So the morning comes; the morning after Plotar’s visit. I see my therapist as per schedule. I tell him everything.

I tell him of Plotar’s plot, his confidences, his plan of organization and his request. I describe how he wanted me to find places for incendiary plants in the enclosure. In a way this is bitter for me to say because I still have greater feelings of loyalty to my shipmates than to the aliens who confine us, but sentiment cannot interfere with what I know must be the right. Plotar’s plan will fail and the consequences of this will make life in the enclosure more hideous for most of us than it is already. It will be like the early days. I cannot bear this. I cannot bear the tortures. It is not a question of personal weakness; I have the strength to withstand them if I must, but cannot think of my shipmates’ suffering.

It cannot be; our early weeks in the enclosure were bad enough and if they were to recur it would only destroy what small confidences I hope we have created with this staff. I explain these reasons to my therapist after I have talked sufficiently of the plot. “A higher loyalty,” I say. “Allegiance to a higher necessity; this has been a cruel dilemma for me.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for telling me this; I’m very moved by your confidence and will see that no harm comes to you because of this.” He cuts our session short, returns me to my room with many new reading materials and orders not to leave; but later in the morning I am summoned to his offices again and his mood is not so reserved. “How do we know that you are telling the truth?” he wants to know. “I realize that we have dealt with each other for quite a long time but there are other parties involved now. There are other considerations.”

Behind him, standing in a menacing posture, is another alien, wearing a uniform and armaments. He looks at me quietly and with loathing, then turns to whisper a comment to my therapist which I cannot hear.

“Yes,” my therapist says to him in a different voice. “Yes, thank you. I understand that perfectly. It’s all right, it really is,” and then turns back toward me as if to say something but before he can the side door swings open.

Plotar is led trembling into the room by two more aliens with armaments. He looks at me without recognition and then lets his gaze sink dully to the floor. He mumbles, scuffs his shoes, shrugs often.

And denies everything then as I stand by, not speaking. He states that he had no such conversation with me; he states that we have not dealt with each other for all the time in the enclosure, we never got along well together in the ship culture and that I, psychically damaged by imprisonment, have probably been dreaming vengeance for a long time. He was master of rituals, an important post which gave him access to the darkest and most necessary reactions; the master of rituals is always hated and feared by those low in the hierarchy. I am far below the midpoint; my breakdown would be understandable.

One of the aliens smiles when Plotar has finished and reminds him that our life in the enclosure is constantly monitored and that any record of this alleged conversation would appear on recording devices, visual and aural, which are at this very moment being researched. This is an example of their thoroughness and he advises Plotar to be reasonable. Plotar backs imperceptibly away from the center of the room where he has been standing and says that he did nothing, he said nothing, there was no such conversation at any time and in any event they have to be lying about the recording devices. They would not expend that much on spying on us; we are not that menacing. “We’ve told you everything you wanted to know; you have utter contempt for us,” he says and then, convulsively, his control seems to break. He hurls himself upon the nearest alien and grapples with him before one of the others knocks him unconscious with an implement. He is dragged from the room, whining piteously like a female, leaving only my therapist, myself and the single alien who was in the room at the start. It is very quiet and I avert my eyes; shy at having brought about this catastrophe but filled with pride as well because, in the abruptness of his collapse, Plotar has shown his weakness.

“Our methods must strike you as cruel, Quir,” he says, and that is odd to hear because never before has he suggested that I have any right to make judgments of him. “I feel, somehow, that I must apologize. You know that I’m sorry about this, about your having to witness it and the other thing, but you did precisely right in coming to me in the first place and I’m grateful that you’ve shown this kind of confidence and trust. It means something, it really does. But what I’m trying to say simply is that I’m very moved and I hope you know that, Quir, really.”

It is one of the very few times that he has used my given name (and now, in one instant, he has used it twice) and oddly, unexpectedly, I am moved as well. I feel an impulse to dissolve and weep before the therapist and since this is clearly impossible (for what would I be weeping?) I turn instead and quickly leave his office. The alien with armaments makes noises behind me but there is no attempt to retain me in their presence. I can hear them whispering.

I return to my room where, for a long time, I look at the ornaments on the walls and think of the old times in the ship society where Plotar ranked so far above me. (But I was barely below the midpoint of the hierarchy; the midpoint was one hundred and twenty-four and I fell only thirty-four places below that, barely a significant statistical variation.) It was different then; better in some ways, worse in others but in all senses overpowering, the more so because, before the enclosure, these are the only memories I have. Presumably there were reasons why I ranked so far below Plotar, but all of them have to do with the forgotten part of my life and now there seems no way that I will ever retrieve that information. Surely those who assigned the rank had a sense of purpose. Had a system. The assignors could not have been capricious.

Very far above me; quite beyond, I think of Plotar, now in another part of the enclosure, wrapped in upon himself for the tortures which will follow and think of him as he was: as he was in shiptime, so grandiose as to be known only by inference, moving through the corridors in his distracted way, moving toward the rituals and the perishing fire.