When she had left, Fiben finally found Iris voice. “You assume too much with all your glib theories, Gailet. What the hell makes you so sure—”

“I’m not sure of anything!” she snapped back. And the confused, hurt look on her face stunned Fiben more than anything else that had happened that evening.

Gailet passed a hand in front of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Fiben. Just do as you think best. Only please don’t get offended. None of us can really afford pride right now. Anyway, Sylvie’s not asking all that much, on the scale of things, is she?”

Fiben read the suppressed tension in Gailet’s eyes, and his outrage leaked away. It was replaced by concern for her. “Are… are you sure you’ll be okay?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. The Suzerain’ll probably find me another partner. I’ll do my best to delay things as long as I can.”

Fiben bit his lip. “We’ll get word back to you from the humans, I promise.”

Her expression told him that she held out little hope. But she smiled. “You do that, Fiben.” She reached up and touched the side of his face gently. “You know,” she whispered. “I really will miss you.”

The moment passed. She withdrew her hand and her expression was serious once more. “Now you’d better gather whatever you want to take with you. Meanwhile, there are a few things I suggest you ought to tell your general. You’ll try to remember, Fiben?”

“Yeah, sure.” But for one instant he mourned, wondering if he would ever again see the gentleness that had shone so briefly in her eyes. All business once more, she followed him around the room as he gathered food and clothing. She was still talking a few minutes later when there came a knock on the door.

In the darkness, after they had left, she sat on her mattress with a blanket oyer her head, hugging her knees and rocking slowly to the tempo of her loneliness.

Her darkness was not entirely solitary. Far better if it had been, in fact. Gailet sensed the sleeping chen near her, wrapped in Fiben’s bedclothes, softly exhaling faint fumes from the drug that had rendered him unconscious. The Probie guard would not awaken for many hours yet. Gailet figured this quiet time probably would not last as long as his slumber.

No, she was not quite alone. But Gailet Jones had never felt quite so cut off, so isolated.

Poor Fiben, she thought. Maybe Sylvie’s right about him. Certainly he is one of the best chens I’ll ever meet. And yet… She shook her head. And yet, he only saw part of the way through this plot. And I could not even tell him the rest. Not without revealing what I knew to hidden listeners.

She wasn’t sure whether Sylvie was sincere or not. Gailet never had been much good at judging people. But I’ll bet gametes to zygotes Sylvie never fooled the Gubru surveillance.

Gailet sniffed at the very idea — that one little chimmie could have bollixed the Eatees’ monitors in such a way that they would not have instantly noticed it. No, this was all far too easy. It was arranged.

By whom? Why?

Did it really matter?

We never had any choice, of course. Fiben had to accept the offer.

Gailet wondered if she would ever see him again. If this were just another sapiency test ordered by the Suzerain of Propriety, then Fiben might very well be back tomorrow, credited with one more “appropriate response”… appropriate for an especially advanced neo-chimpanzee, at the vanguard of his client-level race.

She shuddered. Until tonight she had never considered j the implications, but Sylvie had made it all too clear. Even if j they were brought together again, it would never be the } same for her and Fiben. If her white card had been a barrier between them before, his would almost certainly be a yawning chasm.

Anyway, Gailet had begun to suspect that this wasn’t just another test, arranged by the Suzerain of Propriety. And if not, then some faction of the Gubru had to be responsible for tonight’s escapade. Perhaps one of the other Suzerains, or …

Gailet shook her head again. She did not know enough even to guess. There wasn’t sufficient data. Or maybe she was just too blind/stupid to see the pattern.

A play was unfolding all around them, and at every stage it seemed there was no choice which way to turn. Fiben had to go tonight, whether the offer of escape was a trap or not. She had to stay and wrestle with vagaries beyond her grasp. That was her written fate.

This sensation of being manipulated, with no real power over her own destiny, was a familiar one to Gailet, even if Fiben was only beginning to get used to it. For Gailet it had been a lifelong companion.

Some of the old-time religions of Earth had included the concept of predetermination — a belief that all events were foreordained since the very first act of creation, and that so-called free will was nothing more than an illusion.

Soon after Contact, two centuries ago, human philosophers had asked the first Galactics they met what they thought of this and many other ideas. Quite often the alien sages had responded patronizingly. “These are questions that can only be posed in an illogical wolfling language,” had been a typical response. “There are no paradoxes,” they had assured.

And no mysteries left to be solved … or at least none that could ever be approached by the likes of Earthlings.

“ Predestination was not all that hard for the Galactics to understand actually. Most thought the wolfling clan predestined for a sad, brief story.

And yet, Gailet found herself suddenly recalling a time, back when she was living on Earth, when she had met a certain neo-dolphin — an elderly, retired poet — who told her stories about occasions when he had swum in the slipstreams of great whales, listening for hours on end to their moaning songs of ancient cetacean gods. She had been flattered and fascinated when the aged ’fin composed a poem especially for her.

Where does a ball alight,

Falling through the bright midair?

Hit it with your snout!

Gailet figured the haiku had to be even more pungent in Trinary, the hybrid language neo-dolphins generally used for their poetry. She did not know Trinary, of course, but even in Anglic the little allegory had stuck with her.

Thinking about it, Gailet gradually came to realize that she was smiling.

Hit it with your snout, indeed!

The sleeping form next to her snored softly. Gailet tapped her tongue against her front teeth and pretended to be listening to the rhythm of drums.

She was still sitting there, thinking, some hours later when the door slid open with a loud bang and light spilled in from the hall. Several four-legged avian forms marched in. Kwackoo. At the head of the procession Gailet recognized the pastel-tinted down of the Servitor of the Suzerain of Propriety. She stood up, but her shallow bow received no answer.

The Kwackoo stared at her. Then it motioned down at the form under the blankets. “Your companion does not rise. This is unseemly.”

Obviously, with no Gubru around, the Servitor did not feel obligated to be courteous. Gailet looked up at the ceiling. “Perhaps he is indisposed.”

“Does he require medical assistance?”

“I imagine he’ll recover without it.”

The Kwackoo’s three-toed feet shuffled in irritation. “I shall be frank. We wish to inspect your companion, to ascertain his identity.”

She raised an eyebrow, even though she knew the gesture was wasted on this creature. “And who do you think he might be? Grandpa Bonzo? Don’t you Kwackoo keep track of your prisoners?”

The avian’s agitation increased. “This confinement area was placed under the authority of neo-chimpanzee auxiliaries. If there was a failure, it is due to their animal incompetence. Their unsapient negligence.”