"That's why it was edited out," Jane said.

"Because it's ambiguous?" I asked.

"Because it's confusing," Jane said. "The Colonial Union sent us here with specific instructions and gave us the information to support those instructions, without the information that would cause us to doubt them."

"You don't see that as a problem," I said.

"I see it as tactical," Jane said.

"But we've been working on the premise that the Conclave is an immediate and genocidal threat," I said. "This suggests it's not."

"You're back to making assumptions without much information," Jane said.

"You knew about the Conclave," I said. "Is a genocidal Conclave consistent with what you know?"

"No," Jane said. "But I've said before that what I know about the Conclave comes from Charles Boutin, who was actively planning treason against the Colonial Union. He's not credible."

"It still bothers me," I said. "I don't like it that all this information was kept from us."

"The Colonial Union manages information," Jane said. "It's how it keeps control. I've told you this before. It shouldn't be news now."

"It makes me wonder what else we don't know," I said. "And why."

"We can't know," Jane said. "We have the information the Colonial Union has provided us on the Conclave. We have what little I know. And we have this new portion of video. That's all we have."

I thought about it a minute. "No," I said. "We have something else."

"Can you two lie?" I asked Hickory. It and Dickory were standing in front of me in our bungalow's living room. I was sitting in my desk chair; Jane stood to my side. Zoe, whom we had woken up, was yawning on the couch.

"We have not yet lied to you," Hickory said.

"But you can clearly evade, since that's not what I asked you," I said.

"We can lie," Hickory said. "It is a benefit of consciousness."

"I wouldn't call it a benefit," I said.

"It opens up a number of intriguing possibilities in communication," Hickory said.

"I suppose that's true," I said. "None of which I'm interested in right now." I turned to Zoe. "Sweetheart, I want you to order these two to answer all my questions truthfully, without any lies or evasions."

"Why?" Zoe said. "What's going on?"

"Please do it, Zoe," I said. Zoe did as I asked.

"Thank you," I said. "You can go back to bed now, sweetie."

"I want to know what's going on," Zoe said.

"It's not something you need to worry about," I said.

"You order me to have these two tell you the truth, and you want me to believe it's not something I need to worry about?" Zoe said.

"Zoe," Jane said.

"Besides, if I leave there's no guarantee they won't lie to you," Zoe said, moving quickly before Jane could finish. Zoe knew she could negotiate with me; Jane was much more of a hard-ass. "They're emotionally equipped to lie to you, because they don't care about disappointing you. But they don't want to disappoint me."

I turned back to Hickory. "Is this true?" I asked.

"We would lie to you if we felt it was necessary," Hickory said. "We would not lie to Zoe."

"There you go," Zoe said.

"Breathe a word of this to anyone and you're spending the next year in a horse stall," I said.

"My lips are sealed," Zoe said.

"No," Jane said, and came over to Zoe. "I need you to understand that what you're hearing here you absolutely cannot share with anyone else. Not Gretchen. Not any of your other friends. Not anyone. It's not a game and it's not a fun secret. This is dead serious business, Zoe. If you're not ready to accept that, you need to leave this room right now. I'll take my chances with Hickory and Dickory lying to us, but not you. So do you understand that when we tell you not to share this with anyone, that you cannot share it with anyone else? Yes or no."

"Yes," Zoe said, staring up at Jane. "I understand, Jane. Not a word."

"Thank you, Zoe," Jane said, and then bent down and kissed the top of Zoe's head. "Go ahead," she said, to me.

"Hickory, you remember when we had the conversation where I told the two of you that I wanted you to hand over your consciousness implants," I said.

"Yes," said Hickory.

"We talked about the Conclave then," I said. "And you said that you didn't believe the Conclave was a threat to this colony."

"I said that we believed the threat to be negligible," Hickory said.

"Why do you believe that?" I asked.

"The Conclave prefers that colonies are evacuated rather than destroyed," Hickory said.

"How do you know this?" I said.

"From our own information on the Conclave, provided to us by our government," Hickory said.

"Why didn't you share this information with us before?" I asked.

"We were told not to," Hickory said.

"By whom?" I asked.

"By our government," Hickory said.

"Why would they tell you not to share this?" I asked.

"We have a standing order from our government not to share information with you on matters about which you are not substantially informed," Hickory said. "It is a courtesy to your government, which requires security and confidence from our own government on numerous matters. We have not lied to you, Dickory and I, but we are not allowed to volunteer information, either. You will recall before we left Huckleberry that we had asked you what you knew of the status of this part of space."

"Yes," I said.

"We were attempting to discover how much of our knowledge we were allowed to share with you," Hickory said. "We regret to say it did not appear you knew much. So we were not able to share much."

"You're sharing it now," I said.

"You're asking now," Hickory said. "And Zoe' has told us not to lie."

"You've seen our video of the Conclave destroying the Whaidi colony," I said.

"Yes, when you shared it with all of your colonists," Hickory said.

"Did it match your own video?" I asked

"No," Hickory said. "Ours was much longer."

"Why would our version be so much shorter?" I asked.

"We cannot speculate why your government does the things it does," Hickory said.

I paused at this; the construction of the sentence left a lot of room for interpretation.

Jane jumped in. "You said the Conclave prefers to evacuate colonies rather than destroy them. Are you saying this because of the video or do you have other information?"

"We have other information," Hickory said. "The video shows only the first attempt by the Conclave to remove a colony."

"How many others have there been?" Jane asked.

"We do not know," Hickory said. "We have been out of communication with our government for the better part of a Roanoke year. However, when we left, the Conclave had removed seventeen colonies."

"How many of those were destroyed?" Jane asked.

"Three," Hickory said. "The rest were evacuated. In ten cases the colonists repatriated with their races. Four chose to join the Conclave."

"You have evidence of this," I said.

"The Conclave extensively documents each colony removal and shares it with every nonmember government," Hickory said. "We have information on all the removals up to our arrival here on Roanoke."

"Why?" Jane asked. "What relevance does this information have to the two of you?"

"Our government was well aware this colony was being founded despite the warnings of the Conclave," Hickory said. "And while we did not know for certain, we expected that the Colonial Union would attempt to hide this colony from the Conclave. When the Conclave found your colony, we were to show you this information."

"For what purpose?" Jane asked.

"To convince you to surrender the colony," Hickory said. "We could not allow it to be destroyed."

"Because of Zoe," I said.

"Yes," Hickory said.

"Wow," Zoe said.