Ambassador Li stepped out of the omnivator and into the muggy entrance-maze of the Convention Assembly. Someone was waiting for him.

It was an upright biped, wearing a hygienic plastic wrapper little different from Li's. On its shoulder rested an egg of silver-tinted crystal.

In his headset's earpiece, Laura sighed. "There he is."

She sat at her desk back in the Embassy. Physically, this desk was no different from three months previously. The same notebooks lay upon the same stacks of paper, piled around the same laptop. The same sorts of things were even written on these devices: "avoid temptation, Quotidian > maximum alienation, Cellendian > ambush predator > ?, Pick > hierarchy instincts > submissiveness."

The difference was that these notes would now be translated into real actions.

"All right, Ambassador," said Laura, "just like we practiced. Be submissive."

The UN delegate bowed deeply. "Esteemed General Graa. I humbly extend my sincere greetings and deepest respect to you."

General Graa growled in pleasure. But he said, "Human Koen. Bow more deeply still!"

The containment-suited figure did so with only a little hesitation. The egg in which Graa sat levitated, remaining stationary in the air as Koen out-humbled Ambassador Li.

"Praise me for the cultural research I have done," commanded Graa.

Both humans did so.

"Believe that the fact that we were paired together is a lucky coincidence," commanded Graa.

Li didn't need Laura to tell him to agree. "Of course, Your Excellency. We will find our way to the center," he promised. "Together."

"Together! Onward, Human Koen!"

The two apes scrambled through the slimy maze, past the traps and temptations.

Today, these took the form of another human wearing another containment suit, accompanied by a Quotidian, who was naked.

"Look, everyone, it's the Salp Larva Clown!" Graa crowed. "His strategy is optimized for intraspecies status, rather than interspecies benefit. Rather than sophonts with shared interests, he sympathized with a subsapient animal, and it out-smarted him."

"Quotidian mixSty, good morning." Ambassador Li bowed to her.

"Maximum alienation," advised Laura. "Stand right up next to her and stare down into her eye."

MixSty crouched. "I hate this. Thank you. Human Mark, begin your temptation."

Mark held up a laminated sheet of paper. It was printed with the words "YOUNG SEXY GIRL MEET FOR ROMANCE."

"Huh," said Koen.

"Prepare for on-the-job evaluation," said mixSty. "Ambassador Li, do you feel tempted? Is Human Mark tempting you sufficiently that resisting him will establish your sapience?"

Mark didn't say anything, but his expression conveyed that he very much wanted the answer to be "yes."

"Tell her the truth," said Laura.

"Unfortunately," said Ambassador Li, "I am not tempted by Mark."

The brush at the end of mixSty's tail shook, spraying pheromones. "Human Mark, attempt plan B."

Mark dropped the paper and picked a bowl of candy off the gummy floor. Inside, he did not rage or weep. A thick layer of fog obscured his emotional state from himself.

"I'm afraid not," said Ambassador Li. The candy was coated with a significant layer of mucus.

"Human Mark, plan B includes dancing."

Mark hopped onto one foot. The other. He lifted and waved his free hand.

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Li shook his head, and Mark sighed to a stop.

Ambassador Li shook his head.

"This new information upsets me," said mixSty. "Thank you again."

"Let us pass," said Graa. "Improve your performance next time."

Koen lowered his voice. "Mark, are you doing all right?"

Mark's jaw clenched as, for a moment, the fog in his head parted. He said nothing, and could not bring himself to meet Koen's gaze. Pleading silently to be rescued, Mark looked into Ambassador Li's eyes.

Which squinched.

Laura told Li what to say, and although it was more straightforward than he usually felt safe, he spoke the words. "Mr. Cafarelli, I cannot do any more to help you. Although I am tempted."

MixSty clacked her jaws. "A hit! We have achieved pity. Excellent job, Human Mark. You will be rewarded with a treat."

Hope flicked amid the vague gray billows of Mark's mind. "No more behavioral experiments today?"

"Better. I will give you a cookie," said mixSty, who had done her homework.1 "If you refrain from eating it, you will get two cookies."

"Onward!" said Graa, and lead them down the path opposite from Mark.

"This maze is working," Graa said as they shoved the slimy pillar aside. "I feel closer to another sophont. Ambassador Li, tell me your innermost thoughts and feelings."

This command did not shock Laura as much as it might have. Koen had warned her about something like this, and she'd stayed up half the night polishing a trio of sentences that were flattering, unobjectionable, and true.

"Formerly, and to my shame, I believed that interspecies communication was impossible," Li recited. "Yet, recent occurrences have enlightened me, demonstrating that this task is merely extraordinarily challenging. Nevertheless, we humans flourish amidst adversity. We possess the ability to engineer solutions to problems, thereby fortifying our resilience."

"A Quotidian would say the same," said Graa. "Offer me a more novel insight."

Koen leapt to the rescue. "Well! You know!" Mucus flew from his gesturing hands. "Proteins, sugars, fats and acids. We're all made of the same stuff."

Laura wondered about the Tensors, but before she could decide whether to relay the question through Ambassador Li, Graa pecked the inside of his silver egg.

"I am not comforted by your allusion to eating me. Try again."

Laura put her finger on one of her notes and instructed Li to say, "It is comforting to find a place in the hierarchy of species, submissive to such a lofty power as yours."

Graa closed his nictitating membranes and growled. "Human Laura, I recognize the pattern of your flattery. Be complimented: you are an apple-juice maggot."

Koen mouthed the correct response as Laura flipped a page and dragged her finger down to the subheading "treats."

"Thank you, Your Excellency."

"Can I try again?" said Koen. "I've been thinking a lot about this lately. It was easy to draw a line between people and animals, right? And it's easy to draw a line through people and mark one side 'evil' and the other 'good.'" He drew his finger down his chest, over his heart. "But what we have to do is get off those lines. People are animals. We're cruel and kind, and weak and strong. We succeed and we fail. There is nothing else we could be."

Back in the Embassy, Laura smiled because she loved a big goof. In the entrance maze of the Convention Assembly, Ambassador Li smiled because it gave his face something to do while he thought about his next meal. Soup, he decided. Soup would be nice. General Graa considered what Koen had said.

"Accept praise for a noble sentiment," he said. "Even if it is not entirely correct."

Any other human on the planet would have left well enough alone, but Koen caught the hint of a secret he could grab. His fingers twitched, as if plucking a berry from a bush. "There's something else we can be aside from person or animal?"

Graa twisted his head around and jabbed his beak at a translator, hovering faithfully in the air behind him. "Yes."

Koen focused on the iridescent creature. His reflection slid across the fishbowl eye at the apex of its body, including the green-gold glint in his visor that was the reflection of that reflection. And so on.

On all earths, everywhere, people need to know what it is like to be each other. That is what holds our civilizations together. That is the service we provide.

You are welcome.

It was with a sense of gratitude that Koen broke through the maze and reached the heart of the Convention.

An artificial lagoon reflected the light of an artificial sun. Over the central pool, ranks of seating rose in ever-widening circles, where delegates rested in their cradles, crutches, aquaria, and antigravity tubes. Ambassador Li's chair had a little pot of tea ready for him.

This was what Koen had been waiting for all this time. He didn't worry about the momentous decisions that might be made here. Politics was Laura's specialty. Koen gazed around avidly, watching the anatomy.

There was a Catenary, its organs each composed of one or more cloned salp-bodies. There, scales shivered on a pine-cone-shaped Grahi. The Cellendian delegate walked into the central pool, pneumatic bladders swelling and compressing down her conical legs. Here was the sapient multiverse, the fruit of the tree of life, the tiny part of the universe that could turn upon the rest, and observe.

The Cellendian gave forth a bagpipe wheeze. "We come together," she said, "in peace."

1Mischel, Walter; Ebbesen, Ebbe B. (1970). "Attention in delay of gratification". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 16 (2): 329–337. doi:10.1037/h0029815.