<You have climbed the mountain.>

The transmission from Quath had a ringing quality, like bells chiming in the distance, yet the words were clear. Toby did not hear them through his ears, but through his mind. Every Family member had comm gear embedded in the neck and lower skull, standard issue. Quath had simply learned how to tap into those channels, and Toby’s own systems translated into a tinkling voice.

“Hello, joke-face Quath’jutt’kkal’thon.” He used the formal, full name immediately. It meant Brave Crawler with Dreams, or so Killeen said. From experience, he knew that otherwise the big thing might turn and walk away. And Toby could never find Quath in this maze unless Quath wanted him to.

<Maggots cover you.>

“Must’ve caught them from your rotten carcass. What’s that about a mountain?”

<This is my mountain, maggot-one.>

“Some mountain. More like a stink-hole, I’d say. And you’re the one looks like a giant maggot.”

<Welcome, food-of-maggots.>

There was something to be said for an alien who liked insults. Quath gave anybody who had the bad judgment to open with compliments a sudden, cold shoulder. The maggot routine Quath particularly liked, maybe because Quath did look a lot like a creepy bug—and probably knew people thought so, too.

She was a weird, ever-changing combination of slinky, green lizard with an insect that had too many legs. Quath sprouted glassy eyes all along the wriggly body, not just from the bulging head. Yellow stick-arms like hard plastic. Fleshy purple folds. But metal, too, because Quath was a composite creature. Bossed steel studded with protrusions. Riveted copper—or were those really warts, not rivets? Crusted flanks above the legs looked like shaped ceramic, but seemed to flex and work as Quath walked. “End of pleasantries, goggle-eyes. Cermo-the-Slow sent me. We’re wondering if you know anything about getting food out of these clouds.”

<Dwarf being, I have harvested such before, in similar sites. I fathom these alkaline chemistries.>

“Great—tell us how.”

<The spheroids would poison you.>

“The blue balls? Okay, we skip them.”

<The hunter will lead you to fertile zones.>

“The sail-snake? How about eating the snake itself?”

<It is of higher order. Your species would plunder it?>

“Hmmm. We don’t kill other animals any more, even though we used to, back on our homeworld.”

<What changed?>

“The mechs, I guess.” Toby had to make himself recall the horrors of the Bishop’s retreat from their home. The mechs were a mechanical civilization that dominated this entire region of space. “They came to Snowglade way before I was born. Mechs killed off just about anything not smart enough to get out of the way, fast—including forests. Which made Family Bishop decide to stop helping them out by eating our fellow creatures. Now we eat plants.”

<Obviously your species is not naturally vegetarian.>

“How do you know that?”

<You have front teeth designed to bite meat. Your back teeth, however, are best at grinding down grains. Plainly your evolution has shaped you as dietary opportunists.>

“So we’re talented—any problem with that?”

<No, tiny mote. None the less, one should know what one is.>

“But that sail-snake—it’s nothing like us. I mean, maybe we can bend the rules a little.” He wondered how much of his reasoning was based on his rumbling stomach.

Quath swiveled her eye-stalks, which from Toby’s experience might mean that she had decided to act. <Such issues are best decided by experience, not rumination.>

Toby had to call up his teacher Aspect, Isaac, to tell him what “rumination” meant. It was irksome when an alien knew the language better than he did.

Toby was figuring out the definition and so was caught off guard when Quath came clambering up the bowl, her bulging green throat pulsing. Without a further signal she swept up Toby in two telescoping copper arms. Quath accelerated, ignoring Toby’s squawks. Thick pads held him as they raced at startling speed through twisting corridors, down a shaft—and into open space.

Perspectives whirled. Toby felt a hard shove of acceleration. “Hey, what are you—where—”

<Only data can decide.>

Toby sputtered objections, but Quath paid no attention to his injured pride. Instead, the huge alien held him even more tightly as they jetted away from Argo.

He was nearly completely enclosed by massive, soft pads. Somehow, it was restful to know that Quath, despite an annoying abruptness, was looking after him—in fact, looking after the whole Family Bishop. Toby had not had anyone hold him in this enveloping way for a long, bleak time. His memory slid back to Snowglade again, to better times.

He recalled distant, fuzzy images, coated with the soft tones of his mother’s voice. Long-ago nights in the lost, hidden Citadel, he had lain in his bed, tangled in the sheets, awakened by some noise. He had heard his parents murmuring. His door was ajar, letting a slant of feeble light into his room. The warm glow and distant talk had been reassuring, as if his parents made the same soft, furry sounds that his stuffed animals did, or he imagined they did, as he slept with them. He had hugged his animals happily, Billy Bigsnout and Alvin Apple-eater, and sung to them. His mother had heard and come into his room and his father too, and his father had said, “Those animals, he still squeezes the life out of them. Hey boy, you’re getting kinda old for those toys. Have to give them up soon.” His mother had said reproachfully, “Oh no, oh no, he’s just a baby still. There’s plenty of time for him to have Billy Bear.” Her warmth tenderly brushed his face and her smell was like flowers in the spring.

So long ago. So far.

Before the Calamity, when the mechs of Snowglade finally tired of pesky human raids on their factories. Before they crushed the last human outposts, leaving the Bishops to flee and forage.

Heavy braking. They came to a stop and Quath released him. Toby spilled into bright space. Argo was a distant bulk of shiny curves and green domes. Toby turned—

And faced a wall of slick jade. The wall heaved, surged.

<The sail creature is afraid of us.>

“Anybody’d be afraid of you, Quath.”

<There must be some way to use so great a creature without killing it.>

“I’m more worried about the other way around.”

<It flees. We can easily overtake it. If we do not venture near the mouth, it will have no way to ingest us.>

That seemed easy enough. The far end of the snake was a distant slash of mouth and a mass of working pink tentacles. Toby closeupped them and saw that some were eyes, others something like crude hands. It was fascinating, watching them move. Curiosity did not make him want to get any closer, though.

He peered at the shimmering green side of the beast. Then he looked into it, through the skin and into the lattice of sliding orange rods, tubes, and sacs that made the sail-snake work.

“I wonder what’s in those?” He pointed to a big vessel made of what looked like plastic. It held a red fluid.

<My chemical diagnostics cannot decide.>

Toby thought of his mother’s warm breath. So long gone, into that black place where the dead dwell. He had come a long way since then. What would she think of him now? Would she be proud?

“Let’s go see,” he said abruptly.

He glided over to the wall of green skin. With care he drew his knife from its boot sheath. There is nothing in space more dangerous than a sharp edge, and Toby handled the long blade carefully. He measured distances to the skin with his eye and cut one quick stroke—then backed off.

Nothing came rushing out to assault him. Not even a puff of gas, which he had half expected.