Somewhere where she wouldn’t have to lie there and contemplate Chanur’s split-open head, she thought as they tucked Megex into one of the utility closets. She tried very hard not to look at it herself, but she felt the acute awareness of it pressing against her like a fever. Like a flame in the room that she couldn’t avoid. She prayed that Chanur hadn’t been telling the truth—that her relatives were not heading their way right now. She stopped herself from looking at Jimex’s bloody hands.

As if aware of her thoughts, he wiped them on his pants. Then he said, “There is another console, down there in the . . . lab. You can use that to send your message. It wouldn’t be safe for us to go to the other areas of the ship, not with Boone and Severov still around. At least we know this area is now secure.”

“All right,” Park said faintly. She did not want to argue with him anymore. “Are you—all right?”

“I was not harmed. Except for my shoulder. But it’s superficial damage—see?” The bullet had barely broken his skin. Park shook her head.

“I meant more about . . . No. Never mind.”

If they had not learned guilt, yet, or remorse or sin or ideas of murder—maybe they were better off. At least for now. Perhaps they viewed it as a balancing of things, the kind of ruthless fine-tuning machines went through all the time. The natural elimination of some virus, a bug that could do harm to the system. How could anyone oppose that, or condemn it? Maybe it was better if they didn’t hesitate to protect themselves, if they weren’t tripped up by the kind of moral questions and arbitrary ethical barriers that had impeded humans for this long. God, she didn’t know. She knew she had a responsibility to guide their development; that she could not let this embryonic society form the wrong kinds of ideas. But who was she to judge which ideas were wrong?

And they had to survive somehow, didn’t they?

“Let’s go down, then,” Park heard herself say. She would think on it more later—when there was time.