“Oh, right,” he said. The Fremda Memo, which Nils had leaked last year, had been falling pebbles on the snowdrift that caused the avalanche that was ET-gate. The human names in the memo had been redacted, but the one ETI name that got dropped, Čefo, had not been. “So Čefo is real?”

“Was real. He’s dead.”

“Really?” he said, suspicion creeping into his voice, like Čefo had been the victim of a CIA hit. “How?”

“Suicide. It’s a long story.”

“Really?” The word suicide seemed to shake him a little.

“Strictly speaking, that’s supposed to be how they all die.”

“Right . . .” He looked at Enola and then actually petted him on the part of him that most resembled a shoulder. That was bold. She could only imagine how Ampersand would feel about being in that position, letting a human touch him with his shield down.

“So Ampersand is bound to Čefo, and Obelus is bound to Ampersand . . .” She stopped, about to draw the line that Čefo and Obelus would therefore not be bound to each other. But they had been. Obelus’s arrival had been the very reason why Čefo had killed himself in the first place— to prevent his bond to Obelus from being the thing that led him to tracking down the Fremda group.

Then, as if reading her thoughts, Enola spoke. “LITTLE COUSIN, I BELIEVE I KNOW WHICH INDIVIDUAL YOU ASSIGNED THE NAME ‘ČEFO.’ ČEFO WAS AN OLIGARCH, DE FACTO LEADER OF THE GROUP YOU CALL ‘FREMDA.’ ČEFO DIED, SUBJECTIVE, SIXTY-NINE EARTH DAYS AGO. I KNOW THIS, BECAUSE ČEFO WAS MY SYMPHYLE. AND HE WAS NOBLE OBELUS’S SYMPHYLE. BUT HE WAS NOT OUR DEAR BELOVED’s.”

“But Ampersand told me—”

“HE LIED,” stated Enola flatly. “YOU KNOW THAT OLIGARCHS MAY NOT FORM PHYLES. THIS DENIED OUR BELOVED FROM THE CHOICE TO BOND WITH ČEFO OR FOR OBELUS TO BOND WITH ME.”

Cora looked at Kaveh, embarrassed that Nikola would undermine what fragile trust she had with Ampersand right in front of this man. Why he would lie about being Čefo’s symphyle was a mystery, although she couldn’t deny it did explain some things. She’d asked him why he hadn’t been able to find Čefo, given that he’d been on Earth a full month before Čefo died. The answer he’d given her had been a wishy-washy, oh, you know, “Obelus had ways of tracking him that I did not.”

The memory sent a peal of nausea through her innards, and something about that sensation, that these were the very same innards that had been skewered by Obelus, made the nausea compound on itself. She looked down at her hands and stuffed them into her lap, realizing that they were visibly shaking. Stop, stop! she thought. Not now, I cannot go through this every fucking time someone says the word Obelus.

“WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU? WHO DID THIS TO YOU?”