“Well then,” Yawiyuen said reasonably, “you should let the Starveling Cult attack us and we will deal with them.”

This, of course, was exactly what the Emergency War Cabinet hoped would happen.

— Can we just say yes here? Liss sent.

“Wouldn’t you then want some help from us?” Sorofieve asked.

“Oh, no!” Gruonoshe exclaimed, as though the idea was just too preposterous even to think about.

“As sub-master Sorofieve has said,” Saluus said, “we are quite certain that the Starveling Cultists intend to take the entirety of Ulubis system, including Nasqueron. We’re all under threat. That’s why it would make sense for you and us to organise our defence together.”

“A common threat requires a common response,” Sorofieve told the Dwellers.

“Or maybe a pincer movement,” Yawiyuen suggested brightly.

Saluus wanted to sigh again. These two guys were supposedly top-grade negotiators with the authority to speak provisionally — in advance of some sort of still undefined plebiscite procedure — for the entire Dweller society on Nasqueron, but they frequently sounded like children. “Well, perhaps,” he said. “Providing we can, at the very least, coordinate our actions.”

“And of course,” Sorofieve said, “it may be that we can share defence technologies.”

“Oh!” Yawiyuen said, rising above his dent-seat a fraction. “Good idea! What do you have that we might want?” He appeared guilelessly enthusiastic.

“Our strengths would lie more in intelligence, in knowing how these Starveling Cultists will think,” Saluus said. “They’re basically humans, too. For all our differences, we think pretty much the same way they do. Our contribution would be to try to anticipate them, to out-think them.”

“And ours?” Yawiyuen asked, settling back down in his seat again.

“Weaponry, I bet,” Gruonoshe said, sounding unimpressed.

“As we have discovered, very much to our cost,” Saluus said, “you have the better of us in offensive capability, certainly—”

“Defensive capability,” Gruonoshe interrupted. “Surely?”

Sal did his best to move his helmeted head in an acknowledging nod, straining his neck muscles in the high gravity. “Defensive capability, as you say,” he said. “If we were able to share some of your knowledge of—”

“Weapons technology is not something we are going to share,” Gruonoshe said crisply.

“We could say we wanted to,” Yawiyuen told them. “We could even mean it — you might argue us round, somehow, to said point of view — but those who control the weapons themselves would not permit it.”

“Well, can we perhaps talk to them?” Saluus asked.

Yawiyuen bobbed over his seat. “No.”

“Why would that be?” Sorofieve asked.

“They don’t talk to aliens,” Yawiyuen told them bluntly.

“They barely talk to us,” Gruonoshe admitted.

“How might we be able to—?” Saluus began.

“We are not the Mercatoria,” Gruonoshe said, interrupting Saluus again. This was not an experience he was used to. He could see how it might get annoying. “We are not the Mercatoria,” the Dweller repeated. He sounded indignant. “We are not one of your states or mercenary- or irrationality-inspired groupings or forces.”

— Bit of stress there, Sal heard in his ear.

“If I may,” Chief Seer Meretiy began. The Seers were under instruction only to take a part in the talks when they felt there was some sort of basic misunderstanding taking place. Meretiy obviously felt that was happening now, but he didn’t get a chance to take his point further.

“What is meant, one believes,” Yawiyuen said, “is that things do not work with us the way that they work with you. We are delegated to speak to you, and what we take from here will be shared with all who wish to take notice. We are not in a position to order other Dwellers to do or not do certain things. No Dweller is, not in the hierarchical sense that you may be used to. We can share information. The information regarding the approach of the Starveling Cultists has been made available to whoever it may concern, as was the information regarding the build-up of Mercatorial forces immediately prior to the unfortunate incident which took place within C-2 Storm Ultra-Violet 3667. Those in charge of the relevant defensive systems will doubtless have taken note of said information. That is really all we can share with you. Our colleagues in charge of the defensive systems would not consider talking to outsiders and there is no precedent for sharing, lending, leasing or giving such technologies to others.”

“You talk of your colleagues in charge of the defensive systems,” Sorofieve said. “But who is in charge of them?”

— And so to the point.

Yawiyuen gave a little bob-shrug. “Nobody is.”

“Somebody has to be,” Sorofieve insisted.

“Why?”

“Well,” Sorofieve said, “how do they know what to do?”

“Lots of training,” Yawiyuen told him.

“But when? When do they know what to do? Who directs them, who decides when it’s time to stop talking and start shooting?”

“They do.”

“They do?” Sorofieve sounded incredulous. “You let your military decide when to go to war?”

— Our sub-master hasn’t done his homework, has he? Sal sent to Liss.

— He may have read, she replied. — He didn’t believe.

Saluus had done as much research as he could into the Dwellers. Amazing how little he’d known. He was smart, well-educated and extremely well-connected and yet he’d been near-shamed by how little he’d known about the creatures that his own species shared the system with. It was as though, having realised how little the Dwellers were concerned with or cared about them, Ulubine humanity had decided to pay them back in the same coin. And this in a Seer system, with more inter-species contact than any save another half-dozen or so similarly favoured, scattered through the galaxy. Yet even here most people didn’t know or want to know much of anything about the Dwellers. There was a large minority who did, but they were seen as slightly embarrassing — nerdy alien-fans. Facing the threat they were, desperately needing the Dwellers’ help, how short-sighted they all seemed now.

And reading up on Dweller society proved the truth of one old cliche for sure: the more you learned, the more you realised how little you knew. (An image of the planet, Liss had suggested when he’d first tried to articulate this feeling; unending depths.)

“Of course our military decide when we go to war,” Gruonoshe said, calm again. “They’re the experts.”

“I think that, if I might be allowed to ‘butt in’,” Chief Seer Meretiy said from his gascraft, “the point at issue is our different ways of looking at our two societies’ military capacity. We -that is, humans, and perhaps one might even presume to speak in this for the whole Mercatoria — regard our military as a tool, to be used by our politicians, who of course rule in the name of all. Conversely, our Dweller friends regard their military as an ancient and venerable calling for those with the relevant vocation, an institution to be honoured for its antiquity which has, almost as an afterthought, the duty of defending Dweller planets from any outside threat. As such, they are like what one might term a ‘fire brigade’, and a volunteer fire brigade, at that, for which no political clearance or oversight is required for it to spring into action, you see? Their raison d’etre is to respond as quickly as possible to emergencies, no more.”

— Fuck me, that actually made a sort of sense, Liss sent.

Just those first two words, delivered in her voice, with her so close behind him, gave Sal the start of an erection. He wondered how strong gravity had to be for hard-ons to become impossible.

“Fire brigades have… leaders, captains, don’t they?” Sorofieve said plaintively, looking from Meretiy to Saluus. “We might talk to them. Mightn’t we?”