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sheath on his belt, a blade sharp and modern, with a cyber-nexus trademark on its hilt. It glittered in the red light. Did he intend to cut me free? Or kill me?
     
     
"Let me go," I said. "Please." I wasn't used to asking. Usually people asked me to do for them.
     
     
"You tell this story to make me feel sorry." He cut open the red beetle and shook its liquid innards into a clay pot. "It will not work."
     
     
Despite his unyielding pose, I felt his doubts. "Is truth." I labored with the language. "Much is at stake. Thousands of colonies. Do you want the Manq to control it all?"
     
     
"I understand you not." He opened the green beetle as if he were cracking an egg, then emptied it into the pot and dropped its carapace on the ground. "You talk too fast." He picked up the blue beetle. "And you say words oddly."
     
     
"Try, I do. But my Shay is small."
     
     
He gave me a startled glance. "Hai! You speak Shay. Not Hajune Shay."
     
     
"What is Hajune Shay?"
     
     
"My speak."
     
     
Hajune. It might derive from Ha'te june, which in ancient Iotic meant "the other." "Hajune is another form of Shay?"
     
     
"Shay, city language. Hajune, forest language."
     
     
My hope jumped. "A city is here?"
     
     
"Thirty klicks west, in the land under the full coal."
     
     
Klicks. Nowadays that terminology was mostly used by spacers, another indication the treeman didn't live in isolation. "What is the full coal?"
     
     
He motioned upward with the blue beetle. "Slowcoal. The planet."
     
     
I spoke carefully, drawing on language routines that continually updated as we conversed. "If we go to where Slowcoal fills more of the sky, will we find this city?"
     
     
"Of course. You know this not? You talk like them." He studied me. "City Shay are not Manq. City Shay hate Manq."
     
     
"As do I." We were finally getting somewhere.
     
     
"Then you are from the city?"
     
     
"Even farther."
     
     
"The starport." He made it a statement.
     
     
My hope jumped. "Yes. The port." It was true in the sense I thought he meant, that I came from beyond Opalite.
     
     
He showed me his knife, a diamond-edged steel blade. "At the docks, I traded for this. That docker, he wanted nothing more than a shirt I made. For that nothing shirt, he gave me this."
     
     
"A fine knife," I agreed. As long as he used it on beetles and not me.
     
     
"Where is your home?" he asked.
     
     
I started to say I didn't know. Then I realized I did. It was on a space habitat called the Orbiter. Eldrin and I lived there together. I served as liaison between the Skolian government and psiberweb. Eldrin was a singer, a glorious baritone. He wrote folk ballads. I had always loved his music, fascinated by the mathematical intricacies within its melodies. Our son Taquinil was an economics professor at Imperial University on the planet Parthonia. He had been visiting us when the Traders attacked.
     
     
"I live in a space station," I said.
     
     
He gutted the last beetle, dumping its insides into the pot. "A strange place, without trees."
     
     
"Many trees are there."
     
     
"It is hard to imagine." He set the pot in a tripod of wet green sticks and placed it over the fire.
     
     
"Treeman, have you a name?"
     
     
He glanced at me. "What say?"
     
     
"Your name, I know it not."
     
     
"Why call me 'treeman'?"
     
     
"The first time I saw you, it looked like you came out of a tree."
     
     
His expression lightened, gentling his face. "Tripodman is better, then. I am like that." Although it was the first time I had seen him smile, he obviously did it often; it creased well-worn lines around his eyes.
     
     
Curious now, I asked, "Other names have you, Tripodman?"
     
     
"Hajune Tailor."
     
     
"Tailor? You sew clothes?"
     
     
Hajune reddened. "The city Shay trade many fine goods for these nothing clothes I make." He stirred the liquid in the pot, and an aroma filled the cavity, tangy and rich, like exotic spices mixed with bittersweet fruit.