Killeen looked shocked and Toby knew it was real. “She’s a friend.”

“Sure, fine, no offense. You realize this will take some delicate negotiations? Experts will have to journey here from ’way out in the esty. Given the cross-shifts, we’ll have to—”

“Good. See to it.” Killeen was his commanding self again. “We’ve got other business here and we’ll pursue it.”

The judge glanced at her desk again and seemed to receive a message. “The alien, that is an important issue. We would prefer to have it under our control until—”

“Naysay!” Killeen said angrily. “She’ll be with us.”

The judge hesitated, then her eyes narrowed. “How do we know you’ve really got this Myriapod?”

“We’ll bring her ashore,” Killeen said simply.

“What? Here? But that could be dangerous.”

“Not to us.”

She looked alarmed. “Those things killed people without pity.” Toby recalled Quath’s casual references to how she and her kind had thought of humans as Noughts, beings who didn’t matter a jot on the Myriapodia’s scale of things. And her forerunners had hunted primate-type species. Maybe people here were slow to forget—or knew something he didn’t.

“I’ll guarantee your safety,” Killeen said airily, plainly enjoying himself now. “And I won’t even charge you extra.”

Toby could tell that Cermo was having trouble containing his laughter. Then he looked behind them. Somehow, without their noticing it, a dozen people had quietly come into the big room and were standing at the back. They didn’t look threatening but they didn’t smile either. They wore small, rectangular backpacks and looked authoritative. This was serious stuff.

“Very well,” the judge said. “Please bring the alien here.”

“Not so fast,” Killeen countered. “I want some information.”

“I can assure you that you’ll be properly briefed once—”

“Now.”

“I suppose we could compromise somewhat—”

“And your Andro here, he said something about a message waiting for us.”

“In due time—”

“Same time as you question Quath. No later.”

She pursed her lips, paused, and then nodded to the people at the back of the room. “I would appreciate it if you would send a few of your people along with mine here. They can work out the transfer of the alien to our control.”

“Hey, you won’t own Quath,” Toby put in.

The judge looked at Toby as if seeing him for the first time, and not much liking the result. “We will establish proprietary ownership of the information we gain from—”

“You just take it for granted that Quath will talk to you at all,” Toby said rapidly, looking at his father. “Plenty times, she won’t say a peep.”

“I believe that is a technical matter for the teams which will be sent to interrogate and—”

“Just a second here,” Killeen said. “Toby’s right. You got to handle Quath just so, or you won’t get a used fart out of her.”

The judge blinked. “A used . . . ? I shall assume that was hyperbole, a figure of speech.”

Cermo chuckled and Toby remembered how Quath had built her complex warren, sticking it together with her own feces. “Not entirely,” Toby said, and smiled mysteriously.

The judge regarded Toby skeptically. “Then perhaps we can enlist your aid. Someone who could help us talk with the Myriapod?”

The other Bishops were looking at Toby. He said, “I suppose so. What you do with whatever Quath decides to tell you, that’s your business. But we’re not handing her over to you. She stays with us.”

The judge paused, studying the surface of her desk, then glancing at the others in the back of the room. Mildly, but with a clear threat, she said, “I don’t think you are in a position to dictate terms.”

Killeen turned and gazed steadily at the people behind them. The other Bishops also did an about-face, standing with knees and elbows slightly bent, hands ready to move. A long, silent moment stretched.

Toby saw his father’s point. These people had tech probably beyond theirs, but they were still human. A lot of communication was not talk, but presence, and the Bishops towered over these other men and women. Jocelyn and Toby, the shortest, still were half again the height of these arrogant dwarves.

Killeen let this fact work on the room, and then said, “I expect you to abide by the letter and intent of our agreement.”

The judge paused, sensing the situation. Then she smiled for the first time. “It is pleasant to encounter a visitor who understands the nuances of negotiation.” She held out a hand. “Monisque, I’m called by my friends. My enemies prefer shorter words. Let’s get our terms worked out in detail. Then maybe we can all have a drink.”

Some human rituals were eternal. Toby had no doubt that the drinks would contain a liberal lacing of alcohol.

FIVE

Trans-History

Quath clambered along beside them, clanging and scraping through Andro’s reception area. She had been forced to squeeze through the loading docks and equipment bays of the port, because the personnel areas were hopelessly small. Toby could have sworn that Quath had added some more legs into the bargain, but the knobby steel shanks moved so fast, her pneumatic joints wheezing, that it was hard to tell.

The buildings here glowed like warm butter. Probably part of these people’s security precautions, Toby guessed, but he couldn’t imagine how. Unless somehow the buildings held energies that could flick out, lick away offending Bishops . . .

“How’s that by you, Quath’jutt’kkal’thon?” Killeen asked.

Her angular head swiveled toward Killeen—a politeness she had learned that humans appreciated, though it was completely unnecessary, since her voice came to them through comm. Still, she said nothing.

“C’mon, Quath, don’t worry,” Toby said, making his voice carry a lightness he did not feel, and hoping the alien couldn’t tell that. “You’ll be fine. We’ll be right there.”

<Quath’jutt’kkal’thon neither minds nor matters.>

Toby was puffing just trying to keep up with her. “How come, eyeball-plucker?”

<I do not mind. And now that we have reached this strange place, I do not matter.>

Killeen said, “To these people you matter. They want you pretty bad.”

<For their own ends. Perhaps when all purposes are known, they shall prove to be our ends as well.>

“They seem pretty worried about the Myriapodia,” Killeen said.

To Toby his father seemed edgy and intense, eyes darting to the sides as they passed out of the receiving dock and into the city. They picked up more of the “Honor Guard,” as the judge had called it—teams of men and women with long-bore weapons slipping down side streets, quick-eyed and edgy, clearing the way. The streets ahead were deserted bare stone, closed shops, echoing the Bishops’ ringing boot heels. Killeen signaled to Cermo and a dozen others, who formed their own perimeter line. The people of this monotonous city didn’t seem like a threat; they all knew the “Honor Guards” were there to keep the Bishops in line.

<I will tell them only what the Code of Philosophs allows.>

Quath followed precepts Toby could never figure out. Sometimes she would reel out endless detail about Myriapodia history. Other times, she would clam up tight, not even acknowledge questions.

“They’re dead anxious for news from out of the Far Black, as they call it,” Toby added.

The guards, their squinty-eyed tautness and all, made him nervous. Even the air here itched with faint striations, as though electricity hummed through it. These people, their funny little stunted city, the sheer incredible but rock-solid fact of it being here at all—they added up to a profound unease. And things were moving so fast, he couldn’t get straight answers to any of the myriad questions this place conjured up.