• CHAPTER ONE

PARTNERSHIP

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events
portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance
to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Bill Fawcett & Associates

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this
book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-72109-7

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, March 1992
Fourth printing, December 1994

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

To ordinary human ears the slight crackle of the
speaker being activated would have been almost in-
audible. To Nancia, all her sensors fine-tuned for this
signal, it sounded like a trumpet call Newly graduated
and commissioned, ready for service — and apprehen-
sive that she would not be able to live up to her family's
high Service traditions—she'd had little to do but wait.

He's coming aboaifl now, she thought in the split second
of waiting for the incoming call And then, as the unmis-
takable gravelly voice of CenCom's third-shift operator
rasped across her sensors, disappointment flooded her
synapses and left her dull and heavy on the launching
pad. She'd been so sure that Daddy would find time to
visit her, even if he hadn't been able to attend the formal
graduation of her class from Laboratory Schools.
"XN-935, how soon can you be ready to lift?"
"I completed my test flight patterns yesterday,"
Nancia replied. She was careful to keep her voice level,
monitoring each output band to make sure that no
hint of her disappointment showed in the upper
frequencies. CenCom could perfectly well have com-
municated with her directly, via the electronic network
that linked Nancia's ship computers with all other
computers in this subspace — and via the surgically
installed synaptic connectors that linked Nancia's
physical body, safe behind its titanium shell, with the
ship's computer — but it was a point of etiquette
among most of the operators to address brainships just
as they would any other human being. It would have
been rude to send only electronic instructions, as if the

2	Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

brainships were no more human than the Al-control-
led drones carrying the bulk of Central Worlds'
regular traffic.

Or so the operators claimed. Nancia privately
thought that their insistence on voice-controlled traffic
was merely a way to avoid the embarrassing com-
parison between their sense-limited communication
system and a brainship's capabilities of multi-channel
communication and instantaneous response.

In any case, it was equally a point of pride among
shellpersons to demonstrate the control over their
"voices" and all other external comm devices that Helva
had shown to be possible, nearly two hundred years ago.
Nancia knew herself to lack the fine sense of musical
timing and emphasis that had made Helva famous
throughout the galaxy as "The Ship Who Sang," but this
much, at least, she could do; she could conceal her disap-
pointment at hearing CenCom instead of a direct
transmission from Daddy to congratulate her on her
commissioning, and she could maintain a perfectly
professional facade throughout the ensuing discussion
of supplies and loading and singularity points.

"Il?s a short flight," CenCom told her, and then paused
for a moment "Short for you, that is. By normal FTL drive,
Nyota ya Jaha is at the far end of the galaxy. Fortunately,
there's a singularity point a week from Central that wifl flip
you intolocal space."

"I do have full access to my charts of known decom-
position spaces," Nancia reminded CenCom, allowing
a tinge of impatience to color her voice.

"Yes, and you can read them in simulated 4-D, can't
you, you lucky stiff!" CenCom's voice showed only
cheerful resignation at the limitations of a body that
forced him to page through bulky books of graphs and
charts to verify the mapping Nancia had already
created as an internal display: a sequence of three-
dimensional spaces collapsing and contorting about

PARTNERSHIP	3

the singularity point where local subspace could be
defined as intersecting with the subspace sector of
Nyota ya Jaha. At that point Nancia would be able to
create a rapid physical decomposition and restructur-
ing of the local spaces, projecting herself and her
passengers from one subspace to the other. Decom-
position space theory allowed brainships like Nancia,
or a very few expensive AI drones equipped with
metachip processors, to condense the major part of a
long journey into the few seconds they spent in Sin-
gularity. Less fortunate ships, lacking the metachips or
dependent upon the slow responses of a human pilot
who lacked Nancia's direct synaptic connections to the
computer, still had to go through long weeks or even
months of conventional FTL travel to cover the same
distance; the massive parallel computations required
in Singularity were difficult even for a brainship and
impossible for most conventional ships.

"Tell me about the passengers," Nancia requested.
When they came aboard, presumably one of her pas-
sengers would have the datahedron from Central
specifying her destination and instructions, but who
knew how much longer she would have to wait before
the passengers boarded? She hadn't even been invited
to choose a brawn yet; that would surely take a day or
two. Besides, picking CenCom's brains for informa-
tion on her assignment was better than waiting in
tense expectation of her family's visit They would cer-
tainly come to see her off . . . wouldn't they? All
through her schooling she had received regular visits
from one family member or another — mostly from
her fether, who made a point of how much time he was
taking from his busy schedule to visit her. But Jinevra
and Flix, her sister and brother, had come too, now
and then; Jinevra less often, as college and her new
career in Planetary Aid administration took up more
and more of her time.

4	Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

None of them had attended Nantia's formal gradua-
tion, though; no one from the entire, far-flung, wealthy
House of Perez y De Gras had been there to hear the
lengthy list ofhonors and awards and prizes she'd gained
in the final, grading year ofher training as a brainship.

/(wasn't enough, Nancia thought. / was only third in my
class. If rd placed first, iffd won the Daleth Prize.... No
good would come of brooding over the past She knew
that Jinevra and Flix had grown up and had their own
lives to lead, that Daddy's crowded schedule of busi-
ness and diplomatic meetings didn't leave him much
time for minor matters like school events. It really
wasn't important that he hadn't come to see her
graduate. He would surely make time for a personal
visit before liftoff; that was what really counted. And
when he did come, he should find her happy and busy
and engaged in the work for which she had trained.
"About the passengers?" she reminded CenCom.

"Oh, you probably know more about them than I do,"
the CenCom operator said with a laugh. "Tney're more
your sort of people than mine. High Families," he
clarified. "New graduates, I gather, off to their first jobs."

That was nice, anyway. Nancia had been feeling just a
bit apprehensive at the thought of having to deal with
some experienced, high-ranking diplomatic or military
passengers on her first flight It would be pleasant to
carry a group of young people just like her — well, not
just like her, Nancia corrected with a trace of internal
amusement. They would be a few years older, maybe
nineteen or twenty to her sixteen; everybody knew that
softpersons suffered from so many hormonal changes
and sensory distractions that their schooling took several
years longer to complete. And they would be softpersons,
with limited sensory and processing capability. Still,
they'd all be heading off to start their careers together;
that was a significant bond.

She absently recorded CenCom's continuing in-

PARTNERSHIP	5

strucu'ons while she mused on the pleasant trip ahead.
"Nyota ya Jaha's a long way off by FTL," he told her
unnecessarily. "I expect somebody pulled some strings
to get them a Courier Service ship. But it happens to
be convenient for us too, being in die same subspace as
Vega, so that's all right"

Nancia vaguely remembered something about Vega
subspace in die news. Computer malfunctions... why
would that make the newsbeams? There must have
been something important about it, but she'd received
only the first bits of the newsbyte before a teacher can-
celed the beam, saying something severe about the
inadvisability of listening to upsetting newsbytes and
the danger of getting the younger shellpeople upset
over nothing. Oh, well, Nancia thought, now that she
was her own ship she could scan the beams for herself
and pick up whatever it had been about Vega later. For
now, she was more interested in finding out what Cen-
Com knew about her newly assigned passengers.

"Overton-Glaxely, del Parma y Polo, Armontillado-
Perez y Medoc, de Gras-Waldheim, Hezra-Fong,"
CenCom read off the list of illustrious High Family
names. "See what I mean?"

"Umm, yes," Nancia said. "We're a cadet branch of
Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and the de Gras-
Waldheims come in somewhere on my mother's side.
But you forget, CenCom, I didn't exactly grow up in
those circles myself."

"Yes, well, your visitor will probably be able to give
you all the latest gossip," CenCom said cheerfully.

"Visitor!" Of course he came to see me off. I never doubted
it for an instant.

"Request just came in while I was looking up the
passenger list. Sorry, I forgot to route it to you. Name
of Perez y de Gras. Being a family member, they told
him to go right on out to the field. He'll be at the
launching pad in a minute."

6	Arme McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

Nancia activated her outside sensors and realized
that it was almost night... not that the darkness made
any difference Co her, but her infrared sensors picked
up only the outline of a human form approaching the
ship; she couldn't see Daddy's face at all. And it would
be rude to turn on a spotlight. Oh, well, he'd be there
any minute. She opened her lower doors in silent
welcome.

CenCom's voice was an irritation now, not a wel-
come distraction. "XN? I asked if you can lift off within
two hours. Your provision list is more than adequate
for a short voyage, and these pampered brats are
kvetching about having to wait around on base."

"Two hours?" Nancia repeated. That wouldn't give
her much time for a visit — well, be realistic; it was
probably more time than Daddy could spare. But
there were other problems with leaving so soon. "Are
you out of your mind? I haven't even picked a brawn
yet!" She intended to get to know the available brawns
over the next few days before choosing a partner. "Hie
selection process was not something to be rushed
through, and she certainly didn't want to waste the
precious minutes of Daddy's visit choosing a brawn!

"Don't you young ships ever catch the newsbeams? I
told you Vega. Remember what happened to the CR-
899? Her brawn's stranded on his home planet —
Vega 3.3."

"What a dreary way to name their planets," Nancia
commented. "Can't they think of any nice names?"

"Vegans are ... very logical," CenCom said. "The
original group of settlers were, anyway — the ones
who went out by slowship, before FTL. I gather the
culture evolved to an extremely rigid form during the
generations born on shipboard. They don't make a lot
of allowances for human frailty, litde things like names
being easier to remember than strings of numbers."

"Makes no difference to me" Nancia said smugly.

PARTNERSHIP	7

Her memory banks could encode and store any form
of information she needed.

"You should get along just great with the Vegans,"
CenCom told her. "Anyway, this brawn is out in Vegan
subspace, no ship, nothing in the vicinity but a couple
of old FTL drones. OG Shipping ought to be able to
divert their metachip drone from Nyota, but as usual,
we can't contact the manager. So it's either waste
months of Caleb's service term by sending him home
FTL, or provide our own transport. You're it. You can
drop off your friends and relations on the planets
around Nyota ya Jaha — I'll transmit a databurst of
your orders after we get through chatting — and then
proceed to Vega 3.3 to pick up your first brawn. Very
neat organization. Psych records suggest the two of
you ought to make a great team."

"Oh, they do, do they?" said Nancia. She had her own
opinion of the Psych branch of Central and the intrusive
tests and questionnaires with which they bombarded
shellpersons, and she had no intention of being hustled
by Central into forgoing her right to choose a brawn just
because some shelltapper in a white coat thought they
knew how to pick a man for her—and because she was a
convenient free ride for a brawn who'd already lost one
ship. Nancia was about to turn up her beam to CenCom
and favor the operator with a few choice words on the
subject when she felt her visitor stepping aboard. Well,
there'd be time for that argument later; she could think
about it on the way out. Agreeing to transport the CR-
899's stranded brawn back to Central wouldn't commit
her to a permanent partnership, and when she returned
from this voyage she'd have plenty of time to choose her
next brawn.., and to tell Psych what they could do with
their personality profiles.

Meanwhile, her visitor had ignored the open lift doors
in favor of climbing the stairs to the central cabin, taking
the last steps two at a time; Daddy made a point of keep-

8

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

ing in shape. Nancia activated her stairway sensors and
speakers simultaneously.

"Daddy, how nice of you — "

But the visitor was Flix, not Daddy. At least, from
what Nancia could see of his face behind the enor-
mous basket of flowers and fruit, she assumed it was
her little brother: spiky red hair in an old-fashioned
punk crown, one long peacock's feather dangling
from the right earlobe, fingertips callused from hours
of synthcom play. It was her little brother, all right.

"Flix," She could keep her vocal registers level, to
conceal her disappointment; but she couldn't for the
life of her think of any words to add.

" 'S'okay," Flix said, his voice coming slightly muf-
fled from the stack of Calixtan orchids and orange
Juba apfruits that threatened to topple over him from
the insecurely stacked basket. Nancia slid out a tray
from a waist-level cabinet just in time. Flix staggered
into the tray, dropped the basket on it and sat back-
wards on the floor with a look of mild surprise. Two
glowing orange apfruits fell off the towering display
and rolled towards Nancia's command console, reveal-
ing a bottle of Sparkling Hereot in the center of the
basket. "Know you'd rather have Daddy. Or Jinevra,
Somebody worthy of the honor you do House Perez y
de Gras, You deserve 'em, too," he added after a
sprawling dive to retrieve the Juba apfruits. "Deserve
a brass marching band and a red carpet instead of this
thing." He brushed one hand across the soft nap of the
sand-colored, standard-issue synthorug with which
Nancia's internal living areas were carpeted.

"You — you really think I didn't disgrace the
House?" Nancia asked. She had been wondering if that
was why nobody had come to see her graduated and
commissioned. Daddy had always spoken of her
graduation with the words, "When you win the
Daleth...." And she hadn't done that.

PARTNERSHIP	9

Flix turned his head toward the titanium column
and gave Nancia the same disbelieving, slightly con-
temptuous look he'd bestowed on the beige
synthorug. "Stupid," he mourned. "Only member of
the family I can stand to talk to, our Nancia; only one
who doesn't give me hours of grief about giving up my
synthcomposing for a Real Career, and it turns out she
has worse problems than a few little malfunctioning
organs. If you hadn't been popped into your shell at
birth I'd suspect you were dropped on your head as a
baby. Of course you've done the House proud, Nancia,
what do you think? Third in academics and first in
Decom Theory and taking so many special awards
they had to restructure the graduation ceremony to
make time for your presentations — "

"How did you know about that?" Nancia
interrupted.

Flix looked away from the titanium column. Of course
she could still see his expression perfectly well from her
floor-level sensors, but it would have been rude to
remind him of that He looked embarrassed enough as it
was. "Had a copy of the program," he mumbled. "Meant
to show up, as long as I happened to be on Central
anyway, but... well, I met these two girls when I was
doing a synthcom gig in the Pleasure Palace, and they
taught me how to mix Rigellian stemjuice with Benedic-
tine to make this wonderful fizzy drink, and ... well,
anyway, I didn't wake up until the graduation ceremony
was about over."

He scowled at the carpet for a moment longer, then
brightened up. "Another thing I like about you, Nan-
cia, you're the only relative I've got who won't burst
into a long diatribe about how I could lower myself by
playing synthcom at the Pleasure Palace. Of course, I
don't suppose you have any idea what those places are
like. Still, neither does Great Aunt Mendocia, and that
doesn't stop her from sounding off."

10

•    Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

11

He got to his feet and began pulling things out of
the basket. "So ... since I was unavoidably detained at
the Pleasure Palace ... and Jinevra's off at the tail end
of nowhere investigating a Planetary Aid fraud, and
Daddy's in a meeting, I thought I'd just drop by while
you were waiting for assignment and we'd have a little
private party."

"What meeting?" Nancia asked before she could
stop herself. "Where?"

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

"You said our father was in a meeting."

"Yes, well, isn't he always? No, I don't know
where; it's just a logical deduction. You know how
full his dayplanner program is. Y'know, I often
wondered," Flix rattled on as he unpacked the bas-
ket, "just how the three of us got born. Well,
conceived, anyway. Do you suppose he sent Mother
a memo? Please come by my office this morning. Can work
you in between ten and ten-fifteen. Bring sheets and pil-
low" He reached the bottom of the basket and
pulled out two scratched and faded datahedra.
"There! I know you think I'm a selfish bastard,
bringing fruit and champagne to somebody who
doesn't eat or drink, but actually I have covered all
contingencies. These are my latest synthcomposi-
tions — here, I'll drop them in your reader.
Background music for the party, and you can play
them on the trip to entertain yourself.

As the jangling sounds of Flix's latest experimental
composition rang out in the cabin, he held up a third
datahedron and smiled. Unlike the first two well-worn
hedra, this was a glittering shape with a slick commer-
cial laser-cut finish that spattered rainbows of light
across the cabin. "And here — "

"Let me guess," Nancia interrupted. "You've finally
found somebody to make a commercial cut of your
synthcompositions."

Flix's smile dimmed perceptibly. "Well, no. Not ex-
actly. Although," he said, brightening, "I do know this
girl who knows a chap who used to date a girl who did
temporary office work for the second VP of Sound
Studios, so there are distinct possibilities in the offing.
But this is something quite different. This," he said,
sounding almost reverent, "is the new, improved, vast*
ly more sophisticated version of SPACED OUT, not due
for public release until the middle of next month, and
I won't tell you what I had to do to get it,"

Nancia waited for him to tell her what the thing was
about, but Flix paused and beamed as if he was expect-
ing some immediate reaction from her.

"Well?" he said after a few seconds. His spiky red
hair began to droop around the edges.

"I'm sorry," Nancia confessed, "but I have no idea
what you're talking about."

Flix shook his head mournfully. "Never heard of
SPACED OUT? What do they teach them at these
academies? No, no, don't tell me." He held up one
hand in protest. "I know. Decomposition theory and
subspace astrogation and metachip design and a lot of
other things that make my head hurt But 1 do think
they could have let you have a little time off to play
games."

"We did play," Nancia told him. "It was in the
schedule. Two thirty-minute periods daily of free play
to improve synapse/tool coordination and gross
propulsion skiUs. Why, I used to love playing Stall and
PowerSeek when I was in my baby shell!"

Flix shook his head again. "All very improving, I'm
sure. Well, this game" — he grinned—"is absolutely, one
hundred per cent guaranteed not to improve your mind.
In feet, Jinevra claims playing SPACED OUT can cause
irreversible brain damage!"

"It can?" Nancia slid her reader slots shut with a
click as Flix approached. "Look, Flix, I'm not sure — "

12

Arme McCaffrey £s? Margaret Ball

"Consider our big sister," Flix said with his sunniest
smile. "Go ahead, just call up an image from her last visit
Don't you think anything she disapproves of must be
worth a try?"

Nanria projected a lifesize Jinevra on the screen that
filled the center wall of the cabin. Her sister might
have been standing beside Flix. Trim and perfect as
ever, from the hem of her navy blue Planetary Techni-
cal Aid uniform to the smooth dark hair that fell
perfectly straight to just the regulation 1/4 inch dis-
tance from her starched white collar, she was the
pattern of reproach to every disorderly element in the
universe. Nancia couldn't remember just what had
caused the disapproving glint in Jinevra's eyes or the
tight, pinched look at the corners of her mouth at the
moment this image had been stored, but in this projec-
tion she seemed to be glaring right at Flix. One of the
red spikes of his retro-punk hair crown wilted under
the withering gaze of the projection.

Nancia felt sorry for him. Jinevra had never
bothered to conceal her opinion that their little
brother was a wastrel and a disgrace to the family.
Daddy, she suspected, felt much the same way. The
weight of the Perez y de Gras clan's disapproval would
have been crushing to her. How could she join them in
condemning Flix? She'd heard stories enough about
his wild tricks — there were times when Jinevra and
Daddy seemed to have nothing else to discuss on their
brief visits — but to her he was still the tousle-headed
toddler who'd hugged her titanium shell every time he
came for a visit, who'd waved and yelled as enthusiasti-
cally as if she were a real flesh-and-blood sister who
could cuddle him on her lap, who'd screamed with
glee when she carried him around the school track for
a quick round of PowerSeek with her classmates.

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

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

PARTNERSHIP	13

projected image of Jinevra faded into a blank screen.

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

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

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

"Holodwarfs?"

'Just look." Flix dropped the glittering datahedron
into the nearest reader slit — fanny, Nancia couldn't
remember having decided to open that reader, but she
must have done so. There was a soft whirring noise as
the contents of the datahedron were read into com-
puter memory, then Flix said, "Level 6, holo!" and a
red-bearded dwarf appeared in the middle of the
cabin, brandishing a curved broadsword whose hilt
glittered with a shower of refracted colored light. Flix
dropped to one knee as the dwarf's broadsword
slashed through the space where his head had been,
rolled towards a control panel and shouted, "Space
Ten laser armor!"

A shape of light beams bent into impossible curved
paths around him. The dwarf bent and thrust his
sword through a gap between the rapidly weaving
lights —

And vanished.

So did the lights.

Flix got to his feet, aggrieved. "You cut the game offl
And I was winning!"

"I, umm, I don't think I'm quite ready for the holo-
dwarfs," Nancia apologized. "I have this automatic
reaction to seeing people I love attacked."

Flix nodded. "Sorry. I guess we'll have to bring you
up to speed slowly. Want to start at Level 1, no holos?"

"That sounds... better."

And it was better. In feet, after a few rounds, Nancia
found herself actually enjoying the silly game, al-
though she still had trouble making sense of the rules.

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

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

14

Anne McCaffrey £*f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

15

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

"Nantia. It's agame. Now, be sure to ask the simugrif
for the answers to the Three Toroid Triples; you'll
need them after you reach the trolls' bridge...."

As Flix instructed her in the rudiments of the game,
Nancia discovered that the actual game program used
very little of her computing power. She was easily able
to scan CenCom's databurst about her coming pas-
sengers while they played. At the same time she
activated the ship's enhanced graphics mode to fill the
three wall-size screens in the central cabin with color
images of the game and of their play icons. Flix had
chosen to be, of all things, a brainship, careening
through imaginary asteroid belts in search of the Mys-
tic Rings of Daleen. Nancia preferred to imagine
herself as Troll Slayer, the long-limbed, bold explorer
who strode through gravity wells and over mountain
ranges with laser staff and backblasters.

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

"Why not?"

"Because he's in ambush behind the rocks. I can see
him, but you can't."

"I can so. I can see everything in this game. It's part of
my main memory now, remember?"

"Well, your play icon can't. He's just a man. He
hasn't got multi-D vision. And you see that blinking
blue light? The program rules are warning you that
he's going to die of hypothermia if you don't get him
into some kind of shelter soon."

"Why doesn't he just increase his fuel — oh. I
remember. You softpersons certainly are limited in
your fuel allocation capabilities." Nancia went ahead
and bent her laserstaff to take out the hiding troll, as
well as three of his fellows, then sent her play icon
under the trolls' snow bridge. Behind three hidden
doors and through a labyrinth there was a nice warm

cave now uninhabited, where Troll Slayer could rest
and refuel.

"Nancia, you're cheating!" Flix accused. "How did
you find that place so quickly, without making any
mistakes?"

"How could I not find it? The game maps are in my
main memory too, remember? All I had to do is look."

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

"No, I could not," Nancia said in a tone that should
have effectively closed off further discussion. Cut off
her consciousness from a part of the ship's computer
memory? The single worst experience of her entire
life had been the partial anesthesia required while ex-
perts completed her synaptic connections to the ship.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing a shellperson
hated more than losing connections! Flix ought to un-
derstand that without her telling him.

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

He never did know when to stop. And the idea of
shutting down her own nodes made Nancia so uncom-
fortable that she couldn't bear to discuss it with him.

"Listen, softshell, I'd have to cut off more than one
node to bring myself down to your computational level!"

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

"Sure, I'll come outside. I'll take you right up to the
Singularity point and let you find your own way out of
the decomposition!"

"Aah, relying on brute force again. It's not fair." Flix
appealed to the ceiling. "Two big sisters, and they both
pick on me all the time!"

"We had to do something to keep you under con-
trol — " Nancia shut down her vocal transmissions
abruptly. There was an incoming beam from Central.

"XN? Message relay from Rigellian subspace." Abrief
pause, then the image of Nancia's father appeared on
the central screen opposite her pillar. On the left-hand

16

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Batt

PARTNERSHIP

17

screen Flix's brainship icon flipped and rotated in an
endless, mindless loop against the glittering stars of deep
space; on the right, Troll Slayer stood frozen with one
foot lifted to step across the threshold of the hidden cave.
Between them, a tired man in a conservative green and
blue pinstripe tunic smiled at Nancia.

"Sorry I couldn't come to your graduation, Nancia
dear. This meeting on Rigel IV is vital to keeping
Central's economy on the planned graph for the next
sixteen quarters. I couldn't let them down. Knew
you'd understand. Hey, congratulations on all those
awards! I didn't have time to read the program in
detail yet, but I'm sure you've done House Perez y de
Gras proud, as always. And I think you'll like your first
assignment. It'll be a chance for you to get to know
some of the younger members of the High Families —
a very fitting start for our own Courier Service star.
Eh? What's that?" He turned towards his left, so that
he seemed to be speaking to the frozen Troll Slayer
icon. "The Secretary-Particular? Oh, very well, send
him in. I'll need to brief him before the next session."

Eyes front again. "You heard that, I suppose, Nan-
cia? Sorry, I have to go now. Good luck!"

" Daddy, wait—" Nancia began, but the screen went
blank for a moment. The old image of the snow bridge
and the trolls reappeared and she heard the voice of
the CenCom operator.

"Sorry, XN. That was a canned message beam.
There's no more. And your passengers are ready to
board now."

"Thank you, Central." Nancia discovered to her
horror that she had lost all control over her vocal
channels; the trembling overtones that surrounded
her speech made her emotional state all too apparent.
A Perezy de Gras does not weep. And a brainship could not
weep. And Nancia had been well trained to repress the
son of unseemly emotional displays that softpersons

indulged in. All the same, she very much did not want
to talk to anybody just now.

Flix seemed to have sensed her mood; he silently
packed up the basket of fruit and sparkling wine and
patted Nancia's titanium column as if he thought that
she could feel the warmth of his hand. For a moment
she had the illusion that she did feel it.

" I'd better get out of the way now," he said." Can't have a
Fterez y de Gras brainship caught partying on her maiden
voyage, can we?"

He paused on the stairs. "Y'know, Nancia, there's no
regulation says you have to greet your passengers the
minute they step aboard. Let 'em find their cabins and
unpack on their own. There'll be plenty of time for social
chitchat on the way out."

Then he was gone, a redheaded blur vanishing into
the darkness, a whistled melody lingering on the night
air outside; and moments later, the bright lights of a
spacepad transport shone in Nancia's ground-level
sensors and a party of young people tumbled out,
laughing and talking all at once and waving glasses in
the air. One of them stumbled and spilled the liquid
over Nancia's gleaming outer shell; from a fin sensor
she could see the snail-trail of something green and
viscous defacing her side. The boy swore and shouted,
"Hey, Alpha, we need a refill on the Stemerald over

here!"

"Wait till we're inside, can't you?*1 called back a tall
girl with ebony skin and features sharp and precise as
an antique cameo. Right now her handsome face was
etched with lines of anger and dissatisfaction, but as
the fair-haired boy looked back over his shoulder at
her she gave him a bright smile that wouldn't have
deceived Nancia for a minute.

They were all still talking — and drinking that sticky
green stuff— as they crowded into the airlock lift without
even asking permission to board. Well, she had left the

18

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

PARTNERSHIP

19

entry port open after Flix's departure; maybe they con-
sidered that an implied welcome. And Nancia had heard
that softpersons — at least those outside the Academy —.
didn't observe the formality that governed greetings and
official exchanges in the Courier Service and other
branches of Central's far-flung bureaucracy. She wasn't
one to take offense yet, not when she herself was hardly
ready for introductions to this bunch of strangers.

As they trooped out of the airlock and into the
central cabin, Nancia played a game of matching faces
to the names Central had given her. The short red-
haired boy with a face like a friendly gargoyle had
Flix's coloring and the flashing smile that reeled girls
in to Flix like trout on a hook; he must be one of the
two related to Nancia's family. "Blaize?" the black girl
called. "Blaize, I can't open this." She held out a plastic
pouch full of shimmering green liquid, and Nancia
winced in anticipation as the redhead tore off the
sealstrip with two short, strong fingers. But not a drop
spilled on her new, official-issue beige carpeting—not
now, anyway.

"Here you are, Alpha," the boy said as he handed it
back, and Nancia matched their faces with the names and
descriptions that had come in CenCom's databurst The
red-haired boy must be Blaize Armontillado-Perez y
Medoc, of a family so high that they barely deigned to
recognize the Perez y de Gras connection. And for some
puzzling reason his first posting was to a lonely Planetary
Technical Aid position on the remote planet of Angalia;
she would have expected anybody from a three-name
Family to start off somewhere near the top of whatever
Central bureaucracy he chose. As for the ebony princess,
with her sharp clever face that would have been beautiful
if not for the discontented expression, she had to be
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong. The short burst transmitted
from CenCom identified her as a native of the warm,
semi-desert world ofTakla, with high marks in her medi-

cal research program, and no hint as to why she'd chosen
to take a five-year sabbatical in the midst of training to
run the Summerlands Clinic on Bahati.

As they passed the pouch of Stemerald back and
forth, Nancia was able to identify the other three from
their casual conversation without having to introduce
herself. The slighdy pudgy boy with a halo of overlong
brown curls clustering around his red face was Darnell
Overton-Glaxely, going to Bahati to take charge of OG
Shipping from the cousin who'd been administering
the business during DarnelTs minority. The other girl,
the sleek black-haired beauty whose delicate bones
and slightly tilted eyes suggested a family connection
with the Han Parma branch of the family, would be
Fassa del Parma y Polo. The del Parma y Polo clan con-
trolled all the major space construction in this
subspace, and now it appeared they were sending this
delicate little thing out to establish the family's rights in
Vega subspace as well. The girl was probably, Nancia
reflected, stronger than she looked. At any rate she
was die only one refusing the pouch of Stemerald as it
went around the circle, and that was a good sign.

And the last one — Nancia let her sensors take in the
full gk>ry of Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, the cousin she'd
never met From die crown of his smoothly cropped yel-
low hair to the gleaming toes of his black regulation-issue
shoes, he was the epitome of the perfect Space Academy
graduate: standing straight but not stiff, eyes moving in
full awareness of what each ofhis companions was doing,
even in this moment of repose conveying a sense of
dangerous alertness. Like Nancia, he was newly
graduated and commissioned. And like her, he'd ranked
high in his class but not first; first in technical grades, the
databurst said, but only second overall because of an in-
explicable low mark in Officer Fitness — whatever that
might be.

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

20

Arme McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

sflly computer game, Nancia had been looking forward
to meeting her cousin Polyon. He was the only one of the
group with whom she felt that she had much in common.
As two High Families members trained for a life of service
to Central, just setting out to meet their destinies, they
should have felt an instant sense of kinship. Now,
though, she felt strangely reluctant to introduce herself
to Polyon. He was so tense, so watchful, as though he
considered even this laughing group of other young
people in the light of potential enemies.

And, she reminded herself, he had personally con-
sumed at least two-thirds of the recently opened
pouch of Stemerald, plus Central only knew what else
before coming on board. No, it wasn't a good time to
introduce herself and tell Polyon of their family con-
nections. She would just have to wait.

"Hey, guys, look at the welcoming committee!"
Blaize interrupted the chatter. He was staring past
Nantia's titanium column, at the triple-screen display
of the SPACED OUT game that Nancia had absentmin-
dedly left up after Flix's abrupt departure. The
concealed visual sensors between the screens showed
Blaize's freckled, snub-nosed face alight with pure,
uncomplicated joy.

Blaize moved slowly across the soft carpet until he sank
into the empty pilot's chair that should have been
reserved for Nancia's brawn. "This," he said reverently,
"has got to be the biggest, best SPACED OUT I've ever
seen. Two weeks will go like nothing with this setup to
play with." The game control channels were still open,
and as Blaize identified himself and took control of the
brainship icon, Nancia let the underlying game program
alter the brainship's course to zoom in on Troll Slayer's
world. The brilliance of the graphic display drew the
other passengers to look over Blaize's shoulder, and one
by one, with half-ashamed comments, they let them-
selves be drawn into the game.

PARTNERSHIP

21

"Well, it beats watching a bunch of painbrains dose
themselves silly in the clinic," Alpha murmured as she
took a seat beside Blaize.

Nancia had hardly recovered from the shock of this
callous comment when Darnell, too, joined the game.
Til have to copy the mastergraphics off this program
and have somebody install it on all OG Shipping's
drones," he said, animating Troll Slayer. "Anybody know
how to break the code protection?"

"I," said Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, "can break any
computer security system ever installed." He favored
Darnell with a slanting, enigmatic side glance. "If it's
worth my while..."

Oh, you can, can you? thought Nancia. We'll see about
that. Software game piracy wasn't exactly a major
crime, but a newly commissioned Space Academy of-
ficer ought to have a stronger ethical sense than some
commoner who hadn't had the benefit of a High
Families upbringing and an Academy training. She
felt distinctly less eager than she had been to introduce
herself to her handsome cousin.

Polyon turned his head and treated Fassa del Parma
y Polo, still lingering beside the door, to a brilliant
smile. "Now you, little one, could make just about any-
thing worth my while."

Fassa moved towards the game controls with a
sinuous, gliding motion-that riveted Blaize and
DarnelTs attention as well as Polyon's. "Forget it,
yellowtop," she said in a voice as sweet as her words
were stinging. "A second-rate Academy officer with a
prison-planet posting doesn't have enough to keep me
interested. I'm saving it for where it'll do me some
good,"

Nancia briefly shut down all the cabin's sensors.
How had she gotten stuck with these greedy, amoral,
spoiled brats? She had a good mind to put off intro-
ducing herself indefinitely. From the freedom of their

22

Arene McCaffrey fcf Margaret Bad

comments, they must be assuming she was only a
drone ship with no power to understand or act on any-
thing but a limited set of direct commands.

But she would still need to know what they were up
to. She opened one auditory channel and heard Blaize
leading Darnell and Polyon in a raucous chorus of,
"She never sold it, she just gave it away!" while Fassa
glowered and slithered off to her cabin.

Nancia had the feeling this would be one of the
longest two-week voyages any brainship had ever
endured.

CHAPTER TWO

polyon

Nancia watched curiously as Polyon de Gras-
Waldheim sauntered into the central cabin. The other
passengers were still sleeping off their departure-
night Stemerald party, snoring and thrashing as the
last doses of the stimulant worked its way out of their
exhausted bodies. Polyon had recovered remarkably
early. Like any good Academy graduate, he'd been up
at 0600 ship's time, washed in the shower cubicle and
dressed in his neatly pressed undress grays before
presenting himself in public. Nancia had shut down
visual sensors in the cabins to allow her passengers the
privacy they would be expecting, but the auditory sen-
sors brought her enough small sounds to enable her to
follow Polyon through his early-morning routine.

Nancia caught her first glimpse of Polyon as he
swung down the passageway to the central cabin. This
was public space; she had no compunction about leav-
ing all sensors activated here. And Polyon de
Gras-Waldheim was certainly a treat for the sensors.
Just a shade under two meters tall, with his golden hair
ruthlessly cropped in the Academy bristle cut, he was a
happy blend of the best in the Waldheim and de Gras
family lines: Waldheim height and rugged strength, de
Gras refinement and quick awareness. Nancia felt a
moment of regret. Polyon was a Space Academy
graduate; he might have been her brawn.

A de Gras-Waldheim? jeered an inner voice. What are
you dreaming of, girl ? A young man who combined those
two bloodlines could look fiar higher than command of

24

Arme McCajfrey &? Margaret Baft

PARTNERSHIP

25

a single brainship. He should have been destined for a
staff position somewhere, being groomed for high
command.

The short databurst of information about her pas-
sengers and their destinations didn't explain why,
instead of joining a Fleet General staff, Polyon was
headed out to be the technical overseer for a prison
metachip plant in a remote subspace. Oh, well, there
must be some good reason for the assignment. Maybe there's
more going on in Vega subspace than I realized. Nancia
remembered that interrupted newsbyte about Vega
and her resolve to study it in depth, now that she was
her own ship, fm Courier Service now; fd better start keep-
ing up with public affairs. But just at the moment,
watching her cousin was more interesting than pulling
up files of old newsbeams.

Polyon glanced about die cabin and his body relaxed
imperceptibly as he scanned the area; a human observer
might not have noticed die slight change, but Nancia —
by now scanning for muscle tension and autonomic
nervous system response as well as for the usual visual
and auditory cues — was immediately aware of his
relaxation. That must be Academy training, that alert-
ness upon entering any unfamiliar territory. She should
have expected no less of one trained in the High
Families' tradition of service; just as she should not have
been surprised that Polyon wakened at a regulation
hour, no matter what he'd been indulging in the night
before. The other passengers might be soft and self-
indulgent, but this one, at least, was a credit to his
training. That's the de Gras blood in him, she thought with a
trace of smugness; Daddy had always stressed the value
of Nancia's connection, through her mother, with the
House of de Gras.

Polyon glanced once more around the room—if he
hadn't been a de Gras-Waldheim, Nancia would have
described his second look as furtive — and then sat

down, not in the pilot's chair facing the central con-
sole, but in one of the spectator seats to the side of die
room. He nodded once, sharply, as if to say, "That's all
rieht, then," and spoke in a low voice that no softper-
son could have heard.

"Computer, open master file, pass 47321-Aleithos-
Hex242."

The automatic security system that guarded the
ship's main computer acknowledged Polyon's com-
mand. Hardly believing what she observed, Nancia let
the computer act without overriding it. How had
Polyon learned the master file password? Perhaps
there was a secret side to her mission, something only
another member of the High Families could be trusted
to know and to reveal at the proper time. TTiat would
explain Polyon's near-furtive way of approaching the
cabin. It would also explain his crude behavior last
night; naturally, as an undercover agent, he'd have to
be sure to blend in with his fellow passengers.

Or ... there might be no such explanation
forthcoming. Now that he had master file access,
Polyon was typing, moving the touchscreen icons, and
issuing verbal commands in a rapid low stream that
rivaled even a shellperson's multi-channel capacity.
And he still hadn't acknowledged her as anything
more than a droneship. What was going on? Nancia
waited and watched, following Polyon's maneuverings
through her computer system while her external sen-
sors kept track of his bodily movements.

Piece of cake, Polyon thought as his fingers darted
from keyboard to touch-screen, setting up his user ac-
count with system privileges that would allow him
access to any data in the ship's computer. Easy as debug-
ging a kid's first program. Now for the tricky stuff—
persuading the security system to treat him as a
privileged user on the Net. Once linked to that sub-

26

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

27

space-wide communications system, he would be abi<
to find out anything he wanted to know abou
anybody who'd ever linked into the Net

Voice commands wouldn't work here; just as wejj
he didn't want to be overheard by any of those snui];
time snoops he was stuck with on this voyage. H;;
fingers flashed over the keys, rattling out commands a:
fast as his excellent brain could analyze the result,
Hmm, security block here . . . but having alrea^
granted himself user privileges on the ship's system
he could take a look at the object code in the blockin;
program itself. He could even "fix" it. "Here a patdi
there a patch," Polyon hummed as he entered a sligl i
ly revised version of the object code, "everywhen -.
trapdoor, dum-de-dum-de-dum." As the system ;>
cepted and ran the revised program, Polyo;
humming switched to a triumphant version of, "1;
the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo!"

Not quite accurate, of course; he intended to win fo
far more than the proceeds of a single night's ol=
Earth-style gambling. He would show them — all
them. Starting with — but definitely not finishing wi >
— the lamebrains who'd shipped out with him. Polyo
knew why he was being posted to a second-rate assigi
ment in a third-rate solar system — his memori
skittered like frightened mice over the surface of th
ugly scene with the Dean — but there must be sorr
reasons why all these other pampered darlings oft)
High Families were going into semi-exile. He woui
start by finding those little secrets, and then... wc:l
then maybe even these rich brats could be useful in t>;
Grand Plan.

And after them.., the Nyota system. All of Ves.
subspace. Central. Why not? Polyon thought, dazzk
by the grandeur of his own desires. If there was on
thing he'd learned while he was growing up, it ws
that you could get away with nearly anything if you dt

most of it while people weren't watching and used
your charm when they did watch.

And where charm didn't work... there were other
means of persuasion. Polyon smiled grimly and
tapped into Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's med school files.

\Vhat cfftM Polyon be doing? Nantia watched and
waited as he redefined the ship's security system, reached
out to the Net, scanned his fellow-passengers' files.
Ought she to stop him? Discretion was the first thing a
Courier Service brainship learned, the first and last com-
ponent of duty. She hadn't been briefed on what to do
with a passenger who started manipulating the Net as if it
were part of his personal comsystem. He was redefining
the security parameters now... no matter, she could
change those back whenever she chose. So for he hadn't
touched her personal data areas, didn't show any signs of
knowing that her synaptic connections to the ship's com-
puter allowed her to follow everything he was doing.

Could it be that he really thought her a drone ship?
Maybe not. At least, he wasn't sure. Now that he was
through playing with the Net, Polyon sent out an ex-
ploratory tendril of code to report on other activities
linked into the ship's computer... a patch that would
reveal the exact location and extent of Nancia's con-
nections within the ship.

A Hale late to check that, my lad! Didn't the Space Academy
teach you to look for ambushes before you started maneuvers ?
Self-protection was an automatic response, more
deeply ingrained even than discretion. Nancia closed
down pathways and redefined access codes in a single,
instinctive wave of activity that left Polyon staring at a
blank screen and touching a keyboard that no longer
responded to his search commands.

Darnell

Darnell Ovetton-Glaxely moaned gently as he caught

28

Arme McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

29

sight of his puffy face, a distorted reflection in the
polished curve of synthalloy along the ship's central cor-
ridor. It was too early in the morning to face mirrors,
especially curving ones that made his reflection swell and
shrink and ripple like waves on the damned ocean. Dar-
nell moaned again and reminded himself that the
artificial gravity of space was practically like being on
Earth; it was only his imagination making him feel sick.
This was really nothing like being aboard one of the old-
style oceangoing vessels that had been the start of OG
Shipping, back when they were still a planetbound local
corporation. His old man had made him go on one of
those monsters once, with some crap about remember-
ing the family's roots. Darndl had taken a lot more crap
from the old man when he puked his guts out before the
ship left harbor.

Well, there wouldn't be any more of ihat\ Dear Papa
was history now, and so was the unexplained space-
station collapse that had killed him and left OG
Shipping in the hands of its directors until Darnell
finished school. And last night's Stemerald debauch
was also history—if only he could convince his queasy
stomach and pounding head of that!

It wasn't fair that he should suffer like this after what
had only been a perfectly reasonable indulgence to
celebrate the end of schooling and the start of his new
career. A pity neither of the girls had seen fit to continue
the celebration in the logical manner. Well, they had two
weeks to planetfall; they'd come around and see his at-
tractions soon enough. After all, it wasn't as if he had any
serious competition on this droneship. De Gras-
Waldheim was handsome enough, but a cold fish if
Darnell had ever seen one. Something frightening about
him, with those intense blue eyes burning like dry ice
under the stiff Academy haircut. As for the Medoc boy,
Blass or Blaze or whatever his name was, no girl was
going to waste time on a kid with a face like a friendly gar-

e. No> it would be old Darnell to the rescue again, the
n man on board widi the social skills to entertain two
lovely ladies all the way to their destination planets
around Nyotayajaha.

And he could hear sounds in the central cabin. Was
one of the girls up and about already? Darnell sucked
in his gut, threw his shoulders as far back as they
would go, and glanced at his reflection in the synth-
ailoy wall once again. His face wasn't really soft and
pufly like that, he told himself; it was a trick of the dis-
torted reflection. Made him look middle-aged and
flabby and tired. Nonsense. He was the handsome
young heir to OG shipping and he was fit to take on
anybody or anything....

But not, maybe, that cold fish, Polyon de Gras-
Waldheim. Darnell clutched at the doorway and tried to
stop his impulsive movement into the central cabin. His
legs kept going while his arms tried to haul him back.

"Oh, come on in, OG," Polyon said impatiently, his
back to the door. "Don't just cling to the doorframe
waving your tentacles like a seasick jellyfish."

Seasick.

Jellyfish.

Darnell gulped down a wave of nausea and
reminded himself again that space travel on a grav-
enhanced drone was not like being on an actual
moving, swaying, shifting oldstyle sea vessel.

"What are you doing?"

Polyon released the chair controls and spun slowly
round to face Darnell, long limbs relaxed as if to em-
phasize his comfort in this environment. "Just. ..
playing games," he said with a queer smile. 'Just a few
little games to pass the time."

"What'd you do, crash the SPACED OUT gameset so
badly you lost the screens?"

"Something like that," Polyon agreed. "You can
help me start it up again, if you like."

30

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

31

It was the closest thing to a friendly overture Darnel!
had heard from Polyon since they met the previous
night. Maybe, he thought forgivingly, maybe the poor
guy didn't know how to make friends. Coming from a
stiff-backed upper-crust lot like the de Gras-
Waldheims, spending his life at military boarding
schools, you couldn't expect him to have the savoir
vivne and easy social manners that Darnell prided him-
self on displaying. Well, he'd help old Polyon out, be
his friend on this litde jaunt.

"Sure thing," he said, walking on into the room with
a careful soft step that didn't jar his aching head. He
sank into one of the cushioned passenger chairs,
"Nothing to it, I used to play this stuff all the time in
prep school. Tell you what — if I help you get into the
computer, maybe you'll help me get into something
else?" He winked laboriously at Polyon.

"What exactly did you have in mind?" The man
didn't have a due how to make light conversation.

"Two of us," Darnell explained cheerfully, tapping
away at the console keys. "Two of them. The black one
is more your size. But I need a strategy to get into the
del Parma skirt's pants. Tactics, maneuvers, advance
and retreat — Got any suggestions?" Not, Darnell
thought, that he really needed any help, but there was
nothing like a round of good, bawdy male-to-male
bonding talk to cement a friendship. And since Polyon
evidently wanted to be friends, Darnell was more than
ready to meet him halfway.

" I'm afraid you're on your own there," Polyon said dis-
tantly. "I've... never had occasion to study the problem."
He nicked an invisible speck of dust off his pressed sleeve
and affected to study the SPACED OUT screens as Darnell
brought them back to fill the walls of the cabin.

The implication was clear; he'd never needed to work
out tactics with the ladies. Well, of course not. With the
de Gras-Waldheim name and fortune behind him —

and that muscle-bound, oversized physique — still, he
had no call to sneer at somebody who was just trying to
he friendly. Darnell glowered at the console and
tapped the commands that would set the game at —
hmm, not Level 10, his reflexes weren't quite up to the
interactive holowaniors just yet. Level 6. That should
be high enough to scramble Polyon's moves and let
him see what it was like dealing with an expert

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

Til bet five credits there's a due to the Hidden Hor-
rors of Holmdale somewhere in the new asteroids,"
Darnell offered.

"No bet on that. But I'll lay you five credits that I/it's
there, I'll find it first. Choose your icon!"

Darnell chose one of the play icons displayed along
the bottom of the central screen. He always liked to be
Bonecrush, the cyborg monster who stalked the lower
tunnels of the labyrinth but occasionally blasted out
into space with his secretly installed jetpacks and per-
sonal force shield. Polyon, he noticed with pleasure,
was taking the icon for Thingberry the Martian Mage,
a wimp of a character if there ever was one. This game
should be over in no time.

"So what brings you out to the Nyota system?"
Polyon asked after a few minutes of seemingly idle
maneuvering and pointless commands.

Darnell scowled at the screen. How had Thingberry
managed to surround two-thirds of the asteroid belt with
a charm of impenetrability? Very well, he would let
Bonecrush turn around and use his internal jetpacks as a
weapon; that should blast through sneaky Thingberry's
magic. "Taking up the old inheritance," he replied as he
tapped in the commands that would give Bonecrush
maximum blasting power. "OG Shipping, you know.
Can't think why old Cousin Wigran moved the firm's

32

Arme McCaffrey &f Margaret BaU

PARTNERSHIP

33

headquarters out to Vega subspace, but I'm sure he'll ex-
plain everything when I get there."

"If he can," Polyon agreed. "You have that much
faith in him?"

Darnell stealthily maneuvered Bonecrush into range.
That idiot Polyon was looking at him, not at the screen;
he could get away with murder if he could keep Polyoris
attention away from the game for a few more seconds.

"What d'you mean?" he asked, not really listening
for the answer. "Why shouldn't I have faith in
Wigran?"

Polyon looked shocked, and for a moment Darnell
was afraid he'd noticed Bonecrush's moves on the
central game screen. "My dear chap! You mean you
haven't heard? Decom it," he cursed in a low vicious
tone. "I didn't realize — Look, Darnell, I shouldn't be
the one to tell you this. Haven't you been paying atten-
tion to the newsbytes from Vega?"

"Management bores me," Darnell told him. "I'll be
perfecdy happy to draw the profits from the company
and let Cousin Wigran keep running the store." His
hands were resting on the key that would activate
Bonecrush's jet packs. Any minute now he'd execute a
controlled power surge that should blast a hole right
through Thingberry's defenses. But he wanted
Polyon to be watching in the moment of defeat, not
babbling on about some boring accountant's trial in
the Vega system.

"Well, I suppose you'd have to know pretty soon
anyway," Polyon was saying now. "I hate like hell to be
the one to tell you, though." He was watching
Darnell's face more closely than he'd ever looked at
the game screens.

"Tell me what?" For the first time Darnell felt a chill
of apprehension creep over him.

"It's all been coming out in the trial," Polyon said.
"That accountant who was skimming his clients'

credits to play Lotto-Roids? OG Shipping was one of
his biggest accounts. And your cousin Wigran knew
exactly what the fellow was doing. He even helped
kim _ for a share in the cash. Together, they've
gambled away more than ninety per cent of OG
Shipping'5 assets. I'm afraid all you're going to inherit
on Bahati is one over-age AI drone and a bunch of

debts."

Darnell's sweaty fingers slipped and punched the
power key harder than he'd intended. Bonecrush's jet
packs released their maximum thrust. The blast
rebounded harmlessly off Thingberry's invisible
charm-shield and propelled Bonecrush, too depleted
of power to activate his personal force-shield, into the
blackness of deep space. His cyborg body exploded
into a million stars of synthalloy debris.

"Wow," Polyon said, finally glancing at the dazzling
light effects on the screen. "This is a great game! Will
you look at those graphics? What is it, a supernova?"

"Me," said Darnell Overton-Glaxely. A gentleman
knew when to bite the bullet. "I owe you five credits."

Blaize

Oh, no, not another one!

Nancia briefly shut down all her internal sensors as
Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stirred in his
cabin. She had come to the conclusion that her pas-
sengers were most bearable when they were sleeping it
off. If only she could flood all their cabins with sleepgas
and keep them unconscious until they reached the
Nyota ya Jaha system.... Nancia caught herself in
mid-thought. She was becoming as bad as they were!
How could she even think such a thing? Hadn't she
made perfect marks in all her Integrity and Shell
Ethics classes? She should have been doubly guarded,
by family heritage and Academy training, against even
imagining such a betrayal of her ideals.

34	Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

There was nothing to stop her from leaving her in-
ternal sensors inactive until they reached Nyota ya
Jaha, though. Nancia considered this briefly before
deciding against it. True, her passengers wouldn't
notice anything, since they already assumed she was a
droneship programmed to carry them in privacy to
their destination. And it was also true that she would
rather perform the Singularity transformations that
carried them through decomposition space without
the irritating distraction of these ... brats. But she
shrank from the idea of spending days, more than a
week, in the isolation of space, with nothing to see but
the wheeling stars, no other brain to communicate
with — for if she opened a beam to Central, her cousin
Polyon, with his propensity for snooping through the
ship's computer systems, would be bound to notice the
comm activity. Brainships were as human as any
softpersons; Nancia knew that it would be unwise to
expose herself for so long to the strain of partial sen-
sory deprivation.

Besides, she wanted to know what her passengers
were up to.

When Nancia reactivated the central cabin's sen-
sors, Darnell was already stalking down the hall to his
cabin and Polyon, lips taut with rage, was about to fol-
low him. "I don't care for that name," he told Blaize.

Nancia hastily scanned the cabin's automatic
recording system. Blaize had been teasing his cousin
by calling him "Polly." Academy records on Polyon de
Gras-Waldheim mentioned this nickname as the basis
for several vicious fights that had occurred during
Polyon's Academy training, including one in which
Polyon's opponent was so badly injured that he had to
drop out of the officer training program. Witnesses
had attested that Polyon went on twisting the boy's
bones and listening to them splinter long after his op-
ponent was begging for mercy.

PARTNERSHIP

35

Following that incident, Polyon's file had been
flagged with warning signals that would forever
preclude his being assigned to a responsible military
post. . • and he had been verbally notified of this
decision in an interview with retired General Mack
Erricott, Dean of the Space Academy —

What was sfo doing? Nancia dosed down all her infor-
mation channels momentarily. Where had all this
private information come from? She reopened her
channels and traced the dataflow. It came through the
Net, and she shouldn't have had access to any of this
material; it came from the Space Academy's private
personnel files. Somehow the Net had responded to
her momentary curiosity by opening up material that
should have been shielded under the Dean's personal
password.

After a moment's confusion, Nancia realized what
had happened. Polyon's meddling with the ship's
security system had extended to some very sophisti-
cated tampering in the Net itself. He had, in effect,
defined Nancia as the node of origin for a system con-
troller with unlimited powers to access and change
files and codes in any computer on the Net. Nancia's
instinctive intervention had then made the "System
Controller" identity unavailable to Polyon himself...
but had left the node definition in place, allowing her
access to all the files he had scanned, and a great deal
more besides.

Nancia felt as embarrassed as if she'd been caught
peeking into an anesthetized classmate's open shell
during synaptic remodeling... the invasion of privacy
was that great. / didn't realize what I was doing! She
defended herself, and hastily erased the super-user
node definition before she could be tempted into look-
ing at anybody else's private files.

But she couldn't forget the shocking and disturbing
things she'd just read about Polyon. And she was

36

Anne McCaffrey 67 Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

37

relieved that he'd left the central cabin to Blaize, stalk-
ing back to his own cabin in a pose of offended dignity
far more impressive than Darnell's pout

Blaize looked directly at Nancia's titanium column
and winked. "Bet you thought he was going to beat me
up, didn't you?"

Nancia responded without thinking to this, the first
direct address she'd received since her passengers
boarded and she lifted off from Central. "I hope you
weren't counting on me to protect you!"

Blaize gave a soft, satisfied chuckle. "Not at all, dear
lady. Until this moment I wasn't even sure what — or
who — you were." He lifted an imaginary cap and
mimed an extravagant bow. "Allow me to introduce
myself," he murmured as he straightened again. "Blaize
Armontillado-Perez y Medoc. And you?"

It was too late to retreat into the silence that had
protected her so for. Nancia gave a mental shrug — no
more than a quick flashing of connectors — and
decided that she might as well converse with the brat.
She'd been starting to get lonely, anyway; the isolation
of deep space was too great a contrast after her years of
comfortable, constant multi-channel input and output
with her classmates in Laboratory Schools. "XN-935,"
Nancia said grudgingly. And then, because the call let-
ters seemed inadequate, "Nancia Perez y de Gras."

"A cousin, a veritable cousin!" Blaize crowed with
unabashed delight. "So tell me, cousin, what's a nice
girl like you doing convoying a rabble of riffraff like
us?"

The question was uncomfortably close to Nancia's
own opinion of her passengers. "How did you know I
was a brainship?" she countered.

"The liftoff procedures could have been performed
by an AI drone. But somehow I didn't really think the
Medoc clan and the rest of our loving families would
have sent us off to jaunt through Singularity on auto-

matic. Wouldn't be fitting to the dignity of the High
Families, y'know, to have a packet of metachips
responsible for our safety instead of a human brain."

"You don't have much respect for your family, do
you? No wonder they're sending you off to a fringe
world. They're probably afraid you'll embarrass

them-"
For a moment Blaize's freckled race looked cold and

hard and infinitely sad. Then, so quickly that a human
eye would hardly have recognized the brief betrayal,
he grinned and flashed a salute at Nancia's column.
"Absolutely. Just one minor correction. They're not
afraid I'll embarrass them. They're bloody sure of it!"
Pulling out one of the padded chairs, he seated himself
cross-legged in the middle of the cabin, arms folded,
and beamed at Nancia's column as though he hadn't a
care in the world. She retrieved the image of his race a
moment earlier and projected it on interior space,
comparing the bleak-eyed young man of the record-
ing with the smiling boy in the cabin. What could be
hurting him so deeply? Against her will, she felt a
twinge of sympathy for this spoiled scion, this disgrace
to the High Families.
"And do you intend to?" she asked in carefully

neutral tones.

"What? Oh—disgrace them?" Blaize shrugged a lit-
tle too gracefully. Nancia began to wonder how many
of his seemingly casual gestures were rehearsed. "No,
it's too late now. Sure, I had fantasies when I was a kid.
But I'm a little old for running away now, don't you

think?"

"What—to join the circus?"

For another split second, the mobile face before her
matched the bleak image she'd stored. "No. The Space
Academy. Actually," Blaize said in a voice as carefully
neutral as Nancia's own, "I used to think I'd train as a
brawn — Don't laugh; it was a kid's idea. But I never

38

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Batt

could imagine anything better than working with a
brainship. To fly between the stars, saving lives and
worlds, partnered with a living ship to learn the dance
of space...." His voice cracked on the last word. "I
told you. Kids have dumb ideas."

"It doesn't seem like such a dumb idea to me," Nan-
tia told him. "Why did you give it up? Did somebody
tell you brawns have to be six feet tall and built like...
like Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?"

"Give it up!" Blaize echoed. "I didn't give it up. Iran
away three times. The first time I actually got into the
Space Academy, too. Took the open tests, forged
papers saying I was a war orphan, won a scholarship.
It was three weeks before my tutor found me." The
momentary, unguarded joy in his face as he remem-
bered those weeks wrenched at Nancia's heart. "The
second and third times they knew where I'd go; there
was a squad of House Medoc private guards waiting
for me at the Academy."

"Your family seems to have been rather violently
against die idea."

Blaize's mobile, ugly face twisted into a sneer.
"Wouldn't do for folks in our position, y'know. Not
quite the thing. My cousin Jillia is in line to be the next
Planetary Governor of Kaza-uri, and my buddy Hene-
quin — m'father's best friend's son," Blaize explained
parenthetically, "is already in charge of the Vega
branch of Planetary Technical Aid. A son who's in
brawn training doesn't quite match up with those stel-
lar accomplishments for after-dinner bragging."

"I wonder if my family feels that way," Nancia said.
Was that why Daddy hadn't made time for her
graduation?

"Shouldn't think so. They sent you to Laboratory
Schools, didn't they?"

"They didn't," Nancia said, "have many options. I
would not have survived a normal birth.**

PARTNERSHIP	39

"Oh. Well. Anyway," Blaize said carefully, "I don't
think your branch of the family is quite as snobbish as
ours- And neither one can beat the de Gras-Waldheims
for exclusiveness. Polly got to go to the Academy, but
he was supposed to turn into a general, not a lowly
space jockey; I can't imagine what he's doing on his
way to administer a metachip plant on Shemali. Must
have been some scandal at the Academy. I thought I
knew all the family gossip, but whatever he got into,
they hushed it up exceedingly well. You probably have
access to the files, though — or — anyway, I bet you
could find out if you wanted to."

"I imagine," Nancia said, "they are in need of his
technical expertise." She felt no impulse whatever to
share the details of Polyon's Academy problems with
this gossipy boy. Didn't the High Families train their
softperson children in any kind of discretion? First
Polyon, using his computer expertise to hack through
security checks and find out the other passengers'
secrets, and now Blaize, turning his charm on her to

the same end.

"You don't approve of gossip, do you?" Blaize
guessed. "All right. Have it your way. You will be a
suitably discreet Courier Service brainship and a
credit to the family, and I'll be a nice little PTA ad-
ministrator on Angalia and try not to disgrace my side
of the family, and we can all drift on in boredom

forever."

"Planetary Technical Aid isn't so bad," Nancia told
him. "My sister Jinevra is an area administrator, and
she's only twenty-nine. You could rise rapidly — "

"Fromy4ftgtt&a?" Blaize's eyebrows shot up like red
exclamation marks, giving his face a look of comical
astonishment. "Dear Cousin Nancia, you really don't
pry, do you? If you'd read my file you would know bet-
ter than to try and stir up my ambitions for Angalia.
The sum total of civilization there consists of one PTA

40

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

41

office, one coryrium mine, and a bunch of humanoid
natives with the collective IQ of a zucchini. Asmall zuc-
chini. It's amazing they even qualify for Planetary Aid;
somebody must have filled out the FCF wrong, and
whoever later determined that they didn't have ISS
forgot to correct the PTA data. The wheels of the
bureaucracy grind on and on.... So here I go to An-
galia, less than the dust beneath old Henequin's
chariot wheels."

"You should do well enough," Nancia said. "You've
certainly got the jargon of the bureaucracy down pat"
She scanned her data files for translations of the initials
Blaize had used. PTA was Planetary Technical Aid, of
course, and FCF turned out to be a First Contact
Form, and ISS — ah. Intelligent Sentient Status. Nan-
cia had learned all the regulations for dealing with
alien sentients in Basic Courier Diplomacy and
Development 101, but she wasn't used to hearing the
abbreviations tossed about so casually. Daddy, when he
visited and told her about his work, was always careful
to give each bureaucratic office its full name, each offi-
cial his full tide.

It was possible, Nancia thought, involuntarily con-
trasting Blaize's darting, hummingbird speech patterns
with Daddy's measured delivery — it was possible that
her father, Javier Perez y de Gras, was just a bit stuffy. No.
That was ridiculous. She was getting corrupted by her
passengers, straying into non-regulation and non-
approved ways of thinking. Heaven knew what
indiscretions Blaize would lure her into if they continued
this conversation.

"Do you play SPACED OUT?" She filled the three
wall-size screens with the displays that had tempted
Polyon and Darnell into the game. "It'll have to be
solitaire, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

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

apologized. "You see, the game's part of my memory
banks now. And I've never learned your softperson
trick of selectively turning off awareness." She wasn't
about to try, either. But she could, she told Blaize,
make the solitaire game a little more challenging by
redefining the maze of tunnels and Singularity nodes
that connected one part of the SPACED OUT galaxy
with another.

"Rules that change as you play?" Blaize hummed in
delight. "Great idea. Polly will hate it, too."

That thought seemed to increase his pleasure in the
game. And while he happily manipulated a solitary
play icon through the traps and surprises set up by the
designer, Nancia contemplated the vast loneliness of
the stars around them and the distance she must travel
before she could make private contact with another
shellperson.

PARTNERSHIP

43

• CHAPTER THREE

Alpha

When she awoke after the graduation "party,"
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong made her way to the main
cabin and found her traveling companions engaged in
one of those silly role-playing games. Medical school
and a demanding research program had never given
her the time to waste on such frivolities. But there might
be plenty of time where she was going. Alpha pushed that
thought to the back of her mind. She would find some-
thing productive to do; she always did. She might even
find a way to continue her research.

For the present, her companions watched the game
screens, and Alpha watched them. They were consid-
erably more amusing than the game; especially Blaize
and Polyon, stalking one another in an ongoing verbal
battle. Blaize was obviously dying to know why some-
one Eke Polyon, destined by family and training for a
high command post, was being sent out to start his
career on a remote planet of no real military
importance.

Alpha rather wanted to know the answer to that lit-
tle puzzle herself. As part of the powerful and
high-ranking de Gras-Waldheim clan, Polyon would
seem like a good person to cultivate. And in some
ways, Alpha thought, it would be a pleasure to make
friends with Polyon. He was certainly the most attrac-
tive man on this ship, the only one worth her time. But
if he'd disgraced himself at the Academy and been dis-
owned by his family, she couldn't afford the risk of
getting dose to him. Some of that scandal — whatever

it could have been — might rub off on her. And she
couldn't afford any more blots on her record, not after
the way the medical school had overreacted to that
trivial business about her research protocols. No, she'd
wait and find out a little more about Polyou before she
moved on him. And she'd let Blaize Armontillado-
Perez y Medoc, a born gadfly if ever there was one, do
the finding out.

"Shemali's such an obscure spot," Blaize hinted, "for
a brilliant young man on his way up."

Polyon stared into the display of distant mountain
peaks for a moment before he answered. Alpha could
see a muscle twitching in his jaw. As well as all the muscles
everywhere else ... those Academy undress grays don't leave
much to the imagination! Why doesn't he just break the little
pest in half? But Polyon retained his control. "Yes, it's
nearly as godforsaken as Angalia, isn't it? My brilliant
little cousin-on-his-way-up," he added remotely.

"Ah, but we all know I'm the black sheep of the fami-
ly," Blaize countered, "a modern-day remittance man.
You, on the other hand, are supposed to be the pride
of the de Gras-Waldheims, the last and finest flower of
those entwined family trees, bursting with military
potential and — umm — hybrid vigor."

"At least the Academy taught me not to mix my
metaphors," Polyon said.

"It must be some super-secret military base," Blaize
decided aloud. "Nothing less would suit for a de Gras-
Waldheim's first posting. So classified even the
droneship doesn't know why you're going there.**

Alpha noticed that his eyes flicked towards the
central titanium column as though he expected an
answer through the ship's speakers. Well, she con-
ceded, it was as likely that the drone would take part in
the conversation as that Polyon would tell his cousin
anything he didn't want to. Likelier.

She yawned and fiddled with the joyball, rolling the

44

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

45

SPACED OUT display from the Mountains of Momen-
tum to Asteroid Hall and back. This conversation was
boring. Polyon wasn't going to tell them anything. He
wasn't even going to smash his cousin into the wall. No
information, no amusement. Alpha was about ready to
go back to her cabin and take a nap. There was little
enough else to do on this stupid droneship.

"No secret military plans," Polyon said. "No secrets
at all, Blaize, sorry to disappoint you. But if it'll shut
you up, I'll try to explain what I'm going to do in terms
you'll be able to understand.... Leaving out the tech-
nical terms, let's just say that I'm going to manage the
metachip plant attached to the Shemali prison. Gover-
nor Lyautey is out of his depth. He knows how to run a
prison. He doesn't know anything about metachip
manufacturing. And the productivity record shows it
I'm going to set things straight, that's all."

Alpha sighed. The man's discretion was so perfect,
she almost believed him; except that Blaize was right,
it didn't compute for a de Gras-Waldheim to take a job
as a factory manager.

"Ann, now I understand," Blaize almost purred.
"The governor is to take lessons from you in the finer
points of chip manufacture, and you're to take lessons
from him in the finer points of... ahhh... torture and
degradation of prisoners? Or do I have it wrong?
Maybe it's the other way round."

Polyon smiled. "If the governor wants an expert in
nagging prisoners to death, I'll advise him to send for
you."

"What a pity, though," Blaize prodded. "All that
military training going to waste. Seems the family
could have arranged something a little better for you.
Unless there's something you're not telling us about
your Academy record...."

Polyon's perfectly shaped ears turned red and
Alpha raised her head, suddenly alert. The flush of

rage didn't improve Polyon's looks, but that was all
right with her; if anything, his face in repose was a little
tJo perfect And now he looked ready to kill somebody
_ or tell something. Alpha mentally applauded.
Blaize had finally hit on a nerve!

"And what better position might the family have ar-
ranged foryou, dear cousin?" Polyon inquired. "Save a
Utde of that pity for yourself. When your posting at
Angalia is finished — if you ever do get off that godfor-
saken planet — you'll have nothing but your savings.
Granted, they should be considerable, since there's
nothing to spend money on there, but how much can
a PTA-l7's monthly salary add up to?"

"About as much as a factory supervisor's, I should
imagine. Face the facts, Polyon. We've both been
screwed over by our respective families. For once
you're in the same boat I'm in, regardless of that pretty
face and stiff back. I know why I'm here. What I'd
dearly like to know is why they did it to you."

Alpha, too. She leaned forward, tensing slighdy in
anticipation of the answer, but Polyon chose to answer
the first part of Blaize's goading speech rather than the
second. "Oh, but I've no intention of trying to make it
on my savings, dear coz."
"What, then?"

"Metachips," Polyon said meditatively, "are very ex-
pensive. Not to mention that they're in short supply."
"Tell me something I don't know," Blaize invited him.
"I plan," said Polyon, "to... improve on the current

rationing system."

Unnoticed in her corner, Alpha nodded thoughtful-
ly. Polyon had a good point. Metachips were
exceedingly scarce and costly, and for good reason.
The metachip manufacturing process involved at least
three different acids so hazardous to the environment
that most planets refused to harbor the plants, despite
the unquestioned financial benefits. Shemali, in-

46

AnmMcCaffny & Margaret Baft,

PARTNERSHIP

47

hospitable, cursed with the perpetual biting north
wind that had given the planet its name, with its one
land mass dedicated to a maximum-security priso^
was the only major metachip inanufacturing site in ex-
istence; ShemaU, where nothing you did could make
the environment much worse, and where the workers
bought their lives one day at a time by laboring in the
metachip plant

Because who else could you use, in the final
analysis, but convicts already under sentence of death?
One of the acids involved, when used in the quantities
required for manufacturing, released a gas whose ef-
fects on human tissue were slow, painful, deadly...
and so far, irreversible. Alpha was an expert on those
effects; her research at Central Med had been devoted
to trying various drug therapies to reverse the effects
of Ganglicide. She might have had a major paper out
of the work if the school's Ethics Committee hadn't got
so upset about her testing methods... Alpha clamped
her lips down on the flare of anger that possessed her.
That was all in the past. The present was Polyon and
his plan, which he was explaining to Blaize with a
wealth of patronizing detail about die adverse effects
on the economy of the present rationing system.

"It's ridiculous to have metachips distributed by a
committee of old men and do-gooders," he declared.
"Sure, the military is entitled to Erst cut at the chips, but
after our applications have been satisfied, the remaining
chips ought to go where they'll do the most good."

"1 thought that was the object of the rationing sys-
tem," Blaize remarked. "Companies get Social Utility
Marks for their intended use of the metachips, and the
chips are distributed in proportion to the SUM.
What's wrong with that?"

"Unrealistic," Polyon said promptly. "They're using
chips for single-body operations like repairing kidneys or
replacing damaged spinal nerves, when the same chips

rould R° m*°> on> applications that thousands of people
could use at once. Dorg Jesen would pay millions for a
handful ofmetas and a promise of steady supply."

Blai/e began to laugh. "Dorg Jesen? The feelieporn
jyng? That's your idea of a SUM?"

"Millions," Polyon repeated himself. "And if you don't
believe I can think of a socially useful function for all that

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

you think you'll sneak the feelieporn application past
the advisory board?"

"I see no reason why the matter should ever come
before the board. QA testing for the metachips is one
of the areas Governor Lyautey asked me to supervise.
Disposal of the chips that fail QA will presumably also
fell within my duties." He looked so smug that Alpha
felt the need to puncture his self-satisfaction.

"I wouldn't plan on selling defective chips to Dorg
Jesen if I were you," she interrupted Polyon's gloating.
"He's been known to rearrange the features of people
who interfered with his business." Her shiver wasn't
assumed; one of her first tasks in med research had
been to diagram the facial injuries on a girl who'd
refused Jesen's offer of employment Alpha had even-
tually made a complete inventory of the damage,
together with holosims of the girl's face before the at-
tack and as she would look after plastifilm had
replaced what used to be living flesh.

Eventually.

After she rushed out of the lab theater and threw up
in front of the senior surgical advisor.

At the time, she'd thought it would be the most
humiliating thing that could ever happen to her in
med school.

Remembering, she barely heard Polyon's bland
reply that he had no intention of selling defective chips
to anybody.

48

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

49

Blaize gave a low, admiring whistle. "Of course. Fitf.
die the QA parameters one way for Governor
Lyautey's reports, the other way for sales, and who
knows what happens to the metachips in between?
You could make a fortune in 6ve years!"

"I intend to," said Polyon.

He was really much too self-satisfied, especially for a
man who'd left the Academy under some kind of a
cloud that he was afraid or ashamed to discuss. Alpha
decided that it would be doing humanity a favor to
wipe that smug smile off Lieutenant de Gras-
Waldheim's face. He really shouldn't smirk like that
Spoiled his looks.

"I do hope you'll still be able to enjoy your fortune
by then," she cooed sweetly at Polyon. "Better stay out
of the way of your convict laborers, though. Nasty acci-
dents are so easy to arrange in a D-class facility, aren't
they? But don't let it worry you. Even if you do get a lit-
tle spot of Ganglicide on your precious skin, I'm sure
Governor Lyautey will rush you to Bahati for medical
treatment. And you're lucky to have an expert in
Ganglicide therapy right there at the Summerlands
clinic."

"You." Polyon nodded stiffly. "That was to be your
thesis topic, wasn't it?"

Alpha suppressed a start. How had Polyon known
of her research? Oh, well, the High Families were such
an inbred group. Probably her aunt Leona had been
gossiping over the chai tables. But Polyon wouldn't
know much more than the title of her projected paper;
the symptoms of Ganglicide exposure were hardly fit
material for chai-table gossip. She relaxed and
prepared to enjoy her project of wiping that superior
smirk off Polyon's face.

"I had some success with chemical treatments for the
skin decay," she told him. "Halted the disintegrating
process, anyway. I'm afraid we couldn't do much to

verse the effects, though. The skin shreds like paper

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

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

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

per snredder by the time the shuttle delivers you to
Bahati. Do try to keep it away from your pretty face."

Polyon's handsome features betrayed only slight
uneasiness, but there was a knowing look in his eyes.
«you—had to interrupt your research rather sudden-
ly, didn't you?"

Alpha silently cursed all interfering, gossiping old
relatives and friends. Never mind. "More's the pity,"
she sighed. "I was just getting into the most interesting
cases. You know, when Ganglicide goes into its gaseous
form it attacks nerves and brain synapses. Has much
the same effects on them that it has on the skin; we dis-
sected a really fascinating case, a senior assembly tech
from Shemali, as it happens. The inside of his head
looked like a wet blue sponge. Of course, by the time
the Ganglicide got that far he was too far gone to know
or care what was happening to him. A mercy, really.
Not that we'll ever really know how long he felt the
pain. Ganglicide goes straight to the pain receptors,
you know; we can't block the effects with drugs. And
towards the end he was screaming continuously. Like
an animal dying under torture." She licked her lips
and regarded Polyon. He was standing quite still, two
fingers beating a nervous tattoo on the command
panel behind him. The dance of his fingertips on the
sensitive pressure pads made the SPACED OUT screen
on the far side of the room shift back and forth jerkily,
displaying alternate images of deep space and of a
flaming labyrinth where molten lava menaced the
hapless play icons.

"If you're nice to me," Alpha added, "I'll promise to
kill you before the Ganglicide eats out your brains. No
human being should have to die like that"

50	Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

"Oh, I'll be nice to you," Polyon said. His voice ivas
still even; he thrust off from the control panel with HVQ
fingers and floated across the room. As he came closer
Alpha recognized the look in his eyes. Not frightened
Wary. Like a hunter waiting for his quarry to burst
from cover. And as he reached out to encircle her wrist
with strong, blunt fingers, the look changed to a light
of triumph. "I think we can be very nice to one another
lovely Alpha. It's so kind of you to take an interest in
my career." His voice changed on the last words,
mocking, savagely amused. "But enough about me.
Tell us about yourself, why don't you?" He gestured
towards Darnell and Fassa, floating through the open
door to join them. "We'd all like to hear about your in-
terrupted research. And why one of the school's
brightest young medical researchers chose to donate
five years of public service to an obscure clinic on
Bahati You're too modest, Alpha."

Alpha tossed her head and tried to pull away from
Polyon, but he was too strong for her. "There's noth-
ing to tell, really. I was tired — wanted a change of
scene. That's all."

"Is it?" Polyon murmured. "Funny. The way I heard
it, there were some other people who wanted to
change your scene. The newsnibblers never beamed
the story, did they? Can't have scandals about a High
Families girl going out as entertainment bytes. But I
fancy our friends on board here would find the story
very entertaining."

Alpha stared up at Polyon, looking for a hint of com-
passion in the sharp planes of his face and the ice-blue
eyes that had seemed so attractive a moment ago. "I
did nothing to be ashamed of," she whispered. "The
tradition of scientific experiments — "

"Does not include testing Ganglicide on unwitting
subjects." His voice was so low the others could not
hear it

PARTNERSHIP

51

Charity cases," Alpha defended herself "Streetbums.

ne of them were so far gone on Blissto they didn't even
ow what was happening to them. They were incurable
__ nothing but an expense to the state as long as they
Kved. I did diem a favor, making sure their lives ended for

some purpose."

"Somehow," Polyon murmured, "I don't think the
court would have seen it that way. But then, you never
did come to trial, did you? Hezra clan and Fong tribe
wouldn't let that happen. Private settlement in the
med school offices, records sealed."

«How — did you find out?" Alpha gasped. He was
very close to her now, his voice the subtlest vibration of
sound from lips that almost brushed her cheek. The
raw power of his will and his anger wrapped about
her. She felt weak from the spine out. His smile made

her shiver.

"That's my little secret," he told her, still smiling. His
face and gestures might have been those of a
courtship; Alpha realized that the others in the room
might imagine they were flirting. That was a relief.
Anything was preferable to having her humiliation
made public before these people who were to be her
constant companions for the next two weeks—having
them see her as the disgraced failure she was, instead
of the successful young researcher with a social con-
science she pretended to be. "You were lucky to get off
with five years of community service on Bahati,
weren't you?" Polyon commented, stroking her cheek
with his free hand. "A commoner would have been
doing time. Hard time. Who knows, gorgeous, you
might even have wound up on Shemali — getting a
chance to check out Ganglicide at first hand, so to
speak. Wouldn't our innocent litde friends love to hear

the story?"

But he was still speaking in a low voice, head partial-
ly turned away from Fassa and Blaize and Darnell,

52

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

who had grouped together in the far corner of the
cabin and were pretending deep interest in a round of
SPACED OUT.

"What—do you want?"

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

Blindly, drowning in a sea of air that somehow gave
her nothing to breathe, Alpha turned her face up to
meet Polyon's parted lips.

"Not that sort of cooperation," Polyon told her,
laughing gently, "not yet," His eyes measured her with
a cold glance that made her more afraid than ever —
and, somehow, more excited too. "Maybe later, if
you're a good girl. You were too uppity before, you
know that, Alpha? Now you're the way I like my
women. Quiet. And respectful. Stay that way, and we
won't have to discuss any—ah—painful subjects with
the others. Come with me and follow my lead. That's
all I expect of you — for now."

Submissive, head bowed, Alpha drifted towards the
three SPACED OUT gamers in Polyon's wake. They
were still pretending to be totally involved in the game,
but she felt sure they had avidly witnessed her
humiliation.

She would pay them back. That was certain, she
vowed. Fassa, Darnell, Blaize — they would all learn
not to laugh at her.

She didn't even think of retaliating against Polyon.

/

Nancia quietly transferred the recording of the
scene she'd just witnessed to an offline storage hedron.
Having those bits in her system made her feel... dirty.
As if she were somehow implicated in Polyon's sadistic
games.

Perhaps she should have interfered. But how ...
and why? Alpha was just as bad as Polyon, worse even,
to judge from what he'd revealed of her unauthorized

PARTNERSHIP

medical experiments. The two of them deserved each
other. Blaize was the only one of the bunch she would
care to talk to. The litde redhead reminded her of Flix
__- and unlike the others, he didn't seem to have any-
thing wrong with him that a few years away from
family pressures wouldn't cure.

And what, exactly, Tvitt you say if you do interrupt? Nan-
cia couldn't answer her own question. She was a
Courier Service Ship, not a diplomat! She wasn't sup-
posed to interfere with her passengers! She should
have had a brawn on board — an experienced brawn —
to break up nasty scenes like the one she'd just wit-
nessed, to keep these spoiled young passengers happy
and away from one another's throats for the two weeks
of the trip. It's not fair! Not on my very first voyage!

But there was nobody to hear her plaint. They were
still five days away from Singularity and the decom-
position into Vega subspace.

At least I can keep evidence recordings going, Nancia
thought grimly. If one of the little brats drives another over
the edge, there'll be plenty ofdatahedra to show what hap-
pened. But at the moment, the five passengers seemed
to be getting along reasonably well. Perhaps his sadis-
tic games with Alpha had momentarily satiated
Polyon's need for command and control; he had taken
a play icon and seemed absorbed in that silly role-play-
ing game. Nancia relaxed . . . but she kept her
datacorders running.

•CHAPTER FOUR

"Why can't I get past the Wingdrake of Wisdom?"
Darnell griped. He had chosen Bonecrush again, but
his mighty-thewed play icon was backed into a corner
where a winged serpent hissed menacingly at him
every time he tried to move.

"You should have bought some intelligence for
Bonecrush at the Little Shop of Spiritual Enlighten-
ment," Polyon commented. His fingers flicked
carelessly at the screen as he spoke, sending Thingber-
ry the Martian Mage to spin an apparently pointless
web in the night sky above Asteroid 66.

"I didn't know you could buy intelligence." DarneU's
lower lip protruded in a definite pout "That wasn't in
the rule book."

"A lot of things aren't in the rule book," Polyon said,
"including most of what you need to survive. And in-
formation is always for sale... if you know the right
price. Anything from the secrets of Singularity to the
origins of planet names."

"Oh. Encyclopedias. Libraries, Anybody can buy the
Galactic Datasource on fast-hedra," Darnell whined.
"But who has time to read all that crud?"

"The price of some kinds of information," Polyon
said, "is more than the cost of a book and the time to
read it. I could print out the rules of Singularity math
for you, but you haven't paid the price of under-
standing it — the years of space transformation
algebra and the intelligence to move the theories into
multiple dimensions."

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

PARTNERSHIP

55

compjjcated. Even I know Baykowski's Theorem."

"A continuum C is said to be locally shrinkable in M
if and only if, for each epsilon greater than zero and
each open set D containing C, there is a homeomor-
phism h of M onto M which takes C onto a set of
diameter less than epsilon and which is the identity on
M ___ D," Polyon recited rapidly. "And it's not a
theorem, it's a definition."

Nancia quietly followed the discussion with mild in-
terest. The mathematics of Singularity was nothing
new to her, but at least when her brat passengers were
talking mathematics they weren't trying to drive each
other crazy. And she was impressed that Polyon had
retained enough Singularity theory to be able to recite
Baykowski's Definition from memory; common gossip
among the brainships in training was that no
softperson could really understand multidimensional
decompositions.

"The real basis for decom theory," Polyon lectured
his audience, "is what follows that definition. Namely,
Zerlion's Lemma: that our universe can be considered
as a collection of locally shrinkable continua each con-
taining at least one non-degenerating element."

Fassa del Parma pouted and jabbed her play icon
across the display screen in a series of short, jerky moves.
"Very useful information, I'm sure," she said in a sarcas-
tic voice, "but do the rest of us have to pay the price of
listening to it? All this theoretical mathematics makes my
head hurt And it's not as if it were good for anything, like
stress analysis or materials testing."

"It's good for getting us to the Nyota system in two
weeks instead of six months, my dove," Polyon told
her. "And it's really quite simple. In layman's terms,
Singularity theory just shows us how to decompose
two widely separated subspace areas into a sequence
of compacted dimensionalities sharing one non-
degenerating element. When the subspaces become

56

Anm McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

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57

singular they will appear to intersect at that element —.
and when we expand from the decomposition, pon|
out of Central subspace and into Vega space we go."

Nancia felt grateful that she'd resisted her impulse
to join in the conversation. Her Lab Schools classmates
had been right about softpersons. Polyon knew all the
right words for Singularity mathematics, but he'd got-
ten the basic theory hopelessly scrambled. And clearly
he didn't understand the computational problems un-
derlying that theory. Pure topological theory might
prove the existence of a decomposition series, but ac-
tually forcing a ship through that series required
massive linear programming optimizations, all per-
formed in realtime with no second chances for
mistakes. No wonder softpersons weren't trusted to
pilot a ship through Singularity!

"I agree with you," Alpha told Fassa. "Bo-ring. Even
the history of Nyota is better than studying
mathematics."

"You'd think so, of course," Fassa said, "seeing that it
was discovered and named by your people." The small
grin on her face told Nancia that this was a jab of some
sort at Alpha. Hastily she scanned her data notes on the
Nyota system, but nothing there explained why the
Hezra-Fong family should take a particular interest in it

"Swahili is a slave language," Alpha said haughtily.
"It has nothing to do with the Fong tribe. My people
come from the other side of the continent — and we
were never enslaved!"

"Will somebody give me a map of this conversa-
tion?" Darnell said plaintively. "I'm more lost than I
was during Polyon's math lecture."

"This particular information," Alpha told him, "is
free." She drew herself up to her full height, several
inches taller than Fassa, and favored the top of her
sleek, dark head with a withering glare, "The system
we're going to was discovered by a Black descendant of

the American slaves. In a burst of misguided en-
thusiasm, he decided to give the star and all the planets
names from an African language. Unfortunately, he
was so poorly educated that the only such language he
knew was Swahili, a trade language spread along the
east coast of Africa by Arab slavers. He called the sun
Nyota ya Jaha — Lucky Star. The planets' names are
fairly accurate descriptions, too. Bahati means For-
tune, and it's a reasonably decent place to live —
green, mild climate, lots of nice scenery that stays put.
Shemali means North Wind."

polyon groaned appreciatively. "I know. Unlike
some of us, I did read up on my destination. The place
is called North Wind because that's what you get for
thirteen months out of the year."

"Thirteen months you have in the year? Oh — I get
it! Longer rotation period, right?" Darnell beamed
with pride at his own cleverness.

"Shorter, as it happens," Polyon said. His voice
sounded remarkably hollow. "Shemali has a year of
three hundred days, divided into ten months for con-
venience. I was being sarcastic about the feet that there
is no good season."

"Never mind," Alpha told him almost kindly, "it's bet-
ter than Angalia. Actually the full name is Angalia! with
an exclamation point atthe end. Itmeans Watch out!"
"Dare I ask what that means?" Blaize inquired.
"It means," Alpha told him, "that the scenery — un-
like that of Bahati—doesn't stay put."

Blaize and Polyon stared at one another, briefly

companions in misery.

Polyon was the first to recover himself. "Oh, well,"
he said, turning back to the game screen, "you see the
value of information, Darnell — and the fact that it
isn't always in the Galactic Datasource. And some of
the information that isn't — ah — publicly available —
is the most valuable of all." With delicate gestures he

58

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

nudged the joyball while the fingers of his left hand
tapped out codes to enlarge and strengthen
Thingberry's magical net. "You need to think of ways
to trade for that kind of information. For instance
your shipping company — such as it is — could offer
discreet transport for parcels that don't get on the cargo
list, or that go by a slightly misleading name—in some
cases, disinformation or the lack of information is as
valuable as actual data."

"Who'd want that?" Darnell objected. "And who
cares, anyway? Can't we just play the game?"

Polyon favored him with a dazzling smile. "Dear
boy, this is the game — and a far more rewarding one
than SPACED OUT. Why, I can think of any number of
people who might want a — suitably discreet — cargo
carrier service. Myself, for starters."

"Why you?"

"Let's just say that not all the metachips going off
Shemali are going to be in the SUM rationing board's
records," Polyon said.

"So? What's it worth to me to oblige you?"

"I could pay you back with Net contacts. I can work the
Net like no hacker since the days of the first virus
breeders. It's an unsecured hedron to me. How soon
could you rebuild OG Shipping if you knew ahead of
time about every big contract about to be let in Vega sub-
space ... and what your opponents' sealed bids were?"

DarnelFs pout vanished to be replaced by a look of
stunned calculation. "I could be rich again in five years!"

"But not, I fancy, as rich as I could be from selling
metachips," Polyon murmured. Thingberry's web
glistened on the screen above him, strings of jeweled
fight looping and floating above the play icons on the
surface of Asteroid 66. "What would you say to a
friendly wager? The five of us to meet and compare
notes, once a year — to see how we're each doing at
making lemonade out of the lemons of assignments

PARTNERSHIP	59

our dear families have landed us with? Winner to take
a twenty-five percent share in each of the losers'
operations — business, goods, or cold credits?"

*	do we decide to stop and make the final

evaluation?" DarneU asked.
"Five years — that's the end of most of our tours of

duty, isn't it?"

"You know it is," said Alpha quickly. "Standard tour.
And," she went on under Polyon's firm gaze, " I think it's a
fliarvelous idea. I've got my own plans, you know."

"What?" Darnell demanded.

Alpha gave him a slow, lazy smile. "Wouldn't you

like to know?"

"I'm sure we would all like to know," Polyon put in.
Adeft twist of the joyball set Thingberry's jeweled web
spinning over the top half of the display screen. "Will
you enlighten them, Alpha, or shall I — er — con-
tribute my own scraps of information?" He crooked
his finger, beckoning to her, and she moved closer to
his control chair.

"Nothing much," Alpha said. "But . . . Summerlands is
a double clinic. One side for the paying customers —
mostly VIPs — and one side for charity cases, to improve
their SUM rating. I've got some ideas for an improve-
ment on Blissto — something we can give addicts in
controlled doses. They won't get locked into a cycle of
craving and ever-increasing hits of street drugs."

"Hey, / like Blissto," Darnell protested, "and I don't
get into that cycle."

"Good," Alpha told him. "You're not an addictive per-
sonality. Some people aren't that lucky. You've seen
Blissed-Out cases? Big enough doses, over a long
enough period of time, until their nervous systems look
like shredded wheat? My version won't do that. We'll be
able to take Blissed-Out cases out of the hospital and send
them out to do useful work as long as they stay on their
meds. And I'm the one who did all the preliminary

60

Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

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61

design work on this drug. Actually, it was a side-effect of
my work on — well, there's no need to discuss all the
boring details of my research," she concluded with a
sidelong glance at Polyon. "What matters is that I've got
the formulas and all the lab notes on hedra."

"But won't Central Meds hold the patent, if you did
the work there?"

"When—and if— it's patented," Alpha agreed.

"And you can't sell it until it's passed the trials and
been patented — so it's no good to you!"

Alpha's eyes met Polyon's over Darnell's head.
"Quite true," she agreed gravely, "but I think I may
find a way to profit from the situation anyway."

"What about you, Fassa?" Polyon asked. The girl
had been very quiet since her jab about the slave
names of the Nyota system. "You going to take this
boondocks construction company Daddy handed you
lying down?" His tone invested the question with a
wealth of obscene possibilities.

"Double profit on every job," Fassa announced
calmly. "I've got a degree in accounting. I can fix the
books in ways an auditor will never catch."

Darnell whistled appreciatively. "But if you are
caught — "

Fassa coiled herself on the other side of Polyon's
chair in a series of languorous, sinuous movements
that drew all eyes to her. "I think," she said dreamily,
"that I can distract any auditors who may think about
checking the books. Or any building inspectors who
need to sign off on materials quality." Her slow,
dreamy smile promised a world of secret delights.
"There's a lot of money in construction ... if you go
about it the right way."

The four of them made a tight grouping now:
Polyon in the control chair, Darnell standing behind
him, Fassa and Alpha seated on either side of him.
Four pairs of eyes gazed expectantly at Blaize.

"Well," he said, swallowed, and started over again.
«*^h — PTA doesn't offer quite as much scope for
creativity as the rest of your outfits, does it now?"

"You're with us or against us," said Polyon. "Which
is it to be, little cousin?"
"Ah —neutrality?"

"Not good enough." Polyon glanced around at the
other three. "He's heard our plans. If he doesn't join
us, he could have some idea of informing...."

Alpha leaned forward, smiling sweetly. Her teeth
looked long and very white against her dark skin. "Oh,
you wouldn't do that, would you, Blaize dear?"

"I wouldn't even think about it," Darnell put in, tap-
ping one pudgy fist against his open palm.

Fassa licked her lips and smiled like a child anticipat-
ing a treat. "This could be interesting" she murmured
to no one in particular.

Blaize glanced around the circle of faces, then looked
towards Nancia's titanium column. She kept her silence.
Nothing had actually happened yet; if these brats at-
tempted violence, she could stop it in seconds with a flood
of sleepgas. And Blaize knew that as well as she did. Nan-
cia saw no reason to give up her anonymity just to
reassure him. He'd been brave enough when he was
picking on Polyon alone; why, for heaven's sake, couldn't
he stand up to the rest of them?

"But then, Blaize never did have the guts to do
something as decisive as telling" Polyon dismissed his
cousin with a brief nod. "We'll let him think it over...
all the way to Angalia. It'll be a long couple of weeks,
little cousin, with nobody to talk to. And a much longer
five years on Angalia. Hope you enjoy life among the
veggie-heads. 1 shouldn't think anybody else in the
Nyota system will have much to do with you." He
swiveled to face the SPACED OUT display, and the other
three turned with him.

"Oh — don't leap to assumptions so fast. I'm with

62

AnmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball

you, definitely with," Blaize babbled. "There are pos-
sibilities — I just haven't had time to think them over
yet The coryrium mine, for instance — it hasn't been
properly developed — maybe I could get a part inter-
est in that. And PTA makes regular food drops to
Angalia, who's to say how much of the food gets dis-
tributed to the natives and how much gets
transshipped to some place that can pay for it..." He
spread his hands and shrugged jerkily. "I'll think of
something. You'll see. I'll do as well as any of you!"

Polyon nodded again. His fist closed over the joyball
and Thingberry's jeweled web spiraled down to
enclose Asteroidland, trapping the others' play icons
in a tissue of glittering strands. "Done, then. Five of us
together. Here, we'd better each have a record." He
drew a handful of minihedra from the pocket of his
Academy   grays   and   dropped   them   into   the
datareader. One by one, Alpha, Fassa, Darnell and
Blaize identified themselves by hand and retina print
and spoke aloud the terms and conditions of the wager
they'd agreed to. Polyon retrieved the minihedra after
the recording was over and handed one faceted black
polyhedron to each of them, keeping the last for him-
self "Better store them someplace safe," he suggested.
Fassa clipped her minihedron inside a silver wire
cage that hung from her charm bracelet among tin-
kling bells and glittering bits of carved prismawood.
She alone seemed in no particular hurry to escape
Polyon's influence; while the others jostled to reach
the exit door, Fassa fiddled with her charm bracelet
and tried out the shining black minihedron in various
places, as if her only concern was to see where it would
show to best advantage.

As Alpha, Darnell and Blaize left the central cabin,
Nancia wondered whether Polyon's quick actions and
mesmerizing personality had made them forget that
he alone, of the five, had not recorded his intentions

PARTNERSHIP

63

on the minihedra. Or were they simply afraid to chal-

lenge him?

that it mattered. She had the entire scene

recorded. From several angles.

"You'll see," Blaize repeated over his shoulder as he
left. TH do better than any of you."

"Small time, little man," Alpha sneered on her way
down the corridor, "small-time plans for a small per-
son. You'll be the loser, but who cares? Somebody has to

lose."

"She's wrong, you know," Polyon commented to
Fassa. "Four of you have to lose. There'll be only one
winner in this game." And he too left, twiddling his
black minihedron between two fingers and humming
quietly to himself.

Fassa

The gleaming black surfaces of the minihedron
flashed in the central cabin lights as Fassa turned her
arm this way and diat, admiring the effect of the stark
blackness against the jumble of silver and prismawood
trinkets. The hedron was as black as Fassa's own sleek
hair and tip-tilted eyes, an admirable contrast to the
whiteness of her creamed and pampered skin. In its
hard glossy perfection she saw a miniature of her-
self. . . beautiful, impenetrable . . .

A shell full of dangerous secrets,

Fassa stared at the mirror-smooth surfaces of the
minihedron and saw her face reflected and distorted in
half a dozen directions at once, a shattered self looking
out, trapped in the black mirrors that distorted her
lovely features to a mask of pain and a silent scream.

No! That's not me — that can't be me. She dropped her
arm; the jingling silver bells on the bracelet tinkled a
single discordant peal. Pushing off from the strange
titanium column that wasted so much cabin space, Fassa
floated into a corner between display screens and a

64

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

storage locker. "Blank screens," she ordered the ship.

The dazzling display of SPACED OUT graphics faded
away, to be replaced by a black emptiness like the sur-
faces of the minihedron. Fassa stared into the flat
screen, lips parted, until the reflection of her own
beauty reassured her. Yes, she was still as lovely as
she'd always believed. The distorted reflections from
the minihedron had been an illusion like the dreams
that troubled her sleep, dreams in which her lovely
face and perfect body peeled away to reveal the
shrunken, miserable creature underneath.

Reassured, she stroked the charm bracelet with two
fingers until she touched the sharp faceted surface of
the minihedron. I keep my secrets, avid you keep yours, little
sister. As long as she had the shield of her perfect
beauty between herself and the world, Fassa felt safe.
Nobody could see beyond that to the worthless thing
inside. Very few tried; they were all too mesmerized by
the outer facade. Men were rutting fools, and they
deserved no better than to have their own folly turned
back on them. If she could use their desire for her to
enrich herself, so much the better. Gods knew her
beauty had cost her too much in the pastl

Mama, mama, make him stop, wailed a child's voice
from the recesses of her mind. Fassa laughed sourly at
the memory of that folly. How old had she been then?
Eight, nine? Young enough to think her mother could
stand up to a man like Faul del Parma y Polo, could
make him give up anything he really wanted — like his
daughter. Mama had closed her eyes and turned her
head away. She didn't want to know what Faul was
doing to their lovely little girl.

Ugly little girl. Dirty little girl, whispered another of
the voices.

All the same, it had been Mama who stopped it, in a
way. Too late, but still — her spectacular and public
suicide had ended Paul's private games with his

PARTNERSHIP

65

daughter. Jumping from the forty-second story bal-
cony, Mama had shattered herself on the terraces of
the Regis Galactic Hotel in the middle of Faul del
Parma's annual company extravaganza, the oneatt
the gossipbyters attended. And the news and gossip
and rumor and innuendo that surrounded the suicide
of del Parma's wife had been splashed all over the
newsbeams for weeks thereafter. Why should she kill
herself? Faul del Parma could give a woman every--
thing. There was no history of mental instability. And
everyone knew Faul del Parma never so much as
looked at another woman, he only cared for his wife—
well, one didn't hear so much about the wife, did one?
A homebody type. But he went everywhere with that
lovely little daughter at his side, only thirteen but a
heartbreaker in the making....

It occurred to a dozen gossipbyters at once that the
daughter should be interviewed. And that had stopped
it. Faul del Parma had whisked his daughter into a
very exclusive, very private boarding school where no
gossipbyters could find her and ask inconvenient
questions.

Fassa twisted the minihedron on its clasp. Tkankyou,
Mama. Even now, six years later, the story of the del
Parma wife's suicide still made an occasional gossip-
byte. Even now, Faul del Parma didn't want to risk
having Fassa anywhere near him. So now that she was
graduated from the expensive, exclusive school, he'd
found a position for her with the least of his com-
panies, Polo Construction, based on a planet in Vega
subspace. And Fassa had practiced her bargaining
skills for the first time.

"I'll take it. But not as your subordinate. Make over
Polo Construction to me, and I'll go out to Bahati and
manage the company and never trouble you again.
Call it a graduation present."

Call it a bribe for going into exile, Fassa thought, twist-

66

Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Batt

ing the minihedron back and forth until the sharp angles
of the facets bit into her thumb and forefinger. Because
when Paul had balked at giving her complete ownership
of the company, Fassa had leaned elegantly on his desk
and speculated aloud about her chances of getting a posi-
tion with one of the major newsbeamers. '"They're aU very
interested in me," she teased her father.

"Interested in picking up sleazy gossip about our
family," Faul snapped. "They've no interest in you for
your own abilities."

Fassa smoothed her gleaming black hair back from
her face. "Some of my abilities are very interesting," she
told him. She let her voice drop down into the husky
lower register that seemed to produce such an effect
on her male teachers. "And the del Parma y Polo family
is always news. I bet some of the major newsbeam com-
panies would just love to serialize a book by me. I could
tell them all the secrets I learned from my father...."

"All right. It's yours!" Faul del Parma y Polo slapped his
hand on the palmscanner beside his deskcomp, jabbed
the hardcopy pad with his free thumb and ejected the
finished minihedron with a glare for his daughter.

"You won't object if I scan it first?"

"Use a public scanner. You can't be sure of mine," Faul
pointed out "I might have programmed it to give a false
readout You'd better start thinking smarter if you want
to make a success of this business, Fassa. But don't worry
—it's all there. Ownership transfer and my palmprint to
back it up. I wouldn't cheat you. I don't want you coming
back to this office."

"Don't you, Daddy dear?" Fassa twisted forward over
the desk, sinuous and flowing in her formfitting
sheath of Rigellian spiderspin. She leaned dose
enough to let Faul breathe in the warmth and subde
perfume of her skin... and was rewarded by a flash of
pain and desire in his eyes.

"Ta-ta, Daddy dearest." She slid from the desk and

PARTNERSHIP	67

clasped the minihedron inside a coryciurn heart that
dangled from her charm bracelet "See you around...
Idon't think."

"I wonder," Faul said hoarsely, "how many of those
Htde charms contain men's hearts and souls."

"Not many — yet." Fassa paused at the door and
gave him a sparkling smile. "I'm starting the collection
with you."

Now, three days out from Central, she had already
added a second hedron to the collection. Fassa jingled
the charm bracelet reflectively. Each of the sparkling
bits of jewelry was a clasp or a cage or an empty locket,
waiting to receive some trinket. She'd collected the
charms over those lonely years at boarding school,
spending the lavish birthday and Christmas checks
from Faul on expensive custom-made baubles. One
for each time that Faul had come to her room at night
Only twenty-three hi all; strange, she thought, that
less than two dozen carefully chosen nights over a
period of four or five years could make you rot away
from the inside. Twenty-three shining jewels, each as
perfect and beautiful in its own way as Fassa was in
hers; each as empty inside as she was.

No, not any more. Two of them are filled. Fassa pushed
off from the wall with the tips of her fingers and floated
gently through the main cabin, twirling the charms
around her wrist Before she was done, she'd fill every
charm with something... appropriate.

Andthenwhat?

No answers to that, no conceivable end to the future
she'd mapped out for herself.

Blaize

The central cabin was empty; Polyon's buddies had
all slunk off to their cabins to think over their wager
and its probable consequences. Good. Blaize knew he
could perfecdy well have talked to Nancia from the

68

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

privacy ofhis own cabin, but somehow it seemed more
real to come here and speak directly to the titanium
column that contained her shell.

Besides, she wasn't answering him from the cabin.
He thought maybe she'd turned off the cabin sensors
to give her passengers privacy.

He cleared his throat tentatively. Now that he was
here, and not so confident of his welcome, it seemed
rather strange to be talking to the walls. Sort of thing
that got you shipped off for a nice rest in a place like
Summerlands Care, Inc. Blaize shivered. Not for him,
thank you. If he ever did need medical treatment, he'd
make sure to go to a clinic where that snake Alpha bint
Hezra-Fong vtasnot operating.

"Nancia? Can you hear me?"

The silence was as absolute as that of the empty,
black space outside the brainship's thin skin.

"I know you're listening," Blaize said desperately.
"Watching, too. You have to be. / wouldn't close my
eyes or turn my back on somebody like Cousin Polyon,
and I don't believe you'd risk letting him sneak into
your control cabin unobserved."

His wild gestures as he made the last statement al-
most overbalanced him in the ship's light grav field.
He grabbed at a handrail and made a dancer's turn
into the center of the cabin, recovering from the near-
stumble as gracefully as a cat correcting a mis-timed
jump. Nancia's titanium column coruscated in rain-
bow reflections of the cabin lights, sparkling and
dancing around him. And she did not reply.

"Look, I know what you're thinking, but it's not like
that. Really." Blaize grasped a chair back to steady
himself "I mean, what could I do? Did you expect me
to call them all criminals and wrap myself in my own
integrity? They could've spaced me before we got to
Angalia, and called it an unfortunate accident"

Silence.

PARTNERSHIP

69

"All right," Blaize conceded. "They probably
wouldn't have spaced me. Especially if I told them you
were a brainship and could bear witness against
them."

Silence.

This was worse than the time he'd been locked in his
room for a month.

"But that would have meant telling on you," Blaize
pointed out, "and you didn't really want them to know
you've been listening, did you?"

Silence.

"Well, what did you expect me to do, anyway?
They'd all have hated me." Blaize's voice cracked.
"Isn't it bad enough I have to go out to Angalia and
spend the next five years handing out PTA boxes to
some walking veggies? Do I have to start by losing my
only friends in the whole star system?"

Nancia answered at last. "They are not your friends,
and you know it."

Blaize shrugged. "Best imitations I've got. Look,
I've spent my whole life being the family black sheep,
the one nobody bothers with, the one nobody likes
much, nobody respects. Can you blame me for want-
ing to change that? Just once in my life I want to
belong"

"You do," Nancia told him. "As far as I'm concerned,
you do indeed belong with the rest of this amoral brat-
pack. And as for respect,.. you can add me to the list
of people who don't respect you. I don't believe you
ran away from home three times, either. You haven't
got the gumption to cross the street without somebody
holding your hand."

"I did so!"

Silence.

"Once, anyway. And if I had run away again, it
would've been just like I said. They'd have been wait-
ing for me at the Academy. So what was the point? And

70

Arme McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

what difference does it make? Worked out the same as
if I'd actually done it, didn't it?"

Silence.

filaize decided to go back to his cabin before some-
body drifted in here and caught him talking to the
walls.

"One more thing," he called as he pushed off for the
return. "I did win that scholarship. Under the name of
Blaize Docem. You can check Academy records on
that!"

Nancia maintained her silence. All the way to
Angalia.

CHAPTER FIVE

Singularity

The neighborhood of the brainship collapsed inward
on itself, spiraling down tornado-like to the Singularity
point where Central Worlds subspace could momentari-
ly be defined as intersecting Vega subspace. The ship's
metachip-augmented parallel processors solved and op-
timized the set of equations represented in a
thousand-square matrix of subspace points, dropped
out of that subspace into Decomposition, rode the col-
lapsing funnel of spaces with a new optimization
problem to choose and resolve every tenth of a second.
To Nancia, Singularity was how she envisioned the an-
cient Earth sport called "surfing"; balanced at the
non-degrading point where decomposing subspaces
met, she recognized and evaluated local paths so quickly
that the massive optimization problems blurred together
into a sense of skimming over a wave that was alwaysjust
about to crash beneath her.

The Singularity field test she'd taken at the
Academy had been simpler than this. There, she'd had
to deal with only one set of parallel equations; here,
the sequence of equations and diminishing subspaces
streamed past her in an incessant flow. It was chal-
lenge, danger, joy: it was what she had been trained
for. She swept over matrices of data and guided them
to the ship's processors, choosing and resolving the
ever-changing paths to Singularity with an athlete's
single-minded concentration.

The same newsbeam that showed Nancia the sport
of "surfing" had also had a section on a diving com-

72

Ante McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

\

PARTNERSHIP

73

petition. The dean lines of the divers' movements, the
seconds during which they hurtled through the air as
though they could give their bodies the lift and
freedom of brainships, fascinated Nancia; she'd
viewed the beam over a dozen times, marveling at
what softpersons would go through for a few seconds
of physical freedom. "Didja see how he ripped that
dive!" the newsbyter had jabbered after one athlete's
performance, then explaining that the term referred
to the clean way the diver had entered the water
without a single splash.

Nancia ripped a perfect dive through Singularity
and came out into Vega subspace.

For her passengers, with nothing to do during Sin-
gularity and no way to filter the barrage of sensory
data, the transition was markedly less pleasant. The
few seconds of decomposition and reformation
seemed like hours of wading through air gone viscous,
picking their way among shapes distorted out of all
recognition, in a place where colors hummed on the
air and light bent around corners.

They gasped with relief when the ship broke
through into normal space again.

Nancia watched them staggering and rubbing their
eyes and ears. She was rather surprised by the inten-
sity of their reactions; the trainer who'd accompanied
her through her Singularity test had not seemed to be
bothered by the few seconds of sensory distortion. Per-
haps practice made a difference to how softpersons
took Decomposition. Polyon's first words after the
return to normal space suggested this might be the
case.

"Well, mes enfants" said Polyon, "how did you like
your first Decomposition? It's been so long since my
first training flights that I've forgotten how it affects
newcomers."

"Once is enough," said Darnell with feeling. "If I

ever go home again, I'll take the six months of travel by
FTL. Or better yet, I'll walk."

Fassa nodded vigorous agreement, then winced as if
she wished she hadn't moved her head so soon.

"Have a Blissto," Alpha offered. "Works on hang-
overs — ought to help with Singularity headaches
too."

Darnell snatched the small blue pills out of her hand
and downed six of them in a single desperate gulp.
Fassa started to shake her head and then obviously
thought better of it. She waved Alpha's hand away
with a languid gesture. "Never touch drugs."

"More fool you," said Alpha. "I know more about
side effects than any of you, and I promise you a few
blues won't do any harm. Just wish I'd thought of it
before we entered Singularity. Blaize?"

"Excellent idea," Blaize said hollowly, accepting the
offered pills. Unlike Darnell, he made his way to the
far side of the cabin and found a half-empty bottle of
Stemerald to help him choke down the pills. "Almost as
good an idea as walking. Don't think I ever really ap-
preciated Earth before." His skin was pale green under
the spattering of freckles.

Polyon chuckled. "May have been a blessing in dis-
guise that you weren't allowed to go in for brawn
training, little one. Apparently you haven't die stomach
for it. Now when you imagine combining frequent
Decom hops with Mil Spec meals of boiled synthoprot
and anonymous vitacaps that all smell like cabbage—"

Fassa clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for
the door. Darnell swallowed convulsively two or three
times. "Would you mind very much not mentioning
food just now?" His last words were slurred and
relaxed; the Blissto was already taking effect.

"At least not till I've had my own blues," Alpha
added, pouring a handful of the shiny blue pills down
her throat.

74

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

Fassa didn't quite make it to the privacy of her cabin.
Silendy, Nancia extruded probes that captured and
vaporized the resulting mess. She activated the release
latch on Fassa's cabin door so that it irised open in
front of the girl.

"T-thank you," Fassa hiccuped into the wet doth
Nantia's second probe held out. "I mean — I know
you're just a droneship, so this is silly, but—oh, thank
you anyway." She collapsed on her bunk, a huddle of
misery. Nancia closed down the cabin sensors, trans-
mitted a shut command to the door iris, and left Fassa
to recover on her own. At least, she thought, the girl
had the strength of character to abstain from mind-
rotting drugs. And the manners to thank whoever
helped her, even a supposedly inanimate droneship.
Her stated intention of using sex to get concessions for
her company was appalling, as were her manners in
general; but maybe she was a shade less repellent than
the rest of Nantia's young passengers.

They had completely ignored Fassa's distress, Nan-
cia noted. Polyon was playing a solitaire round of
SPACED OUT and the other three were giggling over a
new bottle of Stemerald. Nancia wondered uneasily
what the mix of stimulants and depressants was likely
to do to a softperson's nervous system — and what else
Alpha might have smuggled aboard. Maybe it had
been a mistake to turn off the cabin sensors; these
people didn't deserve privacy.

But then, what business was it of hers if they wanted
to drug themselves into a stupor? They'd be much
nicer that way, after all. Nancia herself could conceive
of nothing more horrible than voluntarily scrambling
one's synapses, but softpersons did, by all reports,
have very strange tastes.

Besides, they were much easier to put up with now
that they were too doped to do anything but giggle
softly and spill their Stemerald. Nanria's housekeep-

PARTNERSHIP

75

ing probes mopped up the green puddles on the cabin
floor; her passengers ignored the probes and their
cleanup activity, and she, as far as possible, ignored the
passengers.

Because now, at last, there was somebody else to talk

to-

Within seconds of her emergence from Singularity,
Nancia had initiated a tightbeam contact with Vega
Base. By the time Fassa was cleaned up in her cabin
and the odier passengers busy with their own peculiar
amusements, she had gone through the recognition
sequences and the official messages and was happily
chatting with Simeon, the managing brain of Vega
Base.

"So how did you like your first voyage?" Simeon
inquired.

"Singularity was..." Nancia couldn't find words for
it; instead she transmitted a short visual burst of colors
melting and expanding like soap bubbles, iridescent
trails of light joyously spiraling around one another. "I
can't wait to jump again."

Simeon chuckled. "You're one of the lucky ones,
then. From all I hear, it doesn't take everyone that
way."

"My passengers didn't seem to enjoy it much," Nan-
cia conceded, "but who cares?"

"Even brainships don't always get such a kick out of
Singularity,11 Simeon told her.

Nancia found that hard to believe, but she remem-
bered that Simeon was a stationary brain. Embedded
in die heart of Vega Base, his only experience of travel
would have been the jump that brought him here
from Laboratory Schools — as a passenger, like any
softperson. Perhaps she shouldn't go on about the joys
of Singularity to someone who could never experience
the thrill of managing his own jumps.

Besides, Simeon wanted to pursue something else.

76

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

"You don't seem to care much for your passengers'
comfort"

Again words foiled Nancia. She damped the colors
of her visual burst to a muddy swirl of greenish browns
and grays. "They're not... very nice people," she
finally answered. "Some of the things I overheard
them discussing on the trip... Simeon, could I ask you
a hypothetical question? Suppose a brainship hap-
pened to learn that some people had unethical plans.
Should she report them?"

"You mean, like a plot to murder somebody? Or
high treason—an attempt to overthrow Central?"

"Oh, goodness, no, nothing like thatl" How could
Simeon sound so calm while discussing such dreadful
things? "At least, I don't think — I mean, suppose they
weren't planning to hurt anybody, but what they
meant to do was morally wrong? Even illegal?" Alpha's
plans to profit from a drug that should have been
credited to Central Meds, Polyon's idea of creating a
black market in metachips — no, Nancia assured her-
self, her passengers were nasty and corrupt as all
get-out, but at least they weren't violent

"Hmm. And how might this brainship have found
out about her passengers' plans?"

"I — they thought she was a droneship," Nancia
said, "and they discussed everything quite freely. She
has datacordings of it all, too."

"I see." Simeon sounded quite disapproving, and for
a moment Nancia thought he shared her shock at her
passengers' plans. "And has it occurred to you, young
XN-935, that masquerading as a droneship in order to
eavesdrop on High Families' conversations is a form of
entrapment? In fact, given that the passengers in-
volved an High Families and very close to CenCom,
the act of taking surreptitious datacordings could even
be interpreted as treason. What if they'd been discuss-
ing vital military secrets?''

PARTNERSHIP

77

"But they weren't — I didn't — Listen, VS-895,
they're the criminals, not me!" Nancia shouted.

"Ouch."

Simeon's reply was almost an electronic whisper.

"Turn down your waveforms, would you? That
nearly jolted me out of my shell."

"Sorry." Nancia controlled her impulses and chan-
neled a clean, tight beam at Simeon. "But I don't see
what you're accusing me of."

"Me? Nothing, XN, I assure you. I'm just trying to
warn you that the courts may see things rather dif-
ferently. Now, I don't know what your young
passengers have been up to, and 1 don't particularly
care to know. You haven't seen much of the world yet,
or you'd realize that most softpersons have some way
or other to get a little extra out of every situation in
which they find themselves,"

Nancia mulled that over. "You mean — are they all
corrupt, then?"

Simeon chuckled. "Not all, Nancia, just enough to
make it interesting. You have to understand the poor
things. Short lifespan, limited to five senses, single-
channel comm system. I expect they feel cheated
when they compare themselves with us. And some of
them translate that feeling into trying to get extra
goodies for themselves."

Nancia had to agree that what Simeon said made a
lot of sense. She tried to emulate his attitude of lofty
detachment while she went about the business of land-
ing her passengers at their assigned stations in the
Nyota ya Jaha system. Since four of them still thought
her a droneship and the fifth knew she wasn't speak-
ing to him, it was easy enough to remain aloof.

Nancia made each planetary landfall an exercise in
split-second timing and perfect orbit-matching. It was
good practice, it kept her concentrating on her own
business and not on that of her passengers, and if the

78

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Baft

rapid maneuvers involved gave them a bumpy ride —
well, so much the worse. She took pride in making the
actual moments of touchdown as gentle as the landing
of a feather. At least, Bahati and Shemali went that way.
When she reached Angalia, she couldn't quite restrain
her impulse to give filaize a good shaking on the way
down. He was pale and sweating by the time they came
to a bumpy halt on the mesa that served as Angalia's
spacefield.

"That," he said as he collected his baggage, "was not
necessary."

Nancia preserved an icy silence — literally. Each
moment that Blaize delayed, she lowered her internal
temperature by several degrees.

"You could at least send a housekeeping probe to
help me with all this stuff," he complained, gripping a
box of novelhedra with fingers that were rapidly turn-
ing blue with cold.

"^fou're not my mother, you know," he said while lean-
ing on the button to the lift. "Nobody asked you to pass
judgment on my moral standards. Just like nobody asked
me if I wanted to come out to this godforsaken place."

"I guess it would be too much to expect anybody to
have a little sympathy," he said as the lift sped downward.

Nancia tilted the hatchway floor so that Blaize's
carefully stacked boxes of supplies tumbled out as
soon as he stepped onto the surface of Angalia.

"I know what you're thinking," he shouted from the
red dust of the mesa top, "but you're wrong about me!
You're all wrong! I'll show you!"

Nancia was pleased that her assignment made no
mention of collecting the previous PTA administrator,
the one whom Blaize had been sent to relieve. Ap-
parently, not being a member of the High Families, he
was expected to wait for the regularly scheduled PTA
transport rather than taking advantage of a brainship
for the Courier Service. Hard on him, Nancia

PARTNERSHIP

79

thought, but quite appropriate. She would proceed
directly to Vega 3.3, collect this stranded brawn, and
return to Central for a real assignment—with a brawn
of her own choosing. Thank goodness she was
through being used as a substitute droneship for the
convenience of the rich and powerful!

She discovered her error when she was halfway
from Nyota ya Jaha to Vega 3.

"What do you mean, another little errand?" she
blasted poor Simeon.

"Turn it down," came Simeon's low-intensity
reminder. "It wasn't my idea and you don't have to
shout like that Anyway, what difference does it make?
you were going to Vega 3 anyway."

"I was going to 3.3, not 4.2," Nancia pointed out,
and this reminded her of another grievance. "Why
can't these people give their suns and planets real
names, anyway? This Vega numbering system makes
me feel like a machine."

"They're great believers in efficiency," Simeon said.
"And logic. You'll see what I mean when you pair up
with Caleb."

"Hmph. You mean, when I transport the man—for
that's all I've agreed to. Efficiency!" Nancia grumbled.
"That's a new word for misuse of the Courier Service.
Why, it's a whole different solar system and an extra
stop to pick up this governor Thrixtopple and his
family, not to mention having to feed them all the way
back to Central. Time and fuel and ship's stores
wasted. My fuel belongs to the Courier Service," she
said, "and so does my time."

"What about your soul?" inquired Simeon, return-
ing to a normal-intensity beam. "Oh, never mind. I
keep forgetting how new you are, XN. Wait till you've
been around the subspaces a few hundred years.
You'll start understanding how the rules have to be
bent to accommodate people."

80

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaU

"You mean, to accommodate softpersons," Nancia
corrected proudly. "I've never asked for an exception
or a favor in my life, and I'm not about to start now."

Simeon's responding burst of discordant waves and
clashing colors was the electronic equivalent of an ex-
tremely rude word. "I can see why Psych thought you
and Caleb would be a good match," he said. Infuriat-
ingly, he shut down transmissions on that comment,
leaving Nancia to wonder all the way to Vega 3.3. Why
did Psych see fit to match her with a brawn whose
major accomplishment so far had been the loss of his
first brainship? Was there something wrong in her
profile, some instability that made it appropriate to
assign her an incompetent brawn? This Caleb soft-
person was probably going to be stuck doing
interplanetary hops and minor errands—like picking
up Governor Thrixtopple—for the rest of his Service.
And Central Psych wanted to stick her with him and his
flawed record! It wasn't/air. Nancia brooded about it
all the way to Vega 3.3.

Her first sight of Caleb did nothing to restore her
confidence in this assignment. Courier Service records
said that he was only twenty-eight — young for a
softperson — but he walked slowly and carefully, as if
he were already old and tired. His Service uniform
looked as if it had been designed for a larger man; the
tunic hung loosely from broad but bony shoulders, the
trousers flapped about his shins. Short, scraumy and
sour-faced, Nancia mentally catalogued as he made his
halting way up the stairs. And why couldn't he use the toft,
if he's too out of shape to walk up one/light of stairs?

His greeting to her was correct but lifeless. Nancia
responded in the same tone. Listlessly, they went
through the Service formulas until Nancia displayed
the orders beamed from Vega Base.

Caleb exploded. "Detouring to pick up that lard-
bottomed junketer and his family? That's not a Courier

PARTNERSHIP

81

Service job. Why can't Thrixtopple wait for the next
scheduled passenger transport Uke anyone else?"

Nancia sent a ripple of muddy brown rings across
the screen where their orders were displayed.
"Nobody told me anything," she responded verbally
for Caleb's benefit. "Stop here, go there, take these
kids to the Nyota system, collect a stranded brawn on
Vega 3.3, pick up the governor of 4.2 and take him
back to Central. / don't know why he rates a special
deal; he's not even High Families."

"No, but he's been working this subspace for a long
time," Caleb told her. "Probably has more pull than
half a dozen empty-headed aristos with their double-
barreled names."

"We are not all," Nancia said, "empty-headed. Per-
haps you failed to read your orders in detail?" She
flashed her full name on the screen to get his attention.

"Oh, well, you can't help your birth," Caleb said ab-
sent-mindedly, "and I suppose a good Lab Schools
training will make up for a lot. Are you ready for lift-
off? We can't waste time gossiping if we have to fit this
extra stop into the itinerary."

I give him ten minutes after we reach Central to get himself
and his bags off me and make room for a brawn with some
manners, Nancia vowed to herself as she drove her en-
gines through a harder and faster takeoff than she
would normally have imposed on a softperson pas-
senger. No, that's too generous. Five minutes.

She felt slighdy regretful when she peeked through
Caleb's cabin sensors and saw him struggling to sit up
after the takeoff, white and shaken. But she wasn't
sorry enough to change her basic position on brawn
assignments.

"There's one thing we should have settled before
liftoff," she announced without preamble.

"Yes?" Caleb didn't bother turning his head to look
at the cabin speaker. Of course, he was an experienced

82

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

— if incompetent — brawn; he would know that she
would be able to pick up his words from any direction.
Still, Nancia felt vaguely ruffled — as if she were being
ignored even as he replied to her.

"Transporting you back to Central Worlds is my offi-
cial assignment, and I cannot refuse it. But I do not
wish you to construe this as formal acceptance of you
as my brawn. I have no intention of waiving my rights
to free choice of my own brawn just because this match
is convenient for Central."

Now what ailed the man? He had just begun to
regain some color after the high-G lift-off; now his face
was drained again, still as a mask — or a corpse. Nan-
cia began to wonder if this brawn would live to see
Central. If he wasn't fit enough to make the journey, some-
body should have warned me.

"Of course," said Caleb in a voice so level and
drained of meaning that it could have issued from any
housekeeping drone, "no one would expect you to
waive that right. Particularly for me." He turned his
head and for the first time looked direcdy at the sensor.
"Shut down sensors to this cabin, please, XN. I wish to
rest In privacy," he emphasized. He lay down again
with one arm flung over his face. After a moment he
rolled over and lay facedown on the bunk, as if he
didn't trust Nancia not to peek at him.

"Simeon? Shellcrack, Simeon, I know you're pick-
ing up my beams. TALK TO ME!"

"You're an excessively demanding young thing,
XN-935, and you're shouting again."

"Sorry." Nancia was so glad to have got some
response from the Vega Base brain that she immedi-
ately lowered the intensity of her beam to match
Simeon's almost inaudible burst. "Simeon, I need to
know about this brawn they've saddled me with."

"So scan the newsbeam files."

PARTNERSHIP

83

"I did. There's nothing in them. Not what I need to
know, anyway." The files had been enlightening in
their own way, with their lurid stories of a ship and a
man almost destroyed by a sudden radiation burst, the
brawn's limping, months-long journey homeward in
his crippled, brainless ship and the hero's welcome he
had received when he arrived at Vega 3.3 with the sur-
vey data he'd been sent to gather. The tale of what
Caleb had gone through, the months of solitude and
deprivation and the lingering effects of radiation
poisoning, had done much to reshape Nancia's feel-
ings towards the pallid brawn who'd boarded her on
Vega 3.3. She felt a grudging respect for the man she
saw spending hours in her exercise facility, working
out with gyroweights and spring resistors to restore
wasted niusdes.

The man who had accepted her initial hostile at-
titude as no more than his due, who'd shut her out of
his mind at once and had not spoken a word to her
since. They had traveled in silence through the three
days it took to move between the suns of Vega 3 and
Vega 4, while Nancia waited impatiently for Simeon to
resume communications so that she could ask what
she wanted to know. Finally she'd begun battering at
the Vega Base brain's frequencies with ever-increasing
bursts of communication that must have given him the
equivalent of a softperson's "headache."

Nancia condensed the newsbytes she'd read and
transmitted them in three short bursts to Simeon, just
to convince him she'd done her homework.

"So what else do you want to know?"

"How. Did. He. Lose. His. Ship?" Nancia punctuated
each word with a burst of irritated static

"You read the newsbytes."

"WE'RE SHIELDED AGAINST — sorry." She
started over at normal intensity. "We're shielded
against radiation. He shouldn't have been harmed,

84

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

unless he was being careless — leaving the ship
without checking radiation levels? And there's no way
his ship could have been affected. What could have got
through her column?"

"His column, in this case," Simeon corrected, as if
that mattered.

Unless Caleb used the access code to open his brninskip's shdL.
That was the nightmare, that was what she wanted reas-
surance about. No brawn was supposed to know both
the syllables and the musical tones that comprised his
brainship's access codes. One sequence was given to the
brawn on assignment, the other deeply classified in
CenCom's codes. But Polyon's casual dabbling in the Net
had left Nancia deeply suspicious of computer security
systems. Any code invented could be broken... and how
else could the CL-740 have been lost to something as
minor as a radiation burst?

"Nothing did get through the column," Simeon told
her. "The CL-740 was one of the first Courier Service
ships commissioned, though. Three hundred years
ago they didn't know as much as we do about shielding
the synapse connectors. The radiation burst they were
subjected to wasn't enough to harm the major ship's
systems, but it fried the connections to die shell,
leaving CL-740 in total isolation — unable to com-
municate or to receive signals, completely unable to
control the ship. Caleb brought the ship back on
manual controls, but by the time they got to Vega the
CL-740 had gone mad from sensory deprivation,"

"But the Helva System — " Nancia protested. It had
been a long, long time since any brainship had been
subjected to sensory deprivation; shell-internal
metachips, named for the legendary brainship who'd
survived the ordeal and suggested the modification,
should have been invulnerable to any outside
interference.

"The Helva modifications are not universal, though

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85

God knows they should be." Simeon sounded very
tired. "It's a traumatizing procedure for those of us
who aren't lucky enough to have it built into our first
design, young'un. Some of the older brainships, those
who'd paid off and continued in the Courier Service as
free agents, had a right to refuse retrofitting. CL ...
exercised that right"

"Oh." It was a brain's worst nightmare, that being cut
off from the world with a thoroughness no softperson
could even imagine. Nancia dosed down all her sensors
for a moment, imagining that absolute blackness. How
long would she be able to bear it? No wonder her super-
visor at Lab Schools had canceled the first newsbyte
about the CL-740. No wonder the newsbyte files made
available to her now had been censored. No one wanted
a brainship to start thinking about the worst that could
happen. Nancia didn't want to think about it any longer.
With an internal shudder she threw open all her sensors
and comm channels at once.

The minor clatter of everyday life was a warm, reas-
suring tide about her, connecting her with the rest of
humanity, the rest of all sentient life. Nancia
catalogued the details with surprise and gratitude.
How strange and wonderful all this is ... to see, hear, feel,
think, know... and I have been taking it all for granted! For
a moment, the smallest input was precious to her, a gift
of life. Caleb was hanging between two spring-resis-
tors in the gym, the display screens in the central cabin
were dancing with their elegant geometric screen-
saver patterns, the stars outside burned with then-
distant fire, Vega 4 was a ruddy glow before her, some-
one was chattering between Vega 4.3 and 4.2 about
Central synthsilk fashions. Someone else was crying
into a satellite link....

And Simeon was still talking. "Levin." The databits
transmitted like a whisper. "His name wasn't CL-740.
His name was Levin, and he was my friend."

86

At Vega 4.2, Governor Thrixtopple and his family
spilled aboard Nanria like a pack of cruise passengers,
dropping their luggage anywhere for the patient ser-
vants who followed to pick up, commenting loudly on
any feature of Nancia's interior that caught their
attention.

"Hey! Look at these display screens!** The youngest
Thrixtopple, a weasel-faced brat in his early teens, lit
up on sight of the three wall-size display screens in the
central cabin. "Sis, where's my SPACED OUT hedron? I
could play all the way home — "

"/don't have to keep track of where you drop all
your junk," his older sister whined. "Mama, there's
only one storage bin in my cabin. My Antarxian ruffe
will get all wrinkled!"

"Who cares? They still won't make any difference to
your ugly face!" Thrixtopple Junior stuck out his
tongue at his sister. She hurled a globe of something
pink and slushy at him; he ducked out of the way and
Caleb caught the globe in a neat one-handed catch.

"Now, kiddies," Thrixtopple Senior mumbled,
"mustn't upset your mother or the servants." He held
out one skinny hand to receive the pink globe his
daughter had thrown; glance and gesture included
Caleb among those "servants." Nancia bristled. He
might not be her official brawn, she might still have
her reservations about the way Psych was trying to
throw the two of them together for the convenience of
CenCom, but Caleb was still a trained brawn and
deserving of more respect than that!

"Governor Thrixtopple, I'm afraid I will have to ask
all of you to enter your personal cabins and strap
down for lift-off now," Caleb said tonelessly.

"Already? Why, these clumsy servants haven't begun
to unpack for me yet! I'm not nearly ready to send
them away!" Trixia Thrixtopple complained without a

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87

word of gratitude or fere well to the servants who had,
presumably, waited on her through the twenty years
of Governor Thrixtopple's service. It was dear where
her daughter had learned that penetrating whine.

"My apologies, ma'am," Caleb said, still without any
inflection that they could react to, "but I am bound by
regulations. Section 4, subsection 4.5, paragraphs ii to
iv. Courier Service ships are not permitted to dally for
any reason; a prolonged stop here could upset urgent-
ly needed communications elsewhere."

He personally escorted the Thrixtopple family to
their bunks and made sure each of them was secured
against the high-grav stresses of lift-off. Nancia kept
the cabin sensors open to double-check every move,
but Caleb made no mistakes.

Once the passengers were strapped down and their
luggage stowed, Caleb returned to the central cabin
and waved one hand towards the door. "Would you
close us off, please, XN?" He sighed with exaggerated
relief. "If only we could keep them out of here for the
entire flight. People like that are a disgrace to Vega.
Why, they didn't even have the manners to greet you!"

"Neither did the passengers I took on the way out,"
Nancia told him. "I was beginning to feel invisible."

"Not to me," Caleb told her. His eyes scanned the
entire cabin with a look of longing that surprised Nan-
cia. "Never to me.... If I don't get a new assignment,
this could be my last voyage on a brainship. And we
had to be saddled with these, these ..." He threw up
his hands as though words failed him.

"It is a pity," Nancia agreed, "but there's no reason
we can't be professional about doing our jobs, is
there?" While she made conversation with Caleb, she
was rapidly reviewing the volumes of Courier Service
regulations with which her data banks had been
loaded upon commissioning. There should have been
something in the third megahedron.... Ah, there it

88	Anne McCaffreytf Margaret BaU

was. Precisely what the situation called for. But she
wouldn't mention it now. Caleb was eager to escape
the surface of Vega 4.2 before the Thrixtopple family
started complaining about their restraints, and she
couldn't blame him.

In deference to Caleb's weakened condition, Nanria
made this lift-off as slow and gentle as she could. After
all, it wasn't his fault that Psych Central was practically
forcing their personal codes into one datastream. And
she didn't want to kill the man on the way home.

When they entered freefall again, Caleb unlatched
himself from the support chair and moved about the
cabin with none of the languor he'd shown after the
previous lift-off. "Being gentle with the civilians?** he
inquired. "I seem to recall that you can lift consider-
ably fester than that when you're so inclined, XN."

"I... um... I didn't see any need to hurry," Nancia
muttered. Damn the man! Too stiff-necked to admit
that he, too, could benefit from a slightly gentler
takeoffl

Caleb looked faintly amused. "No. Considering that
now there's no excuse to keep them strapped in, and
we'll probably have the brats in our laps until you
reach Singularity.... I wouldn't have wanted to hurry,
either."

As if on cue, the Thrixtopple boy punched through
the iris-opening of the door. Nancia winced at the
damage to her flexible membranes. She left the door
iris open so that Governor Thrixtopple, proceeding
down the corridor at a stately pace behind his son,
wouldn't inflict further violence on her.

"Ok, we're in space now, lemme play with the com-
puter!" the boy demanded.

Nancia slid her datareaders shut as the boy ap-
proached and deliberately blanked her screens. Tm
sorry, young sir. Courier Service Regulations, volume
XVIII, section 1522, subsection 6.2, paragraph

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89

mcmlii, strictly prohibit allowing unauthorized pas-
sengers access to the ship's computer or free
movement within the central cabin. The prohibition is
intended as a protection against illegal interference
with Courier Service property."

"Hear now, you — you talking shell, that's not
meant to apply to people like us!" Governor Thrixtop-
ple blustered as he entered the cabin.

"The official orders which were transmitted to me
by CenCom at the beginning of this voyage make no
reference to your family, Governor Thrixtopple,**
Nancia replied. She paused slightly between words
and gave her voice a slight metallic overtone to make
the Thrixtopples feel they were talking to a machine
that could not be threatened or bribed. "I am not
myself authorized to change such orders save on direct
beam from Central Command.**

"But Vega Base told you to ferry us to Central!"

"And I am always happy to do my good friends at Vega
Base a favor," Nancia replied. "Nevertheless, it is not in
my power to change regulations. Should Central Com-
mand retroactively authorize you to access my
computers, I will—retroactively — permit you to have
done so. In the meantime, I must request that you return
to your personal cabin areas. I should be reluctant to en-
force the order, but you must know that I retain the
power to flood all life support areas with sleepgas,"

Governor Thrixtopple grabbed his son's collar and
dragged him out of the central cabin. The iris of the
door membrane slid together.

"That," said Caleb reverently, "was brilliant, XN.
Positively brilliant. Ah — I suppose there is such a
regulation?"

"Of course there is! You don't think I'd IwT

"My deepest apologies, ma'am. It was only that I
had no personal recollection of the paragraph in
question—"

90

Anne McCaffivy & Margaret Ball

**I understand that softperson brains are quite
limited in their storage and retrieval powers," Nancia
said loftily. Then she relented. "It took me several
minutes of scanning to find something applicable,
actually. And I never would have thought of it if you
hadn't quoted regulations to get them out of here
before lift-off."

"If it weren't for meals," Caleb reflected aloud, "we
wouldn't have to speak to them again all the way back
to Central...."

"I have the capacity to serve meals from any room in
the living quarters," Nancia informed him. Unlike the
older models ... She cut that thought offbefore voicing
it. It would be sheer cruelty to remind Caleb of what he
had lost

"Okay, XN, try this one." Caleb manipulated the
joyball to bring up a display of a double torus contain-
ing two simple dosed curves. Three disks labeled Al,
B, and A2 contained sections of the torus. "You're in
Al; A2 is your target space. Find the Singularity points
and compute the decompositions required."

"No fair," Nancia protested. "It's never even been
proved that there is a decom sequence that'll navigate
that structure. Satyajohi's Conjecture." She quoted
from her memory banks, "If h is a homeomorphism of
E3 onto itself that is fixed on E3 — T, need one of
h(Jl), h(j2) contain an arc with four points of A+B
such that no two of these points which are adjacent on
the arc belong to the same one of A and B? If so, the
decomposition space H does not yield E3, And in this
application," she reminded Caleb, "E3 is equivalent to
normal space."

Caleb blinked twice. "I didn't expect you to know
Satyajohi's Conjecture, actually. Still — let me point
out, XN, it's only a conjecture, not a theorem."

"In one hundred and twenty-five years of deep-

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91

space mathematics it's never been disproved," Nancia
grumbled.

"So? Perhaps you'll be the first to find a counter-
example.''

Nancia didn't think there was much point in even
trying, but she set an automatic string-development
program to race through the display, illuminating
various possible Singularity paths as lines of brilliant
blue light, then letting them fade out as the impos-
sibility of one after the other was proved. There was
something else on which she very much wanted
Caleb's advice, and now — with the Thrixtopple fami-
ly intimidated into staying in their cabins, and Caleb in
as good a mood as she'd ever seen him after his
demonstration of Satyajohi's Conjecture — now was
the best time she could have to bring it up.

"I haven't been commissioned very long, you know,
Caleb," she began.

"No, but you're going to be one of the best," Caleb told
her. "I can see it in the way you handle little things. I
wouldn't have thought of finding a regulation to get the
Thrixtopples out of our hair. And I don't think I'd have
tested Satyajohi's Conjecture the way you're going about
it right now, either." Two possible Singularity lines
flashed bright blue and then vanished from the screen as
he spoke, while a third snaked through Al and into the B
disk around the double torus.

"Some things," Nancia said carefully, "get more
complicated than that. In mathematics a conjecture
either is or isn't true."

"The same is true of Courier Service Regulations,"
Caleb pointed out

"Yes, well... not everything. They don't tell you
what to do if a brainship happens to hear her pas-
sengers making illegal plans."

"If you've been eavesdropping on Governor Thrix-
topple in his cabin," Caleb said sternly, "that's a

92

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Batt

dishonorable action and I hereby formally request you
to stop it immediately."

"Oh, I haven't," Nantia assured him. "But whatif—
if a brainship had some passengers who didn't know
she was sentient, and they liked to sit in the central
cabin and play SPACED OUT, and they just happened
to discuss some possibly illegal plans while they were
doing it?"

"Oh — a hypothetical case?" Caleb sounded
relieved, and Nancia felt the same way. At least he
hadn't guessed immediately, as Simeon had, that she
was talking about her own previous experience.
Everything Nancia had learned or seen of Caleb—the
newsbeams of his heroic solo return to Vega, the
dedication with which he put himself through a gruel-
ing exercise program, his respect for Courier Service
regulations — made her think of him as a man of
supreme integrity, one whose word she could trust
under any circumstances. She would not have wanted
to hear him laugh at her as Simeon had done, or sug-
gest — as Simeon had done — that her own actions in
this instance had been morally culpable.

"Well, in such a case—if it ever arises — you should
remember that a sentient ship is morally obliged to
identify herself as such to her passengers at the first
opportunity."

"That's not in the regulations," Nancia defended
herself against a charge Caleb didn't know he had
made.

"No, but it's common sense. Anything else would be
like — like me hiding in a closet to catch Governor
Thrixtopple counting his ill-gotten gains from bribes
while in public office." Caleb said this with so much
disgust in his voice that Nancia shrank from pursuing
die subject.

So, evidently, did Caleb. He looked up at the central
display screen, where a network of dim gray lines

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93

showed Nantia's repeated attempts to compute a path
of Singularity points through the topological con-
figuration he'd defined.

"Let's just take it that Satyajohi's Conjecture is
upheld in this particular case," he suggested, "and
now it's your turn to put up a problem. I don't know
why we're discussing hypothetical ethical problems
that are never likely to arise when we could both be im-
proving our Decom Math skills. Nor do I understand
why — " He bit his lip and blanked out the screen with
a swift roll of the joybalL

"Why what?" Nancia asked.

"Your turn to pose a problem," Caleb reminded her.

"Not until you finish that sentence."

"All rightl I don't understand why you're asking for
ethical guidance from a brawn whose greatest achieve-
ment to date has been the loss of his first ship!" Caleb
bit out the words with a frustrated savagery that
aroused Nancia's sympathy. She remembered
Simeon's grief for his lost friend Levin, the CL-740.
How stupid she had been.

"I'm sorry," she told Caleb. "1 should have realized
that discussing such issues would remind you of Levin.
Do you miss him so very much?"

Caleb sighed. "It's not that, XN. Levin was a good,
competent brainship, and he trained me when I was a
new brawn, and I'll always owe a debt of gratitude to
him. But we weren't — we never just talked, like this,
you know? Five years I served with him, and I don't
feel I ever really got to know him. No, I'm not in
mourning for Levin. But he had a right to look for-
ward to hundreds more years of service, and I lost him
that time. And I myself had rather hoped to spend
more than five years as a brawn."

"You may yet," Nancia pointed out. "Just because
you haven't got a ship assignment yet—"

"And what brainship is going to accept the brawn

94

Atme McCaffrey 6? Margaret BaH,

who let the CL-740 die?" Caleb snapped back. "You
yourself have made that little point tolerably dear, XN.
Now drop it Next problem, pleasel"

Nancia started transmitting to CenCom — on a
private beam — the moment she exited Singularity
and entered Central Worlds subspace. She wanted to
have everything arranged, with no possibility of argu-
ment, before Caleb was ready to leave the ship.

All proceeded as planned. Dahlen Rahilly, her Ser-
vice Supervisor, requested permission to enter even
before the Thrixtopple family had gathered their
numerous items of luggage and departed.

"Arrogant snit," Rahilly commented as they
watched the last of Governor Thrixtopple's bony
shoulders through Nancia's ground viewport. "He
could at least have credited you with a bonus for doing
him the favor of this quick transport home."

"I didn't expect it," Nancia replied with perfect truth.
The only bonus she expected—or wanted — was sufl in
his cabin, using the cabin comm board to enter a job ap-
plication letter that somehow kept getting wiped from his
personal file storage area. This was his third attempt, and
Nancia could tell by the emphatic way Caleb's voice
snapped out the words for the dictaboard that he was
losing patience. If she didn't get matters settled soon, he
would quit trying to use the ship's comm system and
make his application personally, at CenCom offices. And
that wouldn't suit her at all.

"Well... there will have to be a few changes. Paper-
work," Rahilly said. "We ... weren't expecting this,
you know, XN. In feet, VS at Vega seemed quite cer-
tain that you had formally refused the assignment"

"He ... may have misinterpreted my words," Nan-
cia said demurely. "How soon can it be arranged?"
Shellcrack! While she was talking to Rahilly, Caleb had
managed to dictate the complete text of his application

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95

letter. He was getting ready to transmit it to CenCom.
That mustn't happen... not yet Nancia shut down all
outgoing beams at once.

"Oh, we can finish the paperwork in a day. If you're
sure that's what you want?"

"I am," Nancia said firmly. There was another party
to be consulted, but Rahilly didn't seem to think that
would be necessary.

Caleb stalked into the central cabin, brows drawn
together. "XN, what do you mean by shutting down
my beam to CenCom?"

"Your beam?" Nancia replied. "Oh, dear. All my ex-
ternal beams seem to have lost power for a moment"

"Well have a tech out to fix the malfunction imme-
diately," Rahilly promised.

"Oh... I don't think that will be necessary," Nancia
told him. "I've been investigating while we talk, and I
believe I have found the source of the problem. It
should be easy enough to correct internally." All she
needed to do was reopen the power gate....

"Very well, CN-935." Rahilly sketched a Service salute
in the general direction of Nancia's titanium column,
"The remaining paperwork will be completed within the
day, and then you and Brawn Caleb will be requested to
hold yourselves ready for a new assignment—there was
one pending, actually; Central wiU be happy not to have
to wait while you choose a brawn."

He left as soon as the last word was snapped out,
and Nancia was grateful for that. Caleb was staring
around the cabin with an expression she could not
read. If he was going to be angry with her for going be-
hind his back, she'd just as soon have it out in private.

"I... don't understand," he said slowly. "You aren't
waiting to choose a new brawn? You're going to go out
solo again?"

"Hardly that," Nancia told him. "I've had enough of
solo voyages, thank you very much; I find that I much

96

AnmMcCaffrey & Margaret Ba&

prefer to travel with a partner."

"Then..."

"Didn't you hear the man? From now on I'm the
CN-935. I've decided that Psych Central was right,"
Nancia said. It was a struggle to keep her voice projec-
tions calm and even. "We make a very good team."

Caleb was still speechless, and Nancia felt her one
fear approaching.

"If... if that's all right with you?"

"All right, all right, all rigktl" Caleb exploded. "The
woman gives me back my life — and with the perfect
brain partner—and she wants to know if it's all right? I
— Nancia — oh, wait a minute, would you? There's
something I've got to take care of before you restore
external beam transmissions."

He hurried off to his cabin, presumably to erase the
job application letter that had taken so long to create,
and Nancia permitted herself a small coruscating dis-
play of stars and comets across her three wide screens.
It was going to be all right.

More than all right. "Nancia," she repeated to her-
self. "He finally called me Nancia."

CHAPTER SIX

Angalia, Central Date 2750:
Blaize

Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stared in dis-
belief at his new home as the exit port of the XN-935
slid shut behind him. The mesa top that had served
Nancia as a landing field was the only level bit of solid
ground in sight. Behind the mesa was a wall of crumb-
ly, near-vertical rock that rose in jagged peaks to block
out the morning sun. The long black shadows of the
mountains fell across the mesa and down into a sea of
oozing glop that looked like the Quagmire of Despair
as displayed in the latest version of SPACED OUT. The
only variation in the brownish sea was that at a few
locations large, lazy bubbles rose from the glop and
burst with a sulfurous stink.

At the very edge of the mesa, cantilevered
precariously out over the Quagmire of Despair, was a
gray plastifilm prefab storage facility. Bulging brown
sacks stenciled with the initials of Planetary Technical
Aid hung from hooks on one side of the shack, dan-
gling right out over the sea of glop. On the side of the
shanty nearest Blaize, the plastifilm roof had been ex-
tended with some sort of woven fronds to create a
sagging awning. Beneath this awning lounged an im-
mensely fat man wearing only a pair of sweat-stained
briefs.

Blaize sighed and picked up the nearest two pieces
of his kit. Staggering slighdy under a gravity consider-
ably higher than ship's norm, he made his way

98

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

towards the obese guardian of Angalia.

"PTA tech-trainee Armontillado-Perez y Medoc,
sir," he introduced himself. Who is this guy? He's got to be
one of the corydum miners. They're the only humans on An-
gatia — except, of course...

"And the top of the morning to you, Sherry, me lad,"
- said the sweating man-mountain cordially. "Never was
so glad to see anybody in m'life. Hope you enjoy the
next five years here."

"Ah — PTA Grade Eleven Supervisor Harmon?"
Blaize hazarded. Except my new boss.

A richly alcoholic wheeze almost knocked him off his
feet. "You see anybody else around here, kid? Who
d'you think I am?"

"The corytium mine — "

"Dead. Defunct Abandoned. Kaput, all gone splash,
stinko," Grade 11 Supervisor Harmon said with relish.
"Went bust. Owner sold the mine to me for a case of
spirits before he pulled out."

"What went wrong?"

"Labor. Company couldn't keep miners here for
love nor money. Not that they offered much love —
even a corycium miner ain't desperate enough to try
and get it on with a Loosie, heh, heh, heh." Another
wave of alcohol-flavored breath washed over Blaize.

"Loosie?"

"Homosimlis Lucilla Angalii to you, m'boy. The veg-
heads Lucilla Sharif discovered, damn her soul, and
reported as possibly intelligent on the FCF, double-
damn her, and for her sins we're stuck administering
Planetary Technical Aid to a bunch of walking zuc-
chini. All the company I've had since they closed the
mine. And aHyou'U have for the next five years. Next
PTA transport comes by here is taking me off-planet."
Harmon looked enviously at the sleek length of the
XN-935, her tip now gleaming in the sun that peeked
over the jagged mountains. "Nice perks you High

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99

Families kids get, transport like that. I don't suppose
you could persuade that brainship — "

"I doubt it," Blaize said.

Harmon chortled. "No, didn't much sound like it,
way you come out yelling and screaming over your
shoulder, with it dumping your luggage after you. You
musta pissed it off real handsome. No matter. Next
PTA shipment oughta be along any day now. And
when it comes, my new assignment should be ready."
He stretched luxuriously, took a deep drink from the
bottle beside him, and sighed with anticipated content-
ment. "Reckon I've earned myself a nice long tour of
duty on Central, in a nice office tower with air con-
ditioning and servos and no need to pay any bloody
attention to bloody nature unless you happen to feel
like looking out the window. Sit down, Madeira-y-
Perez, and don't look so miserable. Do your five years
and maybe they'll post you back in civilization. You're
in luck, coming when you did."

"I am?" The sun was over the mountain by now, and
it was hot on the mesa. Blaize pulled his largest grip
under the shade of the awning and sat down on it

"Sure. Today's feeding time at the zoo. Put on a real
show for you, the Loosies will." Harmon waved again,
this time as if beckoning the cliff that towered above
them to come on down. Blaize stared in shock as crag-
gy bits of mountain broke loose and trickled down to
the mesa top, shambling like crazy puppets made of
rocks and wire. Strange costumes — no, they were
naked; that was their skin he was looking at.

"Yaohoo! Feeding time! Whoeel" Harmon yodeled,
simultaneously jerking the cord that ran along the side of
the PTA prefab. One of the sacks overhanging the muddy
basin opened and brownish-gray ration bricks spilled out
in a torrent, piling up in the mud below the mesa,

The Loosies scurried to the edge of the mesa and let
themselves down into the muddy sea, fingers and toes

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Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

clinging to crevices in the rocks. The first ones down
threw themselves on the ration bricks as if they were
greeting a long-lost lover; the later arrivals piled on
top of them, swinging uncoordinated limbs and wrig-
gling to burrow into the muddy heap of rations.

Blaize felt a rumbling vibration coming up through
the soles of his feet.

"Look out!" Harmon roared.

Blaize jumped and Harmon chuckled. "Sorry to
startle you, kid. You wouldn't want to miss the other
big show of Angalia." He pointed to the western
horizon.

It seemed to be moving.

It was a wall of water. No, mud. No — Blaize strug-
gled for the right word and could only find the one
that had first occurred to him: glop.

The "Loosies" had ignored Harmon's shout as if
they were deaf, but something — perhaps the rum-
bling vibration that Blaize felt — alerted those still at
the bottom of the quagmire. They swarmed up the
sides of the mesa, clutching their ration bricks in teeth
and fingers. The last one got out of the way just before
the advancing tide of glop struck the mesa.

The whole desperate, squirming consumption of
ration bricks had taken place in total silence. Now, less
than three minutes later, it was over and the mesa was
surrounded by a sucking, slimy tide of glop. As Blaize
watched, the tide receded, sliding back down the sides
of the mesa until the new mud melted into the same
soggy configuration of puddles and bubbles that had
greeted him on arrival.

"That was a small one," Harmon said with regret.
"Oh, well, there'll likely be some better ones before
you go. Bound to be, in feet."

In response to Blaize's questions he explained,
without much interest, that the erratic climatic pattern
of Angalia produced a constantly moving band of

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thundershowers in the mountains which surrounded
this central basin. Whenever the storms stayed in the
same place for a while, the rainfall built up into a flash
flood which raced across the plain, picking up mud as
it went, and sweeping away anything that might be
foolish enough to remain in its path.

"Terraforrning," Blaize mused. "Dams to catch the
rainfall and release it slowly..."

"Expensive, and who'd bother? Nothing here to
repay the investment. Besides," Harmon explained,
"it's fun. Damn sure ain't much else to watch out
here!"

Blaize gathered that one of Harmon's amusements
was trying to predict the times of the mud-floods so
that he could feed the natives just before one, forcing
them to scramble first for ration bricks and then to save
themselves from the tide of mud.

"Ain't it the damnedest thing?" he demanded as the
rock-like natives climbed back to their mountain
heights, some clutching a few ration bricks for later
consumption, some still chewing the last mouthfuls of
their haul. "You ever see anything like it?"

"Never," Blaize admitted. Are the — the Loosies starv-
ing'? Is that why their skin hangs loose like that? Or is that their
normal appearance ? And how does this fat creep get away tuith
putting them through sitch a degrading performance1?

"I know what you're thinking, Port-Wine-y-Medoc,"
the fat man said, "but wait'll you've done six months
out here, you'll forget all the PTA regs about respect-
ing the natives' dignity and all that crapola. Damned
Loosies don't have any dignity to respect, anyway.
They're a bunch of animals. Never developed agricul-
ture —or clothing—or even language."

"Or lies," commented Blaize.

"What?" For a moment Harmon looked startled,
then he chuckled and wheezed with amusement.
"Righto. No language, no lies — gotta say that for

102

Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU

them, anyway! But they're ootpeople, young Claret-
Medoc. Waste of resources, this whole operation —
some paperpusher's mistake. Only encourages the
veg-heads to breed more little veggies. We oughta pull
outa here and let 'em starve on their own, /ask me."

"Maybe they could be trained to work the mine,"
Blaize suggested.

Harmon snorted. "Yeah, sure. I did hear about
some prisoners in olden times who amused themselves
trying to train their pet rats to run errands. You could
do that sooner'n you could teach a Loosie anything,
kid. I tell you, there's just three amusements on An-
galia: feediri time for the Loosies, drinkin' time for me,
and playing computer games. And I've mapped every
damn level of the Maze of the Minotaur so many times
I can't stand to look at it no more."

Blaize felt in his pocket The datahedron recording
the wager wasn't the only item he'd copied from
Nancia's computer. "Does your computer—"

"Yours now, Sake-ArmontUlado," Harmon inter-
rupted with a cheerful belch. "PTA issue.**

"Does it have enough memory and display graphics
to run SPACED OUT? Because," Blaize said, "I just hap-
pen to have a copy of the latest version here.
Pre-release — it's not even on sale at Central yet" He
winked at Harmon.

"Is that so!" Harmon oozed to his feet "C'mon in-
side, Burgundy-Champagne. Pass the time in a li'l
friendly game until my transport gets here.** He
scratched his bare chest, squinting at Blaize with the
rudiments of a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Have to name some stakes, of course. No fun playing
for nothing."

"My sentiments exactly,'' Blaize agreed. "Lead the way.*1

Five days later, exactly as scheduled, the PTA
transport touched down to deliver new supplies and
to pick up Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon for the

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103

months-long FTL journey to his new assignment.
Blaize remained behind with the Loosies and his
winnings: two partially depleted cases of Sapphire
Ruin, Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon's hand-woven
palm-frond sun hat, and the title to an abandoned
corycium mine.

Deneb Subspace, Central Date 2750:
Nancia and Caleb

"That," said Caleb as he and Nancia left Deneb
Spacebase, "was one of our more satisfying
assignments."

"Out of a grand total of two?" Nancia teased him.
But she agreed. Their first scheduled run out of
Central, delivering medical supplies to a newly settled
planet, had been worthwhile but hardly challenging.
And they had both been apprehensive about this as-
signment: transporting some semi-retired general,
another High Families representative, into the middle
of a particularly nasty conflict between Central Worlds
settlers and Capellan traders. But General Micaya
Questar-Benn had proved completely different from
the spoilt High Families children Nancia had taken
out to Vega subspace on her first assignment. Short,
competent, unassuming, the general had won Caleb's
heart at once with her in-depth knowledge of Vega's
complex history. She'd proceeded to spend much of
the short run to Deneb subspace talking shop with
Nancia; half the general's body parts and several
major organs were cyborg replacements, and she was
interested in the possibility of improving her liver
functions with one of the newer metachip implants
such as kept Nancia's physical body healthy within its
shell. Nancia had never envisioned herself discussing
something so personal with anybody, let alone a high-
ranking army officer, but something about General
Questar-Benn's unassuming manner made intimate

104

Asms McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

talk unthreatening and easy.

Nanria wasn't too surprised to learn that before she
and Caleb had even prepared for the return journey,
General Questar-Benn had drawn human and Capellan
antagonists into negotiations and worked out a settle-
ment that would allow each side to feel they had "won."

"And here I thought we were warmongering,
delivering somebody with authority to send in the
heavy armored divisions!" Caleb went on.

Nancia chuckled. "The galaxy could do with a few
more 'warmongers' like Micaya Questar-Benn. Ready
for Singularity, partner? Central should have a new as-
signment for us by now."

Bahati, Central Date 2751:
Alpha

Alpha bint Hezra-Fong stared down in distaste at
the writhing body of her experimental subject. What
had gone wrong? The molecular variations of Blissto
which she'd been preparing should have rendered the
patient calm and tractable. Instead he was contorting
his limbs and moaning uncontrollably, trying to break
the restraint straps on his stretcher.

Alpha tightened the straps until the patient stopped
thrashing and passed a medscanner over his forehead.
She frowned at the results. Instead of generating
soothing hormones, Blissto.Rev.2 was invading and
replicating itself within the man's nervous system like a
cancer gone wild.

"Damn! I haven't got time for this," she muttered.
Quickly she considered her options. If she could keep
the patient alive and in isolation for a few days, per-
haps she would be able to find out what was causing
this invasive replication and find a way to stop it. But if
anybody questioned her work —

The man's convulsions increased. One leg broke the
reinforced restraint strap and kicked out wildly.

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105

"Too dangerous," Alpha decided. She pressed a
hypospray to the man's neck and watched his body sag
back against the stretcher. His eyes rolled upwards and
the thrashing stopped.

So did all other movement.

Alpha had papers prepared for just such an emergen-
cy. Tlie clinic director was an old fool, too lazy to check
her reports; nobody else would dare to question her.
Charity Patient B.342.iv would be listed as having died of
heart feilure brought on by a preexisting medical condi-
tion which the clinic had not had time to reverse.

The only trouble was, that made the third such
death in the year since Alpha had begun testing her
improved version of Blissto. Sooner or later, if she
didn't get the drug dosage right, somebody was going
to notice the string of identical sudden-death reports
and ask questions.

Alpha seriously considered returning to ex-
perimenting on rabbits. But rabbit cages stank, and
taking care of the beasts was a lot of work, and there
was even more probability that somebody would ques-
tion her sudden interest in raising pets.

She'd just have to think up a few more excuses for
sudden deaths on the charity wing. A little variation in
the paperwork would help disguise these unfortunate
accidents.

Procyon Subspace, Central Date 2751:
Caleb and Nancia

"This is boring,'1 Nancia complained as she watched
workers on Szatmar II unload die cases of vaccine she
and Caleb had transported there.

"It is important to see that children's vaccinations
are kept up regularly," Caleb told her.

"Yes, but it's hardly an emergency. At least, it
wouldn't have been one if PTA would keep its records
up to date." A horrified bureaucrat had discovered

106

Arme McCaffrey &? Mwgore* Ball

that some incompetent named Harmon, working out
of PTA on Central Worlds, had forgotten to ship last
year's supplies of vaccine to any PTA client planets in
the Procyon subsystem. In consequence, Nancia and
Caleb were getting an extended tour of that subsys-
tem, delivering measles and whooping-cough vaccine
to several dozen settlements on widely scattered
planets. "I've got a good mind to speak to my sister
about this idiot Harmon," Nantia grumbled. 'Jinevra
would never tolerate such inefficiency in her own
branch of PTA; maybe she can get Central to transfer
Harmon to a spot where he can't do any harm."

"Nancia, you wouldn't seriously consider using
your family connections for personal interest!"

Caleb sounded shocked. Nancia apologized imme-
diately. She hadn't realized that trying to get an
incompetent bureaucrat ousted came under the head-
ing of "personal interests." But Caleb was doubtless
right; he always was. And she felt quite guilty as he lec-
tured her about the consequences of being flighty and
expecting glamorous assignments. He was right about
that, too. Service loyalty demanded not only that she
go where she was needed, but that she do so willingly
and cheerfully.

Nancia closed her loading dock and tried to lift off
for their next vaccine delivery with a willing and
cheerful heart,

Bahati, Central Date 2752:

Darnel!

Darnell leaned back in his upholstered stimuchair
and activated the interoffice transmitter. "You may
send Hopkirk in now, Julitta mlovely."

"Oh, Mr. Overton-Glaxely!" Julitta's delighted gig-
gles came clearly through the transmitter. Darnell
activated the double display screens as well and en-
joyed two views of his secretary. The top screen

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107

showed her tossing her pretty yellow curls and preen-
ing with delight at his compliment; the lower screen
displayed her shapely legs, crossing and recrossing
restlessly beneath the desk. Darnell noted with
pleasure that J ulitta's petiskirt had ridden up almost; to
her waist Such a delightful, twitchy tittle girl.

Darnell considered Julitta, like the second display
screen and die vibrostim units in his executive chair and
the view of Bahati from his glass-walled executive office,
to be one of the perks appropriate co a Man Who Had
Made It He let Hopkirk wait awkwardly in front of his
desk while he contemplated with equal delight his own
rapid success, his immediate plans for Julitta, die view of
her legs in the lower display screen, and the fact that
Julitta didn't know about die second screen.

"Hopkirk, I've got a job for you," Darnell ordered.
"Productivity in the glimware plant dropped by three
thousandths of a percent last month, I want you to get
out there and send me a full report of any contributing
factors.''

"Yes, Mr. Overton-Glaxely," the man called Hopkirk
murmured.

"It's probably cumulative worker fatigue due to the
poor design of the assembly line," Darnell continued
Ah, that was better; a flash of pain crossed Hopkirk's
features. Six months ago the man had owned,
designed, and managed Hopkirk Glimware,
producers of fine novelty prismaglasses for the luxury
trade. And managed it damn poorly, too, Darnell
thought; the place would have gone bankrupt soon
enough anyway, even without his interference. Now it
was a profitable, if small, addition to Darnell's revital-
ized OG Shipping (and other) Enterprises.

"Questions, Hopkirk?" Darnell snapped as the man
remained standing instead of speeding to his task.

"I was just wondering why you did it diis way," Hop-
kirk said.

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ArmeMcCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

"Did it what way?"

Hopkirk shrugged. "You know and I know that
Hopkirk Glimware would have done all right if you
hadn't manipulated the Net to bring my stock prices
down and cut off my credit"

"That's a matter of opinion," Darnell told him.
"Admit it, Hopkirk. You're an engineer, not a
manager, and you didn't know how to run the com-
pany. It would have crashed eventually in any case. All
I did was help it along."

"But why do it this way? Why ruin me when you
could have bought the company for a fair price and
still made your profit?"

Darnell was pleased that the man didn't argue the
basic point He'd been an incompetent manager and
he knew it

"You're a brilliant businessman," Hopkirk went on.
"Look at how you turned OG Shipping around in just
a year!"

With a little help from my friends... Darnell quashed that
thought Sure, Polyon's ability to hack into the Net and
get advance information had been useful. But it was also
true that Darnell had discovered within himself a true
talent for efficiency. Cut out the deadwood! Fire the in-
competent, the lazy, and those who've merely foiled to get
results! And know everything! Those were DarnelTs new
mottoes. Those who'dbeen fired talked about the Reign
ofTerror. Those who hadn't been fired yet didn't dare to
talk. And OG Shipping prospered ... leaving Darnell
free to amuse himself again.

There was Julitta, of course. There were an infinite
number of JuHttas. But Darnell had discovered that no
number of willing girls could give him quite the thrill
of victory that his business manipulations brought

He regarded Hopkirk thoughtfully. The man
seemed to intend no offense; perhaps he honestly
wanted to understand the workings of Darnell Over-

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109

ton-Glaxel/s brilliant mind. A laudable impulse; he
deserved an honest answer.

"Sure, I could have done it straight," he said at last
"Would have taken a little longer. No prob. But," he
winked at Hopkirk, "it wouldn't have been as much
ftm... and that way I wouldn't have had you working
for me, would I? Get on with the job, Hopkirk. I've got
another assignment for you when you get back."

Now that he'd as good as admitted his illegal use of
the Net to Hopkirk, Darnell thought, the man had to
go. It had been fun to keep him around for a little
while, using him as a clerk and gofer, but one couldn't
risk disgrunded victims getting together to compare
notes. Once OG Glimware was taken care of, Darnell
would "reward" Hopkirk with a free vacation at Sum-
merlands Clinic. The Net revealed, among other
things, that Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's patients on the
charity side of Summerlands had an unusually high
death rate. He'd "suggest" to Alpha that it would be
convenient for both of them if Hopkirk never came
back from Summerlands. That way nobody would talk
about Darnell's use of the Net; and in return, he'd get
Polyon to fix the Net records so that nobody would
raise inconvenient questions about the number of
charity patients Alpha had lost

Achernar Subspace, Central Date 2752:
Caleb and Nancia

"I wonder if he'll really be able to resolve anything,"
Nancia said thoughtfully as she and Caleb watched
their latest delivery being greeted at Achernar Base on
Charon. The short, spare man whom they'd brought
halfway across the galaxy wasn't doing much to take
control of his first meeting with the Charonese offi-
cials. He was just standing there on the landing field,
listening to the speeches of welcome and accepting
bouquets of flowers.

110

Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

"None of our business," Caleb reminded her.
"Central said, take Unattached Diplomatic Agent
Forister to Charon, and do it fast. They didn't say to
evaluate his job performance. And we've got another
assignment waiting."

"Don't we always?" But the little group of pompous
Charonese officials that surrounded Forister was
moving off now, leaving the spacefield clear for
Nancia's liftoff

"It's just that I like to feel we've accomplished some-
thing," she lamented as Caleb strapped down for
liftoff, "and I do feel this Charonese situation calls for
somebody a bit more ... more forceful." Somebody
like Daddy, for instance. With his brisk, no-nonsense
manner and willingness to enforce his decisions, Javier
Perez y de Gras would have made short work of
Charon's seven feuding factions, the continual war be-
tween the Tran Phon guerrillas and all seven
provisional governments, and the consequent
destruction of Charon's vital quinobark forests. He'd
have been using Nancia's comm facilities and working
the Net every minute they weren't in Singularity,
preparing for his descent on the Charonese, arming
himself with every last detail of the conflict, softening
up the principal offenders with stern warning
messages.

This Forister had spent the three days of the voyage
reading ancient books — not even disks, but some ac-
count of an Old Earth war too minor to have been
transcribed to computer-readable format. And when
he wasn't reading about this place called Viet Nam, he
wasted his time in relaxed, casual conversation with
her and Caleb, chatting about their families and
upbringing, their hopes and dreams. Too soft to stop a
war, Nancia thought contemptuously. Oh, well, Caleb
was right — the results were none of their business.
They were Courier Service; they went where they

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111

were sent, quickly and efficiently. Sticking around to
report on the failure of the resulting mission was not
in the CS job description.

Bahati, Central Date 2753:
Fassa

"You can't just leave me like this!"

Fassa del Parma y Polo paused at the door and blew
a mocking kiss at the gray-faced, potbellied man who
was looking at her with such pain in his eyes. "Watch
me, darling. Just watch me." She touched her left
index finger to the charm bracelet on her wrist.
There'd been an empty prismawood heart there, just
the right size to hold the minihedron recording this
stupid bureaucrat's sign-off on the Nyota ya Jaha
Space Station contract. "Our business is done." All
their business, including those boring maneuvers on
the man's synthofur rug. At least it hadn't taken too
long. These old guys had dreams of grandeur, but they
really couldn't do much when they did get the chance.
You're past it, sweetheart, and the future belongs to me. Some-
thing uncomfortable writhed under the triumphant
thought, some question as to why she exulted so much
in the moral destruction of a small-time civil servant
old enough to be her father; but Fassa pushed the
question away with the ease of long practice. She had
got what she wanted. It was as simple as that

"But we were going to live together. You were going to
quit this messy, unfeminine job, now that you've got
enough money to pay for your sister's metachip pros-
thesis, and we were going to retire to Summerlands..."

Fassa laughed out loud. "What, me? Spend my last
hundred years tending to some old man in a Summer-
lands retirement cottage? You've been popping too
much Blissto, my friend." She paused to let the rejec-
tion sink in before delivering her final warning. "And
don't even think about blowing the whistle on me.

112

Arms McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

Remember, you've got more to lose than I have." She
always set it up that way.

There was an unwelcome surprise waiting for her
when she reached her offices. Two, in feet. One was
minor; some kid was slumped in the corner sackback
chair in the outer office, fiddling with forms. Employment
applications were supposed to be handled in a different
office; the kid should have been sent there to begin with.

Before she had time to point this out, her secretary
lowered his head and apologetically informed her that
Bahati CreditLin insisted on one more palmprint
before they would release the final payment for the
space station construction into her Net account. Just a
formality, the secretary quoted the CreditLin officials.

Fassa's brows snapped together as the man assured
her there was nothing to worry about. "Inspection?
What inspection? Everything's been passed and
signed by Vega Base." Or rather, by the befuddled old
fool she'd just left, who hadn't even bothered to take a
transport up to the station and walk its corridors in
person, much less assign a qualified engineer to the
task of a detailed structural inspection.

"That's what I told them," the secretary said, "and
I'm sure this will take no time at all, since Vega's en-
gineering division has already signed off on all the
main structural elements. Just a formality," he
repeated. "It seems there's been a new law passed;
CreditLin is obliged to send one of its own inde-
pendent inspectors to verify that our construction
meets standards before they can transfer the credits."

A new law... Damn! I thought all the Bahati Senators had
been paid off. Do I have to do everything myself?

Fassa suppressed the thought with a quick frown.
She'd deal with the legislature later. For now—so there
was one more fool of a man to deal with, to wheedle and
distract and please into forgetting the obvious checks that
would reveal her substandard materials. Annoying, that

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113

was all. She didn't like surprises. But it would, after all, be
one more minihedron to fill her charm bracelet

Fassa caught a flicker of movement in the corner, just
enough to distract her for a moment The kid in the sack-
back was stretching, rising out of the enveloping chair.
Notnow. Go away. I ^w other things to thJnkaboiU.

"Miss del Parma y Polo?"

Not such a kid; a man grown, older than she was
herself— but not by so very much. Fassa took in his
appearance with growing appreciation. Broad
shoulders, legs long enough to carry off his out-
rageously psychepainted Capellan stretchpants, black
hair and eyes whose blue was set offby slashing streaks
of ochre face paint. A pretty peacock of a man. Maybe I'll
hire him after all, even if he did bypass the employment office.
Who cares whether he can do anything? Keep him around just
to look at.

"I should introduce myself now, I guess." He smiled
down at her and enveloped her hand in his. "Sev
Bryley, chief inspector for Bahati CreditLin. I reckon
it'll be a pleasure working with you, Miss del Parma."

Cor Caroli Subspace, Central Date 2753:
Caleb and Nancia

Caleb slammed one fist into the opposite palm and
paced the width of the central cabin, growling deep in
his throat. He paused opposite a purple metalloy
bulkhead with silver-gilt stenciled borders and raised
his fist again.

"Don't even think about it," Nancia warned him.
"You'll only hurt your hand and damage my nice new
paint job."

Caleb lowered his fist. A reluctant smile twitched at
the corners of his lips. "Don't tell me you like the paint
job?"

"No. But it seemed suitable for our role. And I don't
wish to return to Central looking as if I'd been through

114

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

a clawing match with some of Dorg Jesen's popsies,
thank you very much."

They had been undercover for this mission, Caleb
posing as a debauched young High Families scion who
wanted a cut of Dorg Jesen's secret metachip supply. In
return, he was to have offered the feelieporn king secret
information on certain of his High Families customers.

"Could be dangerous," Rahilly had warned them,
back on Central Base. '[Jesen doesn't like awkward
questions. Try to keep the meetings on shipboard.
Nancia, you'll have to protect yourself and Caleb if
Jesen tries anything."

But they hadn't even lured Jesen into one ship-
board meeting. He'd taken one look at Caleb's vidcom
image, listened to Caleb's stiff delivery of the speech
he'd been assigned to make, and burst out laughing.
"Pull the other one, it's got bells on," he taunted Caleb.
"And next time Central decides to send someone to in-
vestigate me, tell them not to make it an Academy boy
with a Vega accent you could cut with a knife, in a
brainship with a tarted-up central cabin. If you're
High Families, I'll eat my..."

Nancia cut the sound transmission at that point.

"Perhaps," she said now, "undercover work is not
our metier"

"I hate lies and spying," Caleb confirmed moodily.
"We should have refused this mission." He looked up
with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. "Unless... did you
get anything?"

Nancia had used the brief minutes of the vidcom link
to insert feelers into Jesen's private computer system, so
private that it didn't even have a Net connection. Central
had surmised he might have such a system in addition to
the open accounts he maintained via Net, but nothing
could be checked until they arrived planetside.

"Nothing," she told him. "I did get into his supply
acquisition database, but all the metachips in the

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115

records there show perfectly legitimate Shemali Base
control numbers."

Caleb made a fist again. "Then you didn't get into
the right records. Somebody's counterfeiting
metachips, and Jesen could lead us to the source ...
could have led us. He must be keeping three sets of
books. Do you think if I got him on vidcom again..."

An incoming transmission reached Nancia, and she
activated her central display screen. Dorg Jesen's nar-
row face appeared. "Been doing a litde research of my
own," he announced, almost pleasantly. "Got your
Central ID now to add in to my report. CN-935, lift
your Courier Service tail fins offplanet in fifteen
minutes and we'll forget this episode ever happened.
Otherwise I'll file a formal complaint with CS, charg-
ing you and your brawn with entrapment.''

"You can't win them all," Nancia tried to soothe
Caleb when they were offplanet and on their way back
to Central. "We do many things well. Lying doesn't
happen to be among them, that's all." But fm lying,
right now, by saying nothing. Nancia made an internal
playback of the datacordings she'd made four years
earlier, on her maiden voyage. There was Polyon,
cheerfully announcing his plan to slip metachips past
the SUM board and sell them to unauthorized opera-
tions like Dorg Jesen's feelieporn empire. If only Caleb
knew what she knew, he could make a report to
Central that would send them straight to Shemali.

Except... he wouldn't do it In the four years of then-
partnership, Caleb had never once wavered or com-
promised his moral principles. He would never stoop to
using a datacording made without the knowledge or con-
sentofthe passengers. And he would neverrespectNancia
again,oncehe knew whatshe'd doneon thatfirstvoyage.

Sadly, Nancia ended the replay and slapped five
more levels of security classifications on the datacord-
ing. Caleb must never know. But there must be some

116

way to point Central's investigations towards Shemali,
to stop them thinking in terms of counterfeit
metachips and start them thinking about the prison
factory.

Shemali, Central Date 2754:
Polyon

Polyon slapped the palmboard built into his
armchair and activated a vidcom link with Bahati.

"Summerlands Clinic, Alpha bint Hezra-Fong,
private transmission, code CX22." That would
scramble his message so that only someone with the
CX22 decoding hedron would be able to see and hear
anything but gibberish. "Alpha, my sweet, you were
just a tad premature in announcing that you'd
finished your Seductron research. The free sample
you sent up has one of my key techs too blissed-out to
do any useful work. I've no idea when he'll stop con-
templating his toenails, so you'd better find out—and
fast Unless you want to be the next test subject." He
smiled sweetly into the vidcom unit. "I can arrange it,
you know."

The next message went to Darnell, using a similar
scrambling technique. In a few words Polyon in-
formed Darnell that IntraManager, the small
commlink manufacturing company Darnell was
presently trying to take over, was not to be touched.
"It's one of mine," he said pleasantly. "I'm sure you
wouldn't have made a takeover move if you'd known
that, would you now? By the way—did I show you the
latest vids of the metachip line?" A tap of his fingers on
the palmboard called up a datacording from the lowest
circles of Hell: suited and masked workers toiling amid
clouds of poisonous green steam. This was the last and
most dangerous phase of metachip assembly, when
the blocks between the polyprinted connection pat-
terns were burned off with a quick dip into vats of acid.

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117

The burn-off process released a gaseous form of
Ganglicide into the atmosphere. Before Polyon's time,
this phase had been handled — rather badly — by
automated servos that misjudged the depth and
timing of the burnoff phase, dropped metachip
boards, and quickly self-destructed in the poisonous
atmosphere. Expensive and wasteful. By contrast,
prison workers in protective suits could process more
than three times as many metachips in a session, and
only a few of them were lost each year to leaks in the
suit sealing.

"See the third man from the left, Darnell?" Polyon
spoke into the vidcom while the images unreeled. "He
used to be High Families. Now he's a Shemali assem-
bly worker. How are the mighty fallen, eh?"

He cut the connection on that — an implied threat
was ever so much more effective than a specific one.
Actually, Polyon had no idea who the masked workers
on the line might be. They were the scum of the prison
system, the expendables who had neither tech train-
ing nor business sense to justify keeping them in the
safer areas of design and preprocessing. And while
there was indeed a High Families convict on Shemali,
the man had been sent there for a particularly revolt-
ing series of crimes involving the torture of small
children. Polyon didn't really think he could frame
Darnell for something like that and make it stick;
anybody would see the rich boy didn't have the guts to
torture anybody.

But I won't need to, will I? The threat witt be enough to
keep old Darnell in line.

The last call was to Fassa. He was lucky enough to
catch her in person. Polyon enjoyed the sight of Fassa's
eyes widening while he explained in detail just how
unhappy he felt about the collapse of his new
metachip assembly building, how personally hurt he
was to discover that Polo Construction had supplied

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

the substandard materials used in the building, and
exactly what he might do to assuage his sense of loss
and betrayal. The only trouble with the live connec-
tion, Polyon thought, was that he didn't get to finish
outlining the list of things he could do to Polo Con-
struction as a company and to Fassa personally. Before
he was half through, she was stammering apologies
and practically begging to be allowed to rebuild the as-
sembly facility. Free of charge, naturally.

Polyon graciously accepted the offer.

Just one more item ofbusiness to clear up. "Send in
4987832," he commanded.

A few minutes later, a pale-faced man in the prison
uniform of green coveralls came into the office. He
gave Polyon a confident smile. "Thought it over, have
you?"

"I most certainly have," Polyon agreed. He smiled
and shrugged with palms outspread. "Can't say I'm al-
together happy about the idea — but I see you leave
me no choice. You're a clever fellow, 4987832- Who
were you, before?"

^ames Masson," the prisoner said. "Head of re-
search for Zectronics — you've heard of them? No?
Well, it's a large galaxy. But it so happens I personally
directed the metachip design effort there. That's how I
happened to recognize the changes you've introduced
in the chips."

"My hyperchips will be fester and more powerful
than die old metachips by at least two orders of mag-
nitude," Polyon said. "They'll revolutionize the
industry. It didn't take any genius to recognize that.
The genius was in figuring out how to do it."

"And that's not all the hyperchips will do, is it, de
Gras-Waldheim? Industry isn't the only thing about to
suffer a... revolution."

Polyon inclined his head slighdy. "YouTI have a glass
of Stemerald with me, to celebrate our arrangement?"

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119

Masson's eyes widened and he licked his lips. "Why,
I haven't tasted Stemerald in — in — well, it must be
ten years! Not since I came here! I must say, de Gras-
Waldheim, I didn't think you'd take our little
arrangement so well."

Polyon's back was to Masson as he poured out the
Stemerald into two sparkling globes from OG GUmware.

"A lot of men would be petty about cutting me in on
the profits," Masson babbled on, accepting his globe
and draining it between words, "but that's you High
Families type, you know how to accept defeat gra-
ciously. And after all, giving me a small cut isn't much
when you think of what it would do to your plans if I
told Governor Lyautey about all the hyperchips'
programming." He swallowed the last drops of
Stemerald, ran his tongue round his lips once more to
savor the taste, then sat back with the slightly dazed ex-
pression of a man who'd just had his first strong drink
in ten years.

"As I said," Polyon repeated, "you leave me no
choice in the matter." He frowned quickly. "You have
honored your end of the agreement, haven't you,
Masson? No word to anyone else?"

"No word," Masson agreed. He spoke more slowly
now. "I wouldn't... want... anyone else .., cutting
in ..." His eyes glazed over and he sat staring into
space with a blissful smile on his face.

"Very good. Now, Masson, I have a special task for
you." Polyon leaned forward. "Hear and repeat! You
will go to the dip chambers."

"I... will... go... to... the... dip ... chambers,"*
Masson droned.

"I want you to make a surprise inspection. You will
not announce yourself."

"... not... announce... 'self."

"You do not need a protective suit."

Masson nodded and smiled. All the intelligence had

120

Anne McCaffrey &? Mwgorrf Ban

left his face now. Polyon felt a twinge of regret. The
man had been brilliant; would be again, if the
Seductron wore off. He could have been a useful sub-
ordinate if he hadn't made the mistake of trying to
blackmail Polyon. But as it was ... well, there was no
point in waiting, was there? Damn Alpha. If she'd only
developed the controlled Seductron she kept promis-
ing, with doses ranging from ten-minute zaps to a state
of mindless, permanent bliss, there would be no need
for this last distasteful step.

Polyon finished his orders to Masson and snapped a
dismissal. "Go. Now!"

Masson stood unsteadily and left Polyon's inner of-
fice. Polyon sat back and began sketching a metachip
linkage plan with one forefinger, tracing glowing
paths across the design screen.

Five minutes later, his vidcomm lit up to show the
face of the afternoon shift supervisor. "Lieutenant de
Gras-Waldheim? Sir? There's been a terrible accident.
One of your designers just... the man must have
gone mad, he walked right into the dip room without a
suit... if only he'd knocked they could have kept him
waiting in the outer lock until the gases were cleared
out... they didn't even know he was there.... The
room was filled with Ganglicide in gaseous form, he
didn't have a chance...." Screams sounded in the
background. "Oh, sir, it's terrible!"

"A most distressing accident," Polyon agreed.
"Begin the paperwork, 567934. And don't blame
yourself. Sometimes it just takes them like that, you
know, the lifers. Better any death than a lifetime on
Shemali, they think, and who knows? Perhaps they're
right. Oh, sorry, 1 forgot — you're a lifer too, aren't
you?"

He didn't start laughing until the connection was
broken.

• CHAPTER SEVEN

Spica Base, Central Date 2754:
Caleb and Nancia

Nancia limped into Spica Base on half power, depend-
ent on Caleb for reports on the lower deck damage
where her sensors had self-destructed to preserve her
from shock when the asteroid struck them.

"Freak accident," commented the Tech Grade 7
who came out to survey the damage in person.

Nancia mourned the sleek gloss of her exterior finish,
now pitted and gouged around the torn metal shreds of
the entrance hole. "Ishould have takena different route."

"Freak ship." The tech snapped his IR-Sensor gog-
gles down, hiding his eyes behind a band of black
plastifilm. "Ain't natural. Ship talks, pilot don't."

"The correct terms, as I'm sure you are aware, are
'brainship* and 'brawn,' " Nancia said frostily. "Caleb
is... it's none of your business. Just leave him alone,
okay?" She'd seen him plunged into these unreason-
ing depressions before, whenever one of their
missions was less than one hundred percent success-
ful. He'd retreated into himself without speaking for a
week after the disastrous undercover assignment with
Dorg Jesen, while Nancia tried to tempt his appetite
with fancy dishes from the galley and interesting tid-
bits of news picked up from the gossipbeams.

"I'll need somebody at the other end to help me link
the hyperchips into the ship's system," the tech
protested. "Somebody who knows the ship. My guys
are good, but this is a small base. They ain't never

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Anne McCaffrey £*f Margaret Ball

worked on a talking ship before. And nobody's got that
much experience with hyperchips. They might not in-
terface with these sensor setups just like the old
metachips did."

"Then," said Nancia, "perhaps you should explain to
them that a talking ship can, in fact, talk. There's no need to
trouble my brawn for information; 111 manage the installa-
tion myself" She didn't feel nearly so cheerful and carefree
as she tried to sound; the thought of some dolt like this tech
fooling around with her synaptic connectors made her feel
sick and weak. But she did not want him bothering Caleb.
One thing she'd learned in the last four years of partner-
ship was that Caleb only stayed depressed longer ifhe was
forced to talk to people before he was ready to.

The tech grunted acquiescence and twiddled some-
thing she couldn't see, "Sensor connection to
OP-N1.15, testing."

"If you mean can I see what you're doing," Nantia
responded, "the answer is no."

The tech gaped but recovered himself quickly.
"Hah! OP-N1 series . . . optic nerve connections?
Sorry, lady — ship — whatever you are. What I'm
looking at, see, it's just schematics. 1 didn't think ..."
His voice trailed off for a moment. "Awesome, really,
when you think about it that way. That there's zperson
somewhere inside this steel and titanium."

"Correction," Nancia said. She was becoming used
to this tendency among softpersons; they insisted on
equating her with the body curled inside the titanium
column, as if that was all there was to her. "I am a per-
son. That's my lower deck vision you're twiddling with
now, and I'd very much like to have it — Thank you!"
A partial visual field opened as she spoke. Now she
could see the tech again, and one gloved hand reach-
ing up into the tangle of fused metal and wires that
had been her lower deck sensory system.

"OP-N 1.15 restored," the tech noted. "Now if— say,

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123

this is going to be easy. Don't need this stuff" He clipped
a test meter to his belt and used both hands to rejoin
severed wires. "OP-N1.16 functioning now? Good. 17?"
He worked through the full series rapidly, while Nancia
kept him informed of the status of each repair.

"Thank you," she said again when he'd restored her
full optic series for the lower deck. "It's... most trou-
bling, being unable to look at a part of myself"

"Imagine it would be," the tech agreed. "Glad to
help a lady, any time."

Nancia noted that in the course of one short repair
session she had advanced from "unnatural talking
ship," to "person" to, apparently, "lady in distress." By
the time the repairs are finished, he'll be wanting to sign up for
brawn framing... and most distressed to learn he's over age.

"And this is just the beginning," the tech promised.
"We'll have you fixed up good as new in a day or so.
Better than new, really. You had any hyperchips in-
stalled before? Thought not. They're — I dunno —
about a thousand times better than the old line
metachips. You're gonna like this, ma'am." His fingers
twisted, seating one of the new chips. It felt strange to
see the movements without feeling the slight pressure
and hearing the dick as the chip slid into place.

"Can you feel anything when I do this?"

"No—yes. Oh!"

"Hurt you?"

"No. Just — surprised." Nancia felt as if her sensors
had been turned up to full volume, without sacrificing
the slightest accuracy. Every movement was dear; the
world sparkled like crystal around her. "How many
more of those do you have? Can you replace my upper
deck sensor chips too?"

The tech shook his head regretfully. "Sorry, ma'am.
It's a new design out of Shemali. There's not enough
hyperchips out yet to go around to all the folks who
need them for repairs, let alone bringing in functional

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Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

equipment and retrofitting it. Shemali Plant estimates
it'll be a good three-four years before they can
produce enough to retrofit all the Fleet ships."

"Oh. Of course." Nancia remembered the plan
Polyon had described on her maiden voyage. "I sup-
pose," she said, feeling very crafty, "I suppose a lot of
the chips are failing QA tests? It being a new design,
and all," she added hastily.

The tech shook his head. "No, ma'am. Actually,
these new chips don't fail in testing near as often as the
old design. Pretty near the full production run is being
cleared for distribution, most times. It's just that even a
year's full production runs out of Shemali don't
amount to that much when you consider all the places
the chips have to go these days. It's not just the Fleet,
y'know. Hospitals, Base brains, cyborg replacements,
defense systems — seems like we just about couldn't
run the galaxy without "em!"

Nancia felt first disappointed, then relieved. She had
expected Co hear that the new design somehow caused a
great many metachips to foil in the QA phase and that
nobody knew what became of the substandard chips
rejected by the SUM ration board. That would have been
evidence she could mention to Caleb, something to steer
his mind in the direction of Polyon's illicit activities
without revealing that she already knew about the plan.

Instead, it seemed that Polyon had given up his plan
altogether. He was brilliant. Perhaps the hyperchip
design was his idea; and perhaps, Nancia thought op-
timistically, he had forgotten his original notion of
stealing metachips in favor of the honest pleasure of
seeing his design accepted and used galaxy-wide.

Angalia, Central Date 2754

The third annual progress meeting of the Nyota
Five was held on Angalia, an arrangement which
pleased no one — least of all the host

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125

"It was your idea to rotate the annual meetings,"
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong pointed out, somewhat snap-
pishly, when Blaize apologized for the primitive
accommodations. "We could have been comfortably
settled in a Summerlands conference room, but nooo,
you and Polyon had to fuss that it wouldn't be fair if
you two had to travel to Bahati every time just to suit
the three of us who had the good luck to be stationed
there. So we have to rotate. Two nice meetings on
Bahati, now this godforsaken dump, and next time,
stars help us, Shemali. You and your bright ideas!
Send someone to unpack for me — you must have
some help around the place, surely?"

" 'Fraid not," Blaize said with a sunny smile. He was
beginning to enjoy the prospect of Alpha's discomfort
on Angalia. Rotating the meeting sites had really been
Polyon's idea, not his, but Alpha was obviously afraid
to take out her bad temper on Lieutenant de Gras-
Waldheim. Blaize glanced sidelong at Polyon, very
straight and correct in his Academy dress blacks, and
admitted to himself that he didn't blame Alpha. Given
a choice of tongue-lashing the enigmatic technical
manager of Shemali MetaPlant, or the little red-haired
runt from PTA, who wouldn't choose to lash out at the
PTAwimp?

But this understanding didn't make him love Alpha
— or the rest of the Nyota Five, including himself—
any better.

"Welcome," Blaize said with a sweeping bow that in-
cluded all four of his guests, "to the Angalia Tourist
Center. A modest facility, as you can see — "

Darnell's snort of laughter testified to the truth of
that statement

" — but vastly improved from its humble begin-
nings," Blaize finished. "If the winner were to be
chosen on the basis of progress rather than of absolute
wealth, I'd have no doubt of succeeding next year."

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

And that, by God, was the absolute and unvarnished
truth! The rest of them might sneer at Blaize's long,
low bungalow with its thatched roof and thatch-
shaded balcony, the garden of native ferns and grasses
and the paved path leading from there to the
corycium mine. Never mind. He knew what it had
taken to create these amenities from the mud-hole that
Supervisor Harmon had left him with.

"All done with native labor?" Fassa interrupted his
explanation. "But everybody knows the Loosies are
too stupid to do anything useful."

Blaize put one finger to the side of his nose and
winked, a gesture borrowed from an old tri-D show
called Fagm and His Gang. "Amazing what even a veg-
head can do with the proper... incentive," he drawled.

"Where d'you store the whips and spiked sticks?"
That was pudgy Darnell, bright-eyed as if he actually
expected Blaize to produce a panoply of torture in-
struments and demonstrate their use.

"You've no subtlety, Overton-Glaxely," Blaize
reproved the man. "Think. The — er — Loosies were
starving when I came here, kept alive only by PTA ra-
tion bricks. The task of distributing the ration bricks,
naturally, belonged to the PTA representative on An-
galia. Me."

"So?" Darnell really was amazingly slow. Not for the
first time, Blaize wondered how he'd made such a suc-
cess out of OG Shipping and the smaller corporations
that OG Enterprises had swallowed up over die years.

"So,** Blaize drawled, "I saw no reason togrw away
PTA ration supplements when they could perfectly
well be used to train the natives. We have a simple rule
of life now on Angalia, my friends — no work, no eat"
He pointed towards the entrance to the corycium
mine. "And it's not just applied to building the master's
bungalow. I hold the title to that mine. United
Spacetec abandoned it because they couldn't keep

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127

human miners on Angalia. / use the native resources
to mine the native resources, so to speak — you'll see
the day shift coming out in a few minutes."

"And you pay them with ration bricks, which come
free via PTA?" Alpha gave Blaize an approving smile
that chilled him to the bone. "I must admit, Blaize,
you're not as stupid as you look. Anything you make
from the corycium mine is profit, free and dear."

Blaize opened his mouth wide in simulated shock.
"Dr. Hezra-Fong! Please! I am deeply shocked and dis-
illusioned that you should think such a thing of me.
Any profits accruing from the corycium mine natural-
ly belong to the natives of Angalia." He waited a beat
before continuing. "Of course, since the natives of An-
galia do not have Intelligent Sentient Status, they can't
have bank accounts — so the credits do, perforce, go
into a Net account in my name. But held in trust for
the Loosies—you understand?"

The others chuckled knowingly and all agreed that
they did indeed understand, and that Blaize was a
clever lad to have found such a good way of covering
his tail in the event of a PTA inspection. All but Polyon
de Gras-Waldheim, who was tapping one finger
against the seam of his black trousers and staring at the
thunderclouds on the horizon.

"You've done pretty well, considering," Darnell ad-
mitted, "but with creatures as dumb as these, surely
you have — er — discipline problems?" He was get-
ting that whips-and-chains expression again.

"If he does, maybe regulated doses of Seductron
would be the answer," cooed Alpha. "I've just about
got the bugs worked out of the dosage schedule now,
and it might be interesting to test it on non-humans."

Blaize forced himself to smile. Time for his
demonstration. He'd planned it beforehand, in case
there was need to make an additional impression on
the others, but had hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

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Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

Messy, it would be. And wasteful. But apparently they
still weren't convinced of his firm control over the
Loosies.

"Thanks, Alpha, but Seductron wouldn't quite do
the trick; the Loosies are passive and malleable
enough already. What they need is occasional stimula-
tion, and that," he said with a low laugh, "that I can
arrange for myself." He raised one hand in the air and
brought it down with a swift chopping motion.

Two of the tall rock pillars beside the garden wall
moved forward in the shambling, awkward gait char-
acteristic of the Loosies. With movement, their
features and humanoid shapes could be clearly seen,
although until a moment earlier they had blended in
with the real stones making up the rest of the wall. Be-
tween them they hauled a third "rock," a native whose
double-jointed legs sagged under him and whose flap-
ping liplike folds of skin opened and closed with a
mimed display of silent terror.

"They may not talk," said Blaize, "but they've
learned to understand simple sign commands quite
well. Most of them have, anyway. This fellow in the
middle dropped a serving dish when he was waiting
on me at dinner yesterday. I've been saving him to
make an example of in front of the miners, but since
there's an audience here already" — he allowed his
eyes to roam lazily over his four co-conspirators —
"why wait any longer for the pleasure?"

He pointed over the side of the mesa with a
deliberate downward motion, three times repeated.
The two Loosie guards bobbed their square heads and
half carried, half dragged their prisoner over the edge.

"You make 'em throw themselves over the cliff?"

"Not at all," Blaize cackled. "Too fast, that'd be.
Come and watch!"

By the time everybody had crowded around the low
wall at the mesa's edge, the three Loosies were already

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129

down on the mud flats, approaching one of the areas
where bubbles rose and burst in the glop with a stench
of sulfur. The two guards hauled the prisoner to the
edge of this bubbling area and thrust him into the soft
mud. As he writhed and struggled to escape, they
picked up the long sticks that had marked the site of
the bubbles and used them to thrust him back into the
steaming mud.

"Natural hot springs under there," Blaize ex-
plained. "Very hot. Takes a couple of hours to cook
'em through. Fortunately, the Loosies are real patient
Those two I use as guards will keep pushing him down
until he quits trying to get out, even if it takes most of
the evening."

He turned away from the spectacle of torture and
bowed once again to his guests. "Well, ladies and
gendemen," he inquired with a benign smile, "shall we
begin the business meeting?"

Even Polyon, Blaize noted, was pale against the
dead black of his uniform; while the other three were
shocked into silence. So much the better. It would be a
while, he thought, before any of them underestimated
little Blaize again.

After the shocking scene Blaize had just provided,
the third annual progress meeting began more quietly
than the previous meetings had gone. The underlying
tensions in the group were still present, however, and
all the sharper for another year's fermenting.

As host, Blaize claimed the honor of giving the initial
report While Polyon gazed over his head in unfeigned
boredom and the two girls sat pale and silent, he began
reciting facts and figures to back up his earlier assertions.
In earlier years he'd had little to report This year he was
at last coming into his own. He fancied a glimmer of
respect in Polyon's eyes as Blaize explained how he was
using the first profits from the corycium mine to finance

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret BaU

the purchase of heavy mining equipment that would
open up even more of the planet for exploitation. Dar-
nell twitched and muttered to himself during this pan of
the report, but he didn't explode until Polyon pointedly
inquired as to how Blaize had financed the initial startup
costs of the mine.

"Reselling surplus PTA shipments," Blaize replied
prompdy.

"Dear me," commented Polyon, "I thought the —
ah — 'Loosies' were starving. Didn't this move reduce
your potential worker population somewhat?"

"Waste not, want not," Blaize waved his hand in
vague circles. "There's a lot of surplus in any
bureaucracy. I just — as you might say — cut the fat
out"

It was perhaps unfortunate that his eyes met
DarnelTs at this moment, and that the airy circles his
hand was sketching could have been taken for an in-
dication of DarnelTs growing paunch.

"The hell you did!" Darnell exploded, surging to his
feet on a wave of red-faced fury. "Cut it right out of my
hide, you mean!" He turned to the others as if appeal-
ing for their sympathy. "Little bastard blackmailed me
to ship extra food here —free — while he was selling
the supplies that ought to've gone to the natives!"

This accusation did not have quite the effect he
might have been hoping for.

"Really, Darnell?" asked Polyon with bright-eyed in-
terest. "And what were you doing that he could
blackmail you for, I wonder?"

Darnell puffed and stammered and Alpha inter-
rupted him. "Who cares? I'm delighted somebody finally
nailed you. Ever since you took over Pair-a-Dice I've
wanted to pay you back!"

"What do you care whether I buy out a crummy
casino?"

"That 'crummy casino,' " Alpha informed him, "just

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131

happened to be my primary outlet for Seductron at
street prices. The gambling was only a front — once
you pay the Bahati cops off for a gambling operation,
they're too dumb to check and see if that's really where
all the money is coming from. Pair-a-Dice — Paradise
__ get it, stupid? That's the street name for
Seductron."

"I thought you didn't have the dosage schedules
worked out yet!" Fassa sounded appalled.

Alpha shrugged thin, elegant shoulders. Her face
was sharp as a knife under the elaborate Nueva Estrel-
la style of tight braids piled high in a prismawood
spiral frame. "So a few Blissto addicts go out happy.
Who cares? I've got to start making something off
Seductron before next year. Even if I work around all
the side effects, it's too late to patent it now. So it's street
deals or nothing." This reminded her of her
grievance. "And since you took over my best outlet,
Pudge-face, it's been nothing. You owe me!"

"So do you," Fassa told Blaize, "Del Parma was low
bidder on the corycium processing plant. By govern-
ment regulations you ought to've given us the job.
How much did the winning contractor slip you under
the table?"

"That," Blaize replied stiffly, "is between the two of
us, and nothing to do with you, Fassa! Besides, know-
ing what I do about del Parma's construction methods,
what made you think I'd be fool enough to let you
build a latrine trench on Angalia?"

"Huh! Angalia already is a latrine trench! Ha-ha-
ha!"

Nobody except Fassa paid the least attention to
Darnell's lame jest. She whirled and stabbed a long
iridescent corycium-sheathed fingernail at his chest.
"And you! Remember the Procyon run? That's the last
time OG Shipping gets any del Parma business!'*

Darnell smoothed down his green synthofur jacket

132

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

and smirked. "Can't see what you're complaining
about," he replied. "Switching good construction
materials for substandard ones is standard practice for
del Parma."

"Only," Fassa said, "when / keep the profit. I'm not
running a charitable association for the benefit of OG
Shipping."

"Can't see why not," Darnell leered. "The word is
you've been charitable to enough of Bahati's male
population already."

Fassa sat down abruptly, holding her head in her
hands. "Don't remind me," she wailed, "as if you and
everybody else cheating me weren't enough, can't I at
least forget about that inspector from CreditLin for a
little while? I gave him what he wanted, the space
station's paid for, I can't understand why he won't go
away."

"I can," suggested Blaize helpfully. "Fraudulent QA
records, shoddy materials, slipshod building practices,
non-union workers..."

"Cheat!"

"Bloodsucker!"

"Shark!"

The meeting dissolved into the usual chaos while
Polyon sat back, arms crossed, and murmured,
"Naughty children."

• CHAPTER EIGHT

Kailas, Procyon Subspace, Central Date 2754

The Central Diplomatic Services office tower was a
lacework of steel and titanium needles, wrapped in
translucent green synthofilm that trapped and
redistributed natural light in a soft, unchanging glow.
Midnight or noon, the CDS offices on Kailas were lit by
a gentle, slightly green-tinged light that was energy-
efficient, situation-appropriate, and psychologically
proven to be simultaneously soothing and
inspirational.

It made Sev Bryley feel as if he was about to suffer a
recurrence of the jungle rot that had attacked his skin
on Capella Four. He tried not to think about the light
It was a minor matter, not worth wasting the precious
minutes this important man had granted him.

"Youhate this, too, don'tyou?" the important man said.

"Sir?"

An impatient grunt "The blasted light Something
Psych and EcoTech dreamed up between them. Makes
me feel as if I were back on Capella Six."

"For me it was Four," Sev confessed.

Another grunt. "Different war, same jungle. I'd
open a window if this place had windows. Can't peel
plastifilm open, more's the pity."

"It's very good of you to make time to see me at all,
sir," Sev said cautiously. So they had a common back-
ground — service in the Capellan Wars? Was that why
this highly placed diplomat had given a mere private
investigator ten minutes out of his crowded schedule?

"Not at all. Do the same for any friend of the family

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who needed help. So. What's your problem, d'Aquino?"

Sev stiffened. "I didn't intend to call on family con-
nections, sir— "

"Then you're a damned young fool," said the gray-
haired man in the conservative blue tunic. "I've been
checking your Net records. Your full name is Sevareid
Bryley-Sorensen d'Aquino—why didn't you use it when
you requested this appointment? You could have gotten
in to see me three days sooner. And why me, if you didn't
mean to call on High Families connections?"

"I was not aware that there was a relationship be-
tween our families. Sir," Sev said stiffly. "I came to
Kailas because it was the nearest world with any CDS
representatives high-ranking enough to deal with my
problem. And I approached you because you have the
reputation of being one of the two Central Worlds offi-
cials on this planet who cannot be bribed, threatened,
or suborned."

"So you found two honest men, my Diogenes? I'm
flattered."

"Sir. My name is Bryley, not Dio — whatever."

"A classical reference. No matter. What do they teach
them in University these days? But then, you didn't
finish your schooling. Why didn't you cash in your
veteran's benefits after Capella IV to complete your
education at Central's expense?"

Sev tried without success to conceal his surprise.

"The Net can supply — um—rather a lot of detail,"
his interlocutor explained gently. "Even about a
rather obscure private investigator who's recently lost
his position with Bahati CreditLin — yes, I found out
about that too. Something about a gambling scandal at
the Pair-a-Dice, wasn't it?"

"It was a lie!" Sev leaned forward, burning with in-
dignation at the memory. "My supervisor — he had
anonymous letters about me. I know who sent them,
but I can't prove it,"

"And who might that be?"

The same man who transferred credits into my Net
account and played under my name at Pair-a-Dice —
or maybe he sent one of his flunkies to play the part.
When I went to the casino, they wouldn't tell me any-
thing about the man who used my name."

"No. They beat you — rather badly—and threw you
out into the ecocycler in the back alley." The gray-eyed
man surveyed Sev with eyes that took in every feint mark
of healing bruises and scraped skin. "Lucky you didn't
wind up being recycled into somebody's rose garden; we
suspect that's what has happened to a few other people
who annoyed the proprietor of that particular estab-
lishment So. \bu came to your senses, crawled out of the
ecocycler before it began its chop sequence, got treat-
ment for your more obvious wounds from some shady
blacklisted ex-doctor among your underworld friends,
and... came halfway across the galaxy to wait three days
for an interview with me. Want me to get you reinstated
with Bahati CreditLin, is that it? Favor for a friend? Teach
them not to act on anonymous accusations against a
High Families lad — even one who's rebelled against his
background and is working incognito?"

"Sir!"

"It can be arranged, you know," said the gray-eyed
man, watching Sev closely. "A word from this office,
and Bahati CreditLin will reinstate you, full back pay,
no questions asked. If that's what you want..."

"No, sir."

The gray-eyed man nodded briskly. "Good. I didn't
think so, but one has to be sure. You want to track
down the people who framed you, then."

"More than that." Sev dropped his eyes. "I think I
know who framed me. And why. But it's a long story,
and there are High Families involved. That's why I
came to you, sir. Somebody without that background
might be tempted to shove everything under the car-

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pet for fear of offending someone powerful. And of
those in Central Administration who are High
Families — well — " He spread his hands helplessly." I
don't know the lineages and their reputations. The
only two people whose integrity everyone is absolutely
sure of are you and General Questar-Benn — and
she's on some kind of secret assignment, nobody
would tell me where."

"How flattering," purred the gray-eyed man.

Belatedly, Sev realized the implications of his words.
"Sir. I didn't mean — 1 am most grateful that you
agreed to see me, truly I am."

"Take that as read. Now why don't you tell me
what's going on?"

Sev's cheekbones reddened. His tongue felt like a
wad of cotton in his mouth. Where could he begin? In
this cool green-lit office, the madness that had seized
him on Bahati seemed like a dream.

"There was — a girl."

"Ann. You know, there quite often is, in such cases.
And you — made a fool of yourself?" He looked at Sev
sympathetically. "You know, I can remember the urge
to make a fool of oneself over a young lady. I'm not so
old and dried-up as all that. But if this story is going to
be personal, perhaps you'd feel easier continuing it in
a less formal environment? Sometimes I go across
town for lunch — there's a cafe in Darkside. Nothing
fancy. But at least it gets one out of this damned jungle
light-
Fifteen minutes later, feeling somewhat as if he'd ac-
tually been through the ecocycler's processing
sequence, Sev and the man he'd come to see were
seated at a table in the back of a cavernous, dimly lit
cafe. The one window that might have admitted a little
sunlight was curtained by dusty streamers of glitzrib^
bon and prismawood light-dangles. In one corner of
the room, a weedy boy with long red hair tied in z\

black velvet bow tinkered with his synthocom set,
producing occasional bursts of strident sound that
grated on Sev's eardrums.

Even his sleazy story seemed no more than normal,
here. He wondered if that was why they'd come to this
dingy place. It seemed an odd setting for a man who
spent his working life meeting with presidents and
kings and generals.

"It's quiet here," said the only honest man on Kailas,
"and more to the point, I know there won't be any un-
authorized datacordings made of our conversation;
I'm acquainted with the proprietor of this place. She
has quite a number of visitors who don't want their dis-
cussions overheard or recorded."

"I can believe it," said Sev with feeling.

"So. If that answers your curiosity about why we
came here — why don't you tell me about this girl?

"She was — " Sev stopped, swallowed, searched again
for a place to begin. "She is head of a construction com-
pany based on Bahati. Their most recent contract was for
a space station to catch Net signals and route small-pack-
age traffic between Vega subspace and Central. As pan of
my routine duties for Bahati Creditlin, I was asked to do
a final walk-through inspection of the station. It was—it
should have been just a formality; the head of Contracts
Administration had already signed off on the work."

"I take it," murmured the gray-eyed man, "there
were, in fact, some deficiencies in the construction
methods?"

"It was a. joke" Sev's hands moved freely and he for-
got his nervousness as he sketched the discoveries he'd
made. "Oh, everything looked good enough on the
outside. Fresh new permalloy surface skin. Interior
corridors painted and glowlit, shiny new sensor
screens to scan the exteriors. But once I opened up a
few panels and started looking at what was behind the
fresh paint—" He shook his head, remembering. "She

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139

tried to distract me. No. That's not fair. She... did dis-
tract me. For a while." Three days and nights in Fassa
del Parma's private cubicle on her personal transport
ship, wheeling around the space station, watching the
blazing dance of the stars through the clear walls
above and below and around their own dance...

Sev felt himself on fire again, remembering. And
regretting. Even now, some part of him wanted noth-
ing better than to be back on the Xanadu with Fassa del
Parma y Polo. Whatever the cost.

"She was... annoyed," he said slowly, "when I told her
I'd have to complete the inspection according to form."
He looked up at the man seated across the table, search-
ing for a hint of condemnation in the level gray eyes. "I
should have done the inspection immediately. I'd given
her three days." No, shegave them to me. Three days FU never
forget. "She'd had her people working overtime to con-
ceal their cheap work. Panels behind panels. Fake safety
numbers stenciled on the recycled supporting beams.
Warning signs about chemical danger areas in front of
the rats' nests they called an electronic system — as
though that would've stopped me!" Sev snorted.

"If 7 had put up signs warning of chemical dangers,"
the other man commented, "I would have made sure
that you did indeed run into such dangers the first time
you removed a panel. Nothing fetal, of course. Certainly
nothing really nasty, like gaseous Ganglicide. Maybe a lit-
tle sinoidal stimulant Or Capellan fungus spores."

"She thought of that," said Sev grimly. "So, unfor-
tunately for her, did I... I wore a chem-pro suit and
gas mask while I checked out the electronics."

"And?"

"The place never should have passed the most cursory
inspection," Sev said tonelessly. "ltdidn't pass mine. I
transmitted a full report via the Net — enough to stop
payment on the space station and put Polo Construction
under investigation. The lady was, ummm — not

auo>-"———      i

right ear. Nothing more than the feint memory ol scars
now, but the lines still tingled whenever he thought of
Fassa. Being clawed by Fassa del Parma wasn't nearly as
much fun as the things they'd done on the Xanadu, but it
vras still a remarkably stimulating experience. Even now,
Sev reckoned he would rather have a fight with Fassa
than party with any six other girls ofhis acquaintance.
Not that the opportunity was likely to come his way

again....

"You said your report should have shut down the
space station," his companion prompted gently. "In-
stead...?"

"Damned if I know." Sev spread his hands. "When I got
i i^__^jrt "-"™*rvM-f wa* crone. All mv fifes had been

erased by some treaic computer HIUUUIA.UUU, ««.«* *___,
had bothered to copy it to a datahedron first... or so they
said. And I was up on charges of sexual harassment.
Specifically, faUingtocompletea schedukdinspection, and
.i_—„—;—„ Vr>*& Hf>l Parma v Polo with a bad inspection

jportifshe didn't comply witnmy pci vci itw^v-suv—
"She got there first," the other man murmured.
"She's fast," Sev admitted grudgingly. "And smart.
And ... well, it doesn't matter. Not now." FU never get
back on the Xanadu now. And if I did, she'd nail me to a wall

and flay me. Slowly.

"It was her word against mine, no evidence on either
side. Or so my supervisor told me. Asecond inspection, a
second honest inspection, would have found the same
flaws I detailed in my report. But they weren't going to
send me, not after her complaints. And while they were
waffling around looking for somebody else with the tech-
nical background to do the inspection, Senator Cenevix
pushed a special bill through his committee. He's in
charge of the Ethics Committee," Sev explained. "This

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bill made second inspections in the same class as trying a
man twice for the same crime — placed a construction
company under the protection of the old double jeopar-
dy rule. So we weren't allowed to go back and collect the
evidence. Then the letters started coming — about me
gambling at the Pair-a-Dice — and, well, you know the
rest of it."

"What I don't know, though, is what you expect me
to do about it You've said you don't want me to get you
reinstated at Bahati CreditLin — and I think that's a
good idea; if you went back to the Nyota ya Jaha sys-
tem, I don't think your life would be worth much. And
you must know Central doesn't interfere with other
worlds' internal legislative affairs. If this young lady
has bribed a senator, that's most deplorable, but we
must wait for the people of Bahati to recognize the feet
and remove him by due electoral process."

"Not," said Sev grimly, "if I can get incontrovertible
evidence of what she's been up to."

"My dear boy, you'll never get close to a Polo Con-
struction job again. From what you've told me, I'm
quite sure she's too bright to let you anywhere near
her operations."

"True," Sev agreed."/ haven't a chance of catching her
now. And there aren't many investigators — male or
female — whom I'd guarantee to be immune to Fassa's,
umm, methods of distraction." He paused for a moment
of brief; intense, almost painful memory. "Maybe none,"
he concluded, opening his eyes again. "But a brainship
would be safe enough, don't you think?"

"Tell me," said the gray-eyed man, "exactly what
you have in mind." He hadn't moved by so much as
the flicker of an eyelash, but Sev could sense the sud-
denly heightened interest. He outlined his plan,
accepted several corrections and emendations to the
basic strategy, and all but held his breath with hope
and excitement. It had been a long shot, coming to this

man, and one he hadn't really expected to pay off.

"I thinkitcanbedone," was the final verdict "I think it
should be done. And I do believe I can arrange it."

"Then it only remains to find a brainship capable of
carrying out the plan."

"Any Courier Service ship would be capable" There
was a hint of reproof in the level, passionless voice.
"But we can do better than that. You want integrity,
brains, diplomatic skills, and the ability to pass as a
droneship. There's one ship fairly recently commis-
sioned — about five years — that should suit your
purposes. I can guarantee her personal integrity, you
see, and that's what is most important in this opera-
tion. For the rest — "a brief, ironic smile that puzzled
Sev — "well, let's just say I've been following this par-
ticular ship's career with some interest."

He stood, and Sev followed suit. As they passed the
music platform, the synthocommer broke into a
raucous burst of primitive melody—annoying, Jar too
loud, but with a compelling rhythm behind the raw
sounds. Sev rather liked it, but his companion dosed
his eyes and shuddered faintly.

"I apologize," he said as the door closed behind them,
"for the music. It's not one of the cafe's attractions, in my
opinion. Still, it is the other reason why I come here."
Sev frowned in puzzlement.

"You'd think a young man of High Families stock,
with a good education and a family eager to help him
get started in a worthwhile profession, could find some
better career than playing synthocom in a dusty bar on
the wrong side of town, wouldn't you?"

It was dearly a rhetorical question. Sev nodded his
head in agreement.

"So," said the only honest man on Railas, "so would
I. But evidently my son is of a different opinion."

PARTNERSHIP

143

CHAPTER NINE

Rahilly, Nancia's CS supervisor, ordered her to take it
easy while she was getting used to the hyperchip im-
plants. "Cruise back to Central and take your time about
it," he ordered her. "You'll have several assignments to
pick from when you get here, but there's nothing urgent
and no reason for you to strain yourself with too many
Singularity transitions while you're getting up to speed
with your new capabilities." So Nancia chose a lengthy
return route that required only one very small transition
through Singularity, while she reveled in the enhanced
clarity and speed of thought she enjoyed wherever the
hyperchips had been installed.

After the jump she was inclined to grumble at the.
caution displayed by the Courier Service.

"That was the best jump I've ever made," she told
Caleb. "Did you feel how cleanly I ripped that dive into
Central subspace?"

"Ripped a dive?" Caleb inquired.

Nancia realized that in all their time together, she'd
never discussed how she felt about Singularity, or
mentioned the Old Earth-style athletic metaphors that
came to her when she was diving through decompos-
ing three-space. "It's ... a term athletes use," she
explained. "There were some newsbytes of the Earth
Olympics once . . . anyway. I just meant it was a per-
fecdy wonderful jump. Don't you think so?"

"It was over faster than most," Caleb allowed. "Let's
see what our next assignment is."

They had a choice of three, but as soon as Nancia
scanned the beam she knew there was only one she

wanted to take. Abrainship was needed for an under-
cover assignment investigating the methods of BLEEP
Construction Company on planet in the star system
CENSORED. The matter must be handled with ex-
treme discretion; details would be available only to the
brainship accepting the assignment.

"Two weeks travel. One major Singularity point. I
bet I know where it is," Nancia said.

"That could describe any number of routes," Caleb

pointed out.

"Yes, but..." Nancia created a pattern of dancing
lightstrings on her central panel. She would have been
willing to bet her four years' accumulated pay and
bonuses that at least one of the spoiled brats she'd
carried out to the Nyota ya Jaha system was im-
plementing the plans she'd discussed. Fassa del Parma
y Polo. Polo Construction. Bahati. Hadn't there been
something on the newsbytes about a delay in financing
the new space station off Bahati, some question about
the inspection? ... It had to be Fassa's company. And
here, at last, was Nancia's chance to stop one of the un-
ethical litue beasts. "Caleb, let's take this one. I like it"
Caleb sniffed disapprovingly. "Well, I don't Under-
cover —that's next door to espionage. Vega Ethical Code
considers it the same thing, in feet. I didn't sign on to
Courier Service to become a dirty, sneaking spy." He
made the word sound obscene. "And look at this.'' He
overrode Nancia's pattern of dancing lights to display a
copy of the assignment description on the central screen.
A laser pointer highlighted the wait-code inconspicuous-
ly marked on the top left corner of the message header.
"See that? Somebody specifically routed this assignment
to us, even if it meant waiting three weeks for us to come
back from Spica subspace by the longest route. With a lit-
tle checking the Net we could probably find out who —
no, that would be unethical," Caleb conceded with a
small sigh. "But I don't like it, Nancia. Smells of High

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PARTNERSHIP

145

Families meddling and pulling strings. I think we ought
to take one of the other two assignments. Something
that's presented in a straightforward manner, something
we can do without compromising our integrity."

But even Caleb couldn't work up much enthusiasm
for their other two choices.

The first, they were warned, might be a relatively
long-term assignment. A ship was required to
transport the Planetary Technical Aid inspection com-
mittee on its five-yearly rounds, remaining at each
planet while the committee inspected the situation and
prepared a report.

"I guess there are worse chores," he said. "And maybe
it wouldn't take so long. If they do this trip every five
years, the last inspection ship should have been coming
back just before you were commissioned. Want to check
the records and find out how long the round trip took?"

Nancia began checking the Courier Service's open
records while Caleb studied the third assignment
choice. "Taking a bull to Cor Caroli subspace? This is a
Courier Service assignment?"

"Improving agriculture," Nancia suggested, and
then, "but they can't be serious. Surely all we'd have to
take out is a sperm sample."

But it turned out, when they checked, that nobody
had ever successfully taken a sperm sample from
Thunderbolt III, the prize bull bufialo of die Central
Worlds Zoo. And since die only surviving cow bufialo
was on Cor Caroli VI, and since the zoo keeper diere
claimed Shaddupa suffered from terrible Singularity
stress and couldn't possibly handle spaceflight, the
preservation of the species required that Thunderbolt
III be transported to Cor Caroli VI.

" I think even a PTA committee would be better com-
pany than Thunderbolt Three," Caleb commented.
"Nancia, isn't there any CS record of how long the pre-
vious inspection tour lasted?"

"I just found it," Nancia told him. She'd had to check
through more years of records than she anticipated.

"And?"

"And they should be returning some time next year.
They're still out in Deneb subspace. I've been reading
the interim reports. It seems the PTAbylaws prohibit die
inspection committee from leaving any planet until diey
have all agreed to and signed the report for that planet**

'And?'

This time Nancia did sigh. "Caleb, it's a committee."
Three hours later Sevareid  Bryley-Sorensen
d'Aquino came aboard to explain his plan in detail.

"1 don't like the paint job," Nancia complained
when the retrofitting was done.

Caleb glared at her control panel. She wished he
would turn around and look at her central column,
now hidden behind fake bulkheads. "It was your idea
to travel under false colors. Don't complain now."

"It's not being disguised as an OG Shipping
droneship I mind," Nancia said. "It's Darnell's choice
of colors. Puce and mauve, ugh!"

That wasn't quite true. She did mind the OG Ship-

-*----*. —.-..-, Lm*. ., j~wf*Ar\v

feeling to Know mat suangwio .»v,^«.—— — __
see pan of Darnell Overton-Glaxely*s rapidly growing
empire. But she wasn't about to admit that to Caleb,
not after arguing so hard to convince him that they
should take the assignment.

Sev Bryley's plan had been simplicity itself. Fassa del
Parma seduced men when she needed to, but she was
economical with herself as with all Polo Construction's
resources: very few strangers were allowed dose enough
to the construction company's operations to become any
sort of a threat. Herworkers were fanatically loyal to her—

"Let's not discuss that part," Caleb had interrupted
Sev at this point. "It's not fit for Nancia to hear."

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Anne McCaffrey £ff Margaret Ball

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147

"I believe," Sev said carefully, "that their loyalty is pur-
chased by stock options and high financial bonuses. Not
to mention the feet that a number of them are rumored
to be wanted by Central under other IDs; somebody
seems to be doing a fine business in supplying Fassa with
lake Net identities for her workers."

Polyon. Nancia remembered the ease and dexterity
with which he'd hacked into the Net accounts via her
own computer. And that had been five years before. He
was probably much, much better at it now. She could tell
Sev Bryley where to look for the Net forger... or just
drop him a hint. A hint might be enough for this deter-
mined young man; look how quickly he'd dredged up
the connection between Polo Construction and OG
Shipping, the very basis for their hastily executed plan.

Fassa's business required heavy transport facilities.
For the most part Polo Construction ran their own
ships, but when she had too many contracts Fassa
rented droneships from OG Shipping. The drones
were the safest way for her to transport illicitly ac-
quired materials; there would be no witnesses except
her own men, loading materials at one end, and the
customer's men unloading at the other end of the run.
Neither would be inclined to bear witness against a sys-
tem that brought them so much profit

Sev had worked out all this from a combination of
studying partial Net records, interviewing anybody
with even casual interest in Polo Construction, and
putting the bits together with his own flashes of bril-
liant insight. He lacked just one thing: the testimony of
an unimpeachable eyewitness to confirm his deduc-
tions. Somebody needed to see the substitution of
materials going on... somebody whose integrity could
not be questioned... somebody who could get close to
operations without warning Fassa.

The integrity of Courier Service brainships was beyond
question. And Fassa, accustomed to the services of the

suspect thatbehind painted ovuiuieausiiiju ciupvy r^o^u^
docks there resided a human brain with the sensor
capacity to hear and see all that went on aboard the ship ...
and the intelligence to testify about it later.
"It's a brilliant plan," Nancia declared when Sev first

explained it.

"1 don't like it," Caleb glowered. "Sending Nancia
out alone — without me to tell her how to do things?
What if she panics?"

"I won't panic." Nancia made her voice as calm and

soothing as possible.

"And I'll be with her," Sev pointed out. "1 won't risk
coming out where they can see me, but I'll track every-
thing via Nancia's sensor screens and send her cues if
she needs help."

Caleb folded his arms. "That," he said grimly, "is not
a satisfactory solution. Why can't I go too? I'm her
brawn. I should be wherever she is."

"Minimizing the risks," Sev said briefly. Actually, his
original plan had called for the brainship to go complete-
ly unattended, just like a drone. But he was damned if he
would miss out on the culmination of his careful plans.
He trusted himself to have the self-control to stay out of
sight until Fassa had completely incriminated herself; he
didn't trust Caleb to display the same good sense. But ex-
plaining all that would hardly mollify the brawn.

Caleb appealed directly to Nancia. "You're too
young," he said. "You're too innocent. You won't
recognize their dirty tricks until too late. You — "

"Caleb" Sev Bryley*s voice cracked like a gunshot The
brawn stopped his rompulsive pacing around the narrow
perimeter of the remodeled cabin. "You aren't helping
Nanria," Sev said once he had Caleb's attention. "Don't
make her nervous. Why don't you go to the spaceport bar
and have a drink? I'll join you as soon as Nancia arid I have
run through her final checklist ofinstrucdons."

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Caleb opened his mouth for an angry retort and
then shut it again. Nantia wished she had a sensor that
could report on the rapid ticking of his brain. He was
thinking something behind that quiet, tight-Upped ex-
terior —but what?

"Consumption of intoxicating beverages is against
the Vega Ethical Code," Caleb said at last, and Nancia
relaxed connections that she hadn't realized were so
tight. Whatever Caleb's thoughts, they weren't leading
him into a fight with Sev that would very likely abort
the mission at this late date. "I'll, I'll, I could have a
vegosqueeze, though."

"You do that, then," Sev agreed. "See you in a few
minutes."

He leaned against a fake bulkhead, arms folded.
The temporary wall squeaked in protest and Sev
straightened up quickly. "Crummy construction job
they did on your interior," he remarked as Caleb's
footsteps echoed down the central stairs.

"Then it should m-match the rest of the work around
P-Polo Construction." Where had that stammer come
from? Nancia ordered her vocal circuits to relax. They
only tightened up farther, making the next sentence
come out in a squeak. "What final checklist?"

"What? Hmm? Oh, there isn't one. I just wanted to
get Caleb out of the way. He was making you nervous,
wasn't he?"

"I'm fine," Nancia said, this time more gruffly than
she had intended.

"You'll need to get better control over your vocal ]
registers if you want to sound like a dronetalker," Sev '\
warned. "Drones' synthesized voices don't wobble." '

He sank to the cabin floor, long legs folding under him
with no apparent strain, and gazed at the fake wafl con-
cealing Nancia's titanium column. "Undercover work is
always a strain,'' heconfided. "I used to do half an hour of
yoga meditation before taking on a false identity."

Nancia rapidly scanned her data banks. Apparently
yoga was an old-style Earth exercise designed to induce
tranquility and spiritual enlightenment.

"Too bad you can't do the same thing," Sev
commented.

"A brainship can do anything you softpersons can,"
Nancia snapped, "only better! Tell me about thisyoga."

Sev grinned. "Well. Maybe you can. It just requires a
little translation. Let's see, start with regular breathing...
Not heavy," he said reprovingly as Nancia flushed dean
air in and out through her ventilation ports, "just
regular. Even. Smooth. That's the idea. Now dose
your... umm, deactivate your visual sensors."

Usually Nancia hated the blackness that accom-
panied temporary loss of visual sensor connections.
But this time it was voluntary. And Sev's voice con-
tinued, low and soothing... and it was restful not to be
scanning her remodeled interior.

Caleb must be exiting her lower entry port now; if she
opened an external sensor she'd be able to see him walk-

'•>•(•     l_l^-_ ___J__ ».!_„ *~*n.^cmn-r+ rvanli—il

the exercise now; Sev's patient instructions were work-
ing. She felt perceptibly less nervous as she followed his
suggestions to feel the energy in her lower engines and
let it flow through her propulsion units without actually
releasing it A warm glowing sensation bathed her fins
and exterior shell. Caleb's near-quarrel widi Sev, the ap-
proaching confrontation off Bahati, even the exciting
suspicion that Daddy had personally recommended her
for this assignment... all these doubts and fears and
hopes seemed very small and far away. Nancia con-
templated herself, a tiny speck in the universe; as was the
planet on which she sat, the sun that lit the sky around
them. All little floating dots in an infinite pattern; dots
winked out or came into existence, but the pattern
swirled on and on forever....

150	Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

"Restore full sensor connections." Sev's calm order
was like a gentle wake-up call. Nancia opened her sen-
sors one by one, feeling anew the wonder of existence.
The gritty spaceport floor beneath her landing gear,
the smell of engine oil in the air outside, the sights and
sounds of an ordinary working spaceport were all
bright and trembling with new meaning.

"I think you'll do now," Sev said with satisfaction.

"I think so, too," Nancia agreed.

Out of habit, Nancia lifted offas gently as if she were
carrying a full committee of Central Worlds diplomats.
Just because she was decked out in the revolting colors
of OG Shipping didn't mean she had to slam on-and
off-world like a mindless drone. Besides, rapid move-
ment would destroy the trance of peace in which she
was still floating. And, she thought guiltily, it would
also bounce Sev around. If Caleb had been aboard, his
comfort would have been her first thought; Sev
deserved the same consideration.

The work of outfitting her as an OG drone had been
done at Razmak Base in Bellatrix subspace. Razmak
possessed the very useful quality of being located just
one hour's spaceflight away from a Singularity zone
opening directly onto Vega subspace near Nyota ya
Jaha; Nancia would not have to risk a long flight
during which some authentic OG Shipping employee
might notice and report her presence. She arced
through the sky like a silver rainbow and made one
sleek rolling dive into Singularity.

The disadvantage of this particular transition, from a
softperson's point of view, was that the transition
through Singularity was subjectively longer than usual.
Sev had considered this a reasonable tradeoff for the ad-
vantages of Razmak Base; Nancia hoped he would feel
the same way when they exited into Vega subspace.

For herself, Nancia had been looking forward to the

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jump- She skimmed the rolling waves of collapsing sub-
space, dove and surfaced and spiraled through the
spaces until the decomposition funnel drew her whirling
into its shrinking space. Systems of linear equations fol-
lowed their orderly dance; space shrank and expanded
about Nancia, colors sang to her and the inexorable
regularity of the mathematical transformations unfolded
with the beauty of a Bach fugue. She came out into Vega
subspace with an exuberant shout of joy, the golden
notes of a Purcell trumpet voluntary echoing through
concealed passages and empty loading bays,
"CUT THAT OUT!"

The outraged shout, echoing where no human
voice should have sounded, was like a spattering of
high-frequency power along Nancia's synaptic
connectors.

She opened all sensor connections at once. The world
was a faceted diamond of images: painted bulkheads,
pseudosteel corridors, Sev still strapped to his bunk for
the Singularity transition, the central cabin viewed from
three angles at once: all framed by the external sensor
views ofblackness spattered by the fire of distant suns.

And Caleb, coming from one of the angles where
temporary walls blocked Nancia's sensor view of her
own interior, resplendent in his Courier Service full-
dress uniform and still green in the face from the
extended period in Singularity. Nancia dosed down all
the other sensors and expanded the image of Caleb.
Her brawn wasn't usually inclined to Service frip-
peries; she had forgotten just how fine a man could
look in the uncomfortable full-dress black and silver of
the Courier Service, with the stiff collar forcing his jaw
up and the silver-and-corycium braid winking in rain-
bow lightfires every time he drew a deep breath.

"You've developed a distaste for classical musk?" It
was the only thing she could think of to say — the only
thing that was even remotely safe to say.

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"You were half a tone flat on the high notes," Caleb
informed her, using the same carefully remote voice
that Nancia had employed. "And much too loud."

"I suppose I should apologize for the unintended
assault on your delicate sensors," Nancia said. "I had
turned off the cabin speakers, and I wasn't aware that
there was another softshell aboard."

"Awhat?"

Had Caleb really spent four and a half years as her
brawn without ever once hearing the slang term that
sheUpersons used for mobile humans? Nancia rapidly
reviewed a selection of their communications. It was
indeed possible. She had never realized how much of
her communication she censored for Caleb's benefit,
how careful she'd been to avoid offending against his
standards of speech and action.

Maybe she'd been too careful, if he thought he
could get away with a stunt like this.

"I think you can figure out what the term means,"
Nancia told him. Then, as she absorbed the emotional
impact of what Caleb's action meant, her hard-won
control cracked like a faulty shell. "Caleb, you idiot,
you could have been killedl What if I'd lifted off at full
speed? Hiding in that corner, you'd have been
bounced around like three dice in a cup!"

"You never do bruising takeofls or landings," Caleb
pointed out. "Too fond of showing off your land-on-
an-eggshell, turn-on-a-dime navigational skills."

Nancia was momentarily distracted. "What's a
dime?"

"I'm not sure," Caleb admitted. "It's an Old Earth
phrase. I think it refers to some kind of small insect.
Want to check your thesaurus? We could call up the
Old English language files via the Net, too. Something
to pass die time."

"Stop trying to change the subject! Why didn't you
tell me you were going to be aboard?"

"Would you have let me come?"

"Well. •. no," Nancia admitted. "I'd have had to tell
Brytey. Your presence could compromise the mission,
Caleb, don't you realize that? I'm supposed to be an
unmanned droneship, remember?"

"I know," Caleb said. "Don't worry. I won't com-
promise the bloody mission. But I couldn't let you face
this gang of diieves alone, Nancia. Don't you see that?"

She wasn't alone; she had Sev, who knew all about
investigative work and undercover missions. But she
couldn't very well berate Caleb for wanting to protect

her, could she?

"Just keep out of sight," Nancia said finally. "Please,
Caleb?" Oh-oh. Sen is using his cabin. He isn't going to Uke
that. "Work it out with Sev. If one of you can hide, I
guess two of you can. But—he's in charge for this mis-
sion. I agreed to that, and you'll have to do the same."
She took the set of his jaw and the brief upward jerk
of his head for all the assent she was going to get
"Oh. One other thing."
"Yes?"

"Why," Nancia inquired, "did you choose to wear
full Service uniform for this little jaunt? Not that it isn't
becoming, but I'd have thought something a little less
conspicuous...."

Caleb explained, patiently and at length, about tradi-
tions of honor on Vega. There seemed to be some
connection in his mind between wearing uniform and
being taken for a spy. Or not taken for a spy. Nancia
couldn't quite follow the argument, and when he went
from Vega history to Old Earth stories about somebody
called Major Andr£, she quit trying. Caleb was Caleb. His
sense of honor wouldn't let him send his brainship
without him into what he considered a dangerous and
morally ambiguous situation. Apparently his sense of
honor also wouldn't let him dress sensibly for the oc-
casion. His sense of honor was a royal pain in the

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synapses at times, but it was part of Caleb. Part of what
she respected in him.

While Caleb discussed the laws of war, the concept of
a just war, the Truce of God, and the Geneva Conven-
tions, Nantia found and activated her files of baroque
brass music. With all speakers off, she ran the Purcell
trumpet voluntary through her comm channels three
times and was going on for a fourth before Caleb final-
ly ran out of things to say.

Fassa del Parma paced the loading dock of Bahati
SpaceBase II, biting her lip. Ever since that near-
debacle over SpaceBase I, she had been unwilling to
delegate the ambiguous details of her business. That
had been a near thing. Who'd have thought Sev
Bryley would be so persistent? She'd taken him aboard
the Xanadu and given him what he wanted, hadn't
she? And when that hadn't proved sufficient to shut
the man up — Fassa stopped pacing and bit her lip. All
she'd wanted from Darnell was to fake a minor gam-
bling and embezzling record that would discredit Sev
with his employers. There'd been no need to go as far
as he had, even if Sev had come sniffing around the
Pair-a-Dice to find out who was framing him. There
were other ways to discourage people besides dump-
ing their unconscious bodies in a recycling bin. She
should have recognized DarnelTs sadistic tendencies,
she should have remembered the whispers about
mysterious disappearances from the Pair-a-Dice.

Oblivious to the soft thump and the vibration
through the base walls that announced the docking of
DarnelTs OG Shipping drone, Fassa leaned her head
against the wall for a moment. It gave slightly where
her forehead pressed against it; that was what hap-
pened when you replaced the contracted synthosteel
with steel-painted plastiflim. Not that she cared. Not
that anybody cared about anything. That was how the

world was, and nobody bothered to stop any of the
corruption. Why should she trouble herself about one
man caught up in the general unfeeling way of the
world? Nobody had ever cared about her> had they?

Certainly not Sev Bryley. All he'd been after was a
scandalous case that would build up his career. He'd
taken what she offered and then attacked her again as
if none of it meant anything. Well, it didn't.

Did it?

Fassa blinked rapidly and activated the series of locks
that would automatically check on the seal between an
attached ship and the spacebase itself, equalize pressures
and open the spacebase for loading and unloading. She
hadn't economized on that part of the work. She was
dever enough to keep well above standards on any part
of a contract that might jeopardize her personal safety.
Clever enough, she thought as the spacebase doors irised
open, to handle any problem that came up ... except,
maybe, her own memories.
Which were no problem!

She was about to call the loading crew to shift the
permasteel beams and other expensive materials onto
Darnell's drone when a thought stopped her. You
couldn't be too careful these days. She walked through
the spaceport iris, through the extruded pressure
chambers and into the empty loading bays of the OG
Shipping droneship.

Everything seemed to be as it should. The loading
layout was rather strange, but Darnell had a habit of
taking ships from the other companies he acquired
and retrofitting them to suit his own needs. Certainly
there was plenty of space. And everywhere she looked,
on columns and walls and internal panels, Fassa saw
the puce-and-mauve logo of OG Shipping stenciled.
Rather sloppily stenciled, in some cases: lines wobbled
and droplets of paint spattered the borders of the sten-
cils. Looked like a rush job. Darnell didn't take the

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trouble to oversee his people personally as she did
hers, she thought, and the difference showed.

"Droneship, are you prepared to accept cargo?" she
queried the air.

"Prepared. To accept. Cargo. Begin. Transfer." The
answer came back from a speaker somewhere behind
her, metallic and uninflected like all AI speech. Fassa
remembered reading that AI linguists were perfectly
capable of designing a more human-sounding speech
system, especially with the help of the sophisticated
metachips of Shemali design, but that marketing for-
ces wouldn't let them release it. Drones and other AI
devices weren't supposed to sound too human; it
made people nervous.

"Credit transfer, please," Fassa requested briskly.
Darnell had stiffed her on one load of supplies, resell-
ing it and pocketing the profit himself and blandly
denying that any of his drones had been anywhere
near SpaceBase I. And her own excessive caution, her
own refusal to leave any records behind, had given her
no way to fight him. Now she demanded payment in
advance before a single roll of synthosteel made it onto
one of the bastard's drones.

"Your credit transfer will be. Approved. As soon as
the. Loading is complete."

Fassa grinned to herself. That speech had sounded
considerably more like human inflections than most
dronetalk did. She wouldn't put it past Darnell to have
diverted some of the new metachips for frivolous ap-
plications like improving dronetalk. He hadn't got it
quite right, though. She could still tell she was talking
to a machine.

And she wasn't about to let a damned droneship
cheat her out of the rights to this expensive shipment!

"Credit transfer to be produced when loading is
twenty-five percent complete," she said, "as by usual
agreement. Or I stop loading there and you don't

leave SpaceBase until the credit slip is approved."

"Agreed." The last word from the droneship had a
very human sound of resignation to it. Darnell had
been fooling with the Shemali metachips in his ships;
Fassa was now willing to bet on it

She still felt a vague unease about the operation, but
brushed it off. She was just brooding over the Sev
Bryley fiasco, that was all. No reason to suppose any-
thing like that would happen again — not with the
number of senators and bankers and inspectors Fassa
now had personally dedicated to her welfare. Fassa ac-
tivated the spacebase's comm link and called her
hand-picked loading crew to complete the transfer.

With drone-powered lifters and other automated
devices, loading the construction materials was a quick
job, calling for no more than three men, all of them
bound to Fassa by personal loyalty — and by the stock
which they had vested in Polo Construction, Those stock
options were an expense Fassa regretted, but it was
necessary to ensure the absolute silence ofher assistants.
Once again, while the men went about their business,
she cursed the underlying chauvinism of contractors
who insisted on building their lifters to the specifications
of a six-foot, muscular male body. There was no reason
the lifters couldn't be designed so that their controls were
within the reach and strength of a smallish woman; the
real muscle involved here came from the machines, not
from the men. But Fassa was too small to operate the
machines. When she calculated what this one feet was
costing her in stocks and bonuses to keep her loading
crews silent, she was tempted to start her own heavy
machinery factory, with lifters and forks and cranes all
built so that anybody could operate them at the touch of a
button.

Someday, she promised herself. When I have enough
money. When I feel strong enough... and secure enough...
when I am enough.

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Somehow she felt that such a day would never arrive.

But the twenty-five percent mark on transfer had ar-
rived ... and it was time to claim her credit slip. Fassa
motioned to die loading crew to stop. While they waited
in position, lifters frozen in mid-arc, she walked back into
the partially filled cargo bays of the droneship.

"Credit transfer," she rapped out "Now!"

"Regret that I do not have facilities to issue credit
slips in loading bay area," the droneship replied. "Re-
quest that del Parma unit transfer self to cabin area to
receive payment."

The inflections were almost human, but the
awkward wording was pure dronespeak. Smiling as
she waved her hand before the lift-door sensors, Fassa
reflected that she would have to recommend some bet-
ter linguists to Darnell.

The lift-door irised open and Fassa, wrapped in her
satisfied thoughts, took one step forward before she
took in the glitter of silver and corycium braid against
the deep-space black of a Courier Service uniform.

Startled, she flung herself backwards, but the
uniformed man grabbed her sleeve just before she was
out of reach. Fassa fell back onto the loading dock
floor, dragging her assailant with her. He landed
heavily on her midsection, knocking the breath out of
her. Where were the damned loading crew? Couldn't
they see something had gone wrong?

"Fassa del Parma — I arrest you — in the name of
Central Worlds — for embezzlement of SpaceBase —
construction and supplies," the bastard wheezed. Both
his hands were around her wrists now, pinning her to
the floor. Fassa gasped for breath, brought up a knee
into the brute's crotch, and wriggled free in one move-
ment. Her brain had never stopped working. So there
was a witness! Darnell had double-crossed her? All
right; dispose of the witness, that was the new prob-
lem, then she would deal with the rest

"Kill that man!" she screamed at the dumbstruck
idiots on her loading crew. She raced towards the
safety of the spacebase.

The droneship's loading doors slammed shut. How
had the bastard managed to transmit the command?
He should still be writhing in agony.

He was. But as Fassa looked, he rose to his knees.
"Under—arrest,** he panted.

"That's what you think," Fassa said with her
sweetest smile. What did this fool think, that she was
too weak and sentimental to kill a man face to face? He
was still on his knees, and she was standing, and the
needier in her left sleeve slid into the palm of her hand
with the cool solid feel of revenge. Time slowed and
the air shimmered about her. The Courier Service
brawn was lunging forward now, but he'd never reach
her in time. Fassa aimed the needier until she saw a
face neatly framed in the viewfinder. Who was he? It
didn't matter. He was a total stranger, he was Sev, he
was Senator Cenevix, he was Paul del Parma. All turn-
ing green around her, and her fingers almost too weak
to squeeze the needier; what was happening? Fassa
swayed on her feet, squeezed the needier handle and
saw an arc of darts ripping wildly through the thick
green clouds that surrounded them now. So dizzy ...
her eyes wouldn't stay open to track the darts to their
target... but she'd been too dose to miss. So close.,.

Fassa collapsed in the cloud of sleepgas with which
Nancia had, just too late, flooded the closed loading
bays. So did Caleb, going down just in front of Fassa
with his black and silver uniform all spoiled by blood.

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161

• CHAPTER TEN

"Don't gas the lift! Don't gas the lift!"

The shouted commands, coming from a dosed-off
area behind the fake walls, startled Nancia. She shifted
views rapidly, cursing the quick and dirty remodeling
job that had left large areas of her own interior cut off
from her visual sensors.

Sev Bryley, white-faced, appeared from behind one
of the puce-and-mauve pseudoboard walls. "I'll get
him out of the loading bay," he snapped without so
much as a glance towards Nancia's sensor unit. "You
can keep the sleepgas confined to that area?"

"Yes, but—"

"Don't have time for a mask." Bryley was in the lift
now, and Nancia could watch him on die agonizingly
slow passage down to the loading dock. His chest rose
and fell rapidly as he took the deep, rapid breaths of
clean air that would keep him going in the loading bay.

Nancia kept the lift door on three-quarter pressure,
just enough to let Bryley squeeze through the flexible
opening that shut behind him. At the same time she
flushed the loading bay with the ventilation system on
high power, replacing as much sleepgas as she could
with dean air.

Sev's back and shoulders bulged awkwardly half
through the lift door. Nancia released the flexible
membrane just long enough to let him drag Caleb
through into the lift. She kept the ventilation system
on high for the long seconds of the ride back. By the
time the lift was at cabin level, she could find no
measurable trace of sleepgas in the air. But Sev had

inhaled enough to make him slump against the wall,
too woozy to carry himself and Caleb farther.

"Antidote... ?"

"In the corridor," Nancia told him. "In the c&rridorF
She had no housekeeping servos within the lift itself.
Sev had to stagger forward, out of the lift, fetching up
against the freshly painted corridor wall with a thump.
At least it was one of Nancia's true walls; only a few
steps away from Sev was an opening from which the
servos could dispense stimulants and medical aids. Sev
took two gasping breaths of the dean air, reached into
the shallow dish presented by the opening in the wall,
grabbed a handful of ampules and crushed them
under his nose.

"More," he commanded.

"You've already exceeded  the recommended

dosage."

"1 need a dear head now" Sev growled.

Was there more blood on Caleb's uniform? Impossible
to tell what he'd been hit with, or how bad the damage
was. Nancia sent another set of stim ampules to the servo
tray. Sev broke these more cautiously, one at a time. After
the third deep breath of pungent stimulant, he dropped
the rest back in the tray. "Medical supplies!"

"What?"

"I'll tell you when I know." He was on his knees,
blocking Nancia's view as he peeled back the front of
Caleb's spoiled uniform. "Something to stop bleed-
ing ... there shouldn't be so much from a needier ...
ahh. The ..." he used a Vega slang term that was not
in any of Nancia's vocabulary hedra. "She loaded it
with anticoagulant. And . . . other things, I think.
Analyze?" He dropped a torn and bloody strip of doth
into the servo tray. Nancia transferred it to the medical
lab and replaced it with ampules of HyperClot which
Sev injected directly into Caleb's veins.

"That*s stopped the bleeding," he said finally, rising

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to his feet. "But I'm not happy about his color. Does
that look like normal sleepgas pallor to you?"

"No." The one word was all Nancia could manage.

"Me neither. Can you analyze what else was in the
needier?"

"No. Organics of some sort, but it's too complex for
me." Concentrating on the technical problem helped
to steady her voice. "I haven't the facilities here. I am
contacting Murasaki Base for Net access to medtechs."

But Murasaki Base could suggest only that she
transport Caleb to the nearest planet-based clinic as
quickly as possible. If Fassa's needier had been loaded
with Ganglicide —

"It wasn't Ganglicide," Nancia said quickly. "He'd be
dead by now. Besides, no one would do such a thing."

"You might be surprised," said the infuriatingly
calm managing brain of Murasaki Base. "But I agree,
probably not Ganglicide. There are, however, slower-
acting nerve poisons which, untreated, can be just as
fetal. From what you report of his convulsive reaction,
I would suggest immediate medical treatment by
someone experienced with nerve poisons and their
antidotes."

"Thanks very much," Nancia snapped. Sev had
wrapped Caleb in all the blankets he could collect, but
nothing stopped Caleb's incessant nervous shivering.
And every once in a while his spine arched backward
while he cried out in delirium. "We came from Raz-
mak Base in Bellatrix subspace. You're not seriously
suggesting I take a man in this condition through Sin-
gularity, are you?"

"There happens to be an excellent clinic on Bahati,1*
the Murasaki Base brain replied. "If you were calm
enough to check the Net records I'm transmitting,
CN, you'd see that the assistant director there has a
strong background in nerve poison research. With
your permission, I will alert the Summerlands clinic to

receive an emergency patient for the direct care of Dr.
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong."

Time stopped. Snatches of conversation forgotten
for nearly four years echoed in Nancia's memory. An

gxbert in Gangliade therapy right there at the Summerlands
dime.. • testing Ganglicide on unwitting sitbjects ... so far
vane on BUssto they didn't even know what was happening to

them..-

She had the full conversations recorded and safely
stored away. She didn't need them. Her own human
memory was mercilessly replaying words she'd tried to

forget
Did she dare put Caleb in Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's

hands?

Did she dare not take him to the clinic?

There was really no choice.

They were only a few minutes from Bahati, but the
time seemed like hours to Nancia. She blessed the
multiprocessing capability that allowed her to perform
multiple tasks at once. While one bank of processors
controlled the landing computations, Nancia assigned
two more to maintaining the comm link with Murasaki
and opening a new link with Bahati. She reached the
director of Summerlands and explained her require-
ments while simultaneously assimilating Murasaki
Base's calm instructions.

The combination of Fassa's arrest and Caleb's
wounds presented a complex political problem. Nan-
cia was almost grateful for the complications; they
gave her something to think about during the endless
minutes before touchdown.

Courier Service policy strictly prohibited the
transport of prisoners on a brainship with no brawn.
Nancia thought it was a silly policy, born of fears that
were decades out of date. Earlier, less cleverly designed
brainships might have been vulnerable to passenger
takeover, but she was well protected against any little

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tricks that Fassa might come up with. The auxiliary
synaptic circuits known as the Helva Modification
would prevent any attempt to dose off her sensory
contact with her own ship-body.

All the same, Murasaki Base informed Nancia, the
regulations existed for good reason and it was not up
to a brainship to pick and choose which Service regs
she would obey.

"All right, all right." Had Caleb twitched again? Sum-
merlands Clinic personnel were standing by to collect
him as soon as they landed. Bahati Spaceport was issu-
ing final landing instructions. "Ill hand Fassa del
Parma over to Bahati authorities."

"That you will not," the Murasaki Base brain in-
formed her. "I've been in contact with CenDip while
' you were fussing over your brawn. The young lady is a
political hot potato."

"Awhat?"

"Sorry. Old Earth slang. Never thought about the
literal meaning ... let's see, I think a potato is some
kind of tuber, but why anybody would try to ignite
one... oh, well." Murasaki Base dismissed the intrigu-
ing linguistic question for later consideration. "What it
means is that nobody really wants to handle her trial.
Well, you can see for yourself, can't you, Nancia? If
you're going to try a High Families brat and send her
to prison, you don't do it out on some nowhere world
at the edge of the galaxy. You bring her back to Central
and you are very, very careful that all procedures are
followed. To the letter. CenDip has strict instructions
that nothing is to go wrong with this case; there's a cer-
tain highly placed authority who has taken a personal
interest in stopping High Families corruption."

"You can tell your highly placed authority to — "
Nancia transmitted a burst of muddy tones and discor-
dant high-pitched sounds.

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

"Softshells can't receive that kind of input Fortunately
for them, I might add. Where did a nice brainship like
you pick up that kind of language?"

Nancia landed at Bahati Spacefield as gently as a
feather floating in the breeze. She opened her upper-
level cabin doors and waited for the spaceport workers
to bring a floatube. They'd already been informed of
the reason why she didn't want to open the lower
doors; the equipment should have been ready and
waiting—ah! There it was now.

"Well, then, just inform your 'highly placed
authority,' that a few little things have already gone
wrong with this operation," Nancia told Murasaki
Base. "And if I can't transport del Parma without a
brawn, and I can't hand her over to Bahati, what am I
supposed to do with her?"
"Wait for your new brawn, of course," Murasaki

Base informed her.

"And just how long will thai take?" They were load-
ing Caleb onto a stretcher now.

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

should."

"What?"

In answer, Murasaki Base transmitted the CenDip in-
struction bytes directly. "Senior Central Diplomatic
service person ArmontiUado-y-Medoc, Forister, current-
ly R&R at Summerlands Clinic, previous brawn status
inactivated upon joining CenDip Central Date 2732,
reactivated 2754 for single duty tour returning prisoner
del Parma y Polo, Fassa, to Central Worlds jurisdiction,"

Before taking Caleb away, the Summerlands med-
techs were running tests and dosing him with
all-purpose antidotes. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong had
come personally to oversee the operation. Nantia's
sensors caught her dark, sharp-featured face from
several angles while she leaned over Caleb. Her ex-
pression showed nothing but keen professional

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Anm McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball

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167

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

And no compassion.

And now he was going into the floatube, beyond
Nanria's sensor range.. .beyond her help. WhenwasSev?
Nancia scanned the sensor banks until she located him in
one of the passenger cabins that had been concealed be-
hind her fake paneling. He was guarding a groggy Fassa
who had just begun to comeoutofthesleepgas.

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

"CN-935, please acknowledge receipt of formal or-
ders," Murasaki Base input on another channel.

"Can't," Sev answered without looking round.
"Have to guard the prisoner. Check regulations."

Nancia knew he was right The same stupid CS regs
that forbade her to transport Fassa without a brawn
would also forbid her to take sole charge of a prisoner.
"Are regulations more important than Caleb's life?"

"Nancia, he's getting the best possible medical care.
What are you worried about?"

"CN-935 RESPOND!" Murasaki Base shouted.

The floatube was a speck on the horizon. They weren't
stopping at the spaceport; they were taking Caleb direct-
ly to Summerlands. Where Alpha bint Hezra-Fong could
do anything, anything at all, to him, and Nancia wouldn't
even know until it was too late....

"Instructions received and accepted," she trans-
mitted to Murasaki Base in one short burst. "Now
GETTHAT BRAWN ON BOARD!" Forister Armon-
tillado-y-Medoc? Nancia remembered the short, quiet
man she'd transported somewhere, years earlier, to
solve some crisis. The one who'd spent all his time on
board reading. No matter what his records said, he
wasn't her idea of a brawn. But who cared? The sooner
he was here, the sooner Sev could be released from
guard duty to go watch over Caleb.

Fassa was choking on the bottom of a lake. Weeds
twined around her ankles, and the dear air was impos-
sibly far away, miles above the green water that
pressed her down and pushed at her mouth and ears
and nose widi gentle, implacable persistence. She tried
to kick free of the weeds; they clung tighter, reaching
up past ankle and calf and knee with green slimy
fingers that pressed dose against her thighs. When she
looked down, the weeds shaped themselves into pale
green faces with open mouths and dosed eyes. All the
men who'd given her their hearts and their integrity
and pieces of their souls were there on the bottom of
the lake, and they wanted to keep her there with them.
Her chest was bursting with the need to breathe. If she
gave back their souls, would they let her go?

She tried to strip off the charm bracelet on her left
wrist, but the catch was stuck; tried to break the chain,
but it was too strong. Green lake water seeped into her
mouth with a bitter taste, and black spots danced
before her eyes. She tugged the chain over her hand,
scraping a knuckle raw, and flung it at the hungry
ghosts. The sparkling charms of corydum and iridium
floated lazily down among the muddy weeds, and
Fassa was released to rise through rings of ever-
lightening water until she broke the surface and
breathed in the air that hurt like fire in her lungs.

She was lying on a bunk in a spaceship cabin. Sev
Bryley was seated cross-legged on the opposite bunk,
watching her with unsmiling attention. And the burn-
ing in her lungs was real, as was the throbbing pain in
her head; sleepgas hangover. Now she remembered:
surprise and violence and a fool who'd been where he
had no business, and the gas flooding the cargo bay
while she tried to hold her breath.

It all added up to a failure so crushing she could not
bear to think about it yet. And Sev, the man who'd

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ArmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball

never given her a piece of his soul to keep in her
charm bracelet — was he the one who'd engineered
this disaster?

"What are you doing here?" she croaked.

"Making sure you came out of the sleepgas without
complications," Sev said. His voice sounded thin and
strained, as if he were trying to reach her from a great
distance. "Some people have a convulsive reaction. It
looked for a while like you were going to be one of
them."

And that had worried him? Perhaps he still cared for
her a little, then. Perhaps her experiment of taking
him aboard the Xanadu hadn't been a total failure,
after all. Fassa stretched, experimentally, and saw the
way his eyes followed her movements. Perhaps some-
thing could yet be salvaged from this catastrophe.
After all, they were alone on the droneship...

"Not convulsions," she said, languorously wriggling
her toes and proceeding upward, muscle by muscle, to
make certain that every inch of her own amazing body.
was back under her command again. *Just bad dreams."
"What sort of dreams?" Sev inquired.
Fassa sat up, rather more quickly than she had in-
tended, and fell back against the cabin wall. "The sort
that make you afraid to die."

"Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all," Sev
agreed with no change of tone, and Fassa felt a stab of
regret. She could have liked this man who so quickly
picked up on her thoughts, capping her unvoiced
quotations. If only he weren't so obstinately on the
wrong side! Ah, well, perhaps that could be changed.
It would damn well have to be changed if she hoped to
get out of this, she reminded herself

"Speak for yourself," she told him. "My conscience
isn't all that troubled; I've done nothing more than
what everybody does, just trying to get ahead by my
own efforts." Wrong tone, wrong tone. She didn't want

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169

to argue with Bryley; she wanted to seduce him. No.
Reeded to seduce him. That was all.

And she wasn't going to get anywhere in her present
condition. Fassa pushed sweaty, matted dark hair away
from her forehead with a genuine moan of pain.
"God, I must look like hell," she said. "Would you
mind very much getting out of here so I can clean up?"

"Yes," said Sev, "I would. You're not to be left un-
guarded until we return to Central. Orders from

CenDip."
Fassa moaned again. If CenDip was interesting itself

in her case, she was worse off than she'd thought.
Never mind. Central was a long way off. For the
present she was alone on a droneship with this gor-
geous hunk, and with any luck at all she'd make him
change his allegiances before the official transports ar-
rived to carry her to trial.

After only a little pouting and posing she managed
to persuade Sev that propping himself against the wall
outside her cabin would be adequate to fulfill his
guard duty. It was, Fassa thought with satisfaction, a
beginning. Now he would feel that this cabin was her
territory. When he came in again, it would be at her in-
vitation ... and invitations could lead to all sorts of
interesting things. She washed from head to foot, kick-
ed her stained and crumpled clothes in a corner under
the bunk, splashed a little extra cool water over her
face, and wrapped a sheet around herself in lieu of
fresh clothes. This would be a real test of her abilities.
No cosmetics, hair combed straight with no styling, a
scratchy Service-issue sheet instead of a clinging gown,
and this bare cabin for a romantic setting!

"fossa baby, you're so sweet, I just can't resist you," Paul
del Parma used to moan when he came into her room
and buried himself in her. And she'd been aji
awkward, sullen Uttle girl then, with her black hair in
thin tight braids. She'd worn the ugliest, plainest

170

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret BaU

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

For the first time Fassa deliberately summoned up
the memories she'd tried for so long to bury, seeking
the confidence she needed to go on. She really was ir-
resistible to men. Faul del Parma had proved that,
hadn't he? Even knowing it was wrong, even knowing
she hated it, he'd still refused to let her alone.

"It'severytkfngaboutyou, the way you walk, the way you smile
up atme with those bigsooty lashes hatfcoveringyour eyes"

Instead of giving her confidence, die memories
made Fassa feel grimy. She must have invited him, not
with words, but with something about the way she
walked and looked at him. Somehow she'd made
Daddy want her without even knowing it. She was a
bad little girl and if Mama ever found out...

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Mama screamed
and fell endlessly through the glittering interior atrium
of the hotel, tumbling in a cloud of gauzy draperies. And
it was all her fault. Fassa cried out once and threw some-
thing across the cabin with all her might, and Sev Bryley
burst through the unlatched door.

"What's the matter? What happened?"

His arms went around her and Fassa rested against
the fresh starched fabric of his shirt, feeling the strong
beat of his heart beneath her face. For some reason she
was crying; she couldn't stop crying for long minutes
while Sev just held her. Not easing her backwards
towards the bunk, not letting his hands slide artfully
downward in a disguised caress. Just holding her.

"Well," Fassa said finally, gulping down the last of
her sobs, "I told you; 1 have bad dreams."

"You seemed wide awake when I left you."

Fassa drew a shaky deep breath. "I — I'm afraid to
be alone just now," she said. It happened to be true.
"Could you stay with me?"

"As it happens," Sev told her, "I was going to
anyway." He released her, as if sensing that she was

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171

recovered for the moment, and moved a step back-
ward. Fassa sighed again, with a little more
forethought this time, and watched his eyes. Yes, he
was aware of what those deep breaths were doing to
the sliding knot that held the sheet together between
her breasts, and he couldn't take his eyes off the
creamy skin that contrasted with the stark white of the
sheet. Good. She had a job to do, here; she had best
think about that and nothing else, or she'd never win
this man to her side before she was taken away for trial.

"Oh, that's right," she said, allowing a tear to creep
into the corner of one eye; not difficult, in her present
shaky mood. "I forgot; you're my jailer, aren't you?"

Sev looked uncomfortable at this assessment, as
she'd wanted him to. "I wouldn't put it quite like that
But someone does have to stay widi you until..."

"Until the end," Fassa finished for him. "What sort
of sentences are in favor these days? Will it be hard
labor, do you think?" She tossed her head and gave
him her Christian-facing-the-lions look, all nobility
and virgin defiance. At the same time she moved
slightly so that the sheet molded over one thigh, giving
him (she hoped) visions of what sort of hard labor she
might be good for.

"You'll have a fair trial," Sev told her, "and a chance
to speak in your own defense."

"Will I?" Fassa challenged him. "Look at me. Don't
you think there'll be some old judge who'd just love to
see me mindwiped? They'll be thinking what a pity it is
to waste such a beautiful body, keep the body, just wipe
out the personality and start over."

"Oh, I'm sure they won't do that," Sev said, but he
sounded less righteously certain than he'd been a mo-
ment before. Fassa mentally applauded her own
cleverness. There wasn't much point in trying to con-
vince Sev that she was innocent of the charges against
her, not when he was Central's prime witness. Much

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Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Bail

better to switch the topic to the corruption at all levels
of government. Sev knew something about that. Let
him stew over the assertion that she couldn't possibly
get a fair trial, let him think — as he must be thinking
now — about the danger that she'd end up as the
mindwiped toy of some corrupt official.

"You know it happens," Fassa said in a low voice.
"You know how much cheating there is in the govern-
ment. Everybody wants something for himself. One of
them will want me, and then — " She blew a kiss into
the air with a mocking smile. "Bye-bye, Fassa del
Parma!" Time to let the sheet fell to the ground, giving
Sev a good look about what some dirty old man would
get if he didn't get there first. She moved towards him,
inch by inch, watching the color rise in his sharp fea-
tures, watching the blue eyes darken with desire. "You
could at least say good-bye properly, Sev, my love," she
whispered.

She paused, eyes closed, awaiting the warmth of his
arms about her and his mouth on hers.

"I think not," said Sev Bryley, and while Fassa's eyes
flew open in shocked disbelief he took the two steps
that brought him to the cabin door.

Once outside the cabin, Sev reactivated the
guardlock mechanism that would prevent Fassa from
leaving. He leaned against the wall and wiped his
forehead with the back of one hand. It wasn't much
help; he still felt as hot as if he'd just done a ten-mile
run in the Capellan jungle. He needed a cold shower.
And that ten-mile run might not be a bad idea, either,
except he couldn't leave Nancia alone to guard Fassa.

He could get some extra help, though — and some
insurance against temptation. "Nancia?" he said in a
low voice, looking upward at the angle between ceiling
and roof where her auditory sensors were installed.
"Nancia, I think you'd better activate full sensors

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173

within Fassa's cabin. I know it's a breach of the
prisoner's privacy, but this is a very dangerous woman.
And, Nancia? You'd better keep the sensors on at all
times. Even when I'm with Ms. del Parma."

Sev thought that over and decided he hadn't
worded that last request strongly enough. "Especially
when I'm with Fassa," he rephrased.

"I'd already done that, Sev," Nancia responded
from the wall speaker. "Don't worry. Everything has
been observed and recorded."

"Excellent," said Sev between his teeth. "I'm sure that
little scene will be vasdy amusing to somebody who's not
troubled by hormonal urges. Now, if you don't mind,just
keep watching Fassa and let me know if she tries any-
thing. I'll be in the ship's exercise room."

"What for?"

"Taking care of my hormones," Sev said. He
stamped off to improve his weight-lifting record.

"FN-935, Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc requests
permission to come aboard."

"Permission granted."

Even to her own ears, Nancia sounded brusque. After
a grudging nanosecond's thought she added formally,
"Welcome aboard, Forister Armontilladoy-Medoc."

The short, spare man whom she'd last seen heading
into the tangled planetary conflicts of the Tran Phon
guerrillas on Charon dropped three heavy pieces ofbag-
gage onto the lift with a grunt of relief. Pm getting an old
man who can't even carry his own luggage without getting out of
breath. But as if to contradict die unspoken criticism,
Forister waved the lift upwards with his luggage and took
the circular stairs. Nancia watched his progress from sen-
sor to sensor. He moved with quick, neat steps,
economical of his motions. You couldn't say he was
bounding up the stairs, but he did get to the top more
quickly dian she'd expected; and there wasn't a gray hair

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Anne McCafjrey 6? Margaret Bail

out of place or a drop of sweat on his forehead when he
entered the central cabin.

"Greetings, Nancia," Forister said. Unlike Caleb, he
looked directly at the titanium bulkhead that housed
Nancia's human body and brain. His direct gaze was
rather disconcerting to Nancia, who'd been used to Caleb
wandering round the ship and addressing her without
turning his head, counting on her efficient sensor system
to pick up his words wherever he might be. She took a mo-
ment to look over this strange elderly brawn and prepare
her response. Light eyes in a tanned fece, with a network
of crinkles around the eyes as if he were accustomed to
looking deeply at whatever he saw; hints of red and ginger
in the graying hair; a light, erect, relaxed stance, as if he
were prepared to move in any direction at a moment's
notice. He may do. But he's not Caleb!

"You seem remarkably fit for someone who's just been
recuperating at Summerlands," Nancia said at last

Forister grimaced. "Oh, I'm fit enough, if that's
what's been worrying you, FN. The stay at Summer-
lands was not for any medical reasons."

"Then what? The orders I received said you were
there for R&R."

"Um. Yes. Well, they would, wouldn't they?" Forister
said, maddeningly, while Nancia wondered if the man
ever gave a straight answer to anything. Maybe that was
trained out of you in the diplomatic service.

At last he vouchsafed one more sentence that could
be considered an explanation. "My last posting for
CenDip was... shall we say, stressful, and things didn't
work out as well as I'd hoped."

"Charon?" Nancia asked.

The brawn blinked once, surprised. "Why, no. Why
— oh, I remember. I had the honor of being
transported to Charon by you, didn't I? Some years
ago — you were the CN-935 then, as I recall. My con-
dolences on the loss of your partner."

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175

"It's only temporary," Nancia said. "Which reminds
me. I wouldn't wish to hurry your unpacking, but as
soon as you're ready, I'd like you to take over guarding
the prisoner. Sev Bryley is needed at Summerlands to
look after my brawn."

"As you wish." Forister did not quite dick his heels
together as he executed a perfect bow in the direction
of the titanium column. He wheeled, collected his bags
from the open lift and marched down the hall to the
brawn's cabin — Caleb's cabin — leaving Nancia with
the feeling that she had been unpleasantly brusque.
She opened a speaker in the cabin.

"If you don't object, we could continue our conver-
sation while you unpack."

"No objection," said Forister. He was slighdy out of
breath now, after lifting the heavy bags to his bunk.
What on Earth did the man travel with? A fortune in
Corycium bars buried beneath his underwear? The
first things he drew out of the bags were commonplace
enough: CenDip formal dress and spare shirts,
toiletries and a handful of laser-printed datahedra.

He might not object, but he wasn't being very help-
ful either. Well, she hadn't been as friendly as she
might; it was up to her to make the first move. "What
was your last posting, then, if it wasn't Charon? And
why did you pick Summerlands?"

"Summerlands has a very good reputation as a rest
facility," Forister said. "I expect you're unduly worried
about your former brawn; the medical staff there is
top-quality."

"It's not their technical skills I'm worried about,"
Nancia told him. There was movement in Fassa's
cabin. She had been keeping the sensors there down
to monitor level; now she activated full pick-up and
saw that Sev had gone in to talk to Fassa. The girl was
fully dressed this time, and they were sitting on op-
posite bunks; she didn't think Sev would encounter

176

Arme McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

any real problem. All the same, she captured their
quiet conversation and listened to it with one ear while
she watched Forister and wished he would hurry up
with his unpacking. Now he had got to the hottom
layer of the first bag, and she saw what had weighed
his luggage down so: nothing but a lot of antiques.
One antique book after another, kilos and kilos of
them, and doubtless no more information in the lot of
them than could be stored in a few facets of a
datahedron! There was no accounting for tastes.

"Isn't Summerlands rather remote for a man of
your importance?" Nancia probed. She knew she was
being pushy, but she didn't care. If Forister was in with
Alpha and her criminal friends, she didn't dare set him
to guard Fassa — nor did she dare send him back to
the clinic to watch over Caleb. She would have to get
on the datastream to Murasaki Base at once.

"I've family in the Nyota system," Forister told her.
"I was hoping to make a brief visit after I left Summer-
lands. And I'd a friend at the clinic."

"Alpha bint Hezra-Fong," Nancia surmised. She
might as well face all the bad news at once.

"Good God, no!" Forister seemed genuinely
startled. "If that's what you think of the company I
keep, no wonder you've been so hostile. Somebody
else entirely, I assure you."

"Who?"

"I'm not at liberty to say just now. If all goes well — "
Forister broke off and rather fussily adjusted the port-
able folding shelf where he had stowed his books,
lightening the spring-bindings that would keep them
in place in case of any rapid ship's movements. "But
whether it comes off or not," he said, more slowly, "I
won't be here to help. And I won't have any free time
afterwards to visit in this system. I'll be on my way back
to Central with you, and once I land there, God knows
what six urgent assignments will be waiting." He

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177

looked up, direcdy into Nantia's primary cabin sensor.
"So you see, dear lady, this assignment is no more to
my liking than it is to yours. I hope we can sink our dif-
ferences for the duration — "

"Hush" The conversation in Fassa's cabin had sud-
denly become very interesting; Nancia didn't want to
have to wait and replay it, she wanted to know what
was going on right now.

It appeared that Fassa was trying to plea bargain with
information on some of the other young people who'd
been involved in that vicious wager. She began by hinting
to Sev that she might be able to inform on a whole gang of
criminals in the Nyota system if doing so would get her a
reduced sentence. Sev, quite properly, told her that he
wasn't authorized to make such promises.

MOh, what the hell," Fassa said wearily at last." If I'm
going down, I won't go alone. You might as well know
everything. At least then you'll see that I'm not the
worst of the bunch by a long shot."

She began telling Sev all she knew about Darnell
Overton-Glaxely and the ways in which he'd worked his
illegal Net access, first to bring in shipping bids that were
always just a shade lower than those of his competitors,
then to destroy the credit and acquire the stock of any
small businesses he felt like adding to his empire.

"AU very interesting," Sev told her. "But if Overton-
Glaxely is as clever as you say at accessing private Net
datastreams, he'll have been clever enough to leave no
traces of his taps."

"Oh, he's not clever at all," Fassa said. "He was
taught how to tap into the datastream — "

"By?" Sev prompted gentiy.

Fassa shook her head. She had gone rather white
about the lips. "It doesn't matter. Nobody you're likely
to catch up with. Not me, if that's what you're think-
ing; I haven't got that kind of brains."

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

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaS

solemnly. Fassa gave him a suspicious glance. His lips
were twitching. She aimed a mock blow at him.

"That's right, insult my intelligence!"

Sev caught her wrist and held it for a long moment
while Nancia wondered if it was time to interrupt. At
last his fingers relaxed. Fassa subsided onto her bunk.
There was a white ring about her wrist where Sev had
held her; she rubbed it absently while she went on
talking. "Never mind about the Net, then. There's
other ways to prove it. One of the men Darnell ruined
found out a little too much about his methods, and
Darnell sent him to Summerlands."

At that point Nancia decided that Forister had better
hear this too. Whatever she thought of the man as a re-
placement for her Caleb, he was a trusted CenDip
senior civil servant. He had friends in Summerlands.
And he seemed to share her opinion of Dr. bint Hezra-
Fong. She piped the input from Fassa's cabin through
her speakers in Forister's cabin. After a moment's
stunned silence, Forister sat down amid the piles of an-
tiques on his bunk and listened carefully.

"Darnell thought Alpha would kill the man for him.
She'd had a bunch of accidents with the tests she ran
on her charity patients; she was getting quite good at
faking death certificates with innocent-seeming causes
of death. She used to boast about it at our annual
meetings. One more wouldn't have been any problem
for her. But she didn't kill him. She keeps him so full of
Seductron that he doesn't know who he is, and when-
ever she wants Darnell to do her a favor, she threatens
to cut the man's Seductron dosage."

"His name?'* Sev demanded.

Fassa looked down. "I'd like some assurances that
you'll see my sentence reduced."

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

She twisted her fingers together. "You could lose the
records of this last trip, though. Without your tes-

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179

timony and the recordings, there woulan't be any
hard evidence against me." She looked up, eyes bril-
liant with unshed tears. "Please, Sev? I thought you
cared for me a little."

"You were wrong," said Sev in a voice as dead and
even as any droneship's artificially generated speech.

"Then what do I have? Why should I give you a
damned thing?" Fassa pounded on the yielding sur-
face of the bunk in frustration. Her fists sank into the
plasmaform and left momentary dents that smoothed
out as soon as she lifted her hands. "Oh, all right. Go
ahead and see me mindwiped, or sent to prison until
I'm too old to care," she said wearily. "Why should the
others get away with it when my life is ruined? The
man's name is Valden Alien Hopkirk, and he used to
own Hopkirk Glimware right here on Bahati. Is that
enough for you, or would you like his Central Citizen
Code as well?"

"Any little thing you can tell us would be much ap-
preciated," said Sev carefully.

"Well, I don't happen to know his CCC, so you're
out of luck!" Fassa snapped. "Wait — wait — there's
more."

"There is?"

"Find Hopkirk, and you'll have evidence on Alpha
and Darnell both," Fassa said rapidly. "But there's
another one you ought to get. His name's Blaize...."

In the brawn's cabin, Forister lowered his head to
rest on his clenched hands. "Blaize Armontillado-
Perez y Medoc," he whispered. "No. No."

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

Nancia cut off the audio transmission to Forister's
cabin and shut down her own sensors there. She lis-
tened alone while Fassa babbled out the details of
Blaize's felonious career on Angalia; the diverting of
PTA shipments, the slave labor and torture of the na-

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt

rive population he was supposed to be guarding.

Some day Forister would have to know and face
those details, but not yet. She would leave him alone
until he requested the recordings of this conversation,
and then she would let him listen in privacy.

And so Nancia was the only witness when Fassa's
confessional came to an abrupt ending. After she
finished the tale of Blaize's misdeeds, Sev probed her.

"I've looked up the records of that first voyage," he
said, almost casually. "There were five of you in it
together, weren't there? You, Dr. bint Hezra-Fong,
Overton-Glaxely, Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and
one other. Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, newly commis-
sioned from the Academy. What was his part in the
wager?"

Fassa clamped her lips shut and slowly shook her
head. "I can't tell you any more," she whispered.
"Only — don't let them send me to Shemali. Kill me
first. I know you never cared for me, but as one
human being to another—kill me first Please."

"You're wrong in thinking I never cared for you,"
Sev said after a long silence.

"You said so yourself."

"You asked if I liked you a little," he corrected her.
"And I don't. You're vain and self-centered and you
may have killed a good man and you've yet to show
any interest at all in Caleb's fete. 1 don't much like you
at all."

"Yes, I know."

"Unfortunately,** he went on with no change of ex-
pression, "likeitornot—and believe me, I'm not at all
happy about the situation — I do seem to love you.
Not," he said almost gently, "that it'll do either of us
much good, under the circumstances. But I did think
you ought to know."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Caleb recovered with amazing speed. Two hours after
his arrival at the clinic, forty minutes after Alpha bint
Hezra-Fong had analyzed the poisons in his blood and
slapped on stimpatches of the appropriate antidotes, the
nervous convulsions had stopped. Nancia knew exactly
when that happened, because by then she had thought
to send Sev Bryley to Summerlands with a contact button
discreetly replacing the top stud in his dress tunic and a
second contact button to clip onto Caleb's hospital gown.
While Forister remained on board as a nominal guard
for Fassa, Sev lounged about the public rooms at Sum-
merlands trying to look like a worried friend-or-relative
and chatting up the recuperating VIPs. Nancia watched
the clinic from two angles: the convulsive shuddering
view of a cracked white ceiling, emanating from Caleb's
contact button, and the repetitive views of artificial potted
palms and doddering old celebrities to whom Sev talked.
On the whole, the potted palms were more valuable than
the celebrities; at least they didn't waste Sev's time with
their reminiscences of events a century past

"None of these people know anything about
Hopkirk," she whispered through Sev's contact button.

"I've noticed," he replied as the senile director
emeritus of the Bahati Musical College, aged one
hundred seventy-five Standard Central Years, tottered
away for his noon meds.

"Can't you do something more productive?"

"Give me time. We don't want to be obvious. And
stop hissing at me. They'll think I'm talking to myself
and hearing voices."

182

Anne McCaffrvy & Margaret Ball

"From what I've seen of these befuddled gentry,
that'll make you fit right in."

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

Nantia hated to leave him with the last word in an
argument, but she was distracted at that moment.
Something had happened — or stopped happening.
Caleb's sensor button was no longer transmitting a jig-
gling view of the cracks on the ceiling; the image was
still and perfectly dear.

Not quite still. A regular, gende motion assured her
that he still breathed.

A moment later, two aides exchanged a flurry of
rapid, low-voiced but mainly cheerful comments over
Caleb's bed. Nancia gathered that the news was good;
his (three-syllable Greek root) was up, his (four-syl-
lable Latin derivation) was down, they were putting
him on a regular dosage of (two-word Denebian
form), and as soon as he was conscious they were to
start him on a physical therapy routine.

She complained to Forister about the jargon.

"Now you know how the rest of the world feels
about brains and brawns," he said soothingly. "You
know, there are people who think decomposition
theory is just a little hard to follow. They accuse us of
mystifying the mathematics on purpose."

"Huh. There's nothing mystical about mathe-
matics," Nancia grumbled. "This medical stuff is
something else again."

"Why don't you translate the terms and find out
what they mean?"

"I didn't have a classical education," Nancia told
him. "I'm going to buy one when we get back to
civilization, though. I want full datahedra of Latin,
Greek, and medical terminology. With these new hy-
perchips I should be able to access the terms almost as
fast as a native speaker."

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183

Somebody shouted just out of visual range of
Caleb's sensor button. The view of the hospital ceiling
swayed, blurred, and was replaced by glass windows,
green fields, and a white-clothed arm coining from the
left. "Here," said a calm, competent voice just before
Caleb bent over the permalloy bowl before him and
gave up the contents of his last meal.

The contact button gave Nancia a very clear, sharply
detailed close-up view of the results.

After that, though, he recovered his strength with
amazing speed. Throughout the day Nancia followed
his sessions with the physical therapist. At the same
rime she tracked Sev while he prowled the hallways of
Summerlands Clinic and listened for any scrap of in-
formation about a patient named Valden Alien
Hopkirk.

By mid-afternoon a new aide was able to assure
Caleb that there would be no permanent nerve
damage as a result of the attack.

"You're weak, though, and we'll need to retrain some
of the nerve pathways; the stuff your space pirate used
was a neural scrambler. Damage is reversible," the aide
said briskly, "but I'd advise a prolonged course of
therapy. You certainly won't be cleared to act as a brawn
for some time. Has your ship been notified?"

"She knows everything that goes on here," said
Caleb, placing one finger briefly on the edge of the
contact button.

Nancia got a good look at the aide's face. The man
looked thoughtful, perhaps worried. "I... see. And,
um, I suppose the button has a dead-man switch?
Some alarm if it's inactivated or removed?"

"Absolutely," Nancia responded through the contact
button before Caleb could tell the truth. Some such ar-
rangement would be a great safeguard for Caleb, and
she wished Central had thought of it. But failing that,
the illusion of the arrangement might give him some

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

protection. She went on through the tiny speaker, ig-
noring Caleb's attempts to interrupt her. "Please
notify all staff concerned of the arrangement. I would
be sorry to have to sound a general alarm just because
some ignorant staff member accidentally interfered
with my monitoring system."

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

After he left, Caleb said quietly into the contact but-
ton, "That was a lie, Nancia."

"Was it?" Nancia parried. "Do you think you know all
my capabilities? Who's the 'brain' of this partnership?"

"I see!"

Nancia rather hoped he didn't. At least she'd
avoided lying direcdy to Caleb. That was some-
thing ... but not enough.

She had never before minded her inability to move
about freely on planetary surfaces. Psych Department's
testing before she entered brainship training showed
that she valued the ability to fly between the stars for
more than the limited mobility of planet-bound crea-
tures. "I could have told them that," Nancia responded
when the test results were reported to her. "Who wants to
roll about on surface when they could have all of deep
space to play in? If I want anything planetside, they can
bring it to me at the spaceport"

But they couldn't bring her Caleb. And she couldn't
go to the Summer-lands clinic to watch over him.
Nancia could see and hear everything that passed
within range of those buttons. She could even send in-
structions to the wearers. But she could not art. She
was reduced to fretting over the slow progress they
were making and worrying about the medications
being inserted into Caleb's blood stream.

"Haven't you found anything yet?" she demanded
of Forister. Since Fassa had spent the day crying quiet-
ly in her cabin, Forister interpreted his "guard" duties

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185

rather liberally. He was on board and available in case
of any escape attempt, but he told Nancia that he saw
no reason to waste his time sitting on a hard bench out-
side Fassa's cabin door. Instead, he sat before a
touchscreen in the central cabin, inserting delicate
computer linkages into Alpha's clinic records and
scanning for some hint of where she'd put the witness
they needed.

Forister straightened and sighed. "I have found," he
told her, "four hundred gigamegs of patient charts,
containing detailed records of all their medications,
treatments, and data readouts."

"Well, then, why don't you just look up Hopkirk
and find out what she's done with him?" Nancia
demanded.

In response, Forister tapped one finger on the
touchscreen and slapped his palm over Nancia's
analog input. The data he had retrieved was shunted
directly into Nancia's conscious memory stores. It felt
like having the contents of a medical library injected
directly into her skull. Nancia winced, shut down her
instinctive read-responses, and opened a minuscule
slit of awareness onto a tiny portion of the data.

It was an incomprehensible jumble of medical ter-
minology, packed without regard for paragraphing or
spacing, with peculiar symbolic codes punctuating the
strings ofjargon.

She opened another slit and "saw" the same tightly-
packed gibberish.

"It's not indexed by patient name," Forister ex-
plained. "Names are encoded — for privacy reasons, I
suppose. If the data is indexed by anything, it might be
on type of treatment. Or it might be based on a hashed
list of meds. I really can't find any organizing principle
yet. Also," he added, unnecessarily, "it's compressed."
"We know he's being kept quiet by controlled over-
doses of Seductron," Nancia said. "Why not... oh." As

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PARTNERSHIP

187

she spoke, she had been scanning the datastream.
There was no mention of Seductron. "Illicit drug," she
groaned. "Officially, there's no such treatment. She'll
have encoded it as something else."

"I should have taken Latin," Forister nodded.
"Capellan seemed so much more useful for a
diplomat... Ah, well."

"Can you keep hacking into the records?" Nanria
asked. '"There might be a due somewhere else."

Forister looked mildly offended. "Please, dear lady.
'Hacking' is a criminal offense."

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

"I may be temporarily on brawn service," Forister
said, "but I am a permanent member of the Central
Diplomatic Service. Code G, if that means anything to
you. As such, I have diplomatic immunity. Hacking is
illegal; whatever I do is not illegal; hence, it's not hack-
ing." He smiled benignly and traced a spiraling path
inward from the boundaries of the touchscreen,
wiping the previous search and opening a new way
into the labyrinth of the Summerlands Clinic records.

"/ should have taken logic," Nancia muttered. "I
think there's something wrong with your syllogism.
Code G. That means you're a spy?" Caleb would never
forgive her for this. Consorting with spies, breaking
into private records... The feet that she was working
as much to save him as to track down criminals
wouldn't palliate her offense in his eyes.

"Mmm. You may call me X-39 if you like." Hum-
ming to himself, Forister smoothed out the path he
had begun and traced a new, more complex pattern
on the touchscreen.

"Isn't that rather pointless," Nancia inquired,
"seeing that I already know your name?"

"Hmm? Ah, yes — there we go!" Forister chuckled
with satisfaction as he opened his access to a new seg-
ment of Summerlands Clinic's computer system.

"Supremely pointless, like most espionage. Most
diplomacy, too, come to think of it. No, we don't use
code names. But I've always thought it would be
rather fiin to be known as X-39."

"Have you indeed, fungus-brain?" Alpha bint
Hezra-Fong muttered from the security of her inner
office. "How'd you like to be known as Seductron Test
Failure 106 Mark 7? If I'd known who you were — "
She bit off the empty threats. She knew now. And if
Forister made the mistake of coming back to Summer-
lands for any reason, she'd have her revenge.

Neither Forister nor Nancia had thought to check
Nancia's decks for transmitters — and even if they
had, they might not have recognized Alpha's personal
spyder, a sliver-thin enhanced metachip device that
clung to any permalloy wall and, chameleon-like,
mimicked the colors of its surroundings. In all the fuss
attendant on getting the wounded brawn into the
floatube, Alpha had found it easy enough to leave one
of the spyders attached to Nancia's central corridor.
From there it picked up any conversation in the
cabins, although the voices were distorted by distance
and interference.

At the time, Alpha hadn't been exactly sure what in-
stinct prompted her to plant the spyder; she had just
felt that the amount of Net communications traffic
concerning this particular brainship and brawn sug-
gested they were more important than they looked.
Infuriatingly, the datastreams coming from Central
over the Net were in a code Alpha had not yet suc-
ceeded in breaking, so the spyder was her only source
of information.

So £ar, though, it had proved a remarkably effective
tool. Alpha preened herself on her cleverness in drop-
ping one of the expensive spyders where it was most
needed. She drummed her fingers on the palmpad of

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PARTNERSHIP

189

the workstation while she mentally reviewed what
she'd done so far and the steps she'd taken to
counteract the danger. The rhythm of her fingertips
was repeated on the screen as a jagged display of
colored lines, breaking and recombining in a hypnotic
jazzy dance.

First had come the surprising sound of Fassa del
Parma's voice. While admiring the dramatic range
Fassa put into pleading with her captor, Alpha hadn't
been too surprised when the girl rapidly broke down
and began spilling what she knew about her com-
petitors. She'd always felt the del Parma kid didn't
have what it took to make it in the big time. Too emo-
tional. She cried in her sleep and then she gloated over
her victims. Real success came from being like Alpha
or Polyon, cool, unmoved, above feeling triumph or
fear, concentrating always on the desired goal.

Fortunately, Fassa didn't know much; she'd been
too stupid to think much beyond her personal con-
cerns. Alpha was willing to bet the little snip had never
thought of compiling a dossier on each of her com-
petitors, with good hard data that could be traded in
emergency. All she had were gossip and innuendo and
stories from the annual meetings. Blaize was nasty to
the natives, Alpha had developed an illicit drug, Dar-
nell was less than totally ethical in his business
takeovers.

Hearsay! Without hard evidence to back up the
stories, Central would never make charges like these
stick, and they were too smart to try. Alpha grinned
and slapped her open hand down on the palmpad,
jolting the computer into a random display of medical
jargon and meaningless symbols mixed with sentences
pulled at random from patient reports. She'd
prepared that program years ago, as protection
against a computer attack like the one Forister was
trying now. And to judge from the snippets of conver-

sation between him and Nancia, it was working. They
would waste all their energy trying to decipher a code
that had no meaning.

And while they worked, Alpha would take steps to
deal with the one piece of hard evidence Fassa had
pointed out to them. Her fingers drummed fester; she
slapped the palmpad again to enter voice mode.

"Send Baynes and Moss to my office — no, to Test
Room Four," she said. Baynes could safely be pulled
off the task of watching that brawn for a while; Caleb
was too weak to be any danger, and anyway he was
protected by his brainship's monitor button.

Alpha didn't think her office was infested with
spyders; she was absolutely certain about Test Room 4,
a gleaming permalloy shell with no crack in the walls,
no furnishings but the permalloy benches and table.
Alpha had commissioned the building of this room out
of her profits from the first illicit street sales of
Seductron. The official purpose of the lab room was
for Alpha's experiments on bioactive agents; the ex-
treme simplicity of its design was to aid in complete
sterilization of the chamber after experiments were
completed.

It served well enough for these purposes. And the
contractor who'd installed nets of electronic impulse
chargers behind the permalloy skin, making the room
impervious to any known external monitors, had suf-
fered a fatal overdose of Blissto shortly after the
completion of the room. Alpha shook her head and
sighed with everyone else that she'd never have
guessed the man was an addict. And the secret of the

room was safe.

Baynes and Moss really were addicts. Alpha had
"cured" their Blissto addiction, found them jobs at the
clinic, and then explained to them that the Blissto ad-
diction had only been replaced by a much more
serious drug, a variant of Seductron with the unfor-

190

Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

191

tunate side effect of causing complete nervous collapse
in victims who were suddenly cut off from their
regular dosage. Alpha had been experimenting with a
mildly addictive form of Seductron that would create a
captive market in anyone who ever tried the stuff;
Seductron-B4 was an overresponse to the problem.
She was afraid to release the stuff to street markets.
But it was incredibly useful in creating willing ser-
vants. It had only taken one or two delicately timed
delays in the Seductron-B4 doses to convince Baynes
and Moss that their only hope of life lay in total loyalty
to her. She had picked her tools carefully; they had
enough medical background to be genuinely useful as
aides in the clinic, but were far too stupid to replicate
her work on Seductron. If she died or were in-
capacitated, Baynes and Moss would die too:
inevitably, slowly, and painfully.

She felt quiet satisfaction, as always, at seeing two
men to whom her life was, literally, as valuable as then-
own. And for all thai little snip fossa vaunts her sex appeal,
no man who's rutted after her cares about her life the way these
two care about mine.

She gave her instructions quickly and confidently,
expecting nothing but instant obedience. The patient
carried on Summerlands' lists as Varian Alexander
was to be removed to the charity side of the clinic at
once. There was an empty bed in Ward 6, where the
recovering Blissto addicts and alcoholics were housed;
he would do very well there for the moment.

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

"He'll stand the move," Alpha said.
* Yes, but—"

"It's simple enough even for your drug-logged
brain, I should think!"

"It's not Alexander that worries him, Doctor," said
the quicker Moss. "It's that half-cyborg freak in Ward

6, Qualia Benton. Been asking a lot of questions, she
has. Too many."

Alpha drummed her fingers on the permalloy table.
Benton. Qualia Benton, Ah, yes. An interesting case,
presented as an alcoholic veteran of the Capellan Wars
who was too shaky and brain-damaged to keep up her
own periodic maintenance on her cyboig limb and organ
replacements. All parts had appeared to be in good
working order, but Alpha had approved the series of tests
and maintenance anyway; Veterans' Aid would pay for
the work, and if Qualia Benton was too far out of it to do
her own maintenance, she'd never think to question
whether the work the clinic charged was absolutely
necessary—or whether it had even been done.
"What sort of questions?"

Baynes shrugged. "Anything. Everything. How do we
like our jobs. How did we get our jobs. How many rooms
are there in this wonderful big building, and what all
goes on here besides taking care of poor old freaks like
her. Supposing she wanted to get work at a nice clean
place like this, would we put in a good word for her."
"No harm in all that"

"Yeah, but..." Baynes shifted his weight from one
foot to the other and fell silent.

Moss took up the story. "Last Friday she was rolling
about in her bed, claiming she had nervous pains
something awful in her left foot, which it isn't there
any more, Doctor, and nothing wrong with the pros-
thesis connections, I checked 'em out twice. Wouldn't
go out for exercise with the rest of the winos, so I left
her while we shoved the others out for their healthful
walk around the park. Only thing is, I had to come
back early on account of old Charlie Blissed-Out col-
lapsed with chest pains and I wanted a floatube to
bring him back. And I found her on the floor outside
the staff room. She claimed she'd been trying to work
the prosthesis and it collapsed on her."

192

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

"Possibly true," said Alpha.

"Yeah. But... the staff room door was unlocked. I
swear I locked up like always, Doctor, but it was open
then."

Alpha considered Moss's sweating face for a long
moment He could be trying to cover up his own care-
lessness in leaving the staff room door unlocked and a
patient alone in the ward. But he hadn't had to tell her
about the incident in the first place. He would only be
risking her anger if he were afraid of something even
worse — like a threat to her position at the clinic,
something that would take her away and end his
supply of Seductron-B4.

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

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

Moss rolled his eyes. "God give me strength," he
pleaded. "Doctor knows that, Baynes. Forget about
moving Victor Alexander to the charity side. We're to
put Qualia Benton in a private room with him on the
V.I.R side, and don't worry about the feet that Veterans
Aid won't pay; I reckon she won't be there long
enough to run up much of a bill. Right, Doctor?"

He gave Alpha a conspiratorial smile which she did
not return.

"Benton's is an interesting case," Alpha said neutral-
ly. "I wish to investigate this prosthesis trouble myself.
Any charges incurred will be billed to the experimen-
tal lab. Meanwhile, I wish you to keep an eye on the
visitor Bryley. He's supposed to be here as escort to
that brawn, but he's been spending entirely too much
time talking to too many people in the pubUc rooms."

Bryley might not be an immediate threat, but it
wouldn't do any harm to have Baynes and Moss keep
an eye on him. As for the other two, Alpha had no in-
tention of leaving the disposal of her problems to this

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193

pair of bunglers, one stupid and the other trying to
wriggle himself into her good graces. Nor did she in-
tend to risk their being able to give direct evidence
against her, if worst came to the worst

Qualia Benton might be no more than an alcoholic
old fool who couldn't keep from snooping into other
people's business, or she might be considerably more
than that If the first, she would be no loss; if the
second, she had to be disposed of immediately. As for
Valden Alien Hopkirk — Alpha hated to waste a
potential tool like Hopkirk, especially after going to
the trouble of keeping him lightly drugged and avail-
able for all this time, but she prided herself on the
ability to face fects and cut her losses. There were sud-
denly too many people asking too many questions
around Summerlands.

Alpha dismissed Baynes and Moss and went back
into her private storage room to prepare. "If you want
a thing done well, do it yourself," she murmured as
she prepared two stimpads, each loaded with a mas-
sive overdose of Seductron-B4.

The woman known as Qualia Benton knew some-
thing was wrong when the two aides who were Doctor
Hezra-Fong's shadows came to transfer her from the
charity side of the clinic. She'd been ready to act then,
fingers tensed against the side of her left-leg pros-
thesis, adrenalin keeping her unnaturally aware of
every shadow and change of intonation.

And nothing happened. "You're moving to a private
room," the big one called Baynes said.

"Who'll pay?" Qualia Benton demanded in the fret-
ful, shrill tone to be expected from an old soak whose
nerves were jangling for just one more drink.

"Doctor's interested in your case," said the little
black-haired one, Moss. "She wants to run some spe-
cial tests. On the clinic, if Veteran's Aid won't cover it

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Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt

You could get into the next issue of the Medical Re-
search Journal."

"I'm honored," said Qualia Benton politely. She let the
men transfer her to a wheelchair and rode quiedy down
the long silent corridors of Summerlands clinic, watching
the myriad reflections of herself and the aides in the
polished tiles of floor and walls and ceiling, ready for the
slightest move that would warn her it was time to act

It won't happen in the halls. They'll move when Tm in a
room alone, she told herself. But what if they expected
her to count on that, and took her by surprise in one of
these long empty hallways? She dared not relax.

Even when they wheeled her into a room with two
beds, the one nearest the window already occupied,
she was tense with expectation.

"Here now, you said I was getting a private room!"
she whined. Qualia Benton would whine; what's
more, she would be suspicious and distrustful like
most recovering addicts, almost paranoid. God knew,
it wasn't hard to fake that part

"Might as well be private," said the one called Moss.
"He won't bother you much. Will you, Varian?"

The patient in the other bed nodded and shook his
head alternately, smiling with a loose, open-lipped grin
that chilled her spirits. Blissto addict. Or worse... if there is
anything worse ? And they're maintaining hm in that condition,
instead of trying to break the addiction. That's criminal!

Qualia Benton, chronic alcoholic, too woozy to take
proper care of her own prostheses and replacement
organs, wouldn't care about somebody else's
problems. She said nothing.

The aides helped her into the free bed.

"Here you go," said the small black-haired man
cheerfully. He slapped a sum pad downwards; she
recoiled but could not quite escape the stinging con-
tact against her shoulder. 'Just a litde relaxation med
before the tests," he said.

PARTNERSHIP

195

"Don't wanna relax," she muttered. The thickness
in her speech was natural. She was suddenly finding it
hard to think. Something was infiltrating her
bloodstream, something soft as a cloud and warm as
sunshine, floating her away to the Isles of the Blest —
bless—bliss — Blissto! That was it!

The man in the other bed — was he really a Blissto
addict, or had he been drugged in the same manner?
Foolish, foolish not to have anticipated this. Once the
aides had caught her out of bed and snooping where
she had no business, she should have known her time
at the clinic was limited.

She set her will to resisting the power of the drug.
And not only her will. One thing about being under-
estimated, being seen as an old lush without die sense
to care for her own artificial organs: Dr. Hezra-Fong
hadn't, apparently, run any serious tests on those hy-
perchip-enhanced organs. The Blissto was carrying
her away; but if she could only gain an hour or two, afi
might yet be well.

Did she have that hour's grace? No way to tell; she
could only watch and wait, and that not very effective-
ly. The hard hospital pillow beneath her head was soft
as a Denebian flufftuff. Her left hand still rested
against the smooth hard prosthesis, but she could
barely feel the permaskin; the Blissto was interposing
a fluffy cloud of blissful illusion between her and
reality.

Doctor wants to run some tests ... Was that truly all this
meant? Surely not So important a person as Dr. Hezra-
Fong, assistant director of Summer-lands, wouldn't go to
all this trouble to prove that an old lush was faking dis-
ability. There had to be more going on here.

By late afternoon Sev noticed that the same two
aides kept walking through the public visiting rooms.
They were both rather striking in their appearance —

196

Arme McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

one a burly, blue-chinned man with a lumbering walk,
the other neat and quick and given to slicking down
his black hair with short nervous strokes. And they
would have looked more natural at a portside bar than
in a luxury medical clinic.

Sev reckoned he was supposed to notice them and
to be scared off. That was annoying. The doddering
old CenDip widow he was talking to had finally men-
tioned a patient named Varian Alexander, a Blissto
addict. That could be an alias for Valden Alien Hop-
kirk; the information that Alexander had just been
moved to a semi-private room supported the theory.
He was ready to get back to Nancia and check out the
records on this Alexander, and he hated like hell to let
these two petty thugs think they'd frightened him.

"You will not start anything with those two," Nancia
instructed him when he muttered his complaints into
the contact button. "They're minor. You get back and
watch Caleb. I'll send Forister to take care of our friend
Hopkirk."

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

Nancia assaulted his eardrums with a burst of static
that attracted the attention of two other visitors. Glanc-
ing doubtfully at the artificial Capella fern beside Sev,
they moved to the other side of the room and seated
themselves well away from the strange, dour young
man and his talking plant.

"You're attracting attention," Sev said sweetly. "Bet-
ter let me handle this in my own way."

"Don't blame me if you end up in a recycler," Nancia
grumbled in an undertone. "And don't expect me to
send Forister to fish you out of trouble, either. After all,
as you pointed out, somebody has to guard Fassa."

"I don't," said Sev loudly and clearly, "need anybody
to get me out of trouble."

The other visitors whispered among themselves and
somebody giggled. Sev felt his face turning red. Two

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shapes materialized at his elbows, one large and lum-
bering, one darting in quick as a hummingbird.

"Forgetting your meds again, sonny?" asked the
small one in a kindly, concerned voice. He turned
towards the other visitors in the room. "Sorry about
the disturbance. He hears voices. Should improve
with therapeu — ahh!"

Sev drove one fist into the small man's chin and
wheeled to confront the big one. A hand like a small
boulder descended on his head. The room whirled
around him. An old lady screamed. He saw something
sharp in the rock-like hand. Shoidd have guessed. The
danger is never where you're looking. The hand came down
for a second time, like an earthquake or an avalanche,
vast, implacable, and as Sev twisted away the needle slid
into flesh, quiet as a whisper, smooth as sleep.

When she heard the sounds of the fracas in the
public waiting rooms, Alpha slipped into the semi-
private room she'd assigned to Hopkirk and the
snoopy derelict. Damn Baynes and Moss! Couldn't
they handle a minor surveillance task without starting
a fight? There must be something about Blissto that
permanently destroyed the brain cells.

Oh, well, at least the disturbance in the waiting room
would draw everybody's attention; there'd be no incon-
venient witnesses to her actions here. Not that she
expected to be here long enough for any problems to
develop. Hopkirk was grinning in his usual loose-lipped,
amiable way, and the derelict Benton was limp against
her pillow in a Blissto dream. Better take care of her first;
she knew Hopkirk was too sedated to give trouble.

As she pushed up the old lush's sleeve to apply the
stimpad, Alpha wondered whether Qualia Benton
were really a snoop, or just a brain-damaged bag lady
who'd had the bad luck to stumble into private places
at the wrong time. Not that it made much difference.

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Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

She wouldn't be answering any questions now.

The stimpad slapped down on chill, firm flesh. The
array of needles clicked but did not sink in. Alpha felt a
moment's cold apprehension. Something is turong here.
Something is very wrong.

And Qualia Benton's dark eyes were wide open,
watching her with amusement.

"The right arm prosthesis is real lifelike," she said
cheerfully, "but you won't get stimpad needles
through the plastiskin. And now — oh, no, dear. 1
wouldn't do that. I really wouldn't."

From under the bedclothes she had produced an
ugly, snub-nosed needier. Where did thai came from? The
old bitch isn't wearing anything but a hospital gown.

"Whatever you had in that stimpad, die charge is
wasted now," Qualia Benton informed her in that
same cheerful tone. "There should be just enough left
for a lab on Central to analyze. Please don't try to
throw it away; I'll want to put it in an evidence bag for
the trial."

"Trial," Alpha croaked. "Evidence bag." She backed
up a step, frozen with horror, while her intended vic-
tim swung one real leg and one permalloy prosthesis
out of bed, fussily straightened her gown, and
produced a plastic bag from under the pillow.

"Just drop it in here, dear, and don't make any sud-
den moves. You wouldn't want to startle a poor
nervous old woman. This needier is set on wide spray,
and it's loaded with ParaVen. I don't really want to
paralyze you," she said thoughtfully, "but if neces-
sary ..."

Two more backward steps brought Alpha to the
door. She dropped and rolled into the corridor,
momentarily out of range of the needier. "Baynesl
Moss!" she shrieked. "32-A, patient out of control,
CodeZ,stat!"

Running feet pounded down the corridor and

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199

Alpha dosed her eyes in momentary relief. That heavy
tread had to belong to Baynes. Let this crazy snoop of a
woman waste her needier charge on the aides — then
Alpha would spirit her away to the violent ward. She
promised herself a long and entertaining series of ex-
periments on the bitch, once they got that damned
needier away from her.

"Stop right there," the old woman called in a voice
too clear for her apparent age. "I am a legally con-
stituted representative of Central Worlds Internal
Investigation. Any attack on my person is treason,
punishable by law. You're under arrest"

"The hell I am," countered a voice that most certain-
ly did not belong to the thick-witted Baynes. Alpha
looked up and saw that Bryley man, the one she'd sent
Baynes and Moss to take care of. "Fm the Central
Worlds rep here, and you're under arrest. What have
you done to my witness?"

"The guy in the next bed?" For the first time, the
Benton woman sounded uncertain. "He's not going to
be a lot of good to you. Too blissed-out to know his own
name. But you're welcome to him, if you want him. I
expect she was going to kill him next, after she took
care of me."

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

From her crouching position, Alpha saw the Benton
woman bend and fumble along the side of her leg
prosthesis. A crack opened and she drew out a thin
holographic strip that shimmered with rainbow colors
in the hallway lights. So that's where she hid the needier....

"General Micaya Questar-Benn," the woman intro-
duced herself. She was standing straighter now,
without the hunch and the bent leg that had made her
look so small and helpless before. "Undercover assign-
ment for Central, checking out the suspiciously high
death rate on the charity side of Summerlands. My col-
league Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc should be

200

Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Bail

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

"Sevareid Bryley-Sorensen, on temporary assign-
ment to investigate fraud in a Bahati construction
company." He looked down at Alpha; she had a dizzy-
ing glimpse of blue eyes and an expression as if the cat
had dragged in something better left in a back alley. "I
think our cases may be connected. I was here to collect
Valden Alien Hopkirk, witness to a case of criminal Net
interference by one of the del Parma girl's friends.
Apparently this 'lady1 is another of the gang; she's
been concealing the witness and — from what you say
— keeping him too doped up to testify. You think she
was going to kill him?"

"We'll have to wait until that stimpad in her hand
has been analyzed for drug traces," General Questar-
Benn said mildly, "but I certainly don't think she was
dispensing routine meds. Fortunately, she slapped the
stimpad on my upper-arm prosthesis. I think I was
supposed to be too drugged to notice her; one of those
thugs she uses for aides dosed me with Blissto, or
something like it, about an hour ago."

Alpha slowly uncurled herself and stood up. If she
was lost, she'd go with that much dignity. She was half
a head taller than this Sev Bryley; it helped, a litde, to
look down on him.

"So what are you," she demanded, "a robot?
Nobody's immune to Seduc — Blissto," she caught
herself. No reason to give away information.

General Questar-Benn chuckled. "No, dear girl,
I'm not quite as badly off as the Tin Woodman. The
valves may be helped along by hyperchips, but I still
have a heart — something that appears to have been
left out of your makeup. But the fiver and kidneys are
replacements, and last year I had a new hyperchip-
enhanced blood filtering function installed so that I
could monitor my own internal prostheses. If you'd
shown up right after your goon drugged me, I might

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have been in trouble. But an hour was more than
enough time to filter the drug out of my bloodstream."

Alpha glowered at her and Bryley impartially. "And
what about you?" she demanded of Bryley. "You
looked like a man, but I guess you're another fucking
cyborg freak."

"I am a man," Bryley said mildly. "I'm also fast —
and I learned Capellan hand fighting in the war. Your
big thug tripped over his own feet — with a litde help
— and slapped himself with the stimpad he was
aiming at me. I don't know what was in it; perhaps
you'd like to tell me whether he'll survive the ex-
perience? As for the litde one, he collided with one of
those big ceramic pots you've got decorating the wait-
ing room. He'll have one hell of a headache when he
wakes up, but he'll be in perfectly good shape to testify
against you."

"No, he won't," Alpha snapped. "You don't know as
much as you think you do! The man's addicted to —
something you won't be able to supply. Without his
next fix, he'll die in agony before the week's out!"

Bryley raised one eyebrow. "Then," he said cheer-
fully, "we'd better make sure to get his testimony on
datahedron before he dies, hadn't we? Thanks for the
warning."

• CHAPTER-TWELVE

"Hospitals!" General Questar-Benn made the word
sound like an expletive. "No offense, Thalmark, but
those damn gowns are just a plot to make patients
helpless and submissive. Thanks for bringing my
uniform, Bryley."

"I have a feeling it would take more than that to
make you submissive, General," Galena Thalmark
said with a slight inclination of her head.

Sev and Micaya had met in what used to be Alpha
bint Hezra-Fong's office, now occupied by the ad-
ministrative assistant who'd first alerted Central
Worlds to the surprising death rate in Summerlands'
charity wards. This morning Galena Thalmark looked
ten years younger than the harried, overweight
woman who'd greeted Micaya and smuggled her into
the wards in the disguise of die alcoholic "Qualia Ben-
ton."

"I can't express my thanks to you both," she said,
pushing dark curly hair away from her round face, "so
I won't try. General Questar-Benn, you have my sin-
cerest apologies for the dangers you experienced."

"Part of the job," said Micaya.

"All the same, we should have been more alert. I
should have had staff I could trust watching you at all
times," said Galena.

Micaya nodded without further comment. She was
favorably impressed by Galena's quick command of
the situation, even more impressed by the feet that the
young woman had taken full responsibility for
problems which were hardly of her making. It wasn't

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her fault that the aging director of Summerlands had
left more and more power in the hands of Dr. Hezra-
Fong, allowing the charity side to become disastrously
understaffed and letting a deplorable lack of discipline
infect the whole clinic.

"Clinic's problems weren't your fault, Thalmark,"
Micaya said at last, "but they're about to be your prob-
lem. The director must have been senile to let all this
go on under his nose. High Families, of course, politi-
cally unwise to fire him, but I've had one of my aides
compose a nice letter of resignation for him. Want the
spot? Can't guarantee it, you understand," she added,
"but I've some influence at Central."

Galena Thalmark flushed becomingly and mur-
mured her thanks. "Meanwhile," she said, shuffling
papers until she'd recovered her composure, "I'm glad
to report that Mr. Hopkirk is responding quite well to
treatment. Dr. Hezra-Fong has supplied us with full
details of the drugs used to keep him sedated. We're
steadily lowering the dosage and watching him for
seizures, but so far there have been no complications. He
should be quite lucid and competent to make a deposi-
tion on datahedron within the next forty-eight hours."

"Good work!" Micaya exclaimed.

Galena Thalmark nodded. "Whatever her other
failings, Dr. Hezra-Fong is a brilliant biomedical re-
searcher. I feel obliged to tell you that without her full
cooperation and guidance, we would not have been
able to reverse the effects of the treatment so rapidly."
She looked up into Micaya's eyes. "She requested that
this feet be formally noted on her dossier."

"It will be," Micaya promised. "But I doubt that it'll
bear much weight against the rest of the record."

Galena bit her lip. "All those deaths," she mur-
mured. "If only I'd seen what was going on from the
first..." Micaya nodded in sympathy.

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

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Aims McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU

woman. "You weren't even at Summerlands when she
began. You had every reason to trust your superiors;
it's to your credit that you suspected something as
soon as you did and called in the proper authorities to
put a stop to it Don't second-guess yourself!"

The last words were barked out in a parade-ground
intonation that made Galena's head snap up.

"I mean it," Micaya told her more gently. "My dear,
I've commanded soldiers in battle. I've seen brave men
and women die because of orders I gave; and some-
times those orders were wrong. You mourn the
deaths, you do the best you can, and — you go on.
Otherwise, you cannot be of service."

Galena Thalmark looked thoughtfully at the older
woman, standing erect and composed in her plain
green uniform. Some of her battle wounds were
visible, the permalloy arm and leg. Others were buried
in the surgical history that Galena had read: the inter-
nal replacements for kidneys and liver, the hyperchip
implant in one heart valve and the blood-filtering
function. And as a doctor, Galena could assess just how
many hours of painful surgery and retraining had
gone into reconstructing Micaya's body after she sus-
tained each of the original wounds.

""Vbu go on," Micaya repeated softly, "and... you serve
as best you can. I believe that you will make an excellent
director for Summerlands, Dr. Thalmark. Don't let
regrets and hindsight cripple you; we need you here and
now, not relivinga past that cannot be changed."

"I can see why you're a general," said Sev thought-
fully as they boarded the flyer that was to transport
them from Summerlands. "If we'd had a commanding
officer like you on Capella Four...."

General Questar-Benn's high cheekbones flushed a
shade darker. "Don't delude yourself. Making per-
suasive speeches is only a small part of the art of war."

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

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served on Capella. There may have been more going
on in the staff rooms, but I never rose high enough in
the army to see the whole picture. That's what I like
about EL work," Sev added thoughtfully, "now lam
the whole picture. Or was." He looked directly at
Micaya. Til consider myself under your command for
the rest of this operation."

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

"Is it?"

It has been a long time since a young man looked at
her so intently — and back then, Micaya thought with
an amusement that she did not allow her features to
reflect, the last man to look at her like that had wanted
something quite different. Ah, well. They always
wanted something, didn't they?

"Fassa del Parma and Alpha bint Hezra-Fong came
out to the Nyota system on the same transport," Sev
went on. "So did Darnell Overton-Glaxely. They've all
been helping each other get rich by the quickest and
dirtiest means they could arrange. There were two
others on that transport — Blaize Armontillado-Perez
y Medoc, and Polyon de Gras-Waldheim. Fassa's al-
ready implicated Blaize — the one who was posted to
Angalia. Don't you see? You're holding one thread
into this tangle; I'm holding another one."

"You think that together we could unravel it?"

Sev gave her a flashing grin that was all but wasted
on his present purpose. "Or take Alexander's solution,
and cut the Gordian knot. This corruption ought to be
cut off," he argued. "Don't tell me it's just a small part
of what 'everybody does.' I don't care. This is the part I
can see, that I can do something about. I have to see
this through!" He stopped, looking momentarily em-
barrassed by his own intensity. "And I had hoped," he
went on in a somewhat quieter voice, "I had hoped
that you would want to join us. Lead us."

206

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Bail

The flyer skated to a perfect landing just outside
Nantia's opened entry bay.

"Come with me?" Sev suggested.

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

"You can change that," he said confidently, and
grinned at her as he would at a contemporary. "Come
on, Micl You don't really want to go back to shuffling
papers on Kailas, do you?"

Micaya rubbed the back of her neck. She felt
generations older than this intense young man: tired,
and dirty from the corruption of Summerlands, and
not very interested in anything except a long bath and
a massage. "Damnit," she said wearily. "You'renotbad
at persuasive speeches yourself, Bryley-Sorensen. I
suppose you think I can get your brainship's orders
changed so that we can go on to Angalia, instead of
transporting del Parma straight back to Central?**

"It makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Sense," said Micaya, "has never been a compelling
argument for any bureaucracy. All right. You win. ill
see what I can do towards persuading Central to reas-
sign both Nancia and me. I must admit, I'd like to see
the end of this case." Despite her weariness, she felt a
smile beginning deep inside her. "Besides, your ship's
brawn owes me a rematch at tri-chess."

"Caleb?"

"Forister," Micaya corrected him. "Nancia's been as-
signed a replacement brawn, remember? Forister
ArmontiUado-y-Medoc. We were working together on
this Summerlands business, until Central pulled him
off the case to brawn Nancia back to Central." She
stopped in the open landing bay. "Wait a minute.
What did you say the other boy was called — the one
who went to Angalia?"

Sev didn't have time to answer; a second flyer
pounced down on the landing strip, and a messenger

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in the white uniform of Summerlands came running
toward them.

"Tried to raise you in the air," he panted. "Your
driver's comm unit must have been defective.
Hopkirk's testified!"

"The devil he has! Already?"

"He seemed rather eager to do it. Dr. Thalmark
thought it would do more harm to restrain him than to
let him speak. His deposition's on datahedron — and
there are a few honest men left on Bahati, Mr. Bryley;
two of them are going to arrest Overton-Glaxely now.
Since he'll likely be sent back to Central for trial, they'd
like a representative of Central to accompany them
now, just to make sure everything's in order."

"You mean, to make sure there's somebody else to
blame if his family goes out for revenge," Sev
muttered.

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

"Til go," Sev corrected her. "I've already annoyed so
many High Families, one more makes no difference.
You go catch up on your tri-chess."

"I always did like subordinates with plenty of initia-
tive," Micaya said wryly. But she was tired, and
worried about the possible connection between Blaize
and Forister. Well, they'd have some privacy for a little
while, with Sev Bryley off to collect his prisoner and
Fassa del Parma locked in her cabin. She would have to
ask Forister just how close the relationship might be —
and whether he really wanted to brawn a ship headed
for Angalia to arrest one of his relatives.

Forister was happily unpacking a special order from
OG Glimware when Micaya Questar-Benn requested
permission to board.

"We've got company coming," Nancia warned him.
"And isn't there something unethical about buying

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Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaU

something from a firm while you work to arrest its
owner?"

"Can't think what," said Forister, whistling under his
breath, "but if you find anything in CS regulations, be
sure and let me know. Anyway, OG Glimware is the
only company this side of Antares that does this par-
ticular specialty work." He peeled away the last
opaque shrinkwrapping to display his purchase: a
foot-high solido of a lovely young woman, every fea-
ture sharply delineated in the fragile prismatic
carving. Her chin was lifted almost defiantly; she
greeted the world with a smile whose reflection danced
in her eyes; a short cap of curly hair, so finely carved it
seemed the separate strands might lift in any passing
breeze, crowned the uplifted head that gazed out at
worlds beyond any human vision.

"Ah — very nice," Nancia said slowly, as Forister
seemed to be waiting for some reaction. "Relative of
yours?" His records didn't say anything about a girlfriend,
and isn't he rather old for this one?

"A very distant connection, like most of the High
Families scions. But she may become more than that
— my friend, I hope. Perhaps my partner." Forister set
the solido on the ledge above the pilot's control panel
and turned to smile at Nancia's titanium column. "It's
a genetic extrapolation, actually; shows what a certain
young woman I know would have looked like if she'd
grown up normally, without the one genetic anomaly
that made her unable to survive outside a shell. Her
name is... Nancia Perez y de Gras."

Nancia didn't know how to respond to that revela-
tion. She couldn't respond. Caleb never wondered what I
would have looked like ... never thought of me as a person.
Even thinking that was disloyal... but what could she
say to Forister?

She was spared the necessity by the opening of the
airlock. General Questar-Benn's somber face startled

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them both. "This pan of the mission's completed," she
announced. "Hezra-Fong's on her way here — under
guard — and Bryley has gone off to arrest Overton-
Glaxely. He's suggested that we should request a
change in Nancia's orders, to investigate the other two
passengers she brought to the Nyota system before
returning to Central. Thought I should consult you
first, Forister."

Forister's face went gray. "I will accept any orders is-
sued by Courier Service as long as I brawn this ship."

"Know that," Micaya told him. "But I need to know
more. Exactly what is the connection between you and
this boy on Angalia? Distant relative? How much con-
flict of interest are we looking at?"

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

"Can I rely on you?"

Nancia watched and listened without intruding into
the conversation. She had liked General Questar-
Benn on their previous meeting, but now she felt the
general was pushing Forister too hard. For the first
time since he'd come on board, he was looking his age;
the bristly graying hair lay flat, the sparkle of mischief
that had made his face so familiar to Nancia had disap-
peared. Of course, she realized with a shock of
recognition, that was why she felt as though she knew
Forister already. It wasn't just his previous trip to
Charon. It was die sparkle in his eyes as he hummed
and hacked his way into Summerlands' medical
records. That redheaded boy Blaize had just the same
expression when he was planning mischief.

But Forister had the integrity so disastrously missing
from Blaize's makeup. He hadn't tried to argue away
Fassa's stories implicating his nephew, and now he would
not evade the duty of confirming those stories.

"You don't have to come with us," Micaya told him.
"We can get another brawn assigned to this ship.

210

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

You're due a real R & R tour after that undercover
work at Summerlands — "

Forister lifted his head and gazed at her with flat
gray eyes. "You took all the risks at Summerlands," he
said in a voice so drained of feeling that it made Nancia
distinctly nervous. She increased the magnification of
her local sensors until she could see the pulse throb-
bing in Forister"s temple and hear the soft pounding of
his heart. The man was under far too much strain.

"I WAS USELESS," his amplified voice crashed
upon her, and Nancia hastily retreated to a normal
sensor level, nerve endings twitching from the grating
sounds. "Couldn't even find computer records to back
you up. If anyone deserves a term of rest, Mic, it's you.
And if anyone must prove my nephew's dishonor," he
finished wearily, "let it be me. We won't be able to keep
it in the family—I know that—but I need to know ex-
actly what he's done and how we can make
reparation."

"It's not good to be personally involved in your
cases," General Micaya Questar-Benn murmured.
"First rule of Academy."

Forister's spine straightened. "No. The first rule
is... to serve. That's all I ask of you. A chance to serve,
to make some reparation if any can be made. Besides,"
he added with just a trace of the old snap in his voice,
"you won't find another brawn this side of Bellatrix
subspace."

"Oh, come now," Micaya said. "You people with
brawn training always overrate yourself. I'll wager
there are half a dozen qualified brawns in Vega sub-
space alone."

Forister straightened another infinitesimal fraction
of an inch. "Not qualified for the new hyperchip-en-
hanced brainships. Our Nancia's got the
enhancements, haven't you, my dear?" As always, he
turned his head towards the titanium column when

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addressing her, just as if he were inviting another
softshell — so&person, Nancia corrected herself— to
join in the conversation.

"My lower deck sensors and port side nav controls
have the hyperchips," she told him, "and I'm using
them in some of the processing banks. I'm on a waiting
list for the rest."

"There you are, then," Forister told Micaya. "You
need me. And 1 — need to do this."

"You need this assignment like I need another pros-
thesis," Micaya muttered, but she sat down again with
the air of one who'd given up argument. "And just how
do you happen to be qualified for the new chipships,
anyway? You've been CenDip for — "

"More years than either of us chooses to specify,"
Forister interrupted her. "And the term is brainships,
Mic, not 'chipships.' Let's not offend our lady."

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

"But I am," said Forister. He took a deep breath and
straightened. Nancia could almost see him pushing
the pain he felt deep inside, replacing his diplomat's
mask. When he turned his head to speak directly to
her, he looked almost untroubled — if you didn't focus
your sensors on the tiny lines of strain and worry
around his eyes. "You are my lady now, Nancia, at least
for the duration of this mission. And no one speaks
casually of my brainship."

Micaya blew out her pursed lips with an ex-
asperated sigh. "You never answered my question.
How come you're qualified for the newest models of
brainships, when you've been out of the brawn service
for... years?"

"I read a lot," Forister said with an airy wave of one
hand. "Ancient guerrilla wars, new compunav sys-
tems, it's all grist to my mill. I'm a twentieth century
man at heart," he told Micaya, referring to the Age of
the First Information Explosion. "A man of many in-

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Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

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213

terests and unguessed-at talents. And I like to keep
current in my field—all my fields."

"A man of unguessed-at bullshit, anyway," Micaya
retorted. "Okay. You're in. At least I'll have someone to
beat at tri-chess on the way over to Angalia."

Forister snorted. "You mean someone to beat you.
Your ego has increased out of all proportion to your
skill, General. Set 'em up!"

Nancia watched with curiosity as General Questar-
Benn drew a palm-sized card from her pocket. Forister
grinned. "Brought your portable game board, I see."

The general tapped the slight indentations on the sur-
face of the card and it projected a hologram of a
partitioned cube, shimmering with rainbow light at the
edges. Another series of taps produced the translucent
images of playing pieces aligned at two opposing edges of
the cube. Nancia twiddled with her sensor magnification
and focus until she could make out the details. Yes, those
were the standard tri-chess pieces: she recognized the
age-old triple ordering. Pawns in the first and lowest
rank; above them, the King and Queen with their
Bishops and Knights and Castles. Above them the
highest rank was poised to swoop down over the
gamecube, the Brainship and Brawn with their support-
ing pieces, the Scouts and Hovercraft and Satellites. The
images were blurred and kept flickering in and out,
giving Nancia a sensation of tight bands pulled across her
sensor connections if she tried to look at them for any
length of time.

"Pawn to Brain's Scout 4,2,w Forister grunted a
standardized opening move.

Nothing happened.

"My portable set isn't equipped with voice recogni-
tion," Micaya apologized. "You'll have to tap in the code."

As she indicated the row of fingertip-sized indenta-
tions, Nancia hummed softly — her substitute for the
rasps and hawks of "throat-clearing" with which

softshells began an unscheduled interruption. Both
players looked up, and after a startled moment
Forister inclined his head to Nancia's titanium
column.

"Yes, Nancia?"

"If you'll give me a moment to study the configura-
tion," Nancia suggested, "I believe I can replicate your
play-holo with a somewhat clearer display. And I, of
course, can supply the voice recognition processing."

Even as she spoke, she assigned a virtual memory
space and a graphics co-processor to the problem.
Before the sound of her voice had died away, a new
and much clearer holographic projection shimmered
beside the original one. Forister exclaimed in delight
at the perfect detailing of the miniaturized pieces;
Micaya put out her hand as if to touch a perfectly
shaped litde Satellite with its three living and storage
globes, complete with tiny access doors and linking
spacetubes.

"Beautiful," Forister sighed in delight. "But won't
this take too much processing capability, Nancia?"

"Not when we're just sitting dirtside," Nancia told
him. "I don't even use that processor when we're
doing regular navigation. Might have to shut down
briefly when we're in Singularity, that does take some
concentration, but— "

Forister closed his eyes briefly. "That's perfectly all
right, Nancia. To tell you the truth, it never occurred
to me to play tri-chess in Singularity anyway."

"Me either," said Micaya, looking slightly green at
the very thought. "You don't want to think about spa-
tial relationships at a moment like that"
"I do," said Nancia cheerfully.

Less than two Central Standard Hours later, Sev in-
terrupted the first tri-chess game to deliver a subdued
Darnell Glaxely-Overton for transport to Central. "He

214

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

215

broke when I showed him the hedron of Hopkirk's
evidence," he told the others after Darnell had been
confined in a cabin. "Funny — almost as if he'd ex-
pected somebody to come after him one of these days.
Spent most of the flyer trip back telling all he knows
about the other three. Here's the recording.''

"Four," Nancia corrected Sev as he slid a datacard
into her reader.

"Three," Sev said again. "Fassa. Alpha. And . ..
Blaize." He carefully avoided looking at Forister as he
pronounced the last name.

"Neither of them has said anything implicating
Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?'' Nancia couldn't believe
this.

Sev shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe there isn't any-
thing to say. You never know, there could be one good
apple in this barrel of rotten ones."

Not Polyon. But Nancia refrained from voicing her
protest. After the conversations she'd heard on her
maiden voyage, she was convinced that Polyon de
Gras-Waldheim was completely amoral. But would it
be ethical to reveal those conversations? Caleb had
been so adamantly against anything that even sug-
gested spying, she'd never even thought of telling him.

But that had been five years ago. She had changed;
she now saw shades of gray instead of the neat black
and white of CS rules. Even Caleb might have
changed; after all, he'd consented to this undercover
mission.

Under protest

He might feel doubly betrayed if she chose to violate
his ethical code when he wasn't even here to censure
her for it.

Perhaps she could put off the decision for a little
longer "It might be worth going by Shemali anyway,"
Nancia suggested. "You never know. We might find
some evidence linking de Gras-Waldheim with the rest

I

of the crew." We'd have that evidence already, if they weren't
-}:    oft terrified to say a ward against him.

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

galia?"

"I thought you were coming with us!" Micaya Ques-
tar-Benn half rose from her seat, putting one hand
right through Nancia's tri-chess hologram.

"I was," Sev agreed. "I am. I'll meet you on Shemali.
Something's come up."

He was gone before any of them could question
him, taking the stairs three at a time and whistling as
he went. Nancia briefly considered slamming her
lower doors on him and holding him until he ex-
plained exacdy what he was up to.

She wouldn't do that, of course. It would be an un-
ethical and unconscionable abuse of her abilities, the
sort ofbullying she'd been warned against in the ethics
classes that were pan of every shellperson's training.

But it was a sore temptation.

"Something," Micaya said thoughtfully, "has made
that young man extremely happy. I wonder what it
was. Nancia, is there anything earth-shaking in that
datacard of Darnell Overton-Glaxer/s testimony?"

Nancia had started scanning just before Micaya
spoke. "There isn't even anything interesting," she
said, "unless a sordid record of petty bribes and cor-
ruption and bullying fascinates you."

"Ah. Overton-Glaxely did strike me as the cheap sort"

"You might want to examine his statement your-
self," Nancia suggested. "You may see something I've
overlooked."

Micaya nodded. "I'll do that. But I doubt I'll find
anything. Bryley said there wasn't any evidence
against de Gras-Waldheim, so whatever is taking him
to Shemali, it can't be our business. Damn that boy!
Oh, well, I suppose we'll find out when we reach
Shemali."

216

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

"But first," Forister said, "we have a task to complete
at Angalia." His face was gray and still again; the
momentary animation brought on by the tri-chess
game had vanished. He looks like a man with a deadly dis~
ease. Is family honor so important to him ? Nancia wondered
how she'd feel if her sister Jinevra were found to have
corrupted her branch of PTA and embezzled the
department's funds.

Impossible even to imagine such a thing. Well, then,
what if Flix — she couldn't think what Flix might do,
either, but what if he had got in with the wrong crowd
— like Blaize — and had done something that would
force her to hunt him down, arrest him, send him to
Central for years of prison without his beloved musk?

The pain of that thought shook Nancia so deeply
that for a moment the even hum of the air stabilizers
was broken and the co-processor handling the tri-
chess hologram faltered. The gamecube image
shivered, broke apart in rainbow fractures, then
solidified again as Nancia gained control of herself and
her systems.

If even imagining Flix in trouble hurt her so deeply,
how could Forister face the reality of Blaize's crime?
He couldn't, she decided, and it was up to her and
Micaya to distract him whenever possible.

"General Questar-Benn, it's your move," she said.

"What? Oh—Scout to Queen's Bishop 3,3," Micaya
said. The move took one of Forister's Satellites and left
a probability path to his Brains hip. Nancia calculated
the possible moves without conscious effort.

"You have only two moves that will not put your
Brainship in check within the next five-move se-
quence," she warned Forister.

"Two?" Forister's eyebrows shot up and he bent
over the gamecube. "I saw only one."

"Foul!" Micaya complained. "I challenged the
brawn, not the brain. **

PARTNERSHIP

217

"We work as a team," Nancia told her.

She certainly hoped that was true. For Forister's
sake — for both their sakes. He didn't need to get
through this grief alone; she was there to steady him.

"Ah. I see what you mean." Forister bent over the
board and surprised Nancia with a third move, one so
apparently disastrous that she had not even con-
sidered it in her initial calculations.

With a subdued whoop of glee, Micaya Questar-
Benn took Forister's second Satellite — and watched
dumbfounded as he proceeded to shift an uncon-
sidered knight from the second rank and place her
Brainship in check.

"Thank you for the hint, Nancia," Forister said.
"Until you forced me to consider the alternative move,
I hadn't even thought of using the Jigo Kanaka ad-
vance in this situation."

"I ... ah ... you're quite welcome," Nancia
managed to tell him between the three subsequent
moves that brought the game to its slashing con-
clusion, with Micaya's forces immobilized, her Brawn
taken and her Brainship checkmated.

Perhaps Forister didn't need quite so much help as
she'd anticipated.

PARTNERSHIP

219

• CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nancia's landing on Angalia was one of the worst
she'd ever executed. The planet took her completely
by surprise.

Initial navigation maneuvers went normally. It
wasn't until she was in visual range of the landing field
that she became confused. The green terraced cliffs
behind the mesa and the grassy basin surrounding it
looked nothing at all like her memories of the landing
five years ago. Could she possibly have miscalculated,
come down in some hitherto unknown section of the
planet?

Nancia called up her files from that first landing and
superimposed the stored images on the green
paradise below her. Yes, this had to be the Angalia
landing field. The topographical features were a per-
fect match with her internal map. And there, at the
edge of the mesa, was the plastifilm prefab hut with its
sagging awning of woven grass, looking if anything
slightly more derelict and tottering than it had ap-
peared five years ago.

Intent on her image comparison, Nancia drained
computing power from the navigation processor,
forgot to monitor the approach, and came embarrass-
ingly close to making a new crater on Angalia's landing
field. She corrected the descent, hopped into mid-air,
and came down more slowly the second time. Her
auditory sensors picked up a variety of crashes,
groans, and complaints from the cabins where Micaya
and the three prisoners were housed.

"Apologies for the rough landing," she began, but

Forister cut off her speakers for a moment and over-
rode her. "Local turbulence," he said. "Nancia
recovered superbly, but even a brainship can't com-
pensate for all the freak conditions on Angalia."

He swept his open hand over the palmpad with a
caressing gesture, restoring speaker control to Nancia,
and smiled at her benignly.

"I didn't need you to cover for me," Nancia trans-
mitted a vibrant whisper through the main cabin
speakers.

"Didn't you? I thought we were a team. If you can help
me play tri-chess, I certainly have the right to preserve
you from apologizing to those overindulged brats."

"I — well, thank you," Nancia conceded.

"Think nothing of it. By the way, what did happen
just now?"

"I was distracted. This place doesn't look the way it
did last time I landed." Nancia switched all her screens
to external mode. Forister gazed appreciatively at the
triple-screen display of a grassy paradise ringed by
flowering terraces.

"What on earth is that?" Fassa cried from her cabin.
Darnell and Alpha joined her exclamations of
surprise.

Nancia was gratified by this response. The screens
in the passenger cabins weren't as dramatic as her
central cabin's display walls, but at least they showed
enough of Angalia to confirm that she wasn't losing
her mind — or if she was, she wasn't alone. None of
the prisoners had been expecting Angalia to look like
the Garden of Eden.

"Do I take it," she asked mildly, "that the planet has
changed since your last visit?"

"It certainly has," Fassa said. "Are you sure it's the
same place? Only last year — oh, I see."

A prolonged silence followed. For once in her life
Nancia longed for a softperson's physical extrusions.

220

AttneMcCaffrey & Margaret Batt

It would be enormously satisfying to take Fassa by the
shoulders and shake her out of the trance in which she
had fallen. MP%y couldn't softpersons keep transmitting
datastreams while they were processing?

She had to content herself with blinking Fassa's
cabin lights and assaulting her with raucous bursts of
music from Flix's latest sonohedron.

"Do I take it," she inquired when satisfied that she
had the girl's attention, "that you recognize some
salient features?"

"Yes... I think so, anyway." Of course, Fassa would
have no control over the visual detail, not to mention
the accuracy, of whatever images she'd stored from
her previous visit. She would be dependent on
whatever her non-enhanced biological memory could
provide. Recognizing this, Nancia didn't count on
learning much.

"Those gardens on the side of the mountain," Fassa
said. "He had the terraces in place a year ago, but
nothing was planted. I thought it was something to do
with the mine."

Nancia switched the signals going to Fassa's display
screen to show the mine entrance. Blue-uniformed
figures moved in and out, pushing wagons on railings
that curved around the side of the mountain. A mag-
nified display showed that the figures were shambling
Angalia natives, neady dressed in blue shorts and
shirts and working together with the precision of a
choreographed dance. One native heaved a sack from
the mine entrance and tossed it over his head; another
casually moved into place just in time to catch it; by the
time he'd turned, a third native had backed his wagon
down the rail system and into place to receive the load.

"Amazing," Nancia commented. "I thought the An-
galians couldn't be trained."

"Blake," Forister said hollowly, "has certainly been a
busy little boy."

PARTNERSHIP

221

"It doesn't look all that bad so far," Nancia pointed
out * Fassa, do you — or the others — recognize any-
thing else?"

She let the display screens sweep over a panoramic
view of the mesa and the surrounding countryside.
Suddenly Fassa gave a cry of recognition. "Oh, God,
he's left the volcano!"

Nancia halted the display and studied it. An evil-
looking bubble of brown and green mud heaved and
burst and formed again, roiling continuously in the
midst of the tall grass covering the rest of the basin.

"I don't suppose planting flowers would do much to
disguise it," she agreed.

"You don't understand." Fassa sounded close to
tears. "That's how he controls them — how he makes
them do things for them. If the Loosies don't please
him, he cooks them alive in that boiling mud! I saw it
done last time — I'll never forget those screams."

"Alpha? Darnell?" Nancia queried the other two.

"That's right," Darnell told her. "Revolting."

Alpha nodded silently, the movement barely visible
to Nancia's visual sensors.

She could think of no more encouraging words for
Forister.

Micaya persuaded Forister to let her confront Blaize
initially. "I'll wear a contact button," she promised
him. "You and Nancia can see and hear everything
that goes on."

"It's my duty—" Forister began.

"Mine too," Micaya interrupted him. "The young
man is more likely to confess if he doesn't think he can
bring family influence to bear."

"He can't," Forister said grimly. "I'm not here to in-
tercede for him."

"Yes, but he doesn't know that," Micaya pointed out-

Nancia kept all her external sensors trained on

222

Anne McCajfrey & Margaret Ball

Micaya'as the general picked her way along a path of
rounded volcanic stones to the door of the permalloy
hut. On both sides of the path, feathery grasses and
blazing tropical flowers grew in exuberant, uncon-
trolled patterning, throwing up their seed-heads and
blooms above Micaya's crisp silver-sprinkled hair.
Nancia recognized Old Earth species mixed with
Denebian starflowers and the singing grasses of
Fomalhaut II, a joyous blaze of pink and orange and
purple flowers.

Micaya entered the hut and Nancia's field of vision
contracted to the half-circle covered by the contact
button. In the shadowy hut, stacked high with papers
and bits of machinery, Blaize's red head glowed like a
burning ember before the computer screen that held
his attention.

"Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc," Micaya said
formally.

"Urn. PTA shipment? I'll sign for it in a minute. Just
got to finish this one thing...."

The contact button's resolution wasn't enough for
Nancia to read the words on the computer screen, but
she recognized the seven-tone response code that
chimed out when Blaize slapped his open hand on the
palmpad. An interplanetary transmission — no, inter-
subspace; he had just sent something to ... Nancia
rummaged through her files and identified the code. To
Central Diplomatic headquarters? What could they have to
do with Angalia, a planet where no intelligent sentients
existed? Had Blaize's net of corruption drawn in some of
her father's and Forister's own colleagues?

"There!" As the last notes of the code chimed out,
Blaize swung round, a seraphic smile on his freckled
face. "And what — "

His expression changed rapidly and almost comical-
ly at the sight of Micaya Questar-Benn in full uniform.
"You," he said slowly, "are not PTA."

PARTNERSHIP

223

"Quite correct," said Micaya. "Your activities have
attracted some attention in other quarters."

Blaize's jaw thrust out and his freckles seemed to
take on a glowing life of their own. "Well, it's too late.
You can't stop me now!"

"Can't I?" Micaya's tone was deceptively mild.

"I've sent a full report to CenDip. I don't care who
your friends in PTA may be, they'll have to leave An-
galia alone now."

"My dear boy," said Micaya, "haven't you got it back-
wards? You're the one employed by Planetary Technical
Aid. Or rather, you were."

Nancia had been so caught up in the dialogue, she
never noticed when Forister slipped out of her central
cabin and made his way down the stairs. She was as
starded as Blaize when Forister appeared in the door-
way of the hut, just on the periphery of her view from
the contact button.

"Uncle Forister!" Blaize exclaimed. "What's going
on here? Can you help—"

"Don't call me uncle," Forister said between his
teeth. "I'm here with General Questar-Benn to stop
you, boy, not to help you!"

Blaize went green between the spattering of freck-
les. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked as if he
wanted to be sick. "Not you too?"

"You didn't think family feeling would extend so far
as helping you exploit and torture these innocents?"

"Torture? Exploit?" Blaize gasped. "I — oh, no.
Uncle Forister, have you by any chance been talking to
a girl named Fassa del Parma y Polo? Or Alpha bint
Hezra-Fong? Or Darnell — "

"All three of them," Forister confirmed, "and —
what the devil is so funny about that?"

For Blaize had all but doubled up, snorting with
repressed laughter. "My sins come back to haunt me,"
he gasped between snorts.

224

Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

225

"I don't see what's so funny about it." Pollster's own
face had gone white and there was a pinched look
about the corners of his mouth.

"You wouldn't. Not yet. But when I — Oh, Lord!
This is one complication I never — " Blaize sputtered
into hysterical laughter that ended only when Forister
slammed a fist into his belly. Blaize was still crowing
and wheezing for breath when a second blow to the
jaw knocked his head back and flung him in an undig-
nified collapse against the rickety table where his
computing equipment had been stacked. Blaize's legs
folded under him and he slid gendy to the floor. Be-
hind him, the table rocked and wobbled dangerously.
The palmpad skated to one corner of the table top and
hung on a splinter. A shower of flimsy blue hardcopies
fluttered down over Blaize in a gentle, rustling rain of
reports and accounting figures and FTA instructions.

Forister snatched one sheet as it drifted down and
studied the column of figures for a moment, brows
raised. When his eyes reached the bottom of the page, he
looked tired and gray and showed every year ofhis age.

"Proof positive," he commented as he passed the
paper to Micaya, "if any was needed."

Micaya held the paper where Nancia could focus on
it through the contact button. The figures wobbled
and danced in Micaya's hand; grimly Nancia compen-
sated for movement and enlarged the blurred letters
and numbers until she too could read the flimsy.

It was a statement of Blaize's Net account balance
for the previous month. The pattern of deposits and
withdrawals of large sums made no immediate sense to
Nancia, but one thing was clear: any single figure was
considerably larger than Blaize's PTA salary, and the
total at the bottom was damning — more than thirty
times as much credit as he could have accumulated if
he'd saved every penny ofhis legitimate pay.

"Uncle Forister," said Blaize from the floor, tenderly

massaging his aching jaw, "you have got it all wrong.
Trust me."

"After the evidence before my eyes," Forister spat
out, "what could you possibly say that would incline
me to trust you?"

Blaize grinned up at him. His lip was bleeding and one
ftont tooth wobbled alarmingly. "You'd be surprised."

"If you were thinking of a small bribe out of your ill-
gotten gains," Micaya told him, "you can think again."
She lowered her head to speak directly into the contact
button and Nancia hastily reduced the amplification,
Softshells never could quite understand that they
didn't need to shout at a conduct button; the speaker
might be tinny, but the input lines were as powerful as
any of a brainship's on-board sensors. "Nancia, please
enter the Net with my personal ID code. That's Q-
B76, JPJ, 450, MIC. Under that code you will be
authorized to freeze all credit accounts under the per-
sonal code o£ let me see...." She squinted at the top
of the flimsy, peering to make out a code sequence that
Nancia could read perfectly well with the vision cor-
rectors damping down movement and enhancing
blurred letters. "Oh, never mind, I guess you can read
it," Micaya recalled a moment later.

"Correct," Nancia sent a vocal signal over the con-
tact link.

"Don't do that!" Blaize scrambled to his feet, sway-
ing slightly. "You don't understand—"

Forister moved to one side more rapidly than Nan-
cia had ever seen him step, a blur of motion that placed
him between Blaize and Micaya with her copy of the
account balance. "I understand that you've been ex-
ploiting nonintelligent sentients to enrich yourself,"
he said. "You can make your explanation to the
authorities. Nancia, I want you to file a formal record
of the charges now, just in case anything goes wrong
here."

226

Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

227

"Done," Nancia replied.

Blaize shook his head and winced at the motion. "Ow.
No. Uncle Forister, you really have got the wrong end of
the story. And there's no way you can have me up on
charges of— what did you say? — exploiting nonintel-
ligent sentients. On the contrary. The Loosies are
entitled to Intelligent Sentient Status and I can prove it—
and nobody can stop me now; I've just sent the final
documentation to CenDip. Even if you silence me,
there'll be an independent CenDip investigation now."

"Silence you, silence you?" Forister looked at Micaya.
His gray eyebrows shot up. "No question of that. We
don't deal in coverups. You'll have the opportunity to
say anything you like at your trial. And so will I, God
help me," he murmured, so low that only Nancia's
contact button picked up the words. "So will I."

"If you people would just listen" said Blaize, ex-
asperated, "there wouldn't be any need for a trial. Didn't
you hear what I said about the Loosies being intelligent?"

Micaya shook her head. "You've been here too long
if you've started to cherish that illusion. Face the facts.
On the way here I downloaded the survey reports off
the Net. The native species don't exhibit any of the key
signs of intelligence — no language, no clothing, no
agriculture, no political organization."

"They've always had language," Blaize insisted.
"They've got clothing and agriculture now. As for a
political organization, just think about PTA for a
minute and then ask yourself if that's any proof of
intelligence."

Micaya laughed in spite of herself. "You have a
point. But we didn't come here to argue ISS certifica-
tion standards—"

"Maybe not," said Blaize, "but since you are here,
and — " He looked suspicious for a moment "You're
not working with Harmon, are you?"

"Who?"

Micaya must have looked surprised enough to con-
vince Blaize.

"My predecessor here — my supervisor now.
Crooked enough to hide behind a spiral staircase,"
Blaize explained briefly. "He's the reason — well, one
of the reasons — I had to do things in this way. Al-
though even an honest PTA supervisor probably
wouldn't have approved. I have bent a few regula-
tions," he admitted. "But just do me the favor of taking
a brief tour of the settlement. 1 think you'll understand
a lot better after I show you a few things."

Micaya looked at Forister and shrugged. "I don't see

any harm in it"

"I suppose if we don't go along, you'll apply for a
mistrial on the grounds that you weren't allowed to
show evidence in your defense?" Forister inquired.

Blaize's face turned almost as red as his hair. "Look.
You're in contact with your brainship via that button.
If it's inactivated, or if she sees anything she doesn't
like, the full recording can go over the Net to Central
at once. What will it cost you to listen to me for once in
your life, Uncle Forister? God knows nobody else in
our family ever bothered," he added, "but I used to
think you were different"

Forister sighed. "I'm listening. I'm listening."

"Good! Just come this way, please." Blaize pushed
between Forister and Micaya and flung the door of the
hut open. Sunlight and gaudy flowers and a thousand
shades of green danced before them, all the brighter
for the contrast with the shabby interior of the hut
Blaize started down the path, talking a mile a minute
over his shoulder as the other two followed him. Nan-
cia activated the failsafe double recording system that
would transmit every word and image direcdy to Vega
Base as well as to her own storage centers.

"The Loosies never developed spoken language be-
cause they're telepaths," Blaize explained. "I know, I

228

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

know, that's hard to prove directly, but just wait till you
watch them work together! When the CenDip team
gets here, they should bring some top Psych staff.
Open-minded ones, who'll arrange tests without as-
suming from the start that I'm lying. Mind you, it took
me a while to figure out myself," he babbled
cheerfully, turning from the main path to a secondary
one that wound through head-high reeds, "especially
at the beginning, when they all looked alike to me. I
was so damn bored, and those croaking noises they
make got on my nerves, so I started trying to teach a
couple of them ASL."

"What?" Micaya interrupted.

"It's an antique hand-speech, used for the
incurably deaf back before we learned how to direct-
install auditory synapses on metachip and hook
them into the appropriate brain centers," Forister
told her. "Blaize always did have strange hobbies.
But teaching the Loosies a few signals in sign
language doesn't prove they're intelligent, boy. A
couple of twentieth-century researchers did that
much with chimpanzees."

"Yeah, well, that's all I hoped to achieve in the
beginning," Blaize said. "Believe me, after a couple of
months on Angalia, a signing chimp would have
seemed like real good company! But they picked it up
like—like a brainship picks up Singularity math. That
was the first surprise. I was teaching three of them
who sort of hung around — Humdrum and Bobolin
and Gargle." He flushed briefly. "Yeah, I know they're
damn silly names, but I didn't know they were people
then. 1 was just copying some of the strangled noises
they made when I would talk to them and they'd try to
talk back, before I realized they'd never developed the
vocal equipment for true speech — that was when I
started on the sign language — sorry, I'm getting
mixed up. Where was I?"

PARTNERSHIP

229

"Teaching Humdrum to sign 'Where ration bar?'"
Forister told him.

Blaize laughed. "Not bloody likely. His first sentence
was more like, 'Why did Paunch Man throw ration
bars in mud and treat us like animals, and why do you
make stacks and hand them to us one at a time with
proper respect?'"

He stopped and turned to face them, his freckled
face dead serious for once. "Can you imagine how it
felt to hear a question like that coming from somebody
I'd been thinking of as — oh, like a trained spider to
while away the hours of my prison sentence? I knew
then that the Loosies weren't animals. Figuring out
what to do about it," he said, resuming his progress
through the reeds, "took a little longer."

"I deduced the telepathy when I noticed that a week
after Humdrum caught on to ASL, every Loosie who
showed up for rations was signing to me. Fluently. He
couldn't have taught them the rudiments that fast;
they had to have been picking the signs and the lan-
guage structure out of his mind as the lessons
progressed. In fact, they told me as much when I asked
about it. Which wasn't all that easy. ASL doesn't have a
sign for 'telepathy,' and since they don't know English,
I couldn't spell it out. B ut eventually we got our signals
straight."

"If they were as intelligent as you claim, and had a
system of communication, they should have advanced
beyond their primitive level without intervention,"
Micaya objected.

"Easy for you to say," Blaize told her. "I wonder how
well you or any of us would do if we had evolved on a
planet where the only surface fit for farming is
rearranged by violent floods once a week, where the
caves we used for shelter crumbled and were shattered
by periodic quakes? They had a hunter-gatherer cul-
ture until a few generations ago — a small population,

230

Artne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

not more than the planet could support, ranging
through the semi-stable marshlands on the far side of
this continent"

"Then what?"

"Then," Blaize said, "they were discovered. The first
survey thought they might be intelligent and re-
quested Planetary Technical Aid support By the time
the second survey team came along, this PTA station
had been handing out unlimited supplies of ration
bricks for three generations, and the culture was effec-
tively destroyed. Instead of small bands of
hunter-gatherers, you had one large colony with no
food-gathering skill. There were far too many for the
existing marshlands to support, with nothing to do
and no hope of survival except to collect the ration
bricks. The second survey, not unnaturally, decided
they weren't intelligent. After all, nobody on the sur-
vey team was stuck here long enough and lonely
enough to try signing to them. But they recom-
mended on humanitarian grounds, or kindness to
animals, or whatever, that we not discontinue PTA
shipments and starve them to death."

"But if they're intelligent— " Forister objected again.

They are. And they can build for themselves. They
just needed a—a place to start" Blaize pushed the last
of the feathery reeds aside with both arms and stepped
to one side, inviting Forister and Micaya to admire die
view of the mine. "This was the first step."

From this vantage point, Nancia observed, they
could see far more of die mine's operations than had
been visible from the landing field. Teams of blue-
uniformed workers were scattered across the hillside
and grouped under the roofs of the unwalled process-
ing sheds — twenty, forty, more than fifty of them,
divided into groups of four or five individuals who
worked at their chosen tasks with perfect unanimity
and wordless efficiency.

PARTNERSHIP

231

"Could you train chimps to do that?" Blaize
demanded.

Forister shook his head slowly. "And I suppose the
mine is the source of your prodigious wealth?"

"It's certainly the source of the credits in that Net ac-
count," Blaize agreed.

"Exploiting intelligent sentients isn't any better dian
exploiting dumb animals."

Blaize ground his teeth; Nancia could pick up the
clicks and grinding sounds through the contact but-
ton. "I. Am. Not. Exploiting. Anybody," he said.
"Look, Uncle Forister. When I got here, the Loosies
didn't have ISS. They couldn't be owners of record for
the mine, they couldn't have Net accounts, they
couldn't palmprint official documents. Of course my
code is on everything! Who else could front for them?*1

"And your code is also," Micaya pointed out, "as-
sociated with the illegal resale of PTA ration shipments
that were supposed to be distributed to the natives."

Blaize nodded wearily. "Needed money to get the
mine started again. I tried to get a loan, but the banks
wanted to know what I was going to do with it When I
told them I was going to revive the Angalia mines they
told me I couldn't do that because there was no source
of labor on the planet, because the CenDip report said
Angalia had no intelligent sentients. Without credits, I
couldn't start the mine. And without the credits for the
mine, I couldn't — well, we'll get to that in a while.
Look, I falsified a few PTA reports. Said the popula-
tion had tripled. Ration bars aren't exactly a hot item
in international trade," he said dryly. "I had to have a
targe surplus to bargain with. Fortunately, I had an
outlet right at hand. That bastard Harmon was keep-
ing the Loosies at semi-starvation level so he could
trade some of their ration bars for liquor. I had to have
a little talk with the black market trader to convince
him I wanted hard credits instead of hard liquor, but

232

Arme McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball

eventually he ... um ... came around to my way of
thinking."

"Don't tell me how you persuaded him," Forister
said quickly. "I don't want to know."

Blaize grinned. "Okay. Anyway, you've seen the
mine; now I want to take you on a tour of Project Two.
Well have to go up the mountain for that, I'm afraid; I
want you to get the long view."

The path up beside the mine was steep, but
switchbacks and steps made it easier than it looked
from a distance. As they passed the mine door, several
Loosies looked up from their work to smile at Blaize.
Their loose-skinned, grayish hands moved rapidly
back and forth in flickering gestures that Nancia cap-
tured as imageflashes for later interpretation. For now,
she was willing to accept Blaize's translation.

"They're asking who my mentally handicapped
friends are, and whether you'd like a ride down to the
processing sheds," he explained.

As he spoke, the team working at the mine's mouth
filled a wagon with chunks of ore and poised it at the
head of the rails swooping down into the valley. The
three workers perched on top of the ore, hands grip-
ping the sides of the wagon, and a member of the next
team gave them a shove that started them off on a
roller-coaster glide down the hill, swerving around
rocks and dipping into hollows.

"Lost a few that way, at the start," Blaize com-
mented, "before I remodeled the rail track so that the
dips wouldn't throw anybody off."

The vegetation thinned out above the mine, giving
them a view of the terraced gardens that replaced clifls
and rocks wherever a shovelful of soil could find a
place. Micaya sniffed appreciatively and commented
on the pungent aroma of the herbs growing in the
mini-gardens.

At the top of the mountain they enjoyed a

PARTNERSHIP

233

panoramic view of what had been the Great Angalia
Mud Basin, now a grassland in which fields of grain
shared space with brightly colored blossoms.

"This'll be our first year's crop," Blaize said. Td just
finished the necessary preparations for planting last
year, when those nitwits I came out with were here for
the meeting. None of them noticed anything different,
of course. But if your brainship can call up files of the
first survey — "

"She can do better than that," Forister told him.
"She's been here herself. Nancia, do you observe any
changes here? Apart from the growing things, that is?"

Blaize paled between his freckles. "Nanria?"

"You have some problem with my brainship?"
Forister inquired mildly.

"We... didn't part on the best of terms," Blaize con*
fessed in a strangled voice.

Nancia was feeling rather more kindly towards
Blaize now, but she wasn't quite ready to admit that to
him. "Horizon shows changes between all major
peaks," she reported in the neutral, tinny voice forced
on her by the contact button's limitations. "Magnifica-
tion of one area of variation shows new construction of
rammed earth and boulders blocking a system of gul-
lies that appears now to be under 17.35 meters of
water...."

"Lake Humdrum," Blaize said. "My first terraform-
ing effort. Trouble was, I had to block all the outlets,
and build up reservoir walls, before I could guarantee
the floods wouldn't crash through the mud basin.
Then we needed irrigation ditches down into the
basin. And silt collection systems, so that the soil the
floods used to carry down here would still reach the
basin and renew its topsoil. You want to come back
down now? I want to show you the grain samples and
the test results. It's not quite ripe yet, of course," he
chattered as he led the way down the path, "but it's

234

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

going to beaprime crop. Amaranth-19-hyper-J Rev 2,
if that means anything to you. High in protein, loaded
with natural nutrients, super yield from that rich top-
soil. We should be able to feed ourselves and have a
surplus to sell. That's why I waited until now to claim
Intelligent Sentient Status for the Loosies; I wanted to
be sure we would be self-sufficient in case PTA decided
to curtail the ration shipments. And I didn't dare start
planting until the whole flood control system had been
put in place and tested. The Loosies would never have
trusted me again if they'd put in a crop and seen it
washed away. We needed a lot of heavy-duty ter-
rafbrming equipment; sucked up all the mine's profits
for the first three years."

They reached the bottom of the mountain and
Blaize set off at a brisk walk towards the hut. Forister
took his arm and gently urged him away from the hut,
towards the edge of the mesa. "I'd like to get a closer
look at this grain crop of yours before we go inside," he
suggested.

But they didn't wind up standing in the best place to
assess the grain; they came to the edge of the mesa just
above the ugly volcanic mud hole that disfigured the
basin, with its lazy bubbles roiling and tumbling just
before the sticky surface of the mud.

Forister eyed Blaize warily. "You've been forcing the
natives to work in a corycium mine owned by you."

"Persuading," Blaize corrected.

"They believed your promises to use the profits for
their own good ?"

Blaize flushed. "I don't think they fully understood
what I had in mind at the beginning. Most of them,
anyway. Humdrum and Gargle got the idea, but they
never believed it would work."

"Then... ?" Forister left the question dangling.

"I think," Blaize said almost inaudibly, "I think they
did it because they like me a little."

PARTNERSHIP

235

"Other reasons have been suggested," said Forister.

Blaize looked blank for a moment, then noticed the
direction of Forister's gaze. He was staring down at the
volcanic mud bubble.

"Oh. Fassa del Parma again?"

"And Dr. Hezra-Fong," said Micaya, "and DarneD
Overton-Glaxely. You've still to dear up their allega-
tions of torture."

"I — I see." With a sudden leap, Blaize jumped
away from Forister and Micaya to perch on a boulder
sticking halfway out from the side of the mesa. "You
want proof that I didn't torture Humdrum?"

"It won't do any good to produce some other native
and claim he was the one you tortured publicly, and
that he recovered," Micaya told him, "just in case you
were thinking of that. You've no way to prove you
didn't murder and bury the one witnesses saw you tor-
turing."

"Well, it was Humdrum, all right, and he'll tell you
so, but I see your point," Blaize agreed. He fumbled at
the front of his tunic; die synthofilm sides parted and
he folded the garment neatly. "My best tunic," he ex-
plained politely, "you'll understand I don't want to
ruin it"

"What are you doing? Come back, boy!" Forister
called, just too late; Blaize had skidded down a couple
of feet and was clinging to a rock ledge barely out of
reach.

iJust a minute," Blaize panted in between some
strange contortions. His synthofilm trousers collapsed
in a shining heap around his ankles; he kicked diem
upwards and they snagged on a thorn bush.

"Blaize, don't do this." Micaya spoke in tones of quiet
authority that seemed for a moment to weaken
Blaize's will. He paused on the ledge, his milk-white
skin almost glowing against the dull hues of the vol-
canic pool beneada him.

236

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

"I have to," he said calmly. "It's the only way."

Before either of them could argue further, he leapt
from the ledge in a spiraling, awkward dive that ended
with a resounding smack in the center of the heaving
mud. White arms and legs splayed out, red head still,
for a moment he seemed to have been stunned or
killed outright by the fell. Then he kicked and wrig-
gled vigorously, sinking deeper into the bubbling glop
with each movement.

"Hold still,'1 Forister called, "we'll get a rope to you
— we'll do something — "

Blaize turned over onto his back. A thick layer of
mud coated his body, barely preserving the decencies.
He thrashed around in what Nanria belatedly recog-
nized as an attempt at the backstroke.

"Come on in, Uncle Forister," he called up. "The
mud's fine today!"

"Are you all right?" Micaya shouted while Forister,
for once, struggled to find his voice.

"Couldn't be better. Mud's just at sauna heat today."
Blaize stretched and wriggled luxuriously and
grinned up at them through mud-spattered cheeks. "I
don't usually dive from that high up — knocked the
breath out of me for a minute — but I thought you
needed the demonstration. Care to join me?"

Micaya looked quizzically at Forister. The brawn
kicked off his shoes and rolled his trouser legs up. "Oh,
I'm going down, all right," he said between clenched
teeth. "It's the quickest way to get my hands on that
boy. And then I'm going to — to — " Words failed him.

"Torture him in a boiling mud hole?" Micaya
suggested.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nancia deliberately slowed her speed for the short
hop from Angalia to Shemali. She needed time to
check her records, time to access the Net and look for
evidence of Polyon's scam. Somewhere in all the past
five years' records of metachip and hyperchip transac-
tions there must be some clue to his criminal activities
— for she could not believe he had totally given up on
the plans he'd announced during her maiden voyage.
Not Polyon de Gras-Waldheim.

Even Net access was not always instantaneous, par-
ticularly when one was gathering and collating all the
public records on sale, transfer or use of hyperchips in
the known galaxy. Nancia idled and hoped that her
passengers would not notice how long the voyage was
taking.

Fortunately, they all seemed wrapped up in their
own concerns. Fassa, Alpha and Darnell were all being
held in separate cabins, dealing with the long spells of
solitary imprisonment in their own ways. Alpha re-
quested medical and surgical journals from Net
libraries and studied the technical material Nancia
downloaded for her with intense concentration, just as
if she thought she would be permitted to practice her
chosen profession again. Not if I have anything to say
about it, Nancia vowed silently. But the truth was, she
didn't have much to say. She could record her tes-
timony and the images she'd received via contact
buttons, and those depositions would go into evidence
at Alpha's trial. But after that, all would be up to those
softpersons who controlled the high courts on Central.

238

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

239

Most of them were High Families; half of them had
some connection, kinship or financial, with the Hezra-
Fong clan. Alpha might very well be free — not
immediately, but in five years or ten or twenty, a mere
blip in the life of a High Families girl with fewer than
thirty chronological years behind her and access to the
best rejuv technology to expand her life span dose to
two hundred years.

Not for me to decide, Nancia reminded herself, and
turned her attention to the other two. As a safety
precaution she kept sensors in all their cabins active at
all times, but she tried not to pay too much attention
unless the sensor receptors flashed to indicate unusual
activity.

DarnelTs activities were usual enough, Nancia sup-
posed, for someone enslaved to a softperson's pitifully
limited array of sense-receptors. He had requested
Stemerald, Rigellian smokefowl and an array of Dorg
Jesen's feelieporn hedra; Nancia had supplied nonal-
coholic nearbeer, synthobird slices, and the hedra
which Forister told her were the nearest things to porn
in her library. Darnell spent most of his time reclining
on his bunk, washing down synthobird and candied
brancake with the nearbeer and watching a remake of
an Old Earth novel over and over again. Nancia
couldn't understand what he saw in the datacorded
adventures of this Tom Jones, but then, it was none of
her business.

Blaize was confined in the cabin opposite Darnell's.
After hah0 an hour's furious argument about who
would look after "his" Loosies while he was being
shipped back to Central, he'd accepted Nancia's
promise to see that her sister Jinevra personally over-
saw whoever was sent to replace him on Angalia. "One
thing about the Perez line, they're hopelessly honest,"
he said in resignation. 'Jinevra may not be creative,
but at least she won't let that swine Harmon get his

hooks into them again. You do realize that if this year's
harvest foils, all my work will be wasted?"

"I realize, I realize," Nancia told him patiently.
"Trust Jinevra." And as she sent out a general Net call
to Jinevra and explained the situation to her sister, she
wondered guiltily just how different she was from the
rest of the High Families brats. Daddy had pulled
strings to get her sent on this assignment. Now she was
calling in favors owed her in Courier Service, and
making her sister feel guilty, so that she could interfere
in what should have been left to the normal channels
of PTA administration.

But "normal channels" left the Loosies without the
kind of aid they needed. Nancia sighed.

"Will there never be a bureaucracy that does what
it's supposed to without sinking into corruption and
inefficiency?'* she asked Forister.
"Probably not," he replied.

"You sound like Simeon — advising me to accept
corruption because it's everywhere!"

Forister shook his head. "Not in the least. I'm advis-
ing you not to waste energy being surprised and
shocked about the predictable. No system, anywhere,
is proof against human failings. If it were — "he
forced a tired smile — "we'd be computers. Your hy-
perchips may be foolproof, Nancia, but the human
pan of you makes mistakes — and so do all of us. For-
tunately," he added, "humans can also recognize and
correct mistakes—unlike computers, which just go on
until they crash. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like access
to your comm system for a while. I want to see what I
can do to prevent Blaize from crashing."

While Blaize's explanations had satisfied all of them
on an emotional level, he still had some legal problems
to face. No matter how excellent his motivation, the
feet remained that he had falsified PTA reports, sold
PTA shipments on the black market, and transferred

240

Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU

PARTNERSHIP

241

the profits into his personal Net account To leave him
on Angalia while the others were shipped back for trial
would have seemed like the worst kind of favoritism.
All Forister could do was to make sure that all the facts
were on record for the trial — not just how Blaize had
obtained the money, but what he had done with it and
how he had improved the lives of the people he was
sent to aid.

"They are people," Forister reported to Blaize with
satisfaction.

"Of course they are! Couldn't you tell that?"

"What I thought, or what you thought, is beside the
point," Forister told him. "What counts is CenDip's
decision. And there must be at least one intelligent
man in CenDip, because your report has already been
received and acted on. The Loosies have ISS as of
yesterday. And the decision's palmprinted by no less a
person than the CenDip Secretary-Universal, Javier
Perez y de Gras."

Nancia heard that with great satisfaction and turned
her attention to her last prisoner. Fassa was spending
most of this voyage just as she had spent the trip from
Bahati to Angalia, crouched on her cabin floor, arms
around her knees, staring at nothing and ignoring the
food trays Nancia extruded at the dining slot. Un-
touched bowls of soup, baskets of sliced sweet bread,
tempting fruit purees and sliced synthobird in glow-
sauce went back into the recycling bins to be
synthesized into new combinations of proteins and
carbohydrates and fats. To all Nantia's gentle sugges-
tions of food or entertainment Fassa replied widi a dull
"No, thank you," or "It doesn't matter."

"You must eat something," Nancia told her.

"Must 1?" Fassa seemed obscurely amused. "No,
thank you. I've had enough of men telling me what I
must do and what I must be. Who cares if I get too
skinny to appeal to anybody?"

"I'm not a man," Nancia pointed out "I'm not even
a softperson. And my only interest in your body is that
I don't want you to get sick before..."

"Before my trial," Fassa finished calmly. "It's all
right You needn't be tactful. I'm going to prison for a
long time. Maybe forever. As long as they don't put me
on Shemali, I don't care."

"What's the matter with Shemali?" Nancia asked.

Fassa clamped her lips together and stared at the
cabin wall. Her creamy skin was a little paler than
usual, tinged with green shadows. "Nothing. I don't
know anything about Shemali. I didn't say anything
about Shemali."

Nancia gave up on Fassa for the moment After all,
there were other ways to find out what was up on
Shemali. Reports on hyperchip production and sales
should soon be coming in over the Net. A few in-
vigorating hours of compiling evidence against Polyon
would calm her and leave her better able to cheer up
Fassa.

She felt a sneaking sympathy for the girl after read-
ing her records. Growing up in the shadow of Faui del
Parma couldn't have been easy. Losing her mother at
thirteen, spending the next five years in a boarding
school with not a single visit from her father, then sent
out to Bahati to prove herself.... Nancia thought she
understood how Fassa might feel. But I didn't turn
criminal to impress my family, she argued with herselt

Your family, she replied, wouldn't have been impressed.
Besides, she'd had it better than Fassa. Daddy and
Jinevra and Flix had dropped in regularly during the
eighteen years Nancia spent at Laboratory Schools. It
was only after graduation that Daddy had lost interest
in her progress....

Softpersons could cry, and it was said that tears were
a natural release of tension. Nancia looked up the
biomed reports on the chemical components of tears,

242

Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

243

adjusted her nutrient tubes to remove those chemicals
from her system, and concentrated on the Net records
of hyperchip sales and transfer.

There was absolutely nothing there to incriminate
Polyon. Two years after his arrival at Shemali, his new
metachip design had been approved for production
and christened the "hyperchip" in tribute to its im-
proved speed and greater complexity. Since then,
production of hyperchips had increased rapidly in
each accounting quarter, so rapidly that Nancia
couldn't believe Polyon was siphoning off any of the
supply for his personal use. The manufactured hyper-
chips were subjected to especially stringent QA testing,
but no more than the expected ratio failed the test...
and all the failures were accounted for; they were sent
off-planet for disposal and destroyed by an inde-
pendent recycling company that had, so far as Nancia
could discover, no links whatsoever with Polyon, the
de Gras or Waldheim lines, or any other High
Families. The hyperchips that passed QA were in-
stalled as fast as they were released, and every sale
passed through the rationing board. Nancia knew
from personal experience how difficult it was to get
them; ever since her lower deck sensors and graphics
coprocessors had been enhanced with hyperchips,
she'd been pushing without success to get the hyper-
chips installed in the rest of her system. Micaya
Questar-Benn, when questioned, told Nancia that her
liver and heart-valve filter and kidneys all ran on hy-
perchips, installed when the metachip-controlled
organs began to fail. But she, too, had been unable to
get hyperchips to replace the smart chips in her exter-
nal prostheses; that wasn't an emergency situation,
and the ration board had refused to approve the
surgery or the supplies.

Polyon had been nominated twice for the Galactic Ser-
vice Award for the contributions his hyperchip design

bad made in areas as diverse as Fleet brainroom control,
molecular surgery, and information systems. Even the
Net, that ponderous, conservative communications sys-
tem that finked the galaxy with news and information
and records of everything ever done via computer —
even the managers of the Net were slowly, conservatively
augmenting key communications Sanctions with hyper-
chip managers that had significantly speeded Net
retrievals. The gossipbyters speculated openly that
Polyon would receive the coveted GSA this year, the
youngest man — and the handsomest, said Cornelia
NetUnk coyly — ever to hold one of the corycium
statuettes. Speculation also ran rampant on which distin-
guished post he would surely accept after the
presentation of the GSA. It seemed such a waste for such
a talented young man — and so handsome, Cornelia in-
evitably added — to be stuck out at the back of beyond
running a prison chip manufacturing plant Yet so far,
Polyon had refused with becoming modesty even to dis-
cuss offers of other positions.

"StarFleet assigned me to this post, and my honor is
in serving where I am assigned," he declared when-
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,

244

Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball

PARTNERSHIP

245

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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AnnsMcCaffrey &MargaretBall

"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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Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball

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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249

"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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Anne McCaffrey &1 Margaret Ball

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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251

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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253

• 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

254

AsmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball

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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255

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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Anne McCaffrey Gf Margaret Ball

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257

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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Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball

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259

"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."

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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.

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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

264

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

266

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

268

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.

270

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

272

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

274

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

276

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

278

AmneMcCaffrey & Margate Ball

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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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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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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

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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

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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

304

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.

308

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."

310

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?"

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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!

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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-

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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

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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 —