probably spend his on a pirated Xeelee version of the same thing and come blazing into your home system…

Shira sketched more of the story of mankind.

The light, inefficient yoke of the Squeem was thrown off with (in retrospect) ease, and humans moved out into the Galaxy again, in new ships based on the Xeelee hyperdrive… stolen, at secondhand, from the Squeem.

Then humans encountered the Qax. And people were made to grow old again.

"And are you here to escape the Qax?"

Shira’s mouth closed, softly; obviously, Poole thought, he was reaching the boundaries of what Shira was prepared to tell him.

"Well, then," he said, "your intention must be to find a way to overthrow them."

Shira smiled. "You’re an intelligent man, Michael Poole. It must be obvious that I don’t wish to answer such questions. I hope you won’t force me to be rude—"

Berg snorted and folded her arms. "Damn it, here’s the brick wall I’ve come up against since this clod of earth came flying up in the path of the Cauchy. Shira, what’s obvious to me is that you’re out to get rid of the Qax. But why the hell won’t you let us help you? We might seem primitive to you, but, lady, we can pack a punch."

"We’ve discussed this before," Shira said patiently.

"But she has a point," Poole said. "If nothing else we can offer you AS technology. You don’t have to grow old, Shira; think about that."

Shira’s expression remained unclouded. "I doubt if you’ll believe me, but that really doesn’t matter."

Harry seemed to shiver. "This girl gives me the creeps," he said, blurred.

"I believe you," Poole said patiently to Shira. "I understand there are more important things than life itself… But still: Miriam has a point. What have you to gain by turning aside the resources of a Solar System?"

"Maybe they just don’t trust us to help," Harry mused. "Maybe we’d be like chimpanzees working alongside nuclear physicists… or perhaps she’s scared of a time paradox."

Berg shook her head, a sour expression fixed on the girl. "Maybe. But I’ve another theory."

"Which is?" Poole asked.

"That if they let us know what they’re really up to, we’d stop them."

Shira’s laugh was unconvincingly light. "This is a pleasant game."

Poole frowned. "Well, at least I’ve learned enough to understand now some of the things that have been puzzling me," he said.

Shira looked puzzled.

"Your ship was constructed under the nose of an occupying force," he said. "Hence you were forced to build it in camouflage."

"Yes." Shira smiled. "We are proud of our deception. Until the moment of its launch, when we activated a hyperdrive shell, the earth-craft was indistinguishable from any other patch of Earth, save for the ancient stones that served further to misdirect the Qax."

"Hence no hull," Poole said. "But still, the craft was more than detectable. After all, it has the mass of a small asteroid; there must have been gravitational anomalies, detectable by the Qax from orbit, before its launch."

Shira shrugged, looking irritatingly amused. "I cannot speak for the Qax. Perhaps they have grown complacent."