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  Chapter 16

  Five. Inhale. Five. Exhale.

  “This is different,” said the Host. “This is much better. How long can we talk like this?”

  Six. Inhale.

  “As long as I don’t get anxious,” said Philippe during the exhalation.

  “OK. Try to stay calm, then” said the Host. “So, how did you get me out?”

  Out? thought Philippe as he inhaled.

  “Out?” he said as he exhaled.

  “Out of your head. I wound up in a couple of other people. I kept getting bumped around.”

  “You were in other people?”

  “In their minds, you know. It was nice, but obviously it’s important that I be here with you, so I came back as soon as I could. Were you going through the portals?” he asked.

  “Yes,” exhaled Philippe.

  “That must have been what forced me out, I think,” said the Host, pensively. “I don’t know a thing about this process, but I can’t think of anything else that would have done it. Can you?”

  “No,” said Philippe. He inhaled again and tried not to think about what an understatement that was. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Kre-Pi-Twa-Ki-Tik-Nao,” said the Host. “I’m a physical scientist—or I was a physical scientist. I also used to be what I believe your people call a Host. I hope I still am.”

  “What do you want?” exhaled Philippe.

  “Wow, so many things. To go back home, mainly. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, not if you’ve already met my kind and the other aliens.” The Host looked dismayed. “It was bad seeing those guys, let me tell you.”

  “Why?” Inhale. “Are they bad?”

  “For me, yeah,” said the Host, resignedly. “They’re not harmful or anything, it’s just that, if you know them, that means that a lot of time has passed.”

  It was too much. Philippe could feel the tension rising in his body. The Host seemed to recognize what was happening and tried to say something else, but it was no use. In a blink of the eye, he was gone.

  And Philippe was far too freaked out to get him back.

  Philippe tried again and again, but of course you couldn’t get into a relaxed state if you were damned nervous about what you’d find there. He decided to just leave off the meditation for a little while.

  That night, he worried that the nightmares would return. Of course, the anxiety made it hard for him to fall asleep, but when he did, his only dream was about eating slice after slice of fresh, hot, delicious apple pie—the type of dream he always had when going back onto the all-ration-bar diet.

  The next day, he went to see Max. The weeks he had been on vacation had apparently marked a relaxation in the SFers’ security policies, especially where the Hosts were concerned, because when Philippe asked his entourage if he and Max could meet privately in Max’s office, they just shrugged and said, “Sure.”

  Philippe asked Max for more information about the Host messiah and the chosen one. Not surprisingly, Max was eager to help, but there was very little in the way of actual historical facts known about the messiah himself, and the only information about the chosen one was contained in the verses that Max and Moritz had chanted to him earlier.

  Philippe did learn that the Host messiah lived about a century-and-a-half before the Hosts began to build the station. According to Max, the messiah “studied the world” before “attaining his destiny,” which might mean he had been a scientist, but it might mean something else entirely. Intriguingly, the messiah made himself known as such by appearing in a vision to every single Host simultaneously and singing his prophecy. When people who knew him before tried to track him down after the vision, he had disappeared.

  It was all quite interesting in the light of recent events—not that Philippe was necessarily buying into the whole messiah/chosen one thing, but there could be some truth behind the myth. In any case, there was not much more he could do to investigate until he could see the Host again.

  As Philippe spoke with Max, he realized that he really wasn’t bothered by the return of the glowing Host. He’d certainly been surprised when it happened and somewhat anxious immediately afterward, but now he viewed it as a puzzle to be solved.

  It’s because I know I’m not crazy, he thought, although in the back of his mind, he remembered Shanti saying something ominous about the way mental illness worked.

  There were more pressing things to deal with, however. Philippe asked Max for as much information as possible on the parasite that had sickened Arne, telling him that the medical personnel on Earth wanted to be prepared for any eventuality.

  There might be some truth in that, Philippe didn’t know, but his real agenda was to keep Arne out of orbital solitary. Pressure from Arne’s friends had already gotten the Union to set an outside date on his imprisonment—no longer than six months, assuming there were no complications.

  Six months in zero-gravity solitary confinement was hardly ideal, however, so Philippe was hoping to prove to the Union that the parasite was a simple, unintelligent organism unlikely to plot the everlasting conquest of Earth. George had wanted to make the inquiries, but Philippe didn’t dare let him: The doctor was so angry about Arne’s imprisonment that Philippe was sure he would let the news slip to the alien population. The last thing Philippe wanted was for the aliens to know the extent of the Union’s paranoia.

  Max, naturally, was happy to help. They couldn’t simply share information—the Union would not allow the humans to link their data system directly to the aliens’. But Max and Philippe arranged for Vip to come over and access the Hosts’ data; the SFer had some way of doing it that avoided any potential contamination.

  It occurred to Philippe on the way back to his living area that that the parasite-taking-over-Earth scenario should not, perhaps, sound so far-fetched to someone who was seriously considering the possibility that an alien messiah had recently taken up residence inside his head.

  A few days later, Arne had recovered enough of his health that it was safe to ship him off to his orbiting prison. Philippe came in for a last chat, and casually asked if he had ever dreamed about the Hosts.

  “Oh, all the time,” said Arne. “I’d dream about not being able to talk to them, when everyone else could.”

  “I used to have this repeating dream about this one particular Host who would glow,” said Philippe. “Instead of being red, he was this gold color.”

  “In my dreams I could never tell any of them apart,” replied Arne. “They were always making that grinding noise. And everyone else was best friends with them, and I was always out in the cold.”

  After Philippe saw Arne off—the sick man was being transported in a mobile isolation unit that looked inauspiciously like a coffin—he dropped by Shanti’s office to find her sitting behind her desk.

  “I’ve been talking to Arne,” he began, “and I was wondering about something. You were saying that he couldn’t tell Max and Moritz apart, and he was saying that everyone else seemed to be able to tell just by looking at the Hosts what they were feeling.”

  She nodded.

  “And I was thinking, he’s right—we can.” Philippe paused and looked at her. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Odd?” Shanti echoed.

  “Think about it—we can’t, or at least I can’t—read the body language of any of the other aliens like that, and it’s the devil to tell them apart,” Philippe said. “I mean, I’ve learned from experience with some of them, but I remember coming into the common area of the station the very first day we were here and knowing that the Hosts were happy to see us, just by looking at them. I didn’t have to study them at all. And once I saw them in the flesh, I could always tell Max and Moritz apart, from each other and from any other Host.”

  Shanti smiled. “You know how we do those fighting simulations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, well, after we got here, everyone’s reaction time slowed down, and when I checked, it w
as because they’d started to hesitate before they’d shoot the Hosts,” she said.

  “See? See what I mean? Why is that?” Philippe was getting excited. “You know, maybe the Hosts didn’t just build the station. Maybe they built the portals, too.”

  “The Hosts built the portals,” Shanti said. “And then they didn’t take credit for it. Does that sound like them?”

  “Say, for the sake of argument, that they built the portals,” Philippe continued, undeterred. “And the portals are somehow, I don’t know, imbued with their energy, so that when you go through them, you become a little bit like the Hosts.”

  Shanti rested her elbow on her desk and put her fist on her cheek. “And Arne?” she asked.

  “Maybe the energy . . . ran out or something,” Philippe said, knowing how lame it sounded. Maybe the energy’s living in my head, he thought.

  “You know there’s another possibility,” Shanti said. “Other species? On Earth? You know—dogs, cats, horses? We read their body language all the time. Maybe the Hosts just happen to move like those animals do.”

  “Yeah, but—” said Philippe.

  “Obviously some of the species are easier to talk to than others, even with the translators,” Shanti continued. “You know that alarm the Swimmer drones use, the really awful shrieking? That’s a recording of the Hosts’ distress call. So if their spoken language is easier to understand, why shouldn’t that be true of body language as well? They’re just easier to understand, that’s all.”

  “I like my theory better,” said Philippe.

  Shanti shrugged her shoulders. “OK,” she said, returning her attention to the scroll she was reading. “But I don’t buy it.”

  Philippe retreated to his office. The room was still cluttered with gold get-well gifts, and he stared at them blankly. Obviously they couldn’t ship all these alien artifacts to Arne. So what to do with them?

  There was no answer: According to the Union, alien goods weren’t even supposed to be in the human living area, except maybe in the isolation unit. But that obviously wasn’t a realistic policy.

  There was no place for these things, but there they were. Philippe wondered if, one day, the Union would decide that the same was true of all of them.

  Predictably, Philippe was once again able to see Kre-Pi-Twa-Ki-Tik-Nao—whom he had begun mentally referring to as just “Creepy”—the one day he was meditating just because he needed to relax a little.

  During his absence, the relative harmony between the alien species had become strained—a situation that Philippe was forced to conclude that he and Arne both had worsened, however inadvertently.

  The spark had been the attempt by that Host merchant to better the living conditions of the Snake Boys. The merchant had sought support from other aliens for his campaign, and had gotten the backing of the Pincushions and the Cyclopes.

  But the Cyclopes were all new—Endless Courage had rotated out while Philippe was on Earth—and led by Stern Duty, they was taking a more militant tone. They wanted to change the entire way the station was run. Much to Philippe’s chagrin, they pointed to the way multinational organizations on Earth operated as an example of how the station should be governed—apparently Brave Loyalty had not kept his meetings with Philippe entirely secret.

  The Hosts had, of course, been politely but completely inflexible, noting that running the station was their destiny, and strongly implying that obeying the Hosts’ rules was everyone else’s. The Blobbos were hostile toward any idea that emerged from the Cyclopes, whom they unapologetically viewed as untrustworthy and aggressive. The Swimmers and the humans remained neutral, as did the Magic Man and the White Spiders, assuming that either of those two species was even aware a conflict existed.

  Arne’s illness was apparently viewed as an opportunity to score points against the Hosts by the Cyclopes, who began publicly denouncing the “poisoning” of the second human diplomat. Philippe had several conversations with Stern Duty and other Cyclopes, pointing out that the humans did not consider the poisoning to be deliberate or even the result of negligence on behalf of the Hosts.

  The Cyclopes kept describing Arne’s illness in those terms in public, however, and Philippe began to wonder if perhaps they were not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of a smear campaign. Many of the aliens on the station had noticed that Arne was not as chummy with the Hosts as Philippe had been. That, combined with the fact that the Cyclopes kept using Earth examples when talking about representative forms of station government, had given rise to speculation that perhaps the humans were not as neutral as they claimed.

  So Philippe had to initiate a little campaign of his own, repeating publicly and often that the humans did not blame the Hosts for what happened to Arne, noting again and again that the Hosts had tried to warn him away from the food.

  Philippe was a little uncomfortable positioning the humans more toward the Hosts’ side: He, of course, ardently believed that governments should be representative, and he never liked having to say that he had no relevant opinion on how a place was run. He also felt sympathetic to the Snake Boys, who really did need more space, and he certainly didn’t want to damage their cause.

  But Philippe disliked more the idea of being used, and when the Cyclopes ignored his multiple requests that they stop saying that Arne was deliberately poisoned, he began to wonder what his options were. Could he file formal protests? Ask the Swimmer drones to play a little disclaimer every time a Cyclops was overheard blaming the Hosts for Arne’s absence?

  He was trying to put it all out of his mind for a brief spell, and, of course, that meant that his meditation practice went quite well, which meant that the candle’s light once again morphed into Creepy.

  Philippe tried to not let his irritation ruin things.

  “Oh, good, you did this again,” said Creepy.

  “It’s better than the dreams.”

  “I’ll say,” said the Host.

  Philippe inhaled. “So, you are the Host messiah.”

  “What?” Creepy looked dumbfounded. “No, no, no. I’ve got nothing to do with your Jesus. I’m a scientist. I study matter and the blossoms of energy. I’m not religious.”

  “You’re not?” exhaled Philippe.

  “Of course not,” said the Host. “Perhaps it is different on your planet, but on my planet, religion is just a bunch of silly crap fabricated to make you think that your family is better than any other family. No decent person of any intelligence believes in religion. Religion has brought nothing but pain to my people. I’d like to see all of it gone.”

  Philippe took a deep breath before responding. “‘Abandon your divisive religions, and listen to me, for I will show you the genuine truth.’”

  Creepy sat for a moment. “Yeah, that’s basically what I said,” he replied cautiously. “But I tried to be a little more poetic. How did you know about that?”

  “Two of your priests sang it for me,” said Philippe, “when we were discussing the miraculous reappearance of the Host messiah.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Creepy. “Well, I guess that figures. I really wish they could have done things some other way, though!”

  “They?” asked Philippe.

  “The ones who took me. I mean, there’s just no way I’m going back home, right? If they’re telling you about me, then the history’s already been written.” He looked dismal. “Do you know how long it’s been since I was taken?”

  “Since you vanished?” Inhale. “About 850 Earth years.”

  “What is that in Host years?”

  It was hard to stay relaxed and remember how to convert the years at the same time, but Philippe realized about halfway through that there probably wasn’t any point to what he was doing.

  “Were there portals around when you were alive?” he asked.

  “I’m not dead!” snapped the Host. “And, no. No portals.”

  “Your calendar has changed,” said Philippe. “I can’t help you.”

  Creepy looked, i
f anything, more depressed. Then he went out of focus, and Philippe was staring at the candle again.

  Philippe came out to greet his visitor. The Host merchant was looking concerned, and Philippe ushered him through the no man’s zone and into the conference room.

  “I apologize about the clutter,” he said, gesturing at the gold gifts. He had moved the ones from his office into the conference room and stacked them so that they took up less space, but they still dominated the room. There was also a White Spider on the ceiling, and Philippe found himself thinking that it looked a bit tatty.

  “Those must be the gifts given when the second human diplomat became ill,” said the merchant. “I am of the opinion that he was not allowed to take them back to your planet because of security concerns.”

  “You are correct on both counts,” said Philippe.

  “I am of the opinion that giving gifts is not a functional tradition on this station,” said the merchant, looking over the items.

  “We do appreciate the gesture, nonetheless,” said Philippe.

  “Can you identify these items?” asked the merchant.

  “I am afraid that I cannot,” Philippe replied.

  “I can identify some of them, because they are traditional gifts. Would you like me to identify them for you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The Host gave a quick tutorial. As Philippe had suspected, the gifts were mainly symbolic—statues representing friendship, plaques containing symbols for good health, and the like.

  “And this,” said the Host, gesturing at what looked like a golden rod with a wire at the end, “is a Pincushion organ of renewal, in the act of imparting health to another Pincushion.”

  Philippe looked at the rod and started. “I thought that was the organ through which the Pincushions exchanged genetic information,” he said carefully.

  “It is,” said the merchant. “That is how they maintain longevity. Their longevity is why they rarely need to actually reproduce.”

  “How interesting,” said Philippe.

  “It is,” said the Host. “They rarely die, but they also do not live quite as we do since their genetic makeup is always changing. I often wonder if they really maintain the same identity throughout one lifetime, or if it is more accurate to describe them as constantly dying and being reborn by increments.”

  “Please do not take this observation as an insult to your chosen career,” said Philippe, “but you do seem very philosophical for a merchant.”

  The merchant looked up from the rod, amused. “Despite what some may think, I was not allowed to come onto this station solely because of my wife. I have come to visit you, however, to discuss something else.”

  “Please do—I am happy to hear you speak on any topic,” replied Philippe.

  “I am concerned about the damage I appear to have caused the community of this station.”

  “What damage?” asked Philippe.

  “My efforts to secure larger living facilities for the Snake Boys,” said the merchant, looking worried. “I fear they were a terrible mistake.”

  Philippe thought for a moment before replying. He was going to have to proceed very cautiously.

  “As you know, my government is neutral in this matter, since we are new to this station and do not feel competent to criticize its governance,” he said. “But on a personal level, I believe that your intentions were good, and I do not think you should feel badly for having tried to better the lives of the Snake Boys.”

  “What is your opinion of the Cyclopes, given that one of them attacked you?” the merchant asked.

  Philippe took a deep breath. This conversation was definitely moving to treacherous ground. “The attack on me was an isolated criminal incident,” he replied. “My government has friendly relations with the Cyclopes, as we do with all the other people on this station.”

  “I ask because they are asking me to help with something, and I am unsure if I should provide this assistance,” said the merchant. “The Cyclopes have been critical of this station’s governance. They now are suggesting that the people on this station create an organizational structure to settle trade disputes. Your people do not currently have a trade agreement in place, so I will explain: Currently disputes are either settled between the two parties, or if they cannot be resolved, the Hosts pass judgment.”

  “I see,” said Philippe.

  “My concern is that the Cyclopes have asked me to provide them with a great deal of information about my family’s trading operations, since we have a contract to provide foodstuffs to the Snake Boys. I cannot understand what harm it would do my family’s business to provide this information. But I also cannot understand why the Cyclopes would want such information.” The merchant looked even more concerned. “I know the Blobbos think they are untrustworthy, and currently the Pincushions think very poorly of the Cyclopes as well.”

  “They do?” asked Philippe, mildly surprised. The Pincushions, along with the Cyclopes, had been backing the Snake Boys’ bid for more living space.

  “Yes, they are offended by the Cyclopes’ attitude toward poisoners,” said the Host. “While I found the Cyclopes helpful in the beginning, the departure of Endless Courage and the arrival of Stern Duty has marked a change in their attitude that is distressing to me. I have been made particularly unhappy by the Cyclopes’ comments blaming our diplomats for the poisoning of your second human diplomat.”

  “Well,” said Philippe, “I am speaking here as a private individual, not as a representative of Earth. But I would say that if you are made uncomfortable by a request, then you should decline the request. If you are concerned that you will offend the Cyclopes, you could always say that your business associates do not want that information revealed.”

  “That is true,” said the Host, perking up. “I can tell them that my wife will not give me permission to provide the information. That would most assuredly be understandable to them.”

  Philippe agreed, although privately he doubted if the current pack of Cyclopes would be sympathetic to the peculiar structure of Host marriages.

  “I appreciate your assistance,” said the merchant, looking grateful. “I, of course, lack priestly training, and I fear that until the return to the station of cannot translate—I apologize, until the return to the station of the priest who helped me obtain the translation gear from you, I am without assistance from my own people in these matters.”

  “These matters can be confusing to even the most experienced diplomat,” said Philippe. “I think you have managed as well as anyone could. Your speech, for example, is much improved from when I departed.”

  “Thank you,” said the Host. “We laymen frequently mock the speech of the priests as archaic and simplistic, but now I understand why they speak as they do.”

  “How are things going for the priest who was asked to leave the station?” Philippe asked.

  “The hearing has not yet taken place. Religious orders are never very prompt in resolving their affairs. I do not know very much about it because if my family involved itself, that would harm his case, but I understand that his wife is optimistic.”

  “I am happy to hear that,” said Philippe.

  The station was definitely getting tenser, as was Philippe. Surveillance footage from the common area revealed none other than Stern Duty telling a completely indifferent Magic Man that the Hosts had not really saved Arne’s life but had, in fact, poisoned him twice—once with the food, and once with a caustic toxin masquerading as an antidote.

  Philippe had had enough. He and George called what was essentially a press conference, speaking to a Swimmer drone with the express purpose of creating a broadcast to the rest of the station. George explained that the parasite would have continued to spread without the Hosts’ antidote, so while the antidote did damage Arne’s small intestine, it also saved his life.

  “I do not know why these rumors have been spreading regarding the Hosts’ treatment of the second human diplomat,” said Phi
lippe in closing. “But we consider such rumors as entirely without merit. Our relations with the Hosts remain friendly, and we encourage all other people not to allow such unfounded rumors to influence their dealings with the Hosts, who performed such a vital service in preserving the life of the second human diplomat.”

  The conference marked—or perhaps sparked—the beginning of a larger backlash against the Cyclopes. The Host merchant told Philippe that he had stopped talking with them altogether, and the Pincushions formally asked the Cyclopes to stop making remarks defamatory of the natural abilities of any people—apparently a reference to the constant harping on poisoning. Informally, many Pincushions satisfied themselves by pointing out whenever possible that a Cyclops had electrocuted the first human diplomat, and that electrocution was a particularly sadistic method of attack—far more painful than, say, poison.

  Of course, since Philippe was the first human diplomat, he wound up doing damage control on all sides. In addition to having to constantly exonerate the Hosts for Arne’s illness, he had to do the same for the Cyclopes, exonerating them from blame for his attack. After several days of this, Philippe began to feel like if he was woken up suddenly in the middle of the night, he would shout out “isolated criminal incident” and “we attach no blame for this incident to the Hosts.”

  As the merchant had warned they might, the Cyclopes began agitating for a court or board made up of representatives from all the planets to review trade disputes. The Hosts viewed trade agreements as symbolic of friendly relations and had them with everyone except the humans and the White Spiders. In some cases the actual trade was nominal—their agreement with the Magic Man, for example, was purely symbolic—and of course with the Snake Boys the agreement was simply that the Hosts would provide them with the provisions necessary for their survival with no expectation of payment.

  But in other cases, the trade was quite valuable. And, as the Cyclopes endlessly pointed out, giving the Hosts final authority over disputes to which they could be a party might create a conflict of interests. The Hosts—with their polite but absolute inflexibility—replied that there was no possibility of such a conflict, since merchants conducted the trade but priests settled the conflicts.

  While Philippe once again found himself agreeing with the Cyclopes in the abstract, none of the other aliens with experience trading on the station appeared to view the system as fundamentally flawed or unfair. The priests who settled trade conflicts were screened to ensure that they and their families had no interest in the outcome, and that apparently had once been enough to satisfy everyone. And again, the level of rhetoric coming from the Cyclopes was disturbing: More than once, Stern Duty all but called the Hosts thieves.

  Of course, in all the debate over methods of governance and the motives of the various aliens, the issue of living space for the Snake Boys was completely forgotten.

  “I was hoping to relax.”

  “I do not have many opportunities to communicate with you. I feel we should not waste them.”

  Philippe let that slide—really, there was no point in getting cross with Creepy, it just made meditating even less worthwhile.

  “Who took you from your planet?” he asked.

  “You don’t know?” asked Creepy.

  Again, Philippe suppressed irritation. “Why would I know?” he asked.

  “You’re an alien. And you know other aliens,” said the alien.

  “You were taken by aliens,” said Philippe.

  “Yes, I was. I thought you’d know more about them.”

  “You’re the one who is with them.” Inhale. “Why don’t you know more about them?”

  “They’re weird,” said Creepy. “They don’t—they haven’t been keeping me in a normal place. I haven’t even been able to really see them. It’s been very disorienting.”

  “Maybe they don’t have a physical form?” asked Philippe. “You don’t.”

  “I used to,” said Creepy. “But why don’t you know about them?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because they chose you,” said Creepy.

  “You chose me,” said Philippe.

  “No, no—I didn’t have anything to do with it,” said Creepy. “They chose you. You’ve got to have some kind of connection to them.”

  “Like you do? They chose you, too, you know.”

  And Creepy was gone before Philippe finished talking, leaving him to sit there alone and stare at the electric candle, annoyed.

  After a few weeks of escalating debate, the Cyclopes suspended trade on the station until their demands for a new trading panel were met. Since the humans were still neutral—Philippe’s comments about being attacked by a Cyclops appeared to balance out his refusal to blame the Hosts for what happened to Arne—he offered to act as an intermediary for the Hosts to see if relations between the two species couldn’t be put on a sounder footing.

  His offer was rejected, with Max telling Philippe that it would be inconsistent with the Hosts’ divine destiny as foretold by prophecy to have a non-Host try to settle a significant conflict.

  “I do not wish to offend your religious sensibilities,” Philippe said, “but this is ridiculous. The entire problem with the Cyclopes is that they feel you exercise too much authority. Why do you assume that they want to acknowledge and strengthen that authority through direct negotiation? I assure you, indirect negotiations through a third party can work—I have done it before, many times, with great success.”

  “The Cyclopes are a test of our commitment to our destiny,” Max replied. “They are not the first test we have faced since the prophecy was sung to us by our messiah. Our ancestors developed the technology to go into space before the portal opened, and they built this station before another alien race was found, all because of their belief in the prophecy. We should follow their example and fully embrace our destiny.”

  Philippe thought for a moment. It was a bit low to take advantage of someone’s beliefs, but considering the situation. . . . “What about that disaster?” he asked, quietly. “The one I’m supposed to stop?”

  Max was apparently not capable of rolling his eyes, but his body language got the message across. “This is not that disaster,” he replied. “Our friends from this station do not cause the disaster. On the contrary, they will help you to prevent it. That is what was sung by cannot translate.”

  The situation appeared to get worse the next day, when Baby dashed in to report that the Cyclopes were going to be broadcasting some remarks in about a half-hour. Philippe and his entourage hurried over to the Cyclopes living area, where a small crowd was gathering, including several thrumming Hosts.

  The doors to the Cyclopes living area opened, and Stern Duty stepped out, positioning himself before a Swimmer drone.

  “Greetings fellow residents of this station,” he began. “As all of you know, for the past several weeks we have made certain demands on the Hosts regarding how this station is run. I am announcing at this moment that we have determined that such demands are very emphatically unnecessary. Like all the people here, we are guests in the establishment of the Hosts, and they emphatically have the right to run the establishment as they wish. Our demands were the result of our being emphatically misled by certain other parties, and we intend to restore emphatically normal relations as soon as is possible. We apologize if we caused any dismay and hope to emphatically embrace the Hosts in friendship. I am finished.”

  The crowd began talking, as a small group of Hosts walked up to speak to Stern Duty. Philippe could see that they were ecstatic.

  He stepped over to Max. “That was a surprise. Were you expecting this?” he asked.

  “It is a surprise,” Max replied. “You understand now why we follow the policy of embracing our destiny. If we do so fully, all will be well for ourselves and all people.”

  Max took his leave to go speak with the Cyclops, and Philippe stood there, watching the delighted Hosts exchange pleasantries with the inscrutable Stern Duty.
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  His head began to throb.