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When the doors slid open, they were in free fall. A few instinctive flicks of his fingers sent Makaio-Yalbo out into the broad, featureless corridor that ran along the axis of the engineering section. He pivoted around a handhold and headed for the airlock. Faraji kept level with him, zipping along as if his body had acquired some kind of avian heritage. The boy's plain white toga fluttered lazily around him, and Makaio-Yalbo could tell he was making an effort not to smile.

"Remember," Makaio-Yalbo said, "although the Heresy Dominion is technically our ally, anything you say in the archon's ship will be heard."

"So don't say anything. Got it."

"No, you will speak politely when and if you are addressed by the Heresy archon, but at all other times you will remain silent. I especially do not wish to be informed of your opinion, and neither does he. You are simply to listen to our conversation; nothing more."

"Yes, father. Uh, is their archon going to be aggressive?"

"No." They passed into the airlock chamber. The docking tunnel stretched out ahead, a basic tube three meters in diameter, ribbed with bright lighting strips. Makaio-Yalbo paused at the rim. "We will be perfectly safe—a courtesy we also extend to the Heresy archon. Without the basic tenets of diplomacy, the whole Centauri Cluster would collapse into anarchy. The archon will respect this. After all, the citizens of the Heresy consider themselves superior to us."

"Why?"

"They believe they have evolved further from the original human baseline than we have."

"They haven't!"

"Your loyalty does you credit. Celestial evolution took many forms as we progressed out of the Dawn Times. None of the other dominions have matched our mindline immortality. Therefore, none of them can acquire our wisdom in their woefully short lives. The majority of Heresy don't even live beyond four or five hundred years. They are true children. Large, powerful, and well armed, but children nonetheless."

"I understand."

"Good. Come now." Makaio-Yalbo launched himself into the docking tunnel. When they passed the halfway point, the lighting was subtly different. Softer, Makaio-Yalbo decided; the white light of the Alumata, which matched Wynid's primary, had drifted into the yellow spectrum. He didn't know which of the Heresy star systems it was supposed to portray; the habitat clusters of their dominion were established across many, and the tentacles of its influence grasped still further. The alliance they had with the Wynid Royal House was established and occasionally fruitful, but Makaio-Yalbo was under no illusion it would switch in an instant if there was an advantage to be gained in becoming closer to one of the other four remaining Royal Houses of the Crown Dominion. Just as I would switch ours.

The airlock at the end of the docking tunnel was a broad spherical chamber, with a single multi-segment door opening into a smaller compartment.

"Secure your feet," Makaio-Yalbo instructed Faraji, gesturing at the gripband.

They both settled, and the door segments closed up. A slight acceleration force pulled at them as the chamber started moving. In less than a minute it had built to a full gravity. The door opened. Olomo, the Heresy archon, was waiting for them. Like the majority of Heresy citizens, he was close to three meters tall thanks to a spindly body and six long, slim limbs—two legs and four arms—that had a strength equal to the biotech muscles dominions favored for their armor suits. The folds of his multilayered robe swirled as he extended an arm from his top set. The hand was close to standard in that it had four fingers and a thumb, though the elongated fingers had three joints apiece. His lower set of arms dangled out of the robe like inflexible ropes with bulbous elbows, and their hands were a simple triple claw arrangement. The anatomy was designed to provide excellent mobility in zero-gee environments, which Makaio-Yalbo never did understand, given that their habitats all had rotational gravity. Also inexplicable in terms of environment was the archon's head; both sides of the skull were extended cones that came out level with his shoulders. Skin, such as it was, was almost reptilian, and wrapped his body so tightly it could easily be mistaken for an exoskeleton shaded with subtle hues of blue and green.

Makaio-Yalbo extended his own hand, holding it vertical so their neural induction pads could touch to exchange the traditional self-perceptual greeting directly between their minds. He received a brief flash of sensation, as if his body had suddenly dried in a tingling wind, while he effused a soothing warmth. Outside the induction pad, his hand experienced the coolness of Olomo's fingers. Heresy citizens had a low body temperature, necessary to stop the large brains inside their inflated skulls from overheating.

Olomo's four eyes blinked simultaneously. "Fire and ice," he said equably. "A fitting conjunction."

Makaio-Yalbo inclined his head as much as his bloodstone-shrouded neck would allow. "We represent balance in a discordant universe."