“In a sense. I made a study of beings similar to you when we fought with them in the Way. I was an individual then, biologically based, in a shape similar to my original birth-form.”

Her grandmother had told her what little she knew about the Jart Wars. To a young girl, they had not meant much—meaningless wonders in a weave of fantastic stories. She wished she had listened more closely.

“What was your original birth-form?”

“Not human, not this shape at all.”

“But you did have your own shape once.”

“No. Part of me did. I have since been combined with others, stirred together.” He twirled an extended finger slowly. Rhita frowned at him over her shoulder. All my questions keep me from the truth I’ll have to face.

“I’m confused again,” she said. “You tell me one thing, then another.”

Typhōn knelt beside her, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. A very human gesture. Was his face gaining more character?

“Your language doesn’t have the right word-groups. All sound-carried language is inadequate.”

“You don’t talk to each other,” she said.

“Not in words, or using sounds. Not usually, at any rate.”

“Would you kill me if you were ordered to?”

“I will not be ordered to kill you or anybody, if by that you mean destroy your patterns. That is what you would call a crime, a sin.”

Enough for the moment. She rolled back on her stomach. Below them, the ocean stretched blue-green, shallow, with pillars of rock sticking up like stumps of trees. She did not know this place.

Yet they were supposed to be near Rhodos. “Near” might mean different things to a Jart; they could speed down the Way and exit through gates in soap bubbles, after all.

More pillars appeared. Each was covered by a cap of gold that took the shape of the rocks, as if painted on. No vegetation, no boats in the water, just this cloud-shadowed and pillar-specked barrenness.

“Could I smell the air?” she asked.

“No,” Typhōn said bluntly.

“Why not?”

“It is no longer healthy for you. There are organisms and biological machines on your world now that travel by air, too small to see. They are raising Gaia to a higher level of efficiency.”

“Nobody can live out there?”

Typhōn seemed to commiserate. “Not of your kind,” he said.

She felt weak again. They had spread disease around Gaia—was that what the escort meant? Death and defilement. Nobody could live—

“Anywhere? Can people live anywhere?”

“There are no humans on Gaia. They have been stored for further study.”