Callie decided not to ask why the Liar addressed Ashok by the name of her ship, or why he was called My Cousin Paolo. Liar names were just odd, that was all. Some were incomprehensible mishmashes of sound, or grandiose titles (or both, like Tlthm the Solarian, who operated a salvage and repair shop on the lower levels of Meditreme Station), or common nouns (Callie had met Liars who called themselves Brick, Loaf, and Shoe), or phrases poetic or dull, or even ordinary human names – sometimes a Liar would claim to have exactly the same name as the person they were talking to, often expressing astonishment at the outlandish coincidence. Really, My Cousin Paolo wasn’t even all that strange a name by Liar standards.

“Does your ship require service?” the Liar said.

“Not at the moment,” Ashok said. “We found something in a wreck, though – an engine component we don’t recognize, or maybe part of a navigation system – and I wanted you to take a look. We think it might be something your people made.”

A couple of the Liar’s pseudopods undulated lazily in the air. “My people made everything. My ninety-nine-times-progenitor is the one who seeded your planet Earth with life, in the times prehistoric. Do you have this component with you?”

Ashok beckoned him closer, then crouched down to open up the duffel bag he’d stashed the cube in, revealing the greasy black shape of the box inside. “What do you think?”

My Cousin Paolo made a high-pitched keening sound that seemed to come not from his artificial voicebox but from some more organic place, which was astonishing in itself – Liars were almost never heard to vocalize naturally, and the prevailing theory was they communicated among themselves with pheromones, gestures, and color-changing skin cells rather than sound. The Liar scuttled away from the cube and began to shout, his booming mechanical voice overlaying the high-pitched wail, a single word over and over: “Axiomatic! Axiomatic! Axiomatic!”

The Liar raced away faster than Callie had ever seen one of its kind move before, using all his tentacles in a complicated leaping and vaulting motion, at one point spinning end-over-end like a wheel, before disappearing into a three-foot-square access hatch in a far wall.

“That was not the reaction I was expecting.” Ashok zipped the duffel closed.

“Axiomatic? What does that mean?”

Ashok’s upper left eye-lens rotated at her. “It means self-evident. From the Greek ‘ἀξίωμα,’ meaning ‘something known to be true.’”

Callie glared at him. “There are so many things in this hangar I could hit you with, Ashok. I know what the word means. Why did that Liar shout it and run away?”

“I have no idea. He’s never done anything like that before. It was unusual even by Liar standards. Maybe the box frightened him?”

“It’s a black box,” Callie said. “What’s scary about a black box?”

“Maybe whatever’s inside it?”