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now—and stared straight up at Rayat. He could probably smell him. The Eqbas biologist made his way through the crush, moving between the exchanges, the halls and chambers where Eqbas came to deposit surplus things and collect whatever took their fancy. It was busy today. Rayat gestured to Shapakti to stay where he was and ran down the steps to meet him.
    They were friends and colleagues rather than researcher and captive specimen. Rayat felt a pang of guilt about the lab rats that Aras had rescued from him with a warning about his carrion-eater’s habits, and wondered if it was his own shame or Shan’s censorious voice deep in his mind. Even now, Rayat worked hard at separating his own thoughts from the ones c’naatat had created within him. Now that he was infected again, they seemed more insistent, but even during the periods that the parasite was removed from his body, they still nagged at him.
    â€œDid Varguti listen?” Shapakti asked, stepping close to the exchange walls to avoid the pedestrians. “You should have let me talk to her as well.”
    â€œIf I’d done that,” said Rayat, “then she might have given you an order not to do something, and you’d have obeyed, wouldn’t you?”
    Shapakti tilted his head slowly. He knew what was coming, more or less. “You know I would obey the matriarch in matters of state. Besides, it’s unlikely anyone would want to disobey the consensus.”
    â€œI have to call Shan.”
    â€œYou’re banned, and she never responded to you last time anyway.”
    I tried. Stupid cow. I’ve been waiting twenty years to get hold of her again. No, twenty-five, if I count the journey here. “Then you call her.”
    â€œNo—”
    â€œOr you let me call Eddie and ask him to call her.”
    â€œI’m not happy with this.”
    Rayat caught Shapakti’s arm and steered him into the nearest exchange, a chamber that would have said stock exchange to any human. The trilling and warbling was at fever pitch as wess’har debated and chatted. Yet this wasn’t about money—they had no equivalent economy—but ideas. It was a shop for exchanging ideas.
    â€œHelp me warn Shan,” Rayat said, in English now. “If I can get her to listen.”
    â€œWhen you speak English, you’re being deceitful,” Shapakti hissed. “You put me in an impossible position.”
    â€œAnd what can Varguti do to you? Are you breaking a law? No. Help me do this. Just to warn Shan, or at least find out if Esganikan’s crew know she’s infected.”
    â€œAnd if they don’t…what can Shan Chail do?”
    Rayat had thought about that, long and hard. He’d had plenty of time to do it, too. And now he knew more about wess’har than Shan herself. She’d known them a few years; he’d lived with them for a generation.
    â€œLong screwdriver.” Rayat waited for Shapakti’s comprehension. “It’s what we call the ability to control frontline events on the battlefield straight from the top.”
    â€œBypassing the field commanders…a foolish thing, because you can never see the situation as clearly as they can.”
    â€œBut sometimes it has to be done.”
    There was plenty Shan Frankland could do thirty light-years away. He knew how the jask pheromone worked in establishing dominance among wess’har females, and c’naatat had given Shan the full chemistry set. If anyone could bring Esganikan into line, it was Shan, chock full of the dominant wess’har matriarchal pheromone and her own arrogant sense of messianic, world-saving, uninvited righteousness.
    He had his long screwdriver. He had Shan Frankland.
    If she’d listen to him, she would be his instrument on Earth.
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    Kamberra, Australia, Office of the Prime Minister.
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    This was the worst day of Den Bari’s life, and he knew it had been coming for a long