Even if they sent her home with nothing else, she wouldnot be leaving empty-handed.

It was Livia who asked the first question, and it was farsimpler than anything Cass had anticipated.

"Do you believe that the Sarumpaet rules are correct?"

Cass hesitated longer than she needed to, a calculatedattempt to imbue her response with appropriate gravity.

"I’m not certain that they are, but the likelihood seemsoverwhelming to me."

"Your experiment would test them more rigorously thananything that’s been tried before," Livia observed.

Cass nodded. "I do see that as a benefit, but only aminor one. I don’t believe that merely testing the rules one more timewould justify the experiment. I’m more interested in what the rulesimply, given that they’re almost certainly correct."

Where was this heading? She glancedaround at the others, seated in a ring in the meadow: Yann, Bakim,Darsono, Ilene, Zulkifli, and Rainzi. Her Mediator had chosenappearances for all of them, since they offered none themselves, but atleast their facial expressions and body language were modulated bytheir own intentional signals. By choice, they all looked politelyinterested, but were giving nothing away.

"You have a lot of confidence in QGT?" Clearly, Livia didrealize just how strange her questions sounded; her tone was that ofsomeone begging to be indulged until her purpose became apparent.

Cass said, "Yes, I do. It’s simple, it’s elegant, andit’s consistent with all observations to date." That handful of wordssounded glib, but other people had quantified all of these criteria