“I told you the truth,” said Wang-mu. “I come from Path. And Peter’s origins, so far as they can be traced to any planet, are on Earth. But the vehicle we came in — that originated on Lusitania.”
Peter’s face went white. She knew he was thinking, Why not just noose ourselves up and hand them the loose ends of the rope? But Wang-mu had to use her own judgment, and in her judgment they were in no danger from Grace Drinker or her family. Indeed, if she meant to turn them in to the authorities, wouldn’t she already have done so?
Grace looked Wang-mu in the eyes and said nothing for a long while. Then: “Good fish, isn’t it?”
“I wondered what the glaze was. Is there sugar in it?”
“Honey and a couple of herbs and actually some pig fat. I hope you aren’t some rare combination of Chinese and Jew or Muslim, because if you are you’re now ritually unclean and I would feel really bad about that, it’s so much trouble getting purified again, or so I’m told, it certainly is in our culture.”
Peter, heartened now by Grace’s lack of concern with their miraculous spaceship, tried to get them back on the subject. “So you’ll let us see Malu?”
“Malu decides who sees Malu, and he says you’re the ones who’ll decide, but that’s just him being enigmatic.”
“Gnomic,” said Wang-mu. Peter winced.
“Not really, not in the sense of being obscure. Malu means to be perfectly clear and for him spiritual things aren’t mystical at all, they’re just a part of life. I myself have never actually walked with the dead or heard the heroes sing their own songs or had a vision of the creation, but I have no doubt that Malu has.”
“I thought you were a scholar,” said Peter.
“If you want to talk to the scholar Grace Drinker,” she said, “read my papers and take a class. I thought you wanted to talk to me.”
“We do,” said Wang-mu quickly. “Peter’s in a hurry. We have several deadlines.”
“The Lusitania Fleet, now, I imagine that’s one of them. But not quite so urgent as another. The computer shut-down that’s been ordered.
Peter stiffened. “The order has been given?”
“Oh, it was given weeks ago,” said Grace, looking puzzled. Then: “Oh, you poor dear, I don’t mean the actual go-ahead. I mean the order telling us how to prepare. You surely knew about that one.”
Peter nodded and relaxed, glum again.
“I think you want to talk to Malu before the ansible connections are shut down. Though why would that matter?” she said, thinking aloud. “After all, if you can travel faster than light, you could simply go and deliver your message yourself. Unless –”
Her son offered a suggestion: “They have to deliver their message to a lot of different worlds.”
“Or a lot of different gods!” cried his father, who then laughed uproariously at what certainly seemed to Wang-mu to be a feeble joke.
“Or,” said the daughter, who was now lying down beside the table, occasionally belching as she let the enormous dinner digest. “Or, they need the ansible connections in order to do their fast travel trick.”
“Or,” said Grace, looking at Peter, who had instinctively moved his hand to touch the jewel in his ear, “you’re connected to the very virus that we’re shutting down all the computers in order to eliminate, and that has something to do with your faster-than-light travel.”
“It’s not a virus,” said Wang-mu. “It’s a person. A living entity. And you’re going to help Congress kill her, even though she’s the only one of her kind and she’s never harmed anybody.”
“It makes them nervous when something — or, if you prefer, somebody — makes their fleet disappear.”
“It’s still there,” said Wang-mu.
“Let’s not fight,” said Grace. “Let’s just say that now that I’ve found you willing to tell the truth, perhaps it will be worthwhile for Malu to take the time to let you hear it.”
“He has the truth?” asked Peter.
“No,” said Grace, “but he knows where it’s kept and he can get a glimpse now and then and tell us what he saw. I think that’s still pretty good.”