"Why did you tell Salamander and his people, all the hundreds of others, that you made them?"

"We did not. They concluded that we are their makers. We have chosen not to contradict their beliefs."

Martin was getting nowhere. Still, he would keep asking questions, keep probing. He could not, for justice' sake, do otherwise.

"Do you remember your makers?"

"No."

"They never met with you after making you?"

"They made us as growing potentials within this world. By the time of our maturity, they had changed, and they have not returned or looked at us, so far as we can sense."

"Why did they make you?"

"We do not know."

Martin looked up again. "Can you understand how frustrated I am, not being able to judge? Not having enough evidence?"

"No."

"What would you have me do?"

"Choose different masters, different guides," the staircase god replied. "It is obvious to me, and to many of our smaller surface species, that you have been poorly informed and poorly led. Those who seek revenge for wrongs committed in ages past are not thinking correctly."

"It's part of a system of justice," Martin said. "If you make machines that kill living planets, you know that you or your descendants will be punished."

"Has this prevented the creation of such machines, and the destruction of worlds like yours?"

"No," Martin admitted.

"Then such a law is useless. Ask yourself if there is only one law, or if others have made other laws; ask yourself why we feel that if there are many joined civilizations of the kind you describe, they must to us seem immature, not capable of judging.

"It seems likely now that you cannot harm our worlds, that you are weaker than we. You are not a threat. Any further discussion is wasted effort."

The vision faded, helix of light and glimmer dropping to the red circle.

Martin's audience was over.

Salamander, frozen throughout the dialog, lifted its crest and advanced a step toward Martin.

"You have talked? Have you what you need?" it asked.

Martin relaxed his clenched fists. An involuntary spasm clenched them again. He sucked in breath, shuddering with frustration and rage.

"Have you what you need?" Salamander repeated. Martin looked at the creature sharply, trying to see behind the barriers of physical form, language, his prejudice. He could not help but conclude that Salamander was not an illusion.

The creature in the Death Valley spaceship had been a kind of prototype of the bishop vultures, designed by the Killers, who also created all these beings now experienced… Creators of whom Salamander knew nothing.

To Salamander, Martin represented a monster as frightening as the neutronium bombs that had whizzed through the Earth had been to his father…

Martin was Death, Destroyer of Worlds.

"I should go back," Martin said.

Salamander advanced again, fingers held up. "You have not enough," it said. "You still think we are guilty."

"No," Martin said. What could he say? Nothing to reassure it; nothing to mislead.

"What can we do to defend ourselves?" Salamander asked, with sufficient ambiguity of meaning to confuse Martin.

"I need evidence that those who built the machines are no longer here," Martin said. "Your superiors either can't or won't supply me with the evidence."

"We know nothing of them," Salamander said. "There will be meetings. We must meet with you again."

"Please take me back," Martin said. In Salamander he recognized a type not so inhuman after all; diplomat, organizer, representative of many interests and individuals. He could not hate Salamander, or by extension, any of the others he had seen.

"You must recognize what is to be lost," Salamander said, waddling closer, fingers curling as if in threat.

"I know," Martin said.

"You are not capable of knowing, you are too small and limited," Salamander said. "I must teach you now, immediately, what can be lost. There is no time. What must I do? "

Martin did not want to confront Salamander. "We'll try to arrange another meeting."

"You have met with the superiors twice, and that has never happened in our history."

"Maybe there can be a third meeting."

"They have told you what you need. They will not speak to you again," Salamander said.

"How do you speak to them?"

"We send signals into this planet, and they respond, or do not respond."

Like calling monsters from the deep with songs. Leviathan, indeed; the staircase gods were great energy leviathans basking on the deep energy slopes of paradise, thinking unknown thoughts, disdaining surface creatures.

Noach blackout would end within hours. Martin had to speak with the other ships as soon as possible.

Salamander drew back its arms, dropped them to the floor, backed away, miter head bowed as if in supplication.

"I have been ordered to let you return," it said. It walked on all fours toward the opening of the tunnel. Martin followed, the timeless wash of the vast blue ocean growing louder.

With Martin's return and explanation of what had happened, Double Seedaltered radically in design and ability. The crews stayed on the bridge as the ship drew in its extensions, armored itself against possible direct assault, and shielded itself against transmissions into or out of the ship's interior. Martin knew the ship's transformation could be taken as a sign of aggression, but they had to take the risk.

While they waited, Hakim and Silken Parts selected and displayed some of the, huge volume of information sent to the Double Seedin the past two hours from the surface of Sleep.

Images of planet-spanning cities on the inner worlds, scenes of daily life whose meaning they could hardly guess without reference to hundreds of thousands of pages of text, expertly Englished; the varieties of races, sounds of over twenty spoken languages, biographies and portraits of highly accomplished individuals, including long sequences on Salamander and Frog, more than just diplomats or representatives—creative artists famous throughout the Leviathan system, experts in planetary architecture, responsible for Puffball's construction over the past few hundred years, as well as designers of philosophical systems regarded as complex games…

They're trying to personalize themselves, be more to us than unfamiliar creatures and opponents. It's a tactic almost human… and it implies some understanding of or congruence with our psychology.

"They have opened their archives," Eye on Sky said, and curled to face Martin. "They are very afraid of we us."

Martin nodded.

"He knows that," Paola said.

"They couldn't give me proof that the Killers have gone," Martin said.

"Is that kind of proof possible?" Ariel asked. "They could only prove the Killers are still here if the Killers themselves talked to us—admitted they were here. Right?"

"Right," Martin said. "I'm thinking of the decision Stonemaker and Hans have to make. We've tracked the Killers, we've found conclusive evidence they once lived here…"

Talented Salamander and Frog, betrayed by their physique; leftovers from centuries, millennia of frantic creativity—and to what end? To make up for the Killers' sins, creation to atone for destruction?

Hans would not see it that way. Martin could not predict Stonemaker's reaction, but Eye on Sky was clearly sympathetic to the pleas of innocence, the urgent appeal for multitudes of intelligent beings, far more than just the leftovers of Killer habitation.