Mark tried to control his breathing as he looked down at the creatures arranging themselves below him. Excitement and nausea warred.

Was there any chance he could get used to this? Make a career out of public speaking to nonhumans? If so, he'd need to rethink his schemes. He'd need to do something about Koen.

A skull-rattling caw sounded just behind him. Mark and his pillar held each other.

"Look at me!" spoke Mark's translator in a familiar voice. "I am here! I am the most powerful of all of you!"

General Graa flew into the auditorium and alighted on a guy-wire. The Pick was wearing little gloves over his toes.

"Human Mark, ahoy! I am late. Clear a space for me!"

"Your Excellency," said Mark. "Welcome. I'm honored you decided to join our exercise after all."

"No, I do not want to join it."

"You've just come to watch? Well, we are of course still honored by your presence."

"I agree." Graa swept the auditorium with his gaze. "I see for your first trick, you have arranged your guests into a cladogram."1

"Yes?" said Mark, not entirely confidently. "We have?"

"There is the great cleft between bacteria and archaea—Hello, Multiplex Ambassador.2 How is your husband?—And there are the plants-and-algae, the animals-and-fungi. Honored Pneumaticon, Honored Sprocket."3

Graa closed his eyes and mumbled as if savoring a potato chip. "I wonder on which side of that split my friend the Toxoplasmotic would place herself." He fixed Mark with an abrupt, double-barreled stare. "Who gave you this idea? Answer!"

"Why do you want to know?" Mark's answer would depend on whether Graa thought it was a good idea.

Graa clacked his beak. "I am slightly frustrated. Do you not see the problem?"

"Oh," said Mark. "It was Koen's idea."

"In that case, Koen made an elementary mistake." Graa flicked his nictitating membranes and spread one wing. "I patronizingly indicate the Caternary, the Strophinx, and the Propinquine perched next to Human Laura.4 Should I take my place at the tip of that branch?"

"That was the idea," said Mark with utmost caution. "Koen thought it would break the ice?"

"I ignore your incomprehensible idiom. I am impatient. I wonder if I should remember to whom I am related. Should I favor my kin with nepotism? I am proud and prideful! I am sufficiently adroit to see what you have set to wait behind that temptation. I am proud and impatient and quite frustrated!"

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Mark didn't follow most of what Graa was saying, but he knew that nepotism was bad. "Of course not, Your Excellency. I don't expect nepotism of course. That would run totally counter to our goals. The goals of the United Nations."

Graa voice grew louder. "I ignore your distractions and continue to drive my beak into your underbelly. Taxonomic nepotism is how the Convention operates. The Tensors and the Pick fly together because we share the traits of our dinosaur ancestors. We understand group-marriage, discipline, and regurgitation. It is easier for us to work with each other than to work with you dripping, half-blind mammals. But, Human Mark, it is easier for you and I to work together than for either of us to work with a clone-loving Quotidian."

Mark gave up. "Yes?"

"I will feed you my question because you are so cute and trapped. For what purpose do you illuminate this crack that runs through the heart of the Convention?"

Mark breathed out in relief. He'd rehearsed responses like this. "Well, this is what we have to fight against."

Mark raised his voice to address the assembled sophonts, who had been listening all this time. "Now, guests, please turn to the sophonts around you and find out what they have in common with you."

Graa flapped. "Too obvious a joke! I am disappointed and proud. They will have more in common with their kin, of course. Metruians and Proskelisks both enjoy confusing their prey.5 The Sprocket and the Roridum can compare the best vintages of light.6 And why didn't you invite the Greaves or the Monumentals to this conspiracy-club? You could have bonded over how much you love chewing your food and cuddling babies."

Sophonts in the audience laughed.

Mark didn't recognize the sounds. He had no instincts for interpreting other species' emotions. He did, however, have a finely honed sense for when he was being accused of racism. He waved his hands frantically. Other sophonts in the audience waved back.

"Your Excellency, I'm terribly sorry to have given you such a mistaken impression of my goal here. Of course our aim is to foster a safe, inclusive, environment for all, uh, species without reference to, um, evolutionary privilege. At the United Nations embassy, we are committed to breaking down boundaries in a non-human-centric way!" He paused for breath.

From her place on the cladogram next to a Successor and the red igloo, Sty mix Sty clattered her mouthparts in applause. "There it is! Finally! Dance for us again, Human Mark! Dance!"

The fact that Mark felt instinctively closer to people more closely related to him is understandable. Everyone is like that. Laura, for example, felt sharply the pain of loneliness, but wasn't aware of it. Mark was, and he used people's herd instincts to pursue his goals.

He had made Koen help him put this exercise together, but Koen had been distracted and thinking of other things. Koen had allowed Mark to take control because that felt safest. But, because Koen didn't want to feel like a coward, he pushed aside his awareness of his decision. He forgot where his own need to belong came from. Seeing Mark's guests lined up like that, grouped by genetic affiliation, might have forced Koen to remember.

But Koen wasn't there. He was busy kidnapping Mr. Grumbles.

1 Readers are encouraged to see a more complete tree at https://www.onezoom.org/

2 A kind of biofilm

3 Brown algae and horsetails

4 Respectively, Laura's "lemon-bridge," "claw-head," and the friendly fellow tetrapod.

5 A species of cuttlefish and our friend the tripodal sea-slug. Both are mollusks.

6 The attentive reader might remember that the Roridum are related to kiwifruits.