S que was waiting for them when they returned. That is to say, she was in her domicile when they got back. As to whether or not she cared if they returned or if they happened to drown in the merlot-shaded sea was a matter for conjecture.

They were greeted first by Braouk, who was sitting beneath his usual stony overhang letting the occasional burst of purple sunshine warm his fur. Noting their approach, he bestirred himself, rose up on all four supportive limbs, and lumbered toward them.

“The charming Sque, I have been advised, has information. Of what nature she would not tell me, but insisted on waiting until you returned and all could hear it together.”

Walker’s heart thumped. He glanced excitedly down at his companion. “Finally! Some news regarding the hunt for Earth, I bet.”

“Some news, anyway,” conceded George, his reaction more guarded than that of his friend.

Wanting all three of her companions and visitors to simultaneously learn the details of what she had to tell them, as Braouk had said, she exited her dwelling as soon as Walker and George alerted her to their return. She carried nothing with her, unless one counted the usual ribbons of personal adornment. Walker was unable to restrain himself from prompting her.

“News of the search for our homeworld?” he asked eagerly.

Metallic gray eyes turned to regard him. Having lived with her for so long, he had learned to recognize certain subtle movements. A swelling here, a tentacle twitch there. At the moment, she seemed ill at ease. That was unusual in and of itself. It did not bode well.

He was right. “No news of the search for your homeworld, Marcus. And I am very much afraid there will not be any news of the search for your homeworld.” Her body expanded slightly, contracted more slowly as she punctuated her response with an exhalation signifying resignation. “Because there will not be any search for your homeworld.” Reaching up with one appendage, she used it to delicately clean one aural opening. “At least, none that involve the K’eremu.”

Walker swallowed. He felt as if someone had kicked him in the throat. “I don’t understand, Sque. Why not? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is ‘wrong,’ Marcus.” Though the tone of her voice did not change, the intensity of her feeling was underlined by the fact that she had used his personal name twice in as many responses. “The K’eremu are simply being the K’eremu.”

“Slimy bastards.” George made no attempt to hide his bitterness.

“I assure you that neither epidermal viscosity nor the composition of individual ancestry has anything to do with the decision.”

Walker suddenly felt sorry for her. As much as was possible for one of her kind, she clearly felt disturbed at having to deliver such bad news. She was K’eremu, but she was also their friend.

Putting aside his resentment and frustration, he made himself inquire patiently, “Why won’t your people help us? What do you mean when you say that ‘the K’eremu are simply being the K’eremu’?”

She gesticulated with three limbs, and this time it was a gesture whose meaning he could not divine. “There is no hostility involved, Marcus. Only characteristic indifference. If the average K’eremu, and those are two terms I assure you are not often used in tandem, is not concerned with his or her neighbor, how can they be expected to involve themselves in the far more alien and complex troubles of others? Especially those of insignificant non-K’eremu primitives?”

“Is that what you told your authorities we are?” George snarled. It had been a long time since he had heard the dog growl like that, Walker reflected.

Sque reacted immediately, and in a manner sufficiently unexpected to startle both man and dog. One flexible appendage whipped out and smacked the dog across his snout. So startled was George that he did not even respond with an instinctive bite. Instead, he was knocked back onto his haunches, where he sat, stunned, staring at their hostess.

“Do you think so little of me, after all this time we have spent in one another’s company?” She swelled up so prodigiously Walker thought she might burst, the expression “bust a gut” having a more literal application among the K’eremu than any other species he had yet encountered. To his relief, the furious bloat rapidly subsided.

“That may indeed be what you are,” she went on, having brought herself under control once more, “but it is not how I presented you and your case to the relevant segment of K’erem’s scientific establishment. Plainly, my account made no difference to those in a position to act upon it.”

“What about our part in helping to rescue you,” Walker ventured, “in helping a K’eremu to return home? Did you mention that? You said it would be worth something.”

“I did indeed allude at length to your humble and unassuming assistance,” she assured him. “It seems to have swayed no opinion. Without a compelling reason to do so, no astronomer of K’erem will expend the time or effort to assist your Niyyuuan and Iollth friends in their attempt to locate your homeworld. That if they wished they could do so I have no doubt. The problem is not execution, but motivation.” A pair of tentacles reached out to wrap around his right leg and squeeze gently. Apologetically, even.

“I am sorry, Marcus Walker and George. There is nothing more I can do. Rare is the individual K’eremu who can persuade another.”

“Because each one feels superior to every other one,” a disconsolate George muttered. “A standoff of superciliousness.” He looked up at Walker. “That means there’s no higher court we can appeal to, because none of these squids recognizes another of their kind as having a superior grasp of any situation. How do you convince a pod of conceited egotists to change their minds?”

“I don’t know,” a dejected Walker muttered. Wind nipped at his ears. “I don’t know.”

“I sorrow also, for my good friends, at this.” Braouk rested one massive upper tentacle across Walker’s shoulders, lightly stroking George’s back with another. “The K’eremu are not Tuuqalian.”

“Observations of the obvious don’t help us much.” Shrugging off the caress, George jogged off toward the low alien scrub that dominated the landscape in the vicinity of Sque’s residence. Walker didn’t try to stop him. Let his friend and companion brood in privacy. They’d had little enough of that during these past years traveling.

He looked back down at Sque. “Is there anything else we can do? Anything that might change the minds of the K’eremu who could help us?”

Half a dozen appendages waved fluidly in a gesture of substantial import. “You can try putting your case to some of them directly; possibly one at a time, certainly not many, since as you know we are not especially fond of one another’s company.”

Her suggestion wasn’t exactly encouraging, he decided, but it was a beginning. Certainly it was better than sitting around helplessly bemoaning the fate to which an unkind, uncaring universe had consigned them. From the time he had been introduced to the Vilenjji capture ship, he had taken a proactive role in his own survival. That was how he had conducted his trading of commodities; that was how he had conducted his life. He would not change that now, not even in the face of seemingly indomitable K’eremu obduracy.

“All right then: we’ll start with one. Can you at least line up an initial interview with an appropriate entity? We’ll try putting our case to the scientific authorities that way, like you say. One at a time.”

She hesitated, but only briefly. “It may take a little while to make the necessary arrangements, but I think it might be possible.”

Bending down, he leaned so close to her that she could have touched his face with her speaking tube. “And will you continue to speak on our behalf?”

“Having only recently returned to it, I dislike the idea of being away from my residence again so soon. But”—and she reached up with an appendage to flick him gently on one cheek—“if nothing else it may prove entertaining. A relief from the tedium of everyday existence is always welcome.”

“Oh, it won’t be dull, I promise you that.” Straightening, he cupped both hands to his mouth and raised his voice. “George! Get back here! We’re going traveling—again.”

The route they took several days later was as familiar as their intended destination. There being no facility on all of K’erem dedicated to the (according to the K’eremu way of thinking) unnatural and downright repulsive enterprise of mass assembly, it was decided to hold the meeting Sque had arranged as well as any subsequent ones at the port where they had first set down. The port, at least, was equipped with facilities for the handling and distribution not only of cargo, which was almost entirely dealt with by servicing automatons, but also the occasional odd guest. Such uncommon visitors had to be very odd indeed, Walker reflected as he and his companions disembarked from their transport and entered once more into the facility, given that the K’eremu were not exactly a warm, wildly welcoming folk.

As he had during the course of his initial arrival at K’erem, he once more had the opportunity to admire and marvel at the smoothly supple bronzed and silvered shapes that comprised his surroundings. Devices and mechanisms extruded silently from or retracted almost sensuously into walls, ceilings, and floor, pulsing with oozing mechanical life. From time to time K’eremu automatons slid, scurried, or shushed past the travelers as they followed Sque deeper into the complex. Walker likened it to strolling through a set of alien internal organs that had been fashioned from several different consistencies and colors of liquid metal.

Infrequently, they encountered another K’eremu. Espying the visitors, these locals would every so often offer a greeting to Sque. Just as frequently, they ignored her. Argent eyes flicked over human and dog and Tuuqalian. They did not precisely drip contempt. They did not have to. If you were not K’eremu, you barely qualified as sentient. And if you were K’eremu, regardless of profession or specialty or age or education, you were superior to everything and everyone else, including your neighbors. Recalling the arrogant attitudes of certain human teenagers he had met, Walker was thankful he had not been forced to deal with any juvenile K’eremu. Doubtless they raised the description “insufferable” to new heights. Or maybe, he thought, adolescence progressed differently among his hosts. When traveling among alien cultures, anthropomorphism was the first casualty.

There were three K’eremu waiting for them in an immigration holding chamber just beyond the point where arrivals officially disembarked from or reboarded visiting ships. All three were bedecked with the kind of trashy, glittering individual bodily adornments Walker and his friends were familiar with from time spent in Sque’s similarly gaudy company: K’eremu bling. The slick, shiny skin of two of the aliens was the same yellow-mottled maroon hue as Sque’s, though the patterns differed. The third’s epidermis was a darker red, almost carmine, and marked with mildly eye-catching splotches of yellow that shaded to gold. Sexual dimorphism being readily recognizable among the K’eremu, and Walker having been enlightened as to the details by Sque, he duly noted that the trio waiting before them consisted of two females and one male.

“You should feel honored,” Sque hissed softly up at him. “Rarely do more than two K’eremu come together in person for any purpose.”

“Then why aren’t there only two?” Walker whispered back at her.

“Two might never come to a decision. When K’eremu desire to reach a consensus, the number involved in the discussion must always be odd, never even.”

The trio did not look happy. Dozens of tentacles writhed in annoyance. Introductions were perfunctory and delivered with the same kind of generic irritation Walker and his friends had been subjected to ever since they had made Sque’s acquaintance back on the Vilenjji ship. Accustomed to it, he was able to largely ignore it. Adhering to usual K’eremu practice, formalities were, well, brief.

“Speak,” snapped the larger of the two females, whose name (greatly shortened like Sque’s for the convenience of inarticulate alien visitors) was Alet. “My time passes, and I can think of at least a hundred things that would be better done with it.”

Walker looked down at George; George promptly settled his belly down on the shimmering bronzed floor and crossed his front legs. Walker looked at Braouk; the Tuuqalian giant squatted down on his four under-limbs, and Walker realized that yet again it was being left to him to make their case. Clearing his throat, which caused the male member of the impatiently waiting trio to wince visibly, he took a step forward. After a moment’s thought he crouched down, the better to put himself eye level to eye level with the three already visibly indifferent K’eremu.

“I am—” he began. It was as far as he was allowed to get before he was brusquely interrupted by the female called Mhez.

“We know who you are. We know all there is to know about you that is knowable by K’eremu.” A pair of appendages waved briskly. “I am of the personal opinion that is more than enough. We know where you came from, how you came to be here, and what you want. Your request has already been denied.” A couple of desultory bubbles wandered aloft from the end of her speaking tube. “Our astronomers have a higher calling, and better things to do, than waste their time seeking the location of remote worlds inhabited by boorish primitives.”

George sprang to his feet, only to visibly control himself in response to a cautionary wave from Walker. “We’re aware of your opinion of us.”

“Do you dispute it?” challenged the male, whose abridged name was Rehj.

“I think you underestimate us.” Walker composed his reply carefully. He was acutely conscious of the fragile nature of the confrontation, and that the trio of scarcely attentive K’eremu might decide at any moment to bring it to an abrupt and unproductive end. “For one thing, as our friend and companion Sque can attest, George and I are intelligent enough to recognize the innate and unarguable superiority of the K’eremu.” Behind him, a rude canine noise sounded. Unfamiliar with the nature of the auditory discharge or its possible import, the K’eremu ignored it.

As a result of Walker’s comment, some shuffling ensued among the judgmental trio. “That shows wisdom, if not intelligence,” declared Alet. “It also conforms to the opinion of another who has exhibited an interest in this situation.”

A frowning Walker immediately glanced over at Sque. Their K’eremu companion raised a pair of appendages.

“I have done nothing more than comment honestly on what I have observed these past several years. You should know that I can be nothing but honest.”

“That kind of honesty doesn’t seem to be helping us much,” George observed tartly.

“The other to whom I refer,” Alet continued irritably, “is not the K’eremu Sequi’aranaqua’na’senemu, who has been forced to associate with you in the course of your wandering.” Pivoting slightly, she gestured in the direction of the fluid wall to her left. Like chrome jelly stirred by an active hand, a portal appeared in the undulating surface and a figure stepped through to join them.

Walker lost a breath. George growled softly as the hackles rose on his shoulders. Braouk started forward, only to be restrained by Sque.

“There can be no fighting here,” she warned their hulking companion. Tentacles gestured simultaneously in several directions. “There are dynamic devices present that will restrain even such an oversized sentient as yourself, and not always gently.” At her words of warning the Tuuqalian paused, vertically aligned jaws opening and clashing in frustration.

Advancing on thickened, flap-padded feet, the Vilenjji Pret-Klob came toward them, halting well out of reach of any of his former captives. Huge eyes that nearly met in the center of the tapering, cilia-crowned skull regarded them impassively.

“Greetings to inventory,” their former captor murmured with utter lack of emotion. “Tracking you has been one of the most psychologically rewarding if fiscally unproductive experiences of my lifetime.”

“How did you find us?” a stunned Walker blurted. “How did you track us?”

Cold, calculating eyes met his own. “On every world you visited, you stood out, human investment. By virtue of your uniqueness, you drew attention. The media of Niyu, where you traveled upon entering the service of one minor official there, was constantly full of your exploits: political, military, and culinary. That is how we initially located you there. You will recall that unfortunate confrontation, when this increasingly costly recovery operation would have ended but for the misguided interference of some of the natives. By the way, I congratulate you on your mastery of a new skill. I am always pleased when an item of inventory takes the time and trouble to enhance its own value without the need of additional financial input from my association. You are to be commended on your initiative.”

“Keep it,” Walker growled, no less gutturally than the snarling dog now standing at his feet.

“As you were journeying in the company of three well-armed vessels, we could hardly attempt to recover you through the use of force. Subsequent to your illicit flight from that world, the Niyyuuan media very usefully indicated in detail and at length the next destination to which you hoped to travel. As you know, the nature of our business requires my association to travel quite extensively. We had no difficulty locating Hyff. Though we arrived there in the wake of your enterprising engagement with the Iollth, by presenting ourselves to the locals as your friends, and making ourselves useful in other ways, we succeeded in learning that you were going to try to reach Tuuqalia.” Vast flattened eyes shifted to the barely restrained Braouk. “That being a world whose location in the stellar firmament we already knew, we then traveled there.”

Mindful of Sque’s warning, Walker was also keeping a watchful eye on the silently seething Braouk. “I hope you had enough brains not to try to abduct another Tuuqalian.”

The Vilenjji’s response suggested common sense, if not morality. “Actually, as we were already there, and had successfully carried out such an appropriation previously, the possibility was discussed. It was decided, however, that despite the potential profit, since the prior acquisition from that world had proven untenable, not to mention lethal, it fell on the downside of cost-effectiveness. Hence, no: no further acquisition was attempted on that world.”

“How fortunate for you,” Braouk rumbled.

“We only just missed you there,” Pret-Klob continued serenely, “but by the same means that have so greatly facilitated our commerce in the past, we did learn that you next intended to visit K’erem. We were most impressed to learn that you had acquired the assistance and company not only of the original three craft that had accompanied you from Niyu, but by now of Iollth and Tuuqalian help as well.” Eyes appraisingly traveled the length and breadth of the enraged Braouk. “You are well and intact, I see. That is good. Throughout the term of our following you my associates and I were much concerned for the state of our long-lost inventory.”

“Not your inventory, this particular saga spinner, or friends.” Reaching out with the two massive appendages on his left side, Braouk extended them protectively out over Walker and George. Probably correctly, the Tuuqalian was assuming that Sque was in no danger here on her homeworld. Though where the capricious K’eremu were concerned, Walker cautioned himself, nothing could be taken for granted.

“I’d like to know,” he pressed their tormentor, “why you continue to bother. In my trade, when a business deal goes sour and costs you money, you don’t pursue it.” He indicated his friends. “We’d call it ‘throwing good money after bad.’”

“For one thing,” the Vilenjji told him easily, “in the course of your traveling, you have accumulated knowledge and skills that have greatly enhanced your value beyond that of simply being interesting uneducated specimens from unvisited worlds. More importantly”—and as he spoke, the tendrils atop his tapered head writhed and twisted vigorously—“there is principle involved. The Vilenjji do not willingly surrender inventory without making as aggressive an attempt as possible to recover it. Also, as I may have explained previously, it sets a precedent that is very bad for business if it is learned that inventory has been able to disengage from us without any compensation. That is damaging for customers to know, and damaging for inventory still in retention to know.”

“All right,” Walker shot back, his tone an uneasy mix of disquiet and defiance, “so you’ve managed to follow us this far.” He jerked his head sharply in the direction of the three inquisitive K’eremu. “Alet says you have an ‘interest in the situation.’ I can tell you right now that’s as far as it’s going to go.”

“On the contrary,” Pret-Klob replied, unperturbed as ever, “I hope, and expect, that ‘it’ will continue onward to what I consider to be the most desirable and logical conclusion. Unable to recover our absent inventory by force, the members of the association have consistently sought a way to bring other means to bear on this odious and ongoing dilemma. It may be that those means that would not be practical on, say, Niyu or Tuuqalia may have more efficacious application here.” The Vilenjji appeared to gather himself.

“In connection with that I have lodged a formal claim for the return of our absent property with the amorphous entity that passes for local authority on this world.” A sucker-lined upper arm flap indicated the unblinking Sque. “With the exception of one among you, the rights to whom my association must for obvious practical reasons abjure any claim.”

Feeling slightly faint, Walker struggled to hang on to his wits. Turning away from the poised and expectant Vilenjji, he directed his attention to the trio of silently watching K’eremu.

“This is insane. Surely you can’t give any credence to this contemptible creature’s outrageous claims!” Behind him, Braouk was already searching for an escape route, calculating whether it would be better to try to flee the port complex or take one or more of the three monitoring K’eremu hostage. Though mindful, and respective, of Sque’s warning, he would readily die without seeing Tuuqalia again and with his grand saga unfinished before he would submit to Vilenjji captivity a second time.

George took a couple of steps toward the trio, nodding in the direction of the ever watchful Pret-Klob. “No matter what this ambulatory vegetable claims, we’re all of us here independent intelligences. Capturing and selling a sentient is against the laws and customs of galactic civilization.”

It was Rehj who responded coolly. “What galactic civilization would that be? Whichever, it is not one to which the K’eremu belong, nor to whose laws we subscribe.”

That was right, Walker thought furiously. K’erem lay far, far outside the boundaries of the culture and society inhabited by the Sessrimathe and the Niyyuu, among others. Undoubtedly Pret-Klob and his loathsome association were counting on that.

“Though no decision has been rendered in this matter,” Mehz informed him, “it would behoove you to offer a better argument.”

“I have an argument.” The Vilenjji waved the flattened, sucker-lined extremity of one limb. “At this moment, there are in orbit around K’erem twelve warships crewed by representatives of three different warlike species, with delegates from a fourth.” In what was not quite a bow, his cloaked, purple-tinged upper body inclined in the direction of the three. “While I do not doubt the ability of such superior beings as the K’eremu to defend themselves and their world from any imprudent demonstrations of bellicosity, twelve ships is an impressive number. One that, directed and designed by other intelligent races, might conceivably pose a threat even to K’erem itself.”

Standing for a moment on his hind legs, George whispered up at his human. “What’s the moldy old eggplant getting at?”

“I don’t know,” Walker replied honestly, plenty worried in spite of his ignorance.

Both travelers quickly found out, as Pret-Klob continued. “By coincidence and good fortune, the commander of this entire force stands now before you. Neutralize him and his companions while still keeping them alive and well, and you eliminate any motivation for those on board the twelve armed ships to cause trouble. And in doing so, you also make permanent allies and friends of myself and my kind.”

Rehj could not frown, but conveyed the impression of doing so. “What ‘commander’?”

The arm flap that had been deferring to the three K’eremu now swung around to point directly at the startled Walker.