After a glance at her Captain, Cynric said, “We can.”

“At last,” Amanda said. “Common ground.”

That, at least, startled Mallory into a snort of laughter. Perceval was still smiling, if you could call that a smile. If smiling, for her, were not a prelude to aggression.

Danilaw raised and spread his hands, drawing attention, gathering focus. “In short, we have outcompeted the Hell out of everything. Thus, in that we are as Gods to the rest of”—he flagged, until Amanda mouthed a word at him—“of creation, it is incumbent upon us to treat with that creation as would honorable Gods—to protect and preserve, to limit our influence, to allow it scope.”

The aliens were frowning at him, or at least that was how he interpreted the variety of their expressions. Tristen scratched the side of his nose. Perceval, around her scowl, remained impassive.

Cynric breathed deep and sighed. “I do not mind sounding ignorant,” she said. “The part of me that was easily shamed is dead—and good riddance to it.”

Even, Danilaw thought, if it was a fragment of your humanity?

But apparently she wasn’t actually a mind reader after all, because rather than reacting with indignation, she continued the thread of her question. “If you coddle the world,” she said, “how does the world grow? As we are a part of creation, part of our purpose is to produce stress on other elements of creation. We force the evolution of other species as they force—or facilitate—ours.”

There was something behind that word, facilitate, Danilaw thought. He didn’t have the time to ferret it out now, but patience would be his reward.

“We have a thing,” he said, “that we call The Obligation. It is made up of many smaller Obligations, each carefully defined, but the essence of it is this: leave the world better—healthier, more complete, more diverse—than you found it.”

“Isn’t that,” Cynric said, “condescending? Doesn’t that set humankind in a kind of stewardship over every other species? Doesn’t that make us the colonialists, responsible for the well-being of primitives?”

Danilaw sat back. He would need time to consider this tack, he thought, before he could argue it successfully.

But Cynric wasn’t done. “Doesn’t that deny the agency of the nonsentient? Doesn’t it argue that we are somehow responsible for them?”

“When we became more able to compete,” Danilaw said, uncomfortable, “we became responsible. We become responsible to protect the natural world. When we become stronger, we become stewards.”

“The world does not reward timidity,” Cynric said.

Tristen placed a hand on her forearm, his long fingers so pale they barely showed against her garb of purest white. “Sister,” he said. “This might not be the time to plumb the depths of philosophy.”

But Cynric shook him off. “Does your philosophy not set humankind apart from nature?” she said. “You speak of protecting the natural world, but nature protects nothing. Nature does not believe in a fair fight. For every mouse, there is an owl. For every spider, there is a wasp. The world destroys to feed itself; it is a zero-sum game, and life consumes life. There is only so much carbon in any given carbon cycle.” She smiled now, as if confident she had one. “Who the hell set you up in loco parentis to the natural world?”

“With power,” Danilaw said, “with strength, there comes responsibility. With maturity come the burdens of maturity. Self-discipline. The acceptance that we do not always get to have what we want just because we are strong and we want it. You are stronger than me. Does that give you the right to take what is mine? Does that give you the dispensation to rob or rape me?”

“Not the privilege,” Tristen said, fingers lacing and unlacing, fisting and unfisting. “But the facility.”

“And in your world, are such things permitted without question?”

Perceval’s hidden smile was growing more patent by the moment. “To prevent such things,” she said, “such abuses of power, that is why we have knights-errant, and Captains, and all of Rule.”

“When they are not abusing that power their own selves,” Mallory qualified. “Not that that would ever happen.”

Perceval snorted. Danilaw decided he rather liked the androgynous necromancer after all.

“When you have an extreme advantage,” Danilaw said, “the gentlemanly thing to do is to reserve its use for those who share it. Or to choose to compete only with equal opponents, and leave the bullying to bullies.”

Cynric leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m not sure if that’s egalitarian or condescending.”

“Cynric,” Perceval said warningly, as Amanda stiffened beside Danilaw. Under the table, Danilaw placed the back of a hand against her thigh. She startled almost imperceptibly before releasing her held breath and turning to him. Primate pissing contests.

Having studied Danilaw’s face for a moment, Amanda turned back to the aliens across the table. “I understand your point,” she said. “In assuming the role of protector, we deny agency. But we deny agency to creatures that may or may not desire it—”

“When you assume stewardship for everything, you domesticate everything,” Tristen said.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Danilaw saw Amanda nodding, though he kept his attention firmly on Perceval and her crew. “And if we do not assume stewardship, we exploit everything.”

Tristen let his folded hands fall apart to lie on the tabletop, pressed flat. “Except for what exploits us,” he said. “Tell me, Administrator Bakare. Does your world have rats on it?”

“Rats?” He nodded. “Rats and roaches. They follow humanity everywhere.”

“Mmm,” Tristen said. “In that relationship, who has evolved to exploit whom?” He shook his head. “I do not think, Administrator Bakare, that we are all that different. I do not think that we interact with the world and each other with such deep moral differences. I think we have different terms for what we do—that what you term The Obligation, we term Chivalry. But I do think we have common ground, and I think we can find more.” He paused. “My people, you understand, are very adaptable.”

*   *   *   

After the meeting, Samael in all his patchwork magnificence showed Danilaw and Amanda to the quarters they’d inhabit for the rest of their trip home. It was not a long walk—apparently Captain Perceval had seen merit in keeping them centrally located—but it was as full of revelations as every other walk around the corridors had been.

Walking on yielding moss down a spaceship gangway, Danilaw began to understand that the entire starship was an ecosphere—an ecology far more delicately balanced than that of Fortune. And far more aggressively managed. It revealed something to him about the Jacobeans’ culture and experience, if he thought on it carefully. Of course, evolution must be managed. Of course, a biosphere must be maintained.

They had never known another way.

Thinking distracted him, but neither Amanda nor Samael seemed inclined to make small talk, so he needed not divide his attention. It might have been better if he had, however, because he tripped and almost fell when he realized that the large, ornately floral shrub that they were about to pass along the corridor wall was in fact moving. Walking, or not precisely walking, toward them.

It was a bundle of spear-shaped leaves and boles, six tiger-striped, fuchsia-and-lemon flower heads bobbing above its back. Danilaw shied back against the corridor wall as it turned to him; on his left, he felt Amanda do the same.

The giant, self-mobile orchid turned to them and bent its thorn-fanged flower faces into something that looked like a smile. “Welcome, visitors,” it said, and kept walking.

Samael had drawn ahead, and with a glance to Amanda, Danilaw hurried to catch up. Beside him, Amanda stretched her legs. “Talking plant,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I noticed.”

On behalf of his Captain, the Angel of Biosystems apologized for the size and inelegance of the quarters before vanishing in a scatter of withered petals and beetle wings, leaving Danilaw feeling as if he had just choked on his tongue.

The “cramped” quarters they would share were half again as large as the crew habitat on the Quercus, and every square millimeter was soft with life. Mosses ran up the bulkheads so that Danilaw could not tell if the architecture of the space—an anchore, Samael called it—was truly all but cornerless or if it had merely been softened by centuries of growth. Vines—heavy, swaying, and

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