“The young agricultural expert who vanished so long ago. Truly do I remember you!” He paused, thinking furiously. “Word came to us all the way from Ciccikalk that you had become something of a dangerous renegade.”

“Something of that, yes. I am a renegade from and danger to the blind, the callous, and the reactionary. No one else has anything to fear from me.” Now that the AAnn had been neutralized, other problems—in their own fashion more serious—were beginning to resurface.

“Rest deep and warm, Elder. Neither I nor my friends,” and he indicated the monsters, “are any threat to the hive. The contrary is true. All will be explained.” I hope, he add silently. “All that matters is what I have accomplished in my absence.”

Bonnie had walked over to stand next to him. She was gazing with interest at the Elder, who found the attention very upsetting.

“Who are these … creatures, and how have you come to be among them?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” Bonnie said via the appropriate whistles and clicks.

The Elder was flabbergasted. Reflexively, he threw back a stream of questions.

“I don’t understand,” she told him patiently. “You’ll have to speak more slowly. I’m not very fluent yet.”

Ryo translated the rough places for both of them. The Elder’s active mind was homing in on another unsettling thought.

“We thank you for our hive’s salvation. I think we will be safe from AAnn depredations from now on. Would you by any chance know what happened to six children who were taken from the Nursery several months ago? Their Nurse vanished with them. A heinous crime.”

“And a necessary one, I’m afraid.” Ryo was past caring what local Elders thought Having broken so many important laws in a comparatively brief span he had no compunction at mentioning yet another perfidy.

“The Nurse Falmiensazex had nothing to do with the disappearance.” He had to hesitate before he could go on. “She lies in a comasleep. That was my fault. It was also necessary.”

The Elder was watching him shrewdly. “You call it necessary, yet you show signs of remorse.”

“She is—was—my premate.”

“Ah.” The council member was trying to sort events in his mind. “And the larvae?”

“All are well, healthy, and maturing.” In areas you can’t begin to imagine, he added silently.

“There will have to be an adjudication, of course,” murmured the Elder.

“Of course.”

“What are they talking about?” Bonnie asked him.

“My most recent crimes. I will have to surrender myself soon to confinement.”

Bonnie hefted her rifle. “Not if you don’t want to, you won’t. You’re too valuable, too important to the Project to languish in some cell while we try and muddle through first contact without you, Ryo.”