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he was up for good.
    â€œHe wakes up for the first time since he was a drooling baby,” Cade said, “and you let the place get
raided?
”
    â€œXan was taken.” Mr. Niven didn’t seem too worked up about it. He recited the words with the same thin-soup nonthrill that he said everything else.
    Cade curled that last knuckle.
    â€œHumans will be much stronger if entanglement proves possible,” Mr. Niven said. “Not every species in the universe would like to see that. Project QE has enemies, Cadence. You have enemies.”
    She got the distinct feeling that Mr. Niven wasn’t going to help her fight those enemies. It made her want to get up in his wrinkle-scaped face. Tear his lab coat into a thousand white pieces.
    â€œSo I’m supposed to sit around waiting for some hostile nonhumans to swarm all over me?
Attack?
”
    Mr. Niven reached into his pocket. “No,” he said. “You are not supposed to fight. You are supposed to find Xan.”
    â€œWhat!”
    She rushed him now, and his hand flew out of his pocket, arms high and sudden-white as solar flares.
    â€œNo contact,” he said. “No contact. No contact.”
    He bleated it until she backed off.
    â€œYou weren’t here to tell me what I should be doing for the last fifteen years,” Cade said. “Isn’t this in your job description? You bred us and raised us and entangled us—aren’t you the ones who keep us safe?”
    â€œThe scientists of Firstbloom would like nothing more than to recover Xan and run Project QE to completion.”
    â€œYou’d like nothing more than to make me do it
for
you. Why should I do that?” Cade kicked a fallen chair, and the echo of the metal shivered up her leg. “Here’s another question, while we’re at it. Why wasn’t
I
recovered? I’ve been on this boiling excuse for a planet, and this whole time Xan was on Firstbloom . . .”
    â€œIt was never our intention to keep the entangled on Firstbloom.” Mr. Niven kept up the pace of the excuses, but his voice thinned out even more, like a tape at the end of its loop. “We needed to see how you would fare in a natural environment. We’ve kept a close watch all these years, Cadence. How do you think I located you?” He put his hand to the left of his undone buttons, over his heart. “You are our most treasured experiment. We would never let harm come to you.”
    The pride Cade had felt at being a good little entangled girl was gone, washed off on a stomach-sick tide.
    â€œYour most treasured experiment?”
    Cade pointed a harsh finger at Niven. “I don’t owe you.” Her voice trembled like a shadow on a hot day. “Find him yourself. And when you do, you can reunite us. No . . . better . . . you sweep me off this sand-nugget and get us both back to Firstbloom, or a planet where humans are cleared for work. You scientist types must have some intense clearance. I mean, look at what you’re getting away with. Running experiments on babies.”
    Cade picked up Cherry-Red. It was time to drain out. “You let me know when you find him,” she said. “When you do, bring him to me. I want to meet this Xan.”
    Mr. Niven stood firm in front of the door. It looked like he would take his encore, whether she applauded or not.
    â€œThat’s impossible,” he said with one of his too-rare blinks. “The scientists cannot find Xan. The scientists were killed in the raid.”
    â€œYou’re standing right in front of me. So at least one of you made it.”
    â€œNo,” Mr. Niven said. “I was not so fortunate.”
    The wrinkles on his face trembled and then—vanished. Mr. Niven was thin, then thinner, transparent. He flickered, same as the light from a distant star. Then he snuffed out.

 
    Â 
    CHAPTER 3
    PRINCIPLE OF LOCALITY: A once universal notion that an object can be