They are my kind. There is glory in them. They have accomplished much improvement.

Will they know you?

They already recognize this modified expediter. Humble submission to their presence. Something else passed between them that did not fit the pidgin mental language Olmy shared with the Jart, something ominous and dark and exalted at once; a kind of murderous pride he could not classify in human emotions.

“You’re looking bemused,” Korzenowski said to Olmy.

“No muse at all,” Olmy said. “Those are definitely Jarts.”

“Ah,” said Korzenowski dryly. “Our hosts.”

The bubble came to rest at the fourth corner of a square, the command individuals occupying the other three. The misty black drapes wrapped around their bodies evaporated, and the Jarts lifted their anterior bifurcations, claws on appendages meeting delicately tip-to-tip, like sutures over twin gashes, in a manner that would have made Olmy’s skin crawl, and did make Korzenowski draw back instinctively.

“They are quite thoroughly horrible,” he said. Olmy did not disagree; he could not remember encountering intelligent beings who looked more threatening.

Ry Oyu stood at one edge of the bubble platform, still relaxed and undisturbed.

Surely they’re not the most vicious-looking intelligences in the universe, Korzenowski thought. The Final Mind doubtless will encompass far worse. He glanced at Ry Oyu, who smiled and nodded as if listening and agreeing.

The three command individuals spread their uplifted bifurcations into wider Vs.

“We meet,” said the voice in the bubble, seeming to each of them to come from over his right shoulder. “This event is not expected. Are you one or many?”

“We are each individual,” Ry Oyu said.

“Which represents descendant command?”

“I do.”

“Is there confirming evidence?”

“They want loaves and fishes,” Ry Oyu said in an undertone. “So be it.”

He did not appear to do anything, but the three command individuals shivered slightly, as if struck by a cold breeze. Their upper sections closed almost to the point of joining.

The voice said, “The testimony is adequate confirmation. What is your plan for completion?”

Korzenowski frowned, puzzled. Ry Oyu said, “Tell them what we’ve done, and what we wish to do. Tell them who you are.”

“My name is Konrad Korzenowski,” he said. “I designed the Way.”

The command individuals did not react.

“We have already begun destruction of the Way…”

“Command individuals are aware of this,” the voice said.