Thus it was, just three days into Roanoke colony's second year, a single ship appeared in the sky above us. It was the Gentle Star, bearing General Gau, who sent his compliments to me as the colony leader and bade me to meet Mm to discuss the future of my world. It was the third of Magellan. According to the intelligence estimates of the Colonial Defense Forces, begun before the "leak" was set into motion, General Gau was right on time.

"You have lovely sunsets here," General Gau said, through a translator device slung on a lanyard. The sun had set some minutes before.

"I've heard this line before," I said.

I had come alone, leaving Jane to manage the anxiety-filled colonists at Croatoan. General Gau's shuttle had landed a klick from the village, across the stream. There were no homesteads here yet. At the shuttle, a squad of soldiers eyed me as I walked past. Their demeanor suggested they did not consider me much of a threat to the general. They were correct. I had no intention of trying to harm him. I wanted to see how much of him I recognized from the versions of him I bad seen on video.

Gau motioned gracefully at my response. "My apologies," he said. "I don't mean it to be insincere. Your sunsets actually are lovely."

"Thank you," I said. "I can't take credit for them; I didn't make this world. But I appreciate the compliment."

"You're welcome," Gau said. "And I am pleased to hear that your government made information about our colony removals available to you. There was some concern that it would not."

"Really," I said.

"Oh yes," Gau said. "We know how tightly the Colonial Union controls the flow of information. We worried that we would arrive here, you would know nothing of us—or know something incomplete—and that lack of information would cause you to do something irrational."

"Like not surrender the colony," I said.

"Yes," Gau said. "Surrendering the colony would be the best course, in our opinion," Gau said. "Have you ever been in the military, Administrator Perry?"

"I have," I said. "Colonial Defense Forces."

Gau looked me over. "You're not green," he said.

"Not anymore," I said.

"I assume that you commanded troops," Gau said.

"I did," I said.

"Then you know that it is no shame to surrender when your forces are outnumbered, outgunned and you face an honorable adversary," Gau said. "One who respects your command of your people and who would treat you as he would expect you to treat his own troops, if the situation were reversed."

"I regret to say that in my experience in the CDF, the number of opponents we faced who would have taken our surrender was rather small," I said.

"Yes, well," Gau said. "An artifact of your own policies,

Administrator Perry. Or the policies of the CDF, which you were obliged to follow. You humans are not especially good at taking the surrender of other species."

"I'll be willing to make an exception for you," I said.

"Thank you, Administrator Perry," Gau said. Even through his translator I could sense his dry amusement. "I don't believe it will be necessary."

"I hope you'll change your mind," I said.

"I was hoping you might surrender to me," Gau said. "If you have seen the information on how the Conclave has handled our previous removals, then you know that when colonies surrender to us, we honor their sacrifice. No harm will come to any of your people."

"I've seen how you've handled these before—the ones where you've not blown up the colony," I said. "But I've heard we are a special case. You've been deceived by the Colonial Union as to where we would be. We've made the Conclave look foolish."

"Yes, the disappearing colony," Gau said. "We were waiting for you, you know. We knew when your ship was supposed to skip. You were going to be welcomed by several ships, including mine. Your people wouldn't have even made it off the ship."

"You were planning to destroy the Magellan," I said.

"No," Gau said. "Not unless it attempted to attack or begin colonizing. Otherwise, we would have simply escorted the ship to skip distance to return to Phoenix. But you deceived us, as you say, and it's taken us this long to find you. You may say it made the Conclave look foolish. We believe it made the Colonial Union look desperate. And we did find you."

"It only took a year," I said.

"And it might have taken another after this," Gau said. "Or we might have found you tomorrow. It was only an issue of when we would find you, Administrator Perry. Not if. And I would ask you to consider that. Your government risked your life, and the life of every member of your colony, to make a shadow play of defiance against us. This was a futile colonization. Sooner or later we would have found you. We have found you. And here we are."

"You seem irritated, General," I said.

The general performed something with his mouth I assumed was a smile. "I am irritated," he admitted. "I've wasted time and resources better spent building the Conclave looking for your colony. And fending off political feints by members of the Conclave who have taken your government's insolence personally. There is a substantial group of Conclave members who want to punish your government by attacking humanity at its heart—by attacking Phoenix directly."

I felt simultaneous washes of anxiety and relief come over me. When Gau said "attacking humanity at its heart," I assumed he meant Earth; his mention of Phoenix reminded me that the only people who thought of Earth as the heart of humanity were those who were born there. As far as the rest of the universe was concerned, Phoenix was humanity's home planet. "If your Conclave is as strong as you suggest, then you could attack Phoenix," I said.

"We could," Gau said. "And we could destroy it. We could wipe out every other human colony as well, and if I may speak frankly to you, there are not very many races out there, in the Conclave or out of it, who would complain much about it. But I'll tell you what I've told those in the Conclave who want to make you extinct: The Conclave is not an engine of conquest."

"So you say," I said.

"I do say," Gau said. "This has been the hardest thing to make people understand, both in the Conclave and out of it. Empires of conquest don't last, Administrator Perry. They hollow out from within, from the greed of rulers and the endless appetite for war. The Conclave is not an empire, and I don't want to make humanity extinct, Administrator Perry. I want it to become part of the Conclave. Barring that, I'll leave it to its own devices, on the worlds it had before the Conclave, and only those. But I'd rather have you as part of us. Humanity is strong and incredibly resourceful. It's become immensely successful in a short period of time. There are races who have been among the stars for thousands of your years who have not accomplished as much or colonized as successfully."

"I've wondered about that," I said. "So many other races hare been around and colonizing for so long, and yet we had to go to the stars to find any of you."

"I have an answer for that," Gau said. "But I guarantee you won't like it."

"Tell me anyway," I said.

"We invested in fighting more than we did in exploring," Gau said.

"That's a pretty simplistic answer, General," I said.

"Look at our civilizations," Gau said. "We're all the same size because we limit each other through war. We're all at the same level of technology, because we bargain, trade and steal from each other. We all inhabit the same area of space because that is where we began, and we choose to control our colonies rather than let them develop without us. We fight over the same planets and only occasionally explore to find new ones, which we all then squabble over like carrion animals fighting over a carcass. Our civilizations are at an equilibrium, Administrator Perry. An artificial equilibrium that is sliding all of us toward entropy. This was happening before humans arrived in this part of space. Your arrival punctured that equilibrium for a while. But now you've settled in the same pattern of stealing and squabbling as the rest of us."