Much later, when Hirrilow came to consider how Crinomu had committed the crime for which the Council Of Kalonia was called upon to judge him, he realised that the artilect had learnt all the skills he needed before he ever came to Kalonia in ages long past. Crinomu had been a chemist and a xenobiologist out in the Galactic Compact. He understood the controls built into the body the seers had grown and the processes required to change those controls. He had access to a private laboratory in the dome. Members of the Embassy to the Substrate were trusted with many privileges. Yet in that laboratory he must have made his plans and carried them out. Now he would have to suffer the consequences.

Orietta was pregnant. There could be no doubt about that now. Hirrilow frowned as he considered what had to be done. Under the strange circumstances that had brought the Rider woman to an Enclave, it was just about acceptable to stretch the Vow of Earth and allow an aritlect and a human to find solace with one another in the way that Crinomu and Orietta had been covertly encouraged to do. A relationship was one thing; a dangerous thing but not strictly forbidden provided it was kept to the Enclave. Procreation was something else altogether. That wasn't stretching the rules which the Guardians Of Earth had set for the Enclaves, that was definitely breaking them.

Hirrilow didn't need Gyrun to tell him that. It ought to have been impossible! The members of the Embassy to the Substrate were grown sterile. Since it had plainly happened, though, it was clearly NOT impossible and nor was it an accident. There could only be one culprit. Crinomu was in big trouble.

Hirrilow presided over the trial held in the sanctum with Gyrun taking the part of prosecutor. Admitting his crime in simple sentences, Crinomu gave no defence. Instead he offered an explanation and a plea for mercy. 

"You may think that you know Orietta but you do not know how she longed for a child and the true strength of that longing. On many occasions I told her that it could not be, but each time I told her, the reasons the Guardians forbade it seemed weaker and weaker. She did not berate me or any of you. You must understand that. But I sensed her growing sadness and I knew that all the good work that had been achieved would be as nothing if this one great need in her could not be met. It grew painful for me to see her melancholy when she thought I was not looking. I resolved to address the problem directly and I did. I am guilty then! Punish me if you must, but understand that Orietta did not urge me to my crime and bears no part of the blame."

Then Hirrilow understood the fateful line which Crinomu had crossed and that he had come to love the Rider woman in truth and not simply as it was expedient for the Council of Kalonia. This relationship between human and artilect was genuine and mutual. It had always been a danger. Of all the seers Hirrilow was the keenest observer of the sleeping giant History, that mighty foe of all the Guardian's Conclaves on Earth. In wrestling with History he had learnt of the origins of artilects and how from the beginning a love of the real and the human was built into them so that they were as men once would have thought, like artificial angels. With the strength of feelings permitted to the decanted a platonic sense of abstract love could change into something more painful and more specific. It had happened before and clearly it had happened here. Hirrilow felt sorry that they had not warned Crinomu in much stronger terms when he had volunteered to seduce Orietta. Yet perhaps it would have done no good. 

"It has to end now," Gyrun said, gesturing flamboyantly at the accused. "And this criminal may not take the punishment alone. The foetus must be aborted! If the Rider woman cannot live with this, the plan to make her happy here was always doomed."

There was a stir from the Council and Hirrilow tried to gauge the mood - much genuine outrage yet some sympathy. "I must tell you one more thing before you pronounce my fate," Crinomu declared. "Orietta's unborn baby is mine but only mine to this extent; when I mixed the genes that fathered the infant, I used the Utrian method and I pushed it to a new level. I combined the creative essence of every seer in the station. You are ALL fathers to this child, every last one of you!"

The Council deliberated for many hours. Crinomu had confounded them with his last revelation, subtly implicating every seer in his crime. Whilst all were shocked, given their nature many found it impossible not to feel at least a little latent twinge of paternal instinct. Crinomu had put them in a complete quandary. Although Gyrun continued to urge termination of the pregnancy, the longer the discussion continued the more the members of the old party softened their stance as though Kalonia could become a home of true rebel angels. There were even some who flirted openly with breaking the Vow Of Earth and the Conclave be damned. Hirrilow could not permit this, whatever his private sympathies. When all discussion ended, the judgement was his to make.

"For this crime which breaks the law by which Enclave and Rider are rightfully separated under the Vow of Earth, I sentence you to ten thousand years within the vurtiversal void, to wander the silence and to know the darkness as only one of our kind can know it", he declared in solemn tones to a grim smile of satisfaction from Gyrun. 

"Yet let it not be said that this Council is without mercy. The child may live, provided it is limited by the same rule as its mother and does not leave this Enclave. And further, I decree that as the child and mother are guiltless, so shall they not suffer for the sins of the agent who dares to call us all fathers. Crinomu shall remain within the Embassy to the Substrate for so long as mother or child still live, depriving neither of the emotional help which is their need and their due. And we seers shall be as fathers where we may and not begrudge the innocents their brief lives and shorter happiness. One day they shall die in their time, as all mortals must and Crinomu shall suffer the anguish of that death as all immortals must who dare to love them. We need not hasten to enact the punishment now. When both the humans are dead his term in the Embassy will end forever and then he shall return to the vurtiverse and serve his sentence!"

Crinomu dropped to his knees weeping and he thanked the mercy of the Council for this boon was much more than he had expected, even as the ultimate punishment was much worse. But though Gyrun bowed and acknowledged the Council in his heart he felt that the crucial issue had not been treated properly according to the strict laws of justice the Guardians had established. The seers had gone too far this time; well beyond the sins of prophesy for which the Enclave had been Cursed. It was said afterwards that the trial of Crinomu and the judgement of Hirrilow was the true beginning of the doom that would one day come to all Kalonia. For it was then that Gyrun lost faith in his leader and began secretly to work with his allies against him. And on this path there could be no going back.