"I told you," Fixer said.

"Shut up," the gunman said. "It doesn't matter. I specialize in extracting information the old-fashioned way, anyway. Tell me what I want to know, or I kill you. So: Where are my two friends now?"

Fixer smiled. "You know what," Fixer said. "I know you. I work for the Malloy family. I see your type in here all the time. They come in for me to fix them up, or help them hide, or whatever. And after I'm done with them, every single one of them would kill me just because I saw them. The only thing that kept me alive was the fact that the Malloy family would have killed them for killing me. You don't work for the Malloy family. You're not going to leave me alive. And you killed my dog. So fuck you. I'm not telling you anything else. Shoot me and get it over with."

The gunman looked to the sky, arms imploring. "Jesus. What is it with people today? I can't catch a goddamn break. Everybody wants to do things the hard way. Fine. Have it your way. But you're wrong about one thing. I'm not going to shoot you."

"What are you going to do?" Fixer asked.

"Just you wait," the man said. "Takk. Show the man."

Takk reached out, grabbed Fixer, and spun him around. "I want to say I'm sorry about your dog. I didn't want to kill him. He just kind of rushed at me. I wanted you to know."

"Thanks," Fixer said.

"Don't mention it," Takk said, and split himself open, revealing the immense digestive cavity that allowed Nagch males to consume prey nearly as large as themselves. Fixer was not nearly as large as Takk; there was more than enough room for him. From inside Takk, elastic appendages with thousands of tiny hooks lashed out and adhered themselves to Fixer's body and neck before he could think to move away. In one violent jerk Fixer was yanked into the digestive cavity. Fixer had a quick image of a few mats of Charlie's fur stuck on the inside of Takk's chest before Takk closed up around him and Fixer was enveloped in darkness.

In less than a second, the digestive cavity constricted around Fixer like a glove and began to squeeze. Fixer felt the air involuntarily crushed from his lungs; he struggled to move but was sealed in tight. Across the flesh covered by the appendages that had yanked him in and were still wrapped around him, Fixer felt burning; the appendages had begun secreting hydrochloric acid to begin the digestive process. Fixer was being eaten. In the (very) small part of his brain that was still somewhat rational, Fixer had to admit it was a pretty elegant way to get rid of a body.

There was a muffled, percussive sound—muffled because Fixer heard it through Takk's body. Takk cracked open and Fixer found himself dumped on the floor of his basement. Fixer gasped air, vomited, and became dimly aware of the presence of several new people in his basement, shouting and fighting with the three that had already been there. He looked up in time to see one of the new people jamming some sort of wand into the abdomen of the computer geek, who was already on the floor. Then Fixer was grabbed, hauled up the stairs and out of his shop, and thrown into a waiting van. The van filled up with other people and then peeled away.

"Mr. Young," someone said to him. "How are you feeling?"

"Gaaaaah," Fixer said.

"That sounds about right," the man said.

"Someone just tried to eat me," Fixer said.

"We got in the way of that, I think," the man said. "Once we came through the door, it threw you up. You must have been too heavy to let it fight. It's behind you now. You're safe."

Fixer peered up at him. "All right, I'll bite. Who are you?"

The man held out his hand. "Bishop Francis Hamn, of the Church of the Evolved Lamb. And you, my friend, are in the middle of a very interesting theological development."

"Passports," the cruise line attendant said. Creek and Robin handed them over, and then placed their hands on the DNA scanners molded into the ticket counter. The attendant opened the passports and then looked back to Creek.

"You're Mr. Hiroki Toshima," the attendant said.

"That's right," Creek said.

"Really," the attendant said.

"Adopted," Creek said. "Trust me. I get that all the time."

The attendant glanced down at the monitor; green lights on both passengers. The DNA matched the passports. He shrugged; Mr. Toshima it was, then. "Well, Mr. Toshima and Ms."—the attendant looked down at Robin's passport—"Washington, welcome to the Neverland cruise liner, and our special memorial cruise. In addition to our usual ports of call of Caledonia, Brjnn, Vwanchin, and Phoenix, we'll also be making special visits to Roosevelt Station, off Melbourne Colony, and Chagfun. There will be special observances and tours available at both stops."

Creek looked up at the attendant. "I'm sorry," he said. "Did you say Chagfun?"

"Yes sir. It's all here in the itinerary." The attendant handed them back their passports along with brochures and boarding passes. "The shuttle to the Neverland is just about to leave out of gate C23. I'll let them know you're coming, but if you could make a jog of it, I know our shuttle captain will be grateful. Enjoy your trip."

About 15 minutes into the ascent, Robin tapped Creek on the shoulder. "You've had your nose in that brochure since we got on the shuttle," she said. "What's in there that's so interesting?"

"Fixer said that this cruise was a special cruise for veterans," Creek said, and handed over the brochure. "But it's not just for any veterans. Look. One of our stops is Chagfun. It's the site of one of the biggest battles UNE forces ever fought in. The Battle of Pajmhi."

"Okay," Robin said. "So? Are we the wrong age for this cruise?"

"No," Creek said. "We're exactly the right age. Or at least I am. I was at Pajmhi, Robin. I was there. This is a cruise for vets of that battle."

Around the Common Confederation, the Nidu were not taken especially seriously as a military power. There are 617 officially recognized nations within the CC—a "nation" being understood as a sentient species' home world and its various approved and recognized colonies. (There were no CC nations with more than one sentient species. In a world with more than one sentient species, one species would wipe out the other or others long before it developed starfaring technology—no exceptions ever recorded.) Of these 617 officially recognized nations, Nidu currently ranked 488th in terms of power of military projection.

This ranking becomes even less impressive when one remembers that 60 nations of the Common Confederation field no military at all, for various reasons including economics, moral philosophy, and in the case of the Chawuna Arkan, a religious requirement to be rapturously passive in the face of extraplanetary invasion. Nidu's relatively woeful ability to wage war stemmed from an indifferent national economy of limited productiveness due to an entrenched but tremendously inefficient caste system, underperforming colonies, a lackluster history of technological innovation, and a military of questionable competence that had been defeated in seven of its last eight major engagements, and "won" the eighth on what most military historians considered a particularly shameful technicality.

Be that as it may, were the Nidu inclined to threaten the Earth and its colonies, it would stand an excellent chance of doing real damage. As lowly as the Nidu were in the rankings, Earth was ranked even lower: 530th, and only ranked that high because the Fru had recently lost their flagship Yannwenn when its navigational crew, used to working in native Fru measurements, inputted incorrect coordinates into the Yannwenn's new navigational computers, which used CC standard measurements. It popped into n-space and was gone forever, or for the 3,400 years it would take to reach the position within the Horologium Super-cluster where it would eventually resurface. Which was close enough to forever for everyone on the Yannwenn.