Michael Diocullis ran one hand through his lank black hair and seated himself at the small conference table aboard the CHRISTOS. In the lounge view screen loomed the bulk of the SHEPPARD, a battleship in the service of New Vatica. Four times the size of the WRATH, the SHEPPARD was one of the largest ships in the modest New Vatica fleet, a fully configured battleship. Attending her were six cruiser-class support ships and a dozen courier class vessels much like the WRATH. Given the current state of affairs, Michael had decided that traveling with at least one battle ready group was in order. Events were reaching an action nexus, and he had rather not run into trouble unprepared. Monsignor Ernst Ammens, Arlyis and Colonel Colmer were already seated as was Joshua, who was contemplating the stark utilitarian outlines of the small fleet in the viewer.

Michael started the meeting."I decided, after talking to Joshua, it might be best to hold a face-to-face conference, given the rush of current events. I have, we all have I think, some decisions to make. You are aware a Terran task force has been mounted for a surgical strike at Gregory's facility on Vega?" The question was rhetorical, so everyone simply nodded.

Colonel Colmer - Sir Colmer preferred his non-military title unless he was approached as now, with military issues - cleared his throat. "I understand we won't be going in with 'em, maybe you could clear the air about that?"

"Well, we weren't invited to the party. We need to talk more about that a bit," said Michael.

Monsignor Ammens looked concerned, and said "I don't see why they needed to rush into this, without consulting us. Didn't they ask for your input about it?"

Dio shrugged. "I think the expedition is foolish, ill-advised, and premature."

"What," Ammens raised an eyebrow and asked, "did you tell them?"

Dio blinked at Ammens and repeated, "I told them it was foolish, ill advised, and premature."

Monsignor Ammens sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That was, statistically speaking, possibly not the most effective response, Dio."

"Yes, in fact it was. Their rush to respond is political, not tactical. I think this will become clear in a minute. For now, let's just take for granted that there are elements in the commercial and political arenas on earth capable of putting two and two together. "Perhaps it would be best to start by going over what we know. We know that Gregory discovered how to direct the, ah, Wavies. We have his probe and his cage as evidence.

"We now know the probe broadcast the location of the target and a recorded request from their Queen to remove and solidify oxygen and argon from the upper atmosphere to a way-point near the St Croix refinery, where it was picked up and transferred to the facility."

"Yes, yes, and the cage device," contributed Ammens. "The cage, when analyzed, is not merely a holding cell. It is a sort of operant conditioning box, a training device used with animal experiments of the most classical type. It basically has a slip field generator that creates a pinch in the continuum of space to confine the Wavie inside. The mechanism allows the 'pinch' to be increased or decreased in size, which mimics the effect of a gravity well insofar as the Wavies are concerned. We have no way of extrapolating how the entity was captured in it. Some kind of misdirection, I suspect. The Wavies' natural response to gravitonal irritation is to reposition matter away from themselves, since the most common source of gravitons," Ammens performed a palms-up gesture with his hands, "is structured matter. Simply put, they trained the Queen by increasing the pinch on her until she issued orders to move the right things away to the right places, and rewarded the correct responses by lessening the pinch. Since she is cognate, the process is combined with words and phrases they have decoded, along with such positional cues as they have been able to pin down. The shape of such Positive/negative reinforcement curves is well established-"Ammens, who like any university professor of worth, knew when he was losing his audience. He stopped, cleared his throat, and summed up more clearly.

"In any case, my feeling is that Gregory's grasp of the Wavie language is, eh, not profound, and mostly directed towards defining nouns that designate material types, amounts, and positions. They, if I may paraphrase an ancient aphorism, don't want to talk to the animals; they just want to use them. If he had spent the effort we have, our work with them would certainly have been simpler. Even in animal conditioning experiments it is easy to tell if your specimens have been worked with before, and what the focus of the training likely was."

Joshua looked puzzled."Doesn't the Queen understand she is being abused?"

"Well, I can talk about that," said Sister Seika. "The beings only exist in our continua in a limited way. Actually, what we see of them here amounts to a sensory package and their genitalia. They reproduce here. Our universe is their nesting ground. On their side of things, they may see themselves as all bunched together like a school of fish, for all we know, no matter how scattered they appear to us."

Sister Seika put her hands to her throat and thought for a moment before continuing. "You will excuse me if I don't word this right from a physics perspective. From their position they can dip into our continua at any three-dimensional point. They don't, I have been told, live in three dimensions. Also time, as it exists for us, is a malleable commodity for them, like clay. They work with it but don't necessarily experience it, at least not as we do. For us time is linear, we live through every second as it passes by, the relativistic effects of high speed travel not withstanding. For them," Sister Seika shrugged, fanning out her hands, "it ain't necessarily so.

"Gregory, he grabs 'em by the cajoles alright, but to them it's just one of those vicissitudes they normally wait out, or respond to by repositioning stuff. As far as they knew, the man was just trying to help. Hey, the man says, try moving this stuff from here to there. They try it, and what do you know? Things get better; at least for the queen.

"Mechanisms confuse them; they don't know a structure like a cage from an equal mass of scrap iron or whatnot. They are intelligent non tool-users. Think Dolphins here. They are, thanks to our team effort, just getting educated in linear, time based three dimensional communications. Which is why learning to talk with them has been such a fuss. It doesn't come down to just a matter of linguistics, as we have always understood the science. Besides, I doubt getting the Wavies to understand they were being scammed was a high priority for Gregory's bunch."

"I think we can get down to what I need to discuss now," said Michael. "When we caught Gregory with his hand in the cookie jar, he fled. Why would he do that? Because he couldn't stand, fight, and win. Then, he pops up on Vega III."

"There are two points to consider about this. First, although we found him on our own, he announced himself by filing all kinds of civil paperwork for Avon with the Federation. In effect he is inviting invasion. Second, the paperwork filed gave him the right to defend Vega.

"My question is: what makes him think he can defend an agribusiness cooperative like Vega? I would not want to rush in guns blazing until I knew what Gregory knows, or at least, had the Wavies on our side. This," Diocullis noted, "brings us back to politics. The Terrans don't know everything we know, but they have the basics. They had the probe, they saw the cage, and they know what was done. They know Gregory did it, at least circumstantially, and they trust our judgment on the matter since they know we had enough other intelligence to help them."

Michael held up his hand and started counting off points on his fingers.

"They know, at minimum, four things: First, that matter can be teleported. Second, Gregory has something to do with point one. Third, they know where he is. Fourth, the citizenry are angry, so they have public support on Earth for retribution.

"They have altered the goal of the assault," Diocullis continued. "They now focus on the science of it, mainly. They think Gregory has it, and they want it. The military leaders want it, the industrialists want it, they will kill for it, bargain for it, get down on their knees and grovel for it, come to that. So no, they don't want to share with us right now. Apprehending Gregory has become just a means to that end."

Diocullis leaned forward and looked at each person around the table. "I am a soldier of the church. My business is the military, but my purposes are moral and theological. My concern is - do we want anyone, any group, to have this power? Do we want Gregory or Earth politicians to have the power to grab anything from anyone, anywhere, instantly and in any quantity? In the sight of God, my friends, what should we do about that?"

Silence settled over the table. Joshua absorbed the issues Michael had presented but felt that moving them to resolution would only happen the way any mountain is moved, one spade-full at a time.

"I think the answers to this start with our coming to terms with the Wavies. We need to get them to aid us, or at least, not help Gregory. As far as we know for fact, they hold the keys to these new...processes. As for the larger questions, this isn't the first time something unnerving has reared its head over the horizon. The church has not profited in the past by standing on the tracks of progress, so to speak.

"Delaying the inevitable at best, only buys the time to prepare people to cope ethically with a brave new world. It is in this, to my mind, where the church is most relevant. For now, we need to focus on the task at hand."

Michael drew in on himself as he considered this, then nodded. "You were talking about your efforts when we spoke last. How are they coming along?"

"We are definitely making headway. We attempted to establish a dialog twice, and each went much better than the last. They still lack a basis for discriminating between us and our motives, which needs to be addressed before I can make progress. They have, understandably, no sense of the human condition. I set our linguist, Bishop Wile, to provide that basis. He has been working to explain to them something of our nature and philosophy."

Michael turned a blank stare. "You set that old fire drake Wile to teach them philosophy? How long has he been inflict... instructing them?"

Joshua looked startled. "Why, I just set him to it, just before I talked to you last. He can't have been at it very long. Arlyis, have you seen Wile?"

Arlyis shook her head. "He's had his meals sent in to him. Far as I know, he has been hard at the transmitter for the last thirty-six hours straight."

The sound of Monsignor Ammens and Sister Seika sucking air between their teeth filled the room. Michael, still poker faced, looked back to Joshua. "You haven't checked up on him in thirty-six hours?"

Joshua flustered. "It seems only yesterday. The Bishop hasn't called for me yet. I hadn't thought of it in terms of hours. It's philosophy, not some kind of radiation hazard. Was I wrong?"

Michael straightened up and sat back in his chair. "I think we should continue this discussion after Joshua has had a chance to gauge Bishop Wile's ...progress."

A sense of foreboding filled Joshua as he rose from the table. "Perhaps you are right. I should check on his progress. Please excuse me."

He turned calmly enough towards the hallway entrance, but set off at a pace that would do justice to a marathon champion. Curious, Sister Seika and Arlyis got up and padded after the fast-moving prelate.

Since the five monks bunked in only two rooms aboard the CHRISTOS, with both Arlyis and Sister Seika sharing cabin space, as did Street with Eldon, there were two unused rooms.

The transmitter had been setup in one of the two unoccupied rooms at the extreme end of the cabin corridor. As Joshua approached, he could hear the faint strains of a choral work. Hand on the cabin door latch, the words to the refrain became distinct, obviously Ode to Joy, one of Monsignor Logan's favorites, and one which the rest of the crew had become, unfortunately, over familiar with due to Logan's penchant for whistling.

Joshua opened the hatch, his mouth forming mild censure for Wile, who he assumed to be backing up his philosophic transmissions with music. His mouth continued to stay open for several seconds, as he took in the cabin's context.

The Bishop, and seated next to him, Father Logan, were both smiling and humming along to Beethoven's refrain, the bulk of which, in harmony, was emanating from six blurs that appeared to be lined up along the opposite end of the cabin.

Sister Seika and Arlyis crowded into the cabin pushing Joshua forward, which brought the frozen arch-prelate to his senses.

"JOYFUL, JOYFUL!"

Joshua took in the room, eyes flitting back and forth between the misty caroling blurs and the two seated, foot-tapping scholars. He stiffly motioned at Bishop Wile.

Father Logan brightened at Joshua's entrance. "Isn't it wonderful? They have the tenor and mezzo-soprano down pat!"

Bishop Wile rose, and waving vaguely in his direction, said, "My sons, this, this is Prelate Joshua. You remember Joshua?"

The chorus ended, and one of the blurs floated forward a foot, and in a flattened voice that sounded suspiciously like Bishop Wile's, said, "Content to speak with Joshua again, Bishop Wile."

Behind Joshua, Arlyis whooped an intake of breath, threw a hand over her mouth, and whisked out of the room, pulling Sister Seika with her. Joshua could hear them having a muted fit in the passageway.

"They can hear me?"

"Oh yes," said Wile.

"Good to speak to you again also, and so close at hand as well. May I talk to you a moment, Bishop Wile? - Outside?"

"Ah, yes of course."

Arlyis and Sister Seika were leaning against the wall at the halls other end, near the entrance to the lounge. Sister Seika was holding Miss Denis by her shoulder against the entrance way. Arlyis was shaking limply with the effort to contain herself.

Joshua swiftly approached her, glancing over his shoulder to be certain that Bishop Wile followed. Arlyis took her hand from her mouth and waved Joshua off.

"I am very," she gasped, "sorry, your Grace. It was just, hee-hee, the shock. I've seen them before, outside the ship of course, but just then, in the cabin, with the singing! I remembered what Sister Seika said about what parts of them were visible to us and, Oh! I had to leave. I am truly sorry." Arlyis broke into another paroxysm of barely suppressed laughter.

Joshua blushed, and then turned to face Bishop Wile tightly. "Could you perhaps bring me up to date on what has been happening here?"

"Ah yes, well. I started out by introducing the concepts of free will and responsibility, determinism, and discussing action and consequence models. We discussed logic and proof, the use of syllogisms, touched on dialectical materialism, humanism, solipsism, and my favorite, Thomism."

Bishop Wile stifled a yawn,blinked and continued. "They were very interested in Thomas Aquinas. It became clear they wanted more material on many topics. Father Logan came in at that point. We determined that it might give them more access if they could translate our communication forms to theirs directly rather than having to depend on our translation equipment. We defined some normal communication bands, and explained how we used sound in air to talk normally. We chose some typical radio wavelengths and encoding standards; then," Wile waved his hands in circles at both sides of his head, "sort of ran our translation base backwards to them, so to speak. They picked this up very quickly, so I began broadcasting digital text files on things -the Bible, of course, the collected works of Thomas Aquinas, general works as I had available. Logan explored the concept of music with them, and we broadcast a few of our examples. They decided to try sound-based communication and came aboard - Well, you can't make sounds in a vacuum, after all. They caught on to it quite quickly. They were trying their audible skills at choral music when you came in."

Joshua gave every impression of being about to say things that Bishop Wile did not want to hear, so he rushed on with his report.

"Although not blessed with hands, their mental skills are far more diverse than ours. They have no more problem tuning in on, and translating, all kinds of frequency-based information than we have with falling off a log. They can capture, analyze and remember vast quantities of information. Their memory is eidetic, you see."

"All this in thirty-six hours?" Joshua interrupted.

"I used to teach sophomore philosophy at the college, you know. A typical semester class minus test sessions and labs included about twenty-eight to thirty hours of lecture. Mind you, I couldn't just upload entire texts into student heads either. I know what you are thinking. I was very fair in my lessons. Only twenty-eight Wavies have applied for church membership. I am getting quite tired now, though. On the bright side, I think they are prepared to enter useful dialogs with you, at this point, and I think we can dispense with the translator."

Joshua pressed his lips stoically together and turned back to rejoin Father Logan.