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because it looked like a good idea. It wasn’t. When he gave it to Shan, he did it to save her life—because he was too influenced by whatever c’naatat brought with it to just let her die like she should have.”
    â€œLike you should have, too…”
    â€œI’m glad you’re getting my point.”
    â€œYou’re not getting mine.”
    â€œYou have to stop Esganikan. Recall her. Appoint another commander on the ground. Just get her out of there before anything goes wrong.”
    â€œShe has done nothing to make me think she’s a risk.” Varguti seemed a lot more emphatic now. Rayat had lost her again, just when he thought he’d swayed her. The subtle tricks he’d been so adept at using when he was an intelligence officer dealing with weak, suggestible humans were no use on wess’har. “The risk is that gethes seize a host, but they don’t have the capacity to breach Eqbas security. In the highly unlikely event that they do, then Da Shapakti now has the countermeasures.”
    Rayat felt his throat closing and his pulse pounding. C’naatat didn’t do much to stop that. It seemed to think a little physical stress was good for him. “But you don’t have a mass delivery system for that—”
    â€œWe will have one.”
    â€œâ€”and do you really want to commit yet another task force to Earth simply to clean up the mess? Have you any idea of the social and environmental chaos that a zero death rate would cause even in a few decades on Earth?”
    Varguti stared at him for a moment. She didn’t have the bright gold irises of the Wess’ej wess’har, and somehow it made all Eqbas look less ferociously intelligent; but that was a serious underestimation. They just don’t think like we do. Rayat waited. There was no point angering her.
    â€œYes,” she said. “We can predict exactly what it will do, far more accurately than gethes can. Yours isn’t the only world we’ve adjusted in our history. And so far, I have no reason to think that Esganikan Gai is any more of a risk than Shan Frankland.”
    Rayat felt deflated. But he’d come through plenty, through a one-way ticket to Bezer’ej and becoming an aquatic creature and even living with the torment of nearly wiping out a sentient species. He’d been switched between mortal and immortal so many times that having his c’naatat back again seemed unremarkable. So a few spats with a dangerously optimistic Eqbas matriarch was just a minor setback. He’d try another tack.
    â€œThe reason to worry,” he said, “is that her c’naatat has my genetic material, my memories, and I was an unscrupulous bastard ready to do whatever it took to get c’naatat for my masters, or keep it from their enemies.”
    Varguti had him on the back foot. “And yet you’re not quite that bastard now, are you?”
    â€œIf you have evidence that Esganikan isn’t behaving responsibly, then will you act?”
    Varguti wasn’t even mildly annoyed with him, just impatient. He could smell it. “Yes, within obvious limits.”
    Obvious limits. Esganikan was 150 trillion miles away, five years ahead of the second fleet sent to support her, with a loyal army of fanatical Skavu, a young and deferential Eqbas crew, and enough firepower and bioweapons capability to scour Earth as clean as Umeh. If she decided to do anything that the matriarchs here didn’t sanction, there wasn’t a lot they could do about it other than tell her to pack it in.
    And would she obey?
    If her c’naatat had changed her outlook as subtly as Rayat suspected, as it had all its hosts, then he wasn’t placing bets.
    â€œThank you for your time, Sho Chail, ” he said.
    Rayat left her office—unguarded, unremarkable, and open to any Surang citizen—and made his way down curving stairs onto the next walkway level. There was