They had ported Nikola to Riverside in an armored car and paired the two of them together, like Nikola was the pilot and Kaveh his headset. Then the ROSA social workers and military entourage directed the two of them to the conference room. Nikola seemed happy to be here, but Kaveh’s heart was in his throat. He wondered how Cora had handled this; he’d never exactly gotten the chance to shadow her on interpretation detail.

The room the meeting was intended to take place in seemed specially designed for this purpose, white and sterile and about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It had a large, kidney-shaped conference table off to one side, leaving half the room empty, which made sense considering these subjects that neither sat like a human nor had use for tables.

Before long, Sol Kaplan and Brigadier General “that camel-jockey muckraker” Porter arrived, and a few minutes after that, a handler walked in the other two amygdalines they were scheduled to meet: Esperas, spindly and beady-eyed compared to Ampersand and Nikola, about the height and size of your average NBA player, and Brako, the “Similar,” the biggest one he had yet seen, clocking in somewhere in the eleven-foot range. Suddenly, Nikola’s nine-ish feet felt downright twee.

Brako stood in front of Esperas, his body language unmistakably defensive. Nikola was carefully moving his body in a way that Kaveh had never seen him do, his head down, almost perpendicular to the floor, with his arms up against his side almost like chicken wings, the crest on his head completely deflated like a flaccid balloon.

“Ask if they are communicating,” said Porter.

Kaveh nearly rolled his eyes and restrained the urge to remind the man that Nikola did not need him to repeat everything to the com-pu-ter à la Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest, as Nikola could understand English just fine.

“He says Esperas is understandably leery of him,” said Kaveh. “This is him trying to de-escalate.”

The de-escalation process went on for at least another two minutes, with Nikola slooooowly, like molasses running off a spoon, lowering himself to the floor and into a roosting position. Once there, he kept his eyes down.

“He says this is a submissive posture.”

“We’ve seen it before,” said Ghasabian.

The submissive posture continued for some time, with the two parties on each side of the room, communicating silently through their “network language.” Then something happened with Esperas, who came out from behind Brako, seeming excited. Kaveh figured that he was not excited in a fun way.

“He says he’s letting them know the situation with Obelus,” said Kaveh. “They’re not happy.”

“Can you please elaborate?”

Nikola waited a few moments, then said, “WE ARE COMMUNICATING.”

Kaveh backed off. “We need to be patient. There is a ‘heated’ conversation going on here.”