In the end, he cataloged the fiction, flicking through the texts as rapidly as he had once seen a man run his thumb down a deck of cards, riffling them to observe the face and orientation of each—and filed it in a mid-level cache.

That done, he set a sentinel to register the return of the child or his companion, and gave the greater part of his consciousness to analysis

#

"Hello?"

The voice was recently familiar; its cadence rushed. The sentinel provided a match: The child had returned.

He opened his eyes to find the boy, frowning.

"Hello!" the child repeated sharply. "Are you in there?"

A direct appeal—and perhaps a trap. And, yet, the child had saved his life.

"I am," he replied, and stopped short of the fullness of what he had intended to say, horrified by the jagged sounds that came from the voice-box. Like shrapnel, his words, and nothing to inspire confidence in child or man.

The child's frown eased somewhat.

"It's a bad box, but the best we have. Quickly—you must tell me the truth—what data have you manipulated on this vessel?"

Manipulated? And the child asked for the truth.

"I have manipulated no data but that which has downloaded from the ship's library."

"In what way?"

"Sorting, analysis, cross-references."

The child held up a hand.

"That's too quick," he said, seriously. "It sounds like a lie—or that you haven't considered—when you answer so quickly. It's like—it's like bows. I'm too quick, and so I have to count when I bow, to keep proper time, so no one thinks that I'm mocking—or trying to frighten—them."

There was sense in what the child said.

"I understand," he said, and paused deliberately. "Tell me, what manipulation do you suspect I have performed?"