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“Display no hostility toward this person, he is one of our
friends who is divinely ordained to assist us in our time of need,” Max told
the room.

He is a monster,
thought
Philippe.

He knew that the thought was
unfair, but he was looking at a creature out of a nightmare. At the moment, the
Magic Man was only about a meter tall and about as wide. Presumably in order to
speak to both species, he had taken on the shape of a human head and torso and
roughly half a Host body stuck together.

“Hey, there,” said Shanti. “You
came to help us!”

“No,” replied the head of a beloved
senior political figure. “I came to help those of the body who have been
attacked by those also of the body.”

“You mean the Hosts,” said
Philippe. “You’re here to help the Hosts.”

“They are of the body,” replied the
Magic Man.

“We’re helping them, too, but I
gotta admit, you’re way better at it than we are,” said Shanti. She pointed to
one of the screens, which displayed the long, tubular body that had emerged
from the portal. “Is that all you, like, you personally?”

“Yes,” said the Magic Man’s human
head. The alien’s Host half began to chirp. “I have arrived among you to obtain
advice regarding how best to eliminate this threat,” said Philippe’s earplant.

“You are following your destiny,
and we commend you,” said Max. “We must prevent the portal from closing again.
We believe that the new engine technology on the Cyclopes ships closes the
portal, and it is extremely important that they not be used. If you would be
willing to disable those engines, it would be a great help to us.”

“Why is a priest—?” George began,
but Philippe shushed him. He was actually wondering the same thing, but the
room was filled with Host soldiers. If none of them was objecting to Max taking
leadership of a military operation, Philippe certainly wasn’t going to.

“I am willing,” said the Magic Man.

On the wall screens, the long,
iridescent tube suddenly sped off. Some Host technician switched to a wider
view of the battle, showing the Host ships and Cyclopes vessels trading fire.
The tube passed through the scene like a comet, its end dissolving off until
the entire thing turned into a dark vapor that settled onto the Cyclopes ships.

“He spoke to you in your language,”
said the Host, apologetically. “He does not wear translation gear, and this portable
translation device can translate directly only from Host speech, not human
speech. I do not wish to inconvenience you with my questions, but—”

“I am unfamiliar with the engine
technology, and it would take time to determine how to disable the engines,”
said the Magic Man. “I am already familiar with the bodily operations of the
Cyclopes, thus it is more efficient to eliminate them.”

Everyone was silent for a moment.

“What if they bring in new crews?”
asked Shanti.

“For the short term, I will
maintain a lethal presence in the area where the engines are located,” said the
Magic Man, with both heads.

Philippe turned to Max. “You have to
talk with the Cyclopes, you have to tell them to keep their people out of their
engine rooms.”

“I agree,” said Max, turning to a
soldier. “Establish contact with the Cyclopes liaisons.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Shanti, stepping
over to the priest. “Now’s the time to negotiate and get a cease-fire, too. You
let them know that we’ve got them by the short—that we’ve really got the
advantage now.”

“That is an emphatically
nonsensical comment, made solely in an attempt to deceive,” said Endless
Courage. “This time, our ships are to fulfill our expectations and not turn back.
All you have done is behave in a manner that is very emphatically shameful, and
to ensure that our behavior will be very emphatically without shame.”

“The remaining people on your ships
could be killed,” said Max. “The portal is reopened. Our friends can help us
now, and with their help, we will overpower your forces.”

“More Cyclopes ships shall follow,
and more,” said Endless Courage. “Shame shall be eradicated.”

“So says our leadership,” said
Brave Loyalty. “And none may question their lack of shame.”

Philippe turned to the Magic Man,
who had already grown a third appendage that presumably enabled him to hear and
speak the Cyclopes language, although it didn’t really look familiar.

“Tell them,” Philippe said. “Tell
everyone, tell all of us, in every language. Tell us all what you are going to
do because the Cyclopes attacked the Hosts.”

“I will return through the portal
and eliminate the members of the corrupted sub-body on the station,” said the
Magic Man. “Then I will go through the portal that leads to the planet of the
Cyclopes and will eliminate them there. Then I will seek out secondary colonies
or other ships in that region of space and will eliminate them there. That
should eliminate the great majority of that sub-body. If at a later time I find
other members of that sub-body elsewhere I will eliminate them at that time.”

“Because you believe that the
entire sub-body—and by that, you mean every individual Cyclops, regardless of
age or occupation—is corrupted and must be eliminated,” said Philippe.

“Yes.”

Aside from the underlying noise of
the station, the tactical room was silent. Max had an expression on his face
that Philippe had never seen on a Host before.
Max is terrified,
he
realized.

“An entire sub-body doesn’t have to
be corrupt for the whole thing to act wrong,” said George. “In our bodies, a
diseased organ can act in a way that is harmful to the health of the overall
body. But that doesn’t mean you eliminate the entire organ—that won’t help the
larger body either. Instead, you eliminate the disease. Once you do that, the
organ will return to its normal function, and the body is much healthier.”

“Yes, yes,” said Philippe. “You
keep talking about the body, but you’re thinking about
your
body. All
the parts of your body are basically the same, aren’t they? They follow a
single will. But with our bodies and the Hosts’ bodies and the Cyclopes’
bodies, the parts are different. The members of the Cyclopes sub-body are
different, too—they’re individuals, and they each have their own will. They
just aren’t always free to express it.”

“That is nonsensical,” said the
Magic Man.

“Other people are mysterious,” said
Max, looking at the Magic Man with apprehension and revulsion.

“They are not so mysterious to your
people that your people chose not to combine them into a single body,” replied
the Magic Man.

“But that body is different from
your body, correct?” said George. “It behaves differently. You have a body, and
it is part of a larger body—but that body doesn’t follow the same rules as your
own sub-body. In other species, that principle also works the other way. The
Cyclopes are a sub-body, but within that sub-body are other, smaller
sub-bodies, and they don’t all follow the same will.”

He turned to the screen, alive with
hope. “Brave Loyalty, you once said to me that you thought the Cyclops who
attacked me acted despicably. We now believe that that Cyclops was acting on
orders from your leadership in order to help your people prepare for this
attack. Tell me what you honestly think of those orders and that leadership.”

“All of them? My leaders?” the
Cyclops replied. “I perceive what you wish to accomplish and the role you wish
for me to play, and it would be very emphatically shameful. You wish for me to
arrange to have my leaders assassinated by that freakish creature. And who
would the new leader of the Cyclopes be, if not that same abomination? You wish
for me to betray my entire planet and place it under the leadership of that
hideous entity in order to prevent my own death.”

“You would be saving your entire
species from a threat your leaders brought down upon you,” said Philippe.

Brave Loyalty twisted his arms in a
gesture designed to convey—anger? defiance? resignation? sadness? “Who has the
greater shame?” he asked. “The leader who acts shamefully, or the Cyclops who
betrays that leader?”

“You can’t be serious, you can’t
be!” Philippe realized that he was yelling, that he had completely lost
control, but he didn’t care. “He’ll kill you all! What’s wrong with you? Don’t
you understand that? Don’t you care?”

“Death is unavoidable. Death
creates life. Shame is not and does not,” said Brave Loyalty. “I have served
without shame and operated within the fields my entire life, and if I am to
die, I will do so in the same manner and within the fields. If I am to die,
that is as it is. The betrayal you seek shall not come from me.”

When the bolt hit him, the humans
gasped and a Host shrieked, but Brave Loyalty made no noise. His body convulsed
under the constant pummeling of the electrical discharge.

It let up for a moment, and he took
a few steps away from the screen—
he has to die running,
thought
Philippe. Another bolt of white electricity hit him. Brave Loyalty staggered
for a moment; his legs gave way and his gray body slowly collapsed. He fell
below the monitor’s field of vision.

Endless Courage stepped in front
the screen. He moved slowly and staggered slightly. He looked drained.

“Magic Man, the humans are right,”
he said. “Some of the Cyclopes are poison. I believe that this attack on the
Hosts was a very emphatically shameful action, and I opposed it, but I was
unable to express my will because those who are corrupt had superior strength.
Seeing your emphatically superior strength, I have executed this one to
demonstrate the sincerity of my desire to purge our people of shamefulness.
Please help me eliminate the emphatically shameful corruption from our body.”