“Go ahead and check it,” said Venn aside to his patroller. She nodded and floated out; Gupta watched her depart with some mistrust, but no particular alarm.

“Transient Gupta, it appears you're going to be our guest for a while,” said Venn. “If we remove your restraints, are you going to give us any trouble, or are you going to behave yourself?”

Gupta was silent a moment, then vented an exhausted sigh. “I'll behave. Much good it'll do me either way.”

A patroller floated forward and unshackled the prisoner's wrists and ankles. Only Roic seemed less than pleased with this unnecessary courtesy, tensing with a hand on a wall grip and one foot planted to a bit of bulkhead not occupied by equipment, ready to launch himself forward. But Gupta only chafed his wrists and bent to rub his ankles, and looked grudgingly grateful.

The patroller returned with the bottle, handing it to her chief. “The lab's chemical sniffer says it's inert. Should be safe,” she reported.

“Very well.” Venn pitched the bottle to Gupta, who despite his odd long hands caught it readily, with little downsider clumsiness, a fact Miles was sure the quaddie noted.

“Um.” Gupta gave the crowd of onlookers a slightly embarrassed glance, and hitched up his loose poncho. He stretched and inhaled, and the ribs on his big barrel chest drew apart; flaps of skin parted to reveal red slashes. The substance beneath seemed spongy, rippling in the misting like densely laid feathers.

God almighty. He really does have gills under there. Presumably, the bellows-like movement of the chest helped pump water through, when the amphibian was immersed. Dual systems. So did he hold his breath, or did his lungs shut down involuntarily? By what mechanism was his blood circulation switched from one oxygenating interface to the other? Gupta pumped the bottle and sprayed mist into the red slits, handing it back and forth from right side to left, and seemed to draw some comfort thereby. He sighed, and the slits closed back down, his chest appearing merely ridged and scarred. He smoothed the drifting poncho back into place.

“Where are you from?” Miles couldn't help asking.

Gupta grew surly again. “Guess.”

“Well, Jackson's Whole, by the weight of the evidence, but which House made you? Ryoval, Bharaputra, another? And were you a one-off, or part of a set? First-generation gengineered, or from a self-reproducing line of, of water people?”

Gupta's eyes widened in surprise. “You know Jackson's Whole?”

“Let's say, I've had several painfully educational visits there.”

The surprise became edged with faint respect, and a certain lonely eagerness. “House Dyan made me. I was part of a set, once—we were an underwater ballet troupe.”

Garnet Five blurted in unflattering astonishment, “You were a dancer?”

The prisoner hunched his shoulders. “No. They made me to be submersible stage crew. But House Dyan suffered a hostile takeover by House Ryoval—just a few years before Baron Ryoval was assassinated, pity that didn't happen sooner. Ryoval broke up the troupe for other, um, tasks, and decided he had no alternate use for me, so I was out of a job and out of protection. Could have been worse. He mighta kept me. I drifted around and took what tech jobs I could get. One thing led to another.”

In other words, Gupta had been born into Jacksonian techno-serfdom, and dumped out on the street when his original owner-creators had been engulfed by their vicious commercial rival. Given what Miles knew of the late, unsavory Baron Ryoval, Gupta's fate was perhaps happier than that of his mer-cohort. By the known date of Ryoval's death, that last vague remark about things leading to things covered at least five years, maybe as many as ten.

Miles said thoughtfully, “You weren't shooting at me at all yesterday, then, were you. Nor at Portmaster Thorne.” Which left . . .

Gupta blinked at him. “Oh! That's where I saw you before. Sorry, no.” His brow corrugated. “So what were you doing there, then? You're not one of the passengers. Are you another Stationer squatter like that officious bloody Betan?”

“No. My name is”—he made an instant, almost subliminal decision to drop all the honorifics—”Miles. I was sent out to look after Barrayaran concerns when the quaddies impounded the Komarran fleet.”

“Oh.” Gupta grew uninterested.

What the devil was keeping that fast-penta? Miles softened his voice. “So what happened to your friends, Guppy?”

That fetched the amphibian's attention again. “Double-crossed. Subjected, injected, infected . . . rejected. We were all taken in. Damned Cetagandan bastard. That wasn't the Deal.”

Something inside Miles went on overdrive. Here's the connection, finally. His smile grew charming, sympathetic, and his voice softened further. “Tell me about the Cetagandan bastard, Guppy.”

The hovering mob of quaddie listeners had stopped rustling, even breathing more quietly. Roic had drawn back to a shadowed spot opposite Miles. Gupta glanced around at the Graf Stationers, and at Miles and himself, the only legged persons now in view in the center of the circle. “What's the use?” The tone was not a wail of despair, but a bitter query.

“I am Barrayaran. I have a special stake in Cetagandan bastards. The Cetagandan ghem-lords left five million of my grandfather's generation dead behind them, when they finally gave up and pulled out of Barrayar. I still have his bag of ghem-scalps. For certain kinds of Cetagandans, I might know a use or two you'd find interesting.”

The prisoner's wandering gaze snapped to his face and locked there. For the first time, he'd won Gupta's total attention. For the first time, he'd hinted he might have something that Guppy really wanted. Wanted? Burned for, lusted for, desired with mad obsessive hunger. His glassy eyes were ravenous for . . . maybe revenge, maybe justice—in any case, blood. But the frog prince clearly lacked personal expertise in retribution. The quaddies didn't deal in blood. Barrayarans . . . had a more sanguinary reputation. Which, for the first time this mission, might actually prove some use.

Gupta took a long breath. “I don't know what kind this one was. Is. He was like nothing I'd ever met before. Cetagandan bastard. He melted us.”

“Tell me,” Miles breathed, “everything. Why you?”

“He came to us . . . through our usual cargo agents. We thought it would be all right. We had a ship. Gras-Grace and Firka and Hewlet and me had this ship. Hewlet was our pilot, but Gras-Grace was the brains. Me, I had a knack for fixing things. Firka kept the books, and fixed regs, and passports, and nosy officials. Gras-Grace and her three husbands, we called us. We were a collection of rejects, but maybe we added up to one real spouse for her, I don't know. One for all and all for one, because it was damn sure that a crew of refugee Jacksonians, without a House or a Baron, wasn't going to get a break from anyone else in the Nexus.”

Gupta was getting wound up in his story. Miles, listening with utmost care, prayed Venn would have the sense not to interrupt. Ten people hovered around them in this chamber, yet he and Gupta, mutually hypnotized by the increasing intensity of his confession, might almost be floating in a bubble of time and space altogether removed from this universe. “So where did you pick up this Cetagandan and his cargo, anyway?”

Gupta glanced up, startled. “You know about the cargo?”

“If it's the same one now aboard the Idris , yes, I've had a look. I found it rather disturbing.”

“What's he got in there, really? I only saw the outsides.”

“I'd rather not say, at this time. What did he,” Miles elected not to go into the confusions of ba gender just now, “tell you it was?”

“Gengineered mammals. Not that we asked questions. We got paid extra for not asking questions. That was the Deal, we thought.”