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dog. Without looking at me, he said, “Black Amber is mean. She hates my mother. Are we bad?”
    “No, just different.” I wasn’t really sure, though.
    Karl said, “Why are we called the refuse-people?” The slang Karst One word refugee had its roots in something equivalent to the English for refuse.
    “It’s nasty to call you that. You were born here, and the kids who use that word are just being stupid. Only a few people of any species are smart enough to discover gate technology and the math. Most people aren’t any brighter or better than you.”
    “Are humans too stupid to make gates?”
    “No, not basically.” I couldn’t tell him about Yangchenla’s uncle, who’d figured out the system secretly, but reinvention didn’t count, anyway, and Karl was smart enough to understand that.
    He knew I was concealing things from him and sent the robot running toward me so fast that I flinched. Victory over Daddy. He set his jaw muscles and began packing. I packed my own bags and then cuddled him against me. “You’re a good kid to be so patient with us.”
    “Yeah,” he said, “and you’re stupid to leave Mom alone with the Sharwani, even if they can’t get her, really. And even if Karriaagzh helps her.”
    But she seems so tough, I was about to say, but I got the bus schedule in Karst One instead. We had about a half hour to wait.

 
3
    Karl ran out of the elevator to greet his mother but stopped so abruptly his shoes squeaked. When I got out, I saw Karriaagzh sitting on the floor against Marianne’s knees, the pupils of his yellow eyes contracted. His Rector’s uniform lay folded on the coffee table.
    I smelled the glue before I saw the feather splints and the falconry book opened beside Marianne. She’d sloppily mended his grey feathers where his usual clothes had broken them. Karriaagzh slid his nictitating membranes slightly out of his eye comers. “Good afternoon, Rector,” I said, looking at Marianne, like why? Had Black Amber been telling me Marianne was having an affair with Karriaagzh? The glue smell would cover up any other smells.
    She said, “Karriaagzh knows Sharwanisa, but they didn’t want to talk, so he sent out for the falconry books and feather repair tools.”
    “Did they try to tear down the polycarb?” Karl asked.
    “No,” Karriaagzh said, sounding even more hoarse than usual. “You must play with the young one.” He stood up, unfolding his bent back knees and rising to his eight feet of height. Karl frowned slightly. Karriaagzh bent his knees slightly and looked around the front room as if he’d misplaced something.
    One membrane didn’t retract into the inside eye corner. It looked scratched and bloodshot. He saw me looking at it and said, “I went inside to talk to the Sharwani. The female attacked, again. Psychologically, perhaps the Sharwani need to be able to hurt us, at least individuals of us.”
    “How are they?” I asked.
    Karriaagzh’s crest flicked. “I refrained from breaking her other wrist.”
    I went back to the room where the Sharwani were. The female came up to the door and said in mediocre Wrengu, much less grammatical than her earlier question, “Keep giant feathered sex-scale-ripper away.” Sex-scale-ripper was an odd curse for her to use, but Wrengu came from non-furbearers, without an attitude toward assholes.
    “We all wanted to bring sample Sharwani here for a talk,” I told her in the same language.
    “You non-understand how complex situation is,” she said. Veins swelled up around her eyes. I didn’t know if that meant anger, or frustration, or what.
    “My mate is learning your language.”
    “How do you know which language among many is ours?”
    “The sex-scale-ripper told us which language,”
    The veins shrank back. The Sharwani child came up and said something in their language. She picked him up and cuddled him against her, turning away from me. The male looked up at me and either bared his teeth or smiled.
    I went back to