“It could, and it will.” The silver flower head was nodding, gleaming with internal lights. “But time cannot change certain elements common to you, the Zardalu, the Cecropians. Common to the Lo’tfians and the Hymenopts also, it appears, although those species came later and their influence on the spiral arm has been less. The element possessed by all your species is difficult to capture in a single word. I will call it prodigality.”

“You’d better call it something different if you want me to understand it,” Louis Nenda said. “What do you mean, prodigality?”

“Fertility. Abundance. Wastefulness.” Speaker-Between hesitated, struggling with words. He had been doing a good job so far, despite a tendency to long, inscrutable pauses. Darya wondered how much was being subtly distorted by language difficulties. She itched to have her hands on one of the omnilingual translation units so common on far-off Sentinel Gate — and so rare on a poor world like Opal.

Far-off Sentinel Gate.

She realized that seen from Serenity, Opal and Sentinel Gate were next-door neighbors. Eight hundred light-years was nothing, when one was sitting thirty thousand light-years outside the Galaxy.

“Maybe it is best to offer an example,” Speaker-Between went on at last. “I have functioned for many millions of years. It is likely that I will function for millions more. If I were to suffer injury. I would repair myself. If I need to do so, I can modify and improve my own operations and organization.

“I am a constructed entity, but the Builders themselves, my creators, developed naturally in the same way. They live forever, by your standards, and they are capable of individual self-improvement and transformation.

“Compare that with the beings of your worlds. You are short-lived, every one of you, knowing that each one of you will die, and die very soon, yet you are not obsessed by thoughts of death, or of a future without your presence. By the standards of the Builders, you are incredibly rapid breeders, and your species changes equally rapidly. Yet you are not capable of self-improvement, as individuals. That does not matter, for — most astonishing of all — the survival of an individual is to you of no importance.”

Louis Nenda gave Darya a little nudge with his elbow. “Hear that? You could sure as hell have fooled me.”

“Shhh!”

“The Builders found, on many of the little worlds, wonderfully designed organisms,” Speaker-Between continued. “They were highly specialized to run, or fly, or hover in the air, or hunt other creatures with great skill. But the Builders found something even more amazing. Once an individual organism fell in any way from perfect functioning, because of age or minor injury, it was expendable. It was allowed to die. That wonderful mechanism was thrown away, while another just as exquisite was created to take its place. That approach to life, that prodigality, and the idea that it could ever lead to intelligent life — was so alien to the Builders as to be incomprehensible. For if intelligence is any one thing, it is surely the accumulation of experience.

“But, the Builders argued, in that incomprehensibility lay the possibility of progress with The Problem. They had exhausted the familiar. Therefore, strangeness was absolutely essential to any possible advance. The Builders did not know which of the emerging intelligent life-forms was likely to prove most different from them, but they knew this: The most alien was the one they would need. And so they took steps to set up the necessary selection procedure.

“And it was simple. When those three species were sufficiently developed technologically to reach out from the little-worlds and explore the Builder artifacts that populate the spiral arm, they would be ready. Individuals of the three species would be taken as the opportunity occurred. They would be brought here. And here they would meet for the selection process. Stasis might be needed, to assure that representatives were available at the same time, but that was not a problem. Stasis technology has been available for 150 million years. In any case, the Builders predicted emergence close to the same time for each species.

“What was never anticipated was that the individuals of two different species might arrive here together, as happened with you two.” The flower head dipped toward Nenda and Atvar H’sial. “However, that presents no problem. In fact, it simplifies matters, since I do not need to repeat an explanation. Thus, no further wait is needed.”

The Interlocutor’s voice began to grow deeper and softer. The silvery shape drifted slowly downward. Soon the tail disappeared into the floor, and then the bulging round of the lower body.

“For now you are here, all three species, exactly as required,” Speaker-Between said dreamily. “The conditions are met. My initial task has been carried out. The selection procedure can begin.

“In fact, the actions of the Zardalu show that it has already begun…”

“Wait” Darya cried. The flower head was all that remained above the smooth floor. “The Builders — tell us where are they located now.”

The slow descent halted for a second. “I know many things.” The torpor of the voice had been replaced by a curious agony. “But that, I do not know.”

The blind head nodded. The silver pentagon drifted downward out of sight.

Hans Rebka, Louis Nenda, and Atvar H’sial had understood immediately. It was Darya Lang, the unworldly professor, and E. C. Tally, the even less worldly embodied computer, who had to have it explained to them — and still had difficulty believing the answers.

After Speaker-Between had left they asked the same questions over and over again of their companions.

“Darya, how many times do you need to be told?” Hans Rebka said at last. “Remember, we’re dealing with alien thought processes. From their point of view, what they’re doing is perfectly logical. They have convinced themselves that the beings who may be able to help them with their problem should have the maximum amount of what they think of as ‘little world’ characteristics — violence and energy and strangeness. The Builders don’t want to work with more than one species at a time, so they’re going to pick one out. Or rather, they’ll let one species pick itself. The ‘selection procedure’ is designed with that in mind.”

“May I speak?”

“No,” Nenda said. “You may listen. I’ll give it to you in words of one syllable, Tally. That’s what the two of you seem to need. The Builders have set us up in a three-way knockout contest. Humans against Cecropians against Zardalu. Winner gets the big prize — survival, and a chance to work with the Builders. Losers get you-know-what.”

“But that’s absolutely—” Darya checked herself. She had been about to say inhuman, which was a ridiculous comment. Instead she changed it to, “That’s absolutely barbaric. You — Louis Nenda. You wouldn’t go into a fight to the death with your friend Atvar H’sial, would you?”

“Course not.” Nenda stared across at the hulking Cecropian. “Least, not till I was sure I’d win. Look, Professor, what I’d choose to do and not do ain’t the issue. We were just told the rules. We didn’t pick ’em. I think there’s only one way for us to operate — and At agrees with me, she’s been trackin’ our talk. First, we gotta take care of the Zardalu and bust their asses. After that we decide how we’ll squabble between humans and Cecropians.”

“There are fourteen of them,” Tally said quietly. “And nine of us — four of whom are already Zardalu hostages.”

Nenda snorted. “What do you want to do, go and explain arithmetic to Speaker-Between and say it’s not fair? By the time he shows up again we could all be dead.”