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Venn glanced at Gupta, hanging miserably in air. "How can he be uncomfortable? He's in free fall."

The adjudicator pursed his lips. "Transient Gupta, aside from your restraints, are you in any special discomfort at this time? Do you require food, drink, or downsider sanitary facilities?"

Gupta jerked his wrists against their soft bonds, and shrugged. "Naw. Well, yes. My gills are getting dry. If you're not gonna let me loose, I need somebody to spray them. The stuff's in my bag."

"This?" The female quaddie patroller held out what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary plastic sprayer, of the sort that Miles had seen Ekaterin use to mist some of her plants. She wriggled it, and it gurgled.

"What's in it?" asked Venn suspiciously.

"Water, mostly. And a bit of glycerin," said Gupta.

"Go ahead and check it," said Venn aside to his patroller. She nodded and floated out; Gupta watched her depart with some mistrust, but no particular alarm.

"Transient Gupta, it appears you're going to be our guest for a while," said Venn. "If we remove your restraints, are you going to give us any trouble, or are you going to behave yourself?"

Gupta was silent a moment, then vented an exhausted sigh. "I'll behave. Much good it'll do me either way."

A patroller floated forward and unshackled the prisoner's wrists and ankles. Only Roic seemed less than pleased with this unnecessary courtesy, tensing with a hand on a wall grip and one foot planted to a bit of bulkhead not occupied by equipment, ready to launch himself forward. But Gupta only chafed his wrists and bent to rub his ankles, and looked grudgingly grateful.

The patroller returned with the bottle, handing it to her chief. "The lab's chemical sniffer says it's inert. Should be safe," she reported.

"Very well." Venn pitched the bottle to Gupta, who despite his odd long hands caught it readily, with little downsider clumsiness, a fact Miles was sure the quaddie noted.

"Um." Gupta gave the crowd of onlookers a slightly embarrassed glance, and hitched up his loose poncho. He stretched and inhaled, and the ribs on his big barrel chest drew apart; flaps of skin parted to reveal red slashes. The substance beneath seemed spongy, rippling in the misting like densely laid feathers.

God almighty. He really does have gills under there. Presumably, the bellows-like movement of the chest helped pump water through, when the amphibian was immersed. Dual systems. So did he hold his breath, or did his lungs shut down involuntarily? By what mechanism was his blood circulation switched from one oxygenating interface to the other? Gupta pumped the bottle and sprayed mist into the red slits, handing it back and forth from right side to left, and seemed to draw some comfort thereby. He sighed, and the slits closed back down, his chest appearing merely ridged and scarred. He smoothed the drifting poncho back into place.

"Where are you from?" Miles couldn't help asking.

Gupta grew surly again. "Guess."

"Well, Jackson's Whole, by the weight of the evidence, but which House made you? Ryoval, Bharaputra, another? And were you a one-off, or part of a set? First-generation gengineered, or from a self-reproducing line of, of water people?"

Gupta's eyes widened in surprise. "You know Jackson's Whole?"

"Let's say, I've had several painfully educational visits there."

The surprise became edged with faint respect, and a certain lonely eagerness. "House Dyan made me. I was part of a set, once—we were an underwater ballet troupe."

Garnet Five blurted in unflattering astonishment, "You were a dancer?"

The prisoner hunched his shoulders. "No. They made me to be submersible stage crew. But House Dyan suffered a hostile takeover by House Ryoval—just a few years before Baron Ryoval was assassinated, pity that didn't happen sooner. Ryoval broke up the troupe for other, um, tasks, and decided he had no alternate use for me, so I was out of a job and out of protection. Could have been worse. He mighta kept me. I drifted around and took what tech jobs I could get. One thing led to another."

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