“Here goes nothing,” I said, hitching up my bolt.

“The best experiments,” he said, “are the simplest.”

Analyzing the givens only took a few minutes. The rest of the day was spent making various preparations. How Arsibalt and I got others involved in that work, and the minor adventures each of us had during the day, would make for an amusing collection of anecdotes, but I have made the decision not to spell them out here because they are so trivial compared to what happened that evening. Before it was over, though, we had enlisted Emman, Tris, Barb, Karvall, Lio, and Sammann, and had talked Suur Asquin into looking the other way while we made some temporary alterations to her Dowment.

The fourth Plurality of Worlds Messal began normally: after a libation, soup was served. Barb and Emman went back to the kitchen. Not long after, Orhan was yanked. Tris followed him out. About a minute later I felt a coded sequence of tugs on my rope, which informed me that things had gone according to plan in the kitchen: the stew that Orhan had been cooking had “inadvertently” been knocked over by clumsy Barb. Between that distraction, and the racket that Tris and Emman had begun making with some pots and pans, Orhan would be unlikely to notice that sound was no longer coming out of the speaker.

I nodded across the table to Arsibalt.

“Excuse me, Fraa Zh’vaern, but you forgot to bless your food,” Arsibalt announced, in a clear voice.

Conversation stopped. The messal had been unusually subdued to this point, as though all the doyns were trying to devise some way of restarting the dialog while avoiding the awkward territory that Zh’vaern had attempted to drag us into last night. Even in the rowdiest messal, though, any unasked-for statement from a servitor would have been shocking; Arsibalt’s was doubly so because of what he’d said. As long as everyone was speechless, he went on: “I have been studying the beliefs and practices of the Matarrhites. They never take food without saying a prayer, which ends with a gesture. You have neither spoken the prayer nor made the gesture.”

“What of it? I forgot,” Zh’vaern said.

“You always forget,” Arsibalt returned.

Ignetha Foral was giving Paphlagon a look that meant when are you going to throw the Book at your servitor? and indeed Paphlagon now threw down his napkin and made as if to push his chair back. But Fraa Jad reached out and clamped a hand on Paphlagon’s arm.

“You always forget,” Arsibalt repeated, “and, if you like, I can list any number of other ways in which you and Orhan have imperfectly simulated the behavior of Matarrhites. Is it because you’re not actually Matarrhites?”

Beneath the hood, Zh’vaern’s head moved. He was casting a glance at the door. Not the one through which he and the other doyns had entered, but the one through which Orhan had left.

“Your minder can’t hear us,” I told him, “the microphone wire has been cut by an Ita friend of mine. The feed no longer goes out.”

Still Zh’vaern remained frozen and silent. I nodded at Suur Karvall, who pulled aside a tapestry to reveal a shiny mesh, woven of metal wires, with which we’d covered the wall. I stepped around toward Zh’vaern, stuck a toe under the edge of the carpet, and flipped it up to reveal more of the same on the floor. Zh’vaern took it all in. “It is a fencing material used in animal husbandry,” I explained, “obtainable in bulk extramuros. It is conductive—and it is connected to ground.”

“What is the meaning of all this?” demanded Ignetha Foral.

“We’re in a Saunt Bucker’s Basket!” exclaimed Moyra. Her life, as an extremely senior, semi-retired Lorite, probably didn’t include many unexpected events, and so even something as mundane as discovering that she was surrounded by chicken wire seemed like quite an adventure. More than that, though, I believe she was pleased that the servitors had taken her exhortations to heart, and gone out and done something that the doyns never would have dreamed of. “It’s a grounded mesh that prevents wireless signals from passing into or out of the room. It means we’re informationally shielded from the rest of Arbre.”

“In my world,” said Zh’vaern, “we call it a Faraday cage.” He stood up and shrugged his bolt off over his head, then tossed it to the floor. I was behind him and so could not see his face—only the looks of awe and astonishment on the faces of the others: the first Arbrans, with the possible exception of the Warden of Heaven, to gaze upon the face of a living alien. Judging from the back of his head and torso, I guessed he was of the same race as the dead woman who’d come down in the probe. Beneath a sort of under-shirt, a small device was attached to his skin with poly tape. He reached under the garment, peeled it off, and threw it on the table along with a snarl of wires.

“I am Jules Verne Durand of Laterre—the world you know as Antarct. Orhan is from the world of Urnud, which you have designated Pangee. You had best get him inside the Faraday cage before—”

“Done,” said a voice from the door: Lio, who had just come in, cheerfully flushed. “We have him in a separate Bucker’s Basket in the pantry. Sammann found this on him.” And he held up another wireless body transmitter.

“Well-wrought,” said Jules Verne Durand, “but it has purchased you a few minutes only; those who listen will grow suspicious at the loss of contact.”

“We have alerted Suur Ala that it might become necessary to evacuate the concent,” Lio said.

“Good,” said Jules Verne Durand, “for I am sorry to say that the ones of Urnud are a danger to you.”

“And to you of Laterre as well, it would seem!” said Arsibalt. Since the doyns were all too speechless to rejoin the conversation, Arsibalt—who’d had time to prepare—was doing his bit to keep things going.

“It is true,” said the Laterran. “I will tell you quickly that those of Urnud and of Tro—which you call Diasp—are of similar mind, and hostile to those of Fthos—which you call—”

“Quator, by process of elimination,” said Lodoghir.

I’d worked my way round to a place where I could see Jules Verne Durand, and so was feeling some of the astonishment that the others had experienced a few moments earlier. First at the differences—then similarities, then differences again—between Laterran and Arbran faces. The closest comparison I can make is to how one reacts when conversing with one who has a birth defect that has subtly altered the geometry of the face—but without the deformity or loss of function that this would imply. And of course no comparison can be drawn to the way we felt knowing that we were looking on one who had traveled from another cosmos.

“What of you and your fellow Laterrans?” Lodoghir asked.

“Split between the Fthosians and the others.”

“You, I take it, are loyal to the Urnud/Tro axis?” Lodoghir asked. “Otherwise, you would not have been sent here.”

“I was sent here because I speak better Orth than anyone else—I am a linguist. A junior one, actually. And so they put me to work on Orth in the early days, when Orth was believed to be a minor language. They are suspicious of my loyalty—with good reason! Orhan, as you divined, is my watcher—my minder.” He looked at Arsibalt. “You penetrated my disguise. Not surprising, really. But I should like to know how?”

Arsibalt looked to me. I said, “I ate some of your food yesterday. It passed through my digestive system unchanged.”

“Of course, for your enzymes could not react with it,” said Jules Verne Durand. “I commend you.”

Ignetha Foral had finally recovered enough to join the conversation. “On behalf of the Supreme Council I welcome you and apologize for any mistreatment you have undergone at the hands of these young—”

“Stop. This is what you call bulshytt. No time,” said the Laterran. “My mission—assigned to me by the military intelligence command of the Urnud/Tro axis—is to find out whether the legends of the Incanters are grounded in fact. The Urnud/Tro axis—which they call, in their languages, the Pedestal—is extremely fearful of this prospect; they contemplate a pre-emptive strike. Hence my questions of previous evenings, which I am aware were quite rude.”