Cham looked around the cabin with a stern, wild face. "Why haven't they blown us to quarks?"
The Brothers curled together in a ten-strand super-braid that filled one side of the room, an imposing knot of knots. Eye on Sky's head swung closest to the sphere of humans, but so far the Brothers had said nothing.
"They could go a lot finer than quarks," Jennifer said. ' "They could grind us to metrons."
"Whatever those are," Ariel said.
"I just made them up," Jennifer said.
Martin could sense the fraying fabric and he extended straight as a board and stretched his arms, in this way imposing on the whole group, most of whom had lotused or curled in the cabin.
"They haven't destroyed us because they don't know where our other ships are. And we won't tell them. We won't even talk about it."
"The possibility of invisible spies," Cham said.
"Right."
"You drank water…" Donna accused.
"We all breathed the air," Ariel said with a touch of scorn. "We knew that would be a problem…"
"So what canwe talk about?" George Dempsey asked.
"That's what we're going to establish," Martin said. "When we're in the noach chamber, nothing can transmit out…"
"But the… little spies, whatever, could store up a message and send it after we're out of the chamber," Jennifer said.
"Assuming something that small can transmit without our detecting it," Cham said.
"Maybe the little things can use noach, too…"
Martin held up his hand and turned to the mom and the snake mother. "First things first. Can you tell whether we've been contaminated?" he asked them.
"Possibly," the mom said. "But an exhaustive procedure would not be easy. Miniature devices might be as small as molecules, made from one kind or another of super-dense matter. This was a risk we decided to take."
"Great," Jennifer said.
"A better plan than detection would be to change the design of the ship, and protect all spaces against unwanted transmission, in or out," the mom suggested.
"We can do that?" Martin asked.
"It can be done, with a reduction in available fuel," the mom said.
"There's something else," George said. "If they wanted to kill us, they could give us a disease we pass from one to the other… these spies, miniature machines, something deadly."
"Killing us won't stop the others," Paola said.
"Unless the disease doesn't strike until we rejoin them," Donna said.
"We we do not feel contaminated," Eye on Sky said. But the super-braid uncoiled and the braids drifted apart.
Ariel said, "Maybe those of us who went down should be in quarantine…"
"As no fields were present when the first contact was made by their machine," the mom said, "it seems more likely we are all contaminated."
"We tripped ourselves up," George said. "Too clever for our own good. We shouldn't have tried to fool them."
"No time for regrets," Martin said. He took a deep breath, reluctant to say what he had to say. "I'm going down again, if they let me. Just me. To talk. We won't be out of noach blackout for another day… I need to know more before I make my recommendations to Hans."
"Ask them," Eye on Sky said.
"About what?"
"Ask them if we all we have been contaminated."
"Why should they tell us?" George asked, shivering, agitated.
The second meeting was granted, to Martin's surprise.
He knew now with a certainty beyond intuition why they had not been killed, why the unarmed Double Seedhad not been destroyed; they were the only connection their hosts had to the invisible ships now moving back in toward Leviathan, ships with unknown weapons, unknown strengths. The more that could be learned, the longer their action could be delayed, the more advantage for their hosts.
Deception piled upon deception… Their hosts could not know how much of a lie was being told, any more than humans and Brothers.
Martin waited for the white sphere to arrive and carry him, alone, back to the surface of Sleep. He took advantage of the solitude in his cabin to scan Sleep and the other worlds in the Leviathan system, aimless observation, lips pursed, brows drawn together. Ant in kitchen: trying to understand why one planet would be set to change like a clock display, blink one moment, different the next. Why others would be spiky with massive constructs, others barren and smooth. Why Sleep existed at all—perhaps simply to house the staircase gods, all other creatures an afterthought, all other purposes secondary…
The second journey to Sleep followed the exact pattern of the first. He boarded the shuttle and was immediately met by his skeletal suit and by Salamander. He put on the suit—or rather, it put itself on around him.
Salamander gripped its bar behind the transparent wall.
"We are told you are very dangerous to us," Salamander said, hissing faintly behind the words.
Martin did not reply.
"The creators tell us you are an illusion, that you are much stronger than you appear, and that you will try to harm us."
Still, Martin kept silent.
"They tell us you caused the star explosion."
"It was a trap meant to kill us," Martin said, watching the oceans come up beneath them in the display beside Salamander's panel.
"Are we such a danger to you that you would wish us gone? We have never left this system. Nor have we harmed your kind."
"You haven't been told everything," Martin said, face flushed. "Machines came to my world and destroyed it. Other machines destroyed other worlds, maybe thousands of worlds, thousands of races. Whoever made you probably made those machines."
"We are aware of no such history," Salamander said.
Martin shook his head, irritated to be explaining any of this to what might be a puppet, a sham. Still, the instinct to communicate pushed him. If Salamander was anything like a human, the truth might not have much effect… But at least Martin would have done his best.
"Before my world was destroyed," he said, "the robots, the machines, created diversions to test our abilities. They made some of my people believe that a spacecraft had landed in a remote area, and an unknown… being, an individual, came out of the craft, to warn us of our destruction. It didn't tell the entire truth. It was part of an experiment." Anger at the memory made his throat close. He swallowed, then faced Salamander. "It looked like you. They made it look like you."
Salamander lifted its head, brought the knobs of its shoulders together.
"No individuals of my kind have been to your world."
"I'm not making myself clear," Martin said. "Whoever made you destroyed my world. When I look at you, I am reminded of that crime. That's why we're here. To see if any of the guilty still exist."
"I do not believe our creators have done this thing, nor are we guilty," Salamander said. "What will you discuss with our creators?"
"They say they did not create you." Martin shook his head. "Anyway, that's between me and them."
"Are they the guilty ones?"
"I don't know," Martin said. "They say they aren't."
"They claim to be made by others, as we are?"
"Yes," Martin said.
"Would you kill us, knowing we did not harm your world?"
Martin swallowed again, feeling his weight grow as the ship entered Sleep's atmosphere, descending slowly, deliberately and with vast power. "I don't know."
"You do not know anything about us."