Rex swallowed hard but was not about to argue. Martin saw the apprehension in him, and something else—a blunt kind of defiance, no admission to himself that he had done anything wrong.

"I didn't recognize him," Rex said. "I didn't know who it… he was. He was big, though. We passed and he reached out to grab me. It hurt. He hurt me."

"Did he give you any warning?"

"He said something, but I couldn't understand. I can't understand any of them."

"Do you understand I we?" Stonemaker asked.

"Mostly, but you speak the best English," Rex said. "It was an accident. He frightened me."

"Did you figure out later what he might have been trying to say?" Martin asked.

"Gentlemen, we have procedures here," Hans interrupted with a heavy sigh. "I'll ask my questions, and Stonemaker will ask his questions."

Martin agreed to that.

"It's a good question, though," Hans said. "What was he trying to say?"

"I don't know," Rex said.

"Something about being on your team in the exercises, the grab races?"

"Maybe," Rex said. "I just didn't hear him clearly."

"Then what?"

"He got me with those claws… Grabbed me around the chest. It hurt like hell. I thought he was attacking me."

"And?" Hans pursued.

"I defended myself."

"Was there any reason he would want to attack you?"

"How should I know?" Rex said.

Here it is, Martin thought. Plain as can be.

"You mean, the Brothers are unpredictable," Hans said, face clouding.

"I don't know them," Rex said, smiling as if on firmer ground.

Hans turned to Stonemaker. "Rex Live Oak has been to Brother orientations. He participated in the grab races. He's carried Brothers, and been carried by them."

"It wasn't like that," Rex said. "It—he tried to crush me."

"You have bruises?"

Rex dropped his shoulder straps and showed livid bruises around his ribs and abdomen.

Stonemaker rustled, rearranged his coils. Hans put his chin in one hand and bent to examine the bruises. "Did you do anything to frighten him?"

"Nothing. I swear."

"No reason for him to attack you."

"Hey," Rex said, his smile broad now, shoulders lifted.

"Stop smiling, you asshole," Hans said. "Stonemaker, can you tell me how Rex might have frightened Sand Filer?"

"We we have not experienced aggression from our partners before," Stonemaker said. "We we do not understand capacity for being frightened, for giving fright."

"I don't think that's clear," Hans said.

"We we do not expect aggression from you," Eye on Sky said. "There is no reason for we us to be afraid, whatever you do, unless we we are injured. Then we we lose trust and may be afraid."

"Makes sense," Hans said. "It's a pity Sand Filer doesn't remember. I'm open to suggestions from our partners."

The Brothers said nothing, weaving and scenting the air with baking bread, new-mown grass.

"I don't have any guidelines myself," Hans said. "I'm very angry at Rex. Personally, I'd throw his ass outside, if the moms would let us. Would they, Martin?"

Martin shook his head.

"You don't know?" Hans pursued, as if shifting his anger to Martin now, Rex being such a pitiful target.

"I don't think they would let us," Martin clarified.

"Damned lucky for Rex. Stonemaker, I don't know how to make up for this breach, however it happened. I think we should be blunt and say that some of our people are still frightened by your people. Rex seems a simple-minded sort, and anything can happen with idiots." He fairly jammed the name down Rex's throat, standing with face pressed a few centimeters from Rex's nose. Surprise or emotion made Rex's eyes water and he stumbled back a step.

"It wasn't anything I planned," he said. "It just happened."

"Will Sand Filer recover?" Hans asked Stonemaker.

"Damage to Sand Filer will not mean breakdown and adoption by others. He will be an individual, and useful to his friends."

"That's… very good," Hans said, taking two sharp and broken breaths, as if he were about to hiccough. He seemed infinitely weary as he returned his attention to Rex. "We take care of our own. Brothers judge Brothers, and humans judge humans. You're banned from the Job. I suppose later you might try something really impressive and heroic, and get back your duty. But I wouldn't waste my time thinking about it."

Rex closed his eyes. "Hans—" he said.

"Please go," Hans said.

"I was defending myself, for Christ's sake!"

"You're a liar," Hans said. "I can't prove it, but you've lost my confidence, and while I'm Pan, you have no work to do. You're a free man, Rex. Leave before I decide to beat the shit out of you."

Rex left the room, shaking his head, fists clenched. He slammed a wall just before stepping through the hatch.

Hans bowed very low to Stonemaker and Eye on Sky. "I beg forgiveness for my people," he said. "We must work together. We have no choice."

"We we shall work together, and this shall be lost in we our minds," Stonemaker said.

"If we judge again, if we take a vote to enact the Law," Hans said, standing in the middle of a wealth of planetary images, "the Brothers will probably vote to investigate. Am I right?"

Martin, Hakim, Joe, and Cham sat circled before Hans in the nose of the ship. Joe and Cham nodded. Hakim kept still and quiet.

"Martin? Will they vote to go in and learn more?"

Martin said he thought they would.

"Because the more we learn, the more ambiguous this all is," Hans said softly. "I don't think it's going to get any better."

"Terribly ambiguous," Cham said. He pulled down a more detailed image of Leviathan's third planet. Smooth, lovely green continents and blue oceans, no visible cloud cover, surface temperature about twenty Celsius, land masses checked with immense tan squares. Surrounding it like a fringe: huge puff-ball seeds, perhaps a thousand kilometers long, touching ocean and continent. The seeds did not limit themselves to the equator; a few even rose from the poles.

Fourth planet, huge and dark, surrounded by seas butting against dark continents spotted with glowing lava-filled rifts. The fifth planet: volatile-rich gas giant, surface temperature of eighty five kelvins, two point two g's, hints of wide green patches and black ribbons, rotating storms. Again enormous structures studded the upper atmosphere, these shaped like giant nested funnels. The sixth: a smaller gas giant, about the size of Neptune, artificial constructs floating in orbit like braided hair, brilliantly reflective. Thick streamers of gas rose from the giant's surface along the equator, drawn up by the constructs.

"Looks like paradise for the fuel-hungry," Cham said.

"A very masterpiece of bullshit," Hans said. "Designed to do just what it's doing to us."

"Or—" Joe said.

Hans raised an eyebrow.

"I can think of two or three ways what we're seeing could actually be what's there."

"Camouflaged with real races and cultures," Hakim said, taking Joe's hint.

"Explain, please."

"Well, Hakim seems on my wavelength," Joe said.