"We're not talking about depression, here, are we?" I asked as we strode along.

Ignoring my question she continued, "I suffered from the black pit all my life. Whenever I slowed down, relaxed or stopped, the pit opened and I began my descent. It was related to and part of my other condition, and is an affliction from which neither Yishna nor Harald suffer. It drove me. Orduval was likewise driven and suffered a similar malady, though his problem lay in some other part of his psyche. In his case he just kept overloading and crashing like a computer asked to do too much."

"It drove you to what?"

"Carnage," she replied succinctly.

"Why?"

"I don't know…or I am unable to let myself know."

The tunnel terminated at a single exit door, which was secured by a pherophone and keypad lock. Rhodane stooped for a moment before the pherophone, before inputting some code into the keypad. She then spun a wheel positioned centrally on the door, to admit us to a warmer place, but with air just as lethal to normal humans as that left behind us.

We stepped out on a balcony overlooking an immense dark hall. How far it extended I could not say, since before me the curved surface of some giant object rose to the ceiling, its skin hexagon-patterned over shifting veins, and scaffolds laced all over it. I could, however, see that another of its kind lay beyond it, and more beyond that, until the curve of the side wall concealed all further on. I realised we were just below the planet's surface now, for ceiling panels admitted a glimpse of night sky.

"Let's go down." She pointed to a nearby stair of prosaic metal, bolted to stone.

"What is this?"

"When I came here I knew only how to sign-speak. They did not allow me down into one of their cities until I could understand their vocal language as well. Their language underlies everything that they are—how their minds develop, and how their society has developed. I didn't realise until recently how language underlies everything that I am."

"As with us all," I replied. "How we describe our world informs our perception of it—but I again sense you are hedging around the point."

She ignored that, continuing with, "Have you read Uskaron's book?"

"I have."

"I did not really need to read it, because I felt immediately sympathetic to the Brumallians and came to value them more than my own people. What the hilldiggers did to this place angered me, that hideous loss of life angered me. I wanted vengeance." She turned and looked at me. "But as you must realise, David McCrooger, what I want is not necessarily what I want."

We had by now reached the floor. I gazed at dormant biomechanisms clustered like huge iridescent beetles about the base of the nearest of the huge objects, all of which I now saw bore a teardrop shape. The pumps sounded louder here and I could feel their titanic vibration through the floor. Reams of peristaltic pipes entered the base of each object—forcing in nutrients and evacuating waste. To one side, on a large trailer, rested a mechanism consisting both of some biofactured and some plainly manufactured components. It took me only a moment to realise this was a fusion engine, though one of esoteric design. I began to understand what this place was, and wondered what my chances were of getting out alive if we were discovered here.

"When I originally found this, they had no interest in it at all," Rhodane told me. She smiled and gestured for us to move on down the lengthy hall. We walked in silence for a while, finally coming athwart a side cavern in which squatted something I could only assume to be some kind of cannon.

"They abandoned this place after the hilldiggers struck. When I asked about the weapons they used during the War, a Speaker directed me here. No attempt was made at concealment, and clearly no Brumallians had come here in a long while. I knew that to get things running again, to be able to right the terrible wrong done to the Brumallians, I needed them to feel the same way as I did and for that I needed to become more like them."

"They had sufficient expertise left to physically change you?"

"I found it in their records, but it took me some time to create the recombinant viruses. They watched my work with some interest, and sometimes they even helped."

I looked at her and tapped a finger either side of my face where the fibrous patches were positioned on hers. "Those are for the pheromones?"

"To emit them, yes. My sense of smell increased till I could read them just like any other Brumallian."

I studied the weapon and the other things surrounding me. The teardrop objects were evidently biofactured spaceships—warships—and though there seemed little activity here now, there had definitely been much recent activity.

"You persuaded them," I suggested.

"I became part of the Consensus, but a rogue part. I could influence it and yet not be influenced myself, or so I thought. I stated my opinions again and again. At first nothing much happened, then slowly one or two of them came to help me. After a year I had a thousand Brumallians working here, and the meme I had sown began to spread."

I guessed what was coming next. "But the language?"

"Yes…filling up my mind with its intricacies. Communication itself slowly becoming more important than what I was communicating. The Brumallians began to trickle away, lose interest, and their lack of interest began to affect me. Perhaps by changing myself I have overwritten basic codes implanted into my original DNA at the moment of my conception. One day I just walked out of this place and knew I was free."

As I studied her for a long moment, the spectre of the war she had tried to resurrect seemed to crouch in the shadows here. I shivered, now knowing the frightening efficacy of Rhodane, and by extension that of Yishna and Harald.

I asked, "Will you eventually grow mandibles?"

She did not reply, because just then came the racket of heavy feet descending on the stair far behind us. I glanced back to see many quofarl and other Brumallians charging down, armed, and looking none too happy.

Orduval—in the Desert

He counted thirty-two fits occurring since his first meeting with Tigger, each much weaker than the preceding one, the most recent causing a mere thirty-second stutter in his life. With the anticonvulsives no longer impeding him he felt healthier and much more alert than at any time since he had walked into the Ruberne Institute as a child. Sometimes he questioned his choice of remaining out here in the Komarl, but never for long. The information Tigger imparted to him each time it came here kept him hanging on eagerly for the drone's next visit. He also realised that a large proportion of his life had been a kind of aversion therapy and that, illogically, he felt a return to civilisation somehow related to a return to his previous mental and physical state. He stayed. And he loved the desert.

On his twentieth day he found a metallic sphere resting in the clearing outside the cave. Recognising it as being fashioned of the same metal as Tigger, he felt no fear as he stepped out to inspect it. However, he did jump when it addressed him.

"Let me introduce you to my other half," said Tigger's voice.

Orduval stared at the sphere and considered for a moment, quickly working out what the drone meant. It then occurred to him that this fast grasp of meaning was a complete conversation killer, so decided to ask the obvious question: "What do you mean 'your other half'?"

"I reckon you understand perfectly, Orduval, but I'll tell you anyway," Tigger replied. "Being a manufactured entity, it's not necessary for me to have a discrete body. I consist of two parts: the tiger part which I use for planetary environments and to chat with the likes of you, and this sphere which, on the whole, I use extra-planetary. It's the larger part of me, in that it contains the most memory and other resources—tools and the like."