"I beg your pardon? I'm not sure I follow."

Captain Harbaugh sipped her wine and savored it for a moment. When she looked back to me, her expression was even more thoughtful. "Do you think that if we understood the workings of the various Chtorran life cycles that we could stop the infestation?"

"It depends on what you mean by stop. I… I don't think we'll ever completely eradicate it. I can't imagine the tools that would be necessary to scour every square meter of the planet's surface looking for Chtorran bugs and seeds. Maybe some kind of nanotechnology, but-I can't imagine how. No. But if you mean control it or contain it, then I believe that might be possible. At least, I want to believe that it's possible."

"How?"

I sighed. It was a tough question, one that a lot of people had been struggling with. "Well, the military solutions-blast and burn-just don't work against a biological enemy. So… if we're going to control them, we're going to need some kind of biological agent."

"Like for instance?"

"Well, if we could find some essential biological process that we could disrupt-maybe some of their hormones could be turned against them. A maturity hormone or a mating hormone or something like that could be used to confuse them and keep them from maturing or mating properly. It's worked with Terran insects. Or maybe we could find or invent some kind of virus-some equivalent of AIDS or something. If we could determine what the key creatures in the ecology were, and if we could find their biological weakness, then maybe we could… I don't know. How do you find the Achilles' heel of a worm?"

"You're talking about the Chtorr as if it's all one creature."

"Maybe it is," I said. "We have to consider every possibility. Maybe every creature in the ecology is just another form of every other creature in the ecology."

"An interesting idea."

"It's been considered. There's even a continuing DNA study in the works to investigate the possibility. A lot of the Chtorran critters seem to have very similar genetic heritages. We're still looking into it. Anyway-to get back to your original question-I don't think this invasion is accidental. It's too well designed. And too many new creatures keep showing up, almost out of nowhere, and always exactly when the ecology is ready for them. I think there's something at the center of it. I think the mandalas are a chic. I think if we could find that thing or creature or species or process or whatever it is at the center of the whole thing, and if we could find out what it is and how it works and somehow do something to it to keep it from working, then perhaps we could break the ecology down into its component bits and keep them fnm cooperating and forming larger, more devastating structures-like the mandala nests."

"Are the nests really that devastating?"

"In comparison to the random spread of species that we have now, I honestly don't know. At least when they form into mandalas, we know where everything is. And we seem to be  discovering that the various creatures of the infestation are a lot more dangerous to human life when they're part of a mandala than when they're found as feral individuals or feral swarms. Maybe we're a lot safer with mandalas than we are with rogue worms and millipedes and shamblers. I don't know."

We paused then while the waiters served the salad-each one a single crisp head of baby iceberg lettuce, the kind you never saw anymore, spread open to form a leafy bed, overlaid with slivers of firm red tomato, fresh green cucumber slices, and succulent bits of white onion, all laced with a hot-and-sour herb dressing that gave the whole confection a distinctly Chinese flavor. There were edible white flowers around the edges of the plates.

There were three kinds of rolls. I helped myself to a croissant and a sourdough briquette. The butter was real! For a while, none of us talked while we savored the tastes. Lizard and I took turns exclaiming about the freshness of the vegetables and the sweetness of the tomatoes and cucumbers. The wine was a fairly recent, but still pre-Chtorran, Kalin Cellars Sauvignon Blanc Reserve from Marin County. Faust said it was wonderful with anything, but brilliant with the salad. I was beginning to appreciate his commentary; I was starting to learn what to taste for.

We were served little cups of cantaloupe sorbet to clear our palates, and then the fish course followed-an exquisitely arranged plate of sashimi. There were delicate slices of tuna, both lean and fatty, sea bass, sweet yellowtail, abalone, giant clam, and even fresh salmon with a tang sharp enough to cut! I was too amazed to ask how it was possible to serve fresh raw fish aboard a dirigible. Faust poured us each a glass of six-year-old Rosemount Estate Hunters Valley Show Reserve Chardonnay from New South Wales.

"No hot saki?" I asked. He merely frowned and shook his head. Maybe he shuddered.

After a while, the conversation wandered back to the mandalas again. Captain Harbaugh turned to Lizard and asked, "What do you think the postwar world will be like?"

Lizard shook her head. "I can't imagine. Or maybe I don't want to. You're assuming we're going to find something out here that will make the difference, that will give us what we need to stop the spread of the Chtarran ecology. I hope you're right. But I think Jim is right." She reached over and squeezed my hand affectionately. "I don't think the Earth will ever be completely free of the Chtorran ecology. I don't think human beings will ever be able to stop fighting the worms. So whatever the postwar world looks like, it won't be postwar as much as it will probably be reduced war. I think-" She stopped herself from finishing the sentence. She deliberately reached out for her water goblet and took a long deep drink. Lizard put the goblet carefully back on the table, and a steward stepped up almost immediately to refill it. Lizard reached out for the glass, but she didn't lift it; she just held it there on the table for a moment, staring into the shifting patterns of ice cubes and wetness while she considered the vision in her head. Both Captain Harbaugh and I waited politely.

At last, Lizard lifted the glass again and took another drink. "It's so simple, we take it for granted. Clean water." Then, remembering where she was, she looked at Captain Harbaugh again. "The truth? I'm a member of the military. I know what the military position is. We blast, we burn, we never admit defeat. Custer wasn't defeated, you know. He was killed, but he wasn't defeated. That's one option. The other option-and this is just a personal feeling-is that we may have to find a way to live with the Chtorr, because we may not be able to live any other way." And then: "I'm sorry. That's probably a very unpleasant thought, and tonight is supposed to be an extraordinary evening."

Captain Harbaugh politely ignored Lizard's afterthought and turned to me. "Do you share that view, Jim?"

I half shrugged, half shook my head. "I don't know," I admitted. I reached over and took Lizard's hand in mine again. "But I do know that I believe in our future. I have to. Otherwise, there would have been no point in our getting married tonight, would there?"

Lizard responded with a weak smile. She was troubled, but I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, and after a bit, she let herself relax again.

Captain Harbaugh remained focused on me. "How do you think human beings will be able to live with the Chtorr?" she asked.

"I don't know," I answered quietly-I didn't really want to speculate. My experiences with Jason Delandro and his tribe of renegades had skewed my perspective undeniably toward the negative side of the question, but this was neither the time nor the place to rehash that history. The truth was, we really didn't know enough yet. We knew there were people living in mandala nests. The satellite pictures showed it. But we didn't understand how. Or why. And I said so.