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purpose-build artificial people to act as their ruling class. Could you imagine humans ever doing such a thing?”
    “Not really, no,” Kelly said. “Besides, as long as we’re part of the tunnel network, it wouldn’t make sense. As soon as the Stryx recognized our purpose-built leaders as sentient, they could walk away and find something more interesting to do than supervising humans. Wouldn’t you?”
    “I hadn’t thought of that,” Thomas admitted.
    “Libby?” Donna asked. “Are there any Shugas coming to the open house?”
    “They accepted the invitation, and one of the emissaries will be a Shuga,” the station librarian replied. “Clive and Chastity are entering the outer office.”
    “Bring your own chairs,” Kelly hollered towards her open door.
    “Nothing like a Monday morning meeting,” Clive said, entering Kelly’s office with a chair in each hand. “Did you do a sweep, Thomas?”
    “As soon as I came in,” the artificial person replied, waggling his little finger. “This built-in sniffer is worth every cred.”
    “Hi, all,” Chastity greeted them, entering the room immediately after Clive. “Thanks for inviting me. Shall I assume this is on deep background?”
    “Yes,” Kelly replied. “Strictly off the record. I know that you’ll be covering the open house once it officially begins whether the Stryx invite the press or not, but I’d prefer to coordinate ahead of time so we can avoid the problems we ran into at the last CoSHC conference.”
    “I created an employee handbook to specifically prohibit a repeat of that behavior,” Chastity replied. “I admit it was totally unprofessional, and the only thing I can say in our defense is that the reporter in question was employed by EarthCent Intelligence for two years before we hired him away.”
    “I train them to take lots of pictures,” Thomas interjected modestly.
    “I understand, and I appreciate that you didn’t publish any of those images, Chastity,” Kelly said. “In this case, a Stryx open house is new for all of us, so there will be plenty of room for mistakes. Libby has prepared a presentation to give us an idea of what to expect from the primary species. Also, I just learned that one of my duties as hostess is to find families in the diplomatic community willing to invite an alien emissary to live with them for a quiet get-acquainted.”
    “That should be interesting,” Donna commented dryly.
    “Libby? Do you want to start now?” Kelly asked.
    The Stryx librarian brought to life above the ambassador’s display desk a three-dimensional map showing the Cayl Empire. “I’ve adjusted the sizes of the stars and the distances between them for the sake of illustration,” Libby said, getting right down to business. “You’ll notice that the Cayl expanded their holdings in a controlled manner, so they rule a roughly spherical volume of space with their home system at the center. In recent millennia, they’ve been turning down invitations to conquer bordering species, in some cases even ignoring military provocations because they didn’t want to overextend their interior lines of supply and communications.”
    “Smart,” Clive said. “No point fighting wars so far from home that you can’t defend what you take without spending a fortune.”
    “I’m only showing the stars with occupied planets in this hologram, and I’ve colored them according to the four main factions within the empire. While the Cayl are in control of military defense and certain judicial functions, the day-to-day life in their empire is dominated by four advanced species and their followers. The stars I’m pulsing red now are under the economic control of the Shuga, whom Thomas was talking about just a few minutes ago.”
    “What do they look like?” Chastity interrupted.
    A silver-skinned creature with a crest of feathers replaced the map. The hologram began rotating slowly, showing two arms and two legs, though the neck was about twice