“It’s refreshing to hear,” Ryo admitted.

“Nothing of the sort ever touches us here, on Hivehom. The AAnn would never risk that extreme a provocation. Their elaborate explanations would not be strong enough to rationalize away an attack on the mother world itself—assuming they could get through the defenses, of course.

“So they content themselves with irritating us. Eventually such practices may bring about the war they strive so assiduously to avoid. Meanwhile they test our weapons and reactions and readiness far from areas of Thranx power.”

“Precisely the problem we’re here to address,” Ryo said. “And redress,” Wuu added, for good measure.

“Naturally, I sympathize with your concern,” the soldier said. “You wish explanations and answers. You’ve had no trouble from the AAnn since the incident you speak of?”

“No,” Ryo admitted, “but we—”

“Come with me, please.” The officer stepped back, made a sign to his busy pair of associates. There was some enigmatic professional discussion following which Ryo and Wuu were led into another room behind the outer chamber.

A large screen dominated the far end. Banks of chips set in proper file casings covered the entire right-hand wall. A dozen comfortably padded saddles filled the floor of the dimly lit room.

The officer moved along the wall, finally settled on a key, touched it. A sliver of rectangular plastic popped into view. He inserted it into the projector in the back wall, then handed Ryo a small cube dotted with indentations.

“This controls the speed, direction of movement, and other functions of the projector,” he explained. “I’ve run it up to the section that deals with the attack on your home. Other such incidents are also documented on this chip. The chip reviews the history of such attacks and goes into detail on AAnn motivational psychology.” He started toward the doorway to the outer chamber.

“If the material displayed does not answer your questions, I’ll be happy to talk further with you if you finish before I go off shift If I’m gone, the evening shift will be happy to assist you.” The door closed behind him.

Wuu looked disappointed. “I haven’t worked this hard and come all this way to look at sanitized military histories.”

“Nor have I,” said Ryo, “but it’s a start, at least Running the chip will give us time to decide what to try next.”

They activated the projector and soon Ryo’s thoughts were not on what to do next but on the material playing across the screen. He was at once fascinated and appalled as the reconstruction resurrected those confused, frightened moments of so long ago …

VII

After discussion of the attack and lengthy dissection of AAnn attitudes, the chip reported the stepped-up patrols around Willow-wane, the official protest lodged with the AAnn by ambassador Yeltrentrisrom, and a statistical summation integrating the attack on Paszex with all similar AAnn adventures.

Words, Ryo thought bitterly. Words and figures. Lives lost and burrows shattered—all interpreted statistically, for the benefit of study. He let the machine run. It began to describe, other attacks on Willow-wane and on Colophon.