"No, Oar. I also have to think about my daughter. And…" His mist shuddered. "…and my owner. My owner’s wishes."

"Your owner? Uclod would wish you to help Festina!"

"I told you, Uclod isn’t my owner — he’s just renting me. I’m the property of… of someone who doesn’t know or care about your friend Festina, and who wouldn’t want me to risk myself on her behalf." The mist-man shuddered again. "I’m a valuable investment," he said bitterly. "I have strict orders not to endanger myself on ‘unprofitable moral whims.’ "

"And you listen to such orders?"

"Oar," he said. "I told you when I met you, obedience is hard-wired into my genes. I despise it, but I don’t have a choice. It’s how I was built."

I stared at him a moment, then closed my eyes. "I will tell you a thing, Nimbus. We are all built in ways we would change if we could — we are flawed or damaged or broken by forces beyond our control. In the end, we are limited creatures who cannot exceed our boundaries." I opened my eyes again, seeing only mist. "But here is the other half of the truth: our boundaries are never where we think they are. Sometimes we think we are the most wonderful person in the world, then find we are nothing special; sometimes we think we are too weak to do a great deed, then find we are stronger than we believe." I took a deep breath. "Please save Festina, Nimbus. You do not have to be so hard-wired and obedient. Please save her, and prove you are more than you think."

For a moment, he did not answer. His mist shimmered… as if it were glistening in some light beyond the dimness of that dusky room. Then his voice murmured in my ear, "All right. I’ll do what I can."

He swept around me one last time, brushing tenderly against my neck. "My daughter is still inside the web. Get her out and keep her safe."

"I will," I promised.

He swirled away, streaming across the room as fast as an eagle, not slowing down as he flew straight into Festina’s face. The cloud man disappeared up Festina’s nose as he had once before… only this time I was not scandalized by his effrontery, but overjoyed he was going to save her. He would fly down her throat to fight the gold nanites…

And who would win the battle? Who would survive?

I did not know.

Carefully, because I had nothing else to do, I widened the hole into the cocoon that had held Nimbus prisoner. The hole was only three fingers across, the breadth of the pistol’s barrel. Smearing more and more honey into the gap, I increased the breach in the goo-ball until I could stick my arm through safely, with no risk of touching the damp jelly sides.

All that time, I forced myself not to look in Festina’s direction. Nimbus would succeed; of course he would. There was no other way to save my friend, so the universe was compelled to let Nimbus triumph.I merely had to get Starbiter out of the blob; the moment I managed that, Nimbus would emerge from my friend’s mouth and say, "Oar, everything is all right now."

Even before I reached into the blob, I had caught sight of Starbiter. She lay amongst the webbing so tranquilly, I wondered if perhaps she thought she had returned to her mother’s womb. But she did not protest as I wrapped my fingers gently around her and drew her out into the world. I had long since discarded my jacket, for fear of the patches where honey had turned the cloth to gel… so I cradled the little Zarett tight to my chest, right where she could hear my heart beating.

"Now, Nimbus," I said. "Now you will come out."

For many long seconds, nothing happened. Then a vicious spasm shook Festina’s body, and she gave a gagging cough. It was the sound of a human about to vomit; I sped across the room and rolled Festina onto her side just as she gagged again. A spew of yellow phlegm erupted from deep within her, spattering onto the ground. It poured out in streams, puddling on top of the soil. I put an arm around her to hold her steady… and I knelt there, supporting Festina with one hand and baby Starbiter with the other.

"Come out now, Nimbus," I whispered as Festina took a ragged breath. "Your job is done. You have vanquished the enemy. Come out."

But he did not come out. He did not appear and he did not appear and he did not appear… until I realized he had already come out and I just did not recognize him. The spew on the ground was comprised half of golden nanites and half of Nimbus.

Both halves were dead.

I stared at the puddle as it slowly seeped into the dirt. Then I lowered my face to my friend’s shoulder and wept.

True Freedom

"Well, well, well," said a familiar nasal voice, "three cheers for the visiting team! At the closing whistle, the score is Oar 2, Shaddill nothing."

I lifted my head. The Pollisand stood perched on the rim of the basin, looking down at the purple lumps that had once been Immu and Esticus. A creature his size could not possibly balance on the narrow basin wall, but he was there anyway; he pranced a few steps in a rhinoceroid victory dance, then jumped to the floor. "How are you lovely ladies doing?"

"We are splendid," I answered, "no thanks to you. But Nimbus is doing most poorly; you must bring him back to life."

Deep in the Pollisand’s throat, his eyes grew dim. "Can’t do that," he said. "Sorry."

"You can do that," I replied. "You have told me repeatedly how clever you are. You could bring Nimbus back just as you did for me; you must do it now."

"No, I must not," the Pollisand said… and there was something steely in his voice, something much different from the grating tone he usually affected. "Your friend Nimbus made a choice, Oar: a conscious decision to be more than a slave to some absentee owner, even though he knew it might cost him his life. I do not tamper with the results of such decisions."

"But you saved me… when I consciously made a decision to fall eighty stories!"

"You didn’t believe you would die. You didn’t believe you could die. When you grabbed your enemy and jumped out that window, you thought he would die but you’d be just fine; hardly a deliberate sacrifice like Nimbus."

The Pollisand walked over to the slightly muddy patch beside Festina — all that was left of the cloud man. He put out his great clumsy foot and held it over the soil as if he intended to touch the wetness… but then he stepped back and planted his toes on solid ground.

"Nimbus knew he wasn’t designed for battle," the Pollisand said. "As he told you, his only method of fighting was to smash his component cells into the nanites over and over again, until both sides were battered into oblivion. I refuse to trivialize Nimbus’s sacrifice by ‘fixing’ things as if his decision never happened."

"But…"

Festina placed a weak hand on my arm. "You aren’t going to win the argument," she said. With a thoughtful expression, she gazed at the Pollisand. "You care about decisions, don’t you? Good decisions, bad decisions… you care about them a lot."

"Deliberate choices are the only sacred things in the universe. Everything else is just hydrogen." He turned to me. "By the way, kiddo, you finally made an honest-to-god life-or-death choice yourself: when you decided not to rough up Esticus. If you’d broken so much as the little bastard’s finger, the League of Peoples would have put you down like a dog."

"Breaking his finger would have killed him?"

"Hell, no," the Pollisand answered with a snort. "The Shaddill are just as indestructible as you are — they’d probably survive if you crammed H-bombs down their throats. Furthermore, if you’d just gone ahead and smashed Esticus in the face as soon as you thought of it, the League wouldn’t have minded that either… but then, Immu got to blathering that horseshit about, ‘Hey, you never know,’ and even worse, you got to thinking, ‘What happens if she’s right?’ That’s when you were in trouble: the only time you’ve truly been in danger since we first met. If you genuinely recognized the risks and decided to pummel Esticus anyway… well, as Immu said, that really would have been non-sentient. With the League, it’s never the actual result that counts; it’s what goes through your head."