Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture, #2)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

And he could hear a murmur of translation, an artificial female voice turning his jittery Colvul language into something that hopefully sounded a whole lot more reassuring.

He’d like to say, ‘Take me back, I’m not going to be much use,’ but this was exactly the use he was supposed to be. He was the canary in the mine, and you always brought the canary. Nobody cared that the canary didn’t much enjoy its job and would maybe like to be doing something else.

Idris was ransacking his brain for some rejoinder that would get under the man’s skin whilst still seeming perfectly polite.