Carnival

The bipeds plot. Clever, delicious bipeds, random and amusing. They are eager for change, ravenous for it, the antithesis of the Consent. The Consent are firm in their judgment, unambiguous, and Kii is in agreement. It is too dangerous to become involved with such a chaotic species, one prone to generating and collapsing wave-states with mad abandon. The wave-states that originate in the possibility of the Consent intervening on behalf of the bipeds are unpredictable, and some of them endanger the Consent itself.

The possibilities that stem from noninvolvement are safer. Predictable. There is a war, and the defense of the local population of bipeds, those that the khir are fond of.

Most of the others do not survive.

Kaiwo Maru remains a nexus. Where she enters the local system, the potentialities propagate. Where she leaves, they collapse. One choice is safety. The other—

—unpredictable.

There is no intervention. That is the Consent. The actions of the Governors and the Coalition Cabinet follow predictions to a nicety. Kii is one with the Consent in this.

But Julian’s involvement is an emerging pattern, one not forecast. It is a new wave. And Kii is not reporting yet, for Kii has neither instruction nor Consent.

Kii is fond of the bipeds. Kii is explorer-caste. Kii is alien to the Consent in many ways, a valuable, diverse voice in the chorus of similar voices, an evolved risk taker, an outside perspective that exists to be heard and then ignored.

Kii does not resent this. Kii is in agreement with the Consent. Kii will always be one with the Consent.

But the bipeds are so interesting when they’re plotting. And Kii knows that the Consent will be to prevent their plots from coming to fruition. And once the Consent is reached, Kii will be in agreement of it. Will always have been in agreement with it.

Kii will report it when the plotting ceases to be interesting. But Kii is explorer-caste.

Kii wants to listen first.

They slept while Julian was working. It didn’t matter that it was bright afternoon, hours before siesta and the rains not even a hint of darkness on the horizon; Lesa dropped off midsentence, slumped on her bed with her feet propped on pillows, and when Vincent turned to share a grin with Michelangelo, he found his partner leaned against the wall with his head tipped back and his eyelids fluttering, hands palm-up on his thighs.

Just as well, Vincent thought. He was in the best shape of any of them, and he was running on ninety-odd hours of chemistry and snatches of sleep. He told Julian to wake him if anything interesting happened, sat down next to Michelangelo and made a pillow of his shoulder, and was asleep too fast to realize exactly how uncomfortable the position actually was.

He noticed it waking, however.