Martin waited for the white sphere to arrive and carry him, alone, back to the surface of Sleep. He took advantage of the solitude in his cabin to scan Sleep and the other worlds in the Leviathan system, aimless observation, lips pursed, brows drawn together. Ant in kitchen: trying to understand why one planet would be set to change like a clock display, blink one moment, different the next. Why others would be spiky with massive constructs, others barren and smooth. Why Sleep existed at all—perhaps simply to house the staircase gods, all other creatures an afterthought, all other purposes secondary…

The second journey to Sleep followed the exact pattern of the first. He boarded the shuttle and was immediately met by his skeletal suit and by Salamander. He put on the suit—or rather, it put itself on around him.

Salamander gripped its bar behind the transparent wall.

"We are told you are very dangerous to us," Salamander said, hissing faintly behind the words.

Martin did not reply.

"The creators tell us you are an illusion, that you are much stronger than you appear, and that you will try to harm us."

Still, Martin kept silent.

"They tell us you caused the star explosion."

"It was a trap meant to kill us," Martin said, watching the oceans come up beneath them in the display beside Salamander's panel.

"Are we such a danger to you that you would wish us gone? We have never left this system. Nor have we harmed your kind."

"You haven't been told everything," Martin said, face flushed. "Machines came to my world and destroyed it. Other machines destroyed other worlds, maybe thousands of worlds, thousands of races. Whoever made you probably made those machines."

"We are aware of no such history," Salamander said.

Martin shook his head, irritated to be explaining any of this to what might be a puppet, a sham. Still, the instinct to communicate pushed him. If Salamander was anything like a human, the truth might not have much effect… But at least Martin would have done his best.

"Before my world was destroyed," he said, "the robots, the machines, created diversions to test our abilities. They made some of my people believe that a spacecraft had landed in a remote area, and an unknown… being, an individual, came out of the craft, to warn us of our destruction. It didn't tell the entire truth. It was part of an experiment." Anger at the memory made his throat close. He swallowed, then faced Salamander. "It looked like you. They made it look like you."

Salamander lifted its head, brought the knobs of its shoulders together.

"No individuals of my kind have been to your world."

"I'm not making myself clear," Martin said. "Whoever made you destroyed my world. When I look at you, I am reminded of that crime. That's why we're here. To see if any of the guilty still exist."

"I do not believe our creators have done this thing, nor are we guilty," Salamander said. "What will you discuss with our creators?"

"They say they did not create you." Martin shook his head. "Anyway, that's between me and them."

"Are they the guilty ones?"

"I don't know," Martin said. "They say they aren't."

"They claim to be made by others, as we are?"

"Yes," Martin said.

"Would you kill us, knowing we did not harm your world?"

Martin swallowed again, feeling his weight grow as the ship entered Sleep's atmosphere, descending slowly, deliberately and with vast power. "I don't know."

"You do not know anything about us."

"I'm here to learn."

"We are independent. We have a rich existence. Whoever made us did not give us the need to destroy."

Martin stared at Salamander behind the barrier, empathizing for the first time.

"We are not illusions," Salamander continued. "We have separate existence."

Its reiteration made Salamander even more sympathetic. Martin tried to strengthen his resolve, but in Salamander's words there was also sorrow, as well as frustration and perhaps confusion.

"Do you have the power to destroy us?"

Martin said they did, lying.

Salamander's shoulder knobs touched, jerked back, and its six-fingered hands grew tight on the steel bar.

"What will I tell my kind, that we face extinction when we have extended a hand of information and giving?"

"Ask your superiors," Martin said.

"We seldom confer with our creators. We assume they made us. Some have thought perhaps they didn't make us. You say they didn't."

"I don't want to talk to you any more," Martin said.

Salamander's wall darkened.

* * *

The dark sky, thick blue sea, walls of jagged rock; the white disk on its journey around the sharp headland; the triple tunnel mouths, the dock and gray stone floor, into the darkness. Martin carried his water in a plastic bottle, and felt more prepared this time to withstand the heaviness, the weariness in his blood and behind his eyes.

An hour from leaving the ship, he stood within his skeletal suit deep in the tunnel, before the red circle.

The helix of light within its glimmering cylinder rose from the floor.

"Have you contacted your leaders?" the staircase god asked.

"I have more questions," Martin said.

"Why should your questions be answered?"

"If we're going to go to war against each other, we should know more, shouldn't we?"

"That implies an exchange. What do you offer?"

"I'm giving you another chance to convince me you aren't the enemy we've been hunting for."

The staircase god produced its display of cascading lights and colors, but no voice came from the pillar for long seconds. Martin thought of the Bible in his father's library, and reflected that this was a particularly biblical moment. But he did not feel like a prophet facing the burning bush.

What he did feel was not awe, but fear, and not fear for his life. He feared screwing up. He could just begin to see the scale of the blunders they might make here.

"Why should we make the effort?" the staircase god asked bluntly. Language was a true handicap here; nuances and subtleties could not be expected, and bluntness could not be interpreted as… anything.

"Do you believe we can hurt you?" Martin asked.

"It is possible you can destroy us, despite precautions we might take."

"Then accept my offer. Tell me about your past. I'm here to learn."

"In absorbing the information you have given us, I have tried to understand both those you call humans and those you call Brothers. You did not come from the same star systems; your chemistries differ in reliance on certain trace elements. This told us that your story was not true, and we had no difficulty putting facts together. But it did occur to some of us that your gesture of making a lie, of sending a disguised ship, was magnanimous. Your kinds seem to believe in deliberation before reckless action.

"But surely anything we tell you cannot be convincing. What compelling evidence can we provide? We could rearrange your brains, change you so that the beings on your ship would all believe we are innocent. How would you know the difference between compulsion and compelling evidence?"

"I hope to be able to tell the difference," Martin said.

"Your innocence, your ignorance, reminds me of many of our smaller neighbors that live on planet surfaces. There is an attractiveness, you might say a beauty, to their limited lives and thoughts, but unfortunately, faster and more capable minds can't share such illusions."