Fivetide himself had been born with nine limbs - considered the most propitious number amongst the best families, providing one had the decency to lose at least one in duel or hunt - and had duly lost one to his fencing master while at military college in a duel over the honour of the fencing master’s chief wife.

‘It’s a very impressive uniform, Fivetide,’ Genar-Hofoen said.

‘Yes, it is rather, isn’t it?’ the Affronter said, flexing his body.

Fivetide’s uniform consisted of multitudinous broad straps and sashes of metallic-looking material which were crisscrossed over his central mass and dotted with holsters, sheaths and brackets - all occupied by weapons but sealed for the formal dinner they were here to attend - the glittering discs Genar-Hofoen knew were the equivalents of medals and decorations, and the associated portraits of particularly impressive game-animals killed and rivals seriously maimed. A group of discreetly blank portrait discs indicated the females of other clans Fivetide could honourably claim to have successfully impregnated; the discs edged with precious metals bore witness to those who had put up a struggle. Colours and patterns on the sashes indicated Fivetide’s clan, rank and regiment (which was what the Diplomatic Force, to which Fivetide belonged, basically was . . . a point not wisely ignored by any species who wished to have - or just found themselves having - any dealings with the Affront).

Fivetide pirouetted, gas sac swelling and buoying him up so that he rose above the spongy surface of the nest space, limbs dangling, taking hardly any of his weight. ‘Am I not . . . resplendent?’ The gelfield suit’s translator decided that the adjective Fivetide had chosen to describe himself should be rendered with a florid rolling of the syllables involved, making the Affronter officer sound like an overly stagey actor.

‘Positively intimidating,’ Genar-Hofoen agreed.

‘Thank you!’ Fivetide said, sinking down again so that his eye stalks were level with the human’s face. The stalks’ gaze rose and dipped, looking the man up and down. ‘Your own apparel is . . . different, at long last, and, I’m sure, most smart by the standards of your own people.’

The posture of the Affronter’s eye stalks indicated that he found something highly pleasing in this statement; probably Fivetide was congratulating himself on being incredibly diplomatic.

‘Thank you, Fivetide,’ Genar-Hofoen said, bowing. He thought himself rather overdressed. There was the gelfield suit itself of course, so much a second skin it was possible to forget he wore it all. Normally the suit was nowhere more than a centimetre thick and averaged only half that, yet it could keep him comfortable in environments even more extreme than that required for Affronter life.