“Nenda’s right, E.C.” Rebka took over again. “It doesn’t matter how we got into the position we’re in, or how little we like it. We have to accept it and work out how we’ll survive. If we sit here and wait for the Zardalu to come back, that takes us nowhere. They’ll find out we didn’t reach any deal with Speaker-Between for them, and they’ll blame us.”

“But what can we do?” Darya felt she was not getting her urgency across to Rebka. He was as cool and thoughtful as if they were having a round-table discussion of landing permits on Opal. “The Zardalu could be here any minute.”

“Could, and probably will.” Rebka glanced around, assessing each member of the group. “So let’s find out what we’ve got between us, information and possessions.”

“Right!” Nenda said. “Then we better do a little reconnoiter, see where they are and what they’re doing. I’ve had experience in that, and so has At. Tally can tell us where to find ’em.”

“But they’re so big, and so strong…” Darya found it hard to say what she was really thinking, that the thought of the Zardalu gave her the shivers. And she did not like the look in Nenda’s eyes, either, an odd blend of pleasure and anger.

“What can observing them do?” she continued. “It won’t make them weaker, or us stronger.”

“Wrong.” Nenda glared at her. “Information is strength, sweetheart. We take a peek at ’em. Then we come back here, pool all we’ve got and all we know. And then we hit ’em, quick. Zardalu, here we come! I’ll bet that’s the last thing they’re expecting.”

It was the last thing that Darya was expecting, too. Pool what? They didn’t have a thing — not even information. The Zardalu held all the cards: strength, numbers, ruthlessness, hostages.

But looking at the determination on the faces of Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda, Darya did not think her views were going to count for much.

“Have you ever seen a human birth — a normal one, I mean, not in a tank or with an animal surrogate?” Birdie Kelly was speaking in a whisper.

Julius Graves avoided a spoken answer altogether, relying on his head shake being visible even in the low-level light.

“Well, I have,” Birdie went on softly. “A dozen times, back on Opal. And let me tell you, it’s a terrific effort for the mother, even when everything goes fine. You see it once, it makes you glad you’re male. The women get pleasure out of it later, you see it on their faces when they hold their baby. But that don’t make it less painful, or less hard work. But these critters…” He shook his head.

The two men were sitting in a corner of the room. J’merlia was a few meters away with Kallik. Occasionally they whistled and clicked gently to each other, but most of Kallik’s attention was on the Zardalu.

The fourteen massive bodies lay sprawled between them and the only entrance. Now and again a great lidded eye would turn and blink toward Graves and Kelly; otherwise the land-cephalopods seemed scarcely aware of human presence. Certainly they were not worried that any of the group might escape.

The Zardalu talked to each other in their own language, which to Birdie sounded just like the speech Kallik used. Steven Graves had assured him that was an illusion. The Zardalu vocal chords merely produced a range of frequencies and vocal fricatives similar to a Hymenopt’s; or, just as likely, the Hymenopt’s had many centuries earlier been trained to speak so that their masters would understand.

But it was not their speech that held Birdie Kelly’s attention. As they spoke, or ate, or simply lay and rested, the Zardalu were giving birth. They performed the act quickly, easily, and casually.

Birdie and Julius Graves had watched the whole process, while Steven Graves recorded it in his capacious memory, against the time — the unlikely time, Birdie thought — when he would be able to add it to the central data banks of the Fourth Alliance. Steven had also noted his opinion that the Zardalu had evolved in and preferred a low illumination level. He based that on the fact that they had sought out the least well lit chamber they could find that contained a food supply.

Steven had not tried to check his ideas against Kallik’s spotty flashes of race memory of the Zardalu. She was unreliable. The others had all seen her when the giant land-cephalopods had first appeared. What she had done then, and was doing now, went well beyond cooperation for possible future gain. At the first sight of the ancient masters Kallik had dropped flat and groveled on her belly, unwilling to look up with any of her ring of black eyes.

The Zardalu accepted her servitude as natural. The injury to her leg had been done to confirm Holder’s dominance when Kallik was lying helpless, not because she was resisting. Like Louis Nenda, the Zardalu must know that the loss of a limb was not a major trauma to a Hymenopt.

As Graves and Kelly watched, another four Zardalu were giving birth. The first sign was a rhythmic pulse in one of the swollen locations on the necklace of pouches. That was followed, in less than five minutes, by the appearance from that pouch of a rounded cone, like the tip of a shell. It was pale blue in color and quickly swelled to protrude six inches from the opening of the pouch.

At first Birdie had thought that cone-tip to be the head of the newborn. He realized his mistake when the pointed tip began to bulge farther and split open. From it emerged a smooth, rounded egg shape of pale apricot. That surprised Birdie more than he was ready to admit. He had grown to expect everything about the Zardalu, from eyes to torso to tentacle tips, to be some shade of blue.

The egg shape was the cerebral sac of a live infant, born head first. It arrived as a miniature version of the parent, except for its rudimentary tentacles. It wriggled completely free of the pouch in a couple more minutes, took a first, rippling breath, then slithered down the adult’s body to a haven under the canopy of tentacles. Birdie caught a last glimpse of pale orange, then saw nothing for another few minutes. But soon the beak and mouth appeared from between the bases of two of the parent’s tentacles. There was a faint whistling sound. Fragments of food selected from the containers in the center of the chamber were fed in by the parent to the complaining offspring.

From the reaction of the young Zardalu, that was not what they wanted. Within another few minutes they were pushing farther out, biting hungrily with their sharp-edged beaks at the parent’s flesh.

And meanwhile, a second pouch on the necklace was steadily beginning to swell…

“I’m afraid they won’t settle for that for very long,” Graves said. “It’s meat they want.”

“Kallik said that they can survive on other food — if they have to.” Birdie hoped he sounded more optimistic than he felt.

Graves nodded. “But they don’t see any reason why they should. We have to change that, if we can.” He began to ease his way quietly over to Kallik. The site of the Hymenopt’s lost limb had already sealed, and the bud of new growth was peeping through.

“We’ve been waiting for over five hours now,” Graves said as soon as he was close enough for her to hear his whisper. “How long before they do something new?”

As he spoke, Graves saw Birdie Kelly’s reproachful look. For the past few hours there had been unspoken agreement that they would not rely on the Hymenopt for anything. Graves shrugged in reply. What other options did they have? They could not understand the Zardalu, even if their captors were willing to talk to them.

Kallik whistled softly to J’merlia, then said. “I do not know. They are not discussing their plans in my hearing. However, I see new signs of impatience. There are already more young ones than mature Zardalu, and they are under pressure to find a more suitable habitat. They wish to leave this place.”