Kanmi shrugged. He didn't seem particularly bothered by having his question brushed off.

"All right," he said, then gestured at Solomon's gun. "It'll be easier to talk if you put that thing away."

Solomon hesitated. He knew it didn't exactly set a great tone for discussion, but after the day that he'd had he just felt more comfortable with a weapon in hand.

"You see the dove," Kanmi asked, "right?"

Solomon took a quick look around his field of vision. Right there, above the timer that was just ticking past twenty minutes, there was a little icon of a dove. His focus on it prompted a new window to appear.

SURRENDER NEGOTIATIONS

Violence is absolutely prohibited!

Once an agreement has been reached, enter it into the System interface.

Failure to reach an agreement will see KANMI CRITONIA banished from EARTH for five years.

Solomon read it twice before dismissing the box. It didn't take much looking to spot the stone plinth and accompanying ball of light that had appeared in the center of the arena. He shrugged.

"So we either strike a deal or you get kicked off the planet?" Solomon said. It was a relief to know that the default action was something he'd be happy with. That surrender actually meant something and wasn't just a trick.

Kanmi nodded. "That's about the size of it."

"Fine," Solomon said, holstering his pistol. "Lose the helmet. Let me look you in the eye."

Kanmi nodded, then reached up and fiddled with something at the neck of his armor. A moment later he pulled the helmet off and brought it down to his side. The helmet then disappeared, no doubt into his inventory. Solomon barely noticed, focused as he was on the first alien face he'd ever seen.

He almost looked human. He looked to be in his early twenties, maybe a year or two younger than Solomon. The only thing about him that would have drawn a second look had they met in ordinary circumstances were his piercing yellow eyes. A second look brought Solomon's attention to the small pair of ridges set between his eyebrows. The overall effect together with his dark swept back hair was to give Kanmi a sort of avian air about him.

Kanmi raised an eyebrow as Solomon studied him in silence. "What?"

Solomon shook his head. "You almost look human."

"The System won't be letting the real exotic types through for a while," Kanmi said. "We're even a few weeks away from anybody else like me showing up, aren't we? Never thought I'd see Second Grace with my own eyes."

The system's appearance had raised a lot of questions in Solomon's mind. Some of those had been answered with experience, but most of those answers just raised more questions. Mort had given him a few dribs and drabs of information, but mostly just left him wanting more. Now Solomon had somebody in front of him who could give him some real answers. If only he could trust a word out of his mouth.

"Why...." Solomon said, trailing off as he realized that his most pressing question didn't have anything to do with the system. "Why are you here?"

"You guys have that proverb," Kanmi said, before he began counting off on his fingers. "First you get the power, then you get the money. Then you get the women."

"That's not," Solomon began, catching himself before he could go off on a tangent, "all right, fine."

"I got four older brothers, you know," Kanmi said. "I scraped together enough for a ticket and my cousin made sure my number came up."

Solomon shook his head. He'd had it in his mind that an alien invasion would be about wiping out humanity and grabbing the planet for themselves. The idea that the whole thing was some kind of entrepreneurial banditry was almost a relief.

Although, on reflection, just because the invaders were being driven by the profit motive didn't mean they were harmless. Back in Earth's history, the conquistadors had always been outnumbered and focused on the bottom line, but they had managed to do a lot of damage just the same.

He narrowed his eyes as he studied the alien across from him. Kanmi didn't look like somebody who had just had his dreams fall apart.

"You seem pretty chipper," Solomon said. "Considering you went to all that trouble and then lost."

"Yeah, well, next best thing to being a superstar myself," Kanmi said, "is riding on a superstar's coattails."

Solomon blinked. "A superstar?"

"You blitzed through the arena on your first day," Kanmi replied, "and you're packing that hand cannon already. Trust me, that's superstar material."

Well, if he wanted to stand there and praise Solomon, Solomon didn't see a reason to argue. That didn't mean he was going to lose sight of the bottom line, though.

"Why should I want you around?"

"You need someone in your corner who knows the game. And the players," Kanmi said. "Charging straight forward and killing whatever's in your way won't keep working forever."

Solomon frowned. Part of him wanted to argue back. He hadn't just been charging straight forward, after all. Still, he took Kanmi's point. The mess the system was making of Earth was just too big. It was soon going to reach the point where he couldn't solve all his problems with violence.

Of course, Solomon had his own experience with non-violent problem solving to draw on. While it might be nice to have an alien expert around to answer his questions, he wasn't too excited to take advice from somebody who had come to Earth bent on carving out his own little kingdom.

Kanmi's open devotion to the profit motive was great, as long as sticking with Solomon was the most profitable thing to do. If the time came when he could make more money somewhere else, what then? Solomon could easily end up having to spend more effort protecting himself from betrayal than he would save by having Kanmi's help.

"What good is advice if I can't trust you?"

"Haven't you noticed by now?" Kanmi asked with a smile. "If you have a problem, the System has a solution. Go take a look at the options on that thing."

He gestured at the stone plinth and its ball of light.

Solomon hesitated, then decided to check it out. This was the kind of situation where he felt like he was about to get taken advantage of by a contract lawyer. On the bright side, he was probably doing better than most lawyers were at the moment.