Nancia thought it was a silly policy, born of fears that

were decades out of date. Earlier, less cleverly designed

brainships might have been vulnerable to passenger

takeover, but she was well protected against any little

 

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tricks that Fassa might come up with. The auxiliary

synaptic circuits known as the Helva Modification

would prevent any attempt to dose off her sensory

contact with her own ship-body.

 

All the same, Murasaki Base informed Nancia, the

regulations existed for good reason and it was not up

to a brainship to pick and choose which Service regs

she would obey.

 

"All right, all right." Had Caleb twitched again? Sum-

merlands Clinic personnel were standing by to collect

him as soon as they landed. Bahati Spaceport was issu-

ing final landing instructions. "Ill hand Fassa del

Parma over to Bahati authorities."

 

"That you will not," the Murasaki Base brain in-

formed her. "I've been in contact with CenDip while

' you were fussing over your brawn. The young lady is a

political hot potato."

 

"Awhat?"

 

"Sorry. Old Earth slang. Never thought about the

literal meaning ... let's see, I think a potato is some

kind of tuber, but why anybody would try to ignite

one... oh, well." Murasaki Base dismissed the intrigu-

ing linguistic question for later consideration. "What it

means is that nobody really wants to handle her trial.

Well, you can see for yourself, can't you, Nancia? If

you're going to try a High Families brat and send her

to prison, you don't do it out on some nowhere world

at the edge of the galaxy. You bring her back to Central

and you are very, very careful that all procedures are

followed. To the letter. CenDip has strict instructions

that nothing is to go wrong with this case; there's a cer-

tain highly placed authority who has taken a personal

interest in stopping High Families corruption."

 

"You can tell your highly placed authority to — "

Nancia transmitted a burst of muddy tones and discor-

dant high-pitched sounds.

 

"Can't,"  said  Murasaki  Base  rather smugly.

 

"Softshells can't receive that kind of input Fortunately

for them, I might add. Where did a nice brainship like

you pick up that kind of language?"

 

Nancia landed at Bahati Spacefield as gently as a

feather floating in the breeze. She opened her upper-

level cabin doors and waited for the spaceport workers

to bring a floatube. They'd already been informed of

the reason why she didn't want to open the lower

doors; the equipment should have been ready and

waiting—ah! There it was now.

 

"Well, then, just inform your 'highly placed

authority,' that a few little things have already gone

wrong with this operation," Nancia told Murasaki

Base. "And if I can't transport del Parma without a

brawn, and I can't hand her over to Bahati, what am I

supposed to do with her?"

"Wait for your new brawn, of course," Murasaki

 

Base informed her.

 

"And just how long will thai take?" They were load-

ing Caleb onto a stretcher now.

 

"About half an hour, if he can pack as quickly as he

 

should."

 

"What?"

 

In answer, Murasaki Base transmitted the CenDip in-

struction bytes directly. "Senior Central Diplomatic

service person ArmontiUado-y-Medoc, Forister, current-

ly R&R at Summerlands Clinic, previous brawn status

inactivated upon joining CenDip Central Date 2732,

reactivated 2754 for single duty tour returning prisoner

del Parma y Polo, Fassa, to Central Worlds jurisdiction,"

 

Before taking Caleb away, the Summerlands med-

techs were running tests and dosing him with

all-purpose antidotes. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong had

come personally to oversee the operation. Nantia's

sensors caught her dark, sharp-featured face from

several angles while she leaned over Caleb. Her ex-

pression showed nothing but keen professional

 

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interest: no hint of any evil plans to use Caleb as an un-

witting experimental subject

 

And no compassion.

 

And now he was going into the floatube, beyond

Nanria's sensor range.. .beyond her help. WhenwasSev?

Nancia scanned the sensor banks until she located him in

one of the passenger cabins that had been concealed be-

hind her fake paneling. He was guarding a groggy Fassa

who had just begun to comeoutofthesleepgas.

 

"Sev, I need you to go with Caleb," Nancia

announced.

 

"CN-935, please acknowledge receipt of formal or-

ders," Murasaki Base input on another channel.

 

"Can't," Sev answered without looking round.

"Have to guard the prisoner. Check regulations."

 

Nancia knew he was right The same stupid CS regs

that forbade her to transport Fassa without a brawn

would also forbid her to take sole charge of a prisoner.

"Are regulations more important than Caleb's life?"

 

"Nancia, he's getting the best possible medical care.

What are you worried about?"

 

"CN-935 RESPOND!" Murasaki Base shouted.

 

The floatube was a speck on the horizon. They weren't

stopping at the spaceport; they were taking Caleb direct-

ly to Summerlands. Where Alpha bint Hezra-Fong could

do anything, anything at all, to him, and Nancia wouldn't

even know until it was too late....

 

"Instructions received and accepted," she trans-

mitted to Murasaki Base in one short burst. "Now

GETTHAT BRAWN ON BOARD!" Forister Armon-

tillado-y-Medoc? Nancia remembered the short, quiet

man she'd transported somewhere, years earlier, to

solve some crisis. The one who'd spent all his time on

board reading. No matter what his records said, he

wasn't her idea of a brawn. But who cared? The sooner

he was here, the sooner Sev could be released from

guard duty to go watch over Caleb.

 

Fassa was choking on the bottom of a lake. Weeds

twined around her ankles, and the dear air was impos-

sibly far away, miles above the green water that

pressed her down and pushed at her mouth and ears

and nose widi gentle, implacable persistence. She tried

to kick free of the weeds; they clung tighter, reaching

up past ankle and calf and knee with green slimy

fingers that pressed dose against her thighs. When she

looked down, the weeds shaped themselves into pale

green faces with open mouths and dosed eyes. All the

men who'd given her their hearts and their integrity

and pieces of their souls were there on the bottom of

the lake, and they wanted to keep her there with them.

Her chest was bursting with the need to breathe. If she

gave back their souls, would they let her go?

 

She tried to strip off the charm bracelet on her left

wrist, but the catch was stuck; tried to break the chain,

but it was too strong. Green lake water seeped into her

mouth with a bitter taste, and black spots danced

before her eyes. She tugged the chain over her hand,

scraping a knuckle raw, and flung it at the hungry

ghosts. The sparkling charms of corydum and iridium

floated lazily down among the muddy weeds, and

Fassa was released to rise through rings of ever-

lightening water until she broke the surface and

breathed in the air that hurt like fire in her lungs.

 

She was lying on a bunk in a spaceship cabin. Sev

Bryley was seated cross-legged on the opposite bunk,

watching her with unsmiling attention. And the burn-

ing in her lungs was real, as was the throbbing pain in

her head; sleepgas hangover. Now she remembered:

surprise and violence and a fool who'd been where he

had no business, and the gas flooding the cargo bay

while she tried to hold her breath.

 

It all added up to a failure so crushing she could not

bear to think about it yet. And Sev, the man who'd

 

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ArmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

never given her a piece of his soul to keep in her

charm bracelet — was he the one who'd engineered

this disaster?

 

"What are you doing here?" she croaked.

 

"Making sure you came out of the sleepgas without

complications," Sev said. His voice sounded thin and

strained, as if he were trying to reach her from a great

distance. "Some people have a convulsive reaction. It

looked for a while like you were going to be one of

them."

 

And that had worried him? Perhaps he still cared for

her a little, then. Perhaps her experiment of taking

him aboard the Xanadu hadn't been a total failure,

after all. Fassa stretched, experimentally, and saw the

way his eyes followed her movements. Perhaps some-

thing could yet be salvaged from this catastrophe.

After all, they were alone on the droneship...

 

"Not convulsions," she said, languorously wriggling

her toes and proceeding upward, muscle by muscle, to

make certain that every inch of her own amazing body.

was back under her command again. *Just bad dreams."

"What sort of dreams?" Sev inquired.

Fassa sat up, rather more quickly than she had in-

tended, and fell back against the cabin wall. "The sort

that make you afraid to die."

 

"Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all," Sev

agreed with no change of tone, and Fassa felt a stab of

regret. She could have liked this man who so quickly

picked up on her thoughts, capping her unvoiced

quotations. If only he weren't so obstinately on the

wrong side! Ah, well, perhaps that could be changed.

It would damn well have to be changed if she hoped to

get out of this, she reminded herself

 

"Speak for yourself," she told him. "My conscience

isn't all that troubled; I've done nothing more than

what everybody does, just trying to get ahead by my

own efforts." Wrong tone, wrong tone. She didn't want

 

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to argue with Bryley; she wanted to seduce him. No.

Reeded to seduce him. That was all.

 

And she wasn't going to get anywhere in her present

condition. Fassa pushed sweaty, matted dark hair away

from her forehead with a genuine moan of pain.

"God, I must look like hell," she said. "Would you

mind very much getting out of here so I can clean up?"

 

"Yes," said Sev, "I would. You're not to be left un-

guarded until we return to Central. Orders from

 

CenDip."

Fassa moaned again. If CenDip was interesting itself

 

in her case, she was worse off than she'd thought.

Never mind. Central was a long way off. For the

present she was alone on a droneship with this gor-

geous hunk, and with any luck at all she'd make him

change his allegiances before the official transports ar-

rived to carry her to trial.

 

After only a little pouting and posing she managed

to persuade Sev that propping himself against the wall

outside her cabin would be adequate to fulfill his

guard duty. It was, Fassa thought with satisfaction, a

beginning. Now he would feel that this cabin was her

territory. When he came in again, it would be at her in-

vitation ... and invitations could lead to all sorts of

interesting things. She washed from head to foot, kick-

ed her stained and crumpled clothes in a corner under

the bunk, splashed a little extra cool water over her

face, and wrapped a sheet around herself in lieu of

fresh clothes. This would be a real test of her abilities.

No cosmetics, hair combed straight with no styling, a

scratchy Service-issue sheet instead of a clinging gown,

and this bare cabin for a romantic setting!

 

"fossa baby, you're so sweet, I just can't resist you," Paul

del Parma used to moan when he came into her room

and buried himself in her. And she'd been aji

awkward, sullen Uttle girl then, with her black hair in

thin tight braids. She'd worn the ugliest, plainest

 

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clothes she could find, but that didn't put Faul off.

 

For the first time Fassa deliberately summoned up

the memories she'd tried for so long to bury, seeking

the confidence she needed to go on. She really was ir-

resistible to men. Faul del Parma had proved that,

hadn't he? Even knowing it was wrong, even knowing

she hated it, he'd still refused to let her alone.

 

"It'severytkfngaboutyou, the way you walk, the way you smile

up atme with those bigsooty lashes hatfcoveringyour eyes"

 

Instead of giving her confidence, die memories

made Fassa feel grimy. She must have invited him, not

with words, but with something about the way she

walked and looked at him. Somehow she'd made

Daddy want her without even knowing it. She was a

bad little girl and if Mama ever found out...

 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Mama screamed

and fell endlessly through the glittering interior atrium

of the hotel, tumbling in a cloud of gauzy draperies. And

it was all her fault. Fassa cried out once and threw some-

thing across the cabin with all her might, and Sev Bryley

burst through the unlatched door.

 

"What's the matter? What happened?"

 

His arms went around her and Fassa rested against

the fresh starched fabric of his shirt, feeling the strong

beat of his heart beneath her face. For some reason she

was crying; she couldn't stop crying for long minutes

while Sev just held her. Not easing her backwards

towards the bunk, not letting his hands slide artfully

downward in a disguised caress. Just holding her.

 

"Well," Fassa said finally, gulping down the last of

her sobs, "I told you; 1 have bad dreams."

 

"You seemed wide awake when I left you."

 

Fassa drew a shaky deep breath. "I — I'm afraid to

be alone just now," she said. It happened to be true.

"Could you stay with me?"

 

"As it happens," Sev told her, "I was going to

anyway." He released her, as if sensing that she was

 

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171

 

recovered for the moment, and moved a step back-

ward. Fassa sighed again, with a little more

forethought this time, and watched his eyes. Yes, he

was aware of what those deep breaths were doing to

the sliding knot that held the sheet together between

her breasts, and he couldn't take his eyes off the

creamy skin that contrasted with the stark white of the

sheet. Good. She had a job to do, here; she had best

think about that and nothing else, or she'd never win

this man to her side before she was taken away for trial.

 

"Oh, that's right," she said, allowing a tear to creep

into the corner of one eye; not difficult, in her present

shaky mood. "I forgot; you're my jailer, aren't you?"

 

Sev looked uncomfortable at this assessment, as

she'd wanted him to. "I wouldn't put it quite like that

But someone does have to stay widi you until..."

 

"Until the end," Fassa finished for him. "What sort

of sentences are in favor these days? Will it be hard

labor, do you think?" She tossed her head and gave

him her Christian-facing-the-lions look, all nobility

and virgin defiance. At the same time she moved

slightly so that the sheet molded over one thigh, giving

him (she hoped) visions of what sort of hard labor she

might be good for.

 

"You'll have a fair trial," Sev told her, "and a chance

to speak in your own defense."

 

"Will I?" Fassa challenged him. "Look at me. Don't

you think there'll be some old judge who'd just love to

see me mindwiped? They'll be thinking what a pity it is

to waste such a beautiful body, keep the body, just wipe

out the personality and start over."

 

"Oh, I'm sure they won't do that," Sev said, but he

sounded less righteously certain than he'd been a mo-

ment before. Fassa mentally applauded her own

cleverness. There wasn't much point in trying to con-

vince Sev that she was innocent of the charges against

her, not when he was Central's prime witness. Much

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Bail

 

better to switch the topic to the corruption at all levels

of government. Sev knew something about that. Let

him stew over the assertion that she couldn't possibly

get a fair trial, let him think — as he must be thinking

now — about the danger that she'd end up as the

mindwiped toy of some corrupt official.

 

"You know it happens," Fassa said in a low voice.

"You know how much cheating there is in the govern-

ment. Everybody wants something for himself. One of

them will want me, and then — " She blew a kiss into

the air with a mocking smile. "Bye-bye, Fassa del

Parma!" Time to let the sheet fell to the ground, giving

Sev a good look about what some dirty old man would

get if he didn't get there first. She moved towards him,

inch by inch, watching the color rise in his sharp fea-

tures, watching the blue eyes darken with desire. "You

could at least say good-bye properly, Sev, my love," she

whispered.

 

She paused, eyes closed, awaiting the warmth of his

arms about her and his mouth on hers.

 

"I think not," said Sev Bryley, and while Fassa's eyes

flew open in shocked disbelief he took the two steps

that brought him to the cabin door.

 

Once outside the cabin, Sev reactivated the

guardlock mechanism that would prevent Fassa from

leaving. He leaned against the wall and wiped his

forehead with the back of one hand. It wasn't much

help; he still felt as hot as if he'd just done a ten-mile

run in the Capellan jungle. He needed a cold shower.

And that ten-mile run might not be a bad idea, either,

except he couldn't leave Nancia alone to guard Fassa.

 

He could get some extra help, though — and some

insurance against temptation. "Nancia?" he said in a

low voice, looking upward at the angle between ceiling

and roof where her auditory sensors were installed.

"Nancia, I think you'd better activate full sensors

 

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within Fassa's cabin. I know it's a breach of the

prisoner's privacy, but this is a very dangerous woman.

And, Nancia? You'd better keep the sensors on at all

times. Even when I'm with Ms. del Parma."

 

Sev thought that over and decided he hadn't

worded that last request strongly enough. "Especially

when I'm with Fassa," he rephrased.

 

"I'd already done that, Sev," Nancia responded

from the wall speaker. "Don't worry. Everything has

been observed and recorded."

 

"Excellent," said Sev between his teeth. "I'm sure that

little scene will be vasdy amusing to somebody who's not

troubled by hormonal urges. Now, if you don't mind,just

keep watching Fassa and let me know if she tries any-

thing. I'll be in the ship's exercise room."

 

"What for?"

 

"Taking care of my hormones," Sev said. He

stamped off to improve his weight-lifting record.

 

"FN-935, Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc requests

permission to come aboard."

 

"Permission granted."

 

Even to her own ears, Nancia sounded brusque. After

a grudging nanosecond's thought she added formally,

"Welcome aboard, Forister Armontilladoy-Medoc."

 

The short, spare man whom she'd last seen heading

into the tangled planetary conflicts of the Tran Phon

guerrillas on Charon dropped three heavy pieces ofbag-

gage onto the lift with a grunt of relief. Pm getting an old

man who can't even carry his own luggage without getting out of

breath. But as if to contradict die unspoken criticism,

Forister waved the lift upwards with his luggage and took

the circular stairs. Nancia watched his progress from sen-

sor to sensor. He moved with quick, neat steps,

economical of his motions. You couldn't say he was

bounding up the stairs, but he did get to the top more

quickly dian she'd expected; and there wasn't a gray hair

 

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out of place or a drop of sweat on his forehead when he

entered the central cabin.

 

"Greetings, Nancia," Forister said. Unlike Caleb, he

looked directly at the titanium bulkhead that housed

Nancia's human body and brain. His direct gaze was

rather disconcerting to Nancia, who'd been used to Caleb

wandering round the ship and addressing her without

turning his head, counting on her efficient sensor system

to pick up his words wherever he might be. She took a mo-

ment to look over this strange elderly brawn and prepare

her response. Light eyes in a tanned fece, with a network

of crinkles around the eyes as if he were accustomed to

looking deeply at whatever he saw; hints of red and ginger

in the graying hair; a light, erect, relaxed stance, as if he

were prepared to move in any direction at a moment's

notice. He may do. But he's not Caleb!

 

"You seem remarkably fit for someone who's just been

recuperating at Summerlands," Nancia said at last

 

Forister grimaced. "Oh, I'm fit enough, if that's

what's been worrying you, FN. The stay at Summer-

lands was not for any medical reasons."

 

"Then what? The orders I received said you were

there for R&R."

 

"Um. Yes. Well, they would, wouldn't they?" Forister

said, maddeningly, while Nancia wondered if the man

ever gave a straight answer to anything. Maybe that was

trained out of you in the diplomatic service.

 

At last he vouchsafed one more sentence that could

be considered an explanation. "My last posting for

CenDip was... shall we say, stressful, and things didn't

work out as well as I'd hoped."

 

"Charon?" Nancia asked.

 

The brawn blinked once, surprised. "Why, no. Why

— oh, I remember. I had the honor of being

transported to Charon by you, didn't I? Some years

ago — you were the CN-935 then, as I recall. My con-

dolences on the loss of your partner."

 

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175

 

"It's only temporary," Nancia said. "Which reminds

me. I wouldn't wish to hurry your unpacking, but as

soon as you're ready, I'd like you to take over guarding

the prisoner. Sev Bryley is needed at Summerlands to

look after my brawn."

 

"As you wish." Forister did not quite dick his heels

together as he executed a perfect bow in the direction

of the titanium column. He wheeled, collected his bags

from the open lift and marched down the hall to the

brawn's cabin — Caleb's cabin — leaving Nancia with

the feeling that she had been unpleasantly brusque.

She opened a speaker in the cabin.

 

"If you don't object, we could continue our conver-

sation while you unpack."

 

"No objection," said Forister. He was slighdy out of

breath now, after lifting the heavy bags to his bunk.

What on Earth did the man travel with? A fortune in

Corycium bars buried beneath his underwear? The

first things he drew out of the bags were commonplace

enough: CenDip formal dress and spare shirts,

toiletries and a handful of laser-printed datahedra.

 

He might not object, but he wasn't being very help-

ful either. Well, she hadn't been as friendly as she

might; it was up to her to make the first move. "What

was your last posting, then, if it wasn't Charon? And

why did you pick Summerlands?"

 

"Summerlands has a very good reputation as a rest

facility," Forister said. "I expect you're unduly worried

about your former brawn; the medical staff there is

top-quality."

 

"It's not their technical skills I'm worried about,"

Nancia told him. There was movement in Fassa's

cabin. She had been keeping the sensors there down

to monitor level; now she activated full pick-up and

saw that Sev had gone in to talk to Fassa. The girl was

fully dressed this time, and they were sitting on op-

posite bunks; she didn't think Sev would encounter

 

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Arme McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

any real problem. All the same, she captured their

quiet conversation and listened to it with one ear while

she watched Forister and wished he would hurry up

with his unpacking. Now he had got to the hottom

layer of the first bag, and she saw what had weighed

his luggage down so: nothing but a lot of antiques.

One antique book after another, kilos and kilos of

them, and doubtless no more information in the lot of

them than could be stored in a few facets of a

datahedron! There was no accounting for tastes.

 

"Isn't Summerlands rather remote for a man of

your importance?" Nancia probed. She knew she was

being pushy, but she didn't care. If Forister was in with

Alpha and her criminal friends, she didn't dare set him

to guard Fassa — nor did she dare send him back to

the clinic to watch over Caleb. She would have to get

on the datastream to Murasaki Base at once.

 

"I've family in the Nyota system," Forister told her.

"I was hoping to make a brief visit after I left Summer-

lands. And I'd a friend at the clinic."

 

"Alpha bint Hezra-Fong," Nancia surmised. She

might as well face all the bad news at once.

 

"Good God, no!" Forister seemed genuinely

startled. "If that's what you think of the company I

keep, no wonder you've been so hostile. Somebody

else entirely, I assure you."

 

"Who?"

 

"I'm not at liberty to say just now. If all goes well — "

Forister broke off and rather fussily adjusted the port-

able folding shelf where he had stowed his books,

lightening the spring-bindings that would keep them

in place in case of any rapid ship's movements. "But

whether it comes off or not," he said, more slowly, "I

won't be here to help. And I won't have any free time

afterwards to visit in this system. I'll be on my way back

to Central with you, and once I land there, God knows

what six urgent assignments will be waiting." He

 

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177

 

looked up, direcdy into Nantia's primary cabin sensor.

"So you see, dear lady, this assignment is no more to

my liking than it is to yours. I hope we can sink our dif-

ferences for the duration — "

 

"Hush" The conversation in Fassa's cabin had sud-

denly become very interesting; Nancia didn't want to

have to wait and replay it, she wanted to know what

was going on right now.

 

It appeared that Fassa was trying to plea bargain with

information on some of the other young people who'd

been involved in that vicious wager. She began by hinting

to Sev that she might be able to inform on a whole gang of

criminals in the Nyota system if doing so would get her a

reduced sentence. Sev, quite properly, told her that he

wasn't authorized to make such promises.

 

MOh, what the hell," Fassa said wearily at last." If I'm

going down, I won't go alone. You might as well know

everything. At least then you'll see that I'm not the

worst of the bunch by a long shot."

 

She began telling Sev all she knew about Darnell

Overton-Glaxely and the ways in which he'd worked his

illegal Net access, first to bring in shipping bids that were

always just a shade lower than those of his competitors,

then to destroy the credit and acquire the stock of any

small businesses he felt like adding to his empire.

 

"AU very interesting," Sev told her. "But if Overton-

Glaxely is as clever as you say at accessing private Net

datastreams, he'll have been clever enough to leave no

traces of his taps."

 

"Oh, he's not clever at all," Fassa said. "He was

taught how to tap into the datastream — "

 

"By?" Sev prompted gentiy.

 

Fassa shook her head. She had gone rather white

about the lips. "It doesn't matter. Nobody you're likely

to catch up with. Not me, if that's what you're think-

ing; I haven't got that kind of brains."

 

"I never suspected you had," Sev said, rather too

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaS

 

solemnly. Fassa gave him a suspicious glance. His lips

were twitching. She aimed a mock blow at him.

 

"That's right, insult my intelligence!"

 

Sev caught her wrist and held it for a long moment

while Nancia wondered if it was time to interrupt. At

last his fingers relaxed. Fassa subsided onto her bunk.

There was a white ring about her wrist where Sev had

held her; she rubbed it absently while she went on

talking. "Never mind about the Net, then. There's

other ways to prove it. One of the men Darnell ruined

found out a little too much about his methods, and

Darnell sent him to Summerlands."

 

At that point Nancia decided that Forister had better

hear this too. Whatever she thought of the man as a re-

placement for her Caleb, he was a trusted CenDip

senior civil servant. He had friends in Summerlands.

And he seemed to share her opinion of Dr. bint Hezra-

Fong. She piped the input from Fassa's cabin through

her speakers in Forister's cabin. After a moment's

stunned silence, Forister sat down amid the piles of an-

tiques on his bunk and listened carefully.

 

"Darnell thought Alpha would kill the man for him.

She'd had a bunch of accidents with the tests she ran

on her charity patients; she was getting quite good at

faking death certificates with innocent-seeming causes

of death. She used to boast about it at our annual

meetings. One more wouldn't have been any problem

for her. But she didn't kill him. She keeps him so full of

Seductron that he doesn't know who he is, and when-

ever she wants Darnell to do her a favor, she threatens

to cut the man's Seductron dosage."

 

"His name?'* Sev demanded.

 

Fassa looked down. "I'd like some assurances that

you'll see my sentence reduced."

 

"You know I can't do that," Sev told her

 

She twisted her fingers together. "You could lose the

records of this last trip, though. Without your tes-

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

179

 

timony and the recordings, there woulan't be any

hard evidence against me." She looked up, eyes bril-

liant with unshed tears. "Please, Sev? I thought you

cared for me a little."

 

"You were wrong," said Sev in a voice as dead and

even as any droneship's artificially generated speech.

 

"Then what do I have? Why should I give you a

damned thing?" Fassa pounded on the yielding sur-

face of the bunk in frustration. Her fists sank into the

plasmaform and left momentary dents that smoothed

out as soon as she lifted her hands. "Oh, all right. Go

ahead and see me mindwiped, or sent to prison until

I'm too old to care," she said wearily. "Why should the

others get away with it when my life is ruined? The

man's name is Valden Alien Hopkirk, and he used to

own Hopkirk Glimware right here on Bahati. Is that

enough for you, or would you like his Central Citizen

Code as well?"

 

"Any little thing you can tell us would be much ap-

preciated," said Sev carefully.

 

"Well, I don't happen to know his CCC, so you're

out of luck!" Fassa snapped. "Wait — wait — there's

more."

 

"There is?"

 

"Find Hopkirk, and you'll have evidence on Alpha

and Darnell both," Fassa said rapidly. "But there's

another one you ought to get. His name's Blaize...."

 

In the brawn's cabin, Forister lowered his head to

rest on his clenched hands. "Blaize Armontillado-

Perez y Medoc," he whispered. "No. No."

 

Fve family m the Nyota system... I was going to visit after

fleft Sunrnierhnds ...

 

Nancia cut off the audio transmission to Forister's

cabin and shut down her own sensors there. She lis-

tened alone while Fassa babbled out the details of

Blaize's felonious career on Angalia; the diverting of

PTA shipments, the slave labor and torture of the na-

 

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt

 

rive population he was supposed to be guarding.

 

Some day Forister would have to know and face

those details, but not yet. She would leave him alone

until he requested the recordings of this conversation,

and then she would let him listen in privacy.

 

And so Nancia was the only witness when Fassa's

confessional came to an abrupt ending. After she

finished the tale of Blaize's misdeeds, Sev probed her.

 

"I've looked up the records of that first voyage," he

said, almost casually. "There were five of you in it

together, weren't there? You, Dr. bint Hezra-Fong,

Overton-Glaxely, Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and

one other. Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, newly commis-

sioned from the Academy. What was his part in the

wager?"

 

Fassa clamped her lips shut and slowly shook her

head. "I can't tell you any more," she whispered.

"Only — don't let them send me to Shemali. Kill me

first. I know you never cared for me, but as one

human being to another—kill me first Please."

 

"You're wrong in thinking I never cared for you,"

Sev said after a long silence.

 

"You said so yourself."

 

"You asked if I liked you a little," he corrected her.

"And I don't. You're vain and self-centered and you

may have killed a good man and you've yet to show

any interest at all in Caleb's fete. 1 don't much like you

at all."

 

"Yes, I know."

 

"Unfortunately,** he went on with no change of ex-

pression, "likeitornot—and believe me, I'm not at all

happy about the situation — I do seem to love you.

Not," he said almost gently, "that it'll do either of us

much good, under the circumstances. But I did think

you ought to know."

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

Caleb recovered with amazing speed. Two hours after

his arrival at the clinic, forty minutes after Alpha bint

Hezra-Fong had analyzed the poisons in his blood and

slapped on stimpatches of the appropriate antidotes, the

nervous convulsions had stopped. Nancia knew exactly

when that happened, because by then she had thought

to send Sev Bryley to Summerlands with a contact button

discreetly replacing the top stud in his dress tunic and a

second contact button to clip onto Caleb's hospital gown.

While Forister remained on board as a nominal guard

for Fassa, Sev lounged about the public rooms at Sum-

merlands trying to look like a worried friend-or-relative

and chatting up the recuperating VIPs. Nancia watched

the clinic from two angles: the convulsive shuddering

view of a cracked white ceiling, emanating from Caleb's

contact button, and the repetitive views of artificial potted

palms and doddering old celebrities to whom Sev talked.

On the whole, the potted palms were more valuable than

the celebrities; at least they didn't waste Sev's time with

their reminiscences of events a century past

 

"None of these people know anything about

Hopkirk," she whispered through Sev's contact button.

 

"I've noticed," he replied as the senile director

emeritus of the Bahati Musical College, aged one

hundred seventy-five Standard Central Years, tottered

away for his noon meds.

 

"Can't you do something more productive?"

 

"Give me time. We don't want to be obvious. And

stop hissing at me. They'll think I'm talking to myself

and hearing voices."

 

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Anne McCaffrvy & Margaret Ball

 

"From what I've seen of these befuddled gentry,

that'll make you fit right in."

 

"Only," said Sev grimly, "if they don't hear the voices

too."

 

Nantia hated to leave him with the last word in an

argument, but she was distracted at that moment.

Something had happened — or stopped happening.

Caleb's sensor button was no longer transmitting a jig-

gling view of the cracks on the ceiling; the image was

still and perfectly dear.

 

Not quite still. A regular, gende motion assured her

that he still breathed.

 

A moment later, two aides exchanged a flurry of

rapid, low-voiced but mainly cheerful comments over

Caleb's bed. Nancia gathered that the news was good;

his (three-syllable Greek root) was up, his (four-syl-

lable Latin derivation) was down, they were putting

him on a regular dosage of (two-word Denebian

form), and as soon as he was conscious they were to

start him on a physical therapy routine.

 

She complained to Forister about the jargon.

 

"Now you know how the rest of the world feels

about brains and brawns," he said soothingly. "You

know, there are people who think decomposition

theory is just a little hard to follow. They accuse us of

mystifying the mathematics on purpose."

 

"Huh. There's nothing mystical about mathe-

matics," Nancia grumbled. "This medical stuff is

something else again."

 

"Why don't you translate the terms and find out

what they mean?"

 

"I didn't have a classical education," Nancia told

him. "I'm going to buy one when we get back to

civilization, though. I want full datahedra of Latin,

Greek, and medical terminology. With these new hy-

perchips I should be able to access the terms almost as

fast as a native speaker."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

183

 

Somebody shouted just out of visual range of

Caleb's sensor button. The view of the hospital ceiling

swayed, blurred, and was replaced by glass windows,

green fields, and a white-clothed arm coining from the

left. "Here," said a calm, competent voice just before

Caleb bent over the permalloy bowl before him and

gave up the contents of his last meal.

 

The contact button gave Nancia a very clear, sharply

detailed close-up view of the results.

 

After that, though, he recovered his strength with

amazing speed. Throughout the day Nancia followed

his sessions with the physical therapist. At the same

rime she tracked Sev while he prowled the hallways of

Summerlands Clinic and listened for any scrap of in-

formation about a patient named Valden Alien

Hopkirk.

 

By mid-afternoon a new aide was able to assure

Caleb that there would be no permanent nerve

damage as a result of the attack.

 

"You're weak, though, and we'll need to retrain some

of the nerve pathways; the stuff your space pirate used

was a neural scrambler. Damage is reversible," the aide

said briskly, "but I'd advise a prolonged course of

therapy. You certainly won't be cleared to act as a brawn

for some time. Has your ship been notified?"

 

"She knows everything that goes on here," said

Caleb, placing one finger briefly on the edge of the

contact button.

 

Nancia got a good look at the aide's face. The man

looked thoughtful, perhaps worried. "I... see. And,

um, I suppose the button has a dead-man switch?

Some alarm if it's inactivated or removed?"

 

"Absolutely," Nancia responded through the contact

button before Caleb could tell the truth. Some such ar-

rangement would be a great safeguard for Caleb, and

she wished Central had thought of it. But failing that,

the illusion of the arrangement might give him some

 

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

 

protection. She went on through the tiny speaker, ig-

noring Caleb's attempts to interrupt her. "Please

notify all staff concerned of the arrangement. I would

be sorry to have to sound a general alarm just because

some ignorant staff member accidentally interfered

with my monitoring system."

 

"That would indeed be ... unfortunate," said the

aide thoughtfully.

 

After he left, Caleb said quietly into the contact but-

ton, "That was a lie, Nancia."

 

"Was it?" Nancia parried. "Do you think you know all

my capabilities? Who's the 'brain' of this partnership?"

 

"I see!"

 

Nancia rather hoped he didn't. At least she'd

avoided lying direcdy to Caleb. That was some-

thing ... but not enough.

 

She had never before minded her inability to move

about freely on planetary surfaces. Psych Department's

testing before she entered brainship training showed

that she valued the ability to fly between the stars for

more than the limited mobility of planet-bound crea-

tures. "I could have told them that," Nancia responded

when the test results were reported to her. "Who wants to

roll about on surface when they could have all of deep

space to play in? If I want anything planetside, they can

bring it to me at the spaceport"

 

But they couldn't bring her Caleb. And she couldn't

go to the Summer-lands clinic to watch over him.

Nancia could see and hear everything that passed

within range of those buttons. She could even send in-

structions to the wearers. But she could not art. She

was reduced to fretting over the slow progress they

were making and worrying about the medications

being inserted into Caleb's blood stream.

 

"Haven't you found anything yet?" she demanded

of Forister. Since Fassa had spent the day crying quiet-

ly in her cabin, Forister interpreted his "guard" duties

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

185

 

rather liberally. He was on board and available in case

of any escape attempt, but he told Nancia that he saw

no reason to waste his time sitting on a hard bench out-

side Fassa's cabin door. Instead, he sat before a

touchscreen in the central cabin, inserting delicate

computer linkages into Alpha's clinic records and

scanning for some hint of where she'd put the witness

they needed.

 

Forister straightened and sighed. "I have found," he

told her, "four hundred gigamegs of patient charts,

containing detailed records of all their medications,

treatments, and data readouts."

 

"Well, then, why don't you just look up Hopkirk

and find out what she's done with him?" Nancia

demanded.

 

In response, Forister tapped one finger on the

touchscreen and slapped his palm over Nancia's

analog input. The data he had retrieved was shunted

directly into Nancia's conscious memory stores. It felt

like having the contents of a medical library injected

directly into her skull. Nancia winced, shut down her

instinctive read-responses, and opened a minuscule

slit of awareness onto a tiny portion of the data.

 

It was an incomprehensible jumble of medical ter-

minology, packed without regard for paragraphing or

spacing, with peculiar symbolic codes punctuating the

strings ofjargon.

 

She opened another slit and "saw" the same tightly-

packed gibberish.

 

"It's not indexed by patient name," Forister ex-

plained. "Names are encoded — for privacy reasons, I

suppose. If the data is indexed by anything, it might be

on type of treatment. Or it might be based on a hashed

list of meds. I really can't find any organizing principle

yet. Also," he added, unnecessarily, "it's compressed."

"We know he's being kept quiet by controlled over-

doses of Seductron," Nancia said. "Why not... oh." As

 

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PARTNERSHIP

 

187

 

she spoke, she had been scanning the datastream.

There was no mention of Seductron. "Illicit drug," she

groaned. "Officially, there's no such treatment. She'll

have encoded it as something else."

 

"I should have taken Latin," Forister nodded.

"Capellan seemed so much more useful for a

diplomat... Ah, well."

 

"Can you keep hacking into the records?" Nanria

asked. '"There might be a due somewhere else."

 

Forister looked mildly offended. "Please, dear lady.

'Hacking' is a criminal offense."

 

"But isn't that what you're doing?"

 

"I may be temporarily on brawn service," Forister

said, "but I am a permanent member of the Central

Diplomatic Service. Code G, if that means anything to

you. As such, I have diplomatic immunity. Hacking is

illegal; whatever I do is not illegal; hence, it's not hack-

ing." He smiled benignly and traced a spiraling path

inward from the boundaries of the touchscreen,

wiping the previous search and opening a new way

into the labyrinth of the Summerlands Clinic records.

 

"/ should have taken logic," Nancia muttered. "I

think there's something wrong with your syllogism.

Code G. That means you're a spy?" Caleb would never

forgive her for this. Consorting with spies, breaking

into private records... The feet that she was working

as much to save him as to track down criminals

wouldn't palliate her offense in his eyes.

 

"Mmm. You may call me X-39 if you like." Hum-

ming to himself, Forister smoothed out the path he

had begun and traced a new, more complex pattern

on the touchscreen.

 

"Isn't that rather pointless," Nancia inquired,

"seeing that I already know your name?"

 

"Hmm? Ah, yes — there we go!" Forister chuckled

with satisfaction as he opened his access to a new seg-

ment of Summerlands Clinic's computer system.

 

"Supremely pointless, like most espionage. Most

diplomacy, too, come to think of it. No, we don't use

code names. But I've always thought it would be

rather fiin to be known as X-39."

 

"Have you indeed, fungus-brain?" Alpha bint

Hezra-Fong muttered from the security of her inner

office. "How'd you like to be known as Seductron Test

Failure 106 Mark 7? If I'd known who you were — "

She bit off the empty threats. She knew now. And if

Forister made the mistake of coming back to Summer-

lands for any reason, she'd have her revenge.

 

Neither Forister nor Nancia had thought to check

Nancia's decks for transmitters — and even if they

had, they might not have recognized Alpha's personal

spyder, a sliver-thin enhanced metachip device that

clung to any permalloy wall and, chameleon-like,

mimicked the colors of its surroundings. In all the fuss

attendant on getting the wounded brawn into the

floatube, Alpha had found it easy enough to leave one

of the spyders attached to Nancia's central corridor.

From there it picked up any conversation in the

cabins, although the voices were distorted by distance

and interference.

 

At the time, Alpha hadn't been exactly sure what in-

stinct prompted her to plant the spyder; she had just

felt that the amount of Net communications traffic

concerning this particular brainship and brawn sug-

gested they were more important than they looked.

Infuriatingly, the datastreams coming from Central

over the Net were in a code Alpha had not yet suc-

ceeded in breaking, so the spyder was her only source

of information.

 

So £ar, though, it had proved a remarkably effective

tool. Alpha preened herself on her cleverness in drop-

ping one of the expensive spyders where it was most

needed. She drummed her fingers on the palmpad of

 

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret BaH

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

189

 

the workstation while she mentally reviewed what

she'd done so far and the steps she'd taken to

counteract the danger. The rhythm of her fingertips

was repeated on the screen as a jagged display of

colored lines, breaking and recombining in a hypnotic

jazzy dance.

 

First had come the surprising sound of Fassa del

Parma's voice. While admiring the dramatic range

Fassa put into pleading with her captor, Alpha hadn't

been too surprised when the girl rapidly broke down

and began spilling what she knew about her com-

petitors. She'd always felt the del Parma kid didn't

have what it took to make it in the big time. Too emo-

tional. She cried in her sleep and then she gloated over

her victims. Real success came from being like Alpha

or Polyon, cool, unmoved, above feeling triumph or

fear, concentrating always on the desired goal.

 

Fortunately, Fassa didn't know much; she'd been

too stupid to think much beyond her personal con-

cerns. Alpha was willing to bet the little snip had never

thought of compiling a dossier on each of her com-

petitors, with good hard data that could be traded in

emergency. All she had were gossip and innuendo and

stories from the annual meetings. Blaize was nasty to

the natives, Alpha had developed an illicit drug, Dar-

nell was less than totally ethical in his business

takeovers.

 

Hearsay! Without hard evidence to back up the

stories, Central would never make charges like these

stick, and they were too smart to try. Alpha grinned

and slapped her open hand down on the palmpad,

jolting the computer into a random display of medical

jargon and meaningless symbols mixed with sentences

pulled at random from patient reports. She'd

prepared that program years ago, as protection

against a computer attack like the one Forister was

trying now. And to judge from the snippets of conver-

 

sation between him and Nancia, it was working. They

would waste all their energy trying to decipher a code

that had no meaning.

 

And while they worked, Alpha would take steps to

deal with the one piece of hard evidence Fassa had

pointed out to them. Her fingers drummed fester; she

slapped the palmpad again to enter voice mode.

 

"Send Baynes and Moss to my office — no, to Test

Room Four," she said. Baynes could safely be pulled

off the task of watching that brawn for a while; Caleb

was too weak to be any danger, and anyway he was

protected by his brainship's monitor button.

 

Alpha didn't think her office was infested with

spyders; she was absolutely certain about Test Room 4,

a gleaming permalloy shell with no crack in the walls,

no furnishings but the permalloy benches and table.

Alpha had commissioned the building of this room out

of her profits from the first illicit street sales of

Seductron. The official purpose of the lab room was

for Alpha's experiments on bioactive agents; the ex-

treme simplicity of its design was to aid in complete

sterilization of the chamber after experiments were

completed.

 

It served well enough for these purposes. And the

contractor who'd installed nets of electronic impulse

chargers behind the permalloy skin, making the room

impervious to any known external monitors, had suf-

fered a fatal overdose of Blissto shortly after the

completion of the room. Alpha shook her head and

sighed with everyone else that she'd never have

guessed the man was an addict. And the secret of the

 

room was safe.

 

Baynes and Moss really were addicts. Alpha had

"cured" their Blissto addiction, found them jobs at the

clinic, and then explained to them that the Blissto ad-

diction had only been replaced by a much more

serious drug, a variant of Seductron with the unfor-

 

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PARTNERSHIP

 

191

 

tunate side effect of causing complete nervous collapse

in victims who were suddenly cut off from their

regular dosage. Alpha had been experimenting with a

mildly addictive form of Seductron that would create a

captive market in anyone who ever tried the stuff;

Seductron-B4 was an overresponse to the problem.

She was afraid to release the stuff to street markets.

But it was incredibly useful in creating willing ser-

vants. It had only taken one or two delicately timed

delays in the Seductron-B4 doses to convince Baynes

and Moss that their only hope of life lay in total loyalty

to her. She had picked her tools carefully; they had

enough medical background to be genuinely useful as

aides in the clinic, but were far too stupid to replicate

her work on Seductron. If she died or were in-

capacitated, Baynes and Moss would die too:

inevitably, slowly, and painfully.

 

She felt quiet satisfaction, as always, at seeing two

men to whom her life was, literally, as valuable as then-

own. And for all thai little snip fossa vaunts her sex appeal,

no man who's rutted after her cares about her life the way these

two care about mine.

 

She gave her instructions quickly and confidently,

expecting nothing but instant obedience. The patient

carried on Summerlands' lists as Varian Alexander

was to be removed to the charity side of the clinic at

once. There was an empty bed in Ward 6, where the

recovering Blissto addicts and alcoholics were housed;

he would do very well there for the moment.

 

"Excuse me, Doctor, but are you sure — " Baynes

began.

 

"He'll stand the move," Alpha said.

* Yes, but—"

 

"It's simple enough even for your drug-logged

brain, I should think!"

 

"It's not Alexander that worries him, Doctor," said

the quicker Moss. "It's that half-cyborg freak in Ward

 

6, Qualia Benton. Been asking a lot of questions, she

has. Too many."

 

Alpha drummed her fingers on the permalloy table.

Benton. Qualia Benton, Ah, yes. An interesting case,

presented as an alcoholic veteran of the Capellan Wars

who was too shaky and brain-damaged to keep up her

own periodic maintenance on her cyboig limb and organ

replacements. All parts had appeared to be in good

working order, but Alpha had approved the series of tests

and maintenance anyway; Veterans' Aid would pay for

the work, and if Qualia Benton was too far out of it to do

her own maintenance, she'd never think to question

whether the work the clinic charged was absolutely

necessary—or whether it had even been done.

"What sort of questions?"

 

Baynes shrugged. "Anything. Everything. How do we

like our jobs. How did we get our jobs. How many rooms

are there in this wonderful big building, and what all

goes on here besides taking care of poor old freaks like

her. Supposing she wanted to get work at a nice clean

place like this, would we put in a good word for her."

"No harm in all that"

 

"Yeah, but..." Baynes shifted his weight from one

foot to the other and fell silent.

 

Moss took up the story. "Last Friday she was rolling

about in her bed, claiming she had nervous pains

something awful in her left foot, which it isn't there

any more, Doctor, and nothing wrong with the pros-

thesis connections, I checked 'em out twice. Wouldn't

go out for exercise with the rest of the winos, so I left

her while we shoved the others out for their healthful

walk around the park. Only thing is, I had to come

back early on account of old Charlie Blissed-Out col-

lapsed with chest pains and I wanted a floatube to

bring him back. And I found her on the floor outside

the staff room. She claimed she'd been trying to work

the prosthesis and it collapsed on her."

 

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Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

"Possibly true," said Alpha.

 

"Yeah. But... the staff room door was unlocked. I

swear I locked up like always, Doctor, but it was open

then."

 

Alpha considered Moss's sweating face for a long

moment He could be trying to cover up his own care-

lessness in leaving the staff room door unlocked and a

patient alone in the ward. But he hadn't had to tell her

about the incident in the first place. He would only be

risking her anger if he were afraid of something even

worse — like a threat to her position at the clinic,

something that would take her away and end his

supply of Seductron-B4.

 

"Put the two of them in a private room," Alpha

ordered.

 

"Aren't any on the charity side," Baynes objected

glumly.

 

Moss rolled his eyes. "God give me strength," he

pleaded. "Doctor knows that, Baynes. Forget about

moving Victor Alexander to the charity side. We're to

put Qualia Benton in a private room with him on the

V.I.R side, and don't worry about the feet that Veterans

Aid won't pay; I reckon she won't be there long

enough to run up much of a bill. Right, Doctor?"

 

He gave Alpha a conspiratorial smile which she did

not return.

 

"Benton's is an interesting case," Alpha said neutral-

ly. "I wish to investigate this prosthesis trouble myself.

Any charges incurred will be billed to the experimen-

tal lab. Meanwhile, I wish you to keep an eye on the

visitor Bryley. He's supposed to be here as escort to

that brawn, but he's been spending entirely too much

time talking to too many people in the pubUc rooms."

 

Bryley might not be an immediate threat, but it

wouldn't do any harm to have Baynes and Moss keep

an eye on him. As for the other two, Alpha had no in-

tention of leaving the disposal of her problems to this

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

193

 

pair of bunglers, one stupid and the other trying to

wriggle himself into her good graces. Nor did she in-

tend to risk their being able to give direct evidence

against her, if worst came to the worst

 

Qualia Benton might be no more than an alcoholic

old fool who couldn't keep from snooping into other

people's business, or she might be considerably more

than that If the first, she would be no loss; if the

second, she had to be disposed of immediately. As for

Valden Alien Hopkirk — Alpha hated to waste a

potential tool like Hopkirk, especially after going to

the trouble of keeping him lightly drugged and avail-

able for all this time, but she prided herself on the

ability to face fects and cut her losses. There were sud-

denly too many people asking too many questions

around Summerlands.

 

Alpha dismissed Baynes and Moss and went back

into her private storage room to prepare. "If you want

a thing done well, do it yourself," she murmured as

she prepared two stimpads, each loaded with a mas-

sive overdose of Seductron-B4.

 

The woman known as Qualia Benton knew some-

thing was wrong when the two aides who were Doctor

Hezra-Fong's shadows came to transfer her from the

charity side of the clinic. She'd been ready to act then,

fingers tensed against the side of her left-leg pros-

thesis, adrenalin keeping her unnaturally aware of

every shadow and change of intonation.

 

And nothing happened. "You're moving to a private

room," the big one called Baynes said.

 

"Who'll pay?" Qualia Benton demanded in the fret-

ful, shrill tone to be expected from an old soak whose

nerves were jangling for just one more drink.

 

"Doctor's interested in your case," said the little

black-haired one, Moss. "She wants to run some spe-

cial tests. On the clinic, if Veteran's Aid won't cover it

 

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt

 

You could get into the next issue of the Medical Re-

search Journal."

 

"I'm honored," said Qualia Benton politely. She let the

men transfer her to a wheelchair and rode quiedy down

the long silent corridors of Summerlands clinic, watching

the myriad reflections of herself and the aides in the

polished tiles of floor and walls and ceiling, ready for the

slightest move that would warn her it was time to act

 

It won't happen in the halls. They'll move when Tm in a

room alone, she told herself. But what if they expected

her to count on that, and took her by surprise in one of

these long empty hallways? She dared not relax.

 

Even when they wheeled her into a room with two

beds, the one nearest the window already occupied,

she was tense with expectation.

 

"Here now, you said I was getting a private room!"

she whined. Qualia Benton would whine; what's

more, she would be suspicious and distrustful like

most recovering addicts, almost paranoid. God knew,

it wasn't hard to fake that part

 

"Might as well be private," said the one called Moss.

"He won't bother you much. Will you, Varian?"

 

The patient in the other bed nodded and shook his

head alternately, smiling with a loose, open-lipped grin

that chilled her spirits. Blissto addict. Or worse... if there is

anything worse ? And they're maintaining hm in that condition,

instead of trying to break the addiction. That's criminal!

 

Qualia Benton, chronic alcoholic, too woozy to take

proper care of her own prostheses and replacement

organs, wouldn't care about somebody else's

problems. She said nothing.

 

The aides helped her into the free bed.

 

"Here you go," said the small black-haired man

cheerfully. He slapped a sum pad downwards; she

recoiled but could not quite escape the stinging con-

tact against her shoulder. 'Just a litde relaxation med

before the tests," he said.

 

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"Don't wanna relax," she muttered. The thickness

in her speech was natural. She was suddenly finding it

hard to think. Something was infiltrating her

bloodstream, something soft as a cloud and warm as

sunshine, floating her away to the Isles of the Blest —

bless—bliss — Blissto! That was it!

 

The man in the other bed — was he really a Blissto

addict, or had he been drugged in the same manner?

Foolish, foolish not to have anticipated this. Once the

aides had caught her out of bed and snooping where

she had no business, she should have known her time

at the clinic was limited.

 

She set her will to resisting the power of the drug.

And not only her will. One thing about being under-

estimated, being seen as an old lush without die sense

to care for her own artificial organs: Dr. Hezra-Fong

hadn't, apparently, run any serious tests on those hy-

perchip-enhanced organs. The Blissto was carrying

her away; but if she could only gain an hour or two, afi

might yet be well.

 

Did she have that hour's grace? No way to tell; she

could only watch and wait, and that not very effective-

ly. The hard hospital pillow beneath her head was soft

as a Denebian flufftuff. Her left hand still rested

against the smooth hard prosthesis, but she could

barely feel the permaskin; the Blissto was interposing

a fluffy cloud of blissful illusion between her and

reality.

 

Doctor wants to run some tests ... Was that truly all this

meant? Surely not So important a person as Dr. Hezra-

Fong, assistant director of Summer-lands, wouldn't go to

all this trouble to prove that an old lush was faking dis-

ability. There had to be more going on here.

 

By late afternoon Sev noticed that the same two

aides kept walking through the public visiting rooms.

They were both rather striking in their appearance —

 

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Arme McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

 

one a burly, blue-chinned man with a lumbering walk,

the other neat and quick and given to slicking down

his black hair with short nervous strokes. And they

would have looked more natural at a portside bar than

in a luxury medical clinic.

 

Sev reckoned he was supposed to notice them and

to be scared off. That was annoying. The doddering

old CenDip widow he was talking to had finally men-

tioned a patient named Varian Alexander, a Blissto

addict. That could be an alias for Valden Alien Hop-

kirk; the information that Alexander had just been

moved to a semi-private room supported the theory.

He was ready to get back to Nancia and check out the

records on this Alexander, and he hated like hell to let

these two petty thugs think they'd frightened him.

 

"You will not start anything with those two," Nancia

instructed him when he muttered his complaints into

the contact button. "They're minor. You get back and

watch Caleb. I'll send Forister to take care of our friend

Hopkirk."

 

"And who," Sev inquired sweetly, "will guard Fassa?"

 

Nancia assaulted his eardrums with a burst of static

that attracted the attention of two other visitors. Glanc-

ing doubtfully at the artificial Capella fern beside Sev,

they moved to the other side of the room and seated

themselves well away from the strange, dour young

man and his talking plant.

 

"You're attracting attention," Sev said sweetly. "Bet-

ter let me handle this in my own way."

 

"Don't blame me if you end up in a recycler," Nancia

grumbled in an undertone. "And don't expect me to

send Forister to fish you out of trouble, either. After all,

as you pointed out, somebody has to guard Fassa."

 

"I don't," said Sev loudly and clearly, "need anybody

to get me out of trouble."

 

The other visitors whispered among themselves and

somebody giggled. Sev felt his face turning red. Two

 

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shapes materialized at his elbows, one large and lum-

bering, one darting in quick as a hummingbird.

 

"Forgetting your meds again, sonny?" asked the

small one in a kindly, concerned voice. He turned

towards the other visitors in the room. "Sorry about

the disturbance. He hears voices. Should improve

with therapeu — ahh!"

 

Sev drove one fist into the small man's chin and

wheeled to confront the big one. A hand like a small

boulder descended on his head. The room whirled

around him. An old lady screamed. He saw something

sharp in the rock-like hand. Shoidd have guessed. The

danger is never where you're looking. The hand came down

for a second time, like an earthquake or an avalanche,

vast, implacable, and as Sev twisted away the needle slid

into flesh, quiet as a whisper, smooth as sleep.

 

When she heard the sounds of the fracas in the

public waiting rooms, Alpha slipped into the semi-

private room she'd assigned to Hopkirk and the

snoopy derelict. Damn Baynes and Moss! Couldn't

they handle a minor surveillance task without starting

a fight? There must be something about Blissto that

permanently destroyed the brain cells.

 

Oh, well, at least the disturbance in the waiting room

would draw everybody's attention; there'd be no incon-

venient witnesses to her actions here. Not that she

expected to be here long enough for any problems to

develop. Hopkirk was grinning in his usual loose-lipped,

amiable way, and the derelict Benton was limp against

her pillow in a Blissto dream. Better take care of her first;

she knew Hopkirk was too sedated to give trouble.

 

As she pushed up the old lush's sleeve to apply the

stimpad, Alpha wondered whether Qualia Benton

were really a snoop, or just a brain-damaged bag lady

who'd had the bad luck to stumble into private places

at the wrong time. Not that it made much difference.

 

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She wouldn't be answering any questions now.

 

The stimpad slapped down on chill, firm flesh. The

array of needles clicked but did not sink in. Alpha felt a

moment's cold apprehension. Something is turong here.

Something is very wrong.

 

And Qualia Benton's dark eyes were wide open,

watching her with amusement.

 

"The right arm prosthesis is real lifelike," she said

cheerfully, "but you won't get stimpad needles

through the plastiskin. And now — oh, no, dear. 1

wouldn't do that. I really wouldn't."

 

From under the bedclothes she had produced an

ugly, snub-nosed needier. Where did thai came from? The

old bitch isn't wearing anything but a hospital gown.

 

"Whatever you had in that stimpad, die charge is

wasted now," Qualia Benton informed her in that

same cheerful tone. "There should be just enough left

for a lab on Central to analyze. Please don't try to

throw it away; I'll want to put it in an evidence bag for

the trial."

 

"Trial," Alpha croaked. "Evidence bag." She backed

up a step, frozen with horror, while her intended vic-

tim swung one real leg and one permalloy prosthesis

out of bed, fussily straightened her gown, and

produced a plastic bag from under the pillow.

 

"Just drop it in here, dear, and don't make any sud-

den moves. You wouldn't want to startle a poor

nervous old woman. This needier is set on wide spray,

and it's loaded with ParaVen. I don't really want to

paralyze you," she said thoughtfully, "but if neces-

sary ..."

 

Two more backward steps brought Alpha to the

door. She dropped and rolled into the corridor,

momentarily out of range of the needier. "Baynesl

Moss!" she shrieked. "32-A, patient out of control,

CodeZ,stat!"

 

Running feet pounded down the corridor and

 

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199

 

Alpha dosed her eyes in momentary relief. That heavy

tread had to belong to Baynes. Let this crazy snoop of a

woman waste her needier charge on the aides — then

Alpha would spirit her away to the violent ward. She

promised herself a long and entertaining series of ex-

periments on the bitch, once they got that damned

needier away from her.

 

"Stop right there," the old woman called in a voice

too clear for her apparent age. "I am a legally con-

stituted representative of Central Worlds Internal

Investigation. Any attack on my person is treason,

punishable by law. You're under arrest"

 

"The hell I am," countered a voice that most certain-

ly did not belong to the thick-witted Baynes. Alpha

looked up and saw that Bryley man, the one she'd sent

Baynes and Moss to take care of. "Fm the Central

Worlds rep here, and you're under arrest. What have

you done to my witness?"

 

"The guy in the next bed?" For the first time, the

Benton woman sounded uncertain. "He's not going to

be a lot of good to you. Too blissed-out to know his own

name. But you're welcome to him, if you want him. I

expect she was going to kill him next, after she took

care of me."

 

"Kill? You?" Now Bryley sounded equally confused.

 

From her crouching position, Alpha saw the Benton

woman bend and fumble along the side of her leg

prosthesis. A crack opened and she drew out a thin

holographic strip that shimmered with rainbow colors

in the hallway lights. So that's where she hid the needier....

 

"General Micaya Questar-Benn," the woman intro-

duced herself. She was standing straighter now,

without the hunch and the bent leg that had made her

look so small and helpless before. "Undercover assign-

ment for Central, checking out the suspiciously high

death rate on the charity side of Summerlands. My col-

league Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc should be

 

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Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Bail

 

somewhere around; he can vouch for me. And you?"

 

"Sevareid Bryley-Sorensen, on temporary assign-

ment to investigate fraud in a Bahati construction

company." He looked down at Alpha; she had a dizzy-

ing glimpse of blue eyes and an expression as if the cat

had dragged in something better left in a back alley. "I

think our cases may be connected. I was here to collect

Valden Alien Hopkirk, witness to a case of criminal Net

interference by one of the del Parma girl's friends.

Apparently this 'lady1 is another of the gang; she's

been concealing the witness and — from what you say

— keeping him too doped up to testify. You think she

was going to kill him?"

 

"We'll have to wait until that stimpad in her hand

has been analyzed for drug traces," General Questar-

Benn said mildly, "but I certainly don't think she was

dispensing routine meds. Fortunately, she slapped the

stimpad on my upper-arm prosthesis. I think I was

supposed to be too drugged to notice her; one of those

thugs she uses for aides dosed me with Blissto, or

something like it, about an hour ago."

 

Alpha slowly uncurled herself and stood up. If she

was lost, she'd go with that much dignity. She was half

a head taller than this Sev Bryley; it helped, a litde, to

look down on him.

 

"So what are you," she demanded, "a robot?

Nobody's immune to Seduc — Blissto," she caught

herself. No reason to give away information.

 

General Questar-Benn chuckled. "No, dear girl,

I'm not quite as badly off as the Tin Woodman. The

valves may be helped along by hyperchips, but I still

have a heart — something that appears to have been

left out of your makeup. But the fiver and kidneys are

replacements, and last year I had a new hyperchip-

enhanced blood filtering function installed so that I

could monitor my own internal prostheses. If you'd

shown up right after your goon drugged me, I might

 

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have been in trouble. But an hour was more than

enough time to filter the drug out of my bloodstream."

 

Alpha glowered at her and Bryley impartially. "And

what about you?" she demanded of Bryley. "You

looked like a man, but I guess you're another fucking

cyborg freak."

 

"I am a man," Bryley said mildly. "I'm also fast —

and I learned Capellan hand fighting in the war. Your

big thug tripped over his own feet — with a litde help

— and slapped himself with the stimpad he was

aiming at me. I don't know what was in it; perhaps

you'd like to tell me whether he'll survive the ex-

perience? As for the litde one, he collided with one of

those big ceramic pots you've got decorating the wait-

ing room. He'll have one hell of a headache when he

wakes up, but he'll be in perfectly good shape to testify

against you."

 

"No, he won't," Alpha snapped. "You don't know as

much as you think you do! The man's addicted to —

something you won't be able to supply. Without his

next fix, he'll die in agony before the week's out!"

 

Bryley raised one eyebrow. "Then," he said cheer-

fully, "we'd better make sure to get his testimony on

datahedron before he dies, hadn't we? Thanks for the

warning."

 

• CHAPTER-TWELVE

 

"Hospitals!" General Questar-Benn made the word

sound like an expletive. "No offense, Thalmark, but

those damn gowns are just a plot to make patients

helpless and submissive. Thanks for bringing my

uniform, Bryley."

 

"I have a feeling it would take more than that to

make you submissive, General," Galena Thalmark

said with a slight inclination of her head.

 

Sev and Micaya had met in what used to be Alpha

bint Hezra-Fong's office, now occupied by the ad-

ministrative assistant who'd first alerted Central

Worlds to the surprising death rate in Summerlands'

charity wards. This morning Galena Thalmark looked

ten years younger than the harried, overweight

woman who'd greeted Micaya and smuggled her into

the wards in the disguise of die alcoholic "Qualia Ben-

ton."

 

"I can't express my thanks to you both," she said,

pushing dark curly hair away from her round face, "so

I won't try. General Questar-Benn, you have my sin-

cerest apologies for the dangers you experienced."

 

"Part of the job," said Micaya.

 

"All the same, we should have been more alert. I

should have had staff I could trust watching you at all

times," said Galena.

 

Micaya nodded without further comment. She was

favorably impressed by Galena's quick command of

the situation, even more impressed by the feet that the

young woman had taken full responsibility for

problems which were hardly of her making. It wasn't

 

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her fault that the aging director of Summerlands had

left more and more power in the hands of Dr. Hezra-

Fong, allowing the charity side to become disastrously

understaffed and letting a deplorable lack of discipline

infect the whole clinic.

 

"Clinic's problems weren't your fault, Thalmark,"

Micaya said at last, "but they're about to be your prob-

lem. The director must have been senile to let all this

go on under his nose. High Families, of course, politi-

cally unwise to fire him, but I've had one of my aides

compose a nice letter of resignation for him. Want the

spot? Can't guarantee it, you understand," she added,

"but I've some influence at Central."

 

Galena Thalmark flushed becomingly and mur-

mured her thanks. "Meanwhile," she said, shuffling

papers until she'd recovered her composure, "I'm glad

to report that Mr. Hopkirk is responding quite well to

treatment. Dr. Hezra-Fong has supplied us with full

details of the drugs used to keep him sedated. We're

steadily lowering the dosage and watching him for

seizures, but so far there have been no complications. He

should be quite lucid and competent to make a deposi-

tion on datahedron within the next forty-eight hours."

 

"Good work!" Micaya exclaimed.

 

Galena Thalmark nodded. "Whatever her other

failings, Dr. Hezra-Fong is a brilliant biomedical re-

searcher. I feel obliged to tell you that without her full

cooperation and guidance, we would not have been

able to reverse the effects of the treatment so rapidly."

She looked up into Micaya's eyes. "She requested that

this feet be formally noted on her dossier."

 

"It will be," Micaya promised. "But I doubt that it'll

bear much weight against the rest of the record."

 

Galena bit her lip. "All those deaths," she mur-

mured. "If only I'd seen what was going on from the

first..." Micaya nodded in sympathy.

 

"Don't torture yourself," she told the younger

 

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Aims McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

 

woman. "You weren't even at Summerlands when she

began. You had every reason to trust your superiors;

it's to your credit that you suspected something as

soon as you did and called in the proper authorities to

put a stop to it Don't second-guess yourself!"

 

The last words were barked out in a parade-ground

intonation that made Galena's head snap up.

 

"I mean it," Micaya told her more gently. "My dear,

I've commanded soldiers in battle. I've seen brave men

and women die because of orders I gave; and some-

times those orders were wrong. You mourn the

deaths, you do the best you can, and — you go on.

Otherwise, you cannot be of service."

 

Galena Thalmark looked thoughtfully at the older

woman, standing erect and composed in her plain

green uniform. Some of her battle wounds were

visible, the permalloy arm and leg. Others were buried

in the surgical history that Galena had read: the inter-

nal replacements for kidneys and liver, the hyperchip

implant in one heart valve and the blood-filtering

function. And as a doctor, Galena could assess just how

many hours of painful surgery and retraining had

gone into reconstructing Micaya's body after she sus-

tained each of the original wounds.

 

""Vbu go on," Micaya repeated softly, "and... you serve

as best you can. I believe that you will make an excellent

director for Summerlands, Dr. Thalmark. Don't let

regrets and hindsight cripple you; we need you here and

now, not relivinga past that cannot be changed."

 

"I can see why you're a general," said Sev thought-

fully as they boarded the flyer that was to transport

them from Summerlands. "If we'd had a commanding

officer like you on Capella Four...."

 

General Questar-Benn's high cheekbones flushed a

shade darker. "Don't delude yourself. Making per-

suasive speeches is only a small part of the art of war."

 

"Oh? Seems to me I heard enough of them when I

 

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served on Capella. There may have been more going

on in the staff rooms, but I never rose high enough in

the army to see the whole picture. That's what I like

about EL work," Sev added thoughtfully, "now lam

the whole picture. Or was." He looked directly at

Micaya. Til consider myself under your command for

the rest of this operation."

 

"The rest — but my assignment's over," protested

Micaya.

 

"Is it?"

 

It has been a long time since a young man looked at

her so intently — and back then, Micaya thought with

an amusement that she did not allow her features to

reflect, the last man to look at her like that had wanted

something quite different. Ah, well. They always

wanted something, didn't they?

 

"Fassa del Parma and Alpha bint Hezra-Fong came

out to the Nyota system on the same transport," Sev

went on. "So did Darnell Overton-Glaxely. They've all

been helping each other get rich by the quickest and

dirtiest means they could arrange. There were two

others on that transport — Blaize Armontillado-Perez

y Medoc, and Polyon de Gras-Waldheim. Fassa's al-

ready implicated Blaize — the one who was posted to

Angalia. Don't you see? You're holding one thread

into this tangle; I'm holding another one."

 

"You think that together we could unravel it?"

 

Sev gave her a flashing grin that was all but wasted

on his present purpose. "Or take Alexander's solution,

and cut the Gordian knot. This corruption ought to be

cut off," he argued. "Don't tell me it's just a small part

of what 'everybody does.' I don't care. This is the part I

can see, that I can do something about. I have to see

this through!" He stopped, looking momentarily em-

barrassed by his own intensity. "And I had hoped," he

went on in a somewhat quieter voice, "I had hoped

that you would want to join us. Lead us."

 

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Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Bail

 

The flyer skated to a perfect landing just outside

Nantia's opened entry bay.

 

"Come with me?" Sev suggested.

 

"I've got a scheduled transport to Kailas. Back to my

desk job."

 

"You can change that," he said confidently, and

grinned at her as he would at a contemporary. "Come

on, Micl You don't really want to go back to shuffling

papers on Kailas, do you?"

 

Micaya rubbed the back of her neck. She felt

generations older than this intense young man: tired,

and dirty from the corruption of Summerlands, and

not very interested in anything except a long bath and

a massage. "Damnit," she said wearily. "You'renotbad

at persuasive speeches yourself, Bryley-Sorensen. I

suppose you think I can get your brainship's orders

changed so that we can go on to Angalia, instead of

transporting del Parma straight back to Central?**

 

"It makes sense, doesn't it?"

 

"Sense," said Micaya, "has never been a compelling

argument for any bureaucracy. All right. You win. ill

see what I can do towards persuading Central to reas-

sign both Nancia and me. I must admit, I'd like to see

the end of this case." Despite her weariness, she felt a

smile beginning deep inside her. "Besides, your ship's

brawn owes me a rematch at tri-chess."

 

"Caleb?"

 

"Forister," Micaya corrected him. "Nancia's been as-

signed a replacement brawn, remember? Forister

ArmontiUado-y-Medoc. We were working together on

this Summerlands business, until Central pulled him

off the case to brawn Nancia back to Central." She

stopped in the open landing bay. "Wait a minute.

What did you say the other boy was called — the one

who went to Angalia?"

 

Sev didn't have time to answer; a second flyer

pounced down on the landing strip, and a messenger

 

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in the white uniform of Summerlands came running

toward them.

 

"Tried to raise you in the air," he panted. "Your

driver's comm unit must have been defective.

Hopkirk's testified!"

 

"The devil he has! Already?"

 

"He seemed rather eager to do it. Dr. Thalmark

thought it would do more harm to restrain him than to

let him speak. His deposition's on datahedron — and

there are a few honest men left on Bahati, Mr. Bryley;

two of them are going to arrest Overton-Glaxely now.

Since he'll likely be sent back to Central for trial, they'd

like a representative of Central to accompany them

now, just to make sure everything's in order."

 

"You mean, to make sure there's somebody else to

blame if his family goes out for revenge," Sev

muttered.

 

"I'll go," Micaya said. "No one will question my

word."

 

"Til go," Sev corrected her. "I've already annoyed so

many High Families, one more makes no difference.

You go catch up on your tri-chess."

 

"I always did like subordinates with plenty of initia-

tive," Micaya said wryly. But she was tired, and

worried about the possible connection between Blaize

and Forister. Well, they'd have some privacy for a little

while, with Sev Bryley off to collect his prisoner and

Fassa del Parma locked in her cabin. She would have to

ask Forister just how close the relationship might be —

and whether he really wanted to brawn a ship headed

for Angalia to arrest one of his relatives.

 

Forister was happily unpacking a special order from

OG Glimware when Micaya Questar-Benn requested

permission to board.

 

"We've got company coming," Nancia warned him.

"And isn't there something unethical about buying

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaU

 

something from a firm while you work to arrest its

owner?"

 

"Can't think what," said Forister, whistling under his

breath, "but if you find anything in CS regulations, be

sure and let me know. Anyway, OG Glimware is the

only company this side of Antares that does this par-

ticular specialty work." He peeled away the last

opaque shrinkwrapping to display his purchase: a

foot-high solido of a lovely young woman, every fea-

ture sharply delineated in the fragile prismatic

carving. Her chin was lifted almost defiantly; she

greeted the world with a smile whose reflection danced

in her eyes; a short cap of curly hair, so finely carved it

seemed the separate strands might lift in any passing

breeze, crowned the uplifted head that gazed out at

worlds beyond any human vision.

 

"Ah — very nice," Nancia said slowly, as Forister

seemed to be waiting for some reaction. "Relative of

yours?" His records didn't say anything about a girlfriend,

and isn't he rather old for this one?

 

"A very distant connection, like most of the High

Families scions. But she may become more than that

— my friend, I hope. Perhaps my partner." Forister set

the solido on the ledge above the pilot's control panel

and turned to smile at Nancia's titanium column. "It's

a genetic extrapolation, actually; shows what a certain

young woman I know would have looked like if she'd

grown up normally, without the one genetic anomaly

that made her unable to survive outside a shell. Her

name is... Nancia Perez y de Gras."

 

Nancia didn't know how to respond to that revela-

tion. She couldn't respond. Caleb never wondered what I

would have looked like ... never thought of me as a person.

Even thinking that was disloyal... but what could she

say to Forister?

 

She was spared the necessity by the opening of the

airlock. General Questar-Benn's somber face startled

 

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209

 

them both. "This pan of the mission's completed," she

announced. "Hezra-Fong's on her way here — under

guard — and Bryley has gone off to arrest Overton-

Glaxely. He's suggested that we should request a

change in Nancia's orders, to investigate the other two

passengers she brought to the Nyota system before

returning to Central. Thought I should consult you

first, Forister."

 

Forister's face went gray. "I will accept any orders is-

sued by Courier Service as long as I brawn this ship."

 

"Know that," Micaya told him. "But I need to know

more. Exactly what is the connection between you and

this boy on Angalia? Distant relative? How much con-

flict of interest are we looking at?"

 

"He's my nephew." Forister dropped into the pilot's

seat

 

"Can I rely on you?"

 

Nancia watched and listened without intruding into

the conversation. She had liked General Questar-

Benn on their previous meeting, but now she felt the

general was pushing Forister too hard. For the first

time since he'd come on board, he was looking his age;

the bristly graying hair lay flat, the sparkle of mischief

that had made his face so familiar to Nancia had disap-

peared. Of course, she realized with a shock of

recognition, that was why she felt as though she knew

Forister already. It wasn't just his previous trip to

Charon. It was die sparkle in his eyes as he hummed

and hacked his way into Summerlands' medical

records. That redheaded boy Blaize had just the same

expression when he was planning mischief.

 

But Forister had the integrity so disastrously missing

from Blaize's makeup. He hadn't tried to argue away

Fassa's stories implicating his nephew, and now he would

not evade the duty of confirming those stories.

 

"You don't have to come with us," Micaya told him.

"We can get another brawn assigned to this ship.

 

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Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

 

You're due a real R & R tour after that undercover

work at Summerlands — "

 

Forister lifted his head and gazed at her with flat

gray eyes. "You took all the risks at Summerlands," he

said in a voice so drained of feeling that it made Nancia

distinctly nervous. She increased the magnification of

her local sensors until she could see the pulse throb-

bing in Forister"s temple and hear the soft pounding of

his heart. The man was under far too much strain.

 

"I WAS USELESS," his amplified voice crashed

upon her, and Nancia hastily retreated to a normal

sensor level, nerve endings twitching from the grating

sounds. "Couldn't even find computer records to back

you up. If anyone deserves a term of rest, Mic, it's you.

And if anyone must prove my nephew's dishonor," he

finished wearily, "let it be me. We won't be able to keep

it in the family—I know that—but I need to know ex-

actly what he's done and how we can make

reparation."

 

"It's not good to be personally involved in your

cases," General Micaya Questar-Benn murmured.

"First rule of Academy."

 

Forister's spine straightened. "No. The first rule

is... to serve. That's all I ask of you. A chance to serve,

to make some reparation if any can be made. Besides,"

he added with just a trace of the old snap in his voice,

"you won't find another brawn this side of Bellatrix

subspace."

 

"Oh, come now," Micaya said. "You people with

brawn training always overrate yourself. I'll wager

there are half a dozen qualified brawns in Vega sub-

space alone."

 

Forister straightened another infinitesimal fraction

of an inch. "Not qualified for the new hyperchip-en-

hanced brainships. Our Nancia's got the

enhancements, haven't you, my dear?" As always, he

turned his head towards the titanium column when

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

211

 

addressing her, just as if he were inviting another

softshell — so&person, Nancia corrected herself— to

join in the conversation.

 

"My lower deck sensors and port side nav controls

have the hyperchips," she told him, "and I'm using

them in some of the processing banks. I'm on a waiting

list for the rest."

 

"There you are, then," Forister told Micaya. "You

need me. And 1 — need to do this."

 

"You need this assignment like I need another pros-

thesis," Micaya muttered, but she sat down again with

the air of one who'd given up argument. "And just how

do you happen to be qualified for the new chipships,

anyway? You've been CenDip for — "

 

"More years than either of us chooses to specify,"

Forister interrupted her. "And the term is brainships,

Mic, not 'chipships.' Let's not offend our lady."

 

"It's all right," Nancia cut in. "I'm not offended. Really."

 

"But I am," said Forister. He took a deep breath and

straightened. Nancia could almost see him pushing

the pain he felt deep inside, replacing his diplomat's

mask. When he turned his head to speak directly to

her, he looked almost untroubled — if you didn't focus

your sensors on the tiny lines of strain and worry

around his eyes. "You are my lady now, Nancia, at least

for the duration of this mission. And no one speaks

casually of my brainship."

 

Micaya blew out her pursed lips with an ex-

asperated sigh. "You never answered my question.

How come you're qualified for the newest models of

brainships, when you've been out of the brawn service

for... years?"

 

"I read a lot," Forister said with an airy wave of one

hand. "Ancient guerrilla wars, new compunav sys-

tems, it's all grist to my mill. I'm a twentieth century

man at heart," he told Micaya, referring to the Age of

the First Information Explosion. "A man of many in-

 

212

 

Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

213

 

terests and unguessed-at talents. And I like to keep

current in my field—all my fields."

 

"A man of unguessed-at bullshit, anyway," Micaya

retorted. "Okay. You're in. At least I'll have someone to

beat at tri-chess on the way over to Angalia."

 

Forister snorted. "You mean someone to beat you.

Your ego has increased out of all proportion to your

skill, General. Set 'em up!"

 

Nancia watched with curiosity as General Questar-

Benn drew a palm-sized card from her pocket. Forister

grinned. "Brought your portable game board, I see."

 

The general tapped the slight indentations on the sur-

face of the card and it projected a hologram of a

partitioned cube, shimmering with rainbow light at the

edges. Another series of taps produced the translucent

images of playing pieces aligned at two opposing edges of

the cube. Nancia twiddled with her sensor magnification

and focus until she could make out the details. Yes, those

were the standard tri-chess pieces: she recognized the

age-old triple ordering. Pawns in the first and lowest

rank; above them, the King and Queen with their

Bishops and Knights and Castles. Above them the

highest rank was poised to swoop down over the

gamecube, the Brainship and Brawn with their support-

ing pieces, the Scouts and Hovercraft and Satellites. The

images were blurred and kept flickering in and out,

giving Nancia a sensation of tight bands pulled across her

sensor connections if she tried to look at them for any

length of time.

 

"Pawn to Brain's Scout 4,2,w Forister grunted a

standardized opening move.

 

Nothing happened.

 

"My portable set isn't equipped with voice recogni-

tion," Micaya apologized. "You'll have to tap in the code."

 

As she indicated the row of fingertip-sized indenta-

tions, Nancia hummed softly — her substitute for the

rasps and hawks of "throat-clearing" with which

 

softshells began an unscheduled interruption. Both

players looked up, and after a startled moment

Forister inclined his head to Nancia's titanium

column.

 

"Yes, Nancia?"

 

"If you'll give me a moment to study the configura-

tion," Nancia suggested, "I believe I can replicate your

play-holo with a somewhat clearer display. And I, of

course, can supply the voice recognition processing."

 

Even as she spoke, she assigned a virtual memory

space and a graphics co-processor to the problem.

Before the sound of her voice had died away, a new

and much clearer holographic projection shimmered

beside the original one. Forister exclaimed in delight

at the perfect detailing of the miniaturized pieces;

Micaya put out her hand as if to touch a perfectly

shaped litde Satellite with its three living and storage

globes, complete with tiny access doors and linking

spacetubes.

 

"Beautiful," Forister sighed in delight. "But won't

this take too much processing capability, Nancia?"

 

"Not when we're just sitting dirtside," Nancia told

him. "I don't even use that processor when we're

doing regular navigation. Might have to shut down

briefly when we're in Singularity, that does take some

concentration, but— "

 

Forister closed his eyes briefly. "That's perfectly all

right, Nancia. To tell you the truth, it never occurred

to me to play tri-chess in Singularity anyway."

 

"Me either," said Micaya, looking slightly green at

the very thought. "You don't want to think about spa-

tial relationships at a moment like that"

"I do," said Nancia cheerfully.

 

Less than two Central Standard Hours later, Sev in-

terrupted the first tri-chess game to deliver a subdued

Darnell Glaxely-Overton for transport to Central. "He

 

214

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

215

 

broke when I showed him the hedron of Hopkirk's

evidence," he told the others after Darnell had been

confined in a cabin. "Funny — almost as if he'd ex-

pected somebody to come after him one of these days.

Spent most of the flyer trip back telling all he knows

about the other three. Here's the recording.''

 

"Four," Nancia corrected Sev as he slid a datacard

into her reader.

 

"Three," Sev said again. "Fassa. Alpha. And . ..

Blaize." He carefully avoided looking at Forister as he

pronounced the last name.

 

"Neither of them has said anything implicating

Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?'' Nancia couldn't believe

this.

 

Sev shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe there isn't any-

thing to say. You never know, there could be one good

apple in this barrel of rotten ones."

 

Not Polyon. But Nancia refrained from voicing her

protest. After the conversations she'd heard on her

maiden voyage, she was convinced that Polyon de

Gras-Waldheim was completely amoral. But would it

be ethical to reveal those conversations? Caleb had

been so adamantly against anything that even sug-

gested spying, she'd never even thought of telling him.

 

But that had been five years ago. She had changed;

she now saw shades of gray instead of the neat black

and white of CS rules. Even Caleb might have

changed; after all, he'd consented to this undercover

mission.

 

Under protest

 

He might feel doubly betrayed if she chose to violate

his ethical code when he wasn't even here to censure

her for it.

 

Perhaps she could put off the decision for a little

longer "It might be worth going by Shemali anyway,"

Nancia suggested. "You never know. We might find

some evidence linking de Gras-Waldheim with the rest

 

I

 

of the crew." We'd have that evidence already, if they weren't

-}:    oft terrified to say a ward against him.

 

"Possibly," Sev agreed. "Meet me there, after An-

 

galia?"

 

"I thought you were coming with us!" Micaya Ques-

tar-Benn half rose from her seat, putting one hand

right through Nancia's tri-chess hologram.

 

"I was," Sev agreed. "I am. I'll meet you on Shemali.

Something's come up."

 

He was gone before any of them could question

him, taking the stairs three at a time and whistling as

he went. Nancia briefly considered slamming her

lower doors on him and holding him until he ex-

plained exacdy what he was up to.

 

She wouldn't do that, of course. It would be an un-

ethical and unconscionable abuse of her abilities, the

sort ofbullying she'd been warned against in the ethics

classes that were pan of every shellperson's training.

 

But it was a sore temptation.

 

"Something," Micaya said thoughtfully, "has made

that young man extremely happy. I wonder what it

was. Nancia, is there anything earth-shaking in that

datacard of Darnell Overton-Glaxer/s testimony?"

 

Nancia had started scanning just before Micaya

spoke. "There isn't even anything interesting," she

said, "unless a sordid record of petty bribes and cor-

ruption and bullying fascinates you."

 

"Ah. Overton-Glaxely did strike me as the cheap sort"

 

"You might want to examine his statement your-

self," Nancia suggested. "You may see something I've

overlooked."

 

Micaya nodded. "I'll do that. But I doubt I'll find

anything. Bryley said there wasn't any evidence

against de Gras-Waldheim, so whatever is taking him

to Shemali, it can't be our business. Damn that boy!

Oh, well, I suppose we'll find out when we reach

Shemali."

 

216

 

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

 

"But first," Forister said, "we have a task to complete

at Angalia." His face was gray and still again; the

momentary animation brought on by the tri-chess

game had vanished. He looks like a man with a deadly dis~

ease. Is family honor so important to him ? Nancia wondered

how she'd feel if her sister Jinevra were found to have

corrupted her branch of PTA and embezzled the

department's funds.

 

Impossible even to imagine such a thing. Well, then,

what if Flix — she couldn't think what Flix might do,

either, but what if he had got in with the wrong crowd

— like Blaize — and had done something that would

force her to hunt him down, arrest him, send him to

Central for years of prison without his beloved musk?

 

The pain of that thought shook Nancia so deeply

that for a moment the even hum of the air stabilizers

was broken and the co-processor handling the tri-

chess hologram faltered. The gamecube image

shivered, broke apart in rainbow fractures, then

solidified again as Nancia gained control of herself and

her systems.

 

If even imagining Flix in trouble hurt her so deeply,

how could Forister face the reality of Blaize's crime?

He couldn't, she decided, and it was up to her and

Micaya to distract him whenever possible.

 

"General Questar-Benn, it's your move," she said.

 

"What? Oh—Scout to Queen's Bishop 3,3," Micaya

said. The move took one of Forister's Satellites and left

a probability path to his Brains hip. Nancia calculated

the possible moves without conscious effort.

 

"You have only two moves that will not put your

Brainship in check within the next five-move se-

quence," she warned Forister.

 

"Two?" Forister's eyebrows shot up and he bent

over the gamecube. "I saw only one."

 

"Foul!" Micaya complained. "I challenged the

brawn, not the brain. **

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

217

 

"We work as a team," Nancia told her.

 

She certainly hoped that was true. For Forister's

sake — for both their sakes. He didn't need to get

through this grief alone; she was there to steady him.

 

"Ah. I see what you mean." Forister bent over the

board and surprised Nancia with a third move, one so

apparently disastrous that she had not even con-

sidered it in her initial calculations.

 

With a subdued whoop of glee, Micaya Questar-

Benn took Forister's second Satellite — and watched

dumbfounded as he proceeded to shift an uncon-

sidered knight from the second rank and place her

Brainship in check.

 

"Thank you for the hint, Nancia," Forister said.

"Until you forced me to consider the alternative move,

I hadn't even thought of using the Jigo Kanaka ad-

vance in this situation."

 

"I ... ah ... you're quite welcome," Nancia

managed to tell him between the three subsequent

moves that brought the game to its slashing con-

clusion, with Micaya's forces immobilized, her Brawn

taken and her Brainship checkmated.

 

Perhaps Forister didn't need quite so much help as

she'd anticipated.

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

219

 

• CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

Nancia's landing on Angalia was one of the worst

she'd ever executed. The planet took her completely

by surprise.

 

Initial navigation maneuvers went normally. It

wasn't until she was in visual range of the landing field

that she became confused. The green terraced cliffs

behind the mesa and the grassy basin surrounding it

looked nothing at all like her memories of the landing

five years ago. Could she possibly have miscalculated,

come down in some hitherto unknown section of the

planet?

 

Nancia called up her files from that first landing and

superimposed the stored images on the green

paradise below her. Yes, this had to be the Angalia

landing field. The topographical features were a per-

fect match with her internal map. And there, at the

edge of the mesa, was the plastifilm prefab hut with its

sagging awning of woven grass, looking if anything

slightly more derelict and tottering than it had ap-

peared five years ago.

 

Intent on her image comparison, Nancia drained

computing power from the navigation processor,

forgot to monitor the approach, and came embarrass-

ingly close to making a new crater on Angalia's landing

field. She corrected the descent, hopped into mid-air,

and came down more slowly the second time. Her

auditory sensors picked up a variety of crashes,

groans, and complaints from the cabins where Micaya

and the three prisoners were housed.

 

"Apologies for the rough landing," she began, but

 

Forister cut off her speakers for a moment and over-

rode her. "Local turbulence," he said. "Nancia

recovered superbly, but even a brainship can't com-

pensate for all the freak conditions on Angalia."

 

He swept his open hand over the palmpad with a

caressing gesture, restoring speaker control to Nancia,

and smiled at her benignly.

 

"I didn't need you to cover for me," Nancia trans-

mitted a vibrant whisper through the main cabin

speakers.

 

"Didn't you? I thought we were a team. If you can help

me play tri-chess, I certainly have the right to preserve

you from apologizing to those overindulged brats."

 

"I — well, thank you," Nancia conceded.

 

"Think nothing of it. By the way, what did happen

just now?"

 

"I was distracted. This place doesn't look the way it

did last time I landed." Nancia switched all her screens

to external mode. Forister gazed appreciatively at the

triple-screen display of a grassy paradise ringed by

flowering terraces.

 

"What on earth is that?" Fassa cried from her cabin.

Darnell and Alpha joined her exclamations of

surprise.

 

Nancia was gratified by this response. The screens

in the passenger cabins weren't as dramatic as her

central cabin's display walls, but at least they showed

enough of Angalia to confirm that she wasn't losing

her mind — or if she was, she wasn't alone. None of

the prisoners had been expecting Angalia to look like

the Garden of Eden.

 

"Do I take it," she asked mildly, "that the planet has

changed since your last visit?"

 

"It certainly has," Fassa said. "Are you sure it's the

same place? Only last year — oh, I see."

 

A prolonged silence followed. For once in her life

Nancia longed for a softperson's physical extrusions.

 

220

 

AttneMcCaffrey & Margaret Batt

 

It would be enormously satisfying to take Fassa by the

shoulders and shake her out of the trance in which she

had fallen. MP%y couldn't softpersons keep transmitting

datastreams while they were processing?

 

She had to content herself with blinking Fassa's

cabin lights and assaulting her with raucous bursts of

music from Flix's latest sonohedron.

 

"Do I take it," she inquired when satisfied that she

had the girl's attention, "that you recognize some

salient features?"

 

"Yes... I think so, anyway." Of course, Fassa would

have no control over the visual detail, not to mention

the accuracy, of whatever images she'd stored from

her previous visit. She would be dependent on

whatever her non-enhanced biological memory could

provide. Recognizing this, Nancia didn't count on

learning much.

 

"Those gardens on the side of the mountain," Fassa

said. "He had the terraces in place a year ago, but

nothing was planted. I thought it was something to do

with the mine."

 

Nancia switched the signals going to Fassa's display

screen to show the mine entrance. Blue-uniformed

figures moved in and out, pushing wagons on railings

that curved around the side of the mountain. A mag-

nified display showed that the figures were shambling

Angalia natives, neady dressed in blue shorts and

shirts and working together with the precision of a

choreographed dance. One native heaved a sack from

the mine entrance and tossed it over his head; another

casually moved into place just in time to catch it; by the

time he'd turned, a third native had backed his wagon

down the rail system and into place to receive the load.

 

"Amazing," Nancia commented. "I thought the An-

galians couldn't be trained."

 

"Blake," Forister said hollowly, "has certainly been a

busy little boy."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

221

 

"It doesn't look all that bad so far," Nancia pointed

out * Fassa, do you — or the others — recognize any-

thing else?"

 

She let the display screens sweep over a panoramic

view of the mesa and the surrounding countryside.

Suddenly Fassa gave a cry of recognition. "Oh, God,

he's left the volcano!"

 

Nancia halted the display and studied it. An evil-

looking bubble of brown and green mud heaved and

burst and formed again, roiling continuously in the

midst of the tall grass covering the rest of the basin.

 

"I don't suppose planting flowers would do much to

disguise it," she agreed.

 

"You don't understand." Fassa sounded close to

tears. "That's how he controls them — how he makes

them do things for them. If the Loosies don't please

him, he cooks them alive in that boiling mud! I saw it

done last time — I'll never forget those screams."

 

"Alpha? Darnell?" Nancia queried the other two.

 

"That's right," Darnell told her. "Revolting."

 

Alpha nodded silently, the movement barely visible

to Nancia's visual sensors.

 

She could think of no more encouraging words for

Forister.

 

Micaya persuaded Forister to let her confront Blaize

initially. "I'll wear a contact button," she promised

him. "You and Nancia can see and hear everything

that goes on."

 

"It's my duty—" Forister began.

 

"Mine too," Micaya interrupted him. "The young

man is more likely to confess if he doesn't think he can

bring family influence to bear."

 

"He can't," Forister said grimly. "I'm not here to in-

tercede for him."

 

"Yes, but he doesn't know that," Micaya pointed out-

 

Nancia kept all her external sensors trained on

 

222

 

Anne McCajfrey & Margaret Ball

 

Micaya'as the general picked her way along a path of

rounded volcanic stones to the door of the permalloy

hut. On both sides of the path, feathery grasses and

blazing tropical flowers grew in exuberant, uncon-

trolled patterning, throwing up their seed-heads and

blooms above Micaya's crisp silver-sprinkled hair.

Nancia recognized Old Earth species mixed with

Denebian starflowers and the singing grasses of

Fomalhaut II, a joyous blaze of pink and orange and

purple flowers.

 

Micaya entered the hut and Nancia's field of vision

contracted to the half-circle covered by the contact

button. In the shadowy hut, stacked high with papers

and bits of machinery, Blaize's red head glowed like a

burning ember before the computer screen that held

his attention.

 

"Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc," Micaya said

formally.

 

"Urn. PTA shipment? I'll sign for it in a minute. Just

got to finish this one thing...."

 

The contact button's resolution wasn't enough for

Nancia to read the words on the computer screen, but

she recognized the seven-tone response code that

chimed out when Blaize slapped his open hand on the

palmpad. An interplanetary transmission — no, inter-

subspace; he had just sent something to ... Nancia

rummaged through her files and identified the code. To

Central Diplomatic headquarters? What could they have to

do with Angalia, a planet where no intelligent sentients

existed? Had Blaize's net of corruption drawn in some of

her father's and Forister's own colleagues?

 

"There!" As the last notes of the code chimed out,

Blaize swung round, a seraphic smile on his freckled

face. "And what — "

 

His expression changed rapidly and almost comical-

ly at the sight of Micaya Questar-Benn in full uniform.

"You," he said slowly, "are not PTA."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

223

 

"Quite correct," said Micaya. "Your activities have

attracted some attention in other quarters."

 

Blaize's jaw thrust out and his freckles seemed to

take on a glowing life of their own. "Well, it's too late.

You can't stop me now!"

 

"Can't I?" Micaya's tone was deceptively mild.

 

"I've sent a full report to CenDip. I don't care who

your friends in PTA may be, they'll have to leave An-

galia alone now."

 

"My dear boy," said Micaya, "haven't you got it back-

wards? You're the one employed by Planetary Technical

Aid. Or rather, you were."

 

Nancia had been so caught up in the dialogue, she

never noticed when Forister slipped out of her central

cabin and made his way down the stairs. She was as

starded as Blaize when Forister appeared in the door-

way of the hut, just on the periphery of her view from

the contact button.

 

"Uncle Forister!" Blaize exclaimed. "What's going

on here? Can you help—"

 

"Don't call me uncle," Forister said between his

teeth. "I'm here with General Questar-Benn to stop

you, boy, not to help you!"

 

Blaize went green between the spattering of freck-

les. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked as if he

wanted to be sick. "Not you too?"

 

"You didn't think family feeling would extend so far

as helping you exploit and torture these innocents?"

 

"Torture? Exploit?" Blaize gasped. "I — oh, no.

Uncle Forister, have you by any chance been talking to

a girl named Fassa del Parma y Polo? Or Alpha bint

Hezra-Fong? Or Darnell — "

 

"All three of them," Forister confirmed, "and —

what the devil is so funny about that?"

 

For Blaize had all but doubled up, snorting with

repressed laughter. "My sins come back to haunt me,"

he gasped between snorts.

 

224

 

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

225

 

"I don't see what's so funny about it." Pollster's own

face had gone white and there was a pinched look

about the corners of his mouth.

 

"You wouldn't. Not yet. But when I — Oh, Lord!

This is one complication I never — " Blaize sputtered

into hysterical laughter that ended only when Forister

slammed a fist into his belly. Blaize was still crowing

and wheezing for breath when a second blow to the

jaw knocked his head back and flung him in an undig-

nified collapse against the rickety table where his

computing equipment had been stacked. Blaize's legs

folded under him and he slid gendy to the floor. Be-

hind him, the table rocked and wobbled dangerously.

The palmpad skated to one corner of the table top and

hung on a splinter. A shower of flimsy blue hardcopies

fluttered down over Blaize in a gentle, rustling rain of

reports and accounting figures and FTA instructions.

 

Forister snatched one sheet as it drifted down and

studied the column of figures for a moment, brows

raised. When his eyes reached the bottom of the page, he

looked tired and gray and showed every year ofhis age.

 

"Proof positive," he commented as he passed the

paper to Micaya, "if any was needed."

 

Micaya held the paper where Nancia could focus on

it through the contact button. The figures wobbled

and danced in Micaya's hand; grimly Nancia compen-

sated for movement and enlarged the blurred letters

and numbers until she too could read the flimsy.

 

It was a statement of Blaize's Net account balance

for the previous month. The pattern of deposits and

withdrawals of large sums made no immediate sense to

Nancia, but one thing was clear: any single figure was

considerably larger than Blaize's PTA salary, and the

total at the bottom was damning — more than thirty

times as much credit as he could have accumulated if

he'd saved every penny ofhis legitimate pay.

 

"Uncle Forister," said Blaize from the floor, tenderly

 

massaging his aching jaw, "you have got it all wrong.

Trust me."

 

"After the evidence before my eyes," Forister spat

out, "what could you possibly say that would incline

me to trust you?"

 

Blaize grinned up at him. His lip was bleeding and one

ftont tooth wobbled alarmingly. "You'd be surprised."

 

"If you were thinking of a small bribe out of your ill-

gotten gains," Micaya told him, "you can think again."

She lowered her head to speak directly into the contact

button and Nancia hastily reduced the amplification,

Softshells never could quite understand that they

didn't need to shout at a conduct button; the speaker

might be tinny, but the input lines were as powerful as

any of a brainship's on-board sensors. "Nancia, please

enter the Net with my personal ID code. That's Q-

B76, JPJ, 450, MIC. Under that code you will be

authorized to freeze all credit accounts under the per-

sonal code o£ let me see...." She squinted at the top

of the flimsy, peering to make out a code sequence that

Nancia could read perfectly well with the vision cor-

rectors damping down movement and enhancing

blurred letters. "Oh, never mind, I guess you can read

it," Micaya recalled a moment later.

 

"Correct," Nancia sent a vocal signal over the con-

tact link.

 

"Don't do that!" Blaize scrambled to his feet, sway-

ing slightly. "You don't understand—"

 

Forister moved to one side more rapidly than Nan-

cia had ever seen him step, a blur of motion that placed

him between Blaize and Micaya with her copy of the

account balance. "I understand that you've been ex-

ploiting nonintelligent sentients to enrich yourself,"

he said. "You can make your explanation to the

authorities. Nancia, I want you to file a formal record

of the charges now, just in case anything goes wrong

here."

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

227

 

"Done," Nancia replied.

 

Blaize shook his head and winced at the motion. "Ow.

No. Uncle Forister, you really have got the wrong end of

the story. And there's no way you can have me up on

charges of— what did you say? — exploiting nonintel-

ligent sentients. On the contrary. The Loosies are

entitled to Intelligent Sentient Status and I can prove it—

and nobody can stop me now; I've just sent the final

documentation to CenDip. Even if you silence me,

there'll be an independent CenDip investigation now."

 

"Silence you, silence you?" Forister looked at Micaya.

His gray eyebrows shot up. "No question of that. We

don't deal in coverups. You'll have the opportunity to

say anything you like at your trial. And so will I, God

help me," he murmured, so low that only Nancia's

contact button picked up the words. "So will I."

 

"If you people would just listen" said Blaize, ex-

asperated, "there wouldn't be any need for a trial. Didn't

you hear what I said about the Loosies being intelligent?"

 

Micaya shook her head. "You've been here too long

if you've started to cherish that illusion. Face the facts.

On the way here I downloaded the survey reports off

the Net. The native species don't exhibit any of the key

signs of intelligence — no language, no clothing, no

agriculture, no political organization."

 

"They've always had language," Blaize insisted.

"They've got clothing and agriculture now. As for a

political organization, just think about PTA for a

minute and then ask yourself if that's any proof of

intelligence."

 

Micaya laughed in spite of herself. "You have a

point. But we didn't come here to argue ISS certifica-

tion standards—"

 

"Maybe not," said Blaize, "but since you are here,

and — " He looked suspicious for a moment "You're

not working with Harmon, are you?"

 

"Who?"

 

Micaya must have looked surprised enough to con-

vince Blaize.

 

"My predecessor here — my supervisor now.

Crooked enough to hide behind a spiral staircase,"

Blaize explained briefly. "He's the reason — well, one

of the reasons — I had to do things in this way. Al-

though even an honest PTA supervisor probably

wouldn't have approved. I have bent a few regula-

tions," he admitted. "But just do me the favor of taking

a brief tour of the settlement. 1 think you'll understand

a lot better after I show you a few things."

 

Micaya looked at Forister and shrugged. "I don't see

 

any harm in it"

 

"I suppose if we don't go along, you'll apply for a

mistrial on the grounds that you weren't allowed to

show evidence in your defense?" Forister inquired.

 

Blaize's face turned almost as red as his hair. "Look.

You're in contact with your brainship via that button.

If it's inactivated, or if she sees anything she doesn't

like, the full recording can go over the Net to Central

at once. What will it cost you to listen to me for once in

your life, Uncle Forister? God knows nobody else in

our family ever bothered," he added, "but I used to

think you were different"

 

Forister sighed. "I'm listening. I'm listening."

 

"Good! Just come this way, please." Blaize pushed

between Forister and Micaya and flung the door of the

hut open. Sunlight and gaudy flowers and a thousand

shades of green danced before them, all the brighter

for the contrast with the shabby interior of the hut

Blaize started down the path, talking a mile a minute

over his shoulder as the other two followed him. Nan-

cia activated the failsafe double recording system that

would transmit every word and image direcdy to Vega

Base as well as to her own storage centers.

 

"The Loosies never developed spoken language be-

cause they're telepaths," Blaize explained. "I know, I

 

228

 

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

 

know, that's hard to prove directly, but just wait till you

watch them work together! When the CenDip team

gets here, they should bring some top Psych staff.

Open-minded ones, who'll arrange tests without as-

suming from the start that I'm lying. Mind you, it took

me a while to figure out myself," he babbled

cheerfully, turning from the main path to a secondary

one that wound through head-high reeds, "especially

at the beginning, when they all looked alike to me. I

was so damn bored, and those croaking noises they

make got on my nerves, so I started trying to teach a

couple of them ASL."

 

"What?" Micaya interrupted.

 

"It's an antique hand-speech, used for the

incurably deaf back before we learned how to direct-

install auditory synapses on metachip and hook

them into the appropriate brain centers," Forister

told her. "Blaize always did have strange hobbies.

But teaching the Loosies a few signals in sign

language doesn't prove they're intelligent, boy. A

couple of twentieth-century researchers did that

much with chimpanzees."

 

"Yeah, well, that's all I hoped to achieve in the

beginning," Blaize said. "Believe me, after a couple of

months on Angalia, a signing chimp would have

seemed like real good company! But they picked it up

like—like a brainship picks up Singularity math. That

was the first surprise. I was teaching three of them

who sort of hung around — Humdrum and Bobolin

and Gargle." He flushed briefly. "Yeah, I know they're

damn silly names, but I didn't know they were people

then. 1 was just copying some of the strangled noises

they made when I would talk to them and they'd try to

talk back, before I realized they'd never developed the

vocal equipment for true speech — that was when I

started on the sign language — sorry, I'm getting

mixed up. Where was I?"

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

229

 

"Teaching Humdrum to sign 'Where ration bar?'"

Forister told him.

 

Blaize laughed. "Not bloody likely. His first sentence

was more like, 'Why did Paunch Man throw ration

bars in mud and treat us like animals, and why do you

make stacks and hand them to us one at a time with

proper respect?'"

 

He stopped and turned to face them, his freckled

face dead serious for once. "Can you imagine how it

felt to hear a question like that coming from somebody

I'd been thinking of as — oh, like a trained spider to

while away the hours of my prison sentence? I knew

then that the Loosies weren't animals. Figuring out

what to do about it," he said, resuming his progress

through the reeds, "took a little longer."

 

"I deduced the telepathy when I noticed that a week

after Humdrum caught on to ASL, every Loosie who

showed up for rations was signing to me. Fluently. He

couldn't have taught them the rudiments that fast;

they had to have been picking the signs and the lan-

guage structure out of his mind as the lessons

progressed. In fact, they told me as much when I asked

about it. Which wasn't all that easy. ASL doesn't have a

sign for 'telepathy,' and since they don't know English,

I couldn't spell it out. B ut eventually we got our signals

straight."

 

"If they were as intelligent as you claim, and had a

system of communication, they should have advanced

beyond their primitive level without intervention,"

Micaya objected.

 

"Easy for you to say," Blaize told her. "I wonder how

well you or any of us would do if we had evolved on a

planet where the only surface fit for farming is

rearranged by violent floods once a week, where the

caves we used for shelter crumbled and were shattered

by periodic quakes? They had a hunter-gatherer cul-

ture until a few generations ago — a small population,

 

230

 

Artne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

not more than the planet could support, ranging

through the semi-stable marshlands on the far side of

this continent"

 

"Then what?"

 

"Then," Blaize said, "they were discovered. The first

survey thought they might be intelligent and re-

quested Planetary Technical Aid support By the time

the second survey team came along, this PTA station

had been handing out unlimited supplies of ration

bricks for three generations, and the culture was effec-

tively destroyed. Instead of small bands of

hunter-gatherers, you had one large colony with no

food-gathering skill. There were far too many for the

existing marshlands to support, with nothing to do

and no hope of survival except to collect the ration

bricks. The second survey, not unnaturally, decided

they weren't intelligent. After all, nobody on the sur-

vey team was stuck here long enough and lonely

enough to try signing to them. But they recom-

mended on humanitarian grounds, or kindness to

animals, or whatever, that we not discontinue PTA

shipments and starve them to death."

 

"But if they're intelligent— " Forister objected again.

 

They are. And they can build for themselves. They

just needed a—a place to start" Blaize pushed the last

of the feathery reeds aside with both arms and stepped

to one side, inviting Forister and Micaya to admire die

view of the mine. "This was the first step."

 

From this vantage point, Nancia observed, they

could see far more of die mine's operations than had

been visible from the landing field. Teams of blue-

uniformed workers were scattered across the hillside

and grouped under the roofs of the unwalled process-

ing sheds — twenty, forty, more than fifty of them,

divided into groups of four or five individuals who

worked at their chosen tasks with perfect unanimity

and wordless efficiency.

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

231

 

"Could you train chimps to do that?" Blaize

demanded.

 

Forister shook his head slowly. "And I suppose the

mine is the source of your prodigious wealth?"

 

"It's certainly the source of the credits in that Net ac-

count," Blaize agreed.

 

"Exploiting intelligent sentients isn't any better dian

exploiting dumb animals."

 

Blaize ground his teeth; Nancia could pick up the

clicks and grinding sounds through the contact but-

ton. "I. Am. Not. Exploiting. Anybody," he said.

"Look, Uncle Forister. When I got here, the Loosies

didn't have ISS. They couldn't be owners of record for

the mine, they couldn't have Net accounts, they

couldn't palmprint official documents. Of course my

code is on everything! Who else could front for them?*1

 

"And your code is also," Micaya pointed out, "as-

sociated with the illegal resale of PTA ration shipments

that were supposed to be distributed to the natives."

 

Blaize nodded wearily. "Needed money to get the

mine started again. I tried to get a loan, but the banks

wanted to know what I was going to do with it When I

told them I was going to revive the Angalia mines they

told me I couldn't do that because there was no source

of labor on the planet, because the CenDip report said

Angalia had no intelligent sentients. Without credits, I

couldn't start the mine. And without the credits for the

mine, I couldn't — well, we'll get to that in a while.

Look, I falsified a few PTA reports. Said the popula-

tion had tripled. Ration bars aren't exactly a hot item

in international trade," he said dryly. "I had to have a

targe surplus to bargain with. Fortunately, I had an

outlet right at hand. That bastard Harmon was keep-

ing the Loosies at semi-starvation level so he could

trade some of their ration bars for liquor. I had to have

a little talk with the black market trader to convince

him I wanted hard credits instead of hard liquor, but

 

232

 

Arme McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

 

eventually he ... um ... came around to my way of

thinking."

 

"Don't tell me how you persuaded him," Forister

said quickly. "I don't want to know."

 

Blaize grinned. "Okay. Anyway, you've seen the

mine; now I want to take you on a tour of Project Two.

Well have to go up the mountain for that, I'm afraid; I

want you to get the long view."

 

The path up beside the mine was steep, but

switchbacks and steps made it easier than it looked

from a distance. As they passed the mine door, several

Loosies looked up from their work to smile at Blaize.

Their loose-skinned, grayish hands moved rapidly

back and forth in flickering gestures that Nancia cap-

tured as imageflashes for later interpretation. For now,

she was willing to accept Blaize's translation.

 

"They're asking who my mentally handicapped

friends are, and whether you'd like a ride down to the

processing sheds," he explained.

 

As he spoke, the team working at the mine's mouth

filled a wagon with chunks of ore and poised it at the

head of the rails swooping down into the valley. The

three workers perched on top of the ore, hands grip-

ping the sides of the wagon, and a member of the next

team gave them a shove that started them off on a

roller-coaster glide down the hill, swerving around

rocks and dipping into hollows.

 

"Lost a few that way, at the start," Blaize com-

mented, "before I remodeled the rail track so that the

dips wouldn't throw anybody off."

 

The vegetation thinned out above the mine, giving

them a view of the terraced gardens that replaced clifls

and rocks wherever a shovelful of soil could find a

place. Micaya sniffed appreciatively and commented

on the pungent aroma of the herbs growing in the

mini-gardens.

 

At the top of the mountain they enjoyed a

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

233

 

panoramic view of what had been the Great Angalia

Mud Basin, now a grassland in which fields of grain

shared space with brightly colored blossoms.

 

"This'll be our first year's crop," Blaize said. Td just

finished the necessary preparations for planting last

year, when those nitwits I came out with were here for

the meeting. None of them noticed anything different,

of course. But if your brainship can call up files of the

first survey — "

 

"She can do better than that," Forister told him.

"She's been here herself. Nancia, do you observe any

changes here? Apart from the growing things, that is?"

 

Blaize paled between his freckles. "Nanria?"

 

"You have some problem with my brainship?"

Forister inquired mildly.

 

"We... didn't part on the best of terms," Blaize con*

fessed in a strangled voice.

 

Nancia was feeling rather more kindly towards

Blaize now, but she wasn't quite ready to admit that to

him. "Horizon shows changes between all major

peaks," she reported in the neutral, tinny voice forced

on her by the contact button's limitations. "Magnifica-

tion of one area of variation shows new construction of

rammed earth and boulders blocking a system of gul-

lies that appears now to be under 17.35 meters of

water...."

 

"Lake Humdrum," Blaize said. "My first terraform-

ing effort. Trouble was, I had to block all the outlets,

and build up reservoir walls, before I could guarantee

the floods wouldn't crash through the mud basin.

Then we needed irrigation ditches down into the

basin. And silt collection systems, so that the soil the

floods used to carry down here would still reach the

basin and renew its topsoil. You want to come back

down now? I want to show you the grain samples and

the test results. It's not quite ripe yet, of course," he

chattered as he led the way down the path, "but it's

 

234

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

going to beaprime crop. Amaranth-19-hyper-J Rev 2,

if that means anything to you. High in protein, loaded

with natural nutrients, super yield from that rich top-

soil. We should be able to feed ourselves and have a

surplus to sell. That's why I waited until now to claim

Intelligent Sentient Status for the Loosies; I wanted to

be sure we would be self-sufficient in case PTA decided

to curtail the ration shipments. And I didn't dare start

planting until the whole flood control system had been

put in place and tested. The Loosies would never have

trusted me again if they'd put in a crop and seen it

washed away. We needed a lot of heavy-duty ter-

rafbrming equipment; sucked up all the mine's profits

for the first three years."

 

They reached the bottom of the mountain and

Blaize set off at a brisk walk towards the hut. Forister

took his arm and gently urged him away from the hut,

towards the edge of the mesa. "I'd like to get a closer

look at this grain crop of yours before we go inside," he

suggested.

 

But they didn't wind up standing in the best place to

assess the grain; they came to the edge of the mesa just

above the ugly volcanic mud hole that disfigured the

basin, with its lazy bubbles roiling and tumbling just

before the sticky surface of the mud.

 

Forister eyed Blaize warily. "You've been forcing the

natives to work in a corycium mine owned by you."

 

"Persuading," Blaize corrected.

 

"They believed your promises to use the profits for

their own good ?"

 

Blaize flushed. "I don't think they fully understood

what I had in mind at the beginning. Most of them,

anyway. Humdrum and Gargle got the idea, but they

never believed it would work."

 

"Then... ?" Forister left the question dangling.

 

"I think," Blaize said almost inaudibly, "I think they

did it because they like me a little."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

235

 

"Other reasons have been suggested," said Forister.

 

Blaize looked blank for a moment, then noticed the

direction of Forister's gaze. He was staring down at the

volcanic mud bubble.

 

"Oh. Fassa del Parma again?"

 

"And Dr. Hezra-Fong," said Micaya, "and DarneD

Overton-Glaxely. You've still to dear up their allega-

tions of torture."

 

"I — I see." With a sudden leap, Blaize jumped

away from Forister and Micaya to perch on a boulder

sticking halfway out from the side of the mesa. "You

want proof that I didn't torture Humdrum?"

 

"It won't do any good to produce some other native

and claim he was the one you tortured publicly, and

that he recovered," Micaya told him, "just in case you

were thinking of that. You've no way to prove you

didn't murder and bury the one witnesses saw you tor-

turing."

 

"Well, it was Humdrum, all right, and he'll tell you

so, but I see your point," Blaize agreed. He fumbled at

the front of his tunic; die synthofilm sides parted and

he folded the garment neatly. "My best tunic," he ex-

plained politely, "you'll understand I don't want to

ruin it"

 

"What are you doing? Come back, boy!" Forister

called, just too late; Blaize had skidded down a couple

of feet and was clinging to a rock ledge barely out of

reach.

 

iJust a minute," Blaize panted in between some

strange contortions. His synthofilm trousers collapsed

in a shining heap around his ankles; he kicked diem

upwards and they snagged on a thorn bush.

 

"Blaize, don't do this." Micaya spoke in tones of quiet

authority that seemed for a moment to weaken

Blaize's will. He paused on the ledge, his milk-white

skin almost glowing against the dull hues of the vol-

canic pool beneada him.

 

236

 

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

 

"I have to," he said calmly. "It's the only way."

 

Before either of them could argue further, he leapt

from the ledge in a spiraling, awkward dive that ended

with a resounding smack in the center of the heaving

mud. White arms and legs splayed out, red head still,

for a moment he seemed to have been stunned or

killed outright by the fell. Then he kicked and wrig-

gled vigorously, sinking deeper into the bubbling glop

with each movement.

 

"Hold still,'1 Forister called, "we'll get a rope to you

— we'll do something — "

 

Blaize turned over onto his back. A thick layer of

mud coated his body, barely preserving the decencies.

He thrashed around in what Nanria belatedly recog-

nized as an attempt at the backstroke.

 

"Come on in, Uncle Forister," he called up. "The

mud's fine today!"

 

"Are you all right?" Micaya shouted while Forister,

for once, struggled to find his voice.

 

"Couldn't be better. Mud's just at sauna heat today."

Blaize stretched and wriggled luxuriously and

grinned up at them through mud-spattered cheeks. "I

don't usually dive from that high up — knocked the

breath out of me for a minute — but I thought you

needed the demonstration. Care to join me?"

 

Micaya looked quizzically at Forister. The brawn

kicked off his shoes and rolled his trouser legs up. "Oh,

I'm going down, all right," he said between clenched

teeth. "It's the quickest way to get my hands on that

boy. And then I'm going to — to — " Words failed him.

 

"Torture him in a boiling mud hole?" Micaya

suggested.

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

Nancia deliberately slowed her speed for the short

hop from Angalia to Shemali. She needed time to

check her records, time to access the Net and look for

evidence of Polyon's scam. Somewhere in all the past

five years' records of metachip and hyperchip transac-

tions there must be some clue to his criminal activities

— for she could not believe he had totally given up on

the plans he'd announced during her maiden voyage.

Not Polyon de Gras-Waldheim.

 

Even Net access was not always instantaneous, par-

ticularly when one was gathering and collating all the

public records on sale, transfer or use of hyperchips in

the known galaxy. Nancia idled and hoped that her

passengers would not notice how long the voyage was

taking.

 

Fortunately, they all seemed wrapped up in their

own concerns. Fassa, Alpha and Darnell were all being

held in separate cabins, dealing with the long spells of

solitary imprisonment in their own ways. Alpha re-

quested medical and surgical journals from Net

libraries and studied the technical material Nancia

downloaded for her with intense concentration, just as

if she thought she would be permitted to practice her

chosen profession again. Not if I have anything to say

about it, Nancia vowed silently. But the truth was, she

didn't have much to say. She could record her tes-

timony and the images she'd received via contact

buttons, and those depositions would go into evidence

at Alpha's trial. But after that, all would be up to those

softpersons who controlled the high courts on Central.

 

238

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

239

 

Most of them were High Families; half of them had

some connection, kinship or financial, with the Hezra-

Fong clan. Alpha might very well be free — not

immediately, but in five years or ten or twenty, a mere

blip in the life of a High Families girl with fewer than

thirty chronological years behind her and access to the

best rejuv technology to expand her life span dose to

two hundred years.

 

Not for me to decide, Nancia reminded herself, and

turned her attention to the other two. As a safety

precaution she kept sensors in all their cabins active at

all times, but she tried not to pay too much attention

unless the sensor receptors flashed to indicate unusual

activity.

 

DarnelTs activities were usual enough, Nancia sup-

posed, for someone enslaved to a softperson's pitifully

limited array of sense-receptors. He had requested

Stemerald, Rigellian smokefowl and an array of Dorg

Jesen's feelieporn hedra; Nancia had supplied nonal-

coholic nearbeer, synthobird slices, and the hedra

which Forister told her were the nearest things to porn

in her library. Darnell spent most of his time reclining

on his bunk, washing down synthobird and candied

brancake with the nearbeer and watching a remake of

an Old Earth novel over and over again. Nancia

couldn't understand what he saw in the datacorded

adventures of this Tom Jones, but then, it was none of

her business.

 

Blaize was confined in the cabin opposite Darnell's.

After hah0 an hour's furious argument about who

would look after "his" Loosies while he was being

shipped back to Central, he'd accepted Nancia's

promise to see that her sister Jinevra personally over-

saw whoever was sent to replace him on Angalia. "One

thing about the Perez line, they're hopelessly honest,"

he said in resignation. 'Jinevra may not be creative,

but at least she won't let that swine Harmon get his

 

hooks into them again. You do realize that if this year's

harvest foils, all my work will be wasted?"

 

"I realize, I realize," Nancia told him patiently.

"Trust Jinevra." And as she sent out a general Net call

to Jinevra and explained the situation to her sister, she

wondered guiltily just how different she was from the

rest of the High Families brats. Daddy had pulled

strings to get her sent on this assignment. Now she was

calling in favors owed her in Courier Service, and

making her sister feel guilty, so that she could interfere

in what should have been left to the normal channels

of PTA administration.

 

But "normal channels" left the Loosies without the

kind of aid they needed. Nancia sighed.

 

"Will there never be a bureaucracy that does what

it's supposed to without sinking into corruption and

inefficiency?'* she asked Forister.

"Probably not," he replied.

 

"You sound like Simeon — advising me to accept

corruption because it's everywhere!"

 

Forister shook his head. "Not in the least. I'm advis-

ing you not to waste energy being surprised and

shocked about the predictable. No system, anywhere,

is proof against human failings. If it were — "he

forced a tired smile — "we'd be computers. Your hy-

perchips may be foolproof, Nancia, but the human

pan of you makes mistakes — and so do all of us. For-

tunately," he added, "humans can also recognize and

correct mistakes—unlike computers, which just go on

until they crash. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like access

to your comm system for a while. I want to see what I

can do to prevent Blaize from crashing."

 

While Blaize's explanations had satisfied all of them

on an emotional level, he still had some legal problems

to face. No matter how excellent his motivation, the

feet remained that he had falsified PTA reports, sold

PTA shipments on the black market, and transferred

 

240

 

Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

241

 

the profits into his personal Net account To leave him

on Angalia while the others were shipped back for trial

would have seemed like the worst kind of favoritism.

All Forister could do was to make sure that all the facts

were on record for the trial — not just how Blaize had

obtained the money, but what he had done with it and

how he had improved the lives of the people he was

sent to aid.

 

"They are people," Forister reported to Blaize with

satisfaction.

 

"Of course they are! Couldn't you tell that?"

 

"What I thought, or what you thought, is beside the

point," Forister told him. "What counts is CenDip's

decision. And there must be at least one intelligent

man in CenDip, because your report has already been

received and acted on. The Loosies have ISS as of

yesterday. And the decision's palmprinted by no less a

person than the CenDip Secretary-Universal, Javier

Perez y de Gras."

 

Nancia heard that with great satisfaction and turned

her attention to her last prisoner. Fassa was spending

most of this voyage just as she had spent the trip from

Bahati to Angalia, crouched on her cabin floor, arms

around her knees, staring at nothing and ignoring the

food trays Nancia extruded at the dining slot. Un-

touched bowls of soup, baskets of sliced sweet bread,

tempting fruit purees and sliced synthobird in glow-

sauce went back into the recycling bins to be

synthesized into new combinations of proteins and

carbohydrates and fats. To all Nantia's gentle sugges-

tions of food or entertainment Fassa replied widi a dull

"No, thank you," or "It doesn't matter."

 

"You must eat something," Nancia told her.

 

"Must 1?" Fassa seemed obscurely amused. "No,

thank you. I've had enough of men telling me what I

must do and what I must be. Who cares if I get too

skinny to appeal to anybody?"

 

"I'm not a man," Nancia pointed out "I'm not even

a softperson. And my only interest in your body is that

I don't want you to get sick before..."

 

"Before my trial," Fassa finished calmly. "It's all

right You needn't be tactful. I'm going to prison for a

long time. Maybe forever. As long as they don't put me

on Shemali, I don't care."

 

"What's the matter with Shemali?" Nancia asked.

 

Fassa clamped her lips together and stared at the

cabin wall. Her creamy skin was a little paler than

usual, tinged with green shadows. "Nothing. I don't

know anything about Shemali. I didn't say anything

about Shemali."

 

Nancia gave up on Fassa for the moment After all,

there were other ways to find out what was up on

Shemali. Reports on hyperchip production and sales

should soon be coming in over the Net. A few in-

vigorating hours of compiling evidence against Polyon

would calm her and leave her better able to cheer up

Fassa.

 

She felt a sneaking sympathy for the girl after read-

ing her records. Growing up in the shadow of Faui del

Parma couldn't have been easy. Losing her mother at

thirteen, spending the next five years in a boarding

school with not a single visit from her father, then sent

out to Bahati to prove herself.... Nancia thought she

understood how Fassa might feel. But I didn't turn

criminal to impress my family, she argued with herselt

 

Your family, she replied, wouldn't have been impressed.

Besides, she'd had it better than Fassa. Daddy and

Jinevra and Flix had dropped in regularly during the

eighteen years Nancia spent at Laboratory Schools. It

was only after graduation that Daddy had lost interest

in her progress....

 

Softpersons could cry, and it was said that tears were

a natural release of tension. Nancia looked up the

biomed reports on the chemical components of tears,

 

242

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

243

 

adjusted her nutrient tubes to remove those chemicals

from her system, and concentrated on the Net records

of hyperchip sales and transfer.

 

There was absolutely nothing there to incriminate

Polyon. Two years after his arrival at Shemali, his new

metachip design had been approved for production

and christened the "hyperchip" in tribute to its im-

proved speed and greater complexity. Since then,

production of hyperchips had increased rapidly in

each accounting quarter, so rapidly that Nancia

couldn't believe Polyon was siphoning off any of the

supply for his personal use. The manufactured hyper-

chips were subjected to especially stringent QA testing,

but no more than the expected ratio failed the test...

and all the failures were accounted for; they were sent

off-planet for disposal and destroyed by an inde-

pendent recycling company that had, so far as Nancia

could discover, no links whatsoever with Polyon, the

de Gras or Waldheim lines, or any other High

Families. The hyperchips that passed QA were in-

stalled as fast as they were released, and every sale

passed through the rationing board. Nancia knew

from personal experience how difficult it was to get

them; ever since her lower deck sensors and graphics

coprocessors had been enhanced with hyperchips,

she'd been pushing without success to get the hyper-

chips installed in the rest of her system. Micaya

Questar-Benn, when questioned, told Nancia that her

liver and heart-valve filter and kidneys all ran on hy-

perchips, installed when the metachip-controlled

organs began to fail. But she, too, had been unable to

get hyperchips to replace the smart chips in her exter-

nal prostheses; that wasn't an emergency situation,

and the ration board had refused to approve the

surgery or the supplies.

 

Polyon had been nominated twice for the Galactic Ser-

vice Award for the contributions his hyperchip design

 

bad made in areas as diverse as Fleet brainroom control,

molecular surgery, and information systems. Even the

Net, that ponderous, conservative communications sys-

tem that finked the galaxy with news and information

and records of everything ever done via computer —

even the managers of the Net were slowly, conservatively

augmenting key communications Sanctions with hyper-

chip managers that had significantly speeded Net

retrievals. The gossipbyters speculated openly that

Polyon would receive the coveted GSA this year, the

youngest man — and the handsomest, said Cornelia

NetUnk coyly — ever to hold one of the corycium

statuettes. Speculation also ran rampant on which distin-

guished post he would surely accept after the

presentation of the GSA. It seemed such a waste for such

a talented young man — and so handsome, Cornelia in-

evitably added — to be stuck out at the back of beyond

running a prison chip manufacturing plant Yet so far,

Polyon had refused with becoming modesty even to dis-

cuss offers of other positions.

 

"StarFleet assigned me to this post, and my honor is

in serving where I am assigned," he declared when-