“ Skidbladnir,if you must know.” Angelo turned away, not bothering to hide the lie. “Can we be transferred back to our original rooms tonight? For convenience’ sake?”
“Once you’ve accepted Elder Singapore’s challenge.”
“Once Miss Pretoria has accepted it for me,” he replied, leaning back on his elbows. “How’s your back?”
“It hurts,” Vincent said. “But improving. I think the docs are getting some purchase on it.” He used their private channel to continue. “You don’t suppose your new friend is limited to appearing there,do you?”
“Pretty silly if he were.”
“So he probably knows what happened to the statue.”
Angelo was out of bed before Vincent realized he was standing. “He probably knows all sorts of things. The question is, if he’s ethical, will he sharethem?”
Volley and return. Sometimes surprising things came up that way. Vincent batted it back. “How do you suppose his ethics stack up to ours? Do you think they have anything in common?”
Angelo paused, scuffing one foot across the carpetplant. “He’ll avoid the unnecessary destruction of sentient organisms. Or, esthelich,his word. Get the feeling it’s not exactly what we’d call sentient.”
“Right. And he likes pets.”
The look Angelo gave Vincent could have fused his wardrobe. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Quite.”
“So what do we do?”
Vincent rocked on his heels, folding his arms. “We ask?”
“Here?”
“Why not? It’s not as if anyplace in this city is free of surveillance, and we have to assume Kii has some control of House, if he’s observing the citizens–”
“–denizens. Think he’s as concerned for the khir as he is for the Penthesileans.”
“Granted.” Vincent bit his lower lip and frowned at Angelo until Angelo licked his lips and looked down.
And then he dropped channel and said aloud, “House, Vincent and I would like to speak to Kii, please. Privately.”
For a moment nothing happened. Then the rippling leaves of the rain forest canopy fluttered faster, sliding together like chips of mica swirled in a flask, layering, interweaving, a teal‑colored stain creeping through the gathered mass until it smoothed, scaled, feathered, and blinked great yellow eyes at them. “This chamber is private,” the hologram said. “Greetings, Vincent Katherinessen. You speak to Kii.”
Angelo’s description hadn’t prepared Vincent for the reality of Kii. That serpentine shape emerging from camouflaging jungle triggered atavistic responses, an adrenaline spike for which his watch barely compensated. He took one unwilling step back anyway, shivering, and forced himself to pretend calm. “Kii,” he said, as soon as he could trust his voice. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
And then he bowed, formally, as he would have on Old Earth, rather than taking a stranger’s hand. Kii seemed to bow as well, its head dropping on its long neck as it took advantage of apparent depth of field to slither a meter or two “closer.”
“You oppose your government’s agenda for this population?”
Vincent swallowed. Angelo stood at his shoulder, silently encouraging, and it was all Vincent could do not to glance at him for support. But he didn’t care to take his eyes off Kii. The Dragon’s direct, forward gaze was intent as any predator’s, and meeting it made Vincent very aware that he was small and–mostly–quite soft‑fleshed.
“We wish to assist you in protecting New Amazonia from Coalition control. We wish to preserve that population as well.”
“But not its Consent.”
“No,” Vincent answered. “Not its Consent. Its…Consent is not the will of the governed.”
Kii hissed, just the breathy rush of air from its jaw, without any vocal vibration. It wasn’t actually talking,Vincent realized. He was hearing sounds, but they didn’t match any vocalizations the Dragon made. “You are very strange bipeds,” it said. “The Consent is that Kii shall not aid you.”
It was not, Vincent told himself, unexpected. He closed his eyes for a moment, though it was an effort breaking Kii’s regard. “So you deliver your ultimatum, and leave us to it?”
“It is the Consent,” Kii said, unperturbed. “It is Consented that Kii may observe and speak with you, and continue Kii’s attempts to help your local population adapt. And protect them and the khir, as necessary.”
Vincent sank down on his haunches, tilting his head back, up at the looming Dragon. It was comforting to make himself smaller. “Kii, can you use your…wormhole technology to connect points in the local universe?”
“Spatial travel? No. Only parallel branes,” Kii said. “The wormholes must lie along a geodesic, and they must transect, or be perpendicular, orthogonalto the originating, no, the initiating brane. It is not the Consent to provide technology.”
“So you didn’t just plunk one down beside your sun for power,” Angelo said, resting one hand on Vincent’s shoulder, his knees a few inches from Vincent’s tender back. Kii’s nictitating membranes slid closed and open once more.
“We couldn’t give it to them anyway, even if Kii would provide it,” Vincent said, craning his neck to get a look at Michelangelo’s face. “Maybe a power feed. Not the generator technology. It’s not an option under any circumstances.”
Angelo scratched the side of his nose, staring down at Vincent as if it were an everyday occurrence for Kii’s holographic head to hover over both of them while they argued. “If they can’t use it for travel, or as a weapon within this universe, tell me why.”
“Gravity,” Vincent answered. He licked his lips and tilted his head back again, addressing Kii directly. “Just because you can’t make a wormhole open under your enemy’s feet doesn’t mean you can’t use this as a weapon. Kii, correct me if I’m wrong, but do your manipulations of branes cause tidal effects?”
“We amend for them,” it said. “But you are correct. There is gravitational pollution. Some we harvest as an additional energy source, or to create effects in the physical universe.”
“Such as tucking a nebula around your star to hide it from random passers‑by?”
The Dragon’s smile was an obvious mimicry of human expressions, on a face never meant to host them. Its ear fronds lifted and focused, the feathery whiskers that made its muzzle seem bearded sweeping forward, as if focusing its senses on Vincent. “Such as,” it said.
Vincent held his face expressionless as much by reflex as by intent. Michelangelo shifted, broke contact, and sat down on the carpetplant with a plop. “Can’t give the Coalition that. If they didn’t break something on purpose, they’d break it by accident.”
“Can they be educated?”
“Have you metmy species?” Michelangelo snapped.
Vincent burst out laughing and caught his arm. “Kii, can the Consent limit what it provides?”
“The Consent is not to provide.”
“If it did–does the Consent ever, uh, change its mind?”
“The Consent is sometimes altered by a change in circumstances,” Kii said. “But the current probabilities do not indicate it likely. The Consent is to defend.”
Vincent rolled to his knees and pressed himself to his feet, careful of his twinging knee. He thought better if he walked, despite the unsettling oscillation of Kii’s head as it followed him. Michelangelo scooted back against the bed, out of the way. “If we could present a convincing argument, do you think the Consent would authorize us to build receivers? Only? Or even provide them, as a solid‑state technology, for trade? That export would provide the Consent with leverage over the Coalition. They would have something to risk, in opposing you.”
Kii sunk lower, resting its chin on the interlaced knuckles of its wing‑joint digits, the extended pinkie fingers folded against its sides. “You wish a crippled technology?”