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(in their own opaque fashion) cultured, it had never been entirely established whether the Drawmii had ever noticed their conquest by the Khosali, or understood entirely what it meant. Very few of the Drawmii travelled off their native planet, and when they did their travels were obscure, their motives doubly so.
    The Drawmii looked like glistening, eight-foot-long sea slugs. This one was green below and bright orange above, with mottled off-white warts scattered about its body. Five eyestalks sprouted along its back. It left a trail of slime as it moved.
    Accompanying it was a female Khosalikh, about thirty, in the uniform of a Colonial Service diplomat. She wore a translation stud in one ear.
    Khamiss stepped forward to offer her assistance and was promptly staggered by Lord Qlp’s appalling odor. Her nostrils slammed shut, and she only opened them by an act of will.
    This, she realized, was the down side of working with the public.
    “Khamiss, ma’am,” she said in Human Standard, her voice a bit denasal. “Silverside security. I have been put entirely at your service. If you could give me its lordship's documents, I will process them directly.”
    A cigar, she thought. If I smoke a cigar, perhaps I won’t have to smell this.
    “I am Lady Dosvidern,” the Khosalikh said. She spoke Khosali Standard. With polite restraint, she sniffed Khamiss’s ears. “I am Lord Qlp’s translator and assistant.”
    Lord Qlp raised its front end and made a series of blurting sounds. Lady Dosvidern listened, then translated. The voice she used when translating was different: deeper, more polished but less expressive, as if she felt it wasn’t her place to interpret its lordship's remarks by means of locution. Her formality verged on High Khosali without quite losing the communicative ease of Standard.
    “The temporal affinities have been propitiated. They are sound,” she said.
    Khamiss glanced from his lordship to Lady Dosvidern and back. “I am gratified to hear it, my lord,” she said. A cigar, she thought. No. Wrong. Lots of cigars.
    Lord Qlp spoke again. Its breath made its normal odor seem pleasant. “Silverside is an appropriate contextual mode,” Lady Dosvidern said. “The requirements of the continuum are clear. The Protocol of Mission demands the location of the Duchess of Benn.”
    Khamiss’s mind swam, but she understood the last sentence well enough. “I will see if I can locate her grace, my lord. If you will excuse me?” She turned on her heel and marched back to one of the desks. Never had station air tasted so sweet.
    She shouldered aside the customs agent at the second-class counter—the second-class passengers would have to wait—and touched the ideogram for “security central.” Sun's holographic profile appeared above the desk. His eyes were fixed ahead of him, presumably on his monitors.
    “Mr. Sun,” she said. “Lord Qlp wishes to meet the Duchess of Benn. Can you locate her for me, please?”
    The answer was immediate. “She's in the Casino, playing tiles with Maijstral.” Mr. Sun's tone made it clear that he had no respect whatever for Roberta’s scale of values.
    “Thank you, sir. Would you have a robot meet me there, and bring a box of cigars?”
    “I didn’t know you smoked, Khamiss.”
    “I just started, sir.”
    Sun's expression was indifferent, yet resolute. Khamiss thought that Sun made a point of being indifferent to anything unusual, presumably in the hope this would demonstrate his own omnipotence. “As you like, Khamiss,” he said. The hologram vanished.
    Khamiss turned back to the Qlp party and saw Lady Dosvidern approaching on silent feet. While Khamiss waited she inclined her torso slightly to the left in order to peer around her ladyship and make certain that Lord Qlp wasn’t up to any mischief. Apparently it was not: it was undulating slightly, perhaps with respiration, but not moving anywhere.
    “Miss Khamiss,” said her ladyship.
    “Yes, my lady?”
    Lady