“And?” she demanded.

“And…I get to act as an advisor to an ambassador, as I was created to do.”

“What’s a symbiote?” she asked.

The monster hesitated. Then, with a sigh of contempt, like it were speaking to a particularly stupid child he never expected to understand, said, “A symbiote is something that needs the carbon-based physicalities of a genetically compatible host to anchor itself in this dimension, but provides a highly beneficial energetic subsidy for its continued anchorage and support.”

Skipper squinted at the gem, then at Ptah. “So which one’s the symbiote? Him or you?”

There was a pause, and for a moment, Skipper thought Ptah had stopped breathing. “You’re smarter than I thought,” the creature whispered. She could feel it recalculating as it considered that.

“So?”

“Him,” Ptah whispered against the stone. “I’m the interface.”

Skipper glanced at the fallen man, then back up at the stone. “And once I do this, I’ll be able to make water?”

Even through Ptah’s slurred lips, she could hear the hope in his voice. “Much more easily than he can now, with that damned suppressor on his neck. They weren’t supposed to put those on until the volunteer was bonded with a compatible host—how did he get it?”

“I’m not sure…” Skipper said, squinting down at the collapsed man’s neck and shoulders. “I think it was a punishment of some sort.”

“A punishment…” The monster trailed off, but not before she could hear the horror in his voice. “Who is in charge in this age? Clearly they don’t understand the purpose of the device.”

“Oh yeah?” Skipper demanded. “What’s the purpose?”

“It acts as a boundary reference point to transfer energy between species of different dimensional origins.”

She considered that. “So I touch the stone and you take over my mind, but he lives?”

“Taking over your mind would break the treaty. I told you, those madmen you saw wandering the desert had a shitty attempt at an interface done by someone who was clearly desperate. Probably Barduk, that twit. He always was the first to hit the button, then wonder afterwards which one he was supposed to push. I’m a lot more cautious than that, but sixteen thousand years will wear down even my resolve.”

Skipper licked her lips and glanced back down at the Skymancer. It might take a few days, or a week, but he was doomed to die without some miracle. “And you’re sure you can help him? He was shot in the gut…bullet busted up his intestines.”

The thing using Ptah cleared his throat. “Let me try to explain this to you, child. I know you’re only a few years old and truly don’t understand the ways of my people, but someone forced him into that form, then used that collar to lock him in it. He’s naturally just a collection of pretty energy with no boundaries or way to interact with the world, a lot like the aurora borealis, but with intent. In his natural state, he doesn’t even have guts.”

Skipper made a face. “Pretty sure he had guts.”

“We get that contract sealed, he won’t. He’ll just be a collection of energy tied to your physical body, and he can relax. Part of why his kind were so desperate to find symbiotes on this planet—the idea of intestines were utterly foreign to them and they found it quite disgusting. Once he interfaces, he’ll revert to his natural form. Might take a day or two for the brainwashed twit to snap out of it, but eventually he’ll crack, and boom, life will be a lot better for him.”

She grimaced, glancing at Ptah’s slack corpse. “So he won’t have a physical form?”

“He will if he wants to, but only then.” Then she heard the frown in his voice as he added, “Unless he’s very, very stubborn and has somehow come to identify with this body as his own. That might be a complication.”

“He told me he’s been in it a couple hundred years, at least. They kidnapped him as a baby.”

“Well…fuck.” Ptah’s body gave a huge sigh. “Poor bastard probably doesn’t even know what his natural form is. Some idiot just tried to force him to become something here, probably using a picture or something as a reference point. He kinda looks like a fuzzy chicken with snake eyes and bear claws—good lord I wonder what he was trying to actually be. Look, he’s actually got spines. What kind of creature on this planet has spines? Whatever he was trying to imitate, he did a shit poor job of it. That does make things difficult. He’s probably going to have a breakdown.”

“A what?”

“Never mind. He’ll get over it. All you have to do is accept the interface and he can relax. Your constitution is more suited for this planet, and his extradimensional existence can use your anchorage as a stabilizing factor. As long as you’re alive, so will he be. In fact, he’ll be nigh-indestructible…as long as no one hits you over the head with a hammer.”

Skipper squinted at that. “And you?”

“I’ll act as a liaison. A link between your peoples. Schooled in both, technically forged to be neutral—though, after watching you genital-obsessed apes fuck over not only yourselves, but your planet and your only reluctant ally in this galactic hellhole, I have less objectivity than I’d imagine is ideal.”

“What’s a liaison?” She had a vague sense of the word, but it was something she’d only heard once before, in hushed whispers when she was in her early teens.

“It’s a moderator to assist in quelling any initial arguments or misunderstandings between species.”

“I think that happened a long time ago,” Skipper said.

The monster groaned through Ptah’s lips. “The official pairings happened a long time ago. Hell, I’m not even technically a treaty specialist, I’m just using this as a loophole to get myself out of this light-forsaken hellpit of three billion, seven hundred and thirty-two million sand crystals, two hundred and seventeen beetle carapaces, sixteen rodent corpses, and various flood debris, thank you very much.”

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Skipper considered that, then considered Ptah once again. “You can’t use me like a puppet?”

“I’d want to, believe me, but it would break the treaty, and moderators are sworn not to break the treaty.”

“Pretty sure the ones who wrote that treaty are dead,” Skipper said, her face tightening in a grim line.

“Oh, they definitely are, but it still holds weight in galactic court, should they ever decide to stop quibbling and deign to charter a flight to come figure out why the Tuliin stopped checking in. But maybe they’re all dead, too, since I would have expected them to do that by now. They were in the middle of a civil war when we left, so it’s likely the Core’s just a wasteland by now. Everything the Tuliin touched seems to have gotten shat on by the proverbial gods these last couple millennia—maybe we finally passed our foul luck back to the Fields and that sealed the deal.”

“So there’s no one to enforce the treaty.” The thought gave her hope.

The creature puppeting Ptah seemed to catch himself. “Not necessarily. Just because they haven’t come yet doesn’t mean they won’t, and I can assure you that if I’m a bad boy and the Core still exists, I will eventually get punished for any wrongdoing. And since I don’t age and could go through a neutron star without losing cognitive function, chances are I’d eventually be forced to pay the price for my misdeeds.”

“But others of your kind weren’t worried about it,” Skipper countered.

“They’re naturally less cautious than I am and had a different initial purpose, so their thought processes are a bit less restrained in that respect. Besides. Extenuating circumstances. They probably felt they didn’t have a choice. They’ll still be decommissioned for breaking the truce if they are ever caught, but my guess is they probably won’t get caught.”

“You’re not making me want to do this,” Skipper said.

There was a really long, really slow wheeze from between the Skymancer’s lips, and Skipper realized that the monster was groaning. “Okay, consider this: I can transport the gunpowder out of your weapon. Could I not, say, transport you to this crystal, hand outstretched, to initiate the interface?”

“Can you?” Skipper demanded.

In reply, she found herself standing exactly two feet from the vibrating crystal, hand outstretched, fingers only inches from touching the glowing blue surface. The rippling blue gem called to her, the stone itself much smaller than she first assumed, a tight bright speck inside several inches of almost solid ethereal blue glow. Startled, she hastily stumbled backwards.

“I could have made the transport at a slight incline, so you’d fallen into it,” the monster muttered.

Skipper backed to the door and once again placed her spine against the translucent barrier, her heart skipping. “You need my permission somehow,” she managed.

“Not exactly,” the creature muttered. “This room was buried in a top-secret facility before your asshole ancestors gobbled up all the power they could find and started vomiting apocalypse out both ends, which meant there used to be so many levels of security to get here that just being in this room is considered tacit agreement to the process. Applicants had to go through training, get briefed, introduced to their symbiote, get prepared for months before they were allowed to touch me… Whereas you two just blundered in a hole in the wall introduced by the series of massive earthquakes that ripped the continent of North America in half fifteen hundred and eighty-nine years ago.”

Skipper glanced at the circle etched in the silvery wall across the room, for the first time realizing it was probably an old door, one with no handle on the inside…

“I’m trying to be nice,” the creature insisted. “And, if it comes down to it, yes, while I have an excellent chance of eluding authorities if I put my mind to it, I’d rather stay on the up-and-up. So many less complications that way. That means you need to agree. That means you need to willingly suck it up and take the stone before this kid over here starts brain hemorrhaging from the strain of translation.”

“You could get out of his head,” Skipper said, watching the froth slowly creep out between Ptah’s mumbling lips, pooling on the stone.

“And give up the only chance of freedom I’ve had in sixteen centuries? No thank you.”

“So…what…we’re in some sort of standoff where I either accept your terms or everybody dies?”

“I don’t intend to die here.”

“So if I don’t agree, you’ll do it anyway, without my help.”

“I’d just be branding myself a criminal to intergalactic law, but yes, that is an option. And I can assure you, if you force me to go that route, I’ll be much less…benevolent…in our association.”

Meaning she could do it, or the monster could do it, and then she’d have lost whatever good will she possessed.

“Is it reversible?” she asked.

“You will not be able to command him to kill himself, if that’s what you’re asking. That’s one of the exceptions. It’s written in the rules.”

Skipper blinked. “Command?”

“The treaty,” the creature said, clearly getting flustered. “You want him to make water, he’ll make water. In turn, he gets to not be in pain all the time because every atom of this dimension generally hates his existence and attempts to bombard him back to his home realm—something the Tuliin could usually balance out by simply slipping dimensions for a few weeks at a time to rest and recharge, except, because some dickwad in his childhood trapped Ptah with that suppressor, he can’t retreat, so he’s just stuck here.”

Skipper swallowed, glancing at the collar. “You’re not going to turn us into puppets?” She knew it was silly to ask, that this thing could literally say anything it wanted to convince her to comply, and as long as she took the stone, he could do whatever he wanted afterwards. She was acutely aware she was entering into a devil’s bargain, one where she no longer held any cards the moment she touched that glowing rock. It was only Ptah’s insistence that it was something familiar to him that wanted to help that had forestalled her already telling the monster to fuck off.

“I’m surprised a Neolithic throwback even understands the concept of something as creative as a puppet,” the creature muttered. “But no. That’s definitely against the rules. I’m a moderator. I settle disputes.”

“What kind of disputes?” she asked warily.

“There are naturally…tensions…between species when cultural norms are either disrespected or ignored. For instance, humans using indentured Tuliin to destroy cities and set their anal-retentive neighbor’s car on fire the moment they had the contract signed tended to somewhat alarm their Tuliin counterparts. However, to the Tuliin’s chagrin, they never stipulated rules against mass destruction. Because—gasp—it was such a ridiculous concept to them as a species that they didn’t even think it needed to be addressed. So basically, those poor guys moderating that initial clusterfuck had to do a lot of dispute settlement. Sounds like you’ve got a better head on your shoulders, though. Maybe the gods don’t hate me after all.”

Skipper grimaced, her brain starting to fritz out from the overstimulation. It had been happening to her a lot lately, generally whenever Ptah opened his mouth to say anything more than, ‘Can you walk a little slower? My ankle is killing me…’ She grunted. “I’ll need to think on it.”

“Don’t think very long. His abdominal cavity—a cavity he shouldn’t even technically have if it weren’t for one of your land-based species being an asshole and kidnapping him as a youth—is filling with blood.”

In truth, Skipper cared less about the Skymancer’s safety than she did her own, but she didn’t want to see him die if she could help it, either. She watched his breathing slow, getting more ragged.

“And all I have to do is grab the stone?” she finally asked.

“Hurry,” the creature wheezed. It was obviously becoming a struggle for him to force the Skymancer’s lips to move.

Skipper glanced back at the dusty gold pedestal, thinking of what, before last week, she could have expected from life. Jumping from crevice to crevice, running up and down the crags, taking potshots at Changers whenever she got the chance, shooting a coyote or snaring a rabbit now and then, traveling endlessly up and down the canyon until her body gave out or she broke something and no one could hear her scream…

…or she could make water and maybe help Ptah figure out how to get back north to his oasis-people and their very big trees, maybe kill a few fat, happy silverlings on the way through Changer territory.