Anybody who thought that Chtorrans could be farmed… well, they were welcome to parachute down into the center of a mandala. I wouldn't stop them.

My headset beeped. "Yeah?"

Corrigan. "General Tirelli's respects. We're ready to begin."

"Thank you," I replied. "I'll be down shortly."

I turned around and took one last look at the endless expanse of skydeck. The top of the Bosch was a vast pink parking lot in the sky. You could land airplanes here. You could play three side-by-side football games and still have room for a dozen baseball games as well. You could build a neighborhood on top of this airship.

Best of all, you couldn't see beyond it. You could almost forget the dying Earth below. Except for the ever-present haze of tiny gnat-like stingflies, we could have been sailing through the crisp blue sea of memory. But the damn bugs were everywhere up here. I brushed them off the plastic front of my hood, I waved them away from my face. I had nightmares of them flying up my nose or into my ears.

I shuddered and headed for the elevator down. I had to pass through detox too-where jets of air and decontaminant blew into oblivion any stingflies that still clung to me. I shrugged out of my hood and protective coveralls and headed forward.

The debriefing, analysis, inquest, call it what you will, was held in the Bosch's main conference room, a large meeting space surrounded by immense display screens. Two meters into the room and I knew how deep it was going to get. Dr. Shreiber was sitting on the left side of the table. Uh-oh.

General Tirelli caught the look on my face, but merely nodded me toward a seat. She looked unhappy. Worse, she looked grim. We hadn't spoken much. We hadn't had much chance to. I really wanted to know what she was thinking. Corrigan handed me a printed agenda and I buried my attention in it, grateful for something to look at so I wouldn't have to talk to anybody. I needn't have worried. Nobody wanted to talk to me. They were probably afraid it might rub off.

Dwan Grodin scuffed in, followed by Clayton Johns and a couple of other techs. I noticed the Brazilians muttering among themselves. Drs. Amador, Rodriguez, and Hikaru-privately, I'd begun thinking of them as Larry, Moe, and Curly-looked absolutely mutinous. And with good reason. They should have been consulted, not just informed. A major breach of protocol. This wasn't going to go well.

Lieutenant Siegel and Sergeant Lopez, both wearing plain jumpsuits instead of their regular uniforms, slipped in silently and took seats at the back. There were maybe twenty people in the room. I had no idea how many more were listening over the network. Dr. Zymph for sure, Uncle Ira and Danny Anderson as well. Probably General Wainright. Dannenfelser. Bellus? Oh hell, just assume the whole network is tuned in.

Captain Harbaugh came in last, sealing the door behind her. "Sorry to be late," she said. "Our flight engineer insisted on briefing me about helium replenishment. I think he's the only person here who outranks us all." She smiled gently to General Tirelli. "Let's get to work, shall we?"

Lizard went to the podium at the front of the room. She looked off above our heads for a moment as if composing herself. She looked down at the podium as if checking her agenda. She glanced up at me, her face unreadable, then looked to the room as a whole.

"I've been thinking," she said. "Not just about what happened last night. But about this mission. What we're really up to here. And before we do anything else, I want to share those thoughts with you." She took a drink of water. I remembered the beautiful crystal goblets of our wedding dinner and the way the condensation had beaded in icy droplets. That was already such a long, long time ago.

"Most of us in this room," Lizard said, "are old enough to remember what it was like before the Chtorrans came. But we've been living with the Chtorr for so long now that we're starting to forget. We're starting to act as if the Chtorr have always been here. We're starting to forget what we've lost, what we're still going to lose. For my part… I'm willing to lose anything, but my will to resist. I am here because I want to find a way to stop the Chtorr. I want to defeat them. I want them off this planet." She took a deep breath. "I don't know if that's possible anymore, but that's what I want.

"There are scientists-some of them are in this room, many of them are watching and listening on the network-who believe that it is impossible to get the Chtorr off the Earth, that the best we are ever going to be able to accomplish is some kind of accommodation. Personally, I hate that thought. Professionally, I recognize that it may be much more realistic than all-out warfare."

Now she looked around the room carefully, specifically noticing the Brazilian contingent. "In the past year, serious discussions have begun about ways to live with the Chtorr or to accommodate the human species to a Chtorran-dominated ecology. Some people view this as realistic policy planning. Others think it leads to a defeatist mentality. Myself-I see the truth of both sides of the argument. Those of us in positions of responsibility have to make decisions based on the best advice available to us. Believe me, these are heartbreaking decisions." She leaned forward across the podium. Her voice was intense. "Our resources are running out. We only get one chance to invest in our own future.

"War?" she asked. "Or accommodation. That's the debate.

"In the discussions about accommodation," Lizard continued, "we are beginning to hear two separate philosophies, and a host of variations. One position-and it is the position that our Brazilian hosts have adopted as a matter of national policy-is to let pockets of the Chtorran infestation develop unmolested. The rationale behind this is that once a pocket of infestation becomes stabilized, its further growth can be limited by natural and lethetic boundaries. The ultimate goal of the Brazilian experiment is the development of a Chtorran-based economy; one that exploits Chtorran plants and animals for human benefit.

"As attractive as this idea may seem at first hearing, there are a great many questions that need to be answered first, not the least of which is this: are there any Chtorran products of such utility to human beings that the value outweighs the environmental cost? Equally important, we have not seen any evidence that the Chtorran ecology has a threshold of stabilization; it may be that a mandala nest must be the size of Ohio before it starts to slow down appreciably. We just don't know. We do know that the seemingly unchecked ferocity of many of the feral Chtorran species is definitely muted when they are integrated into the complex society of the mandala environment-and so, yes, there is same validity in the argument to let the mandalas exist, but under severe controls. What kind of controls might be applied is a whole other discussion, which I'm not going to get into here.

"There's a second opinion about accommodation with the Chtorr. And this one is shared by a number of scientists not directly involved in the Brazilian experiment. In this second scenario, each mandala represents a significant reservoir of infestation; so much so, that the potential threat that each one presents to us for spawning additional mandalas far outweighs any benefit conveyed by any civilizing effect that they may have on the Chtorran species operating out of the nests.

"In this scenario for accommodation," Lizard said grimly, our best hope will be to invest heavily in the construction of new robot-assembly plants, and put the cyber-animals on the front lines of the battle. The idea-please, let me finish-" Lizard said to Dr. Hikaru, who was rising angrily to his feet. "You'll get your chance to speak, I promise you." He sat down grumpily, and she rebooted her thought. "In this scenario, our attention would be focused on destroying mandala settlements as fast as we can identify them. By keeping the mandalas from establishing themselves, we think we should be able to prevent the Chtorran infestation from reaching a critical threshold long enough to discover the biological weapons we need to directly attack their ecology. The cyber-animals-the prowlers, the spiders, and all the others-functioning as semündependent entities, would patrol their individual territories ruthlessly and relentlessly. In this way, a single human operator can have his effectiveness multiplied a thousandfold. We've already had some success with this technique in northern Mexico, Colorado-especially around Denver, and in Alaska. We expect to see additional progress next year, when the Atlanta and Orlando plants come on-line and begin producing. Those will be big. At the present rate of construction, we should be able to bring two new assembly plants on-line every six months for the next three years. We hope it will be enough." She took a breath. She allowed herself a sip of water. She referred to her notes. And then she went on.