Of course, it wouldn’t be amusing if the debates broke down entirely, for then the Regent might actually send in troops. Ruddle wouldn’t put it past those Kumpen. It would certainly make things busier at the hospital. Why, lives might even be lost. The thought preoccupied her as she compiled the fatality record for the day. None of the deaths today had been due to violence, but deaths from disease and accident were still all too common, even with the new antibiotic medicines—medicines that a Kumpen regime would force them to give up in favor of homeopathy and spiritual healing, no doubt.

As a result of her morbid mood, Ruddle was extremely alarmed when a loud roaring sound came from outside, accompanied by cries of panic. She rushed to the ambulance lot out front, following the ruckus, pushing past the people who were fleeing inside. She expected to see the worst, some kind of war machine from Kump, maybe an airship delivering troops.

What she saw instead was…undreamt of in her philosophy. An angular object of some sort, smaller than an airship but not by much, was descending from the sky, making a roaring, whining noise as it did so. Bright, multicolored lights, even more vivid than the electrics that had replaced gaslights during Ruddle’s adolescent years, shone from the object, half-blinding her. What she could make out of the object’s shape was bizarre, its contours alien to her experience. “Where did it come from?” she cried to an orderly who was heading inside, grasping his arm.

“Out of the sky! Like a spirit-wain!”

“Don’t be absurd! There’s a rational explanation for this!”

“I’ll be happy to debate that, ma’am,” the orderly told her, “some other time!” He pulled free of her grip and retreated within.

Ruddle had to admit, she could understand the perception of this thing as a spirit manifestation. It had an eldritch quality to it, she realized as it slowly settled to the ground. The way it crushed the gwikwhen it landed left no doubt that it was heavier than air, yet still it had been able to hover without any visible propellers and only the stubbiest of winglike protrusions. Perhaps her childhood beliefs in the spirits deserved another examination after all.

The noise and wind from the bizarre craft subsided, and Ruddle dared to step forward and take a closer look. It was larger than she had estimated, intimidating in its looming bulk and arrowhead contours. And did she catch a glimpse of some massive form moving inside? It was hard to see through the transparent portion mounted on the high upper surface of the hull.

But then a hatch opened on the side— slidingopen under its own power, as though with a will of its own. Maybe the craft did indeed have its own spirit. Ruddle ducked behind a tree, though it afforded little cover.

Then itemerged. It was huge, terrifying—a massive golden-brown thing, walking on two legs but with a long, horizontal body and heavy tail like an elkruh. But unlike an elkruh’s gentle blue-furred countenance, this thing’s head was as long and angular as the craft it had emerged from, its enormous mouth filled with countless razor-sharp teeth. Ruddle was too frightened to move.

As the monster came out farther, Ruddle realized it was carrying another creature on its back. This creature was built more like a person, even a female, except it was a giant—Ruddle estimated it was nearly half again a real woman’s height—and had no evident clarfelbelow the chin. She (the pronoun seemed reasonable enough to use) also had a pronounced belly, almost like a pregnant woman.

Another giantess emerged behind the monster, walking under her own power. This one was roughly the same size but with no abdominal bulge; still no clarfel, though. She placed a hand on the other giantess’s flank, perhaps to stabilize her on the monster’s back, though it reminded Ruddle of a doctor’s gesture of comfort to a patient. The walking giantess held something in her hand that gave off lights and a high warbling sound, waving it in the direction of the other giantess and studying it intently as though it were some magic talisman. Was this how spirits tended each other’s illnesses? Or was she reading too much of her own experience into something truly unknown?

The hideous, toothed monster had been looking around the ambulance circle, and now its eyes locked on Ruddle. She jumped, and as it began to stride toward her, she scrambled backward, hoping to retreat into the hospital. But she promptly backed into the side of an abandoned ambulance. And there was no time to try to get inside the cab before the monster reached her. Terror overwhelming her, she sank to the ground, her back against the ambulance’s large middle wheel. She prayed to every spirit she’d stopped believing in as the monster loomed over her and opened its slavering maw.

“I am Shenti Yisec Eres Ree of Titan,” the monster said. “Take me to your obstetrics wing.”

Even at his most aggressive, Deanna observed, Ree managed to maintain the politeness that the Pahkwa-thanh cherished—that, indeed, they needed as a people to defuse potential conflicts before they became violent. Instead of roaring and threatening the diminutive, scarlet-skinned hospital staffers into assisting him, he addressed them in a level voice and cast his demands as courteous requests—yet made the underlying threat clear with his body language. (“Amazing what one can accomplish with a civil word and a smile,” Ree liked to joke while displaying his alarming array of teeth. Right now, though, he was employing the implied principle in earnest.)

“Think about what you’re doing, Ree,” she said to him as he carried her into the hospital’s maternity ward, the terrorized Lumbuans hastening to make the preparations he’d demanded. She glimpsed other nurses and orderlies carrying newborn Lumbuan babies to safety, something Ree was willing to allow so long as the needs of his own “patient” were met. “You swore an oath to uphold the Prime Directive.”

“I have a higher obligation, Counselor,” he told her. “And your reminder would carry more weight if not for recent events on Droplet.”

“That was unavoidable. This is a wanton violation of noninterference. Why come here? Why not a warp-capable people?”

“The nearest warp-capable species are either nonhumanoid or prone to belligerence. Lumbuans, aside from their size, are similar enough to you for their child-care facilities to be suitable, and unlikely to present any threat to the child. More advanced facilities would have been preferable, but they have the essentials, and we can supplement with Alyssa’s kit and the Horne’s replicator.”