She nodded. “I’m guessing the war isn’t going very well for the Gubru. Certainly they haven’t found the dolphin ship that everyone’s chasing, over on the other side of the Galaxy. And taking Garth hostage doesn’t seem to have budged Earth or the Tymbrimi. I’d bet it only stiffened the resistance, and gained Terra some sympathy among former neutrals.”

Fiben frowned. It had been so long since he had thought about the larger scope — about the turmoil raging all across the Five Galaxies — about the Streaker — about the siege of Terra. Just how much did Gailet know, and how much was mere speculation?

In the nearby weather wall, a big black bird with a huge, gaily colored bill was depicted landing in a rustle very close to the carpet where Fiben and Gailet sat. It stepped forward and seemed to regard Fiben, first with one eye, then the other. The Toucan reminded him of the Suzerain of Propriety. Fiben shivered.

“Anyway,” Gailet went on, “the enterprise here on Garth seems to be a drain on their resources that the Gubru can’t afford too well, especially if peace does return to Galactic society, and the Institute for Civilized Warfare makes them give the planet back in only a few decades or so. I figure they re looking real hard for some way to make a profit out of all this.”

Fiben had an inspiration. “All that construction by South Point is part of that, right? It’s part of the Suzerain’s plan to save his hash.”

Gailet’s lips pursed. “Colorfully put. Have you figured out what it is they’re building?”

The multicolored bird on the branch cawed sharply and seemed to be laughing at Fiben. But when he glanced sharply that way it had already returned to the serious business of picking through the imaginary detritus on the forest floor. Fiben looked back at Gailet. “You tell me,” he said.

“I’m not sure I can remember well enough to translate what the Suzerain said. I was pretty nervous, you’ll remember.” Her eyes closed for a moment. “Would — would a hyperspace shunt mean anything to you?”

The bird in the wall took off in an explosion of feathers and leaves as Fiben leaped to his feet, backing more than a meter away. He stared down at Gailet in disbelief.

“A what? But that’s… that’s crazy! Build a shunt on the surface of a planet? It’s just not—”

Then he stopped, remembering the great marble bowl, the mammoth power plants. Fiben’s lips quivered and his hands came together, pulling on opposite thumbs. In this way, Fiben reminded himself that he was officially almost the equal of a man — that he. should be able to think like one when facing such incredible improbability. “What …” He whispered, licked his lips, and concentrated on the words. “What’s it for?”

“I’m not so clear on that,” Gailet said. He could barely hear her over the squawking from the make-believe forest. Her finger traced a hand sign on the carpet, one which stood for confusion. “I think it was originally intended for some ceremony, if they were ever able to find and claim Garthlings.

Now, the Suzerain needs something to salvage out of their investment, probably another use for the shunt.

“If I understood the Gubru leader, Fiben, it wants to use the shunt for us.”

Fiben sat down again. For a long moment they did not look at each other. There were only the amplified jungle sounds, the colors of a luminescent fog flowing in between the leaves of a holographic rain forest, and the inaudible murmur of their own uncertain fear. The facsimile of a bright bird watched them for a little while longer from a replicant branch high overhead. When the ghostly fog turned to insubstantial rain, however, it finally spread fictitious wings and flew away.

The Thennanin was obdurate. There did not seem to be any way to get through to him.

Kault seemed almost a stereotype, a caricature of his race — bluff, open, honorable to a fault, and so trusting that it threatened to drive Uthacalthing into fits of frustration. The glyph, teev’nus, was incapable of expressing Uthacalthing’s bafflement. Over the last few days, something stronger had begun taking shape in the tendrils of his corona — something pungent and reminiscent of human metaphor.

Uthacalthing realized he was starting to get “pissed off.”

Just what would it take to raise Kault’s suspicions? Uthacalthing wondered if he should pretend to talk in his sleep, muttering dire hints and confessions. Would that raise an inkling under the Thennanin’s thick skull? Or maybe he should abandon all subtlety and write out the entire scenario, leaving the unfolded pages in the open for Kault to find!

Individuals can vary widely within a species, Uthacalthing knew. And Kault was an anomaly, even for a Thennanin. It would probably never occur to the fellow to spy on his Tymbrimi companion. Uthacalthing found it hard to understand how Kault could have made it this far in the diplomatic corps of any race.

Fortunately, the darker aspects of the Thennanin nature were not also exaggerated in him. Members of Kault’s faction, it seemed, weren’t quite as smugly sanctimonious or utterly convinced of their own righteousness as those currently in charge of clan policy. More the pity, then, that one side effect of Uthacalthing’s planned jest, if it ever succeeded, would be to weaken that moderate wing even more.

Regrettable. But it would take a miracle to ever bring Kault’s group into power anyway, Uthacalthing reminded himself.

Anyway, the way things were heading, he was going to be spared the moral quandary of worrying about the consequences of his practical joke. At the moment it was getting exactly nowhere. So far this had been a most frustrating journey. The only compensation was that this was not, after all, a Gubru detention camp.

They were in the low, rolling countryside leading inexorably upward toward the southern slopes of the Mountains of Mulun. The variety-starved ecosystem of the plains was giving way gradually to somewhat less monotonous scenery — scrub trees and eroded terraces whose reddish and tan sedimentary layers glittered with the morning light, winking as if in secret knowledge of long departed days.

As the wanderers’ trek brought them ever closer to the mountains, Uthacalthing kept adjusting their path, guided by a certain blue twinkle on the horizon — a glimmer so faint that his eyes could barely make it out at times. He knew for a fact that Kault’s visual apparatus could not detect the spark at all. It had been planned that way.

Faithfully following the intermittent glow, Uthacalthing had led the way and kept a careful watch for the telltale clues. Every time he spotted one, Uthacalthing went through the motions, dutifully rubbing out traces in the dirt, surreptitiously throwing away stone tools, making furtive notes and hiding them quickly when his fellow refugee appeared around the bend.

By now anyone else would be positively seething with curiosity. But not Kault. No, not Kault.

Just this morning it had been the Thennanin’s turn to lead. Their route took them along the edge of a mud flat, still damp from the recent onset of autumn rains. There, crossing their path in plain sight, had been a trail of footprints no more than a few hours old, obviously laid by something shuffling on two legs and a knuckle. But Kault just strode on past, sniffing the air with those great breathing slits of his, commenting in his booming voice on how fresh the day felt!

Uthacalthing consoled himself that this part of his scheme had always been a long shot anyway. Maybe his plan just wasn’t meant to come about.

Perhaps I am simply not clever enough. Perhaps both Kault’s race and my own assigned their dullest types to duty on this back-of-the-arm planet.

Even among humans, there were those who certainly would have been able to come up with something better. One of those legendary agents of the Terragens Council, for instance.