ever asked.

 

Nancia resisted the temptation to imitate a softper-

son raspberry at the files. Shellpersons, with near-total

control over their auditory/speaker systems, didn't

need to sink to such childish levels....

 

"ThpSHt," she declared. There was somettmg wrong

on Shemali; she knew it, even if she couldn't prove it.

 

Perhaps their unannounced visit would give her the

data she needed.

 

Despite her slowdown to cruising speeds, Nancia

reached Shemali while she was still mulling over how

to identify herself to the spaceport crew. Arrival of a

Courier Service brainship was an unusual event on

these remote planets; she didn't want to alert Polyon,

 

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give him a chance to cover up—whatever there was to

cover up, and there must be somethingl Nancia

thought.

 

In the event, the decision was made for her.

 

"OG-48, cleared for landing from orbit," the bored

voice of a spaceport controller crackled over her comm

link while Nancia hovered and wondered how to in-

troduce herself without alarming anybody.

 

She quickly scanned her external sensor views.

There were no other ships visible in orbit around

Shemali, and any OG ship on the far side of the planet

should have been out of commlink range. They must

be speaking to her — oh, of course! Nancia chuckled

to herself. Since the sting operation offBahati, she'd

been far too busy to demand a new paint job. The

mauve-and-puce pseudowalls of an OG Shipping

drone still cluttered her interior; the OG stencil was

presumably still prominently displayed on her exter-

nal skin. Darnell Overton-Glaxely had a reputation

for picking up and retrofitting ships from any possible

source. Her sleek CS shape would be unusual for a

shipping line's vessel, but apparently not unusual

enough to rouse any suspicion in the spaceport con-

troller. As he droned on with landing instructions,

Nancia thought she recognized the calm, level,

uninflected voice. Not that voice specifically, but the

feeling of detachment from worldly cares. Since when

do Blissto addicts hold responsible spaceport positions? I knew

something was very wrong here. And we — Forister and

Micaya and I—are going tofmd out what!

 

She settled on the landing pad with a sense of exul-

tation and adventure. Then, as she took in her

surroundings, the bubbles of joyous feelings went as

flat as long-opened Stemerald.

 

"Ugh! What happened to this place?" Forister ex-

claimed as soon as Nancia cleared her display screens

to give him a view of Shemali from the spaceport.

 

The permacrete of the landing pads was cracked

and stained, and the edge of the "crete had a ragged

hole eaten into it, as though somebody had spilled a

drum of industrial biocleaners and hadn't bothered to

clean up the results before the microscopic biocleaners

ate themselves to death on permacrete and paint. The

spaceport building was a windowless permacrete

block, grim and forbidding as any maximum-security

prison—which, of course, described the whole planet.

 

Beyond the spaceport, clouds of green and purple

smoke billowed into the air. Presumably they were the

source of the greenish-black ashes which had drifted

over every surface visible to Nancia.

 

While they waited for the spaceport controller to iden-

tify himself and welcome them to Shemali, a blast of wind

shrieked across the open landing field, catching the ashes

and tossing them into whirling columnsof pollution that

collapsed as rapidly as they had arisen.

 

Nancia's external monitors recorded the wind

temperature at 5 degrees Centigrade.

 

"Shemali deserves its name," she murmured.

 

"What's that?"

 

"North Wind," Nancia said. "Alpha knows the lan-

guage from which all the Nyota system names come. She

mentioned the translations once... a long time ago."

 

"Is the rest of the planet like this?"

 

Nancia briefly replaced the view of the outside with

magnified displays of the images she'd taken in while

descending from orbit. At the time she'd been too ex-

ercised over the problem of an appropriate greeting

formula to worry much about the surface problems of

the planet. Now she and Forister gazed in horrified

silence at stagnant pools in which no living thing

stirred, valleys eroded from the brutal road cuts lead-

ing to new hyperchip plants, swirling clouds of dust

and ash blanketing woods in which the trees died and

no birds sang.

 

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"I didn't know that one factory could do so much

damage to a planet," Forister said slowly.

 

"Looks as if there are several factories operating

now," Micaya pointed out. "All running at top capacity,

I'd guess, with no concern for damage to the environ-

ment ... and Shemali's winds will have distributed the

polluting waste products planet-wide."

 

"Did nobody visit Shemali before recommending

Polyon for a GSA? Probably not," Forister answered

his own question. "Who wants to come to a prison

planet in a minor star system? And his records are

good, you said, Nancia?"

 

"The public records are excellent," Nancia replied,

"It appears that Polyon de Gras-Waldheim has truly

been making every effort to see that the maximum

quantity of hyperchips is manufactured and that they

are distributed as widely as possible." At incalculable cost

to the environment- But that's not a crime....not legally, not

here anyway. If Central cared about Shemali, they wouldn't

have located the prison metachip factory here to begin with.

 

A pounding on the lower doors reverberated

through Nanria's outer skin. She switched back to ex-

ternal auditory and visual sensors. The ones on her

landing braces gave her a narrow view of whoever was

making this commotion ... a gaunt man wrapped in

tattered rags that looked like the remnants of a prison

uniform, gray smock and loose trousers, and with

more rags draped over his head and bound about his

fists.

 

He was calling her name. "Nancia! Nancia, let me

in, quickly!"

 

On the edge of the landing field, two bulky figures

in gleaming silvercloth protective suits moved slowly

forward, awkward and menacing. The silver hoods

covered their faces like helmets, the silver suits glit-

tered around them like armor. But the weapons in

their raised hands were not knightly lances, but nerve

 

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disruptors, bulky squat shapes more menacing than

any iron lance point.

 

Nancia slid open the lower doors. The fugitive col-

lapsed against the opening doors and fell into the

cargo bay. As one of the silver-suited figures raised its

nerve disruptor, Nancia slammed the doors shut

again. The rays bounced harmlessly against her outer

shell; she absorbed the energy without conscious

thought. All her attention was on the ragged prisoner

who was now pushing himself to his knees, slowly and

painfully unwinding the rags from around his face.

 

"That may not have been a wise decision," Forister

commented mildly. "We don't wish to become

embroiled with the local authorities. Prison disputes

aren't part of our mission."

 

"This man is," Nancia replied. She switched the dis-

play screens to show what her sensors were picking up

in the cargo bay. Micaya Questar-Benn was the first to

gasp in recognition.

 

"Young Bryley-Sorensen! How did he get into

Shemali prison . . . and out again . . . and in such

condition?"

 

"That," said Nancia grimly, "I should very much like

to know."

 

Sev pulled himself upright by one of the support

struts that crisscrossed the cargo bay. "Nancia, don't let

anybody else in. There's — you don't know — terrible

things on Shemali. Terrible," he repeated. His eyes

rolled up and he slid to the floor again.

 

"Forister, Micaya, get him out of the cargo bay

before those two guards or whatever come knocking

on my doors," Nancia snapped. "No, wait. I have an

idea. Take his clothes offfirst and leave them there."

 

"Why?"

 

"Don't have time to explain. Just do it!" She set her

kitchen synthesizers to work and turned on the in-

cinerator. What she had in mind would never work if

 

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Shemali were a decendy run prison. But what she'd

seen of the ravages wreaked on the planet matched

what she remembered of young Polyon de Gras-

Waldheim's ruthless personality, and Sev's last gasped

words were all the confirmation she needed.

 

While Forister and Micaya stripped the unconscious

Sev and manhandled him into the lift, Nancia ex-

panded her sensor reception to examine him more

closely. She recorded everything for future analysis,

taking particular note of the horrible skin lesions that

disfigured both Sev's arms and one leg. Dark bruises

flowered in purple and blue and green on his ribs and

stomach, and his back was crisscrossed with swollen

weals that oozed red as the other two softpersons

moved him. His breathing was shallow and irregular

and he showed no sign of regaining consciousness

while they dragged him to the lift.

 

What had they done to him on Shemali? Nancia

knew how to treat the surface injuries; but this was a

planet of nerve gas and acids. The lesions on his arms

and legs frightened her. So did his desperate, ragged

breath pattern. This went beyond the superficial in-

juries and known diseases she was qualified to treat

What they wanted was a doctor ... and there hap-

pened to be one on board.

 

Nancia flashed her images of Sev to Alpha's cabin.

There was a cry of dismay, then a strangled sob. Fassa's

voice, not Alpha's. Nancia realized that in her hurry,

she'd transmitted the same display to all the passenger

cabins. Already Darnell was cursing about the inter-

ruption of his vid. She switched off the receptors from

his cabin and displayed images of the other three

prisoners so that she could watch their faces while she

consulted with Alpha.

 

"Dr. Hezra-Fong," Nancia said formally, "we have just

brought aboard a prisoner with the severe injuries you

see. I fear Ganglidde poisoning. Can you treat him?"

 

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"That's not Ganglicide," Alpha said confidently.

"Minor acid burns, that's all. But there may be some

lung damage. I can't be sure from these vids. And with

the location of those bruises, I'm worried about kidney

damage and internal bleeding. Transport him to the

medtech center. I'll have a look."

 

She was cool and quick and competent; Nancia ad-

mired those qualities unwillingly. But could she be

trusted with Sev's health?

 

Alpha pushed on the dosed cabin door and turned

back to the sensor port. Her fine, sharp-featured face

was pinched with annoyance. "FN-935,1 cannot diag-

nose and treat this man by remote control! If you're

interested in his health, I strongly suggest you open

this door and allow me to do my job!"

 

But what else would she do? Nancia wondered.

 

"Let me go with her," Blaize suggested.

 

"And me." Fassa's large eyes were filled with tears.

Acting, or desperation? There was scant time to

dedde.

 

Nanda instinctively trusted Blaize, but she wasn't

sure how reliable he might be. He tended to go along

with the majority. And if she let both Fassa and Blaize

out with Alpha, the prisoners would be the majority

among the softpersons.

 

And whatever Fassa's crimes, Nancia somehow

doubted that she would do anything to hurt Sev

Bryley-Sorensen. Not after the scenes she had wit-

nessed between them. Not after she'd watched Fassa

sink into a depression between Bahati and Shemali,

convinced that Sev had deserted her and that she

would never see him again.

 

"Fassa del Parma y Polo will accompany and assist

Dr. Hezra-Fong," Nancia announced with a mental

prayer that she was making the right decision.

 

While the two women raced down the corridor to meet

Forister and Micaya at the lift, Nancia slowly opened her

 

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lower cargo doors six inches. The silver-suited guard

who stood outside had his fist raised to bang on the door,

he lowered it now, but aimed his nerve cttsruptor into

what he could see of the cargo bay.

 

"And what can I do for you?" Nancia asked icily.

 

"Drone OG-48, you are harboring an escaped

prisoner," the guard said. "Return him to our custody

now, or it'll be die worse for you. Your owner won't ap-

prove this, you know."

 

Nancia managed an icy laugh that chilled her own

sensors. "This is not a drone. You'll meet us in good

time. As for that diseased bundle of rags that begged

entrance, it has been disposed of appropriately. It

looked as if it had Capellan jungle rot and Altair

plague — not to mention Old Earth lice. Did you think

we'd leave something like that cluttering up this nice

dean ship?"

 

"Don't try to lie to me," the guard warned. "This

ship has been under surveillance from the moment of

landing. The prisoner has not left the ship."

 

"Who said anything about leaving? There are its

clothes — if you can call those rags clothes," Nancia

added disparagingly. She slid the cargo doors open

another ten inches, just enough to let the guard

squeeze in edgewise. "And here's the rest of your

fugitive." She opened the disposal slot and extruded

the contents. A pitiful little heap of organic ash, par-

tially burnt protein, and charred bone fragments

spilled out onto the tray. The guard stepped back,

every line of his body expressing horror. Nancia

wished she could see his face behind the silver per-

mafilm and the finely woven breath mesh.

 

"What's the matter?" she inquired. "He was dying

anyway, you know."

 

The guard stumbled towards the doors, making

retching sounds behind his mask. "I thought de

Gras-Waldheim was a cold one," he said between

 

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gagging noises, "but you OG Shipping types are

 

worse yet."

Nantia's last and most spine-chilling laugh followed

 

him out onto the landing pad.

 

"Don't you want to take the remains back?" she

called after him.

 

She slammed the cargo doors shut before he

could answer, just in case he overcame his distaste

and came back for the "remains." It would never do

to let a lab get hold of the synthesized "bone" and

algal-protein "flesh" that she had first created, then

charred in the incinerator.

 

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• CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

"Stimpad! Drug stores!" Alpha snapped over her

shoulder. Nancia silently extruded die required

equipment from her medtech drawers. Alpha's slim

dark fingers darted among the ampules supplied and

loaded the pad with a combination of drugs. Nancia

recognized a general nervous stimulant, a breathing

regulator, and at least two kinds of anesthetic.

 

"Er — are you sure those will work all right in com-

bination?" she asked apologetically. Alpha was the

doctor. But Nancia had been rigorously trained in the

minor first aid and holding techniques she might ex-

pect to need until she could get an ailing brawn or

passenger to a clinic; and one thing her instructor had

been very, very firm about was the danger of unex-

pected side-effects from mixing two or more drugs.

 

"You wanted an expert," Alpha snapped, "you got

one. I've got to stabilize his condition before I can treat

the superficial lesions and check for internal damage.

This should keep him breathing ... if anything will.

We haven'ta lot of time to waste, you know."

 

Quietly, Fassa del Parma slid between Alpha and

Sev's unconscious body, now prone on the padded ex-

amining bench that slid out of one wall in the narrow

medtech chamber. "If the combination is harmless,"

she said, "try it on me first"

 

"Don't be silly," Alpha sneered, "you've less than

half his body mass. You'll be out of it for two days if I

give you the same dose I've prepared for Bryley!"

 

"Then just use half the stimpad," Fassa suggested.

She pulled one sleeve down over her shoulder, expos-

 

ing an expanse of creamy white skin, naked and vul-

nerable. "Here. I won't move. But I want to see a

demonstration before you stick anything into... Sev."

She gulped on his name, but otherwise her com-

posure was unbroken.

 

Nancia, who alone had the luxury of viewing the

scene from several angles, thought she saw Sev's

eyelids flutter at the sound of Fassa's voice. Neither of

the young women noticed; they were too intent on one

another. From the door, Micaya Questar-Benn

watched in concern. Behind her, Forister glanced up

at one of Nantia's hall sensors. "Time to intervene?"

he mouthed soundlessly.

 

"Wait a minute," Nancia whispered back, the merest

 

thread of sound.

 

Alpha stared at Fassa's calm face and the exposed

shoulder she was offering. Her own face worked

angrily. "1 ought to take you up on it," she said, "you

interfering dolt. Always were soft on men, weren't

you? All right, then!" She tossed the loaded stimpad in

the general direction of a disposal chute; Nancia ex-

tended the chute's wing-edges and caught the thing

before it slid down into the recycling chamber. She

wanted to have an independent lab analyze the first

mix when they got to a civilized planet

 

Alpha prepared a second stimpad loaded with nodi-

ing more than a common stimulant. "Happier with

this?" she asked the air, brows raised sarcastically.

 

"Yes, thank you," said Nancia and Fassa simul-

taneously. But Fassa still insisted that Alpha inject her

with a sample of each medication she used to treat Sev.

"You're a fool," Alpha muttered, too low for General

Questar-Benn to hear; Nancia had to amplify her audio

sensors to catch the thread of speech. Alpha bent over Sev

as she spoke, swabbing widi short vicious strokes at die acid

sores on his arms and legs. "He was in bad enough

shape... ifhe'd never waked up, there' d be that much less

 

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evidence against you and me both. Do you fed that grate-

ful to him for doing his best to put you in prison?"

 

"I've already killed once," Fassa said. "That's

enough for me. What's that?"

 

"Antibiotic spray. Relax," Alpha told her. "We had

our chance to get rid of some evidence, you blew it, it's

too late now. Got that freak of a general and the old

fert brawn peering over our shoulders, ready to slap

me with a malpractice suit on top of everything else.

I'll do my best to patch your detective up for you —

and my best," she added with simple pride that was

quite undiminished by her criminal record, "my best,

Fassa dear, is very good indeed."

 

It was, too. Within the hour Sev was reclining on pil-

lows, sipping camtea loaded with so much sugar and

chalker that it was hardly recognizable, and explaining

to Forister and Micaya the extent of what he'd un-

covered on Shemali and why he'd been in such

desperate straits when Nancia landed.

 

"I made a few mistakes," he admitted with a

grimace. "Disguising myself as a prisoner on an in-

coming transport seemed like the only way to slip onto

Shemali unnoticed. It worked, too. But there were a

few things I hadn't counted on after that."

 

Sev had expected his faked "prison" records, show-

ing expertise in metachip mathematics and computer

network operation, to earn him a prison job some-

where in the administration, where he'd have a chance

to poke around in Polyon's records and find what he

was looking for. The position he was assigned to

looked promising — but as soon as he started his

search, everything had gone wrong.

 

"Ah — you didn't say exacdy what you were looking

for on ShemaU," Forister hinted courteously.

 

Sev took a long gulp of his scalding camtea,

coughed, gasped, and lay back looking a little weaker.

"Not important. Important thing is, more going on

 

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than you can guess from outside. Don't have it all

myself... but enough...."

 

Polyon's entire computer system was laced with

coded traps and alarms; the first time Sev tried to ac-

cess secure data, Polyon and his trusties were alerted

and caught him in the act before he'd more than

downloaded a handful of innocuous records. Sev then

showed them his Central Worlds pass and explained

that he was on an investigative mission having nothing

to do with Polyon or Shemali.

 

"They didn't believe me," he sighed. "Even though

it happened to be true."

 

"Then what were you doing?" Micaya Questar-Benn

demanded.

 

"Later." Sev went on with his story. The trusties had

beaten him up, stripped him, located and disabled the

thin sliver of spyderplate which he'd meant to use as a

distress beacon to Nancia in case he got into trouble.

"Those things are supposed to start emitting an all-fre-

quencies distress signal hooking into the Net if they're

damaged," Sev complained. "So at first I wasn't too

worried. But then when you didn't come, and it got to

be two days, I thought I might be on my own."

 

"De Gras-Waldheim must know some way to disable

them," Forister nodded.

 

"Reasonable," Nancia put in from the speaker. "He

invented them. They're essentially single-purpose

hyperchips — and nobody knows more about hyper-

chips than Polyon."

 

Sev's next discovery was that Polyon had stepped up

the new plants' production of hyperchips by ignoring all

safety precautions. Sent to the hyperchip burnoff lines,

where prisoners' life expectancy amid the clouds of

nerve-destroying gas could be measured in days rather

than years, Sev had resolved to make a break for freedom

when the first ship touched down on Shemali — espe-

cially when he recognized the slim lines of Nancia's

 

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Courier Service hull behind the disguising frieze of OG

Shipping logos and mauve stripes. The escape hadn't

been too difficult; all the other prisoners had been ter-

rorized out of even thinking about escape, and the

guards were lazy and careless and unwilling to spend

much time in the burnoffrooms.

 

"And besides," finished Forister with a grin, "nobody

would expect a prisoner on the run to go to an OG

Shipping drone for help. Nancia, your paint job has

served us well. I don't suppose you'd consider keeping

it after this is over?"

 

"Most certainly not!" Nancia told him. "And it

wouldn't work, anyway. When we've finished in the

Nyota system, there won't be any more OG Shipping.

But—what do we do now?"

 

SeVs story had demonstrated enough irregularities to

justify arresting Polyon twice over. But he was just one

man, with no datacordings or comp uter records to exhibit

in proofofhis story. If they took Polyon away now without

making sure of their evidence, Sev predicted that Shemali

would be cleaned up by the time they got back.

 

"Impossible," said Forister with feeling.

 

Sev nodded weakly. "Not the planet's surface, I

grant you. But you can be sure there'll be nothing in-

side the factories for an investigative committee to

quarrel with. It'll all be clean assembly lines, strict

safety features."

 

"And the prisoners who've already been damaged

by exposure to acids and gases?"

 

"I don't think," said Sev somberly, "that any of them

will be able to testify by that time."

 

"Then we'll have to go down now and get the

evidence," Forister said.

 

Sev shook his head. "Won't work. He's clever —

there's a VIP tour arranged — the disfigured

prisoners and the dangerous work lines are all kept

well out of sight. Mostly at the secondary plants hidden

 

backplanet I know how to find one of the worst plants.

I was there. But without me, he'll whisk you from one

end of the central prison factory to the other, and you

won't see anything, and every time you try to turn

around there'll be six guards in your way. I'll have to

go with you." He tried to raise himself from the pil-

\ows, started coughing and fell back again.

 

"You can't!" Fassa exclaimed.

 

"May have to," said Micaya Questar-Benn. "Duty."

She and Sev nodded at one another. "You two,** she

jerked her head at Fassa and Alpha — back to your

cabins now. Nothing to do with you — shouldn't have

let you hear this much."

 

"Wait!" Fassa cried as Forister took her by the arm.

"There has to be another way. It won't work, taking

Sev with you, can't you see that? Even if he were

stronger, the sight of his face will warn Polyon at once

that there's something wrong. None of you—none of

us will get away alive."

 

"Oh, come now," said Forister gendy. "Your friend

can't be that dangerous."

 

Fassa's face hardened. "If you don't believe me, ask

the others. Alpha?"

 

Alpha bint Hezra-Fong nodded once, reluctandy.

 

Fassa looked up at the room sensor. "Nancia, can

you connect us with Blaize and Darnell? Just for a

moment?"

 

Both men agreed with Fassa's assessment of the

situation.

 

"Then whatom we do?" Forister demanded. "Damn

it, I'm not going to turn tail and run off-planet for fear

of some spoiled High Families brat who's got hold of

some dangerous toys!"

 

"I think," Fassa said slowly, "that you're going to use

me." She was very pale. "Take Alpha back to her cabin,

and I'll explain what I think we can do." She looked

apologetically at Alpha.

 

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"Traitor! When Polyon finds out—"

 

Fassa's lips were pinched. She was not pretty at all

now. But she was almost beautiful, in a cold remote

way. "I'll have to take that chance, won't I?"

 

"Better you than me," Alpha said. She turned to go.

"All right. Lock me up. I don't even want to hear this

plan. Maybe he won't hold it against me, if I'm not

even here when you discuss it." She didn't sound too

hopeful of that.

 

When Fassa explained her plan, there was a brief silence

while Forister,NanciaandMicaya all thoughtit over.

 

"You think he'll fell for it?" Forister queried.

 

"He thinks Nancia is an OG drone," Fassa pointed

out "He believes her passengers cremated Sev for

being a nuisance; if he hadn't swallowed that story,

believe me, we'd be hearing from him by now." She

gave them a strained smile. "Murderers in the escort of

OG shipping — what better credentials could you

have? And with me to front the introductions—"

 

"I won't let you!" Sev said hoarsely.

 

"Fassa stays on board Nancia," Micaya interrupted.

"That's understood." She looked at the girl. "No of-

fense, Fassa. But from the ship, we can monitor what

you say. And I think you'd better wear these." She bent

over briefly, fiddled with the prosthesis replacing her

left leg, and straightened with two lengths of shining,

thread-fine wire. "Hold out your wrists."

 

Fassa obeyed and Micaya encircled each wrist with a

length of the wire. Where she twisted the ends shut,

the wires seemed to collapse and seal invisibly upon

themselves.

 

"Tanglefield? Is that really necessary?"

 

Micaya nodded. "Security measure, no more. Field

won't be activated unless we run into trouble on

Shemali. Clear, Nancia?"

 

"Affirmed."

 

Micaya touched her synthetic arm. "I've got a port-

 

able tanglefield generator built in here," she told

Forister. "Might come in handy on Shemali. Want

some wires?"

 

Forister took a handful of the gleaming wires and

regarded them dubiously. "I prefer to solve my

problems more elegandy than this."

 

"Me, too." Micaya tugged her dark green pants leg

down over the prosthesis. "Isn't always possible,

though. Everybody tells me there'll be terrible political

complications if we harm a hair on the head of this

High Families brat. So ..." She patted her prosthetic

leg again and straightened. "I've stashed the needier.

Agree with you, taking him out straightaway would be

simpler, but you insisted on doing this by the book."

 

"That wasn't," Forister said, "quite what I meant by

an elegant solution."

 

Micaya regarded him with a hint of amusement on

her solemn, dark face. "Know it. Usually is the most

'elegant' way, though. Leave little tyrants to run loose,

they grow up into big tyrants. Then you get the Capel-

lan mess, or something like. Wars," she pointed out,

"aren't elegant." She nodded once to Fassa, by way of

apology. "Understand, not accusing you of treachery,

just not taking chances. Want you to be warned — "

 

"That a secret signal to Polyon will do me more

harm than good," Fassa finished calmly. "You don't

trust me. That's all right. / wouldn't trust me, either."

 

She was white to the lips now, and her hands were

shaking, but she led the way from the medtech room

without pausing.

 

Nancia could see that Sev was fretting enough to

damage himself by trying to go after them, so she

switched displays to give him visual and auditory sen-

sor taps to the main cabin.

 

Fassa was still pale when Nancia initiated the signal se-

quence that would open a comm link with planetside

authorities, but she managed the promised introduc-

 

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Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

tions with perfect composure. For Polyon's benefit

Forister and Micaya became Forrest Perez and Qualia

Benton, a pair of potential hyperchip customers with

cash to invest in the operation. She hinted delicately that

"Qualia Benton" was really a high-ranking general from

Central, and Micaya started forward to stop her. Forister

laid one hand on Micaya's arm. "Trust the young lady,

Mic," he murmured. "She has — er — more experience

in this sort of thing than you or I."

 

So it proved. Far from being alarmed by Micaya's

military standing, Polyon accepted her presence with

Fassa, on an OG ship, as proof that she was as corrupt

as his friends. And he was clearly delighted to have

made the contact. Within minutes he was arranging to

meet Fassa's "friends" and give them a tour of the

newest hyperchip plant

 

"I don't know why, but Polyon's always been eager to

get more hyperchips sold to the military," Fassa told the

others after she cut the contact. "It's not the money,

either; he offered Space Academy a cut rate once, but the

Ration Board stopped him. 1 knew your rank would be

the thing to draw him in, Micaya. A back door into the

military supply system is Polyon's dream."

 

"I suppose he wants to impress his old teachers and

classmates by making sure they all use his inventions,"

Forister surmised.

 

Nancia was confused. "But surely he doesn't

imagine that selling hyperchips on the black market is

the way to high standing in the Academy?"

 

AU three softpersons laughed tolerandy, and Nancia

heard a weak chuckle from the sensor link to the med-

tech cabin where Sev rested. "Investigate the sources of a

few High Families fortunes some time, Nancia," Sev

recommended to her. "Money washes dean of most any

taint—and more rapidly than you'd believe possible."

 

"Not," Nancia said, "in the Academy. And not in

House Perez y de Gras, either."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

261

 

Nancia fussed over Forister and Micaya until the last

minute, fitting them out with contact buttons,

spyderplates, and every other remote protection device

she could think of. "I don't know what good you think

this will do," Forister complained. "De Gras-Waldheim

disabled Sev's spyderplate without alerting anybody,

didn'the?"

 

"Sev didn't have me monitoring him," Nancia

pointed out.

 

She should have confined Fassa to her cabin before

the other two left, but she didn't have the heart to.

"Somebody should stay with Sev," Fassa pleaded.

 

"Oh, let the child stay with him," Forister put in unex-

pectedly. "She's not worth much as a hostage anyway. If

even half of what Sev told us about the hyperchip factory

conditions is true, Polyon de Gras-Waldheim is a mur-

derer a dozen times over who'd think nothing of

sacrificing a ship full ofhis former friends."

 

Fassa nodded. "Yes, that's about right. Except — I

wouldn't say he'd 'think nothing of it.' He'd probably

enjoy it."

 

"Why didn't any of you tell us about Polyon before

this?" Nancia demanded. "You were all babbling your

stupid heads off, pointing the finger at one another to

get some credit for your own plea bargains, and you

never warned us about Polyon."

 

"Afraid to," Fassa said sadly.

 

"So afraid that you let Sev go off to Shemali without

a word of warning? I'd never have let him go un-

monitored if I'd guessed."

 

"I didn't know Sev had gone to Shemali," Fassa

defended herself. "Nobody told me anything. I didn't

even know he wasn't on board when we left Bahati. All

I knew was that he didn't come to see me again, and I

thought, I thought... and quite right, too; why should

he bother with someone like me?" Tears filled her

eyes; Nancia thought that for once they were genuine.

 

262

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

"Fassa del Parma, you are a prime idiot!" Sev's

weary, hoarse whisper startled all of them; Nancia had

forgotten that she'd left the connections between the

main cabin and the medtech room wide open. "Get in

here and hold my hand and smooth my fevered brow.

I'm an injured man. I need attention."

 

"Call Alpha. She's a doctor," Fassa gulped.

 

"I wantyou. Now are you coming, or do I have to get

up and get you?"

 

Fassa fled. And Nancia watched, satisfied, and feel-

ing only a little bit like an eavesdropper, as she burst

through the door of the medtech room. Hadn't Sev

given her explicit instructions to keep full sensors

open whenever he was with Fassa del Parma?

 

Those two were too wrapped up in each other for

Fassa to pose any danger to anybody. All the same, Nan-

cia kept those sensors open while she concentrated most

of her attention on the images and sounds coming in

from Pollster's and Micaya's contact buttons. Polyon was

losing no time; he'd met them on the landing field in a

flyer that swooped directly to the newest hyperchip

production facility, a squat featureless building set in a

valley that might have been beautiful before Polyon's

construction teams sliced through the earth and the

waste products from his factory killed off the trees. Now

the building stood alone at the top of a sloping hill ringed

round by stagnant, poisonous-looking waters and the

broken stumps of dead trees. Nancia felt her sensors con-

tracting in repulsion at the image.

 

"General, can you handle this flyer?" she mur-

mured through Micaya's contact button.

 

"I'm glad to see you have such up-to-date equip-

ment, de Gras," Micaya said loudly for Nancia's

benefit. "I tested the prototype versions of this flyer

recently, but I had no idea the model was in general

distribution already."

 

Good. Micaya would be able to bring the three of

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

263

 

them back. Nancia listened in on Sev's and Fassa's con-

versation while Polyon landed the flyer and took

Forister and Micaya into the factory.

 

"You think too much," Sev was saying firmly to

Fassa." I meant what I told you before, and I still mean

it. You idiot, I went to Sheniali on your account!"

 

"On my account?" Fassa echoed, sounding as if she

was unable to think at all.

 

Sev nodded." Here I'd been pacing Nancia's corridors

every night, trying to think out a way to save you, and

then Darnell gave me a due. He said you'd contracted to

build a hyperchip factory for Polyon, and that when the

original building collapsed you replaced it free of charge.

I thought if I could prove that, your lawyer might argue

that you never intended to do substandard work—that

any problems with your buildings were the result of in-

competence, of sending a young girl to manage a

business she was unfamiliar with — and that he could

prove it by demonstrating how willingly you'd made res-

titution when a problem was brought to your attention.'*

Fassa smiled through her tears. "If s a lovely, lovely ar-

gument, Sev. Unfortunately, not a word of that is true, I

am," said Fassa, "or rather, I was an extremely competent

contractor." She sniffed. "Damn Daddy. He accidentally

sent me into a business I had a real talent for."

 

"That being the case," said Sev softly, "why the hell

couldn't you just be a contractor, instead of slinking

around in those dresses that kept falling off your

shoulders and driving middle-aged men crazy?"

 

Fassa's face hardened. "Ask Daddy." She tried to

turn away, but Sev had hold of both her hands.

 

"I guessed some time ago," he said. "And ... I've

been checking old gossipbytes. Was that why your

mother killed herself?"

 

Fassa nodded. Tears were streaming down her face

unchecked. "Well, then. You won't want to have any-

thing more to do with me. I understand. I'm not, I'm

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Batt

 

not... it's not just Daddy, you know. There've been all

those other men...." She gulped down a sob.

 

For a man who'd been on the verge of collapse a few

hours earlier, Sev demonstrated remarkable powers of

recovery. Nancia was impressed by the strength with

which he drew Fassa into his arms against her resis-

tance. "You," he said deliberately, "are the woman I

love, and nothing that happened before today matters

in the slightest to me." He paused for a moment and

Nancia blacked out her visual sensors. She didn't real-

ly think that the requirements of surveillance on Fassa

included watching Sev Bryley-Sorenson kiss her as

desperately as a man in vacuum gasping for oxygen.

 

On Shemali, Micaya Questar-Benn had finally per-

suaded Polyon to drop die sanitized V.I.E tour of his

factory. She didn't believe he could produce enough hy-

perchips to satisfy her requirements, she told him, and

what was more, she didn't believe he would be able to ex-

tend the factory's production fast enough for her. The

safety requirements mandated by the Trade Commission

simply took too long to set up and maintain.

 

Polyon suggested that the Trade Commission could,

collectively, do something anatomically impossible for

the individual members. And if the General wanted to

see just how fast he could turn out hyperchips, he

added, she and her friend could just follow him.

They'd have to wear protective gear, though, he said,

struggling into a silverdoth suit himself as he spoke.

 

While Micaya and Forister put on the suits provided

for guests, Micaya commented innocently that the cost of

suiting up an entire production line of prisoners must be

prohibitive, and that she didn't see how they maintained

the dexterity necessary for the assembly process while

working from inside the bulky silvercloth gloves.

 

Polyon chuckled and agreed that the difficulties

posed were enormous.

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

265

 

On board, Sev and Fassa were talking again; Nancia

discreetly tuned in to their conversation, but there

wasn't much in it to require her attention. Fassa was

gloomy about the prospect of years in prison. Sev

wasn't any too cheerful about it himself, but he as-

sured Fassa that he'd wait for her.

 

"I don't think they let murderers out," Fassa said.

"Unless they decide to mindwipe me."

 

"Fassa, you are not a murderer. Caleb isn't dead."

 

Fassa's slender body became quite still. "He isn't?"

 

"You were right," Sev said. "Nobody tells you any-

thing. He isn't dead. He isn't even seriously iU; he was

in therapy for nerve damage when I left Bahati."

 

"Latest bulletins from Summer-lands say that he

should recover full function quite soon and will

probably be restored to active brawn status within the

next few weeks," Nancia confirmed.

 

Sev and Fassa broke apart and looked up at the

overhead speaker.

 

"Nancia!" Sev exclaimed. "I didn't know you were

listening."

 

"You gave me the orders yourself," Nancia

reminded him.

 

"Oh. Well." Sev thought. "Can I cancel the orders?

Will you obey me if I do?"

 

"I really shouldn't."

 

"Lock the door on us both," Sev suggested. "I don't

mind. But please, could we have some privacy now?

This voyage back to Central is likely to be my last

chance to be alone with my girl for a long, long time."

 

Fassa looked ridiculously happy for someone feeing

trial and a stiff prison sentence. Nancia left them to it.

 

She didn't have much to occupy her on Shemali,

either. Micaya and Forister hadn't waited to take the

full tour of the hyperchip assembly line; a few images

 

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Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

of prisoners working unshielded with skin-destroying

acids, in rooms that leaked poisonous gas, were all the

evidence they needed to bolster Sev's detailed

eyewitness testimony. The datacordings were par-

ticularly damning when accompanied, as they were,

by Polyon's pleasant, cultured voice explaining just

how he had cut costs and speeded up production by

condemning the prisoners in his care to lingering,

painful deaths by industrial poisoning. By the time

Nancia had scanned those images, Micaya had already

slapped tanglewires around Polyon's wrists, ankles,

and even his neck. With die ankle field activated, she

read him the formal statement of arrest

 

"You can't do this!" Polyon protested. "Do you know

who I am? I'm a de Gras-Waldheim. And I have Gover-

nor Lyautey's approval for everything I've done here!"

 

"My brainship has already transmitted a request for

drug testing on Lyautey and all other civilian personnel,''

Forister told him. "I suspected Blissto when I heard your

spaceport controller talking. What did you do, make ad-

dicts of anybody who could blow the whistle on you?"

 

""You can't arrest me" Polyon repeated as though he

hadn't understood a word.

 

Micaya Questar-Benn had a smile that would have

chilled steel to the snapping point. "Want to bet, son?

Walk in front of me. Slowly, now. Wouldn't want the

tanglefield to think you're trying to escape and cut off

your feet; it's too quick and easy a death for your sort"

And when Polyon opened his mouth again, she activated

the extended tanglefield from the neck wire to keep him

from flapping his tongue about any more.

 

As they left the assembly lines, a ragged cheer went

up from the prisoners behind them.

 

• CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

To Polyon's shock and amazement, the cyborg freak

and her partner actually managed to convince Gover-

nor Lyautey that they were entitled to arrest a de

Gras-Waldheim and take him away. "Convince" was

probably too strong a word. Polyon recognized with

rueful amusement that he'd been caught in his own

trap. The governor, like all the civilians left on

Shemali, was constantly dosed with Alpha bint Hezra-

Fong*s Seductron. Since Lyautey was in a nonessential

job, Polyon kept his maintenance level of Seductron so

high that the governor did little but nod amiably and

agree with whoever spoke to him last

 

Somebody must have figured that out and thought

of this way to use it against him. With his mouth

covered by tanglefield, Polyon could do nothing but

listen while this Micaya Questar-Benn and her partner

rattled off official-sounding words, flourished their

forged credentials — they had to be forged—and took

him away in the very flyer he himself had sent to pick

them up at the spaceport

 

They considerately removed the tanglefield from

his mouth as soon as the flyer took off. Polyon main-

tained a dignified silence during the short flyer hop

back to the spaceport, but his brain was working

furiously. He refused to believe that this "arrest*' was

real Real Central agents had their own transport, they

didn't hitch a ride on an OG cruiser or get a conniving

little whore like Fassa del Parma to front for them. This

had to be some trick cooked up by Darnell and Fassa to

get control of the hyperchips. He had no intention of

 

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Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

 

giving them or their friends the amusement of seeing

him struggle and protest. Later, when he'd figured out

their game, he would turn the tables and make them

squirm. Darnell would be easy to break, but Fassa...

he smiled unpleasantly at the thought of exacdy how

he'd take the pride out of her. He'd never yet

threatened Fassa physically. Maybe it was time to start

 

Then, as the flyer came gently down on the landing

pad, he blinked and saw the ship for a moment sil-

houetted against the bright sky, only sleek lines and

smooth design, without the contusing detail of the OG

colors and logo, and he knew where he'd seen a ship

like that before.

 

"Courier Service," he groaned, and for the first time

he began to believe that he was really under arrest

 

"Got it in one," said the spare, quiet man who'd

accompanied General Questar-Benn, offering Polyon

his hand to help him to the ground. "Time I intro-

duced myself. Forister Armonttllado y Medoc, brawn

totheFN-935.M

 

"Kftt a brawn, old man?" Polyon sneered. TU believe

that when I see it!" He refused the offer of the steadying

hand and swung himself out of the flyer, feet together,

hands in front of him, still with athletic grace. Even widi

his hands and feet constrained in tanglefields, he still had

his strength and his natural balance.

 

"You'll not have to wait long," Forister replied mild-

ly. "I'll introduce you to my Brainship as soon as we're

aboard."

 

Polyon maintained a grim silence while these two

escorted him to the ship's lift, up to the passenger level

and down a depressing mauve-painted corridor to the

cabin where he was to be confined. Once there, he

leaned against the wall and waited. The brawn Forister

and the cyborg Micaya withdrew, leaving him still con-

fined in the double tanglefield about wrists and ankles.

"Wait!" he cried out "Aren't you going to — "

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

269

 

The door irised shut behind them with a series of

dicks along the concentric rings, and a moment later a

sweet female voice spoke from the overhead speaker.

 

"Welcome aboard the FN-935," she — it — said. "I

am Nancia, the brainship of this partnering. Your ar-

rest is legal under Central Code — " and she reeled off

paragraphs and statute references that meant nothing

to Polyon. "As a prisoner awaiting trial on capital

crimes, you may legally be confined by tanglefield for

the duration of the voyage, which will be

approximately two weeks. General Questar-Benn has

transferred the tanglefield control function to my

computer; if you will give me your word not to attempt

damage to me or to your fellow passengers, I will

release the tanglefield now and allow you the freedom

of your cabin."

 

Polyon glanced over the narrow space and laughed

sardonically. "You have my word," he said. Words

were cheap enough.

 

As soon as he spoke the electronic field ceased

vibrating. His wrists and ankles prickled with return-

ing life; an uncomfortable sensation, but far, fer better

than being electronically bound hand and foot for the

next two weeks.

 

The brainship blathered on with threats about

sleepgas and other restraints that could be applied if

he gave it any trouble; Polyon didn't bother to listen.

He had too much to think about Besides, he didn't in-

tend to do anything the brainship could see. He wasn't

 

that stupid.

 

Unobtrusively, under cover of flexing his wrists to

restore full movement, he patted his breast pocket and

felt the reassuring lump right where it should be,

where he always carried a minihedron with the latest

test version of his master program. He was clever,

Polyon thought. Too clever by half for this pair to

master for long.

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Batt

 

Oh, he'd make some trouble for this interfering

brainship and its doddering brawn, all right, just as

soon as he got the chance. But it wasn't trouble that

they would be able to see or hear coming, and there

wouldn't be a damned thing they could do about it

once he'd started. Damn them! He wasn't ready for

this; he was still two to three years short of having

everything in place. How much would it cost him to

make his planned move ahead of schedule?

 

Impossible to calculate; he'd just have to go ahead

and find out later. Whatever the cost, it couldn't be as

great as that of going tamely back to Central for trial

and imprisonment. It had always been a gamble,

Polyon comforted himself. He'd always known that

one day somebody might figure out about the hyper-

chips, and that he'd have to move fast if that occurred,

 

At least now, even if the move was being forced on

him, it was forced by some ignoramuses who didn't

even guess how he might retaliate. He would have the

advantage of surprise on his side.

 

If only he'd had time to implement Final Phase!

Then he could have started everything right now, with

a spoken word of command. As it was, he'd have to get

this minihedron into a reader slot before he could

make his move.

 

There weren't any reader slots in this cabin; and he

was supposed to be confined here until they reached

Central; and if he tried to break out of the cabin, the

damned brainship would drop him with sleepgas or a

tanglefield before he got to any place with reader slots.

 

Polyon bared his teeth briefly. He did love a chal-

lenge. He still had his voice, and his wits, and his

charm, and sensor contact with the brainship and her

brawn. He set to work with those tools to dig himself

an impalpable tunnel to freedom, placing each word

and each request as carefully as a miner shoring up

the loose earth in the tunnel roof.

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

271

 

In die long dragging hours until they reached the Sin-

gularity point for transition into Central subspaoe, there

wasn't much to do but play games or read. Forister and

Micaya began another tri-chess contest; Nancia obliging-

ly created the holocube for them and maintained a

record of the moves, but warned them that some of the

game data might be lost if she needed to call on that par-

ticular set of coprocessors during Singularity.

 

"That's all right," Forister said absently. "Mic and I

have been interrupted by all sorts of things in our

time. Aren't you partnering me, then?"

 

"I don't think I'd better," Nancia replied with real

regret. "I think I should monitor our passengers.

They've been allowed a great deal of freedom, you

know."

 

Micaya snorted. "Freedom! They're free to move

within their cabins, that's all. Granted, I wouldn't cut

'em that much slack, but—

 

"That," said Forister, "is why you keep having politi-

cal problems. You never cut the High Families any

slack, and they resent it."

 

"Shouldn't," said Micaya. "I'm one of them."

 

"That doesn't help," Forister said, almost sadly.

"Anyway, Mic, you're not seriously worried about a

ship's mutiny?"

 

"From those spoiled brats?" Micaya snorted. "Ha!

Even that de Gras boy, for all the others were so scared

of him, trotted aboard like a little lamb. No, there's not

a one of them has the brains — saving your Blaize,

maybe — or the guts to try anything, now that we've

cut off their special deals."

 

"Blaize wouldn't try anything," Forister said sharply.

"He's a good boy."

 

Micaya patted Forister's arm. "I know, I know. Con-

vinced me. But he did rip off PTA, And what's worse to

my mind — he didn't speak up about the others. Have

 

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Anne McCaffrey &f Afargaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

273

 

to answer for that, though it's less, all told, than the rest

of this precious crew have to stand trial for."

 

"I understand," Forister said glumly.

 

Sev Bryley-Sorenson stretched out his long legs.

"Think I'll work out for a while," he announced to no

one in particular.

 

*Tfou*d think it was him going back for trial, to look at

the long face on the boy," Micaya commented as Sev

whisked himself down the corridor to the exercise room.

 

"Can't be much fun," Forister said gently, "being in

love with a girl who's likely to be unavailable for the

next fifty Standard Years. And he doesn't have much

to take his mind off it. He's not the type for tri-chess."

 

"Not bright enough, you mean. True," said Micaya

with a trace of complacency. "And too bright for that

silly game the prisoners are playing. Doesn't leave him

much, you're right."

 

"Do you really have to monitor the prisoners all the

time, Nancia?" Forister looked at her column with the

smile that always melted her best resolutions. "Surely

they'll do no damage while they're all wrapped up in

that idiotic game. And if you think it's unfair to Micaya

for you to partner me ... we could play three-

handed?"

 

Nancia had to concentrate a litde harder for this dis-

play, but after a moment of intense processing the

holocube shimmered, twisted, danced around its central

core and reformed as a holohex, with three separate

triple rows of pieces formed at opposing edges.

 

And in his cabin, Polyon de Gras-Waldheim stopped

listening to the conversation in the central cabin and

rejoined the SPACED OUT game that was currently

helping his fellow prisoners to forget their troubles.

Persuading Nancia to open the comm system so that

the five of diem could play from their cabins had been

his first move. Now, at least, he could talk to the otbers.

But he hadn't dared say anything beyond standard

 

game moves while Nancia was conscientiously

monitoring them.

 

The display screen showed that three of the game

characters had managed to lose themselves in the Troll

Tunnels. Polyon's own game icon was still at the mouth

of the tunnels, awaiting a command from him." I know

how we can get out of the tunnels," he said.

 

"How? I've tried every exit the system shows.

They're all blocked," Alpha complained.

 

"There's a secret key," Polyon told her. "I have it

But I can't get to the door it unlocks from here."

 

"I never heard anything about a secret key," Darnell

announced. "I think you're bluffing." His game icon

bounced angrily back along one of the Troll Tunnels,

spitting sparks as it went.

 

"You wouldn't," Polyon said smoothly. "I'm the

game master. This secret key can even override your

character, Fassa."

 

Fassa had taken the Brainship icon for this game.

"I don't see how," Fassa responded. "Show me?"

"I told you. I can't get to where I can use it. If any of

you can get me out of this blind alley, though — "

 

"You're not in a blind alley!" Darnell interrupted.

"You're standing right at the entrance to the Troll Tun-

nels! Why don't you move your icon on into the

tunnels?"

 

"And get lost like the rest of you? No, thanks."

Polyon waved his hand over the palmpad and shut off

the bickering voices of the gamesters. He brooded in

silence for a while. Why had he ever bothered with

such an inept bunch of conspirators? They were too

stupid to pick up on his veiled hints. They thought he

was interested in playing a game \

 

Blaize, now; Blaize was brighter than the others,

and he'd taken no pan in the brief exchange. Polyon

tapped out a series of commands that would give him a

private comm link to Blaize's cabin. At least he could

 

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Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

 

hack into Nancia's system to that extent from the key.

board; though it was nothing to the power that would

be his once he'd made his way to a reader slot with his

minihedron.

 

While he thought out his approach to Blaize, he was

startled by a crackle of sound. The idiot thought he'd

achieved a private channel to the lounge! And what

was he planning to do with it? Polyon scowled, then

began to listen attentively. It seemed that Blaize was

too bright to make a good tool.

 

But he might still be an excellent pawn, in a game

whose moves he'd never see....

 

"Uncle Forister?" Blaize switched comm channels to

the lounge. "I need to talk to you."

 

"Talk," Forister grunted. He was just putting the

final touches to a truly beautiful strategy, designed to

pit Micaya's and Nancia's Brainship pieces against one

another while he moved unopposed to control all ver-

tices of the holohex.

 

"Privately."

 

"Oh, all right." Forister got up and stretched. "Nan-

cia, can you store the holohex until I get back? I

wouldn't want to tire you by asking you to maintain

the display while we're not actually playing."

 

Nancia chuckled. "You mean you don't want to

leave the holohex set up where we can study the posi-

tions and figure out what nasty trap you're getting

ready to spring on us this time."

 

"Well..."

 

The holohex folded in upon itself and became a sheet,

a line, a point of dazzling blue light that then winked out

of existence. "All right. We're approaching the Sin-

gularity point, anyway; I really shouldn't be playing

games now. Need to check my math," Nancia said cheer-

fully. "Be sure and get back in time to strap yourself in.

You softpersons get so disoriented in Singularity."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

275

 

"And you shellpersons get so uppity about it,"

Forister retorted. "All right. You'll warn us in plenty of

time, I assume?"

 

"And monitor you while you're in die cabin," Nancia

said. "Don't look like that; it's for Blaize's protection as

well as yours. If you're left alone with him, the

prosecution might try to discredit your testimony, say

you'd been bribed or suborned."

 

"They won't have much respect for his uncle's good

word anyway," said Forister gloomily, going on down

the passageway to find out what Blaize had in mind.

Nancia triggered the release mechanism on the door

just long enough for him to slide dirough.

 

"I think Polyon's planning something," Blaize said

as soon as Forister entered the cabin. He sat at the

cabin console, one hand quivering over the palmpad

without actually starting a program., all red-headed

intensity like a fox at a rabbit hole.

"What?*1

 

"I don't know. He wants to get out of his cabin. He

keeps telling us that he can fix everything if only he could

get out for a few minutes. Listen!" Blaize ran the heel of

his hand over the palmpad and brought up a datacord-

ing of the last few transmissions between the SPACED

OUT gamesters. From the cabin console he couldn't ac-

cess enough memory to store images as well as voices; the

players' words crackled out through the speaker, disem-

bodied and robbed of half their meaning. Forister

listened to the recorded exchange and shook his head.

 

^Just sounds like a few more moves in that dumb

game of yours to me, Blaize."

 

"It's a move in a game, all right," Blaize said grimly,

"but he's not playing the same game as the rest of us.

Damn! I wish I'd been able to capture the images and

the icon moves too. Then you'd see,"

"See what?"

"That what Polyon was saying made absolutely no

 

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Anne McCaffrey fef Margaret, Ball

 

sense in the context of the actual game moves." Blaize

dropped his hands in his lap and looked up at Forister.

"Can Nancia keep Polyon under sleepgas until we

reach Central?"

 

"She can," Forister replied, "but I've yet to see any

reason why she should. This case is going to have all the

High Families buzzing like uprooted stingherbs as it is;

it'll only be worse if we give them some excuse to allege

mistreatment of prisoners."

 

"But you heard him!"

 

"Didn't make any sense to me," Forister allowed,

"but nothing about that silly game makes sense, in my

humble opinion. Come on, Blaize. Can you seriously

see me explaining to some High Court judge that I

kept a prisoner stunned and unconscious for two solid

weeks because something he said in the course of a

children's game made me nervous?"

 

"I suppose not," Blaize agreed. "But — you'll be

careful?"

 

"I am always careful," Forister told him.

 

"And — I don't think you should talk to him. The

man's dangerous."

 

"1 know you four are scared of him," Forister agreed,

"but I think that's because you've been away from

Central too long. He's nothing but an arrogant brat who

was given more power than was good for hun. Like some

other people I could name. Now if you'll excuse me, it's

nearly time to strap down for Singularity."

 

He nodded at the wall sensors and Nancia silently

slid the door open for him.

 

Once he was in the passageway again, she spoke in a

low voice.

 

"Polyon de Gras-Waldheim requests the favor of a

private interview."

 

"He does, does he! And I suppose you think I ought

to take Blaize's warning seriously, and insist on having

Micaya as a bodyguard before I talk to him?"

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

277

 

"I think you're reasonably able to look after your-

self" Nancia said, "especially with me listening in. It's

not as if you were piloting a dumbship. But there's not

much time; I'll be entering the first decomposition se-

quence in a few minutes.'1

 

"All the better," said Forister. "I won't have to spend

too long with him. I'll talk with him until you sound

the Singularity warning bell, if that's all right. Can't do

much less. Visited Blaize — have to visit any of the

others who request it."

 

When Forister entered, Polyon was lying on his

bunk, arms folded behind his head. He turned at the

soft sound of the sliding door, jumped to his feet and

brought his heels together with a military precision

that Forister found almost annoying.

 

"Sir!"

 

"I'm not," Forister said mildly, "your superior of-

ficer. You needn't click your heels and salute. You

wanted to tell me something?"

 

"I — yes — no — I think not," Polyon said. His blue

eyes looked haunted; he pushed a wayward strand of

golden hair back from his forehead. "I thought — but

he was my friend; I can't do it. Even to shorten my own

sentence — no, it's impossible. I'm sorry to have dis-

turbed you for nothing, sir."

 

"I think," Forister said gendy, "you'd better tell me all

about it, my boy." It was hard to reconcile the haunted

creature before him with the monster who'd made

Shemali prison into a living hell. Perhaps Polyon had

some explanation he wished to proffer, some story about

others who'd conceived the vicious factory system?

 

It took him a good five minutes of gentling Polyon's

overactive sense of honor, all the time listening

anxiously for the Singularity warning bell, before he

coaxed the boy into letting out a name.

 

"It's Blaize," Polyon said miserably at last. "Your

nephew. I'm so sorry, sir. But — well, while we were

 

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PARTNERSHIP

 

279

 

playing SPACED OUT he was boasting to me of how

he'd pulled the wool over your eyes, convinced you he

was innocent of any wrongdoing — "

 

"Not quite," said Forister. He spoke very evenly to con-

trol the twist of pain that squeezed his chest "He did sdl

PTA shipments on the black market That's wrongdoing,

in my book, and hell be tried for it on Central"

 

Polyon nodded. His look of suffering had not abated.

"Yes, he said that was the story he'd given you. Then I

thought—if you didn't know — perhaps I could trade

the information for a reduction in my own sentence."

 

"What information?*" Forister asked sharply.

 

Polyon shook his head. "Never mind. It doesn't mat-

ter. I've enough on my conscience already," he said,

raising his head and staring at the wall with a look of

noble resignation that Forister found intensely irritat-

ing. "I won't compound my crimes by informing on a

friend. It's all on this minihedron—well, never mind."

 

"What," asked Forister with the last vestiges of his

patience, "what exactly is supposed to be on the mini-

hedron?'' He stared at the faceted black shape Polyon

held in his hand, dark and baleful like the eye of an

alien god.

 

"The true records of how Blaize made his fortune,"

Polyon said. "It's all there — he thought he'd con-

cealed his tracks, but there were enough Net links for

me to find the records. I'm very good with computers,

you know," he said with a boy's naive pride. "But when

I begged him to tell you the truth, he laughed at me.

Said he had you convinced of his innocence and he

saw no reason to change the situation. That was when

I thought — but no," Polyon said, averting his face as

he thrust out the minihedron towards Forister, "I don't

want any favors."

 

Forister felt as queasy as though they had already

entered Singularity. Was this why Blaize had tried so

hard to keep him from talking to Polyon? He'd wanted

 

to keep Polyon drugged and unconscious until they

reached Central; he'd had that silly story about Polyon

using the SPACED OUT game as a cover for some land

of plot But what good would it do to keep Polyon from

talking for two weeks, when his evidence — whatever

it might be—would come out anyway at the trial?

 

*Just—you take this. Read it once. Then keep it safe

— or wipe it if you want to," Polyon said,"/ don't care.

I just wanted to hand it over to — to somebody

honorable." His voice broke slighdy on the last word,

and Forister thought there was a gleam of moisture in

the corners of his eyes. "God knows, I can scarcely

claim that for myself. You take it. You'll know what to

do with the information."

"What is it?"

 

Polyon shook his head again. "I don't — I can't tell

you. Go and read it in privacy. Just drop it into any of

the ship's reader slots and have a look at the informa-

tion. Then I'll leave it up to you to decide what should

be done. And I don't," he said, almost savagely, "I don't

want to profit from it, do you understand? Say you got

it from somebody else. Or don't say where you got it

Or destroy it. Do what you want — it's off my con-

science now, at any rate!"

 

He dropped back onto the bunk and buried his

head in his arms. Overhead, the silvery chime of the

first warning bell sounded. "Five minutes to Sin-

gularity," Nancia announced. "All passengers, please

fie down or seat yourselves and secure free-fall straps.

Tablets for Singularity sickness are available in all

cabins; if you think you may be adversely affected by

the transition, please medicate yourself now. Five

minutes to Singularity."

 

Polyon fumbled without looking up, caught his

free-fall strap and buckled it around himself. "Sin-

gularity," he said bitterly, "doesn't make me sick. But

what's on that minihedron does."

 

280      Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

Forister left the cabin with a sparkling black mini-

hedron clutched in his hand, the facets cutting into his

palms, his head awhirl with doubts.

 

"What a magnificent acting job!" Nancia com-

mented with a low laugh.

 

"You think Polyon was lying?"

 

"I'm certain of it," she told him. "You know Polyon.

You know Blaize. Is it credible for an instant that Blake

could have committed crimes that would turn Polyon's

stomach?"

 

"I — don't know," Forister groaned. He dropped

into the pilot's chair and stared unseeing at the console

before him. Micaya Questar-Benn tactfully pretended

to polish the gleaming buckle on her uniform belt.

"Up to now, I'd have said — but I'm biased, you

know."

 

"Well, I'm not," Nancia said decisively. "I don't know

what Polyon's going on about, but whatever it is, I

don't believe a word of it"

 

Forister laughed weakly. "You're biased too, dear

Nancia." He stared at the sparkling surface of the

minihedron, the polished opaque facets that gave

nothing away, and sighed deeply. "I suppose I had bet-

ter find out what this is."

 

"Can't it wait until after Singularity?" Nancia said,

but too late. Forister had already dropped the

datahedron into the reader slot. Automatically, her

mind already on the vortex of mathematical transfor-

mations ahead, Nancia absorbed the contents of the

minihedron into memory. Something strange there,

not like ordinary words, more like a tickle at the back

of her head or an improperly positioned synaptic

connector —

 

She rode the whirlwind down into Singularity, balanc-

ing and coasting along constantly changing equations

that defined the collapsing walls of the vortex.

 

Something was wrong; she sensed it even before she

 

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281

 

lost her grasp on the mathematical transformations.

She had never experienced a transition like this one.

What was happening? Sounds as slimy as decaying

weed whispered and snickered in her ears; colors

beyond the edges of human perception rasped at her

like fingernails being drawn over a blackboard. The

balance of salts and fluids surrounding her shrunken

human body swirled crazily, and a dozen alarm sys-

tems went off at once: Overload! Overload! Overload!

 

She couldn't optimize the path; spaces decomposed

around her and shot off in an infinity of different

recompositions, expanding in every path to lights and

chaos that could tear her apart. The hyperchip-

enhanced mathematics coprocessors returned

gibberish. Her brain waves were strung out on the

grid of a multi-dimensional matrix. Something was

trying to invert the matrix. No computations matched

previous results, and all directions held danger.

 

Nancia shut down all processing at once. The grat-

ing colors and stinking noises receded. She hung in

blackness, refusing her own sensory inputs, balanced

on the point of Singularity where decomposing sub-

spaces intersected, with no way forward and no way

back.

 

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283

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

Polyon was pacing the narrow space of his cabin, too

impatient to strap himself in for Singularity, waiting

for some sign that Forister had taken the bait, when

the air shimmered and thickened around him.

 

He opened his mouth to curse his luck. The ship

had entered Singularity before that thick-headed

brawn ambled to a reader slot

 

The air distorted into glassy waves, then became al-

most too thin to breathe. The cabin walls and

furnishings receded to specks in the distance, then

swam around him, huge menacing free-flowing

shapes. Polyon's curses became a comical growl en-

ding in a squeak.

 

Damn Singularity! There was no chance that

Forister would drop the datahedron into a reader now,

he'd be safely strapped into his pilot's chair like a good

little brawn. By now, too, the ship's reader slots would

probably be shut down for Singularity — and even if

by some miracle he could persuade Nantia to accept

the hedron, he still would not be able to enter the Net

until the transformations were over and they had

returned to normal space. No, he would have to wait

until after the subspace transformation to implement

Final Phase — and this transformation would bring

the brainship into Central subspace, close to all the aid

that Central Worlds and their innumerable fleets

could give.

 

He reminded himself that this made no difference

whatsoever. The basic nature of the gamble remained

the same. Either his plan had advanced far enough to

 

succeed despite the way they were forcing his hand, or

jt hadn't. If it had, then the fleets of Central would be

obedient to him and not to their former masters. If it

hadn't — well, then, annihilation would be a little

quicker than if he'd moved from the remote spaces

around Nyota, that was all.

 

He had only to sit and wait. And waiting out a single

transformation through Singularity should be noth-

ing to him. He had already spent patient years waiting

on Shemali, planting his seeds, watching them grow,

seeding the universe, ever since he had the flash of

brilliance which at once conceived the hyperchip

design and saw how it could be twisted to his own ends.

 

But this waiting was harder than all those years in

which he had at least been doing something to further

those ends; and it seemed longer; and there was some-

thing disturbing about this particular ship's

decomposition. Singularity wasn't supposed to be this

bad. Polyon breathed and gagged on a sickly swirl of

colors and smells and textures, looked down at the

wavering distortions of his own limbs and closed his

eyes momentarily. That was a mistake; Singularity

sickness heaved through his guts. What was the mat-

ter? He'd been through plenty of decompositions

during his Academy training, not to mention passing

through this very same Singularity point on die way

out to Vega subspace. Had he so completely lost con-

ditioning in the five years on Shemali, to be gagging

and puking like any new recruit now?

 

No. Something else was wrong. This decomposition

was lasting too long. And some of the visual distortions

looked oddly familiar. Polyon fixed his eyes on one small

sector of the cabin, where braces supporting an extruded

shelf formed a simple dosed curve of permalloy and plas-

Ofilm. As he watched, the triangle ofbrace, waU and shelf

elongated to a needle-shape with one thin eye, stretched

out into an open eye as big as the wall, squeezed into a

 

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285

 

rotating pinpoint of light with absolute blackness at its

center, and opened again into the original triangle.

Needle, eye, pinpoint, triangle; needle, eye, pinpoint, tri-

angle. They were caught in a subspace loop, perpetually

decomposing and reforming in a sequence which

preserved topological properties but which made no

progress towards the escape sequence leading to Central

subspace.

 

A loop like that couldn't have happened, shouldn't

have happened, unless the ship's processors had shut

down. Or — a wild hope tantalized him — unless the

ship's processors were too busy with some other prob-

lem to navigate them out of Singularity.

 

A problem like assimilating a worm program which

would turn over all control to a single user, effectively

cutting the brain off from her own body and its

processing.

 

Polyon swallowed his unspoken curses and plunged

across the cabin. He had some trouble locating the

palmpad and holding his hand steady over it, but even-

tually he managed to match his shrinking and bending

arm with the erratic loop of the ballooning palmpad. He

slapped the surface twice. "Voice control mode!"

 

His own voice boomed oddly in his ears, the

soundwaves distorted by the perpetual twisting of space

around him, but evidently there was something un-

changing in the voice patterns which his worm program

still recognized. "Voice control acknowledged," an un-

dulant voice boomed and twittered from the speakers.

 

"Unlock this cabin door." The first time the words

came out as an unrecognizable squeak; the next,

something close to his normal speaking voice emerged

and the computer acknowledged the command. But

nothing happened. A moment later the quavering

vocal signal of the program responded with a shrill

squeak that gradually became a groaning boom.

 

"Unable to identify designated entity."

 

Polyon was beginning to catch on to the rhythm of

the subspace loop. If he kept his eyes fixed on any

known point, like the triangle of shelf and wall and

brace, he could recognize when they were passing

through the decomposition closest to normal space. If

he spoke then, residual subspace transformations still

distorted his voice, but at least the computer could

recognize and accept his orders.

 

He waited and spoke when the moment was right

 

"Identify this cabin."

 

Lights flashed on the cabin control panel, rose and

fluttered like fireflies trailing the liquid surface of the

panel, swam into elongated hieroglyphics of an un-

known language, and sank back into the panel's

surface to become a pattern signaling failure.

 

"No such routine found."

 

Polyon cursed under his breath, and the subspace

transformation loop twisted his words into a grating

snarl. Something was wrong with his worm program.

Somehow it had foiled to complete its takeover of the

ship's computer functions.

 

"General unlock," he snapped on the next loop

through normal space.

 

His cabin door irised halfway open, then screeched

and wobbled back and forth as die smooth internal

glides had jammed on something. Polyon dove

through, misjudged distances and clearance in the

perpetual liquid shifting of the transformations, crack-

ed a solid elbow on the very solid edge of the half-open

door, landed on a bed of shifting sand, rolled, and

found his feet in what was again, briefly, the solid pas-

sageway outside the cabin.

 

"Out! Everybody out!" The loop stretched his last

word into a howl. At least it got their atterUwn. A green slug

oozed through one of the other doors and became Dar-

nell, vomiting. Farther away, Blaize's red head blazed

under lights that kept changing from electric blue to ar-

 

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PARTNERSHIP

 

287

 

ificial sun to deepest shadow. Fassa was a china dol]

vhite and neat and compact and perfect, but as the loop

>rogressed she grew to her normal stature.

 

"What's happening?" The loop snatched away her

vords, but Polyon read her lips before the next phase

itretched them into rubber. He waited for the next

lormal-space pass.

 

"Get Alpha. Don't want to have to explain twice."

 

Fassa nodded — Polyon thought it was a nod — and

lucked into the cabin nearest hers. Darnell quivered

md resumed his form as a giant green slug. The pas

lageway elongated into a tunnel with Blaize at the far

;nd, somehow aloof from the group.

 

Fassa reappeared, shaking her head. "She won't move.

[ — " She was bright, Fassa del Parma was; in rnid-sen-

:ence, as space shifted around her, she waited until the

lext normspace pass to complete her sentence."— think

ihe'stoo frightened, rmscared too. What's—"

 

Polyon didn't have time to waste listening to obvious

questions. When the next normspace passed through

Iiem, he was ready to seize the moment. "I'm taking

>ver the ship, is what's happening," he said over the

ail-end of Fassa's question. "Any function on this ship

iiat uses my hyperchips is under my command now.

Fhe reason—"

 

Shift, stretch, contract, waver, back to normal for a

few seconds.

 

" — for this long transition is that the ship's brain is

nonfunctional, can't get us out of Singularity."

 

Darnell wailed and vomited more loudly than

sefore, drowning out Polyon's next words and wasting

rtie rest of that normspace pass. Polyon waited, one

rooted foot contracting as he tapped it, stretching and

looping over itself like a snake, then deflating again

into the normal form of a regulation Academy boot.

 

"I can pilot us out of Singularity," he announced.

'But I need to be at the control console. May have

 

some trouble there. You'll have to help me take out the

brawn and the cyborg.M

 

"Why should we?" Blaize demanded.

 

Polyon smiled. "Afterwards," he said gently, "I won't

forget who my friends are."

 

"What good — " Darnell, predictably, wanted to

know, but the transformation loop washed away his

question. And when normspace came round again,

Blaize was closer to the rest of them; close enough to

answer for Polyon.

 

"What good will his favor do? Quite a lot, I should

imagine. It's not just the hyperchips on this ship, is it,

Polyon? All the hyperchips Shemali has been turning

out so fast have the same basic flaw, donft they?"

 

"I wouldn't," said Polyon, "necessarily define it as a

flaw. But you're right. Once we're out of Singularity

and ready to access the Net again, this ship's computer

will broadcast Final Phase to every hyperchip ever in-

stalled. Ill have — "

 

They'd all caught on to the rhythm of the transfor-

mation loop by now; the wait through three distorted

subspaces was becoming part of normal conversation-

al style.

 

" — control of the universe," he finished on the

next pass through normspace. Blaize had come

closer yet; stupid little runt, trying to move during

transformations.

 

"And we'll be your loyal lieutenants?" Blaize asked.

"I know how to reward service," Polyon said non-

committally. Into a GangUdde vat with you, troublemaker,

as soon as I have the power.

 

"Not if I know it," Blaize mouthed as normspace slid

away into the first distortion. He swung a fist at Polyon,

but before it landed his hand had shrunk to the size of

a walnut, and on the next dip through normspace

Polyon was ready for him with a return blow that sent

Blaize to the deck. By the time he landed, it was soft as

 

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289

 

quicksand, a pool in which Blaize swirled, too dizzy to

rise immediately.

 

"Stop me," Polyon said to the other two as

normspace passed through, "and you die here, in Sin-

gularity, because nobody else can get us out of it. Try to

stop me and fail," and he smiled again, very sweetly,

"and you'll wish you had died here. Are you with me?"

 

Before they could answer, a new element entered

the game; a hissing cloud of gas, invisible in

normspace, clearly delineated as a pink-rimmed flood

of rosy light in the first transformational space. It en-

gulfed Blaize and he stopped twitching, lay like one

dead in the yielding transformations of the deck.

 

Sleepgas. And he couldn't shout through the loop to

warn them. Polyon clapped both hands over his

mouth and nose, saw that Fassa did the same, jerked

his head towards the central cabin. That door too was

half open. He made for it, staggering through mud

and quicksand, swimming through air gone thick as

water, lungs aching and burning for a breath. Fell

through, someone pushing behind him, Fassa, and

Darnell after her. Forget Blaize, the traitor, and Alpha,

by now sleepgassed in her cabin. Polyon gasped and

with his first burning breath called, "General lock!"

 

The control cabin door irised shut with a strange jerky

motion, as if it were fighting its own mechanism, and

Polyon found his feet and surveyed his new territory.

 

Not bad. The only passenger he'd been seriously

worried about was Sev Bryley-Sorensen. But Bryley

wasn't here. Good. He was locked out, then, with

Alpha and Blaize; probably sleepgassed, like them.

The other two were bent over their consoles, probably

still trying to figure out why doors were opening and

closing without their command, trying to flood the

passenger areas with sleepgas — well, they'd suc-

ceeded there, but much good it would do them nowl

Through the transitions he saw them turning in their

 

seats, open mouths stretching like taSy in the second

subspace, then shrinking to round dots in the third.

Normspace showed the cyborg freak making a move

that wasn't part of the transformation illusion, right

arm darting towards her belt. Polyon snapped out a

command and the freak's prosthetic arm and leg

danced in their sockets, twisting away from the joining

point; her flesh-and-blood torso followed the agoniz-

ing pull of the synthetic limbs and she rotated half out

of her seat. Another command, and the prostheses

dropped lifeless and heavy to the floor, dragging the

body down with them. Her head cracked against the

support pillar under the seat Polyon stepped forward

to take the needier before she recovered. Space

stretched away from him, but his arm stretched with it,

and the solid heavy feel of the needier reassured him

that his fingers, even if they momentarily resembled

tentacles, had firm hold of die weapon.

 

With the next normspace pass he was erect again,

holding the needier on Forister. "Over there." With a

jerk of his head he indicated the central column. Some-

where behind there the brain of the ship floated widiin a

titanium shell, a shrunken malformed body kept alive by

tubes and wires and nutrient systems, Polyon shuddered

at the thought; he'd never understood why Central in-

sisted on keeping these monsters alive, even giving them

responsible positions diat could have been filled by real

people like himself. Well, the brain would be mad by now,

between sense deprivation and the stimuli he'd ordered

its own hyperchips to throw at it; killing it would be a

merciful release. And it would be appropriate to kill the

brawn at die foot of the column.

 

But not yet. Polyon was all too aware that he didn't

know everything there was to know about navigating a

brainship. He would need full support from both

computers and brawn if he was to get them out of this

transition loop alive.

 

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291

 

He studied the needier controls, spun the wheel

with his thumb, glanced at Darnell and Fassa. Which

of them dared he trust? Neither, for choice; well, then.

which was more afraid of him? Fassa had been show

ing an uppity streak, asking him questions when sht

should have been listening. Darnell was still green-

faced but appeared to be through vomiting. Polyoi.

tossed him the needier; it floated through normspact

and Darnell caught it reflexively just before the transi

tion shrunk it to a gleaming line of permalloy.

 

"If either of them makes a move," Polyon said

pleasantly, "needle them. I've set it to kill... slowly.'

In fact he'd left the needier as Micaya had it, set &

deliver  a   paralyzing  but  not  lethal  dose  of

paravenin; but there was no need to reassure his

captives overmuch. "Now ..." He removed hi*

uniform jacket, draped it neatly over the swivelsesi

where Micaya had been sitting, and sat down i:,

Forister's chair before the command console. Trans;

tions exaggerated the slight flourish of his wrist -

into a great ballooning gesture, spun out his sleeve

into white clouds of fabric that floated over an ;

dwarfed the other occupants of the cabin.

 

"What do you think you're doing?" Forister criec

His voice squeaked through the fourth transitio

space and fell with a thud on the last word.

 

Polyon smiled. He could see his own teeth and ha:

gleaming, white and gold, in the mirror-bright pane.

"I," he said gently, "am going to get us out of Sir

gularity. Don't you think it's time somebody did it?"

 

His reflection narrowed, gave him a squashed fee

like a bug, dulled the bright gold of his hair and turne :

his teeth to green rotting stumps. The control pan<

shrank under his hands, then swelled and heaved lit

a storm-tossed sea. As normspace approached Polyo

darted in, tapping out one set of staccato commanc

with his right hand, passing the left over the palmpa

 

to call up Nancia's mathematics coprocessors, rattling

out the verbal commands that would bring the whole

ship around, responsive to his commands and ready to

sail the subspaces out of this Singularity.

 

She was sluggish as any water-going vessel lacking a

rudder and taking in water, half the engines obeying

bis commands, the other half canceling them. The

mathematics co-processors came online and then dis-

appeared before he'd entered the necessary

calculations, shrieking gibberish and sliding away in a

jumble of meaningless symbols. The moment of

normspace passed and Polyon ground his teeth in

frustration. In the second transformation the teeth felt

like squishy, rotting vegetables inside his mouth, then

in the third they became needles that drew blood, and

by the time normspace returned he had learned not to

give way to emotion.

 

He made two more attempts at controlling the ship,

waited out three complete transition loops, before he

pushed the pilot's chair back from the control panel

 

"Your brainship is fighting me," he told Forister on

the next pass through normspace.

 

"Good for her!" Forister raised his voice slightly.

"Nancia, girl, can you hear me? Keep it up!"

 

"Don't be a fool, Forister," Polyon said tiredly. "If

your brainship were conscious and coherent, she'd

have brought us out of Singularity herself."

 

He used the remaining seconds in normspace to tap

out one more command. The singing tones of

Nancia's access code rang through the room. Forister's

face went gray. Then the transition spaces whirled

about them, monstrously transforming the cabin and

everything in it, and Polyon could not tell which of the

distorted images before him showed the opening of

Nancia's titanium column.

 

On the next pass through normal space he saw that

the column was still closed. Transition must have

 

292

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

 

garbled the last sounds in the access sequence. He

typed in the command again; again the musical tones

rang out without their accompanying syllables; again

nothing happened.

 

"You'd better tell me the rest of the code," he said to

Forister on the next normspace pass.

 

Forister smiled — briefly; something in the expres-

sion reminded Polyon of his own ironic laughter.

"What makes you think I have it, boy? The two parts

are kept separate. I didn't even know how to access the

tone sequence from Nancia's memory banks. The

syllables probably aren't encoded in her at all; they'll

be on file at Central."

 

"Brawns are supposed to know the spoken half of

the code," Polyon snapped in frustration.

 

"I asked to have it changed just before this run,"

Forister claimed. "Security reasons. With so many

prisoners on board, I feared a takeover attempt—and

with good reason, it seems."

 

"I do hope you're lying," Polyon said. He clamped

his mouth shut and waited through the transition

loop, marshaling his arguments. "Because if Central's

the only source for the rest of the code, we're all dead. I

can't tap the Net and hack into the Courier Service

database from Singularity — and I can't get us out of

Singularity without neutralizing the brain."

 

"You mean, without killing Nanria," Forister said in

a voice emptied of feeling. His eyes flickered once to

the cabin consol. Polyon followed the man's gaze and

felt a moment of fear. A delicate solido stood above the

control panels, the image of a lovely young woman

with an impish smile and clustering curls of red hair.

 

Polyon had heard of brawns who developed an

emotional fixation on their brainship, even to the

point of having a solido made from the brainship's

genotype that would show how the freakish body

might have matured without its fatal defects. He

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

293

 

hadn't guessed that Forister was the sentimental type,

or that he'd have had time to grow so attached to Nan-

da. The idiot might actually think that he'd rather die

than kill his brainship.

 

"There's no need to clutter the problem with

emotionalism," Polyon told him. How could he jolt

Forister out of his sentimental fixation? "With partial

control of the ship to me and partial control to Nanria,

neither of us can navigate out of Singularity.''

 

Damn the transition loop! Forister had caught on to

the rhythm by now; and the necessary wait while three

distorted subspaces composed and decomposed

around them gave him time to think.

 

"I've a better suggestion," the brawn said. "You say

you can navigate us out; well, we all know Nancia can.

Restore full control to her, and — "

 

"And what? You'll drop charges, let me go back to

running a prison factory? I've got a better career plan

than that now."

 

"I wasn't," said Forister mildly, "planning to make

that offer."

 

The rhythm of collapsing and composing subspaces

was becoming natural to them all; the necessary

pauses in their conversation no longer bothered

Polyon.

 

"I had something like your own offer in mind,"

Forister continued at the next opportunity. "Release

Nancia's hyperchip-enhanced computer systems, and

she'll get us out of Singularity — and you'll live.**

 

"How did you guess?"

 

Forister looked surprised. "Logical deduction. You

designed the hyperchips; you tricked me into running

a program that did something peculiar to Nancia's

computer systems; the failure reports I read just

before you came in showed precisely the areas where

she has had hyperchips installed, the lower deck sen-

sors and the navigation system; you've since exercised

 

294

 

Anne McCaffrey SjMargxret Ball

 

voice control on Micaya's hyperchip-enhanced pros-

theses. Clearly your hyperchip design includes a back

door by which you can personally control any installa-

tion that uses your chips."

 

"Clever," Polyon said. "But not clever enough to get

you out of Singularity. I assure you I'm not going to re-

store full computing power to a brainship who is

probably mad by now."

 

"What makes you think that?"

 

Polyon raised his brows. "We all know what sensory

deprivation does to shellpersons, Forister. Need I go

into the details?"

 

"Take more than a few minutes in the dark to upset

my Nanda," Forister said levelly.

 

Polyon bared his teeth. "By now, old man, she's had

considerably more than that to deal with. The first

thing my hyperchip worm does is to strike at any intel-

ligence linked to the computers in which it finds itself

The sensory barrage would make any human break

the link at once. I'm afraid that 'your' Nancia, not

being able to escape the link that way, will have gone

quite mad by now. So — I think—if you want to live—

you'll tell me, now, the rest of the access code."

 

"I think not," Forister said calmly. "You've made a

fetal error in your calculations."

 

The transition loop stifled all talk for the endless

winding, looping moments of passage through shrink-

ing and distorting spaces. Polyon ignored the sensory

tricks of spatial transformations and thought furiously.

When normspace returned, he reached up from his

chair to grasp the solido of Nancia as a young woman.

Deliberately, watching Forister's face, he dropped the

solido on the deck and ground the fragile material to

shards under his boot-heel.

 

"That's what's left of 'your' Nancia, old man," he

said. "Are you going to let your love for a woman who

never lived kill us all?"

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

295

 

Forister's face was lined with pain, but he spoke as

evenly as always. "My — feelings — for Nancia have

nothing to do with the matter. Your error is much

more basic. You think I'd rather set you free with the

universe in your control than die here in Singularity.

This is incorrect."

 

He spoke so calmly that it took Polyon a moment to

understand the words, and in that moment die transi-

tion loop warped the room and disguised the

movements in it. When they passed through

normspace again, Fassa del Parma was standing be-

tween Forister and Darnell, as if she thought she could

shield the brawn from a direct needier spray.

 

"He's right," she said. "I didn't have time to think

before. You're a monster."

 

Polyon laughed without humor. "Fassa, dear, to

righteous souls like Forister and General Questar-

Benn we're all monsters. I should have remembered

how you sucked up to them before, helping them trick

me. Did you think that would save you? They'll use

you and throw you away like your father did."

 

Fassa went white and still as stone. "We don't all take

such a simple-minded view of the universe," Forister

said. "But, Fassa, you can't — "

 

Darnell's fingers were twitching. Polyon nodded.

Slowly, too slowly, Darnell raised the needier. He gave

Forister ample time to grasp Fassa by the shoulders

and spin her out of danger. As Forister moved, the

cabin seemed to lurch and the lights dimmed. Gravity

fell to half-normal, then to nothing, and as Fassa spun

into midair the reaction of Forister's thrust pushed

him in the opposite direction. The spray of needles

went wide, but one bright line on the for edge of the

arc stung through Forister's sleeve and bloodied his

wrist. The blood danced out across the cabin in bright

droplets that the transition loop pulled out into bloody

seas; Polyon watched a bubble the size of a small pond

 

296

 

Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

 

float inexorably toward him, settle around him with a

clammy grip, then shrink to a bright button-sized stain

on his shut front.

 

Fassa floated back to grasp Forister's flaccid body

and cry, "Why did you do that? I wanted to save you!"

 

"Wanted him — to kill me," Forister breathed. The

paravenin was fighting the contractions of his chest.

"Without me — no way to get Nancia's code. Trapped

here, all of us — better than letting him go? Forgive

me?"

 

"Death before dishonor." Polyon put a sneering

spin on the words, letting the maudlin pair hear what

he thought of such brave slogans. "And it will be death,

too. See how the ship's systems are failing? What do   i

you think will go next? Oxygen? Cabin pressure?"

 

In the absence of direct commands, gravity and

lighting should have been controlled by Nancia's •

autonomic nervous functions. Forister groaned as the \

meaning of this latest failure came through to him.

 

"She's dying anyway. With or without your help,"

Polyon drove the point home. "And you're not dead yet

I lied to you. The needier was only set to paralyze.

Now let's have the access code before Nancia stops

breathing and kills us all."

 

Forister shook his head with slow, painful twitches.

 

"Come here, Fassa, dear," Polyon ordered.

 

"No. I stay with him."

 

"You don't really mean that," Polyon said pleasantly.

"You know you're far too afraid of me. Remember

those shoddy buildings you put up on Shemali? You

replaced them free of charge, remember, and I didn't

even have to do any of the interesting things we dis-

cussed. But if I'd threaten you with flaying alive for

cheating me over a factory, Fassa, just think for a mo-

ment what I'll do to you for interfering with me now."

 

The transition loop was almost a help; the pauses it

forced gave Fassa time to consider her brave stand.

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

297

 

Go on, Fassa," Forister urged when normal speech

possible again. "You can't help me now, and I've

no wish to see you hurt for my sake."

 

Thank you for the information," Polyon said with a

courteous bow. "Perhaps I'll try that next But I think

we'll begin with an older and dearer friend for quick

results. Darnell, bring the freak—no, 111 do it; you keep

the needier on Fassa, just in case she gets any silly ideas."

 

Holding onto the pilot's chair to keep himself in

place, Polyon turned and aimed a loose kick at Micaya

Questar-Benn. The cessation of ship's gravity had

freed her of the artificially weighted prostheses that

held her down, but the arm and leg were still flopping

loose, free of her control. She was as good as a cripple

— she was a cripple, disgusting sight

 

"I want Forister to get a good view of this," he told

her politely. "Lock prostheses."

 

This to the computer; a signal to the hyperchips

clamped Micaya's artificial arm and leg together.

 

"Lay a finger on Mic — " Forister threatened, strug-

gling vainly against the effects of the paravenin.

 

"I won't need to," Polyon said with a brilliant smile.

"I can do it all from here."

 

A series of brisk verbal commands and typed-in

codes caused the portion of the ship's computer that

Polyon controlled to transmit new, overriding instruc-

tions to the hyperchips controlling Micaya's internal

organ replacements. The changes had the full dura-

tion of a transition loop to take effect. When they

returned to normspace, Micaya's face was colorless

and beads of sweat dotted her forehead.

 

"It's amazing how painful a few simple organic

changes can be," Polyon commented gaily. "Little

things like fiddling with the circulation, for instance.

How's that hand, Mic, baby? Bothering you a bit?"

 

"Come a little closer," Micaya invited him, "and find

out" But now Polyon had drawn attention to her one

 

298

 

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

299

 

remaining hand; they could all see ho wit had changed

color. The fingernails were almost black, the skin was

purplish and swollen.

 

"Keep it like that for a week," Polyon said, "and

she'll have a glorious case of gangrene. Of course, we

don't have a week. I could trap even more blood in the

hand and burst the veins, but that might kill her too

fast. So I'll just leave it like that while you think it over,

Forister, and maybe we'll start working on the foot as

well. Fortunately, the heart's one of her cyborg re-

placements, so we don't have to worry about it failing

under the increased demands; it'll go on working . . .

as long as I want it to. Want to hear how well it works

now?"

 

A word of command amplified the sound of

Micaya's artificial heart beating vehemently, the pulse

rate going up to support the demands Polyon was

making on the rest of her system. The desperate,

ragged double beat echoed through the cabin, droned

and drummed and shrilled through a complete transi-

tion loop, and no one spoke or moved.

 

For a heartbeat, no more, Nantia found silence and

darkness a welcome relief from the stabbing pain of

the input from her rogue sensors. Is this what Sin-

gularity is like for softpersons? But no, it was worse than

that. In the confused moments before she shut down

all conscious functions and disabled her own sensor

connections, she had been aware of something much

worse than the colorshifts and spatial distortions of

Singularity; the malevolence of another mind, in-

timately entwined with her own, striking at her with

deliberate malice.

 

He means to drive me mad. If I enable my sensors ogam, he'll

 

bleak desperation of die thought came from somewhere

iar back in her memories. When, how, had she ever felt

 

so utterly abandoned before? Nantia reached out, un-

thinking, to search her memory banks — then stopped

before die connection was complete. If sensors could be

turned into weapons to use against her, could not

memory, too, be infiltrated? Access the computer's

memory banks, and she might find herself "knowing"

whatever this other mind wanted her to believe.

 

Is it another mind ? Or a part of myself? Perhaps Fm mad

already, and this is the first symptom. The flashing, dis-

orienting lights and garbled sounds, the sickening

whirling sensations, even the conviction that she was

under attack by another mind — weren't all these

symptoms of one of those Old Earth illnesses that had

ravaged so many people before modern electrostim

and drug therapy restored the balance of their tor-

tured brains? Nancia longed to scan just one of the

encyclopedia articles in her memory banks; but that

resource was denied her for the moment. Paranoid

schizophrenia, that was it; a splitting off of the mind

from reality.

 

Let's see, now — she reasoned. IfTm mad, then it's safe to

look up the symptoms and decide that I'm mad, except that

presumably I won't accept the evidence. And ifTm not mad, I

daren't check memory to prove it. So we'd better accept the

working hypothesis that lam sane, and go on from there. The

dry humor of the syllogism did something to restore

her emotional balance. Although how long I will remain

sane, urtder these circumstances...

 

Better not to think about that. Better, too, not to

remember Caleb's first partner, who had gone into irre-

versible coma rather than face the emptiness that

surrounded him after the synaptic connections between

his shell and the outside world had been destroyed. As a

matter of sanity, as well as survival, Nancia decided, she

would make the assumption that somebody had done

this to her, and concentrate on solving the puzzle of who

had done it and how they could be stopped.

 

300

 

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

301

 

A natural first step would be to reopen just one sen-

sor, to examine the bursts of energy that had come so

dose to disrupting her nervous system.... I can't! the

child within her shrieked in near-panic. You can't make

me, I won't, I won't, fUstay safe in here forever.

 

That's not an option, Nancia told herself firmly. She

wanted to say it aloud, to reassure herself with the

sound of her own voice; but she was mute as well as

deaf and blind and without sensation, floating in an

absolute blackness. Somehow she had to conquer that

panic within herself.

 

Poetry sometimes helped. That Old Earth dramatist

Sev and Fassa were so fond of quoting; she had plenty of

his speeches stored in her memory banks. On such a night

as this . . . Nancia reached unthinking for memory,

stopped the impulse just in time. She didn't know that

speech; she had stored it in memory. Quite a different

thing. Try something else, then. Icouid be bounded in a nut-

shell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that 1

have bad dreams.... Not a good choice, under the cir-

cumstances. Maybe ... did she know anything else?

What was she, without her memory banks, her sensors,

her powerful thrusting engines? Did she even existatall?

 

That way lies madness. Of course she existed.

Deliberately Nancia filled herself with her own true

memories. Scooting around the Laboratory Schools

corridors, playing Stall and Power-Seek with her

friends. Acing the math finals, from Lobachevski

Geometry up through Decomposition Topology, play-

ing again, with all the wonderful space of numbers

and planes and points to wander in. Voice training

with Ser Vospatrian, the Lab Schools' drama teacher,

who'd taught them to modulate their speaker-

produced vocalizations through the full range of

human speech with all its emotional overtones. That

first day they'd all been shy and nervous, hating the

recorded playbacks of their own tinny artificial voices;

 

Vospatrian had made them recite limericks and non-

sense poems until they broke down in giggles and

forgot to be self-conscious. Goodness, she could still

remember those silly poems with which he'd started

off every session....

 

And quite without thinking or calling on her artifi-

cially augmented memory banks, Nancia was oft

 

jjtfc

 

!$•    The farmer's daughter had soft brown hair,

 

? ?     Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese,

' 1     And I met with a poem, I can't say where,

 

Which wholly consisted of lines like these...."

 

There was a young brainshxp of Vega.... "

 

"Fhairson swore a feud against the clan MTavish;

Marched into their land to murder and to rafish,

for he did resolve to extirpate the vipers

Withfour-and-twenty men andftue-and-thirty

thirty pipers..."

 

Nancia went through Ser Vospatrian's entire reper-

toire until she was giggling internally and floating on

the natural high of laughter-produced endorphins.

Then, floating quite calmly in her blackness, she set

about testing her sensor connections one by one.

 

She got the mental equivalent of burned fingers and

light-blinded eyes more than once during the testing

process, but it wasn't as bad as she had feared. The

lower-deck sensors were completely useless, as were

her navigation computer and the new mathematics

and graphics co-processors she'd just invested in.

Everything, in fact, that contains hyperchipsfrom Shemati...

and with that deduction, Nancia knew just who was

striking at her and why.

 

She opened the upper deck sensors one by one, first

taking in the sleeping bodies tumbled in the pas-

 

302

 

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret BaU

 

sageway and cabins. Sev, slumped over the isometric

spring set in the exercise room with his hands and feet

still in the springholders; Alpha, strapped in her cabin-

Blaize, floating just above the passageway deck, with

an angelic expression on his sleeping face and a nasty

bruise coming up on his chin.

 

Mutiny. And somebody released sleepgas. But which side}

She opened the control cabin sensors slowly, cautious-

ly. The port side sensors wavered and gave an erratic

display. Somehow Polyon's hyperchips must be work-

ing to contaminate the entire computer system. 2 don't

have much time....

 

Even less time than she'd thought, Nancia realized

as she took in the standoff in the control room.

General Questar-Benn disabled — of course, the hyper-

chips in her prostheses — and Darnell holding her

needier on a defiant Forister while Polyon sat in the

pilot's chair and played his commands on the com-

puter console. That, at least, she could do something

about. Nancia struck back, sending her own com-

mands to the computer, disabling the console section

by section, garbling Polyon's commands as they came

in. He tapped out a sequence she did not know; she

traced it to its source and with shock recognized her

own access code. The musical tones were already

sounding in the cabin. But the accompanying syllables

weren't stored in the same location.... They have to be

somewhere, though. In some part of memory not accessible to

my conscious probe. Otherwise my shell wouldn't recognvze

and open to them. Nancia felt proud of herself for figur-

ing that out, then cold and sick as she wondered how

long it would take Polyon to make the same deduction.

And if the syllables aren't where lean consciously retrieve

them, how can I block Polyon against doing so ?

 

She felt queasy from the repeated looping through

four decomposition spaces, but there was no safe way to

leave the loop until she regained full computing and

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

303

 

navigational facility, first, let's repair the damage..,. Nancia

worked furiously, permanently disabling the sections of

her computer system that had been contaminated by the

Shemali hyperchips, finding alternative routings to ac-

cess the processors that remained untouched. At the

same time the worm program unleashed by Polyon

squirmed deeper into her system, changing and mutat-

ing code as it went, erasing its own tracks so that she could

only tell where it had been by the sudden flares of dis-

orienting sense input or the garbled mathematics where

it had been. She had to find and stop that code before she

could do anything else.

 

Deep in the intricacies of her own system, Nancia

agonized as Darnell struck down Forister.

 

Don't listen. Don't think about that. She would need all

her concentration to disable Polyon's rogue code,

more concentration than she'd ever brought to bear

on the comparatively trivial problems of subspace

navigation. Nancia remembered Sev Bryley's training

in relaxation and deliberately, slowly calmed herself,

drawing energy away from her extremities and center-

ing her consciousness on the internal core of light

where she existed independent of computer and shell

and ship. With some remote part of her awareness she

sensed the failure of gravitational systems and the

dimming of lights, the shock and concern of her pas-

sengers,   but   she   could   not   afford   to   divert

consciousness to those semi-automatic functions now.

The automatic datacording routines Nancia had set

up continued to operate as Polyon began Micaya's tor-

ture. Nancia could not counter his commands without

breaking her trance; she could not even restore gravity

and lights to reassure Forister. Ignoring Micaya's pain

was the hardest thing she had ever done. For the moment,

Micaya does not exist. Nothing exists outside this place, this mo-

ment, this center. There was the rogue code; she

annihilated it in a blaze of energy, destroying deep

 

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Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

 

memory in the process; like an amputation, she thought,

the shaft of pain and the nagging ache afterwards. Now

to restore lost functions... Ruthlessly she cutback on the

frills and luxuries of her programming, reducing the

power that normally fed her autonomic functions. Lights

dimmed even further in the control cabin, and the

softpersons made comments about an acrid smell in the

air. They would just have to put up with it; she needed

that processing power to restore her crippled nav

programs. Three of the four major math coprocessors

were lost; the graphics processor could double for one of

them. No time to think about the others. Naritia erased

unnecessary programs and dumped others to

datahedron, making space in what little remained of her

memory for the processes she had to have. Would that be

enough? No chance for tests, no time for second

thoughts. She struck back, once, with everything she

had; felt hyperchips shriveling to blank bits of permalloy,

felt inactive sensors and processors become dead weights

instead ofliving systems.

 

Some animals will gnaw off their own limbs to get out of a

trap....

 

No time to mourn, either. With the "death" of the hy-

perchips within Nancia's system, the transmissions that

tortured Micaya's cyborgans ceased. The sound of her

amplified heartbeat ended between one drum beat and

the next. Forister groaned. He thmks fm dead. He would

be reassured in a moment Nancia activated full artificial

gravity; Darnell fell to the deck from his wall perch, Fassa

went to her knees. Polyon staggered but remained stand-

ing. Nancia beamed commands to the tanglefield wires,

Darnell, Polyon and Fassa were frozen in place, nets of

moving lights encompassing the tanglefield keys at their

wrists and ankles and necks. Finally, Nancia spared a tittle

power to bring up the cabin lights and freshen the air.

 

"FN-935 reporting for duty," she said. "I apologize

for any temporary inconvenience...."

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

305

 

"Nanda!" Forister sounded dose to tears.

 

"General Questar-Benn, can you take the pilot's

seat?" Nancia requested, "I may need a little help to

navigate us out of Singularity."

 

"Do my best" Micaya's breathing was still ragged,

and she leaned heavily on the chair beside her, but she

limped to the pilot's seat without help, the prostheses

once again responding to her own brain's electrical

impulses. "What can I do?"

 

"I am operating with only one mathematics coproces-

sor," Nancia told her, "and my navigation units are

nonfunctional When I start the drives, we will move out

of this transition loop and into the expansion of whatever

subspace we happen to be in. I'll try to maintain a steady

path through the subspace options, but I may need you

to aid in the navigation. Since the graphics processor is

undamaged, I will throw up images of the approaching

subspaces. Rest your hand on the palmpad and give me a

direction at each branch."

 

"Do my best," Micaya said again, but Nancia noticed

 

it was the prosthetic hand she rested on the palmpad;

 

the other hand was still an ugly purple color, with

 

blackened moons on the swollen fingertips. She

 

remembered what Polyon had said about gangrene.

 

How much had his hyperchips accelerated Micaya's

 

metabolic processes? Get her to a medic., .but I can't do

 

that, unless somebody helps me surf out of Singularity... and

 

we daren't waitfor the paravenm to wear offfbrister....

 

.    Then Nancia had no more energy to spare for wor-

 

. rying about Micaya or anything else but the waves of

 

transformations that broke over her head, tossed and

 

tumbled   her  gasping  through  subspaces   that

 

j,deformed her body and everyone within, streams of

 

[calculations that escaped her processors. Lost and

 

choking, she sensed a firm hand guiding her up-

 

| wards... out... She crunched the last numbers into a

 

tractable series of equations and broke through the

 

306

 

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

 

chaos of uncountably infinite subspaces into the

blessed normalcy of RealSpace.

 

Before she had rime to thank Micaya, a tightbeam

communication assaulted her weakened comm center.

"Back so soon, FN? What's the matter? I thought you

were headed for Central."

 

It was Simeon, the Vega Base managing brain. "We

had a small virus problem," Nancia beamed back.

"Returned for... repairs."

 

The rest of the story could wait until she had ab-

solute privacy. There was no need to alert the galaxy to

the fact that an unknown number of their computer

systems were contaminated by Shemali hyperchips.

 

"Is everything under control now?"

 

"You could say that," Nancia replied dryly, turning

up her remaining sensors and looking over her inter-

nal condition. Half her processors burned out,

sleeping bodies littering the passenger quarters, three

High Families brats secured in tanglefield and mad as

hell, Forister twitching with the pins-and-needles of

paravenin recovery, and a crippled general bringing

them safe into RealSpace —

 

"Yes," she told Simeon. "Everything's under

control."

 

• CHAPTERMGHTEEN

 

In the days of repair work drat followed, Nancia began

to understand just how much Caleb must have hated

being grounded on Summerlands while she went on

with a new brawn to complete the task they had begun.

Now she, too, was "convalescent" and temporarily out of

the action. To protect herself from the insidious effects of

Polyon's hyperchips she had, in effect, crippled herself^

rendering large parts of her own system inoperable; to

keep the worm program he had implanted from contact-

ing other hyperchips once they got out of Singularity

and could make Net contact again, she had slashed

through her own memory, ruthlessly excising whole sec-

tions of memory banks and operating code.

 

"It's a miracle you made it back here in one piece,"

Simeon of Vega Base told her, "and you're not leaving

Base until you've had a very thorough overhaul and

repair. Those aren't my orders, they're a beam from

CS. So no argument!"

 

"I wasn't planning to argue," said Nancia with, for

her, unaccustomed meekness. Indeed, after the

stresses of that prolonged stay in Singularity, followed

by the limping return voyage on one-third power, she

had very litde desire to do anything but park herself in

orbit around Vega Base and watch the stars wheel by.

 

Or so she told herself She was tired and injured; she

wasn't up to the stressful task of transporting the prisoners

and witnesses back to Central for trial It was for more sen-

sible to prepare a datahedron of her own testimony,

something that could be sent back on the bright new

Courier Service ship that came to collect theothers.

 

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Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret BaU

 

Til miss you," Forister said, "but you'll be back in

action soon, Nanria. Why, at the speed Central works,

you'll probably be returning before the trial's over!

And if you don't" — he hefted the gleaming weight of

the megahedron in one hand — "this is as good, for all

legal purposes, as having you there. You've trans-

ferred datacordings of everything that happened on

board or that you perceived through your contact but-

tons, right? Should be the most complete — and most

damning—record we could ask for."

 

"It — may not be as complete as you expect," Nan-

da said. "I have some memory gaps, you know."

 

"Yes, I know. But having you there in person —

well, via contact button, I suppose — wouldn't make

any difference to that, would it? If something's been

lost from your memory banks, it won't come back

under cross-examination."

 

That was true enough, Nancia supposed; and if the

damage to her memory banks were the only cause of

gaps in the recording, there'd be no reason at all for

her to undergo cross-examination. The subject was

not one she wished to discuss in any detail. She said

good-bye to Forister, tried to control the twinge of

loneliness she felt when the new CS ship took off, and

went back to her observations of the stars of Vega sub-

space. Stars were restful; bright and calm, in

unchanging patterns as familiar to her as—as —

 

Nancia discovered that she could no longer

"remember" the names of the constellations as they

appeared in Vega subspace. She had never spent long

enough in this subspace to establish the look of the sky

in her own human memory; and the navigational

maps that she relied on had been erased. So had her

tables of Singularity points and decomposition algo-

rithms, her Capellan music recordings....

 

"Do you know, I'm sorry I used to laugh at softper-

sons," she said thoughtfully to Simeon while the techs

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

309

 

buzzed about her, removing the melted blobs that had

been hyperchips, restoring connections and sensors,

building in new blank memory banks to be loaded with

whatever information she requested. "I never realized

how crippled they are, having to rely on no more skills

and information than they can store in an organic brain."

 

"It's not nice to laugh at the handicapped," Simeon

agreed gravely. "I trust this has been a learning ex-

perience for you, young FN. Would you like me to

help you prepare a list of data requests for your new

memories?"

 

"Yes, please," Nancia said, "and" — this she did

remember, the frustration of listening to the medical

jargon of the techs at Summerlands working on Caleb

— "do you think I can afford a classical education?

Latin and Greek vocabularies and syntax?"

 

"I'll indent for the Loeb Classical Hedron," Simeon

said. "That has twenty-six Old Earth languages plus all

the major literature."

 

"And — " she didn't want to go too far into debt—"a

medical set? Pharmacology, Internals, and Surgical?"

 

"Should be standard equipment on any ship gets

into as much trouble as you do," Simeon agreed.

 

"Yes, but can I afford it? I've lost some accounting

data; I don't know how my credit stands with Courier

Service — "

 

Simeon came as near to a laugh as Nancia had ever

heard from him. "FN, trust me, the bonus for this last

job, plus the hazardous service pay, will cover any frills

you want to request and go a long way towards paying

off your debt to Lab Schools. Pull off a couple more

like this and you'll be a paid-off shell, your own

woman. In fact," he added thoughtfully, "there's no

reason why you should pay for the classical and medi-

cal hedra. I'll just slip those in as pan of the

replacement list, which is charged to Central — "

 

"No," Nancia said firmly. "That's how it starts."

 

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Sail

 

"How what starts?**

 

"You know. Darnell. Polyon. Everything."

 

"Oh. Well, I sec what you mean, but it is a gray area,

you know..."

 

"Not," Nancia said, "for House Perez y de Gras. I'D

buy the extra skills hedra myself, out of my bonus.

From the figures you just beamed up, I'll have more

than enough to pay honestly for those 'frills' and any

other expenses I may incur during this stay."

 

But that was before she discovered the item that

would strain her budget to its limits.

 

Nancia's repairs were nearly finished when Caleb,

now walking without a stick and looking even more

muscular than before, landed at Vega Base and re-

quested permission to come aboard. Nancia exclaimed

in delight at the bronzed, fit young man she saw step-

ping out of the airlock.

 

"My goodness, Caleb, you look as if you'd never

been ill a day in your life."

 

"There wasn't much to do at Summerlands,** Caleb

said dismissively. "It's a sin to waste time; I worked out

in the physical therapy rooms most of die time while

they were fussing over final tests and declaring me fit

for duty again. What's our next assignment?**

 

"Our?"

 

"You didn't think I'd desert you? You made some er-

rors of judgment while I was away, Nancia, but

nothing that can't be repaired. In fact," Caleb added,

looking around the gleaming interior from which all

traces of OG Shipping's mauve and puce had finally

been removed, "it looks as if the repairs are just about

finished."

 

"They are, but Caleb, I — I'm partnered with

Forister now," Nancia said. She felt guilty as she said

the words; suppose Caleb felt that she was rejecting

him? But it was the simple truth. Her call sign was FN-

935 now, not CN.

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

311

 

"Temporary assignment," Caleb brushed that aside.

"Now I've been pronounced fit again, Forister can go

back into comfortable retirement. No need for him to

continue straining himself in tasks he's really not up

to. Take this last debacle. You're not to blame, Nancia,

being young and inexperienced, but you must see that

it was handled all wrong. If..."

 

While Caleb blithely explained the mistakes Forister

had made and how he, with the benefit of hindsight,

could have done so much better, Nancia attempted to

control some new and unfamiliar sensations.

 

Simeon, she tightbeamed to the managing brain, is

there a malfunction in my repaired circuits ? My sensors show a

temperature rise and high conductivity, and I'm picking up a

strange buzzing m some of the audio circuits.

 

The Vega manager's reply was a few seconds

delayed. Fascinating, he beamed back while Caleb con-

tinued his speech. Yoursynaptic connectors are picking up

direct emotional signals. What an unusual coupling — that's

not supposed to happen. You must have done something to your

connections while you were fighting the hyperchip attack.

 

What are you talking about ? Is it dangerous ? Fix it! Nan-

cia demanded.

 

Simeon transmitted a chuckle over the audio circuit,

stopping Caleb in mid-peroration.

 

"What was that? Is Central trying to contact us?"

 

"No, just a — a message from one of the repair

techs," Nancia improvised. "You were saying?"

 

"Well, try not to let it happen again," Caleb said ir-

ritably. "We've got to get our future relationship

straight, Nancia; surely that's more important than

some last-minute twiddling with your repairs? Now

listen. I don't want you to feel guilty over what's past."

 

"Why should I?" Nancia asked, startled. "Oh, be-

cause I didn't report the conversations I heard on my

 

rst voyage, and stop those young criminals before

 

ley got properly started? Well, I do feel guilty. That

 

312

 

Anne McCaffrgy Gf Margaret Ball

 

was a bad mistake." But one Caleb had encouraged

her to make.

 

"I don't mean that at all!" Caleb said. "You acted

with perfect propriety in keeping those conversations

private. I mean die way you've been rocketing around

the Nyota system, bearing false witness, pretending to

be something you're not, encouraging breaches of

PTA regulations on Angalia, getting involved in all

sorts of violence and mixing with very questionable

people indeed — "

 

Simeon, I know Tm overheating. Can't you send a tech out

to fix my circuits?

 

There's nothing to fix, Nancia, but Lab Schools will want to

study just how you achieved it. Briefly, you've created a mind-

body feedback hop between your cortex and the ship—one that

carries emotional as well as intellectual and motor impulses.

 

You mean — ?

 

You're a little more like a softperson than the rest of us, Nan-

da — or, you might say, a little more human. You're angry, my

dear, and your connections are showing it. Flushed, ears buzz-

ing, breathing faster, higher fuel consumption —yes, Td say

you're in a roaring snit. And not without cause. You've out-

grown that righteous little snip, Nancia. When are you going

to shut him up and kick him off you?

 

" — but you were misled, and I myself bear some of

the fault, having allowed you to persuade me against

my better judgment into the first false step on the

downward path of deception," Caleb finished his sen-

tence without being aware of the split-second

exchange between Nancia and Simeon. "Now that

you've seen what such things can lead to, I'm sure

you'll repent of your errors. And I want you to know

that I freely and completely forgive you. We'll never

speak of this again—**

 

"You're darned right, we won't!" Nancia interrupted.

"Go find yourself a ship to match your morals, Caleb!"

 

"What do you mean?"

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

313

 

To calm herself down, Nancia took a moment to

convert her entire Vega subspace map to Old Earth

linear measurements and back. By multiple precision

arithmetic routines. In surface-level code. She was on

the verge of hurting Caleb's feelings. And she wasn't

quite angry enough to do that. The inexperienced

young brainship who'd teamed with Caleb five years

ago would have accepted his self-righteous lecture as if

he were laying down Courier Service regulations. It

wasn't Caleb's fault, or her fault either, that she'd out-

grown his narrow black-and-white view of the world.

Forister had taught her the value of shades of gray and

die duty of perceiving them. And if now she felt more

truly partnered with that spare, sardonic, aging brawn

than with the young man who'd shared her first ad-

ventures — well, there was no reason Caleb should

suffer unnecessarily on that account.

 

Her overheating circuits cooled down and the buzz-

ing in her ears stopped as she calmed herself with

tranquil, fixed equations.

 

"It wouldn't work, Caleb," she said at last. "You may

. forgive me, but the past would always be between us.

You'd do better to find another brainship, one that has

never betrayed your high ideals." Preferably one that

^hasn't been commissioned for more than ten minutes.

 

"For myself—" Nantiasighed, "sadderbutwiser,"f/iaft

\true, anyway, "I think it is more appropriate for me to peti-

j tion Central that my temporary partnership with Forister

be made permanent, or to find another brawn if Forister

I chooses to retire now." Please, please, doritlet himdo that.

 

"Well." At least Caleb's speech-making impulses had

[been knocked out temporarily. "If you really uiink..."

 

"I do," said Nancia, "and," she added firmly, "I will pay

(the penalty fee for requesting a brawn reassignment. It's

not fair diat you should bear any part of that burden."

 

But it was a little disappointing to see how quickly

I Caleb accepted the offer....

 

314

 

Anne McCaffrey £# Margaret BaS.

 

The trial of the Nyota Five, as the gossipbyters had

dubbed Nanda's first passengers, was still in progress

when she landed at Central Base some weeks later.

 

The solitary journey back, with no brawn or pas-

sengers to distract her, had given Nantia plenty of time

to think .. . perhaps too much. She had no way of

knowing how the trial was progressing or how the

court had reacted to the testimony presented; in

deference to High Families sensibilities, newsbeamers

were not permitted in the courtroom and die gossip-

byters had nothing but speculations to report. She

didn't even know if the court would wish her cross-ex-

amined on the deposition she'd sent back on

datahedron. Well, if they did, she was available now.

And diere'd be no new assignment until Forister was

released from testifying and free to brawn her again. If

he still wanted to, once he'd heard what was on her

deposition... and what wasn't

 

Nancia didn't have much time to brood over that

possibility; she had hardly touched down at Base when

a visitor was announced.

 

"Perez y de Gras requesting permission to board," the

Central Base managing brain warned her in advance.

 

That was a welcome surprise! The last Nancia had

heard from Flix was a bitstream packet from Kailas,

mostly consisting of pictures of the seedy cafe where

he'd found a synthocomming gig. He must have quit

— or been fired.... Well, she wouldn't ask him about

diat Nancia opened her outer doors and set die wall-

sized display screens in the lounge to show the

surprise she'd been preparing for him.

 

"Flix, how lovely, I didn't know you were ..." she

began joyfully as the airlock slid open. The words died

away to a faint hiss from her port speaker as she took

in die sight of the trim, gray-haired man who stood in

the open airlock, surveying her interior with cool gray

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

315

 

res. Nancia hastily blanked out the moving displays

liner new, holo-enhanced, super-detailed SPACED

)UT and replaced them with some quiet, correct im-

!jes of still life paintings by Old Masters.

 

"As far as I know," said Javier Perez y de Gras, "he

isn't. Although doubtless, now that I've been reas-

signed to Central, your litde brother will find another

squalid position on this planet from which to annoy

me with the sight of his failure."

 

"Oh." Nancia hadn't previously compared the pat-

tern of Flix's jauntings from gig to gig with her father's

diplomatic assignments. Now she made a hasty scan of

her restored memory banks and found a surprising

number of correspondences. That was something

she'd have to ask Flix about. Just now she really didn't

feel up to discussing it with Daddy.

 

"I don't suppose," she said carefully, "that was what

you came to see me about? Flix's career, I mean?"

 

Her father sniffed. "I don't consider that a career. You

have a career, Nancia my dear, and by all accounts you've

done quite well Co date — a few errors in judgment, per-

haps, but nothing that maturity and experience won't—"

 

This time Nancia knew what caused the flush of heat

diat swamped her upper deck circuits and the red haze

that trembled in her visual sensors. For a moment she

didn't speak, fearing that she would be unable to control

her voice; she could not look at Daddy without seeing

Caleb and, shadowy in her imagination, Paul del Parmay

Polo. Just another man, seeing in her nothing but a tool

to serve his plans, coming to give her a rating on how well

or ill she'd done for him. Were all men like that?

 

"Exactly what errors of judgment were you thinking

of?" she inquired when she had her vocal circuits

under control again. Not that she hadn't made plenty

of mistakes for Daddy to pick at....

 

But what he complained of was the last thing she'd

been worried about

 

316

 

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

 

"At least, fortuitously, some other ship performed

the service of transporting them back to Central,"

Daddy said. "But from what I've heard at the trial, you

were quite prepared to perform that service yoursel£

You shouldn't lower yourself that way, Nancia. A Perez

y de Gras shouldn't be used as a prison ship to

transport common criminals."

 

"In case you've forgotten, Daddy," Nancia replied,

"those 'common criminals' are the very same people I

transported to the Nyota system on my maiden

voyage... and didn't you pull a few strings to arrange

that assignment for me?"

 

Javier Perez y de Gras sat down heavily in one of the

comfortably padded cabin chairs. "I did that," he said.

"I thought it would be nice for you to have some

young company ... young people of your own class

and background ... for your first voyage. An easy as-

signment, I thought."

 

"So did I," Nancia said. Some of the sadness she felt

crept into her voice; whatever she'd done to her feed-

back loops, it seemed to work both ways. She could no

longer maintain the perfectly controlled, emotionally

uninflected vocal tones she had prided herself on

producing before the hyperchip disaster. "So did I.

But it turned out... rather more complicated than

that. And I didn't know what to do. Maybe I did make

some 'errors in judgment.' I didn't have a lot of advice,

if you recall. "Just a taped good-luck message from a man too

busy and important to come to my graduation.

 

"I recall," her father said. "Call that my error, if you

like. Once you'd made it through Lab Schools to

graduation and commissioning, you seemed to be

doing so well, and I was worried about Flix. Still am,

for that matter." He sighed. "Anyway, there you were,

off to the start of a glorious career, and my other two

children had problems aplenty."

 

"Not Jinevra!" Nancia exclaimed. "I always thought

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

317

 

she was the perfect example of what you wanted us to

 

become."

 

"I wanted you to become yourselves," her father

said. "Apparently I didn't communicate that to you.

Jinevra's a paper-doll cutout of the ideal PTA ad-

ministrator, and I don't know how to talk to her any

more. And as for Flix — well, you know about Flix. I

thought he needed attention more than you. Thought

a few suggestions, maybe an entry-level position in

some branch of Central where he could work himself

up and someday amount to something ... of course

he'd have to give up fooling around with the

synthcom...." Javier Perez y de Gras sighed. "Flix

never has straightened out. I don't know, perhaps he

feels neglected on account of all those years when I

took every free moment to visit you at Lab Schools. I

didn't have that much time for him then. Even the day

he was born, I was at Lab Schools, watching you be

fitted for your first mobile shell. Seemed he needed me

more than you.... I thought it was time to redress the

 

balance."

 

Nancia absorbed the impact of this speech quietly.

For the first time, looking at her father's worn face, she

began to comprehend how much time and effort he

must have really given to his family over the years.

Since their mother had quietly retired to the haven of

Blissto addiction in a hush-hush, genteel clinic, he had

tried to be both father and  mother to three

obstreperous, brilliant, demanding High Families

brats. Another man might have leaned too hard on his

children for emotional comfort; another career

diplomat might have shunted the children into ex-

clusive boarding schools and forgotten about them.

But Daddy was no Faul del Parma, to use and abuse

and forget his children. He'd done the best he could

for them ... within his limitations .,. snatching mo-

ments between meetings, suffering long tiring

 

318      AnneMcCaffrey &MargaretBaU

 

rerourings between assignments to spend a day or two

on their planets, juggling a diplomat's unforgiving

schedule to work in graduations and school plays.

 

"An error of judgment, perhaps," Javier Perez y de

Gras said when the silence had lasted too long, "but

never... please believe me... an error of love. You're

my daughter. I only wanted the best for you." And

rising from his padded chair, he laid one hand briefly

on the titanium column that enclosed and protected

Nancia's shell.

 

"Requesting permission to come aboard!"

 

There was no identification this time, but Nancia

recognized Forister's voice, even though there was

something unfamiliar about the way he drew the

words out She activated her external sensors and saw

not only Forister but General Questar-Benn standing

on the landing pad.

 

"Request permission to come aboard," Forister

repeated. He was pronouncing his words very careful-

ly. And Micaya Questar-Benn was standing very

properly, stiff as if she were on a parade-ground. A

suspicion began to grow in Nancia's mind.

 

She slid open the lower doors and waited. A mo-

ment later the airlock door opened and Micaya

Questar-Benn stepped into the lounge. Very slowly

and carefully.

 

Forister followed. He was holding an open botde in

one hand.

 

"You are drunk," Nancia said severely.

 

Forister looked wounded. "Not yet. Wouldn't get

drunk before I came back to share the news with you.

Just... happy. Very happy," he expatiated. "Very,

very, very... where was 1?"

 

"Looking at the bottom of a bottle of Sparkling

Heorot, I suspect," Nancia told him.

 

Forister's wounded expression intensified. "Please!

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

319

 

Do you think I'd toast the best brainship on Central in

that cheap stuff? It's only fit for, for..."

 

"Starving musicians?" Nancia suggested. Some day

she would have to have a serious talk with Daddy about

Flix; suggest that he stop finding Flix promising career

openings and just let the boy be a synthocommer. But

this latest visit of Daddy's hadn't seemed the right time to

bring the subject up. And she couldn't beam him now;

Forister had other things on his mind. What there was

left ofhis mind, she corrected with a shade of envy.

 

"I'll have you know," Forister announced with a

flourish, "this is genuine Old Earth wine! Badacsonyi

Keknyelu, no less!"

 

Nancia's new language module included not only

Latin and Greek but a sprinkling of less well-known Old

Earth tongues. She skimmed the Hungarian dictionary.

"Blue-Tongue Lake Badacsony? Are you sure?"

 

"Believe him," Micaya Questar-Benn chimed in. Like

Forister, she was taking great care with her consonants.

"If it's as good as the red stuff, it's worth every credit he

paid for it What was the red stuff called, Forister?"

 

"Egri Bikaver."

 

"Bull's Blood from Eger," Nancia translated. "Oh,

well. You know, sometimes I don't really mind not

being able to share softshell pleasures. Er — what are

we celebrating?"

 

"End of the trial! Don't you follow the newsbytes?"

 

"Not lately. They never have much to say," Nancia

equivocated. And if there were any questions about my

deposition, I don't want to hear them.

 

"Well, they do now." Forister pulled himself erect

and stood in the center of the lounge swaying slightly.

"Sentencing was this morning. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong

and Darnell Overton-Glaxely got twenty-five years

each. They'll do community service on a newly

colonized planet—under strict guard."

 

"Alpha may be some use to the colonists," Nancia

 

320

 

Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt

 

commented, "but I don't know what a bunch of poor

innocent colonists have done that they should be sad-

dled with Darnell."

 

"Farming world," Forister said cheerfully. "They

need a lot of stoop labor. As for the rest—" He sobered

briefly. "Polyon's back to Shemali."

 

"What?"

 

"Working the hyperchip burnofflines," Forister

said. "The new manager's worked out a failsafe way to

disable the virus Polyon built into his hyperchip

design. So the factories are to continue production...

under somewhat more responsible management I'm

afraid the supply of hyperchips is going to dip for a

while; you probably won't be able to replace the ones

you burned out for some time, Nanda."

 

"I can deal with that," Nancia said dryly. It would be

a long time indeed before she let any chip designed by

Polyon de Gras-Waldheim within connecting distance

of her motherboards!

 

Forister still hadn't mentioned the two people whose

fete concerned her most "And Blaize?" It couldn't be too

bad, or Forister wouldn't be celebrating like that

 

"Five years' community service," Forister told her.

"Could be worse. They've dug up a planet in Deneb sub-

space — son of like Angalia, only worse, and the only

sentient life form resembles giant spiders, and nobody's

ever been able to communicate with them. Blaize was

moaning and groaning, but I suspect he can't wait to start

teaching the spiders ASL. We'll have to drop by after the

next assignment and see how he's doing."

 

"Next assignment?"

 

"Here's the datacording." Forister dropped a

hedron into Nancia's reader slot. She scanned the in-

structions while he and Micaya broke open the bottle

of Badacsonyi Keknyelu. The three of them had been

assigned as a team to Theta Szentmari... a very, very

long way from Central, through three separate Sin-

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

321

 

gularity points. One Singularity transition brought

them briefly into Deneb subspace.

 

"And what," she inquired, "do we do when we get

there?" Assuming they still uxxnt me as a bmmship... I suppose

they do. But tufty hasn't anybody said a word about fiissa ?

 

"Sealed orders." Forister tossed a second hedron

into the reader; Nancia found to her chagrin that she

; could not decrypt the information on this one. "Sup-

posed to be self-decrypting when we pass through the

third Singularity," Forister explained. "Apparently

^whatever's going on there is too hot to explain on

central... they're that worried about leaks. They've

»een discussing the possibility of making the three of

is a permanent investigative team for hot little scan-

' Is like whatever is wrong on Theta Szentmari."

 

"And what," Nancia asked carefully, "do the two of

you think about that? Now that the trial's over?

id... you never did tell me about Fassa."

"Ah, yes, Fassa." Forister's merry twinkle diminished

-Jightiy. "Sev's going out to Rigel IV with her, did you

[know that? He says hell try to pick up El. or security

work there, wait out her term."

"Twenty-five years?"

 

"Ten. They recommended clemency in view of her

apparent rehabilitation ... helping us trap Polyon,

and that very moving attempt to defend me when

Polyon was holding us all hostage inside Singularity.

Most of which came through brilliantly in your image

datacordings, Nancia." Forister smiled benignly.

"There were a few gaps, though."

 

Here it comes. She'd been trying not to think about

that aspect of the trial. "I did tell you I'd suffered some

memory loss," Nancia reminded him.

 

"So you did, so you did.... Anyway. The court wasn't

sure what to make of all that; she'd already been arrested,

after all, and she could just have been trying to put herself

in the best possible light for the trial. But there was one

 

322

 

Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU

 

thing from earlier, well before she was arrested, that con-

vinced them she wasn't quite as seltcenteredly fraudulent

as her partners in crime." Forister twinkled. "Itseemsthat

when a factory she built on Shemali collapsed, she put up

the new building free of charge. Sev Bryley brought that

into evidence. Now, it seems to me that J heard Polyon

saying he'd terrorized her into that replacement But

Polyoris trial was over before Sev brought out the story of

the Shemali buildings, so he couldn't be recalled for cross-

examination. And one of those little blips in your

datacording happened just at the moment when Polyon

was explaining that little matter to us."

 

Nancia felt a glowing heat from all her upper-deck

circuits. "I did tell you I'd suffered some memory loss,"

she repeated.

 

"Very conveniently arranged, though."

 

"All right. I canceled that part of the datacording. I

— Fassa's had problems to deal with worse than any-

thing you or I ever faced," Nancia said. "From what I

overheard, keeping watch on her and Sev — you don't

know what her father did to her."

 

"I can guess," Forister said.

 

"Well, then. It doesn't excuse what she did, I know

that. And it would kill her to have all that brought out

in court. But — she hasn't had many breaks," Nancia

said. "She never knew what it was to have a loving

family behind her." Fve been so much luckier — even if I

didn't know it for a little while. "I thought she deserved

that much of a second chance."

 

Silence followed this statement.

 

"I — it was dishonest," Nancia admitted. "And I

know that. And if you two don't want to be partnered

with me any more..."

 

"Knew about the buildings already," Micaya

pointed out "We were there too, if you recall, /didn't

see any need to stand up in court and contradict Sev's

rather touching evidence. Neither did your brawn

 

PARTNERSHIP

 

323

 

here." She threw her head back and drained her glass

of imported wine in one gulp. Forister winced.

"Then—" Nancia was confused.

Forisfcer patted her titanium column. "It was... in die

nature of a test, you might say," he told her. "Mic, here,

thought you'd been with Caleb too long, absorbed too

much of his black-and-white attitude to be as flexible as a

good investigative team needs to be. We may be feeing

some delicate assignments. Need to make some judg-

ment calls—can'trely on CS regulations to answer every

question. Now / thought you had the maturity to make

your own moral judgments—including knowing when

to keep silent After all, you didn't lie about any of Fassa's

wrongdoing; all that evidence is dear in your deposition.

\bu just—balanced—what you couldn't say about her

tragic childhood, against what you didn't have to say

about her work on Shemali."

"You don't despise me for it?"

"I did the same thing," Forister pointed out, "and

without benefit of your inside information on Fassa's

childhood."

 

"Then — it wasn't wrong?"

 

"You're an adult now, Nancia. You use your own

judgment What do you think?" Forister asked.

 

Nancia was still thinking when they reached the first

Singularity point on the run to Theta Szentmari. With

Forister and Micaya strapped down in their cabins, she

arced through the collapsing spaces in an effortless flash-

ing dive. Space and time twisted and reformed about her

as she chose their path through continually changing

matrices of transformations. For the few seconds of per-

fect, gliding, dangerous transition she danced and swam

in her own element, making her own decisions.

As she continued to do for the rest of her career.

 

— THE END —