"We are most impressed by your partnerships," Eye on Sky said as the camera light blinked. "We have learned to work in partnership ourselves, two very different kinds of life and intelligence, and we have hopes of exchanging useful knowledge."

Hakim turned off the camera. "It is sending," he said. Martin looked around the bridge at Brothers and humans, at the mom and snake mother out of camera range, soon to disappear into the ship's fabric.

Martin could not help thinking of themselves as sacrifices, less Trojan Horsethan trussed lamb waiting for the knife.

He was prepared for that. Death would bring certainty, even an ultimate relaxation. But too many others had gone before them to make the prospect of death in defeat attractive.

William and Theresa. The five billion dead of Earth.

The frozen image of the miter-head creature remained on the screen. Ariel floated beside Martin, swimming against the air with gentle hand motions to stop her axial rotation. "We were taught to hate that thing on the Ark," she observed. "I hope our hatred doesn't show."

"Two hours until our next deceleration," Cham said. "We'll have to be ready—it's going to be four g's and no fields. A big burn."

Eye on Sky and Silken Parts deftly removed a cord apiece and set them down to play chess while they watched. Jennifer, George Dempsey, and Donna Emerald Sea also observed, faces dreamy.

Jennifer said very little now but her eyes were large and her cheeks had hollowed; she slept fitfully, Erin said, and never more than an hour any given time before coming wide awake with a jerk, sometimes a little shriek.

"What did the Killers do to your people when they came?" Ariel asked Dry Skin/Norman. So far, he was the only Brother who had taken a human name, and seemed the most willing to speak about Brother history.

"We our worlds, already in space, already commerce between worlds, all knew when our moons were taken, planets injected. Death was large and quick. We we made our own escapes. The Benefactors found us and told us the Law." Norman weaved a little, releasing a scent of almonds and turpentine: distressed grief. This was not something any Brother enjoyed talking about.

"We know that much," Ariel said. "But did they try to hide themselves, to… play with you?"

Norman jabbed suddenly with his head at the projected chessboard, and the cords engaged in deep concentration jerked, clacked their claws in agitation, resumed. "No deception, no playing false," Norman said.

"I wonder why?" Ariel asked.

"Why play cat and mouse with us, and not with you?" George Dempsey added.

"Perhaps no learning in we us," Norman said. "Perhaps they already met us our kind before, and knew enough."

"You were stronger and more developed than we were," Cham said. "You actually got away from them."

"But we we hate this as much as you," Norman said, "a hate to ungather a braid for multiple fury."

This was the first time Martin had heard a Brother speak of hatred. His face flushed and his heart raced, hearing these words; humans were not alone in their passions. "We're partners, " Martin said. "We feel the same way."

"Cords have no hatred of abstractions," Norman said. "We all we must take their example now. They play better chess, no fury, no hate. United, we we become weaker in some ways."

"Hatred is strength," Cham said. "That's what I feel. Without hating this… without hating them .. ." He bared his teeth like a wolf at the image on the screen. "Let's not underestimate hating."

Norman weaved back and forth and made a smell like burning sugar and cut grass. "I we believe there is strength in you we we have not. I we say never these thoughts to others, but know we we worry them."

Paola questioned him in crude Brother audio, straining her voice to make the scrapes and tones and piped air hums.

"Norman's saying he thinks we might have done better in their situation. Our literature leads him to believe we're better at getting angry. Better at killing."

"I we hope we can learn from you," Norman said.

"I we think we all our aggression suffices," Eye on Sky said, watching his cord push a holographic bishop three squares diagonally.

"How about names for these… creatures or beings or whatever?" Donna asked, breaking the awkward silence that followed. "I have one for it."

"What?" Paola asked.

"Bishop vulture," Donna said. "Sanctimonious diplomat, eater of carrion. Color of sick vomit."

"Yuck," George Dempsey said.

Jennifer came onto the bridge after a few hours' absence, glanced at the chess game in progress, turned to Martin, and projected a series of charts with her wand.

"They can project false light paths," she said. "They can convert matter to anti-matter at billions of kilometers—maybe up to and beyond our noach limit—and they can disarm neutronium bombs. They have it all, or they want us to think they have it all."

"This is what you worked out with Giacomo?"

"And with the ships' minds."

"Then we can't do anything to them."

The crew, human and Brother, fell silent.

Jennifer stiffly turned her shoulders with her neck, looking at her crewmates apologetically. "Sorry," she said. "Before the blackout, this is all we could figure, all we could deduce, given what we're seeing."

"Any chance you're wrong?" Ariel said.

"Of course," Jennifer said meekly. "We can always be wrong."

"You say the ships' minds worked with you," Cham said. "Do they agree?"

"This last part I worked through on my own, after the blackout, after the moms went away, so I can't be sure they would agree," Jennifer said.

"Then there's some hope?" Paola asked plaintively. The Brothers remained silent, waving like grass in a soft breeze.

Jennifer bit her lip. "I'm not perfect at this sort of thing," she said.

"But you're damned good," Cham said.

Martin reached for the last thread before the void, if only to keep the crew from something they did not need at all: complete despair. "Can the ships' minds—on Greyhoundor Shrike—learn from this… advance our technology, add to our defenses, our weapons?"

Jennifer seemed grateful for the suggestion. "That's what we were… I mean, we wouldn't figure this out just to show everybody things were hopeless. We can't do anything on Trojan Horse, but I'm hoping Giacomo and the ships' minds, and all the others…" Tears broke from her eyelids and drifted in front of her face. She batted at them absently. "There just isn't much time, and we could have figured wrong so many different ways."

"But there's hope," Paola persevered. "Real hope."

Jennifer looked at Martin, saw the beseeching in his eyes, and said, "I think so. I haven't given up."

They endured the four-g deceleration for a day. They had created liquid-filled couches for these times; Martin and all the humans kept to their couches and tried to sleep through it. The Brothers' cords clutched their rings.

Orbital insertion was now assured without any further action.

The craft that came alongside a day before they entered orbit gleamed white as snow, a sand-blasted, spherical purity of forty or fifty meters.

The dry voice and image of bishop vulture instructed them, and they pushed their made-up weapons through the mechanical airlock.