He thought of the spiral of plasma and dancing lights, Silken Parts breaking down under the experience of meeting the staircase god.

Bishop vultures, babar, sharks, staircase god.

He lightly touched the stretch of her shorts, withdrew his finger. She still slept.

Reaching down, he touched the flesh between her thighs, centimeters below her pubis, not sexually aroused, simply touching, familiarizing. He did not even think about her consent. He was far from convention and the courtesy of human courtship; he had spoken with a staircase god, and drunk water from the fountain of Sleep.

If there had been something in that water, and if he was now a haven for microscopic listeners and watchers, they could not judge his indiscretion, touching while she slept this woman he had once disliked intensely. No staircase god or bishop vulture, no babar would understand.

Martin could not begin to recall all the races he had been shown, the immense fecundity of the Killers' creation.

"What are you doing?" Ariel asked. He pulled his hand away and pretended to be asleep. "It's okay."

He still pretended to sleep.

She shivered slightly. "You're not asleep," she said.

"No."

"May I touch you?"

"Yes."

She rotated beside him and faced him, then wrapped both arms around him without pressure and touched his back with fingertips, small of back, ribs, where ribs meet spine from each side, fingers gently prodding. "It's okay," she said, voice sleepy. "We feel good."

"Your legs feel nice," he said.

"Not asleep," she chided.

"You have pretty legs," he said.

"They're not fat," she said.

"They're strong," he said.

"It's okay for you to think I'm not pretty."

"I don't think you're not pretty."

"It's okay."

"You smell good."

She hugged him tighter. It was not cold, but both began to shiver, exhaustion compounding excitement. He felt her removing her shorts and then she was on him.

"Ah God," he said. Simple.

She had wrapped her toes in the net left and right of him, and he held himself with fingers and one set of toes above and below her.

She moved strongly and put pressure on him and the result was quick and not particularly intense. She held him then and moved back and forth but did not find herself as Theresa might have. He sensed her weary frustration and even a little anger, angry Ariel, resentful of his ease and her difficulty. But he did not want to put his mouth to her, still reserving that for the memories of Theresa and William.

He put his hand between her legs and she held his wrist and moved his hand and herself, and it was not his doing really when she shuddered in quiet but for a small squeak.

Nothing in the way of finesse, there hadn't even been the voluptuousness of impersonally slicking Paola. But it was enough.

He felt her relax into floating sleep, and willed blanket nothing over himself again. If we all die now and nothing is accomplished, I can at least say

I have met

staircase god

and babar

Pretense seemed useless now. The mom and snake mother emerged from the fabric of Trojan Horse, and now all gathered on the bridge to decide what could be done next.

"If they know, they know," Martin said. "We can't convince them otherwise."

Cham looked around the cabin with a stern, wild face. "Why haven't they blown us to quarks?"

The Brothers curled together in a ten-strand super-braid that filled one side of the room, an imposing knot of knots. Eye on Sky's head swung closest to the sphere of humans, but so far the Brothers had said nothing.

"They could go a lot finer than quarks," Jennifer said. ' "They could grind us to metrons."

"Whatever those are," Ariel said.

"I just made them up," Jennifer said.

Martin could sense the fraying fabric and he extended straight as a board and stretched his arms, in this way imposing on the whole group, most of whom had lotused or curled in the cabin.

"They haven't destroyed us because they don't know where our other ships are. And we won't tell them. We won't even talk about it."

"The possibility of invisible spies," Cham said.

"Right."

"You drank water…" Donna accused.

"We all breathed the air," Ariel said with a touch of scorn. "We knew that would be a problem…"

"So what canwe talk about?" George Dempsey asked.

"That's what we're going to establish," Martin said. "When we're in the noach chamber, nothing can transmit out…"

"But the… little spies, whatever, could store up a message and send it after we're out of the chamber," Jennifer said.

"Assuming something that small can transmit without our detecting it," Cham said.

"Maybe the little things can use noach, too…"

Martin held up his hand and turned to the mom and the snake mother. "First things first. Can you tell whether we've been contaminated?" he asked them.

"Possibly," the mom said. "But an exhaustive procedure would not be easy. Miniature devices might be as small as molecules, made from one kind or another of super-dense matter. This was a risk we decided to take."

"Great," Jennifer said.

"A better plan than detection would be to change the design of the ship, and protect all spaces against unwanted transmission, in or out," the mom suggested.

"We can do that?" Martin asked.

"It can be done, with a reduction in available fuel," the mom said.

"There's something else," George said. "If they wanted to kill us, they could give us a disease we pass from one to the other… these spies, miniature machines, something deadly."

"Killing us won't stop the others," Paola said.

"Unless the disease doesn't strike until we rejoin them," Donna said.

"We we do not feel contaminated," Eye on Sky said. But the super-braid uncoiled and the braids drifted apart.

Ariel said, "Maybe those of us who went down should be in quarantine…"

"As no fields were present when the first contact was made by their machine," the mom said, "it seems more likely we are all contaminated."

"We tripped ourselves up," George said. "Too clever for our own good. We shouldn't have tried to fool them."

"No time for regrets," Martin said. He took a deep breath, reluctant to say what he had to say. "I'm going down again, if they let me. Just me. To talk. We won't be out of noach blackout for another day… I need to know more before I make my recommendations to Hans."

"Ask them," Eye on Sky said.

"About what?"

"Ask them if we all we have been contaminated."

"Why should they tell us?" George asked, shivering, agitated.

The second meeting was granted, to Martin's surprise.

He knew now with a certainty beyond intuition why they had not been killed, why the unarmed Double Seedhad not been destroyed; they were the only connection their hosts had to the invisible ships now moving back in toward Leviathan, ships with unknown weapons, unknown strengths. The more that could be learned, the longer their action could be delayed, the more advantage for their hosts.

Deception piled upon deception… Their hosts could not know how much of a lie was being told, any more than humans and Brothers.