“You weren’t there. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that those mice were sick, and there’s no reason to send only sick mice on a starship unless you’re planning to start a plague. One the humans on Earth will have no defenses against.”

Noxon nodded. “I didn’t see what you saw. I have to accept your judgment.”

“Nobody else does. Loaf made us feel like monsters. Especially Umbo. It really hurt him.”

“Loaf is worried that this power is going to our heads. And it is. Because we can do these things, we act as if we had a right to. Which is why I have to talk to the mice.”

“I don’t see the connection. They’re treacherous and unpredictable.”

“And sneaky and small,” said Noxon. “Either we’re going to be able to share this world with them, or it’s going to be war, and if it’s the latter, I think we’re likely to lose.”

Param thought about that for a while. Noxon liked it that she didn’t always have a ready answer.

“They could unleash that plague here on Garden,” she said.

“True, and not just in the wallfolds they’re in. They can’t travel in time, but they can send objects, and not just in time but in space as well. They could seed their plague in every wallfold. They could do it now.”

“So what you’re really doing is negotiating a treaty with a foreign power.”

“With an alien species. One that has a lot of the human genome, but we definitely can’t interbreed.”

Param pursed her mouth. “I don’t know which of the two images that came to my mind is the more disgusting.”

“Will you stay here and not follow me into the future?”

“Do I have to decide and take a solemn oath right now? If I don’t agree, will you decide not to go?”

“It would be a waste of your time anyway,” said Noxon. “You can’t hear their high little voices, and they talk very fast.”

“They must get so impatient, waiting for humans to finish talking.”

“They hold dozens of conversations of their own while we’re saying, ‘Well, um . . .’”

“Go,” she said abruptly. “I need some alone time anyway.”

Noxon wasn’t sure if she was angry or not. And even if she was, whom she was angry at. Him, maybe, for shutting her out of a negotiation. Or herself, for still being afraid of the mice, maybe, or for being inferior to people with facemasks, or some other unfathomable reason. Sometimes Noxon thought that if he had grown up with Param as a sister, he might have turned out even crazier than he was just getting to know her now.