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technicians, who maintained the time device, the space fleet and flitters, and other critical equipment, lived in the cells. Those who specialized in domestic devices, the sort that every one of the Friends had in numbers, and which did not require daily maintenance, had their own area of the city.
    Ariin had never been there before, but toward the end of her previous time in Kubiilikaan after her telepathic powers had developed, she had learned of the area from their conversations. Disguised by a plain black, hooded cloak she’d discovered at the back of Akasa’s wardrobe, she walked briskly through the constantly changing city. She knew at once when she had reached her goal. The technicians’ quarters were, as she expected, less grand and pretentious, being essentially a large flat hive of rooms connected by corridors, much like the time device building or the interior of a spacecraft. Unlike a spacecraft, the complex had no engine, and unlike the time device building and all of the other areas of the city she had seen to date, its appearance, size, color, and the placement of the windows and doors remained constant and unchanging.
    On Vhiliinyar and MOO, even on Rushima, being still was the normal thing for dwellings and buildings. When Ariin saw the shifting alien sea undulating through the docking bay of the Blanca , she was reminded of the houses of the Friends and had wondered if there might be some connection. Other than the shapeshifting, the houses appeared to be made of the sorts of things human houses were made of—wood, stone, metal and plas, both crete and glas and other inert building materials. But after seeing the alien thing created when ghost-processed inorganic material mingled with the stuff that animated the ghosts themselves, she was not so sure. She reached out and touched the shifting facade of a food store, wondering if it would be soft, spongy, or squishy, but it was none of the above.
    Of course, it could hardly be exactly the same, or the aliens would have destroyed things the way they had elsewhere in the universe.
    Maybe the Friends had domesticated the aliens here? Probably not. Probably the moving houses of the Friends and the big, lumpy, galumphing alien forms had nothing to do with each other, but she thought they did. She thought the cat had thought so, too. She’d felt it inside his furry little devious mind.
    If anyone would know whether or not the houses were organisms or merely dwelling places for other organisms, the technicians who worked on them would. Only, how should she get them to talk about it? The Friends did not have children and did not die, as far as she could tell. She had seen no signs of new houses or buildings under construction and no signs that the old ones were in need of replacing. But that might be due to nothing more exotic than good maintenance.
    Maintenance didn’t explain the constant and seemingly random changes the buildings made. Random. Hmm. What about when the Friends wanted a building to change in a particular way? Did the technicians do certain specific things to get an office to become a ballroom? Was that possible?
    She stopped in her tracks and looked ahead into the still, motionless dwellings of the technicians. They were mostly empty. She felt that now. That would have something to do with the ball, of course. If she hadn’t been so busy arguing with her spoiled sister about the accursed cat, she would have figured that out to begin with. Like it or not, she was going to have to return to the central complex the overlords occupied if she was to learn anything.
    Back she sailed, her cloak billowing behind her, across the rolling waves of windows morphing from small diamond-shaped panes to large single ones, roofs flattening and peaking, trim sprouting around the edges of things, then receding. Surely this organized and even artistic domiciliary activity could not be caused by the same thing as the ugly alien ambulation?
    The Friends were already