Arrayed and curved like the ribs of an immense snake's skeleton, the pseudopods had become his honour guard. He walked down the spine.

In the face of total disaster, defiance is the only recourse… crazy street-lamps they have here.

Cormac allowed his mind to wander; random-access on subject:

Monitor: Insentient autochthon of the planet Aster Colora. It has the appearance of a Terran monitor lizard, but is a kilometre long and weighs an estimated 4.5 million tonnes. It is a silicon-based lifeform with an alien physiognomy…

Dragon… Monitor… What connection?

Why does Dragon want an ambassador?

Questions.

Answers?

Damn!

The two kilometres unrolled and eventually Cormac came before the curving edifice of tegulate flesh within an amphitheatre of pseudopods. He noted, to one side, a piece of machinery that could have been the comlink for Dragon/human dialogue: the one exception to its rule about machines. It was scrapped. He looked up at the pink-and-red-stippled sky, half cut by the cloud-tangled flesh mountain, and he waited.

'Ambassador.'

The voice came from the undershadows of the sphere, resonant but conversational.

'Ian Cormac… yes.'

'Names. All things can be named.'

As of skis on granular snow, a hissing issued from the undershadows. Cormac saw a swirl of movement, then a monstrous head shot towards him, propelled by a ribbed snake body. He stumbled back, fell. It rose above him; a pterosaur head with sapphire eyes.

'Are you afraid?'

Cormac choked back his immediate reply and said, 'Should I be?' His tone betrayed nothing of what he felt.

The head lunged at him, then jerked to a halt two metres above him. It smelt of cloves. Milky saliva dripped on him.

'Answer my question.'

'Yes, I am afraid. Does that surprise you?'

'No.'

The head moved up and away. Cormac stood and brushed himself off.

'I fail to see the purpose of that litde scene,' he said.

'You represent your race,' Dragon replied, 'and you can die.'

More than personal, then. Cormac did not react to the implications, but steadily returned the stare of those sapphire eyes.

'Why did you send for an ambassador.'

'Ah… you are human then?'

'Of course.'

'You do represent your race?'

'Such is my position, though I cannot speak for every individual in it.' He emphasized individual - why? He did not know; it had almost been instinctive. The Dragon head swayed, then twitched, shaking off an accumulation of snow.

'Running round the inside of your skull is a net of mycorhizal fibre optics connected to etched-atom processors, silicon synaptic interfaces and an underspace transmitter. Evolution is a wonderful thing,' it said.

That gave Cormac pause. Smoothly he said, 'They are the tools of my trade. I am human. I am a member of the races of homo sapiens, meaning "wise man", and a wise man will use what tools he can to make his tasks easier.'

'I am glad you are sure of your integrity.'

The head swayed to one side, then looked back. The tegulate skin of Dragon's body bulged and quivered as if it were taking a breath. There was a liquid groaning, then skin and flesh parted like that of a rotten fruit. Unable to hide his reaction Cormac retched at the stench that wafted from the pink vagina of a cave that appeared before him. There were more liquid sounds driven by deep rhythmic pulses. Cormac watched in fascination as a jet of steaming amniot ejected the foetal ball of a manthing wrapped in a caul. The caul burst open, spilling more of the Dragon's juices. Dracoman; Cormac named it instandy.

'A trifle dramatic,' he managed.

The manthing continued to moVe. It stood, showing no sign of imbalance. Again that sound: something else born; a flattened ellipse. The manthing picked it up and stripped away its caul. Legs dropped down from underneath it. Cormac could hardly believe he was seeing a table. The man approached and placed the table between them.

'To be human is to be mortal,' said Dragon. 'Do you play chess?'

'Yes, I…'

Movement from the table: a bulging, bubbling, like sprouting mushrooms and a Dragon chess set grew from its surface.

'Your move.'

For a moment Cormac could think of nothing else to say or do. He reached down and took hold of a pawn.

The tiling writhed in his hand, bit him. He yelled and dropped it. On the board it slithered forwards to a tegulate square.

'There is always a price for power,' said Dragon.

Cormac swore, then waited for his opponent's move, his confusion growing. What the hell was this? Some sort of megalomaniacal game or a test?

He hoped for the latter.

As he thought, he studied his opponent. The draco-man betrayed nothing, even when he suddenly moved and brought his fist down on Cormac's pawn. Cormac was taken aback.

'That is not in the rulebook,' he said, then damned himself for saying it. He knew what Dragon's reply would be.

'There are no rules here, just judgments.'

Cormac decided to react. He brought his fist down and crushed his opponent's king. 'Check,' he said dryly, and watched his opponent.

The dracoman stared at the board for a moment, then methodically began to crush every one of Cormac's pieces. White gore dribbled off the side of the table. Cormac turned towards the head.

'Surely by now you have enough insight into basic human reactions? You've been studying us for centuries,' he said.

'Every human is an individual, as you so rightly indicated,' observed Dragon.

Cormac was not sure he had done any such thing. He turned back to his opponent. 'I do not like subjective games,' he said, and knocked the table aside. The dracoman went for him with frightening speed. The hands reaching for his throat he was able to knock aside, but he was still driven to the ground. The hands reached for his throat again. He brought his knee up, then flung the clammy body from him. He regained his feet as his opponent did. The attack was still without finesse, and this time, not caught unawares, Cormac used his feet to counter it. The fight was over in seconds, the dracoman gurgling on the shale.

'Your second-to-last move was the wrong one,' said Dragon.

'I won.'

'That is not the issue.'

'What is?'

'Morality.'

'Hah, it is the winners who write history and it is the winners who invent morality. Existence is all the reason for existence any of us has, unless you believe in gods. I think you set yourself up too high.'

'No higher than an executioner.'

'You threaten again. Why? Do you have the power to carry out your threats? Do you think that you are a god?'

'I do not threaten you.'

'You seek to judge me then - to judge what I represent.'

'In the system of Betelgeuse there is a physicist working on some of the later Skaidon formulae. I predict he will solve some of the problems he has set himself.'

'And…?'

'Within the next century the human race will possess the intergalactic runcible.'

'What?'

The ground shook. A vast shadow blotted out half the sky. With his skin crawling Cormac turned, and there, making its ponderous gargantuan way across the rock-scape, he saw the Monitor; long as a city, its legs like tower blocks. Cormac watched it pass, knew its destination.

'Another threat?' he breathed. 'What is it that you want?'

The head rose higher and turned in the direction the Monitor had gone.

'Go back to Cartis. When you have seen what you must see, return here.'

Suddenly the head dropped down, and was hovering before Cormac.

'I control Monitor; without me it is mindless, but you know that,' it said. 'I have the power, the power to destroy. Could it be that you know what I mean?'

'I know the substance of your threat… your warning?' was Cormac's reply. After a pause he glanced down at the now unmoving dracoman. Then he swung his attention to his rucksack, back up at Dragon, shrugged and walked away, random accessing as he did so, so that nothing could be read from his expression: