Laura laid out her argument as clearly as she could. "We will not keep that weird monster in my apartment anymore. I will not take care of it. You have to take care of it, Mark."

Mark crossed his arms. "Don't call him a monster, Laura. He has feelings."

Mr. Grumbles had backed into his favorite corner, the one between Laura's bookcase and the mirror that failed to make the space more livable. His pink-blotched hands curled over his face, forming a mesh through which the animal peered.

"It can't understand English, Mark." Laura swept a hand toward Mr. Grumbles, who twitched. The gaps between his fingers closed, hiding his eyes. The erectus tucked in his shoulders and whimpered.

"He looks hurt to me." Mark's amygdala and adrenal glands were still aroused from his encounter with the clown wrangler and the spider. The cortisol in his blood had yet to be completely absorbed into his cells, and his parasympathetic nervous system had only just begun to release acetylcholine.1 In this state, the idea of applying more force was very attractive.

"You have to learn how to deal with him, I mean, unless you want to kill him."

Laura's hands came up. "Of course I don't want to kill him! Why would you say that?"

"And I can't disappear as soon as Mr. Grumbles goes missing," Mark went on. "I have to continue my normal routine."

"What about my routine?"

It was a good argument, but fortunately for Mark, Mr. Grumbles whimpered again." Shh, Laura. Don't show your teeth like that. Mr. Grumbles thinks you're snarling."

"I wasn't snarling." But Laura put her hands over her mouth. A tacit confession.

Mark said nothing, merely directed Laura's attention to Mr. Grumbles, who looked like a child watching his parents fight.

And Laura, she realized, must look like a woman who was too old, bitter, and selfish to ever raise that child.

Now the hand over her mouth hid a frown of misery. Her eyes darted to Mark, scanning desperately for signs that he hated her.

But Mark's smile was gentle. He held out his hands.

"It'll be okay," he said. "We'll take turns. And Koen will be back soon to pitch in. We'll share the burden until you can get Mr. Grumbles amnesty."

Laura took her hand away from her mouth, which was now formed into an acceptable I'm-so-busy frown. Compared to the self-disgust of a moment ago, it was a relief to have a merely logistical problem to bang herself against. The more daunting that problem, the better. Laura considered balancing the release of information, getting the documentation train rolling, convincing the Ambassador that this was all his idea, and all in, at best, a third of her usual working time!

"What can you do?" Mark's question pushed through her spiral of self-doubt like an axle through a wheel. Now her panic could do work as it spun.

"I can take another vacation day," Laura said. That was what she'd done today, when it had become clear she'd get no more sleep. Vacation days were theoretically always available. Laura had just never heard of any Embassy staff actually taking one. Where would you go, except back to Earth?

And that was the problem. "Why would I take another vacation day to sit in my room and do nothing?"

"Why not call in sick?"

"Dr. Kaliannan will want to test me, to see what I'm sick with." Everyone, in the Embassy and out of it, took infectious disease very seriously. "What if they put me in quarantine?"

Mark's first impulse was to jump on that possibility. It would be perfect. But no, too perfect. If Laura got the impression Mark was trying to sideline her, she'd dig in her heels.

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"So, some other kind of disability?" Mark suggested. "Maybe sprain your ankle or something?"

"Or have a mental breakdown." If she told the doctor she had a stress-related psychosis, she wouldn't be lying. But no. "That would only raise more questions and make everything harder down the line."

"What else can we do?" asked Mark, inviting her to do the hard work in this conversation.

Laura considered the possibility of faking a severe period. Dr. Kaliannan wouldn't insist on checking to make sure it was real, and that would buy her three days. But wait, did she want to spend three days locked up with Mr. Grumbles? No. No, but…

How do I want to spend my days? Laura usually squelched questions like that before her internal voice could express them. Now, she couldn't help but ask it, and in asking the question, she answered it.

I don't want to be here.

Mark watched Laura as her face shut down. He was used to expression. This was Laura realizing something important and running simulations with it to figure out what to do with the information. He waited. Not, pushing her, but not allowing her off the hook, either. In the corner, Mr. Grumbles hooted softly to himself.

"Mark," said Laura eventually. "What are we doing here? What are we going to do with him?" She jerked her head toward Mr. Grumbles, who started and looked over his shoulder.

So that was it. The moment of truth had come. Well, Mark had prepared for it.

He began to pace in front of Laura.

"You know it's only a matter of time until support for the Convention collapses entirely," he said, "right?"

If someone had asked her, Laura would have said that she was afraid support for the Convention would collapse. Now, though, hearing Mark state the matter so strongly, she assumed he knew something she didn't, and revised her mental map of the world. Support would collapse. Humanity would turn away from the multiverse. It made sense to her.

Given that premise, the rest flowed logically. The human-isolationists would be in power, and what would that mean for Laura's own career? Laura, who'd worked in the Zogreion with the nonhumans. "We'll be tainted," she said.

Mark leaned forward as he nodded. "Exactly. Unless we make a strong statement," he said. "Right now."

Mr. Grumbles cringed under their combined gaze.

"He's scared," said Laura.

"He's a victim." Mark held his hand out to the erectus. "Without them controlling his breeding, what could he have evolved into? He's been ruined by the nonhumans, too."

Like us, thought Laura.

Mr. Grumbles blinked at Mark's upturned palm in disappointment. He was thinking about cookies.

"Well, I won't let this continue," said Mark, half to himself, rehearsing. Better make that: "I'm speaking out. I'm speaking out against…" did he want to say 'slavery'? No. Too much. "I'm speaking out against cruelty and callousness." Yes, 'callousness' was good.

"He is a victim," Mark repeated.

And he's my ticket out of here, thought Laura.

Laura's translator clicked. She broke eye contact and asked, "Koen?"

"Hi Laura."

She was right. Her heart lifted. "When are you coming back?"

"Uh, not until tonight?"

"What?" Hope turned into familiar irritation. "Koen, you have work to do here."

Mark hid his relief. Koen made a good lightning rod.

"I can't. I have work to do for General Graa. Oh! That's what I called about. Laura, he's putting on a dinner tonight. That's why I called. A dinner."

"He sounds like he slept well," said Mark.

"Oh, hi Mark."

Laura scowled. "Why are you calling about a — I see. Graa has you cooking for him again."

"Yes. He's hired a psychic, he says, to find Mr. Grumbles."

Before either Laura or Mark could figure out what that had to do with anything, he continued.

"Laura, the General is inviting you to dinner, too."

While Mark hastily recalculated, Laura watched Mr. Grumbles. The erectus was a ticking time bomb.

Sooner or later, he would be found out, and then Laura could go home. In the meantime, what difference did it make whether she worried about dinner with some nonhuman psychic? It was all a game. A game at which Laura excelled.

"Of course," she said. "I would be delighted." And for the first time in years, she almost was.

1 Barrett, Kim E. Ganong's review of medical physiology. (Twenty-sixth ed.). [New York]. ISBN 9781260122404.