“I thought I handled things rather well.” Hans Rebka was lying flat on the thick carpet in the living room of Darya’s private quarters. He claimed that it was softer than his bed on Teufel. “You have to understand, Darya, I said all those things about the Builders and the Zardalu on purpose.”

“I’m sure you did — after we all agreed to reveal absolutely nothing to anyone about them! You agreed to it, yourself.”

“I did. Graves proposed it, but we all agreed we should keep everything to ourselves until the formal briefing to the Council. The last thing we wanted was to throw the spiral arm into a panic because there are live Zardalu on the loose.”

“And panic is just what you started at dinner. Why did you all of a sudden do the exact opposite of what we said we’d do?”

“I told you, the briefing to the Council was an absolute fiasco. We need to get people worked up about the Zardalu now. Not one Council member would believe a word of what we had to say!”

“But Julius Graves is a Council member — he’s one of them, an insider.”

“He is, and yet he isn’t. He was elected one of them, but of course his interior mnemonic twin, Steven Graves, as someone pointed out early in the hearing, was never elected to anything. No one expected a simple memory extension device to develop self-awareness, and that happened after Julius was elected to the Council. The integration of the personalities of Julius and Steven seems to be complete now — the composite calls himself Julian, and gets upset if you forget and still call him Julius or Steven. But there were more than a few hints by other councilors that the development of Steven had sent Julius off his head while the integration was going on. You can see their point: although councilors do not lie or fabricate events, Julian Graves is not, and never was, a councilor.”