I took one step forward and popped through the bubble again, onto the metal ramp, and then another step into warmth and darkness. The creature was still in front of me, slightly luminescent. The darkness was silent. It smelled like we were in a forest. I asked whether this was Earth.

No, we are back home. Not far from where you live. Sit down.

I patted the spongy moss and nothing crawled. I sat down carefully, feeling helpless, anus clenching. I asked if this were telepathy.

There is no such thing, to my knowledge. We are physically joined. I reached up and touched a silken thread. Don’t pull on it. That would damage you.

I asked What’s going on? Are you going to hurt me?

Not yet. Then there was an overwhelmingly complex montage of thoughts, indecipherable, chilling. Sorry. There are many others listening. I will keep them from intruding.

I said that they didn’t sound friendly.

Why should they? You represent the alien species that has invaded this planet. They are tired of your actions and angry at having to deal with the moral complexity of the problem you have caused.

I said that we wouldn’t have killed his people—people?—if we had known them to be sentient.

Maybe you would not have. That was our decision; we assumed from first contact that some would die if we kept our nature secret. That’s not the problem.

The problem is whether to allow you to continue existing.

I felt the dimension of that “you.” I asked whether they would kill everybody.

On this planet and in the starship and on Earth and in orbit about the Earth, every person and every cell of preserved genetic material.

I said that that was genocide. Why kill the people on Earth?

Genocide, pest control, it depends on your point of view. If we didn’t destroy them, they would come again in time.

I was glad to know that there are people still alive in orbit about the Earth. I said that we thought they might have been destroyed.

More alive in orbit than on Earth or here. Whether they continue to live will be decided by us and by you.

I asked whether I had been chosen, or was it just chance?

We interrogated three people. All three identified you as best for our purposes.

I asked why.

It can’t be expressed exactly in ways that a human would understand. An obvious part of it is having been many places, known many people, done many things, compared to the others; giving what you would call a large database. Part of it is trust, or reliability, combined with egotism. This makes it easier for us to communicate with you.