•CHAPTERONE

• CHAPTER ONE

PARTNERSHIP

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events

portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance

to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY10471

ISBN: 0-671-72109-7

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, March 1992

Fourth printing, December 1994

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY10020

Printed in the United States of America

To ordinary human ears the slight crackle of the

speaker being activated would have been almost in-

audible. To Nancia, all her sensors fine-tuned for this

signal, it sounded like a trumpet call Newly graduated

and commissioned, ready for service — and apprehen-

sive that she would not be able to live up to her family's

high Service traditions—she'd had little to do but wait.

He's coming aboaifl now, she thought in the split second

of waiting for the incoming call And then, as the unmis-

takable gravelly voice of CenCom's third-shift operator

rasped across her sensors, disappointment flooded her

synapses and left her dull and heavy on the launching

pad. She'd been so sure that Daddy would find time to

visit her, even if he hadn't been able to attend the formal

graduation of her class from Laboratory Schools.

"XN-935, how soon can you be ready to lift?"

"I completed my test flight patterns yesterday,"

Nancia replied. She was careful to keep her voice level,

monitoring each output band to make sure that no

hint of her disappointment showed in the upper

frequencies. CenCom could perfectly well have com-

municated with her directly, via the electronic network

that linked Nancia's ship computers with all other

computers in this subspace — and via the surgically

installed synaptic connectors that linked Nancia's

physical body, safe behind its titanium shell, with the

ship's computer — but it was a point of etiquette

among most of the operators to address brainships just

as they would any other human being. It would have

been rude to send only electronic instructions, as if the

2 Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

brainships were no more human than the Al-control-

led drones carrying the bulk of Central Worlds'

regular traffic.

Or so the operators claimed. Nancia privately

thought that their insistence on voice-controlled traffic

was merely a way to avoid the embarrassing com-

parison between their sense-limited communication

system and a brainship's capabilities of multi-channel

communication and instantaneous response.

In any case, it was equally a point of pride among

shellpersons to demonstrate the control over their

"voices" and all other external comm devices that Helva

had shown to be possible, nearly two hundred years ago.

Nancia knew herself to lack the fine sense of musical

timing and emphasis that had made Helva famous

throughout the galaxy as "The Ship Who Sang," but this

much, at least, she could do; she could conceal her disap-

pointment at hearing CenCom instead of a direct

transmission from Daddy to congratulate her on her

commissioning, and she could maintain a perfectly

professional facade throughout the ensuing discussion

of supplies and loading and singularity points.

"Il?s a short flight," CenCom told her, and then paused

for a moment "Short for you, that is. By normal FTL drive,

Nyota ya Jaha is at the far end of the galaxy. Fortunately,

there's a singularity point a week from Central that wifl flip

you intolocal space."

"I do have full access to my charts of known decom-

position spaces," Nancia reminded CenCom, allowing

a tinge of impatience to color her voice.

"Yes, and you can read them in simulated 4-D, can't

you, you lucky stiff!" CenCom's voice showed only

cheerful resignation at the limitations of a body that

forced him to page through bulky books of graphs and

charts to verify the mapping Nancia had already

created as an internal display: a sequence of three-

dimensional spaces collapsing and contorting about

PARTNERSHIP 3

the singularity point where local subspace could be

defined as intersecting with the subspace sector of

Nyota ya Jaha. At that point Nancia would be able to

create a rapid physical decomposition and restructur-

ing of the local spaces, projecting herself and her

passengers from one subspace to the other. Decom-

position space theory allowed brainships like Nancia,

or a very few expensive AI drones equipped with

metachip processors, to condense the major part of a

long journey into the few seconds they spent in Sin-

gularity. Less fortunate ships, lacking the metachips or

dependent upon the slow responses of a human pilot

who lacked Nancia's direct synaptic connections to the

computer, still had to go through long weeks or even

months of conventional FTL travel to cover the same

distance; the massive parallel computations required

in Singularity were difficult even for a brainship and

impossible for most conventional ships.

"Tell me about the passengers," Nancia requested.

When they came aboard, presumably one of her pas-

sengers would have the datahedron from Central

specifying her destination and instructions, but who

knew how much longer she would have to wait before

the passengers boarded? She hadn't even been invited

to choose a brawn yet; that would surely take a day or

two. Besides, picking CenCom's brains for informa-

tion on her assignment was better than waiting in

tense expectation of her family's visit They would cer-

tainly come to see her off . . . wouldn't they? All

through her schooling she had received regular visits

from one family member or another — mostly from

her fether, who made a point of how much time he was

taking from his busy schedule to visit her. But Jinevra

and Flix, her sister and brother, had come too, now

and then; Jinevra less often, as college and her new

career in Planetary Aid administration took up more

and more of her time.

4 Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

None of them had attended Nantia's formal gradua-

tion, though; no one from the entire, far-flung, wealthy

House of Perez y De Gras had been there to hear the

lengthy list ofhonors and awards and prizes she'd gained

in the final, grading year ofher training as a brainship.

/(wasn't enough, Nancia thought. / was only third in my

class. If rd placed first, iffd won the Daleth Prize.... No

good would come of brooding over the past She knew

that Jinevra and Flix had grown up and had their own

lives to lead, that Daddy's crowded schedule of busi-

ness and diplomatic meetings didn't leave him much

time for minor matters like school events. It really

wasn't important that he hadn't come to see her

graduate. He would surely make time for a personal

visit before liftoff; that was what really counted. And

when he did come, he should find her happy and busy

and engaged in the work for which she had trained.

"About the passengers?" she reminded CenCom.

"Oh, you probably know more about them than I do,"

the CenCom operator said with a laugh. "Tney're more

your sort of people than mine. High Families," he

clarified. "New graduates, I gather, off to their first jobs."

That was nice, anyway. Nancia had been feeling just a

bit apprehensive at the thought of having to deal with

some experienced, high-ranking diplomatic or military

passengers on her first flight It would be pleasant to

carry a group of young people just like her — well, not

just like her, Nancia corrected with a trace of internal

amusement. They would be a few years older, maybe

nineteen or twenty to her sixteen; everybody knew that

softpersons suffered from so many hormonal changes

and sensory distractions that their schooling took several

years longer to complete. And they would be softpersons,

with limited sensory and processing capability. Still,

they'd all be heading off to start their careers together;

that was a significant bond.

She absently recorded CenCom's continuing in-

PARTNERSHIP 5

strucu'ons while she mused on the pleasant trip ahead.

"Nyota ya Jaha's a long way off by FTL," he told her

unnecessarily. "I expect somebody pulled some strings

to get them a Courier Service ship. But it happens to

be convenient for us too, being in die same subspace as

Vega, so that's all right"

Nancia vaguely remembered something about Vega

subspace in die news. Computer malfunctions... why

would that make the newsbeams? There must have

been something important about it, but she'd received

only the first bits of the newsbyte before a teacher can-

celed the beam, saying something severe about the

inadvisability of listening to upsetting newsbytes and

the danger of getting the younger shellpeople upset

over nothing. Oh, well, Nancia thought, now that she

was her own ship she could scan the beams for herself

and pick up whatever it had been about Vega later. For

now, she was more interested in finding out what Cen-

Com knew about her newly assigned passengers.

"Overton-Glaxely, del Parma y Polo, Armontillado-

Perez y Medoc, de Gras-Waldheim, Hezra-Fong,"

CenCom read off the list of illustrious High Family

names. "See what I mean?"

"Umm, yes," Nancia said. "We're a cadet branch of

Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and the de Gras-

Waldheims come in somewhere on my mother's side.

But you forget, CenCom, I didn't exactly grow up in

those circles myself."

"Yes, well, your visitor will probably be able to give

you all the latest gossip," CenCom said cheerfully.

"Visitor!" Of course he came to see me off. I never doubted

it for an instant.

"Request just came in while I was looking up the

passenger list. Sorry, I forgot to route it to you. Name

of Perez y de Gras. Being a family member, they told

him to go right on out to the field. He'll be at the

launching pad in a minute."

6 Arme McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

Nancia activated her outside sensors and realized

that it was almost night... not that the darkness made

any difference Co her, but her infrared sensors picked

up only the outline of a human form approaching the

ship; she couldn't see Daddy's face at all. And it would

be rude to turn on a spotlight. Oh, well, he'd be there

any minute. She opened her lower doors in silent

welcome.

CenCom's voice was an irritation now, not a wel-

come distraction. "XN? I asked if you can lift off within

two hours. Your provision list is more than adequate

for a short voyage, and these pampered brats are

kvetching about having to wait around on base."

"Two hours?" Nancia repeated. That wouldn't give

her much time for a visit — well, be realistic; it was

probably more time than Daddy could spare. But

there were other problems with leaving so soon. "Are

you out of your mind? I haven't even picked a brawn

yet!" She intended to get to know the available brawns

over the next few days before choosing a partner. "Hie

selection process was not something to be rushed

through, and she certainly didn't want to waste the

precious minutes of Daddy's visit choosing a brawn!

"Don't you young ships ever catch the newsbeams? I

told you Vega. Remember what happened to the CR-

899? Her brawn's stranded on his home planet —

Vega 3.3."

"What a dreary way to name their planets," Nancia

commented. "Can't they think of any nice names?"

"Vegans are ... very logical," CenCom said. "The

original group of settlers were, anyway — the ones

who went out by slowship, before FTL. I gather the

culture evolved to an extremely rigid form during the

generations born on shipboard. They don't make a lot

of allowances for human frailty, litde things like names

being easier to remember than strings of numbers."

"Makes no difference to me" Nancia said smugly.

PARTNERSHIP 7

Her memory banks could encode and store any form

of information she needed.

"You should get along just great with the Vegans,"

CenCom told her. "Anyway, this brawn is out in Vegan

subspace, no ship, nothing in the vicinity but a couple

of old FTL drones. OG Shipping ought to be able to

divert their metachip drone from Nyota, but as usual,

we can't contact the manager. So it's either waste

months of Caleb's service term by sending him home

FTL, or provide our own transport. You're it. You can

drop off your friends and relations on the planets

around Nyota ya Jaha — I'll transmit a databurst of

your orders after we get through chatting — and then

proceed to Vega 3.3 to pick up your first brawn. Very

neat organization. Psych records suggest the two of

you ought to make a great team."

"Oh, they do, do they?" said Nancia. She had her own

opinion of the Psych branch of Central and the intrusive

tests and questionnaires with which they bombarded

shellpersons, and she had no intention of being hustled

by Central into forgoing her right to choose a brawn just

because some shelltapper in a white coat thought they

knew how to pick a man for her—and because she was a

convenient free ride for a brawn who'd already lost one

ship. Nancia was about to turn up her beam to CenCom

and favor the operator with a few choice words on the

subject when she felt her visitor stepping aboard. Well,

there'd be time for that argument later; she could think

about it on the way out. Agreeing to transport the CR-

899's stranded brawn back to Central wouldn't commit

her to a permanent partnership, and when she returned

from this voyage she'd have plenty of time to choose her

next brawn.., and to tell Psych what they could do with

their personality profiles.

Meanwhile, her visitor had ignored the open lift doors

in favor of climbing the stairs to the central cabin, taking

the last steps two at a time; Daddy made a point of keep-

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

ing in shape. Nancia activated her stairway sensors and

speakers simultaneously.

"Daddy, how nice of you — "

But the visitor was Flix, not Daddy. At least, from

what Nancia could see of his face behind the enor-

mous basket of flowers and fruit, she assumed it was

her little brother: spiky red hair in an old-fashioned

punk crown, one long peacock's feather dangling

from the right earlobe, fingertips callused from hours

of synthcom play. It was her little brother, all right.

"Flix," She could keep her vocal registers level, to

conceal her disappointment; but she couldn't for the

life of her think of any words to add.

" 'S'okay," Flix said, his voice coming slightly muf-

fled from the stack of Calixtan orchids and orange

Juba apfruits that threatened to topple over him from

the insecurely stacked basket. Nancia slid out a tray

from a waist-level cabinet just in time. Flix staggered

into the tray, dropped the basket on it and sat back-

wards on the floor with a look of mild surprise. Two

glowing orange apfruits fell off the towering display

and rolled towards Nancia's command console, reveal-

ing a bottle of Sparkling Hereot in the center of the

basket. "Know you'd rather have Daddy. Or Jinevra,

Somebody worthy of the honor you do House Perez y

de Gras, You deserve 'em, too," he added after a

sprawling dive to retrieve the Juba apfruits. "Deserve

a brass marching band and a red carpet instead of this

thing." He brushed one hand across the soft nap of the

sand-colored, standard-issue synthorug with which

Nancia's internal living areas were carpeted.

"You — you really think I didn't disgrace the

House?" Nancia asked. She had been wondering if that

was why nobody had come to see her graduated and

commissioned. Daddy had always spoken of her

graduation with the words, "When you win the

Daleth...." And she hadn't done that.

PARTNERSHIP 9

Flix turned his head toward the titanium column

and gave Nancia the same disbelieving, slightly con-

temptuous look he'd bestowed on the beige

synthorug. "Stupid," he mourned. "Only member of

the family I can stand to talk to, our Nancia; only one

who doesn't give me hours of grief about giving up my

synthcomposing for a Real Career, and it turns out she

has worse problems than a few little malfunctioning

organs. If you hadn't been popped into your shell at

birth I'd suspect you were dropped on your head as a

baby. Of course you've done the House proud, Nancia,

what do you think? Third in academics and first in

Decom Theory and taking so many special awards

they had to restructure the graduation ceremony to

make time for your presentations — "

"How did you know about that?" Nancia

interrupted.

Flix looked away from the titanium column. Of course

she could still see his expression perfectly well from her

floor-level sensors, but it would have been rude to

remind him of that He looked embarrassed enough as it

was. "Had a copy of the program," he mumbled. "Meant

to show up, as long as I happened to be on Central

anyway, but... well, I met these two girls when I was

doing a synthcom gig in the Pleasure Palace, and they

taught me how to mix Rigellian stemjuice with Benedic-

tine to make this wonderful fizzy drink, and ... well,

anyway, I didn't wake up until the graduation ceremony

was about over."

He scowled at the carpet for a moment longer, then

brightened up. "Another thing I like about you, Nan-

cia, you're the only relative I've got who won't burst

into a long diatribe about how I could lower myself by

playing synthcom at the Pleasure Palace. Of course, I

don't suppose you have any idea what those places are

like. Still, neither does Great Aunt Mendocia, and that

doesn't stop her from sounding off."

• Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

He got to his feet and began pulling things out of

the basket. "So ... since I was unavoidably detained at

the Pleasure Palace ... and Jinevra's off at the tail end

of nowhere investigating a Planetary Aid fraud, and

Daddy's in a meeting, I thought I'd just drop by while

you were waiting for assignment and we'd have a little

private party."

"What meeting?" Nancia asked before she could

stop herself. "Where?"

Flix looked up from the basket, surprised. "Huh?"

"You said our father was in a meeting."

"Yes, well, isn't he always? No, I don't know

where; it's just a logical deduction. You know how

full his dayplanner program is. Y'know, I often

wondered," Flix rattled on as he unpacked the bas-

ket, "just how the three of us got born. Well,

conceived, anyway. Do you suppose he sent Mother

a memo? Please come by my office this morning. Can work

you in between ten and ten-fifteen. Bring sheets and pil-

low" He reached the bottom of the basket and

pulled out two scratched and faded datahedra.

"There! I know you think I'm a selfish bastard,

bringing fruit and champagne to somebody who

doesn't eat or drink, but actually I have covered all

contingencies. These are my latest synthcomposi-

tions — here, I'll drop them in your reader.

Background music for the party, and you can play

them on the trip to entertain yourself.

As the jangling sounds of Flix's latest experimental

composition rang out in the cabin, he held up a third

datahedron and smiled. Unlike the first two well-worn

hedra, this was a glittering shape with a slick commer-

cial laser-cut finish that spattered rainbows of light

across the cabin. "And here — "

"Let me guess," Nancia interrupted. "You've finally

found somebody to make a commercial cut of your

synthcompositions."

Flix's smile dimmed perceptibly. "Well, no. Not ex-

actly. Although," he said, brightening, "I do know this

girl who knows a chap who used to date a girl who did

temporary office work for the second VP of Sound

Studios, so there are distinct possibilities in the offing.

But this is something quite different. This," he said,

sounding almost reverent, "is the new, improved, vast*

ly more sophisticated version of SPACED OUT, not due

for public release until the middle of next month, and

I won't tell you what I had to do to get it,"

Nancia waited for him to tell her what the thing was

about, but Flix paused and beamed as if he was expect-

ing some immediate reaction from her.

"Well?" he said after a few seconds. His spiky red

hair began to droop around the edges.

"I'm sorry," Nancia confessed, "but I have no idea

what you're talking about."

Flix shook his head mournfully. "Never heard of

SPACED OUT? What do they teach them at these

academies? No, no, don't tell me." He held up one

hand in protest. "I know. Decomposition theory and

subspace astrogation and metachip design and a lot of

other things that make my head hurt But 1 do think

they could have let you have a little time off to play

games."

"We did play," Nancia told him. "It was in the

schedule. Two thirty-minute periods daily of free play

to improve synapse/tool coordination and gross

propulsion skiUs. Why, I used to love playing Stall and

PowerSeek when I was in my baby shell!"

Flix shook his head again. "All very improving, I'm

sure. Well, this game" — he grinned—"is absolutely, one

hundred per cent guaranteed not to improve your mind.

In feet, Jinevra claims playing SPACED OUT can cause

irreversible brain damage!"

"It can?" Nancia slid her reader slots shut with a

click as Flix approached. "Look, Flix, I'm not sure — "

Arme McCaffrey £s? Margaret Ball

"Consider our big sister," Flix said with his sunniest

smile. "Go ahead, just call up an image from her last visit

Don't you think anything she disapproves of must be

worth a try?"

Nanria projected a lifesize Jinevra on the screen that

filled the center wall of the cabin. Her sister might

have been standing beside Flix. Trim and perfect as

ever, from the hem of her navy blue Planetary Techni-

cal Aid uniform to the smooth dark hair that fell

perfectly straight to just the regulation 1/4 inch dis-

tance from her starched white collar, she was the

pattern of reproach to every disorderly element in the

universe. Nancia couldn't remember just what had

caused the disapproving glint in Jinevra's eyes or the

tight, pinched look at the corners of her mouth at the

moment this image had been stored, but in this projec-

tion she seemed to be glaring right at Flix. One of the

red spikes of his retro-punk hair crown wilted under

the withering gaze of the projection.

Nancia felt sorry for him. Jinevra had never

bothered to conceal her opinion that their little

brother was a wastrel and a disgrace to the family.

Daddy, she suspected, felt much the same way. The

weight of the Perez y de Gras clan's disapproval would

have been crushing to her. How could she join them in

condemning Flix? She'd heard stories enough about

his wild tricks — there were times when Jinevra and

Daddy seemed to have nothing else to discuss on their

brief visits — but to her he was still the tousle-headed

toddler who'd hugged her titanium shell every time he

came for a visit, who'd waved and yelled as enthusiasti-

cally as if she were a real flesh-and-blood sister who

could cuddle him on her lap, who'd screamed with

glee when she carried him around the school track for

a quick round of PowerSeek with her classmates.

And what harm could it do her to try the stupid game?

"You'd like it, Nancia," Flix said hopefully as the

PARTNERSHIP 13

projected image of Jinevra faded into a blank screen.

"Really. It's the best version SpaceGamers has ever

• released. It's got sixty-four levels of hidden tunnels,

and simulated Singularity space, and holodwarfs...."

"Holodwarfs?"

'Just look." Flix dropped the glittering datahedron

into the nearest reader slit — fanny, Nancia couldn't

remember having decided to open that reader, but she

must have done so. There was a soft whirring noise as

the contents of the datahedron were read into com-

puter memory, then Flix said, "Level 6, holo!" and a

red-bearded dwarf appeared in the middle of the

cabin, brandishing a curved broadsword whose hilt

glittered with a shower of refracted colored light. Flix

dropped to one knee as the dwarf's broadsword

slashed through the space where his head had been,

rolled towards a control panel and shouted, "Space

Ten laser armor!"

A shape of light beams bent into impossible curved

paths around him. The dwarf bent and thrust his

sword through a gap between the rapidly weaving

lights —

And vanished.

So did the lights.

Flix got to his feet, aggrieved. "You cut the game offl

And I was winning!"

"I, umm, I don't think I'm quite ready for the holo-

dwarfs," Nancia apologized. "I have this automatic

reaction to seeing people I love attacked."

Flix nodded. "Sorry. I guess we'll have to bring you

up to speed slowly. Want to start at Level 1, no holos?"

"That sounds... better."

And it was better. In feet, after a few rounds, Nancia

found herself actually enjoying the silly game, al-

though she still had trouble making sense of the rules.

"What am I supposed to do with the Laser Staff?"

"It helps you walk uphill through the gravity well."

Anne McCaffrey £*f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

"That's dumb. Lasers don't have anything to do

with gravity."

"Nantia. It's agame. Now, be sure to ask the simugrif

for the answers to the Three Toroid Triples; you'll

need them after you reach the trolls' bridge...."

As Flix instructed her in the rudiments of the game,

Nancia discovered that the actual game program used

very little of her computing power. She was easily able

to scan CenCom's databurst about her coming pas-

sengers while they played. At the same time she

activated the ship's enhanced graphics mode to fill the

three wall-size screens in the central cabin with color

images of the game and of their play icons. Flix had

chosen to be, of all things, a brainship, careening

through imaginary asteroid belts in search of the Mys-

tic Rings of Daleen. Nancia preferred to imagine

herself as Troll Slayer, the long-limbed, bold explorer

who strode through gravity wells and over mountain

ranges with laser staff and backblasters.

"Nancia, you can't slay that troll yet!"

"Why not?"

"Because he's in ambush behind the rocks. I can see

him, but you can't."

"I can so. I can see everything in this game. It's part of

my main memory now, remember?"

"Well, your play icon can't. He's just a man. He

hasn't got multi-D vision. And you see that blinking

blue light? The program rules are warning you that

he's going to die of hypothermia if you don't get him

into some kind of shelter soon."

"Why doesn't he just increase his fuel — oh. I

remember. You softpersons certainly are limited in

your fuel allocation capabilities." Nancia went ahead

and bent her laserstaff to take out the hiding troll, as

well as three of his fellows, then sent her play icon

under the trolls' snow bridge. Behind three hidden

doors and through a labyrinth there was a nice warm

cave now uninhabited, where Troll Slayer could rest

and refuel.

"Nancia, you're cheating!" Flix accused. "How did

you find that place so quickly, without making any

mistakes?"

"How could I not find it? The game maps are in my

main memory too, remember? All I had to do is look."

"Well, couldn't you not look? To be fair?"

"No, I could not," Nancia said in a tone that should

have effectively closed off further discussion. Cut off

her consciousness from a part of the ship's computer

memory? The single worst experience of her entire

life had been the partial anesthesia required while ex-

perts completed her synaptic connections to the ship.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing a shellperson

hated more than losing connections! Flix ought to un-

derstand that without her telling him.

'Just shut down that memory node for a little while,"

Flix wheedled.

He never did know when to stop. And the idea of

shutting down her own nodes made Nancia so uncom-

fortable that she couldn't bear to discuss it with him.

"Listen, softshell, I'd have to cut off more than one

node to bring myself down to your computational level!"

"Oh, yeah? Come outside and say that again!"

"Sure, I'll come outside. I'll take you right up to the

Singularity point and let you find your own way out of

the decomposition!"

"Aah, relying on brute force again. It's not fair." Flix

appealed to the ceiling. "Two big sisters, and they both

pick on me all the time!"

"We had to do something to keep you under con-

trol — " Nancia shut down her vocal transmissions

abruptly. There was an incoming beam from Central.

"XN? Message relay from Rigellian subspace." Abrief

pause, then the image of Nancia's father appeared on

the central screen opposite her pillar. On the left-hand

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Batt

PARTNERSHIP

screen Flix's brainship icon flipped and rotated in an

endless, mindless loop against the glittering stars of deep

space; on the right, Troll Slayer stood frozen with one

foot lifted to step across the threshold of the hidden cave.

Between them, a tired man in a conservative green and

blue pinstripe tunic smiled at Nancia.

"Sorry I couldn't come to your graduation, Nancia

dear. This meeting on Rigel IV is vital to keeping

Central's economy on the planned graph for the next

sixteen quarters. I couldn't let them down. Knew

you'd understand. Hey, congratulations on all those

awards! I didn't have time to read the program in

detail yet, but I'm sure you've done House Perez y de

Gras proud, as always. And I think you'll like your first

assignment. It'll be a chance for you to get to know

some of the younger members of the High Families —

a very fitting start for our own Courier Service star.

Eh? What's that?" He turned towards his left, so that

he seemed to be speaking to the frozen Troll Slayer

icon. "The Secretary-Particular? Oh, very well, send

him in. I'll need to brief him before the next session."

Eyes front again. "You heard that, I suppose, Nan-

cia? Sorry, I have to go now. Good luck!"

" Daddy, wait—" Nancia began, but the screen went

blank for a moment. The old image of the snow bridge

and the trolls reappeared and she heard the voice of

the CenCom operator.

"Sorry, XN. That was a canned message beam.

There's no more. And your passengers are ready to

board now."

"Thank you, Central." Nancia discovered to her

horror that she had lost all control over her vocal

channels; the trembling overtones that surrounded

her speech made her emotional state all too apparent.

A Perezy de Gras does not weep. And a brainship could not

weep. And Nancia had been well trained to repress the

son of unseemly emotional displays that softpersons

indulged in. All the same, she very much did not want

to talk to anybody just now.

Flix seemed to have sensed her mood; he silently

packed up the basket of fruit and sparkling wine and

patted Nancia's titanium column as if he thought that

she could feel the warmth of his hand. For a moment

she had the illusion that she did feel it.

" I'd better get out of the way now," he said." Can't have a

Fterez y de Gras brainship caught partying on her maiden

voyage, can we?"

He paused on the stairs. "Y'know, Nancia, there's no

regulation says you have to greet your passengers the

minute they step aboard. Let 'em find their cabins and

unpack on their own. There'll be plenty of time for social

chitchat on the way out."

Then he was gone, a redheaded blur vanishing into

the darkness, a whistled melody lingering on the night

air outside; and moments later, the bright lights of a

spacepad transport shone in Nancia's ground-level

sensors and a party of young people tumbled out,

laughing and talking all at once and waving glasses in

the air. One of them stumbled and spilled the liquid

over Nancia's gleaming outer shell; from a fin sensor

she could see the snail-trail of something green and

viscous defacing her side. The boy swore and shouted,

"Hey, Alpha, we need a refill on the Stemerald over

here!"

"Wait till we're inside, can't you?*1 called back a tall

girl with ebony skin and features sharp and precise as

an antique cameo. Right now her handsome face was

etched with lines of anger and dissatisfaction, but as

the fair-haired boy looked back over his shoulder at

her she gave him a bright smile that wouldn't have

deceived Nancia for a minute.

They were all still talking — and drinking that sticky

green stuff— as they crowded into the airlock lift without

even asking permission to board. Well, she had left the

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

PARTNERSHIP

entry port open after Flix's departure; maybe they con-

sidered that an implied welcome. And Nancia had heard

that softpersons — at least those outside the Academy —.

didn't observe the formality that governed greetings and

official exchanges in the Courier Service and other

branches of Central's far-flung bureaucracy. She wasn't

one to take offense yet, not when she herself was hardly

ready for introductions to this bunch of strangers.

As they trooped out of the airlock and into the

central cabin, Nancia played a game of matching faces

to the names Central had given her. The short red-

haired boy with a face like a friendly gargoyle had

Flix's coloring and the flashing smile that reeled girls

in to Flix like trout on a hook; he must be one of the

two related to Nancia's family. "Blaize?" the black girl

called. "Blaize, I can't open this." She held out a plastic

pouch full of shimmering green liquid, and Nancia

winced in anticipation as the redhead tore off the

sealstrip with two short, strong fingers. But not a drop

spilled on her new, official-issue beige carpeting—not

now, anyway.

"Here you are, Alpha," the boy said as he handed it

back, and Nancia matched their faces with the names and

descriptions that had come in CenCom's databurst The

red-haired boy must be Blaize Armontillado-Perez y

Medoc, of a family so high that they barely deigned to

recognize the Perez y de Gras connection. And for some

puzzling reason his first posting was to a lonely Planetary

Technical Aid position on the remote planet of Angalia;

she would have expected anybody from a three-name

Family to start off somewhere near the top of whatever

Central bureaucracy he chose. As for the ebony princess,

with her sharp clever face that would have been beautiful

if not for the discontented expression, she had to be

Alpha bint Hezra-Fong. The short burst transmitted

from CenCom identified her as a native of the warm,

semi-desert world ofTakla, with high marks in her medi-

cal research program, and no hint as to why she'd chosen

to take a five-year sabbatical in the midst of training to

run the Summerlands Clinic on Bahati.

As they passed the pouch of Stemerald back and

forth, Nancia was able to identify the other three from

their casual conversation without having to introduce

herself. The slighdy pudgy boy with a halo of overlong

brown curls clustering around his red face was Darnell

Overton-Glaxely, going to Bahati to take charge of OG

Shipping from the cousin who'd been administering

the business during DarnelTs minority. The other girl,

the sleek black-haired beauty whose delicate bones

and slightly tilted eyes suggested a family connection

with the Han Parma branch of the family, would be

Fassa del Parma y Polo. The del Parma y Polo clan con-

trolled all the major space construction in this

subspace, and now it appeared they were sending this

delicate little thing out to establish the family's rights in

Vega subspace as well. The girl was probably, Nancia

reflected, stronger than she looked. At any rate she

was die only one refusing the pouch of Stemerald as it

went around the circle, and that was a good sign.

And the last one — Nancia let her sensors take in the

full gk>ry of Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, the cousin she'd

never met From die crown of his smoothly cropped yel-

low hair to the gleaming toes of his black regulation-issue

shoes, he was the epitome of the perfect Space Academy

graduate: standing straight but not stiff, eyes moving in

full awareness of what each ofhis companions was doing,

even in this moment of repose conveying a sense of

dangerous alertness. Like Nancia, he was newly

graduated and commissioned. And like her, he'd ranked

high in his class but not first; first in technical grades, the

databurst said, but only second overall because of an in-

explicable low mark in Officer Fitness — whatever that

might be.

When she'd first scanned the databurst, during Flix's

Arme McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

sflly computer game, Nancia had been looking forward

to meeting her cousin Polyon. He was the only one of the

group with whom she felt that she had much in common.

As two High Families members trained for a life of service

to Central, just setting out to meet their destinies, they

should have felt an instant sense of kinship. Now,

though, she felt strangely reluctant to introduce herself

to Polyon. He was so tense, so watchful, as though he

considered even this laughing group of other young

people in the light of potential enemies.

And, she reminded herself, he had personally con-

sumed at least two-thirds of the recently opened

pouch of Stemerald, plus Central only knew what else

before coming on board. No, it wasn't a good time to

introduce herself and tell Polyon of their family con-

nections. She would just have to wait.

"Hey, guys, look at the welcoming committee!"

Blaize interrupted the chatter. He was staring past

Nantia's titanium column, at the triple-screen display

of the SPACED OUT game that Nancia had absentmin-

dedly left up after Flix's abrupt departure. The

concealed visual sensors between the screens showed

Blaize's freckled, snub-nosed face alight with pure,

uncomplicated joy.

Blaize moved slowly across the soft carpet until he sank

into the empty pilot's chair that should have been

reserved for Nancia's brawn. "This," he said reverently,

"has got to be the biggest, best SPACED OUT I've ever

seen. Two weeks will go like nothing with this setup to

play with." The game control channels were still open,

and as Blaize identified himself and took control of the

brainship icon, Nancia let the underlying game program

alter the brainship's course to zoom in on Troll Slayer's

world. The brilliance of the graphic display drew the

other passengers to look over Blaize's shoulder, and one

by one, with half-ashamed comments, they let them-

selves be drawn into the game.

PARTNERSHIP

"Well, it beats watching a bunch of painbrains dose

themselves silly in the clinic," Alpha murmured as she

took a seat beside Blaize.

Nancia had hardly recovered from the shock of this

callous comment when Darnell, too, joined the game.

Til have to copy the mastergraphics off this program

and have somebody install it on all OG Shipping's

drones," he said, animating Troll Slayer. "Anybody know

how to break the code protection?"

"I," said Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, "can break any

computer security system ever installed." He favored

Darnell with a slanting, enigmatic side glance. "If it's

worth my while..."

Oh, you can, can you? thought Nancia. We'll see about

that. Software game piracy wasn't exactly a major

crime, but a newly commissioned Space Academy of-

ficer ought to have a stronger ethical sense than some

commoner who hadn't had the benefit of a High

Families upbringing and an Academy training. She

felt distinctly less eager than she had been to introduce

herself to her handsome cousin.

Polyon turned his head and treated Fassa del Parma

y Polo, still lingering beside the door, to a brilliant

smile. "Now you, little one, could make just about any-

thing worth my while."

Fassa moved towards the game controls with a

sinuous, gliding motion-that riveted Blaize and

DarnelTs attention as well as Polyon's. "Forget it,

yellowtop," she said in a voice as sweet as her words

were stinging. "A second-rate Academy officer with a

prison-planet posting doesn't have enough to keep me

interested. I'm saving it for where it'll do me some

good,"

Nancia briefly shut down all the cabin's sensors.

How had she gotten stuck with these greedy, amoral,

spoiled brats? She had a good mind to put off intro-

ducing herself indefinitely. From the freedom of their

Arene McCaffrey fcf Margaret Bad

comments, they must be assuming she was only a

drone ship with no power to understand or act on any-

thing but a limited set of direct commands.

But she would still need to know what they were up

to. She opened one auditory channel and heard Blaize

leading Darnell and Polyon in a raucous chorus of,

"She never sold it, she just gave it away!" while Fassa

glowered and slithered off to her cabin.

Nancia had the feeling this would be one of the

longest two-week voyages any brainship had ever

endured.

CHAPTER TWO

polyon

Nancia watched curiously as Polyon de Gras-

Waldheim sauntered into the central cabin. The other

passengers were still sleeping off their departure-

night Stemerald party, snoring and thrashing as the

last doses of the stimulant worked its way out of their

exhausted bodies. Polyon had recovered remarkably

early. Like any good Academy graduate, he'd been up

at 0600 ship's time, washed in the shower cubicle and

dressed in his neatly pressed undress grays before

presenting himself in public. Nancia had shut down

visual sensors in the cabins to allow her passengers the

privacy they would be expecting, but the auditory sen-

sors brought her enough small sounds to enable her to

follow Polyon through his early-morning routine.

Nancia caught her first glimpse of Polyon as he

swung down the passageway to the central cabin. This

was public space; she had no compunction about leav-

ing all sensors activated here. And Polyon de

Gras-Waldheim was certainly a treat for the sensors.

Just a shade under two meters tall, with his golden hair

ruthlessly cropped in the Academy bristle cut, he was a

happy blend of the best in the Waldheim and de Gras

family lines: Waldheim height and rugged strength, de

Gras refinement and quick awareness. Nancia felt a

moment of regret. Polyon was a Space Academy

graduate; he might have been her brawn.

A de Gras-Waldheim? jeered an inner voice. What are

you dreaming of, girl ? A young man who combined those

two bloodlines could look fiar higher than command of

Arme McCajfrey &? Margaret Baft

PARTNERSHIP

a single brainship. He should have been destined for a

staff position somewhere, being groomed for high

command.

The short databurst of information about her pas-

sengers and their destinations didn't explain why,

instead of joining a Fleet General staff, Polyon was

headed out to be the technical overseer for a prison

metachip plant in a remote subspace. Oh, well, there

must be some good reason for the assignment. Maybe there's

more going on in Vega subspace than I realized. Nancia

remembered that interrupted newsbyte about Vega

and her resolve to study it in depth, now that she was

her own ship, fm Courier Service now; fd better start keep-

ing up with public affairs. But just at the moment,

watching her cousin was more interesting than pulling

up files of old newsbeams.

Polyon glanced about die cabin and his body relaxed

imperceptibly as he scanned the area; a human observer

might not have noticed die slight change, but Nancia —

by now scanning for muscle tension and autonomic

nervous system response as well as for the usual visual

and auditory cues — was immediately aware of his

relaxation. That must be Academy training, that alert-

ness upon entering any unfamiliar territory. She should

have expected no less of one trained in the High

Families' tradition of service; just as she should not have

been surprised that Polyon wakened at a regulation

hour, no matter what he'd been indulging in the night

before. The other passengers might be soft and self-

indulgent, but this one, at least, was a credit to his

training. That's the de Gras blood in him, she thought with a

trace of smugness; Daddy had always stressed the value

of Nancia's connection, through her mother, with the

House of de Gras.

Polyon glanced once more around the room—if he

hadn't been a de Gras-Waldheim, Nancia would have

described his second look as furtive — and then sat

down, not in the pilot's chair facing the central con-

sole, but in one of the spectator seats to the side of die

room. He nodded once, sharply, as if to say, "That's all

rieht, then," and spoke in a low voice that no softper-

son could have heard.

"Computer, open master file, pass 47321-Aleithos-

Hex242."

The automatic security system that guarded the

ship's main computer acknowledged Polyon's com-

mand. Hardly believing what she observed, Nancia let

the computer act without overriding it. How had

Polyon learned the master file password? Perhaps

there was a secret side to her mission, something only

another member of the High Families could be trusted

to know and to reveal at the proper time. TTiat would

explain Polyon's near-furtive way of approaching the

cabin. It would also explain his crude behavior last

night; naturally, as an undercover agent, he'd have to

be sure to blend in with his fellow passengers.

Or ... there might be no such explanation

forthcoming. Now that he had master file access,

Polyon was typing, moving the touchscreen icons, and

issuing verbal commands in a rapid low stream that

rivaled even a shellperson's multi-channel capacity.

And he still hadn't acknowledged her as anything

more than a droneship. What was going on? Nancia

waited and watched, following Polyon's maneuverings

through her computer system while her external sen-

sors kept track of his bodily movements.

Piece of cake, Polyon thought as his fingers darted

from keyboard to touch-screen, setting up his user ac-

count with system privileges that would allow him

access to any data in the ship's computer. Easy as debug-

ging a kid's first program. Now for the tricky stuff—

persuading the security system to treat him as a

privileged user on the Net. Once linked to that sub-

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

space-wide communications system, he would be abi<

to find out anything he wanted to know abou

anybody who'd ever linked into the Net

Voice commands wouldn't work here; just as wejj

he didn't want to be overheard by any of those snui];

time snoops he was stuck with on this voyage. H;;

fingers flashed over the keys, rattling out commands a:

fast as his excellent brain could analyze the result,

Hmm, security block here . . . but having alrea^

granted himself user privileges on the ship's system

he could take a look at the object code in the blockin;

program itself. He could even "fix" it. "Here a patdi

there a patch," Polyon hummed as he entered a sligl i

ly revised version of the object code, "everywhen -.

trapdoor, dum-de-dum-de-dum." As the system ;>

cepted and ran the revised program, Polyo;

humming switched to a triumphant version of, "1;

the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo!"

Not quite accurate, of course; he intended to win fo

far more than the proceeds of a single night's ol=

Earth-style gambling. He would show them — all

them. Starting with — but definitely not finishing wi >

— the lamebrains who'd shipped out with him. Polyo

knew why he was being posted to a second-rate assigi

ment in a third-rate solar system — his memori

skittered like frightened mice over the surface of th

ugly scene with the Dean — but there must be sorr

reasons why all these other pampered darlings oft)

High Families were going into semi-exile. He woui

start by finding those little secrets, and then... wc:l

then maybe even these rich brats could be useful in t>;

Grand Plan.

And after them.., the Nyota system. All of Ves.

subspace. Central. Why not? Polyon thought, dazzk

by the grandeur of his own desires. If there was on

thing he'd learned while he was growing up, it ws

that you could get away with nearly anything if you dt

most of it while people weren't watching and used

your charm when they did watch.

And where charm didn't work... there were other

means of persuasion. Polyon smiled grimly and

tapped into Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's med school files.

\Vhat cfftM Polyon be doing? Nantia watched and

waited as he redefined the ship's security system, reached

out to the Net, scanned his fellow-passengers' files.

Ought she to stop him? Discretion was the first thing a

Courier Service brainship learned, the first and last com-

ponent of duty. She hadn't been briefed on what to do

with a passenger who started manipulating the Net as if it

were part of his personal comsystem. He was redefining

the security parameters now... no matter, she could

change those back whenever she chose. So for he hadn't

touched her personal data areas, didn't show any signs of

knowing that her synaptic connections to the ship's com-

puter allowed her to follow everything he was doing.

Could it be that he really thought her a drone ship?

Maybe not. At least, he wasn't sure. Now that he was

through playing with the Net, Polyon sent out an ex-

ploratory tendril of code to report on other activities

linked into the ship's computer... a patch that would

reveal the exact location and extent of Nancia's con-

nections within the ship.

A Hale late to check that, my lad! Didn't the Space Academy

teach you to look for ambushes before you started maneuvers ?

Self-protection was an automatic response, more

deeply ingrained even than discretion. Nancia closed

down pathways and redefined access codes in a single,

instinctive wave of activity that left Polyon staring at a

blank screen and touching a keyboard that no longer

responded to his search commands.

Darnell

Darnell Ovetton-Glaxely moaned gently as he caught

Arme McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

sight of his puffy face, a distorted reflection in the

polished curve of synthalloy along the ship's central cor-

ridor. It was too early in the morning to face mirrors,

especially curving ones that made his reflection swell and

shrink and ripple like waves on the damned ocean. Dar-

nell moaned again and reminded himself that the

artificial gravity of space was practically like being on

Earth; it was only his imagination making him feel sick.

This was really nothing like being aboard one of the old-

style oceangoing vessels that had been the start of OG

Shipping, back when they were still a planetbound local

corporation. His old man had made him go on one of

those monsters once, with some crap about remember-

ing the family's roots. Darndl had taken a lot more crap

from the old man when he puked his guts out before the

ship left harbor.

Well, there wouldn't be any more of ihat\ Dear Papa

was history now, and so was the unexplained space-

station collapse that had killed him and left OG

Shipping in the hands of its directors until Darnell

finished school. And last night's Stemerald debauch

was also history—if only he could convince his queasy

stomach and pounding head of that!

It wasn't fair that he should suffer like this after what

had only been a perfectly reasonable indulgence to

celebrate the end of schooling and the start of his new

career. A pity neither of the girls had seen fit to continue

the celebration in the logical manner. Well, they had two

weeks to planetfall; they'd come around and see his at-

tractions soon enough. After all, it wasn't as if he had any

serious competition on this droneship. De Gras-

Waldheim was handsome enough, but a cold fish if

Darnell had ever seen one. Something frightening about

him, with those intense blue eyes burning like dry ice

under the stiff Academy haircut. As for the Medoc boy,

Blass or Blaze or whatever his name was, no girl was

going to waste time on a kid with a face like a friendly gar-

e. No> it would be old Darnell to the rescue again, the

n man on board widi the social skills to entertain two

lovely ladies all the way to their destination planets

around Nyotayajaha.

And he could hear sounds in the central cabin. Was

one of the girls up and about already? Darnell sucked

in his gut, threw his shoulders as far back as they

would go, and glanced at his reflection in the synth-

ailoy wall once again. His face wasn't really soft and

pufly like that, he told himself; it was a trick of the dis-

torted reflection. Made him look middle-aged and

flabby and tired. Nonsense. He was the handsome

young heir to OG shipping and he was fit to take on

anybody or anything....

But not, maybe, that cold fish, Polyon de Gras-

Waldheim. Darnell clutched at the doorway and tried to

stop his impulsive movement into the central cabin. His

legs kept going while his arms tried to haul him back.

"Oh, come on in, OG," Polyon said impatiently, his

back to the door. "Don't just cling to the doorframe

waving your tentacles like a seasick jellyfish."

Seasick.

Jellyfish.

Darnell gulped down a wave of nausea and

reminded himself again that space travel on a grav-

enhanced drone was not like being on an actual

moving, swaying, shifting oldstyle sea vessel.

"What are you doing?"

Polyon released the chair controls and spun slowly

round to face Darnell, long limbs relaxed as if to em-

phasize his comfort in this environment. "Just. ..

playing games," he said with a queer smile. 'Just a few

little games to pass the time."

"What'd you do, crash the SPACED OUT gameset so

badly you lost the screens?"

"Something like that," Polyon agreed. "You can

help me start it up again, if you like."

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

It was the closest thing to a friendly overture Darnel!

had heard from Polyon since they met the previous

night. Maybe, he thought forgivingly, maybe the poor

guy didn't know how to make friends. Coming from a

stiff-backed upper-crust lot like the de Gras-

Waldheims, spending his life at military boarding

schools, you couldn't expect him to have the savoir

vivne and easy social manners that Darnell prided him-

self on displaying. Well, he'd help old Polyon out, be

his friend on this litde jaunt.

"Sure thing," he said, walking on into the room with

a careful soft step that didn't jar his aching head. He

sank into one of the cushioned passenger chairs,

"Nothing to it, I used to play this stuff all the time in

prep school. Tell you what — if I help you get into the

computer, maybe you'll help me get into something

else?" He winked laboriously at Polyon.

"What exactly did you have in mind?" The man

didn't have a due how to make light conversation.

"Two of us," Darnell explained cheerfully, tapping

away at the console keys. "Two of them. The black one

is more your size. But I need a strategy to get into the

del Parma skirt's pants. Tactics, maneuvers, advance

and retreat — Got any suggestions?" Not, Darnell

thought, that he really needed any help, but there was

nothing like a round of good, bawdy male-to-male

bonding talk to cement a friendship. And since Polyon

evidently wanted to be friends, Darnell was more than

ready to meet him halfway.

" I'm afraid you're on your own there," Polyon said dis-

tantly. "I've... never had occasion to study the problem."

He nicked an invisible speck of dust off his pressed sleeve

and affected to study the SPACED OUT screens as Darnell

brought them back to fill the walls of the cabin.

The implication was clear; he'd never needed to work

out tactics with the ladies. Well, of course not. With the

de Gras-Waldheim name and fortune behind him —

and that muscle-bound, oversized physique — still, he

had no call to sneer at somebody who was just trying to

he friendly. Darnell glowered at the console and

tapped the commands that would set the game at —

hmm, not Level 10, his reflexes weren't quite up to the

interactive holowaniors just yet. Level 6. That should

be high enough to scramble Polyon's moves and let

him see what it was like dealing with an expert

"It's a new version," Polyon said in surprise. "I don't

remember that asteroid belt.''

Til bet five credits there's a due to the Hidden Hor-

rors of Holmdale somewhere in the new asteroids,"

Darnell offered.

"No bet on that. But I'll lay you five credits that I/it's

there, I'll find it first. Choose your icon!"

Darnell chose one of the play icons displayed along

the bottom of the central screen. He always liked to be

Bonecrush, the cyborg monster who stalked the lower

tunnels of the labyrinth but occasionally blasted out

into space with his secretly installed jetpacks and per-

sonal force shield. Polyon, he noticed with pleasure,

was taking the icon for Thingberry the Martian Mage,

a wimp of a character if there ever was one. This game

should be over in no time.

"So what brings you out to the Nyota system?"

Polyon asked after a few minutes of seemingly idle

maneuvering and pointless commands.

Darnell scowled at the screen. How had Thingberry

managed to surround two-thirds of the asteroid belt with

a charm of impenetrability? Very well, he would let

Bonecrush turn around and use his internal jetpacks as a

weapon; that should blast through sneaky Thingberry's

magic. "Taking up the old inheritance," he replied as he

tapped in the commands that would give Bonecrush

maximum blasting power. "OG Shipping, you know.

Can't think why old Cousin Wigran moved the firm's

Arme McCaffrey &f Margaret BaU

PARTNERSHIP

headquarters out to Vega subspace, but I'm sure he'll ex-

plain everything when I get there."

"If he can," Polyon agreed. "You have that much

faith in him?"

Darnell stealthily maneuvered Bonecrush into range.

That idiot Polyon was looking at him, not at the screen;

he could get away with murder if he could keep Polyoris

attention away from the game for a few more seconds.

"What d'you mean?" he asked, not really listening

for the answer. "Why shouldn't I have faith in

Wigran?"

Polyon looked shocked, and for a moment Darnell

was afraid he'd noticed Bonecrush's moves on the

central game screen. "My dear chap! You mean you

haven't heard? Decom it," he cursed in a low vicious

tone. "I didn't realize — Look, Darnell, I shouldn't be

the one to tell you this. Haven't you been paying atten-

tion to the newsbytes from Vega?"

"Management bores me," Darnell told him. "I'll be

perfecdy happy to draw the profits from the company

and let Cousin Wigran keep running the store." His

hands were resting on the key that would activate

Bonecrush's jet packs. Any minute now he'd execute a

controlled power surge that should blast a hole right

through Thingberry's defenses. But he wanted

Polyon to be watching in the moment of defeat, not

babbling on about some boring accountant's trial in

the Vega system.

"Well, I suppose you'd have to know pretty soon

anyway," Polyon was saying now. "I hate like hell to be

the one to tell you, though." He was watching

Darnell's face more closely than he'd ever looked at

the game screens.

"Tell me what?" For the first time Darnell felt a chill

of apprehension creep over him.

"It's all been coming out in the trial," Polyon said.

"That accountant who was skimming his clients'

credits to play Lotto-Roids? OG Shipping was one of

his biggest accounts. And your cousin Wigran knew

exactly what the fellow was doing. He even helped

kim _ for a share in the cash. Together, they've

gambled away more than ninety per cent of OG

Shipping'5 assets. I'm afraid all you're going to inherit

on Bahati is one over-age AI drone and a bunch of

debts."

Darnell's sweaty fingers slipped and punched the

power key harder than he'd intended. Bonecrush's jet

packs released their maximum thrust. The blast

rebounded harmlessly off Thingberry's invisible

charm-shield and propelled Bonecrush, too depleted

of power to activate his personal force-shield, into the

blackness of deep space. His cyborg body exploded

into a million stars of synthalloy debris.

"Wow," Polyon said, finally glancing at the dazzling

light effects on the screen. "This is a great game! Will

you look at those graphics? What is it, a supernova?"

"Me," said Darnell Overton-Glaxely. A gentleman

knew when to bite the bullet. "I owe you five credits."

Blaize

Oh, no, not another one!

Nancia briefly shut down all her internal sensors as

Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stirred in his

cabin. She had come to the conclusion that her pas-

sengers were most bearable when they were sleeping it

off. If only she could flood all their cabins with sleepgas

and keep them unconscious until they reached the

Nyota ya Jaha system.... Nancia caught herself in

mid-thought. She was becoming as bad as they were!

How could she even think such a thing? Hadn't she

made perfect marks in all her Integrity and Shell

Ethics classes? She should have been doubly guarded,

by family heritage and Academy training, against even

imagining such a betrayal of her ideals.

34 Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

There was nothing to stop her from leaving her in-

ternal sensors inactive until they reached Nyota ya

Jaha, though. Nancia considered this briefly before

deciding against it. True, her passengers wouldn't

notice anything, since they already assumed she was a

droneship programmed to carry them in privacy to

their destination. And it was also true that she would

rather perform the Singularity transformations that

carried them through decomposition space without

the irritating distraction of these ... brats. But she

shrank from the idea of spending days, more than a

week, in the isolation of space, with nothing to see but

the wheeling stars, no other brain to communicate

with — for if she opened a beam to Central, her cousin

Polyon, with his propensity for snooping through the

ship's computer systems, would be bound to notice the

comm activity. Brainships were as human as any

softpersons; Nancia knew that it would be unwise to

expose herself for so long to the strain of partial sen-

sory deprivation.

Besides, she wanted to know what her passengers

were up to.

When Nancia reactivated the central cabin's sen-

sors, Darnell was already stalking down the hall to his

cabin and Polyon, lips taut with rage, was about to fol-

low him. "I don't care for that name," he told Blaize.

Nancia hastily scanned the cabin's automatic

recording system. Blaize had been teasing his cousin

by calling him "Polly." Academy records on Polyon de

Gras-Waldheim mentioned this nickname as the basis

for several vicious fights that had occurred during

Polyon's Academy training, including one in which

Polyon's opponent was so badly injured that he had to

drop out of the officer training program. Witnesses

had attested that Polyon went on twisting the boy's

bones and listening to them splinter long after his op-

ponent was begging for mercy.

PARTNERSHIP

Following that incident, Polyon's file had been

flagged with warning signals that would forever

preclude his being assigned to a responsible military

post. . • and he had been verbally notified of this

decision in an interview with retired General Mack

Erricott, Dean of the Space Academy —

What was sfo doing? Nancia dosed down all her infor-

mation channels momentarily. Where had all this

private information come from? She reopened her

channels and traced the dataflow. It came through the

Net, and she shouldn't have had access to any of this

material; it came from the Space Academy's private

personnel files. Somehow the Net had responded to

her momentary curiosity by opening up material that

should have been shielded under the Dean's personal

password.

After a moment's confusion, Nancia realized what

had happened. Polyon's meddling with the ship's

security system had extended to some very sophisti-

cated tampering in the Net itself. He had, in effect,

defined Nancia as the node of origin for a system con-

troller with unlimited powers to access and change

files and codes in any computer on the Net. Nancia's

instinctive intervention had then made the "System

Controller" identity unavailable to Polyon himself...

but had left the node definition in place, allowing her

access to all the files he had scanned, and a great deal

more besides.

Nancia felt as embarrassed as if she'd been caught

peeking into an anesthetized classmate's open shell

during synaptic remodeling... the invasion of privacy

was that great. / didn't realize what I was doing! She

defended herself, and hastily erased the super-user

node definition before she could be tempted into look-

ing at anybody else's private files.

But she couldn't forget the shocking and disturbing

things she'd just read about Polyon. And she was

Anne McCaffrey 67 Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

relieved that he'd left the central cabin to Blaize, stalk-

ing back to his own cabin in a pose of offended dignity

far more impressive than Darnell's pout

Blaize looked directly at Nancia's titanium column

and winked. "Bet you thought he was going to beat me

up, didn't you?"

Nancia responded without thinking to this, the first

direct address she'd received since her passengers

boarded and she lifted off from Central. "I hope you

weren't counting on me to protect you!"

Blaize gave a soft, satisfied chuckle. "Not at all, dear

lady. Until this moment I wasn't even sure what — or

who — you were." He lifted an imaginary cap and

mimed an extravagant bow. "Allow me to introduce

myself," he murmured as he straightened again. "Blaize

Armontillado-Perez y Medoc. And you?"

It was too late to retreat into the silence that had

protected her so for. Nancia gave a mental shrug — no

more than a quick flashing of connectors — and

decided that she might as well converse with the brat.

She'd been starting to get lonely, anyway; the isolation

of deep space was too great a contrast after her years of

comfortable, constant multi-channel input and output

with her classmates in Laboratory Schools. "XN-935,"

Nancia said grudgingly. And then, because the call let-

ters seemed inadequate, "Nancia Perez y de Gras."

"A cousin, a veritable cousin!" Blaize crowed with

unabashed delight. "So tell me, cousin, what's a nice

girl like you doing convoying a rabble of riffraff like

us?"

The question was uncomfortably close to Nancia's

own opinion of her passengers. "How did you know I

was a brainship?" she countered.

"The liftoff procedures could have been performed

by an AI drone. But somehow I didn't really think the

Medoc clan and the rest of our loving families would

have sent us off to jaunt through Singularity on auto-

matic. Wouldn't be fitting to the dignity of the High

Families, y'know, to have a packet of metachips

responsible for our safety instead of a human brain."

"You don't have much respect for your family, do

you? No wonder they're sending you off to a fringe

world. They're probably afraid you'll embarrass

them-"

For a moment Blaize's freckled race looked cold and

hard and infinitely sad. Then, so quickly that a human

eye would hardly have recognized the brief betrayal,

he grinned and flashed a salute at Nancia's column.

"Absolutely. Just one minor correction. They're not

afraid I'll embarrass them. They're bloody sure of it!"

Pulling out one of the padded chairs, he seated himself

cross-legged in the middle of the cabin, arms folded,

and beamed at Nancia's column as though he hadn't a

care in the world. She retrieved the image of his race a

moment earlier and projected it on interior space,

comparing the bleak-eyed young man of the record-

ing with the smiling boy in the cabin. What could be

hurting him so deeply? Against her will, she felt a

twinge of sympathy for this spoiled scion, this disgrace

to the High Families.

"And do you intend to?" she asked in carefully

neutral tones.

"What? Oh—disgrace them?" Blaize shrugged a lit-

tle too gracefully. Nancia began to wonder how many

of his seemingly casual gestures were rehearsed. "No,

it's too late now. Sure, I had fantasies when I was a kid.

But I'm a little old for running away now, don't you

think?"

"What—to join the circus?"

For another split second, the mobile face before her

matched the bleak image she'd stored. "No. The Space

Academy. Actually," Blaize said in a voice as carefully

neutral as Nancia's own, "I used to think I'd train as a

brawn — Don't laugh; it was a kid's idea. But I never

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Batt

could imagine anything better than working with a

brainship. To fly between the stars, saving lives and

worlds, partnered with a living ship to learn the dance

of space...." His voice cracked on the last word. "I

told you. Kids have dumb ideas."

"It doesn't seem like such a dumb idea to me," Nan-

tia told him. "Why did you give it up? Did somebody

tell you brawns have to be six feet tall and built like...

like Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?"

"Give it up!" Blaize echoed. "I didn't give it up. Iran

away three times. The first time I actually got into the

Space Academy, too. Took the open tests, forged

papers saying I was a war orphan, won a scholarship.

It was three weeks before my tutor found me." The

momentary, unguarded joy in his face as he remem-

bered those weeks wrenched at Nancia's heart. "The

second and third times they knew where I'd go; there

was a squad of House Medoc private guards waiting

for me at the Academy."

"Your family seems to have been rather violently

against die idea."

Blaize's mobile, ugly face twisted into a sneer.

"Wouldn't do for folks in our position, y'know. Not

quite the thing. My cousin Jillia is in line to be the next

Planetary Governor of Kaza-uri, and my buddy Hene-

quin — m'father's best friend's son," Blaize explained

parenthetically, "is already in charge of the Vega

branch of Planetary Technical Aid. A son who's in

brawn training doesn't quite match up with those stel-

lar accomplishments for after-dinner bragging."

"I wonder if my family feels that way," Nancia said.

Was that why Daddy hadn't made time for her

graduation?

"Shouldn't think so. They sent you to Laboratory

Schools, didn't they?"

"They didn't," Nancia said, "have many options. I

would not have survived a normal birth.**

PARTNERSHIP 39

"Oh. Well. Anyway," Blaize said carefully, "I don't

think your branch of the family is quite as snobbish as

ours- And neither one can beat the de Gras-Waldheims

for exclusiveness. Polly got to go to the Academy, but

he was supposed to turn into a general, not a lowly

space jockey; I can't imagine what he's doing on his

way to administer a metachip plant on Shemali. Must

have been some scandal at the Academy. I thought I

knew all the family gossip, but whatever he got into,

they hushed it up exceedingly well. You probably have

access to the files, though — or — anyway, I bet you

could find out if you wanted to."

"I imagine," Nancia said, "they are in need of his

technical expertise." She felt no impulse whatever to

share the details of Polyon's Academy problems with

this gossipy boy. Didn't the High Families train their

softperson children in any kind of discretion? First

Polyon, using his computer expertise to hack through

security checks and find out the other passengers'

secrets, and now Blaize, turning his charm on her to

the same end.

"You don't approve of gossip, do you?" Blaize

guessed. "All right. Have it your way. You will be a

suitably discreet Courier Service brainship and a

credit to the family, and I'll be a nice little PTA ad-

ministrator on Angalia and try not to disgrace my side

of the family, and we can all drift on in boredom

forever."

"Planetary Technical Aid isn't so bad," Nancia told

him. "My sister Jinevra is an area administrator, and

she's only twenty-nine. You could rise rapidly — "

"Fromy4ftgtt&a?" Blaize's eyebrows shot up like red

exclamation marks, giving his face a look of comical

astonishment. "Dear Cousin Nancia, you really don't

pry, do you? If you'd read my file you would know bet-

ter than to try and stir up my ambitions for Angalia.

The sum total of civilization there consists of one PTA

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

office, one coryrium mine, and a bunch of humanoid

natives with the collective IQ of a zucchini. Asmall zuc-

chini. It's amazing they even qualify for Planetary Aid;

somebody must have filled out the FCF wrong, and

whoever later determined that they didn't have ISS

forgot to correct the PTA data. The wheels of the

bureaucracy grind on and on.... So here I go to An-

galia, less than the dust beneath old Henequin's

chariot wheels."

"You should do well enough," Nancia said. "You've

certainly got the jargon of the bureaucracy down pat"

She scanned her data files for translations of the initials

Blaize had used. PTA was Planetary Technical Aid, of

course, and FCF turned out to be a First Contact

Form, and ISS — ah. Intelligent Sentient Status. Nan-

cia had learned all the regulations for dealing with

alien sentients in Basic Courier Diplomacy and

Development 101, but she wasn't used to hearing the

abbreviations tossed about so casually. Daddy, when he

visited and told her about his work, was always careful

to give each bureaucratic office its full name, each offi-

cial his full tide.

It was possible, Nancia thought, involuntarily con-

trasting Blaize's darting, hummingbird speech patterns

with Daddy's measured delivery — it was possible that

her father, Javier Perez y de Gras, was just a bit stuffy. No.

That was ridiculous. She was getting corrupted by her

passengers, straying into non-regulation and non-

approved ways of thinking. Heaven knew what

indiscretions Blaize would lure her into if they continued

this conversation.

"Do you play SPACED OUT?" She filled the three

wall-size screens with the displays that had tempted

Polyon and Darnell into the game. "It'll have to be

solitaire, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"I can't not know the underlying structure," Nancia

apologized. "You see, the game's part of my memory

banks now. And I've never learned your softperson

trick of selectively turning off awareness." She wasn't

about to try, either. But she could, she told Blaize,

make the solitaire game a little more challenging by

redefining the maze of tunnels and Singularity nodes

that connected one part of the SPACED OUT galaxy

with another.

"Rules that change as you play?" Blaize hummed in

delight. "Great idea. Polly will hate it, too."

That thought seemed to increase his pleasure in the

game. And while he happily manipulated a solitary

play icon through the traps and surprises set up by the

designer, Nancia contemplated the vast loneliness of

the stars around them and the distance she must travel

before she could make private contact with another

shellperson.

PARTNERSHIP

• CHAPTER THREE

Alpha

When she awoke after the graduation "party,"

Alpha bint Hezra-Fong made her way to the main

cabin and found her traveling companions engaged in

one of those silly role-playing games. Medical school

and a demanding research program had never given

her the time to waste on such frivolities. But there might

be plenty of time where she was going. Alpha pushed that

thought to the back of her mind. She would find some-

thing productive to do; she always did. She might even

find a way to continue her research.

For the present, her companions watched the game

screens, and Alpha watched them. They were consid-

erably more amusing than the game; especially Blaize

and Polyon, stalking one another in an ongoing verbal

battle. Blaize was obviously dying to know why some-

one Eke Polyon, destined by family and training for a

high command post, was being sent out to start his

career on a remote planet of no real military

importance.

Alpha rather wanted to know the answer to that lit-

tle puzzle herself. As part of the powerful and

high-ranking de Gras-Waldheim clan, Polyon would

seem like a good person to cultivate. And in some

ways, Alpha thought, it would be a pleasure to make

friends with Polyon. He was certainly the most attrac-

tive man on this ship, the only one worth her time. But

if he'd disgraced himself at the Academy and been dis-

owned by his family, she couldn't afford the risk of

getting dose to him. Some of that scandal — whatever

it could have been — might rub off on her. And she

couldn't afford any more blots on her record, not after

the way the medical school had overreacted to that

trivial business about her research protocols. No, she'd

wait and find out a little more about Polyou before she

moved on him. And she'd let Blaize Armontillado-

Perez y Medoc, a born gadfly if ever there was one, do

the finding out.

"Shemali's such an obscure spot," Blaize hinted, "for

a brilliant young man on his way up."

Polyon stared into the display of distant mountain

peaks for a moment before he answered. Alpha could

see a muscle twitching in his jaw. As well as all the muscles

everywhere else ... those Academy undress grays don't leave

much to the imagination! Why doesn't he just break the little

pest in half? But Polyon retained his control. "Yes, it's

nearly as godforsaken as Angalia, isn't it? My brilliant

little cousin-on-his-way-up," he added remotely.

"Ah, but we all know I'm the black sheep of the fami-

ly," Blaize countered, "a modern-day remittance man.

You, on the other hand, are supposed to be the pride

of the de Gras-Waldheims, the last and finest flower of

those entwined family trees, bursting with military

potential and — umm — hybrid vigor."

"At least the Academy taught me not to mix my

metaphors," Polyon said.

"It must be some super-secret military base," Blaize

decided aloud. "Nothing less would suit for a de Gras-

Waldheim's first posting. So classified even the

droneship doesn't know why you're going there.**

Alpha noticed that his eyes flicked towards the

central titanium column as though he expected an

answer through the ship's speakers. Well, she con-

ceded, it was as likely that the drone would take part in

the conversation as that Polyon would tell his cousin

anything he didn't want to. Likelier.

She yawned and fiddled with the joyball, rolling the

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

SPACED OUT display from the Mountains of Momen-

tum to Asteroid Hall and back. This conversation was

boring. Polyon wasn't going to tell them anything. He

wasn't even going to smash his cousin into the wall. No

information, no amusement. Alpha was about ready to

go back to her cabin and take a nap. There was little

enough else to do on this stupid droneship.

"No secret military plans," Polyon said. "No secrets

at all, Blaize, sorry to disappoint you. But if it'll shut

you up, I'll try to explain what I'm going to do in terms

you'll be able to understand.... Leaving out the tech-

nical terms, let's just say that I'm going to manage the

metachip plant attached to the Shemali prison. Gover-

nor Lyautey is out of his depth. He knows how to run a

prison. He doesn't know anything about metachip

manufacturing. And the productivity record shows it

I'm going to set things straight, that's all."

Alpha sighed. The man's discretion was so perfect,

she almost believed him; except that Blaize was right,

it didn't compute for a de Gras-Waldheim to take a job

as a factory manager.

"Ann, now I understand," Blaize almost purred.

"The governor is to take lessons from you in the finer

points of chip manufacture, and you're to take lessons

from him in the finer points of... ahhh... torture and

degradation of prisoners? Or do I have it wrong?

Maybe it's the other way round."

Polyon smiled. "If the governor wants an expert in

nagging prisoners to death, I'll advise him to send for

you."

"What a pity, though," Blaize prodded. "All that

military training going to waste. Seems the family

could have arranged something a little better for you.

Unless there's something you're not telling us about

your Academy record...."

Polyon's perfectly shaped ears turned red and

Alpha raised her head, suddenly alert. The flush of

rage didn't improve Polyon's looks, but that was all

right with her; if anything, his face in repose was a little

tJo perfect And now he looked ready to kill somebody

_ or tell something. Alpha mentally applauded.

Blaize had finally hit on a nerve!

"And what better position might the family have ar-

ranged foryou, dear cousin?" Polyon inquired. "Save a

Utde of that pity for yourself. When your posting at

Angalia is finished — if you ever do get off that godfor-

saken planet — you'll have nothing but your savings.

Granted, they should be considerable, since there's

nothing to spend money on there, but how much can

a PTA-l7's monthly salary add up to?"

"About as much as a factory supervisor's, I should

imagine. Face the facts, Polyon. We've both been

screwed over by our respective families. For once

you're in the same boat I'm in, regardless of that pretty

face and stiff back. I know why I'm here. What I'd

dearly like to know is why they did it to you."

Alpha, too. She leaned forward, tensing slighdy in

anticipation of the answer, but Polyon chose to answer

the first part of Blaize's goading speech rather than the

second. "Oh, but I've no intention of trying to make it

on my savings, dear coz."

"What, then?"

"Metachips," Polyon said meditatively, "are very ex-

pensive. Not to mention that they're in short supply."

"Tell me something I don't know," Blaize invited him.

"I plan," said Polyon, "to... improve on the current

rationing system."

Unnoticed in her corner, Alpha nodded thoughtful-

ly. Polyon had a good point. Metachips were

exceedingly scarce and costly, and for good reason.

The metachip manufacturing process involved at least

three different acids so hazardous to the environment

that most planets refused to harbor the plants, despite

the unquestioned financial benefits. Shemali, in-

AnmMcCaffny & Margaret Baft,

PARTNERSHIP

hospitable, cursed with the perpetual biting north

wind that had given the planet its name, with its one

land mass dedicated to a maximum-security priso^

was the only major metachip inanufacturing site in ex-

istence; ShemaU, where nothing you did could make

the environment much worse, and where the workers

bought their lives one day at a time by laboring in the

metachip plant

Because who else could you use, in the final

analysis, but convicts already under sentence of death?

One of the acids involved, when used in the quantities

required for manufacturing, released a gas whose ef-

fects on human tissue were slow, painful, deadly...

and so far, irreversible. Alpha was an expert on those

effects; her research at Central Med had been devoted

to trying various drug therapies to reverse the effects

of Ganglicide. She might have had a major paper out

of the work if the school's Ethics Committee hadn't got

so upset about her testing methods... Alpha clamped

her lips down on the flare of anger that possessed her.

That was all in the past. The present was Polyon and

his plan, which he was explaining to Blaize with a

wealth of patronizing detail about die adverse effects

on the economy of the present rationing system.

"It's ridiculous to have metachips distributed by a

committee of old men and do-gooders," he declared.

"Sure, the military is entitled to Erst cut at the chips, but

after our applications have been satisfied, the remaining

chips ought to go where they'll do the most good."

"1 thought that was the object of the rationing sys-

tem," Blaize remarked. "Companies get Social Utility

Marks for their intended use of the metachips, and the

chips are distributed in proportion to the SUM.

What's wrong with that?"

"Unrealistic," Polyon said promptly. "They're using

chips for single-body operations like repairing kidneys or

replacing damaged spinal nerves, when the same chips

rould R° m*°> on> applications that thousands of people

could use at once. Dorg Jesen would pay millions for a

handful ofmetas and a promise of steady supply."

Blai/e began to laugh. "Dorg Jesen? The feelieporn

jyng? That's your idea of a SUM?"

"Millions," Polyon repeated himself. "And if you don't

believe I can think of a socially useful function for all that

cash—

"That," said Btaize, "I can believe. But just how do

you think you'll sneak the feelieporn application past

the advisory board?"

"I see no reason why the matter should ever come

before the board. QA testing for the metachips is one

of the areas Governor Lyautey asked me to supervise.

Disposal of the chips that fail QA will presumably also

fell within my duties." He looked so smug that Alpha

felt the need to puncture his self-satisfaction.

"I wouldn't plan on selling defective chips to Dorg

Jesen if I were you," she interrupted Polyon's gloating.

"He's been known to rearrange the features of people

who interfered with his business." Her shiver wasn't

assumed; one of her first tasks in med research had

been to diagram the facial injuries on a girl who'd

refused Jesen's offer of employment Alpha had even-

tually made a complete inventory of the damage,

together with holosims of the girl's face before the at-

tack and as she would look after plastifilm had

replaced what used to be living flesh.

Eventually.

After she rushed out of the lab theater and threw up

in front of the senior surgical advisor.

At the time, she'd thought it would be the most

humiliating thing that could ever happen to her in

med school.

Remembering, she barely heard Polyon's bland

reply that he had no intention of selling defective chips

to anybody.

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

Blaize gave a low, admiring whistle. "Of course. Fitf.

die the QA parameters one way for Governor

Lyautey's reports, the other way for sales, and who

knows what happens to the metachips in between?

You could make a fortune in 6ve years!"

"I intend to," said Polyon.

He was really much too self-satisfied, especially for a

man who'd left the Academy under some kind of a

cloud that he was afraid or ashamed to discuss. Alpha

decided that it would be doing humanity a favor to

wipe that smug smile off Lieutenant de Gras-

Waldheim's face. He really shouldn't smirk like that

Spoiled his looks.

"I do hope you'll still be able to enjoy your fortune

by then," she cooed sweetly at Polyon. "Better stay out

of the way of your convict laborers, though. Nasty acci-

dents are so easy to arrange in a D-class facility, aren't

they? But don't let it worry you. Even if you do get a lit-

tle spot of Ganglicide on your precious skin, I'm sure

Governor Lyautey will rush you to Bahati for medical

treatment. And you're lucky to have an expert in

Ganglicide therapy right there at the Summerlands

clinic."

"You." Polyon nodded stiffly. "That was to be your

thesis topic, wasn't it?"

Alpha suppressed a start. How had Polyon known

of her research? Oh, well, the High Families were such

an inbred group. Probably her aunt Leona had been

gossiping over the chai tables. But Polyon wouldn't

know much more than the title of her projected paper;

the symptoms of Ganglicide exposure were hardly fit

material for chai-table gossip. She relaxed and

prepared to enjoy her project of wiping that superior

smirk off Polyon's face.

"I had some success with chemical treatments for the

skin decay," she told him. "Halted the disintegrating

process, anyway. I'm afraid we couldn't do much to

verse the effects, though. The skin shreds like paper

d turns sort ofblue-green. And it spreads very rapidly.

ifvou get a drop of Ganglicide on one finger while you're

n Shemali, your arm will look like it's been through a

per snredder by the time the shuttle delivers you to

Bahati. Do try to keep it away from your pretty face."

Polyon's handsome features betrayed only slight

uneasiness, but there was a knowing look in his eyes.

«you—had to interrupt your research rather sudden-

ly, didn't you?"

Alpha silently cursed all interfering, gossiping old

relatives and friends. Never mind. "More's the pity,"

she sighed. "I was just getting into the most interesting

cases. You know, when Ganglicide goes into its gaseous

form it attacks nerves and brain synapses. Has much

the same effects on them that it has on the skin; we dis-

sected a really fascinating case, a senior assembly tech

from Shemali, as it happens. The inside of his head

looked like a wet blue sponge. Of course, by the time

the Ganglicide got that far he was too far gone to know

or care what was happening to him. A mercy, really.

Not that we'll ever really know how long he felt the

pain. Ganglicide goes straight to the pain receptors,

you know; we can't block the effects with drugs. And

towards the end he was screaming continuously. Like

an animal dying under torture." She licked her lips

and regarded Polyon. He was standing quite still, two

fingers beating a nervous tattoo on the command

panel behind him. The dance of his fingertips on the

sensitive pressure pads made the SPACED OUT screen

on the far side of the room shift back and forth jerkily,

displaying alternate images of deep space and of a

flaming labyrinth where molten lava menaced the

hapless play icons.

"If you're nice to me," Alpha added, "I'll promise to

kill you before the Ganglicide eats out your brains. No

human being should have to die like that"

50 Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

"Oh, I'll be nice to you," Polyon said. His voice ivas

still even; he thrust off from the control panel with HVQ

fingers and floated across the room. As he came closer

Alpha recognized the look in his eyes. Not frightened

Wary. Like a hunter waiting for his quarry to burst

from cover. And as he reached out to encircle her wrist

with strong, blunt fingers, the look changed to a light

of triumph. "I think we can be very nice to one another

lovely Alpha. It's so kind of you to take an interest in

my career." His voice changed on the last words,

mocking, savagely amused. "But enough about me.

Tell us about yourself, why don't you?" He gestured

towards Darnell and Fassa, floating through the open

door to join them. "We'd all like to hear about your in-

terrupted research. And why one of the school's

brightest young medical researchers chose to donate

five years of public service to an obscure clinic on

Bahati You're too modest, Alpha."

Alpha tossed her head and tried to pull away from

Polyon, but he was too strong for her. "There's noth-

ing to tell, really. I was tired — wanted a change of

scene. That's all."

"Is it?" Polyon murmured. "Funny. The way I heard

it, there were some other people who wanted to

change your scene. The newsnibblers never beamed

the story, did they? Can't have scandals about a High

Families girl going out as entertainment bytes. But I

fancy our friends on board here would find the story

very entertaining."

Alpha stared up at Polyon, looking for a hint of com-

passion in the sharp planes of his face and the ice-blue

eyes that had seemed so attractive a moment ago. "I

did nothing to be ashamed of," she whispered. "The

tradition of scientific experiments — "

"Does not include testing Ganglicide on unwitting

subjects." His voice was so low the others could not

hear it

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Charity cases," Alpha defended herself "Streetbums.

ne of them were so far gone on Blissto they didn't even

ow what was happening to them. They were incurable

__ nothing but an expense to the state as long as they

Kved. I did diem a favor, making sure their lives ended for

some purpose."

"Somehow," Polyon murmured, "I don't think the

court would have seen it that way. But then, you never

did come to trial, did you? Hezra clan and Fong tribe

wouldn't let that happen. Private settlement in the

med school offices, records sealed."

«How — did you find out?" Alpha gasped. He was

very close to her now, his voice the subtlest vibration of

sound from lips that almost brushed her cheek. The

raw power of his will and his anger wrapped about

her. She felt weak from the spine out. His smile made

her shiver.

"That's my little secret," he told her, still smiling. His

face and gestures might have been those of a

courtship; Alpha realized that the others in the room

might imagine they were flirting. That was a relief.

Anything was preferable to having her humiliation

made public before these people who were to be her

constant companions for the next two weeks—having

them see her as the disgraced failure she was, instead

of the successful young researcher with a social con-

science she pretended to be. "You were lucky to get off

with five years of community service on Bahati,

weren't you?" Polyon commented, stroking her cheek

with his free hand. "A commoner would have been

doing time. Hard time. Who knows, gorgeous, you

might even have wound up on Shemali — getting a

chance to check out Ganglicide at first hand, so to

speak. Wouldn't our innocent litde friends love to hear

the story?"

But he was still speaking in a low voice, head partial-

ly turned away from Fassa and Blaize and Darnell,

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

who had grouped together in the far corner of the

cabin and were pretending deep interest in a round of

SPACED OUT.

"What—do you want?"

"Cooperation," Polyon said. "Only a little —.

cooperation."

Blindly, drowning in a sea of air that somehow gave

her nothing to breathe, Alpha turned her face up to

meet Polyon's parted lips.

"Not that sort of cooperation," Polyon told her,

laughing gently, "not yet," His eyes measured her with

a cold glance that made her more afraid than ever —

and, somehow, more excited too. "Maybe later, if

you're a good girl. You were too uppity before, you

know that, Alpha? Now you're the way I like my

women. Quiet. And respectful. Stay that way, and we

won't have to discuss any—ah—painful subjects with

the others. Come with me and follow my lead. That's

all I expect of you — for now."

Submissive, head bowed, Alpha drifted towards the

three SPACED OUT gamers in Polyon's wake. They

were still pretending to be totally involved in the game,

but she felt sure they had avidly witnessed her

humiliation.

She would pay them back. That was certain, she

vowed. Fassa, Darnell, Blaize — they would all learn

not to laugh at her.

She didn't even think of retaliating against Polyon.

Nancia quietly transferred the recording of the

scene she'd just witnessed to an offline storage hedron.

Having those bits in her system made her feel... dirty.

As if she were somehow implicated in Polyon's sadistic

games.

Perhaps she should have interfered. But how ...

and why? Alpha was just as bad as Polyon, worse even,

to judge from what he'd revealed of her unauthorized

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medical experiments. The two of them deserved each

other. Blaize was the only one of the bunch she would

care to talk to. The litde redhead reminded her of Flix

__- and unlike the others, he didn't seem to have any-

thing wrong with him that a few years away from

family pressures wouldn't cure.

And what, exactly, Tvitt you say if you do interrupt? Nan-

cia couldn't answer her own question. She was a

Courier Service Ship, not a diplomat! She wasn't sup-

posed to interfere with her passengers! She should

have had a brawn on board — an experienced brawn —

to break up nasty scenes like the one she'd just wit-

nessed, to keep these spoiled young passengers happy

and away from one another's throats for the two weeks

of the trip. It's not fair! Not on my very first voyage!

But there was nobody to hear her plaint. They were

still five days away from Singularity and the decom-

position into Vega subspace.

At least I can keep evidence recordings going, Nancia

thought grimly. If one of the little brats drives another over

the edge, there'll be plenty ofdatahedra to show what hap-

pened. But at the moment, the five passengers seemed

to be getting along reasonably well. Perhaps his sadis-

tic games with Alpha had momentarily satiated

Polyon's need for command and control; he had taken

a play icon and seemed absorbed in that silly role-play-

ing game. Nancia relaxed . . . but she kept her

datacorders running.

•CHAPTER FOUR

"Why can't I get past the Wingdrake of Wisdom?"

Darnell griped. He had chosen Bonecrush again, but

his mighty-thewed play icon was backed into a corner

where a winged serpent hissed menacingly at him

every time he tried to move.

"You should have bought some intelligence for

Bonecrush at the Little Shop of Spiritual Enlighten-

ment," Polyon commented. His fingers flicked

carelessly at the screen as he spoke, sending Thingber-

ry the Martian Mage to spin an apparently pointless

web in the night sky above Asteroid 66.

"I didn't know you could buy intelligence." DarneU's

lower lip protruded in a definite pout "That wasn't in

the rule book."

"A lot of things aren't in the rule book," Polyon said,

"including most of what you need to survive. And in-

formation is always for sale... if you know the right

price. Anything from the secrets of Singularity to the

origins of planet names."

"Oh. Encyclopedias. Libraries, Anybody can buy the

Galactic Datasource on fast-hedra," Darnell whined.

"But who has time to read all that crud?"

"The price of some kinds of information," Polyon

said, "is more than the cost of a book and the time to

read it. I could print out the rules of Singularity math

for you, but you haven't paid the price of under-

standing it — the years of space transformation

algebra and the intelligence to move the theories into

multiple dimensions."

"Oh, come on," Blaize challenged him. "It's not that

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compjjcated. Even I know Baykowski's Theorem."

"A continuum C is said to be locally shrinkable in M

if and only if, for each epsilon greater than zero and

each open set D containing C, there is a homeomor-

phism h of M onto M which takes C onto a set of

diameter less than epsilon and which is the identity on

M ___ D," Polyon recited rapidly. "And it's not a

theorem, it's a definition."

Nancia quietly followed the discussion with mild in-

terest. The mathematics of Singularity was nothing

new to her, but at least when her brat passengers were

talking mathematics they weren't trying to drive each

other crazy. And she was impressed that Polyon had

retained enough Singularity theory to be able to recite

Baykowski's Definition from memory; common gossip

among the brainships in training was that no

softperson could really understand multidimensional

decompositions.

"The real basis for decom theory," Polyon lectured

his audience, "is what follows that definition. Namely,

Zerlion's Lemma: that our universe can be considered

as a collection of locally shrinkable continua each con-

taining at least one non-degenerating element."

Fassa del Parma pouted and jabbed her play icon

across the display screen in a series of short, jerky moves.

"Very useful information, I'm sure," she said in a sarcas-

tic voice, "but do the rest of us have to pay the price of

listening to it? All this theoretical mathematics makes my

head hurt And it's not as if it were good for anything, like

stress analysis or materials testing."

"It's good for getting us to the Nyota system in two

weeks instead of six months, my dove," Polyon told

her. "And it's really quite simple. In layman's terms,

Singularity theory just shows us how to decompose

two widely separated subspace areas into a sequence

of compacted dimensionalities sharing one non-

degenerating element. When the subspaces become

Anm McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

singular they will appear to intersect at that element —.

and when we expand from the decomposition, pon|

out of Central subspace and into Vega space we go."

Nancia felt grateful that she'd resisted her impulse

to join in the conversation. Her Lab Schools classmates

had been right about softpersons. Polyon knew all the

right words for Singularity mathematics, but he'd got-

ten the basic theory hopelessly scrambled. And clearly

he didn't understand the computational problems un-

derlying that theory. Pure topological theory might

prove the existence of a decomposition series, but ac-

tually forcing a ship through that series required

massive linear programming optimizations, all per-

formed in realtime with no second chances for

mistakes. No wonder softpersons weren't trusted to

pilot a ship through Singularity!

"I agree with you," Alpha told Fassa. "Bo-ring. Even

the history of Nyota is better than studying

mathematics."

"You'd think so, of course," Fassa said, "seeing that it

was discovered and named by your people." The small

grin on her face told Nancia that this was a jab of some

sort at Alpha. Hastily she scanned her data notes on the

Nyota system, but nothing there explained why the

Hezra-Fong family should take a particular interest in it

"Swahili is a slave language," Alpha said haughtily.

"It has nothing to do with the Fong tribe. My people

come from the other side of the continent — and we

were never enslaved!"

"Will somebody give me a map of this conversa-

tion?" Darnell said plaintively. "I'm more lost than I

was during Polyon's math lecture."

"This particular information," Alpha told him, "is

free." She drew herself up to her full height, several

inches taller than Fassa, and favored the top of her

sleek, dark head with a withering glare, "The system

we're going to was discovered by a Black descendant of

the American slaves. In a burst of misguided en-

thusiasm, he decided to give the star and all the planets

names from an African language. Unfortunately, he

was so poorly educated that the only such language he

knew was Swahili, a trade language spread along the

east coast of Africa by Arab slavers. He called the sun

Nyota ya Jaha — Lucky Star. The planets' names are

fairly accurate descriptions, too. Bahati means For-

tune, and it's a reasonably decent place to live —

green, mild climate, lots of nice scenery that stays put.

Shemali means North Wind."

polyon groaned appreciatively. "I know. Unlike

some of us, I did read up on my destination. The place

is called North Wind because that's what you get for

thirteen months out of the year."

"Thirteen months you have in the year? Oh — I get

it! Longer rotation period, right?" Darnell beamed

with pride at his own cleverness.

"Shorter, as it happens," Polyon said. His voice

sounded remarkably hollow. "Shemali has a year of

three hundred days, divided into ten months for con-

venience. I was being sarcastic about the feet that there

is no good season."

"Never mind," Alpha told him almost kindly, "it's bet-

ter than Angalia. Actually the full name is Angalia! with

an exclamation point atthe end. Itmeans Watch out!"

"Dare I ask what that means?" Blaize inquired.

"It means," Alpha told him, "that the scenery — un-

like that of Bahati—doesn't stay put."

Blaize and Polyon stared at one another, briefly

companions in misery.

Polyon was the first to recover himself. "Oh, well,"

he said, turning back to the game screen, "you see the

value of information, Darnell — and the fact that it

isn't always in the Galactic Datasource. And some of

the information that isn't — ah — publicly available —

is the most valuable of all." With delicate gestures he

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

nudged the joyball while the fingers of his left hand

tapped out codes to enlarge and strengthen

Thingberry's magical net. "You need to think of ways

to trade for that kind of information. For instance

your shipping company — such as it is — could offer

discreet transport for parcels that don't get on the cargo

list, or that go by a slightly misleading name—in some

cases, disinformation or the lack of information is as

valuable as actual data."

"Who'd want that?" Darnell objected. "And who

cares, anyway? Can't we just play the game?"

Polyon favored him with a dazzling smile. "Dear

boy, this is the game — and a far more rewarding one

than SPACED OUT. Why, I can think of any number of

people who might want a — suitably discreet — cargo

carrier service. Myself, for starters."

"Why you?"

"Let's just say that not all the metachips going off

Shemali are going to be in the SUM rationing board's

records," Polyon said.

"So? What's it worth to me to oblige you?"

"I could pay you back with Net contacts. I can work the

Net like no hacker since the days of the first virus

breeders. It's an unsecured hedron to me. How soon

could you rebuild OG Shipping if you knew ahead of

time about every big contract about to be let in Vega sub-

space ... and what your opponents' sealed bids were?"

DarnelFs pout vanished to be replaced by a look of

stunned calculation. "I could be rich again in five years!"

"But not, I fancy, as rich as I could be from selling

metachips," Polyon murmured. Thingberry's web

glistened on the screen above him, strings of jeweled

fight looping and floating above the play icons on the

surface of Asteroid 66. "What would you say to a

friendly wager? The five of us to meet and compare

notes, once a year — to see how we're each doing at

making lemonade out of the lemons of assignments

PARTNERSHIP 59

our dear families have landed us with? Winner to take

a twenty-five percent share in each of the losers'

operations — business, goods, or cold credits?"

* do we decide to stop and make the final

evaluation?" DarneU asked.

"Five years — that's the end of most of our tours of

duty, isn't it?"

"You know it is," said Alpha quickly. "Standard tour.

And," she went on under Polyon's firm gaze, " I think it's a

fliarvelous idea. I've got my own plans, you know."

"What?" Darnell demanded.

Alpha gave him a slow, lazy smile. "Wouldn't you

like to know?"

"I'm sure we would all like to know," Polyon put in.

Adeft twist of the joyball set Thingberry's jeweled web

spinning over the top half of the display screen. "Will

you enlighten them, Alpha, or shall I — er — con-

tribute my own scraps of information?" He crooked

his finger, beckoning to her, and she moved closer to

his control chair.

"Nothing much," Alpha said. "But . . . Summerlands is

a double clinic. One side for the paying customers —

mostly VIPs — and one side for charity cases, to improve

their SUM rating. I've got some ideas for an improve-

ment on Blissto — something we can give addicts in

controlled doses. They won't get locked into a cycle of

craving and ever-increasing hits of street drugs."

"Hey, / like Blissto," Darnell protested, "and I don't

get into that cycle."

"Good," Alpha told him. "You're not an addictive per-

sonality. Some people aren't that lucky. You've seen

Blissed-Out cases? Big enough doses, over a long

enough period of time, until their nervous systems look

like shredded wheat? My version won't do that. We'll be

able to take Blissed-Out cases out of the hospital and send

them out to do useful work as long as they stay on their

meds. And I'm the one who did all the preliminary

Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

design work on this drug. Actually, it was a side-effect of

my work on — well, there's no need to discuss all the

boring details of my research," she concluded with a

sidelong glance at Polyon. "What matters is that I've got

the formulas and all the lab notes on hedra."

"But won't Central Meds hold the patent, if you did

the work there?"

"When—and if— it's patented," Alpha agreed.

"And you can't sell it until it's passed the trials and

been patented — so it's no good to you!"

Alpha's eyes met Polyon's over Darnell's head.

"Quite true," she agreed gravely, "but I think I may

find a way to profit from the situation anyway."

"What about you, Fassa?" Polyon asked. The girl

had been very quiet since her jab about the slave

names of the Nyota system. "You going to take this

boondocks construction company Daddy handed you

lying down?" His tone invested the question with a

wealth of obscene possibilities.

"Double profit on every job," Fassa announced

calmly. "I've got a degree in accounting. I can fix the

books in ways an auditor will never catch."

Darnell whistled appreciatively. "But if you are

caught — "

Fassa coiled herself on the other side of Polyon's

chair in a series of languorous, sinuous movements

that drew all eyes to her. "I think," she said dreamily,

"that I can distract any auditors who may think about

checking the books. Or any building inspectors who

need to sign off on materials quality." Her slow,

dreamy smile promised a world of secret delights.

"There's a lot of money in construction ... if you go

about it the right way."

The four of them made a tight grouping now:

Polyon in the control chair, Darnell standing behind

him, Fassa and Alpha seated on either side of him.

Four pairs of eyes gazed expectantly at Blaize.

"Well," he said, swallowed, and started over again.

«*^h — PTA doesn't offer quite as much scope for

creativity as the rest of your outfits, does it now?"

"You're with us or against us," said Polyon. "Which

is it to be, little cousin?"

"Ah —neutrality?"

"Not good enough." Polyon glanced around at the

other three. "He's heard our plans. If he doesn't join

us, he could have some idea of informing...."

Alpha leaned forward, smiling sweetly. Her teeth

looked long and very white against her dark skin. "Oh,

you wouldn't do that, would you, Blaize dear?"

"I wouldn't even think about it," Darnell put in, tap-

ping one pudgy fist against his open palm.

Fassa licked her lips and smiled like a child anticipat-

ing a treat. "This could be interesting" she murmured

to no one in particular.

Blaize glanced around the circle of faces, then looked

towards Nancia's titanium column. She kept her silence.

Nothing had actually happened yet; if these brats at-

tempted violence, she could stop it in seconds with a flood

of sleepgas. And Blaize knew that as well as she did. Nan-

cia saw no reason to give up her anonymity just to

reassure him. He'd been brave enough when he was

picking on Polyon alone; why, for heaven's sake, couldn't

he stand up to the rest of them?

"But then, Blaize never did have the guts to do

something as decisive as telling" Polyon dismissed his

cousin with a brief nod. "We'll let him think it over...

all the way to Angalia. It'll be a long couple of weeks,

little cousin, with nobody to talk to. And a much longer

five years on Angalia. Hope you enjoy life among the

veggie-heads. 1 shouldn't think anybody else in the

Nyota system will have much to do with you." He

swiveled to face the SPACED OUT display, and the other

three turned with him.

"Oh — don't leap to assumptions so fast. I'm with

AnmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball

you, definitely with," Blaize babbled. "There are pos-

sibilities — I just haven't had time to think them over

yet The coryrium mine, for instance — it hasn't been

properly developed — maybe I could get a part inter-

est in that. And PTA makes regular food drops to

Angalia, who's to say how much of the food gets dis-

tributed to the natives and how much gets

transshipped to some place that can pay for it..." He

spread his hands and shrugged jerkily. "I'll think of

something. You'll see. I'll do as well as any of you!"

Polyon nodded again. His fist closed over the joyball

and Thingberry's jeweled web spiraled down to

enclose Asteroidland, trapping the others' play icons

in a tissue of glittering strands. "Done, then. Five of us

together. Here, we'd better each have a record." He

drew a handful of minihedra from the pocket of his

Academy grays and dropped them into the

datareader. One by one, Alpha, Fassa, Darnell and

Blaize identified themselves by hand and retina print

and spoke aloud the terms and conditions of the wager

they'd agreed to. Polyon retrieved the minihedra after

the recording was over and handed one faceted black

polyhedron to each of them, keeping the last for him-

self "Better store them someplace safe," he suggested.

Fassa clipped her minihedron inside a silver wire

cage that hung from her charm bracelet among tin-

kling bells and glittering bits of carved prismawood.

She alone seemed in no particular hurry to escape

Polyon's influence; while the others jostled to reach

the exit door, Fassa fiddled with her charm bracelet

and tried out the shining black minihedron in various

places, as if her only concern was to see where it would

show to best advantage.

As Alpha, Darnell and Blaize left the central cabin,

Nancia wondered whether Polyon's quick actions and

mesmerizing personality had made them forget that

he alone, of the five, had not recorded his intentions

PARTNERSHIP

on the minihedra. Or were they simply afraid to chal-

lenge him?

that it mattered. She had the entire scene

recorded. From several angles.

"You'll see," Blaize repeated over his shoulder as he

left. TH do better than any of you."

"Small time, little man," Alpha sneered on her way

down the corridor, "small-time plans for a small per-

son. You'll be the loser, but who cares? Somebody has to

lose."

"She's wrong, you know," Polyon commented to

Fassa. "Four of you have to lose. There'll be only one

winner in this game." And he too left, twiddling his

black minihedron between two fingers and humming

quietly to himself.

Fassa

The gleaming black surfaces of the minihedron

flashed in the central cabin lights as Fassa turned her

arm this way and diat, admiring the effect of the stark

blackness against the jumble of silver and prismawood

trinkets. The hedron was as black as Fassa's own sleek

hair and tip-tilted eyes, an admirable contrast to the

whiteness of her creamed and pampered skin. In its

hard glossy perfection she saw a miniature of her-

self. . . beautiful, impenetrable . . .

A shell full of dangerous secrets,

Fassa stared at the mirror-smooth surfaces of the

minihedron and saw her face reflected and distorted in

half a dozen directions at once, a shattered self looking

out, trapped in the black mirrors that distorted her

lovely features to a mask of pain and a silent scream.

No! That's not me — that can't be me. She dropped her

arm; the jingling silver bells on the bracelet tinkled a

single discordant peal. Pushing off from the strange

titanium column that wasted so much cabin space, Fassa

floated into a corner between display screens and a

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

storage locker. "Blank screens," she ordered the ship.

The dazzling display of SPACED OUT graphics faded

away, to be replaced by a black emptiness like the sur-

faces of the minihedron. Fassa stared into the flat

screen, lips parted, until the reflection of her own

beauty reassured her. Yes, she was still as lovely as

she'd always believed. The distorted reflections from

the minihedron had been an illusion like the dreams

that troubled her sleep, dreams in which her lovely

face and perfect body peeled away to reveal the

shrunken, miserable creature underneath.

Reassured, she stroked the charm bracelet with two

fingers until she touched the sharp faceted surface of

the minihedron. I keep my secrets, avid you keep yours, little

sister. As long as she had the shield of her perfect

beauty between herself and the world, Fassa felt safe.

Nobody could see beyond that to the worthless thing

inside. Very few tried; they were all too mesmerized by

the outer facade. Men were rutting fools, and they

deserved no better than to have their own folly turned

back on them. If she could use their desire for her to

enrich herself, so much the better. Gods knew her

beauty had cost her too much in the pastl

Mama, mama, make him stop, wailed a child's voice

from the recesses of her mind. Fassa laughed sourly at

the memory of that folly. How old had she been then?

Eight, nine? Young enough to think her mother could

stand up to a man like Faul del Parma y Polo, could

make him give up anything he really wanted — like his

daughter. Mama had closed her eyes and turned her

head away. She didn't want to know what Faul was

doing to their lovely little girl.

Ugly little girl. Dirty little girl, whispered another of

the voices.

All the same, it had been Mama who stopped it, in a

way. Too late, but still — her spectacular and public

suicide had ended Paul's private games with his

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daughter. Jumping from the forty-second story bal-

cony, Mama had shattered herself on the terraces of

the Regis Galactic Hotel in the middle of Faul del

Parma's annual company extravaganza, the oneatt

the gossipbyters attended. And the news and gossip

and rumor and innuendo that surrounded the suicide

of del Parma's wife had been splashed all over the

newsbeams for weeks thereafter. Why should she kill

herself? Faul del Parma could give a woman every--

thing. There was no history of mental instability. And

everyone knew Faul del Parma never so much as

looked at another woman, he only cared for his wife—

well, one didn't hear so much about the wife, did one?

A homebody type. But he went everywhere with that

lovely little daughter at his side, only thirteen but a

heartbreaker in the making....

It occurred to a dozen gossipbyters at once that the

daughter should be interviewed. And that had stopped

it. Faul del Parma had whisked his daughter into a

very exclusive, very private boarding school where no

gossipbyters could find her and ask inconvenient

questions.

Fassa twisted the minihedron on its clasp. Tkankyou,

Mama. Even now, six years later, the story of the del

Parma wife's suicide still made an occasional gossip-

byte. Even now, Faul del Parma didn't want to risk

having Fassa anywhere near him. So now that she was

graduated from the expensive, exclusive school, he'd

found a position for her with the least of his com-

panies, Polo Construction, based on a planet in Vega

subspace. And Fassa had practiced her bargaining

skills for the first time.

"I'll take it. But not as your subordinate. Make over

Polo Construction to me, and I'll go out to Bahati and

manage the company and never trouble you again.

Call it a graduation present."

Call it a bribe for going into exile, Fassa thought, twist-

Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Batt

ing the minihedron back and forth until the sharp angles

of the facets bit into her thumb and forefinger. Because

when Paul had balked at giving her complete ownership

of the company, Fassa had leaned elegantly on his desk

and speculated aloud about her chances of getting a posi-

tion with one of the major newsbeamers. '"They're aU very

interested in me," she teased her father.

"Interested in picking up sleazy gossip about our

family," Faul snapped. "They've no interest in you for

your own abilities."

Fassa smoothed her gleaming black hair back from

her face. "Some of my abilities are very interesting," she

told him. She let her voice drop down into the husky

lower register that seemed to produce such an effect

on her male teachers. "And the del Parma y Polo family

is always news. I bet some of the major newsbeam com-

panies would just love to serialize a book by me. I could

tell them all the secrets I learned from my father...."

"All right. It's yours!" Faul del Parma y Polo slapped his

hand on the palmscanner beside his deskcomp, jabbed

the hardcopy pad with his free thumb and ejected the

finished minihedron with a glare for his daughter.

"You won't object if I scan it first?"

"Use a public scanner. You can't be sure of mine," Faul

pointed out "I might have programmed it to give a false

readout You'd better start thinking smarter if you want

to make a success of this business, Fassa. But don't worry

—it's all there. Ownership transfer and my palmprint to

back it up. I wouldn't cheat you. I don't want you coming

back to this office."

"Don't you, Daddy dear?" Fassa twisted forward over

the desk, sinuous and flowing in her formfitting

sheath of Rigellian spiderspin. She leaned dose

enough to let Faul breathe in the warmth and subde

perfume of her skin... and was rewarded by a flash of

pain and desire in his eyes.

"Ta-ta, Daddy dearest." She slid from the desk and

PARTNERSHIP 67

clasped the minihedron inside a coryciurn heart that

dangled from her charm bracelet "See you around...

Idon't think."

"I wonder," Faul said hoarsely, "how many of those

Htde charms contain men's hearts and souls."

"Not many — yet." Fassa paused at the door and

gave him a sparkling smile. "I'm starting the collection

with you."

Now, three days out from Central, she had already

added a second hedron to the collection. Fassa jingled

the charm bracelet reflectively. Each of the sparkling

bits of jewelry was a clasp or a cage or an empty locket,

waiting to receive some trinket. She'd collected the

charms over those lonely years at boarding school,

spending the lavish birthday and Christmas checks

from Faul on expensive custom-made baubles. One

for each time that Faul had come to her room at night

Only twenty-three hi all; strange, she thought, that

less than two dozen carefully chosen nights over a

period of four or five years could make you rot away

from the inside. Twenty-three shining jewels, each as

perfect and beautiful in its own way as Fassa was in

hers; each as empty inside as she was.

No, not any more. Two of them are filled. Fassa pushed

off from the wall with the tips of her fingers and floated

gently through the main cabin, twirling the charms

around her wrist Before she was done, she'd fill every

charm with something... appropriate.

Andthenwhat?

No answers to that, no conceivable end to the future

she'd mapped out for herself.

Blaize

The central cabin was empty; Polyon's buddies had

all slunk off to their cabins to think over their wager

and its probable consequences. Good. Blaize knew he

could perfecdy well have talked to Nancia from the

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

privacy ofhis own cabin, but somehow it seemed more

real to come here and speak directly to the titanium

column that contained her shell.

Besides, she wasn't answering him from the cabin.

He thought maybe she'd turned off the cabin sensors

to give her passengers privacy.

He cleared his throat tentatively. Now that he was

here, and not so confident of his welcome, it seemed

rather strange to be talking to the walls. Sort of thing

that got you shipped off for a nice rest in a place like

Summerlands Care, Inc. Blaize shivered. Not for him,

thank you. If he ever did need medical treatment, he'd

make sure to go to a clinic where that snake Alpha bint

Hezra-Fong vtasnot operating.

"Nancia? Can you hear me?"

The silence was as absolute as that of the empty,

black space outside the brainship's thin skin.

"I know you're listening," Blaize said desperately.

"Watching, too. You have to be. / wouldn't close my

eyes or turn my back on somebody like Cousin Polyon,

and I don't believe you'd risk letting him sneak into

your control cabin unobserved."

His wild gestures as he made the last statement al-

most overbalanced him in the ship's light grav field.

He grabbed at a handrail and made a dancer's turn

into the center of the cabin, recovering from the near-

stumble as gracefully as a cat correcting a mis-timed

jump. Nancia's titanium column coruscated in rain-

bow reflections of the cabin lights, sparkling and

dancing around him. And she did not reply.

"Look, I know what you're thinking, but it's not like

that. Really." Blaize grasped a chair back to steady

himself "I mean, what could I do? Did you expect me

to call them all criminals and wrap myself in my own

integrity? They could've spaced me before we got to

Angalia, and called it an unfortunate accident"

Silence.

PARTNERSHIP

"All right," Blaize conceded. "They probably

wouldn't have spaced me. Especially if I told them you

were a brainship and could bear witness against

them."

Silence.

This was worse than the time he'd been locked in his

room for a month.

"But that would have meant telling on you," Blaize

pointed out, "and you didn't really want them to know

you've been listening, did you?"

Silence.

"Well, what did you expect me to do, anyway?

They'd all have hated me." Blaize's voice cracked.

"Isn't it bad enough I have to go out to Angalia and

spend the next five years handing out PTA boxes to

some walking veggies? Do I have to start by losing my

only friends in the whole star system?"

Nancia answered at last. "They are not your friends,

and you know it."

Blaize shrugged. "Best imitations I've got. Look,

I've spent my whole life being the family black sheep,

the one nobody bothers with, the one nobody likes

much, nobody respects. Can you blame me for want-

ing to change that? Just once in my life I want to

belong"

"You do," Nancia told him. "As far as I'm concerned,

you do indeed belong with the rest of this amoral brat-

pack. And as for respect,.. you can add me to the list

of people who don't respect you. I don't believe you

ran away from home three times, either. You haven't

got the gumption to cross the street without somebody

holding your hand."

"I did so!"

Silence.

"Once, anyway. And if I had run away again, it

would've been just like I said. They'd have been wait-

ing for me at the Academy. So what was the point? And

Arme McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

what difference does it make? Worked out the same as

if I'd actually done it, didn't it?"

Silence.

filaize decided to go back to his cabin before some-

body drifted in here and caught him talking to the

walls.

"One more thing," he called as he pushed off for the

return. "I did win that scholarship. Under the name of

Blaize Docem. You can check Academy records on

that!"

Nancia maintained her silence. All the way to

Angalia.

CHAPTER FIVE

Singularity

The neighborhood of the brainship collapsed inward

on itself, spiraling down tornado-like to the Singularity

point where Central Worlds subspace could momentari-

ly be defined as intersecting Vega subspace. The ship's

metachip-augmented parallel processors solved and op-

timized the set of equations represented in a

thousand-square matrix of subspace points, dropped

out of that subspace into Decomposition, rode the col-

lapsing funnel of spaces with a new optimization

problem to choose and resolve every tenth of a second.

To Nancia, Singularity was how she envisioned the an-

cient Earth sport called "surfing"; balanced at the

non-degrading point where decomposing subspaces

met, she recognized and evaluated local paths so quickly

that the massive optimization problems blurred together

into a sense of skimming over a wave that was alwaysjust

about to crash beneath her.

The Singularity field test she'd taken at the

Academy had been simpler than this. There, she'd had

to deal with only one set of parallel equations; here,

the sequence of equations and diminishing subspaces

streamed past her in an incessant flow. It was chal-

lenge, danger, joy: it was what she had been trained

for. She swept over matrices of data and guided them

to the ship's processors, choosing and resolving the

ever-changing paths to Singularity with an athlete's

single-minded concentration.

The same newsbeam that showed Nancia the sport

of "surfing" had also had a section on a diving com-

Ante McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

petition. The dean lines of the divers' movements, the

seconds during which they hurtled through the air as

though they could give their bodies the lift and

freedom of brainships, fascinated Nancia; she'd

viewed the beam over a dozen times, marveling at

what softpersons would go through for a few seconds

of physical freedom. "Didja see how he ripped that

dive!" the newsbyter had jabbered after one athlete's

performance, then explaining that the term referred

to the clean way the diver had entered the water

without a single splash.

Nancia ripped a perfect dive through Singularity

and came out into Vega subspace.

For her passengers, with nothing to do during Sin-

gularity and no way to filter the barrage of sensory

data, the transition was markedly less pleasant. The

few seconds of decomposition and reformation

seemed like hours of wading through air gone viscous,

picking their way among shapes distorted out of all

recognition, in a place where colors hummed on the

air and light bent around corners.

They gasped with relief when the ship broke

through into normal space again.

Nancia watched them staggering and rubbing their

eyes and ears. She was rather surprised by the inten-

sity of their reactions; the trainer who'd accompanied

her through her Singularity test had not seemed to be

bothered by the few seconds of sensory distortion. Per-

haps practice made a difference to how softpersons

took Decomposition. Polyon's first words after the

return to normal space suggested this might be the

case.

"Well, mes enfants" said Polyon, "how did you like

your first Decomposition? It's been so long since my

first training flights that I've forgotten how it affects

newcomers."

"Once is enough," said Darnell with feeling. "If I

ever go home again, I'll take the six months of travel by

FTL. Or better yet, I'll walk."

Fassa nodded vigorous agreement, then winced as if

she wished she hadn't moved her head so soon.

"Have a Blissto," Alpha offered. "Works on hang-

overs — ought to help with Singularity headaches

too."

Darnell snatched the small blue pills out of her hand

and downed six of them in a single desperate gulp.

Fassa started to shake her head and then obviously

thought better of it. She waved Alpha's hand away

with a languid gesture. "Never touch drugs."

"More fool you," said Alpha. "I know more about

side effects than any of you, and I promise you a few

blues won't do any harm. Just wish I'd thought of it

before we entered Singularity. Blaize?"

"Excellent idea," Blaize said hollowly, accepting the

offered pills. Unlike Darnell, he made his way to the

far side of the cabin and found a half-empty bottle of

Stemerald to help him choke down the pills. "Almost as

good an idea as walking. Don't think I ever really ap-

preciated Earth before." His skin was pale green under

the spattering of freckles.

Polyon chuckled. "May have been a blessing in dis-

guise that you weren't allowed to go in for brawn

training, little one. Apparently you haven't die stomach

for it. Now when you imagine combining frequent

Decom hops with Mil Spec meals of boiled synthoprot

and anonymous vitacaps that all smell like cabbage—"

Fassa clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for

the door. Darnell swallowed convulsively two or three

times. "Would you mind very much not mentioning

food just now?" His last words were slurred and

relaxed; the Blissto was already taking effect.

"At least not till I've had my own blues," Alpha

added, pouring a handful of the shiny blue pills down

her throat.

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

Fassa didn't quite make it to the privacy of her cabin.

Silendy, Nancia extruded probes that captured and

vaporized the resulting mess. She activated the release

latch on Fassa's cabin door so that it irised open in

front of the girl.

"T-thank you," Fassa hiccuped into the wet doth

Nantia's second probe held out. "I mean — I know

you're just a droneship, so this is silly, but—oh, thank

you anyway." She collapsed on her bunk, a huddle of

misery. Nancia closed down the cabin sensors, trans-

mitted a shut command to the door iris, and left Fassa

to recover on her own. At least, she thought, the girl

had the strength of character to abstain from mind-

rotting drugs. And the manners to thank whoever

helped her, even a supposedly inanimate droneship.

Her stated intention of using sex to get concessions for

her company was appalling, as were her manners in

general; but maybe she was a shade less repellent than

the rest of Nantia's young passengers.

They had completely ignored Fassa's distress, Nan-

cia noted. Polyon was playing a solitaire round of

SPACED OUT and the other three were giggling over a

new bottle of Stemerald. Nancia wondered uneasily

what the mix of stimulants and depressants was likely

to do to a softperson's nervous system — and what else

Alpha might have smuggled aboard. Maybe it had

been a mistake to turn off the cabin sensors; these

people didn't deserve privacy.

But then, what business was it of hers if they wanted

to drug themselves into a stupor? They'd be much

nicer that way, after all. Nancia herself could conceive

of nothing more horrible than voluntarily scrambling

one's synapses, but softpersons did, by all reports,

have very strange tastes.

Besides, they were much easier to put up with now

that they were too doped to do anything but giggle

softly and spill their Stemerald. Nanria's housekeep-

PARTNERSHIP

ing probes mopped up the green puddles on the cabin

floor; her passengers ignored the probes and their

cleanup activity, and she, as far as possible, ignored the

passengers.

Because now, at last, there was somebody else to talk

to-

Within seconds of her emergence from Singularity,

Nancia had initiated a tightbeam contact with Vega

Base. By the time Fassa was cleaned up in her cabin

and the odier passengers busy with their own peculiar

amusements, she had gone through the recognition

sequences and the official messages and was happily

chatting with Simeon, the managing brain of Vega

Base.

"So how did you like your first voyage?" Simeon

inquired.

"Singularity was..." Nancia couldn't find words for

it; instead she transmitted a short visual burst of colors

melting and expanding like soap bubbles, iridescent

trails of light joyously spiraling around one another. "I

can't wait to jump again."

Simeon chuckled. "You're one of the lucky ones,

then. From all I hear, it doesn't take everyone that

way."

"My passengers didn't seem to enjoy it much," Nan-

cia conceded, "but who cares?"

"Even brainships don't always get such a kick out of

Singularity,11 Simeon told her.

Nancia found that hard to believe, but she remem-

bered that Simeon was a stationary brain. Embedded

in die heart of Vega Base, his only experience of travel

would have been the jump that brought him here

from Laboratory Schools — as a passenger, like any

softperson. Perhaps she shouldn't go on about the joys

of Singularity to someone who could never experience

the thrill of managing his own jumps.

Besides, Simeon wanted to pursue something else.

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

"You don't seem to care much for your passengers'

comfort"

Again words foiled Nancia. She damped the colors

of her visual burst to a muddy swirl of greenish browns

and grays. "They're not... very nice people," she

finally answered. "Some of the things I overheard

them discussing on the trip... Simeon, could I ask you

a hypothetical question? Suppose a brainship hap-

pened to learn that some people had unethical plans.

Should she report them?"

"You mean, like a plot to murder somebody? Or

high treason—an attempt to overthrow Central?"

"Oh, goodness, no, nothing like thatl" How could

Simeon sound so calm while discussing such dreadful

things? "At least, I don't think — I mean, suppose they

weren't planning to hurt anybody, but what they

meant to do was morally wrong? Even illegal?" Alpha's

plans to profit from a drug that should have been

credited to Central Meds, Polyon's idea of creating a

black market in metachips — no, Nancia assured her-

self, her passengers were nasty and corrupt as all

get-out, but at least they weren't violent

"Hmm. And how might this brainship have found

out about her passengers' plans?"

"I — they thought she was a droneship," Nancia

said, "and they discussed everything quite freely. She

has datacordings of it all, too."

"I see." Simeon sounded quite disapproving, and for

a moment Nancia thought he shared her shock at her

passengers' plans. "And has it occurred to you, young

XN-935, that masquerading as a droneship in order to

eavesdrop on High Families' conversations is a form of

entrapment? In fact, given that the passengers in-

volved an High Families and very close to CenCom,

the act of taking surreptitious datacordings could even

be interpreted as treason. What if they'd been discuss-

ing vital military secrets?''

PARTNERSHIP

"But they weren't — I didn't — Listen, VS-895,

they're the criminals, not me!" Nancia shouted.

"Ouch."

Simeon's reply was almost an electronic whisper.

"Turn down your waveforms, would you? That

nearly jolted me out of my shell."

"Sorry." Nancia controlled her impulses and chan-

neled a clean, tight beam at Simeon. "But I don't see

what you're accusing me of."

"Me? Nothing, XN, I assure you. I'm just trying to

warn you that the courts may see things rather dif-

ferently. Now, I don't know what your young

passengers have been up to, and 1 don't particularly

care to know. You haven't seen much of the world yet,

or you'd realize that most softpersons have some way

or other to get a little extra out of every situation in

which they find themselves,"

Nancia mulled that over. "You mean — are they all

corrupt, then?"

Simeon chuckled. "Not all, Nancia, just enough to

make it interesting. You have to understand the poor

things. Short lifespan, limited to five senses, single-

channel comm system. I expect they feel cheated

when they compare themselves with us. And some of

them translate that feeling into trying to get extra

goodies for themselves."

Nancia had to agree that what Simeon said made a

lot of sense. She tried to emulate his attitude of lofty

detachment while she went about the business of land-

ing her passengers at their assigned stations in the

Nyota ya Jaha system. Since four of them still thought

her a droneship and the fifth knew she wasn't speak-

ing to him, it was easy enough to remain aloof.

Nancia made each planetary landfall an exercise in

split-second timing and perfect orbit-matching. It was

good practice, it kept her concentrating on her own

business and not on that of her passengers, and if the

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Baft

rapid maneuvers involved gave them a bumpy ride —

well, so much the worse. She took pride in making the

actual moments of touchdown as gentle as the landing

of a feather. At least, Bahati and Shemali went that way.

When she reached Angalia, she couldn't quite restrain

her impulse to give filaize a good shaking on the way

down. He was pale and sweating by the time they came

to a bumpy halt on the mesa that served as Angalia's

spacefield.

"That," he said as he collected his baggage, "was not

necessary."

Nancia preserved an icy silence — literally. Each

moment that Blaize delayed, she lowered her internal

temperature by several degrees.

"You could at least send a housekeeping probe to

help me with all this stuff," he complained, gripping a

box of novelhedra with fingers that were rapidly turn-

ing blue with cold.

"^fou're not my mother, you know," he said while lean-

ing on the button to the lift. "Nobody asked you to pass

judgment on my moral standards. Just like nobody asked

me if I wanted to come out to this godforsaken place."

"I guess it would be too much to expect anybody to

have a little sympathy," he said as the lift sped downward.

Nancia tilted the hatchway floor so that Blaize's

carefully stacked boxes of supplies tumbled out as

soon as he stepped onto the surface of Angalia.

"I know what you're thinking," he shouted from the

red dust of the mesa top, "but you're wrong about me!

You're all wrong! I'll show you!"

Nancia was pleased that her assignment made no

mention of collecting the previous PTA administrator,

the one whom Blaize had been sent to relieve. Ap-

parently, not being a member of the High Families, he

was expected to wait for the regularly scheduled PTA

transport rather than taking advantage of a brainship

for the Courier Service. Hard on him, Nancia

PARTNERSHIP

thought, but quite appropriate. She would proceed

directly to Vega 3.3, collect this stranded brawn, and

return to Central for a real assignment—with a brawn

of her own choosing. Thank goodness she was

through being used as a substitute droneship for the

convenience of the rich and powerful!

She discovered her error when she was halfway

from Nyota ya Jaha to Vega 3.

"What do you mean, another little errand?" she

blasted poor Simeon.

"Turn it down," came Simeon's low-intensity

reminder. "It wasn't my idea and you don't have to

shout like that Anyway, what difference does it make?

you were going to Vega 3 anyway."

"I was going to 3.3, not 4.2," Nancia pointed out,

and this reminded her of another grievance. "Why

can't these people give their suns and planets real

names, anyway? This Vega numbering system makes

me feel like a machine."

"They're great believers in efficiency," Simeon said.

"And logic. You'll see what I mean when you pair up

with Caleb."

"Hmph. You mean, when I transport the man—for

that's all I've agreed to. Efficiency!" Nancia grumbled.

"That's a new word for misuse of the Courier Service.

Why, it's a whole different solar system and an extra

stop to pick up this governor Thrixtopple and his

family, not to mention having to feed them all the way

back to Central. Time and fuel and ship's stores

wasted. My fuel belongs to the Courier Service," she

said, "and so does my time."

"What about your soul?" inquired Simeon, return-

ing to a normal-intensity beam. "Oh, never mind. I

keep forgetting how new you are, XN. Wait till you've

been around the subspaces a few hundred years.

You'll start understanding how the rules have to be

bent to accommodate people."

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaU

"You mean, to accommodate softpersons," Nancia

corrected proudly. "I've never asked for an exception

or a favor in my life, and I'm not about to start now."

Simeon's responding burst of discordant waves and

clashing colors was the electronic equivalent of an ex-

tremely rude word. "I can see why Psych thought you

and Caleb would be a good match," he said. Infuriat-

ingly, he shut down transmissions on that comment,

leaving Nancia to wonder all the way to Vega 3.3. Why

did Psych see fit to match her with a brawn whose

major accomplishment so far had been the loss of his

first brainship? Was there something wrong in her

profile, some instability that made it appropriate to

assign her an incompetent brawn? This Caleb soft-

person was probably going to be stuck doing

interplanetary hops and minor errands—like picking

up Governor Thrixtopple—for the rest of his Service.

And Central Psych wanted to stick her with him and his

flawed record! It wasn't/air. Nancia brooded about it

all the way to Vega 3.3.

Her first sight of Caleb did nothing to restore her

confidence in this assignment. Courier Service records

said that he was only twenty-eight — young for a

softperson — but he walked slowly and carefully, as if

he were already old and tired. His Service uniform

looked as if it had been designed for a larger man; the

tunic hung loosely from broad but bony shoulders, the

trousers flapped about his shins. Short, scraumy and

sour-faced, Nancia mentally catalogued as he made his

halting way up the stairs. And why couldn't he use the toft,

if he's too out of shape to walk up one/light of stairs?

His greeting to her was correct but lifeless. Nancia

responded in the same tone. Listlessly, they went

through the Service formulas until Nancia displayed

the orders beamed from Vega Base.

Caleb exploded. "Detouring to pick up that lard-

bottomed junketer and his family? That's not a Courier

PARTNERSHIP

Service job. Why can't Thrixtopple wait for the next

scheduled passenger transport Uke anyone else?"

Nancia sent a ripple of muddy brown rings across

the screen where their orders were displayed.

"Nobody told me anything," she responded verbally

for Caleb's benefit. "Stop here, go there, take these

kids to the Nyota system, collect a stranded brawn on

Vega 3.3, pick up the governor of 4.2 and take him

back to Central. / don't know why he rates a special

deal; he's not even High Families."

"No, but he's been working this subspace for a long

time," Caleb told her. "Probably has more pull than

half a dozen empty-headed aristos with their double-

barreled names."

"We are not all," Nancia said, "empty-headed. Per-

haps you failed to read your orders in detail?" She

flashed her full name on the screen to get his attention.

"Oh, well, you can't help your birth," Caleb said ab-

sent-mindedly, "and I suppose a good Lab Schools

training will make up for a lot. Are you ready for lift-

off? We can't waste time gossiping if we have to fit this

extra stop into the itinerary."

I give him ten minutes after we reach Central to get himself

and his bags off me and make room for a brawn with some

manners, Nancia vowed to herself as she drove her en-

gines through a harder and faster takeoff than she

would normally have imposed on a softperson pas-

senger. No, that's too generous. Five minutes.

She felt slighdy regretful when she peeked through

Caleb's cabin sensors and saw him struggling to sit up

after the takeoff, white and shaken. But she wasn't

sorry enough to change her basic position on brawn

assignments.

"There's one thing we should have settled before

liftoff," she announced without preamble.

"Yes?" Caleb didn't bother turning his head to look

at the cabin speaker. Of course, he was an experienced

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

— if incompetent — brawn; he would know that she

would be able to pick up his words from any direction.

Still, Nancia felt vaguely ruffled — as if she were being

ignored even as he replied to her.

"Transporting you back to Central Worlds is my offi-

cial assignment, and I cannot refuse it. But I do not

wish you to construe this as formal acceptance of you

as my brawn. I have no intention of waiving my rights

to free choice of my own brawn just because this match

is convenient for Central."

Now what ailed the man? He had just begun to

regain some color after the high-G lift-off; now his face

was drained again, still as a mask — or a corpse. Nan-

cia began to wonder if this brawn would live to see

Central. If he wasn't fit enough to make the journey, some-

body should have warned me.

"Of course," said Caleb in a voice so level and

drained of meaning that it could have issued from any

housekeeping drone, "no one would expect you to

waive that right. Particularly for me." He turned his

head and for the first time looked direcdy at the sensor.

"Shut down sensors to this cabin, please, XN. I wish to

rest In privacy," he emphasized. He lay down again

with one arm flung over his face. After a moment he

rolled over and lay facedown on the bunk, as if he

didn't trust Nancia not to peek at him.

"Simeon? Shellcrack, Simeon, I know you're pick-

ing up my beams. TALK TO ME!"

"You're an excessively demanding young thing,

XN-935, and you're shouting again."

"Sorry." Nancia was so glad to have got some

response from the Vega Base brain that she immedi-

ately lowered the intensity of her beam to match

Simeon's almost inaudible burst. "Simeon, I need to

know about this brawn they've saddled me with."

"So scan the newsbeam files."

PARTNERSHIP

"I did. There's nothing in them. Not what I need to

know, anyway." The files had been enlightening in

their own way, with their lurid stories of a ship and a

man almost destroyed by a sudden radiation burst, the

brawn's limping, months-long journey homeward in

his crippled, brainless ship and the hero's welcome he

had received when he arrived at Vega 3.3 with the sur-

vey data he'd been sent to gather. The tale of what

Caleb had gone through, the months of solitude and