“We’re not sure. Stephen agrees with you, and thinks it’s a cultural thing: we’re outsiders, and as such, the Liars are forbidden to tell us any real truths, possibly for religious reasons. That’s a fairly popular theory, but it’s no more verifiable than any other. Me, I hesitate to assume the Liars even share a single culture. What does it mean to meet a ‘human’, after all? Even here, in this system, there are enclaves of hardcore agrarians on Earth who refuse to have anything to do with space travel or any tech from the last few centuries: they try to live a pre-first-contact existence. There are people who live almost entirely in virtual-reality submersion tanks, and bicycle fanatics, and spaceborn who’ve never been down a gravity well and never will, and a thousand weirder cults and cultures. There are twenty-nine solar systems inhabited by humans, including one nobody ever comes back from, because the settlers there are isolationists, and probably violently so. Every system has developed its own cultural qualities over the centuries, and every settlement in every system has its own set of quirks. I figure Liars probably exhibit the same range of variation, except their original civilization is even older than ours, and a lot more fragmented. We’ve found them scattered all over the galaxy, after all, pretty much everywhere we go.”

“I guess the idea of a planet full of monocultural humanoids with bumpy foreheads who all follow a thinly disguised version of the Bushido code is ridiculous,” Elena said. “Nothing’s that simple.”

Callie chuckled. “Our contact with the Liars has been good for humanity overall, though. They’re never violent – if trading fails, and deception fails, they shrug and move on. They seem to believe the universe is plenty big, so it’s stupid to fight over resources when they can trade for them or look elsewhere instead. Also, to be frank, we can’t offer them too much beyond raw materials, since every Liar group we’ve met is more technologically advanced than we are. The Liars mostly settle on planets we don’t want anyway, ones with atmospheres that are toxic soup to humans – their tendency to body modification makes them wildly adaptable. Apart from the ones on Venus, who are totally incommunicado, the Liars don’t have any permanent settlements in our solar system, though some live on our planets and moons and space stations, often working as technicians and engineers. It makes sense – half the technology we use came from Liars in the first place. We pay them hourly, though, and never up front. They’re unreliable as a rule, but their knowledge is an asset. They do have to be watched, though. If left to their own devices, they like to… tinker.”

Elena made a low ahhh sound. “You think these Liars are the ones who ‘tinkered’ with my ship?”