"I'm going on a round," Ollery said. "Want to come along, Major?" A round of inspection, through all those long access tubes.

Dupaynil shook his head. "Not this time, thanks. Ill just..." What? he wondered. There was nothing to do on the tiny bridge but stare at the back of Panis's head or the side of the Weapons Control master mate's thick neck. A swingaway facescreen hid his face as he tinkered delicately with something in the weapons sys- tems. At least, that's what Dupaynil assumed he was doing with a tiny joystick and something that looked like a silver toothpick. Maybe he was playing a game.

"You'll get tired of it," warned Ollery. Then he was gone, easing through the narrow hatch.

A lengthy silence, in which Dupaynil noted the scufimarks on the decking by the captain's seat, the faded blue covers of the Fleet manuals racked for reference below the Exec's workstation. Finally Jig Panis looked over his shoulder and gave Dupaynil a shy smile. "The Captain's ticked," he said softly. "We got into the supply station a day early."

"Ollery reporting: Environmental, section 43, number-two scrubber's up a half-degree."

"Logged, sir." Panis entered the report, thumbed a control, and sent "Spec Zigran" off to check on the errant scrubber. Then he turned back to Dupaynil.

"We'd had a long run without liberty," he said. "The Captain said we'd have a couple of days off-schedule, to sort of rest up and then get ready for inspection."

Dupaynil nodded. "So... my orders upset your party-time, eh?"

"Yes. Playtak was supposed to be in at the same time."

With a loud click, the Weapons Control mate flicked the facescreen back into place. Dupaynil caught the look he gave the young officer; he had seen senior noncoms dispense that "You talk too much!" warning glance at every rank up to admiral.

Panis turned red, and focussed on his board. Dupaynil asked no more; he'd heard enough to know why Ollery was hostile. Presumably Playtak's captain was a friend of Ollery's and they'd agreed to meet at the supply station and celebrate. Quite against regulations, because he had no doubt that they had stretched their orders to make that overlap. It might be innocent, just friendship, or it might have been more. Smuggling, spying, who knows what? And he had been dumped into the middle of it, forcing them to leave ahead of schedule. "Too bad," he said casually. "It certainly wasn't my idea. But Fleet's Fleet and orders are orders."

"Right, sir." Panis did not look up. Dupaynil looked over at the Weapons Control mate whose lowering expression did not ease although it was not overtly hostile.

"You're Fleet Security, sir?" asked the mate.

"That's right. Major Dupaynil."

"And we're taking you into Seti space?"

"Right." He wondered who'd told the man that. Ollery had had to know, but hadn't he realized those orders were secret? Of course they weren't really secret, since they were faked orders, but... He pushed that away. It was too complicated to think about now.

"Huh. Nasty critters." The mate put the toothpick-like tool he'd been using into a toolcase, and settled back in his seat. "Always get the feeling they're hoping for trouble."

Dupaynil had the same feeling about the mate. Those scarred knuckles had broken more than a few teeth, he was sure. "I was there with a diplomatic team once," he said. "I suppose that's why they're sending me."

"Yeah. Well, don't let the toads sit on you." The mate lumbered up, and with a casual wave at the Exec, left the bridge.

Dupaynil looked after him, a little startled. He had not considered Sassinak strict on etiquette, but no one would have left her bridge without a proper salute to the officer in charge, and permission to withdraw. Of course, this was a smaller ship than he'd ever been on. Was it healthy to have such a casual relationship?

Then the term "toads" which wasn't at all an accurate description of the Seti, but conveyed the kind of racial contempt that put Dupaynil on alert. Everyone knew the Federation combined races and cultures that preferred separation, that some hardly-remembered force had compelled the Seti and humans both to sign agreements against aggression. And, for the most part, abide by them. As professional keepers of this fragile peace, Fleet personnel were expected to have a more dispassionate view. Besides, he always thought of the Seti as "lizards."

" 'Scuse me, sir." That was another crewman, squeezing past him to get to a control panel on his left.

Dupaynil felt very much in the way, and very much unwanted. Blast Sassinak! The woman might at least have dumped him onto something comfortable. He looked over at Panis who was determinedly not looking at him. If he remembered correctly, the shortest route to Seti space was going to take weeks and he could not endure this kind of thing for weeks.

The crew had worked off their bad humor in less than a week. Dupaynil exerted his considerable charm, let Ollery win several card games, and entertained them with some of the safer racy anecdotes from his last assignment in a political realm. He had read Ollery correctly; the man liked to find flaws in those above him; preferably blackmailable flaws. Given a story about an ambassador's lady addicted to drugs or a wealthy senior bureaucrat who preferred cross-cultural divertissements, his eyes glistened and his cheeks flushed.

Dupaynil concealed his own contempt. Those who best liked to hear such things usually had their own similar appetites to hide.

Panis, however, was of very different stripe. He had tittered nervously at the story about the bureaucrat and turned brick red when Ollery and the senior mate sneered at him. It was clear that he had no close friends among the crew. When Dupaynil checked, he found that Panis had replaced the previous Exec only a few months before, while the rest of the crew had been unchanged for almost five years. And the previous Exec '•had left the ship because of an injury in a dockside ibrawl. It was odd, and more than odd: regular rotation jjflf crew was especially important on small ships. Fleet Cpolicy insisted on it. No matter how efficient a crew seemed to be, they were never left unchanged too long. Dupaynil had not been able to bring all his tools; along, but he always had some. He placed his sensors carefully, as carefully as he had in the larger ship, and 4$lkl his probe into the datalinks very delicately indeed. SHe had the feeling that carelessness here would get Jbim more trouble than a chewing out by the captain. In the meantime, as the days wore on, the crew sned up with him and played endless hands of every card game he knew, and a few he'd never seen. Crutch was a pirate's game, he'd been told once by the merchanter who taught it to him; he wondered where this crew had learned it. Poker, blind-eye, sin on toast, at which he won back all he'd tost so far, having learned that on Bretagne, where it began.

He sweated up and down the access tube ladders, learning to respond quickly to the shifting artificial-G, keeping his muscles supple. He discovered a storage bay full of water ice which made the restrictions on bathing ridiculous. There was enough to last a crew twice that size all the way to Seti space and back but he kept his mouth shut. It seemed safer.

For all their friendliness, all their casual demeanor, he'd noticed that Ollery or the senior mate were always in any compartment he happened into. Except his own tiny cabin. And he was sure they'd been there when he found evidence that his things had been searched. He had time to wonder if Sassinak had known just what kind of ship she'd sent him to. He thought not. She had probably done a fest scan of locations, looking for the nearest docked escort vessel, some way to keep him from communicating while he was in FTL.

"I say he's spying on us, and I say dump him." That was the mate. Dupaynil shivered at the quietly deadly tone.

"He's got IG orders. They'll want to know what happened." That was Ollery, not nearly so sure of himself.

"We can't just space him. We have to figure out a way."

"Emergency drill. Blow the pod. Say it was an accident." The mate's voice carried the shrug he would give when questioned later.

"What if he figures it out?"

"What can he do? Pod's got no engine, no decent long-range radio, no scan. Dump him where hell fell down a well, into a star or something else big. Disable the radio and beacon. That way no one'U know he's ever been there. 'Sides, I don't think his orders are real. Think about it, sir. Would the IG haul someone off a big cruiser like the Zaid-Dayan—an IFTL message, that'd have to be — and stick 'em on a little bitty escort? To go to Seti space? C'mon. You send a special envoy to the Seti, you send a damn flotilla in with 'em, not an escort. No, you mark my words, sir, he's here to Spy on us and this proves it."

Dupaynil could not tell through the audio link which of his taps had been found, but he wished ardently that be had not planted it, whatever it was. Once again he had out-smarted himself, as he had with Sassinak. Never underesti-mate the enemy and be damned sure you know who the enemy is; a very basic rule he had somehow violated.

He felt a trickle of sweat run down his ribs. Sassinak had been dumped in an evac pod, rescued by the combined efforts of Wefts and a Ssli. He had no Wefts or Ssli to back him up; he would have to figure this out himself.

"You're sure he hasn't got the good stuff out of comp

"Pretty sure." The mate's voice was even grimmer.

"Security's got good tools, though. Give him all the time between here and Seti space, and he'll have not only the basics but enough to mind-fry the lot of us, all the way up to Lady Luisa herself. "

Dupaynil almost forgot his fear. Lady Luisa? Luisa Paraden? He had always been able to put two and two together and find more interesting things than four. Now he felt an almost physical jolt as his mind conected everything he'd ever heard or seen; including all the information Sassinak had gathered. As bright as a diagram projected on the screen of a strategy meeting, all connections marked out in glowing red or yellow... Luisa to Randolph, who had ample reason to loathe Sassinak. That had been Randolph vengeance, through his aunt's henchman, a washed Fleet officer once held captive on the same outpost as an orphan girl. Dupaynil spared a to pity that doomed lieutenant: Sassinak never , even if she learned the whole story. Luisa would do something that potentially dangerous just for Randolph, though. It must have been vengeance for Abe's part in disrupting her operation, a warning to others. Perhaps fear that he would cause her more trouble.

Abe to Sassinak, Sassinak to Randolph, Randolph to Luisa, whose first henchman partially failed. Where was Randolph now, Dupaynil wondered suddenly. He should know and he did not know. He realized that he had not ever seen one bit of information on Randolph in the system since that arrogant young man had left the Academy. Unnatural. A Paraden, wealthy, with connections: he should have done something. He should have been in the society news or been an officer in one of Aunt Luisa's companies.

Unless he had changed his identity some way. It could be done, though it was expensive. Not that that would bother a Paraden. And why had they stopped with one attack on Sassinak? Dupaynil wished he had her file in hand. They would have been covert attempts, but knowing what to look for he might be able to see it. But of course! The Wefts. The Wefts she had saved from Par-aden's accusations in the Academy; the Wefts who had saved her from death in the pod. Wefts might have foiled any number of plots without bothering to tell her.

Or perhaps she knew, but never made the connection, or never bothered to report it, rules or no. She was not known for following the rules. He leaned on the wall of his cubicle, sweating and furious, as much with himself as the various conspirators. This was his job, this was what he had trained for, what he had thought he was good at; finding things out, making connections, sifting the data, interpreting it. And here he was, with all the threads woven into the pattern and no possible way to get that information out.

You're so smart, he thought bitterly. You're going to your death having won the war but lost the brawl. He knew—it was in her file and she had confided it as well—that Sassinak still wondered about the real reason Abe had been killed. She had never forgotten it, never laid it to rest. And he had that to offer her, more than enough to get her forgiveness for that earlier misunderstanding. But too late!

Thinking of Sassinak reminded him again of her experience in the escape pod. It had made chilling reading, even in the remote prose her captain had used. She had gone right up to the limit of the pod's oxygen capacity, hoping to be conscious to give her evidence. He shuddered. He would have put himself into coldsleep as soon as he realized what happened, and he'd probably have died of it. Or, like Lunzie, been found decades later. He didn't like that scenario either. He fairly itched to get his newly acquired insights where they could do the most good.

Sassinak, now. What would she do, cooped in an escort full of renegades? He had trouble imagining her on anything but the bridge of the Zaid-Dayan, but she had served in smaller ships. Would she find a weapon (where?) and threaten them from the bridge? Would she take off in an escape pod before she was jettisoned, with a functioning radio, and hope to be found in time? (In time for what? Life? The trial?) The one thing she wouldn't do, he was sure, was slouch on a bunk wondering what to do. She would have thought of something, and given her luck it would probably have worked.

The idea, when it finally came to him hours later (miserable, sweaty hours when he was supposed to be sleeping), seemed simple. Presumably they would have a ship evacuation drill as the occasion of his murder. The others would be going into pods as well, just to make it seem normal. They had found one of his taps, but not all (or surely they'd have blocked the audio so he couldn't hear). And therefore he could tap the links again, reset the evac pod controls, and trap them—or most of them—in the pods. They would not be able to fire his pod; he could fire theirs.

He was partway through the reprogramming of the pod controls when he realized why this was not such a simple solution. Fleet had a name for someone who took illegal con-trol of a ship and killed the captain and crew. An old, nasty name leading to a court martial which he might well lose.

I am not contemplating mutiny, he told himself firmly. They are the criminals. But they were not convicted yet, and until then what he planned was, by all the laws and regulations, not merely mutiny but also murder. And piracy. And probably a dozen or so lesser crimes to be tacked onto the charge sheet(s), including the things Sassinak might say about his tap into her com shack. And his present unauthorized reprogramming of emergency equipment. Not to mention his supposed orders to proceed into Seti space: faked orders, which no one (after he pirated a ship and killed the crew) would believe he had not faked for himself.

What would Sassinak do about that, he wondered. He remembered the holo of the Zaid-Dayan with its patched hull, with the scars of the pirate boarding party. She had let the enemy onto her ship to trap them. Could he think of anything as devastating? All things considered, forty-three years of cold sleep might be the easy way out, he thought, finishing off the new switching sequences.

Sassinak's great-great-great might complain but a little time in the freezer could keep you out of big trouble. His mind bumped him again, hard. Of course. Coldsleep them, the nasties. Drop the charges to mere mutiny and piracy and et cetera, but not murder (mandatory mindwipe for murder), and he might merely spend the next twenty years cleaning toilet fixtures with a bent toothbrush.

Of course it still wasn't simple. For all his exercise up and down the ladders, he had no more idea than a space-opera hero how to operate this ship. He'd had only the basics, years back; he'd flown a comp-desk, not a ship. He could chip away at that compartment of water ice and not die of thirst, but he couldn't convert it and take a shower. Or even get the ship down out of FTL space. Sassinak could probably do it, but all he could do was trigger the Fleet distress beacon and hope the pickup ship wasn't part of the same corrupt group. He wouldn't even do that, if he didn't quit jittering and get to it.

Chapter Seven

Diplo

Zebara led her through the maze of streets around the university complex at a fast pace. For all his age and apparent physical losses, he was still amazingly fit. She was aware of eyes following them, startled glances. She could not tell if it was Zebara himself, or his having a lightweight companion. She was puffing when he finally stopped outside a storefront much like the others she'd seen.

"Gin's Place," Zebara said. "Best chooli stew in the city, a very liberal crowd, and a noisy set of half-bad musicians. You'll love it."

Lunzie hoped so. Chooli stew conformed to Federation law by having no meat in it, but she had not acquired a taste for the odd spices that flavored the mix of starchy vegetables.

Inside, hardly anyone looked at her. The "liberal crowd" were all engrossed in their own food and conversation. She smelted meat, but saw none she recognized. The half-bad musicians played with enthusiasm but little skill, covering their blats and blurps with high-pitched cries of joy or anguish. She could not tell which, but it did make an effective sonic screen. She and Zebara settled into one of the booths along the side, and ordered chooli stew with figgerunds, the green nuts she'd had at the reception, Zebara explained.

"You need to know some things," he began when the chooli stew had arrived, and Lunzie was taking a first tentative bite of something yellowish.

"I heard you were head of External Security," she said quietly.

He looked startled. "Where'd you hear? No, it doesn't matter. It's true, although not generally known." He sighed. "I can see this makes it more difficult for you..."

"Makes what more difficult?"

"Trusting me." His eyes flicked around the room, as anyone's might, but Lunzie could not believe it was the usual casual glance. Then he looked back at her. "You don't, and I can't blame you, but we must work together or. Or things could get very bad indeed."

"Isn't your involvement with an offworlder going to be a little conspicuous?" She let a little sarcasm edge her voice; how naive did he think she was?

"Of course. That doesn't matter." He ate a few bites while she digested the implications of that statement. It could only "not matter" if policymakers knew and approved. When he looked up and swallowed, she nodded at him. "Good! You understand. Your name on the medical team was a little conspicuous, if you'd had any ulterior motive for coming here..."He let that trail away, and Lunzie said nothing. Whatever motives she had had, the important tiling now was to find out what Zebara was talking about. She took another bite of stew; it was better than the same dish in the research complex's dining hall.

"I saw the list," Zebara went on. "One of the things my department does is screen such delegations, looking for possible troublemakers. Nothing unusual. Most planets do the same. There was your name, and I wondered if it was the same Lunzie. Found out that it was you and then the rocks started falling."

"Rocks?"

"My... employers. They wanted me to contact you, renew our friendship. More than friendship, if possible. Enlist your aid in getting vital data oflplanet."

"But your employers... that's the Governor, right?" Lunzie was not sure, despite having read about it, just where political power was on this planet.

"Not precisely. The Governor knows them, and that's part of the problem. I have to assume that you, with what's happened to you, are like any normal Federation citizen. About piracy, for instance."

His voice had lowered to a muffled growl she could barely follow. The half-bad musicians were perched on their tall stools, gulping some amber liquid from tall glass mugs. She hoped it would mellow their music as well as their minds.

"My ethics haven't changed," she said, with the slightest emphasis on the pronoun.

"Good. That's what they counted on, and I, in my own way, counted on the same thing." He took a long swallow of his drink.

"Are you suggesting," Lunzie spoke slowly, phrasing it carefully, "that your goals and your employers' goals both depend on my steadfast opinions, even if they are... divergent?"

"You could say it that way." Zebara grinned at her, and slightly raised his mug.

And what other way, with what other meaning, could I say it? Lunzie wondered. She sipped from her own mug, tasting only the water she'd asked for, and said, "That's all very well, but what does it mean?"

"That, I'm afraid, we cannot discuss here. I will tell you what I can, and then we'll make plans to meet again." At her frown, he nodded. "That much is necessary, Lunzie, to keep immediate trouble at bay. We are watched. Of course we are, and I'm aware of it so we must continue our friendly association."

"Just how friendly?"

That slipped out before she meant it. She had not meant to ask that until later, if ever. He chuckled, but it sounded slightly forced.

"You know how friendly we were. You probably remember it better than I do since you slept peacefully for over forty of the intervening years."

She felt the blood rushing to her face and let it. Any watchers would assume that was genuine emotion.

"You! I have to admit that I haven't forgotten you, not one... single... thing."

This time, he was the one to blush. She hoped it satisfied whoever was doing the surveillance but she thought the actual transcript would prove deadly.

As if he could read her thoughts, he said "Don't worry! At this stage they're still letting me arrange the surveillance. We're relatively safe as long as we don't do something outside their plans."

Their plans or your plans, she wondered. She wanted to trust Zebara: she did trust the Zebara she'd known. But this new Zebara, this old man with the hooded eyes, the grandchildren he wanted to save, the head of External Security, could she trust this Zebara? And how far?

Still, when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. His fingers stroked her palm and she wondered if he would try something as simple as dot code. Cameras might pick that up. Instead, a fingernail lightly drew the logo on the FSP banner, then letter by letter traced her name. She smiled at him, squeezed his hand, and hoped she was right.

The next day's work at the Center went well. Whatever Bias thought, he managed not to say and no one else asked uncomfortable questions. Lunzie came back to her quarters, feeling slightly uneasy that she hadn't heard from Zebara but her message light was blinking as she came in. She put in a call to the number she was given, and was not surprised to hear his voice.

"You said once you'd like to hear our native music," he began. "There's a performance tonight of Zilmach's epic work. Would you come with me?"

"Formal dress, or informal?" asked Lunzie.

"Not formal like the Governor's reception, but nice."

She was sure he was laughing underneath at her interest in clothes. But she agreed to be ready in an hour without commenting on it. Dinner before the performance was at an obviously classy restaurant. The other diners wore expensive jewels in addition to fancy clothes. Lunzie felt subdued in her simple dark green dress with the copper-and-enamel necklace that served her for all occasions. Zebara wore a uniform she did not recognize. Did External Security really go for that matte black or did they intend it to intimidate ofiworlders? He looked the perfect foil for Sassinak. She let hersetf remember Sassinak in her dress whites, with the vivid alert expression that made her beautiful. Zebara sat there like a black lump of rough stone, heavy and sullen. Then he smiled.

"Dear Lunzie, you're glaring at me. Why?"

"I was thinking of my great-great-great-granddaughter," she said, combining honesty and obliqueness at once. "You have grandchildren, you said? Tlien surely they cross your mind at the oddest times, intruding, but you'd never wish them away."

"That's true." He shook his head with a rueful smile. "And since mine are here in person, they can intrude physically as well. Little Pog, the youngest, got loose from his mother in my office one time. Darted past my secretary, straight through the door and into my conference room. Set off alarms and thoroughly annoyed tte Lieutenant Governor and the Chiefs of Staff. He'd grabbed me by the leg and was howling because the alarm siren scared him. He made so much noise the guards were sure someone was really hurt." His smile had broadened; now he chuckled. "By the time I had peeled him off my leg, found his mother, and convinced the guards that it was not an exceptionally clever assassination scheme using a midget or a robot, none of us could get our minds back on the problem. Worst of all, I had to listen to a lecture by the Lieutenant Governor on the way he disciplines his family. What he didn't know, and I couldn't tell him, was that his eldest son was about to be arrested for sedition. This is, as you might suspect, the former Lieutenant Governor, not the one you met the other night."

The revelation about his job did nothing to quiet Lunzie's nerves. Anyone who could pretend not to know that someone's child was about to be arrested Had more than enough talent in lying to confuse her. She forced herself to concentrate on his feelings for his children and grandchildren. That, at least, she could understand and sympathize with.

"So what happened to little... Pog, was it?"

"Yes, short for Poglin. Family name on his mother's side. Well, I counseled leniency since he'd been frightened so badly by the alarms and the subsequent chaos, but his mother felt guilty that he'd gotten away from her. She promised him a good thrashing when they got home. I hope that was mostly for my benefit. She's very... aware of rank, that one." It was obvious that he didn't like his daughter-in-law much. Lunzie wondered if he'd meant to reveal that to her. "And have you caught up with all your family after your long sleep?" he was asking.

Lunzie shook her head, and sipped cautiously at the steaming soup that had appeared in front of them. Pale orange, spicy, not bad at all.

"My great-great, Sassinak, gave me Fleet transport to Sector Headquarters. She's an orphan. She's never met the others."

"Oh. Isn't that unusual? Wouldn't they take her in?" His eyelids had sagged again, hiding his expression. Lunzie suspected he knew a lot more about her and her family, including Sassinak, than he pretended.

"They didn't know." Quickly, she told him what tittle Sassinak had told her and added her own interpretation of Sassinak's failure to seek out her parents' relatives. "She's still afraid of rejection, I think. Fleet took her in. She considers it her family. I had one grandson, Dougal, in Fleet, and I remember the others complaining that he was almost a stranger to them. Even when he visited, he seemed attached somewhere else."

"Will you introduce her?"

"I've thought about that. Forty-three more years. I don't know who's alive, where they are, although it won't be hard to find out. But she may not want to meet them, even with me. I'm still trying to figure out whose she is, for that matter. I haven't really had time." At the startled look on his face, she laughed. "Zebara, you've been with your family all this time. Of course nothing is more important to you. But I've had one long separation after another. I've had to make my connections where and when I could. The first thing was to get my certification back, get some kind of job."

"Surely your great-great, this Sassinak, wouldn't have tossed you out to starve!"

"She's Fleet, remember? Under orders. I'm civilian." Sort of, she thought to herself, wondering just what status she did have. Coromell had recruited her: was that official? The Venerable Master Adept seemed to have connections to Fleet she had never quite understood. But surely he wasn't a Fleet agent? Sassinak had sent her to Liaka with the same assurance she'd have sent one of her own officers. "I wouldn't have starved, no. You're right about that. But by the time I left Liaka, I still didn't have my accumulated back pay. It would come, they assured me, but it was sticking in someone's craw to pay me for forty-three years of coldsleep. All I really wanted was the credit for time awake, but..." She shrugged. "Bureaucrats."

"We are difficult sometimes." He was smiling, but she wondered why he had intruded his position again.

They finished dinner with little more conversation, then went to the concert. Zebara's rank meant excellent seats, a respectful usher, and a well of silence around them, beyond which Lunzie could just hear curious murmurs. She glanced down at the program. She had never heard of Zilmach or his (her?) epic work. The program cover showed two brawny heavyworlders lifting a spaceship overhead. She didn't know if that was a scene from the work she would hear or the logo of the Diplo Academy of Music. She nudged Zebara.

"Tell me about this."

"Zilmach, a composer you won't have heard of, spent twenty years on this, working from the series of poems Rudrik wrote in the first Long Freeze on Diplo. Rudrik, by the way, died of starvation, along with some forty thousand of those early colonists. It's called Bitter Destiny and the theme is exploitation of our strength to provide riches for the weak. You won't like the libretto, but the music is extraordinary." He nuzzled her neck and Lunzie managed not to jump. "Besides, it's loud, and we can talk if we're careful."

"It's aot rude?"

"Yes," he said quietly into her ear, "But there are segments in which almost everyone gets affectionate; you'll know."

Zilmach's epic work began with a low moaning of strings and woodwinds, plus a rhythmic banging on some instrument Lunzie had never heard before: rather Hke someone whacking a heavy chain with a hammer. She ventured a murmured question to Zebara who explained that it represented the pioneers chipping ice off their machinery. Zilmach had invented the instrument in the course of writing the music.

After the overture, a massed chorus marched in singing. Lunzie felt goosebumps break out on her arms. Although she had told herself that the heavyworlders must have creative capacity, she had never truly believed it. She had never seen any of their art, or heard their music. Now, listening to those resonant voices filling the hall easily, she admitted to herself just how narrowminded she'd been. The best she'd been able to imagine was "kind" or "gentle." But this was magnificent.

She did not enjoy the staged presentation of the lightweight "exploiters." Although seeing massive heavyworlders pretending to be tiny fragile lightweights cringing from each other had the humor of incongruity. She remembered having seen a cube of an Old Earth opera in which a large lady with sagging jowls was being serenaded as a "nymph."

But the voices! She had imagined heavyworlder music as heavy, thumping, unmelodic... and she'd been wrong.

"It's beautiful," she murmured to Zebara, in a pause between scenes.

"You're surprised." It was not a question. She apologized with her expression as the music began again. He leaned closer. "Don't worry. I thought you'd be surprised. And there's more."

"More" included a display of gymnastics representing shifting alliances in the commercial consortium that had (according to the script) dumped ill-prepared heavyworlder colonists on a planet that suffered predictable, but infrequent, "triple winters." Complex gong music apparently intimated the heartless weighing of profit and loss (a balance loaded with "gold" bars on one side and limp heavyworlder bodies on the other) while the corporate factions pushed on the balance and each other, and leapt about in oddly graceful contortions.

Diplo's gravity prevented any of the soaring leaps of classical ballet but quick flips were possible and used to great effect. A scene showing the luxurious life of lightweights in space was simply ludicrous. Lunzie had never seen anyone aboard a spaceship lounging in a scented fountain while a heavyworlder servant knelt with a tray of fruit. But overall she remained amazed with the lush, melodic sound and the quality of the voices.

Those segments in which, as Zebara promised, "everyone gets affectionate" depicted the colonists fighting off the depression of that long winter with song and love. Or lust. Lunzie wasn't sure. Perhaps the colonists hadn't been sure, either. But they had been determined to survive and have descendants.

Duet followed duet, combined into a quartet praising "love of life that warms the heart." Then a soprano aria from a singer whose deep, dark, resonant voice throbbed with despair before rising slowly, impossibly, through three octaves to end in a crystalline flourish which the singer emphasized by a massive fist, shaking at the wicked lightweights in their distant ships.

Finally the male chorus of colonists, who had chosen to starve voluntarily so that children and pregnant women might have a chance to survive, made their final vows, led by a tenor whose voice soared to nearly the same dynamic height as the soprano.

"To you, the children of our dreams, we leave the bread of life!" Lunzie felt tears stinging her eyes. "We ask but this! That you remember..."

The voices faded, slowly dropping to a complex chant. The music and the rich incense flowing from the censers onstage were enough to get anyone's hormones moving. She let her head sag toward Zebara's shoulder.

"Good girl," he murmured.

Around them, rustling indicated that others, too, were changing their positions. Suddenly Lunzie felt something bump her legs, and realized that the seats in this section reclined completely. The armrest between hers and Zebara's retracted. Onstage, the music swelled as the lights dimmed. Clearly, an invitation to Zilmach's epic meant more than just listening to the music.

At the same moment that she wondered how she was going to get out of what was clearly intended, she remembered her pressure garment, and sniggered.

"What?" he asked. His arm lay heavily on her shoulders; his broad hand stroked her back.

"An element of lightweight weakness your producers forgot to show," Lunzie said, trying to control her laughter. "This thing we have to wear. Very inefficient at moments like this."

Zebara chuckled. "Dear Lunzie, I have no intention of forcing you. You might get pregnant. You're young enough. You don't want my child, and I don't want the responsibility. But we are expected to whisper sweet nothings in each others' ears. If the sweets are not nothings, who's to know?"

This was no time to ask if Diplo External Security had the same kinds of electronics Fleet used, which could have picked up the rumbles from dinner in her stomach, let alone anything she and Zebara might whisper. If they didn't, they didn't need to know about it. If they did, she had to hope Zebara had only one double-cross in mind.

"So, how long does this last?"

"Several hoong minutes. Don't worry. Well have plenty of warning before it's over. There's the funeral scene coming up and the decision whether or not to eat the bodies. So let's use this interval to find out the tilings I must know. Who sent you here and what are you trying to find?"

Lunzie could not answer at once. She had not thought that even a heavyworlder could mention cannibalism so calmly. Another blow to her wish to trust him. His tongue flicked her ear, gaining all her attention easily.

"Lunzie, you cannot expect me to believe you came here just to get over your fear of heavyworlders. Ireta would have left you even worse. You could not care that much how we experience coldsleep or what it does to us. You are here for a purpose. Either your own, or someone else's, and I must know that if I am to keep you safe."

"You've told me your government wants you to use our old relationship. How can you ask me to confide in you first?" That was lame, but the best she could do with cannibalism still on her mind.

"I want my grandchildren to live! Really live. I want them to have enough food, freedom to travel, to get education, to work where they want. You want that for your descendants. In that we agree. If war breaks out between our peoples, none of our descendants will have the lives we want for them. Can't you see that?"

Lunzie nodded slowly. "Yes, but unless your people quit working with planet pirates I don't see what's to stop it."

"Which they won't do, unless they see a better future. Lunzie, I want you to be our advocate, our spokeswoman to the Council. You have suffered from us but you have also seen, perhaps understood, what we are, what we could be. I want you to say 'Give the heavyworlders hope! Give them access to normal-G worlds they can live on, worlds like Ireta. Then they won't have reason to steal them.' But as long as you are here to collect evidence proving how bad we are."

"Not all of you."

Lunzie caught a flicker of movement near them, above them, and curled into Zebara's embrace. Perhaps someone needed the restrooms, sidling along between the seat sections. Or perhaps someone wanted to know what they were saying.

"You're different. The patients I've met here are not like those who hurt me." She felt under her hands his slight tension. He, too, had noticed that shadowy form edging past them.

"Dear Lunzie." That ended in a kiss, a curiously grandfatherly kiss of dry lips. Then he sighed, moved as if slightly cramped, and laid his hand back on her hair.

"Who? Please tell me!"

She decided to give him a little, what he might have tapped from Fleet communications if his people were good enough.

"Sassinak. She wanted to know if the Governor were officially involved in Ireta. Captain Cruss, the heavy-worlder on that colony ship, thought so. The Theks got it out of him. With Tanegli's trial coming up, she wanted to know whether to suggest that the Fleet subpoena the Governor."

"Ahhh. About what we thought. But how were you, a physician, supposed to find out such things?"

"I'd told her about you. She said I should come." That wasn't quite accurate, but if he believed she had been pushed into it, he might be sympathetic.

"I see. Your descendant, being a professional, does not consider your feelings, your natural reluctance. Not very sensitive, your Sassinak."

"Oh, she is," Lunzie said quickly. "She is sensitive, she just... She just thinks of duty first."

"Commendable in a Fleet officer, no doubt, but not in a great-great-great-granddaughter. She should have more respect."

"It's a problem," Lunzie admitted. "But she's actually older than I am—real time, at least—and she has trouble seeing me as her elder. We both do." She squirmed a little getting a stiff wrinkle out from under her hip. "But that's why I came... really."

"And I am to offer you just the information you seek, and ask you to smuggle out more. But you will be found to have instead information of great commercial value. You will be discredited as a commercial spy, detained long enough that you cannot testify against Tanegli. Your taped evidence will not be nearly as effective, and if Kai and Varian are not there..." "Why shouldn't they be?"

"Contract scientists with EEC? Easy enough to send an all too special ship to collect them to attend the Assizes. It should not be hard for those with adequate resources to be sure they arrive late. Or not at all."

Lunzie shivered. How could she warn Kai and Varian?

Why hadn't she thought of them before? She had assumed that, as civilians, they would be allowed to go about their new responsibilities on Ireta. She should have known better.

"It is not just heavyworlders," Zebara murmured, as if he'd read her mind. "You know there are others?" Lunzie nodded.

Any of the commercial entities would find greater profit in resource development without regulation. Humans and aliens both. She had heard of no society so idealistic that it had no criminals among it. Perhaps the Ssli, she amended: once sessile, how could they do anything wrong, in anyone's terms? But here and now?

"Seti!" came Zebara's murmur. "They've used us, pretended sympathy for our fate, for having been genetically altered. But they despise us for it, as well."

She nodded against his chest, trying to think. The Seti predated human membership in the FSP, though not by much. They were difficult, far more alien-seeming, and less amusing, than the Ryxi or Wefts. They had destroyed a Weft planet and later claimed to have done so accidentally, not knowing of the Wefts they killed. And the Thekl

"It's three-cornered, really." Zebara nuzzled her hair a long moment and she felt the draft of someone's movement past them again. "Our Governor's worked for the Pralungan Combine for over twenty years. He's been paid off in money, shares, and positions for his relatives. The Combine gets strong backs for its internal security forces, industrial enforcers. Even private troops. Crew for illegally armed vessels to fight Fleet interference. Your Sassinak's been a major problem for us, by the way. She gets along too well with her heavyworlder marines. That word's spread and we have too many • youngsters thinking of Fleet as a future. Not to mention the number of ships she's blown up in her career. Also, the Seti have some gain of their own we haven't quite figured out. They want some of the planets we've taken: mostly those unsuitable for human settlement. They're fanneling money into the Combine and the Combine funnels some, as little as they can, to us."

It was almost too much to take in. "What do you want me to do?" asked Lunzie.

"Get the real data out. Not the faked stuff you're supposed to be caught with. You'll have to leave before your team. It's supposed to look as if you're fleeing with stolen information. And if you don't, they'll know I didn't convince you. But you can leave before even they expect it. I can say you double-crossed me, used the pass you were given too soon."

It sounded most unlikely. No lightweight could get oflplanet unnoticed. Surely they would be watching her. If she tried to bolt, they would simply call Zebara to check. And then find on her the real data, dooming both of them. She said this, very fast and very softly, into his ear. He held her close, a steady grip that would have been calming if her mind had not gone on ahead to the obvious conclusion.

He did not mean her to escape as a lightweight: as someone walking up the ramp, opening her papers for inspection at the port, climbing into her seat in the shuttle. He had something else in mind, something that would not be so obvious. The possibilities scrolled through her mind as if on a screen. As cargo? But an infrared scan would find her. As— She stiffened, puBed her head back, and tried to see his face in the darkened hall.

"Not in coldsleep." She meant it to be non-negotiable.

"I'm sorry," he said, into her hair.

"No." Quietly, but firmly, and with no intention of being talked into it. "Not again."

At that very inopportune moment, the softly passionate music stopped, leaving the hall in sudden silence interspersed with rustling clothing. The silence lengthened. A single drumbeat, slow, inexorable, signalled a dire event, and the back of her seat shoved her up, away from Zebara. The armrest slid upward between them. The footrest dropped. Another drum joined the first, heavy, sodden with grief. Muted brass, one grave note after another followed the drums. Onstage, lights showed the barest outline of a heap of bodies, of sufferers still alive and starving. The sacrifice had not been enough. They would all die after all. A child's soprano, piercing as a needle, cried out for food, and Lunzie flinched. The alto's voice replying held all history's bitterness.

Surely it had not really been this bad! It could not have been! The rigid arm of the man beside her insisted it was, it had been. He believed it so, at least, and he believed the future might be as bleak. Lunzie swallowed, fighting nausea. If they actually showed cannibalism onstage... but they did not. A chorus of grieving women, of hungry children. One suggested, the others cried out in protest, and this went on (as so often in operas) somewhat longer than. was necessary to convince everyone that both sides were sincere.

One after another came over to the side of horror, for the children's sake, but it was, in the end, a child who raised a shaking arm to point at the new element in the crisis. The new element, presented onstage as a fur-coated robot of sorts, was the native grazer of the tundra. Shaggy, uncouth, and providentially stupid, it had been drawn by the warmth of the colonists' huts from its usual path of migration. The same woman who had been ready to put the dead into a synthesizer now wrestled the shaggy beast and killed it: not without being gored by two of its six horns. Whereupon the survival of the colony was assured so long as they were willing to kill and eat the animals.

One alone stood fast by the Federation's prohibition, and threatened to reveal what they'd done. She was prevented from sending any message and died by her own hand after a lengthy aria explaining why she was willing to kill not only herself but her unborn child.

"That none of my blood shed sentient blood, so precious is to me..."

Lunzie found herself more moved by this than she had expected. Whether it was true or not, whether it had happened at all, or for these reasons, the story itself commanded respect and pity. And it explained a lot about the heavyworlders. If you believed this, if you had grown up seeing this, hearing this gorgeous music put to the purpose of explaining that the lightweights would let forty thousand people die of cold and starvation because it was inconvenient to rescue them, because it would lower the profit margin, then you would naturally distrust the lightweights, and despise their dietary whims.

Would I have eaten meat even after it had been through the synthesizer? she asked herself. She let herself remember being pregnant, and the years when Fiona had been a round-faced toddler. She would not have let Fiona starve.

In a grand crashing conclusion, the lightweights returned in a warm season to remonstrate with the colonists about their birthrate and their eating habits. The lead soprano, now white-haired and many times a grandmother, the children clustered around her as she sang, told them off in ringing phrases, dizzying swoops of melody that seemed impossible to bring from one throat. The colonists repudiated the lightweights' claims, refused to submit to their rules, their laws, demanded justice in the courts or they would seek it in their own way.

The lightweights flourished weapons and two heavyweights lifted them contemptuously overhead, tossing them—the smallest cast members Lunzie had yet seen— until they tumbled shaken to the ground. Then the two picked up the "spaceship," stuffed the lightweight emissaries inside, and threw the whole assemblage into space. Or so it appeared. Actually, Lunzie was sure, some stage mechanism pulled it up out of sight. Curtain down! Lights up! Zebara turned to her. "Well? What do you think of Zilmach?" Then his blunt finger touched her cheek. "You cried."

"Of course I did." Her voice was still rough with emotion. To her own ears she sounded peevish. "If that's true..." She shook her head, started again. "It's magnificent, it's terrible, and tears are the only proper response." What she wanted to say would either start a riot or make no sense. She said, "What voices! And to think I've never heard of this. Why isn't it known?"

"We don't export this. It's just our judgment that your people would have no interest in it." "Music is music." "And politics is politics. Come! Would you like to meet Ertrid, the one who brought those tears to your eyes?"

Clearly the only answer was yes, so she said yes. Zebara's rank got them backstage quickly, where Ertrid proved to have a speaking voice as lovely as her singing. Lunzie had had little experience with performers. She hardly knew what to expect. Ertrid smiled, if coolly, and thanked Lunzie for her compliments, with an air of needing nothing from a lightweight. But she purred for Zebara, almost sleeking herself against him. Lunzie felt a stab of wholly unreasonable jealousy. Ertrid's smile widened.

"You must not mind, Lunzie. He has so many friends!"

She fingered the necklace she wore, which Lunzie had admired without considering its origins. Zebara gave the singer a quick hug and guided Lunzie away. When they were out of earshot, he leaned to speak in her ear.

"I could have said, so does she, but I would not embarrass such a great artist on a night like this. She does not like to see me with another woman, and particularly not a lightweight."

"And particularly not after that role," said Lunzie, trying to stifle her jealousy and be reasonable. She didn't want Zebara now, if she ever had. The emotion was ridiculous.

"And I didn't buy her that necklace," Zebara went on, as if proving himself to her. "That was the former Lieutenant Governor's son, the one I spoke of."

"It's all right."

Lunzie wished he would quit talking about it. She did not care, she told herself firmly, what Zebara had done with the singer, or who had bought what jewelry seen and unseen, or what the Lieutenant Governor's son had done. All that mattered was her mission, and his mission, and finding some other way to accomplish it than enduring another bout of coldsleep.

Chapter Eight

FedCentral, Fleet Headquarters

"And that's the last of the crew depositions?" Sassinak asked. The Tenant behind the desk nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. The Prosecutor's office said they didn't need anyone else. Apparently the defense lawyers aren't going to call any of the enlisted crew as witnesses either."

So we've just spent weeks of this nonsense for nothing, Sassinak thought. Dragging my people up and down in ridiculous civilian shuttles, for hours of boring questioning which only repeats what we taped on the ship before. She didn't say any of this. Both the Chief Prosecutor's office and the defense lawyers had been furious that Lunzie, Dupaynil, and Ford were not aboard. For one thing, Kai and Varian had also failed to appear for depositions. No one knew if the fast bark sent to collect them from Ireta had found them on the planet's surface for no message had been received on either count.

She herself was sure that Ford and Lunzie would be back in time. Dupaynil? Dupaynil might or might not arrive, although she considered him more resourceful than most desk-bound Security people. If he hadn't made her so furious, she'd have enjoyed more of his company.

She would certainly have preferred him to Aygar as an assistant researcher. True, Aygar could go search the various databases without arousing suspicion. Anyone would expect him to. The Prosecutor's office had arranged a University card, a Library card, all the access he could possibly want. And he was eager enough.

But he had no practice in doing research; no background of scholarship. Sassinak had to explain exactly where he should look and for what. Even then he would come back empty-handed, confused, because he didn't understand how little bits of disparate knowledge could fit together to mean anything. He would spend all day looking up the genealogy of the heavyworlder mutineers, or baring after some interest of his own. Dupaynil, with all his smug suavity, would have been a relief.

She strolled back along the main shopping avenues of the city, in no hurry. She was to meet Aygar for the evening shuttle flight. She had time to wander around. A window display caught her eye, bright with the colors she favored. She admired the jeweled jacket over a royal-blue skirt that flashed turquoise in shifts of light. She glanced at the elegant calligraphy above the glossy black door. No wonder! "Fleur de Paris" was only the outstanding fashion designer for the upper classes. Her mouth quirked: at least she had good taste.

The door, its sensors reporting that someone stood outside it longer than the moment necessary to walk past, swung inward. A human guard, in livery, stood just inside.

"Madame wishes to enter?"

The sidewalk burned her feet even through the uniform shoes. Her head ached. She had never in her life visited a place like this. But why not? It could do no harm to look.

"Thank you," she said, and walked in.

Inside, she found a cool oasis: soft colors, soft carpets, a recording of harp music just loud enough to cover the street's murmur. A well-dressed woman who came forward, assessing her from top to toe, and, to Sassinak's surprise, approving.

"Commander... Sassinak, is it not?"

"I'm surprised," she said. The woman smiled.

"We do watch the news programs, you know. How serendipitous! Fleur will want to meet you."

Sassinak almost let her jaw drop. She had heard a little about such places as this. The designer herself did not come out and meet everyone who came through the door.

"Won't you have a seat?" the woman went on. "And you'll have something cool, I hope?" She led Sassinak to a padded chair next to a graceful little table on which rested a tall pitcher, its sides beaded, and a crystal glass. Sassinak eyed it doubtfully. "Fruit juice," the woman said. "Although if you'd prefer another beverage?"

"No, thank you. This is fine."

She took the glass she was offered and sipped it to cover her confusion. The woman went away, leaving her to look around. She had been in shops, in some very good shops, with elegant displays of a few pieces of jewelry or a single silk dress. But here nothing marked the room as part of a shop. It might have been the sitting room of some wealthy matron: comfortable chairs grouped around small tables, fresh flowers, soft music. She relaxed, slowly, enjoying the tart fruit juice. If they knew she was a Fleet officer, they undoubtedly knew her salary didn't stretch to original creations. But if they were willing to have her rest in their comfortable chair, she wasn't about to walk out.

"My dear!" The silver-haired woman who smiled at her might have been any elegant great-grand-mother who had kept her figure. Seventies? Eighties? Sassinak wasn't sure. "What a delightful surprise. Mirelle told you we'd seen you on the news, didn't she? And of course we'd seen you walk by. I must confess," this with a throaty chuckle that Sassinak could not resist, "I've been putting one thing after another in the window to see if we could entice you." She turned to the first woman. "And you see, Mirelle, I was right: the jeweled jacket did it."

Mirelle shrugged gracefully. "And I will wager that if you asked her, she'd remember seeing that sea-green number."

"Yes, I did," said Sassinak, half-confused by their banter. "But what..."

"Mirelle, I think perhaps a light snack." Her voice was gentle, but still commanding. Mirelle smiled and withdrew, and the older woman smiled at Sassinak. "My dear Sassinak, I must apologize. It's... it's hard to think what to say. You don't realize what you mean to people like us."

Thoroughly confused now, Sassinak murmured something indistinct. Did famous designers daydream about flying spaceships? She couldn't believe that, but what else was going on?

"I am known to the world as Fleur," the woman said, sitting down across the table from Sassinak. "Fleur de Paris, which is a joke, although very few know it. I cannot tell you what my name was, even now. But I can tell you that we had a friend in common. A very dear friend."

"Yes?" Sassinak rummaged in her memory for any wealthy or socially prominent woman she might have known. An admiral, or an admiral's wife? And came up short.

"Your mentor, my dear, when you were a girl, Abe."

She could not have been more startled if Fleur had poured a bucket of ice over her. "Abe? You knew Abe?"

The older woman nodded. "Yes, indeed. I knew him before he was captured, and after. Although I never met you, I would have, in time. But as it was..."

"I know." The grief broke over her again, as startling in its intensity as the surprise that this woman—this old woman—had known Abe. But Abe, if he'd lived, would be old. That, too, shocked her. In her memory, he'd stayed the same, an age she gradually learned was not so old as the child had thought.

"I'm sorry to distress you, but I needed to speak to you. About Abe, about his past and mine. And about your future."

"My future?" What could this woman possibly have to do with her future? It must have shown on her lace, because Fleur shook her head.

"A silly old woman, you think, intruding on your life. You admire the clothes I design, but you don't need a rich woman's sycophant reminding you of Abe. Yes?"

It was uncomfortably close to what she'd been thinking. "I'm sorry," she said, apologizing for being obvious, if for nothing else.

"That's all right. He said you were practical, tenacious, clear-headed, and so you must be. But there are things you should know. Since we may be interrupted at any time-nafter all, this is a business—first let me suggest that if you find yourself in need of help, in any difficult situation in the city, mention my name. I have contacts. Perhaps Abe mentioned Samizdat?"

"Yes, he did." Sassinak came fully alert at that. She had never found any trace of the organization Abe had told her about once she was out of the Academy. Did it still exist?

"Good. Had Abe lived, he would have made sure you knew how to contact some of its members. But, as it was, no one knew you well enough to trust you, even with your background. This meeting should remedy that."

"But then you..."

Fleur's smile this time had an edge of bitterness. "I have my own story. We all do. If there's time, you'll hear mine. For now, know that I knew Abe, and loved him dearly, and I have watched your career, as it appears in the news, with great interest."

"But how..."As she spoke, the door opened again, and three women came in, chattering gaily. Fleur stood at once and greeted them, smiling. Sassinak, uncertain, sat where she was. The women, it seemed, had come in hopes of finding Fleur free. They glanced at Sassinak, then away, saying that they simply must have Fleur's advice on something of great importance.

"Why of course," she said. "Do come into my sitting room." One of them must have murmured something about Sassinak, for she said, "No, no. Mirelle will be right back to speak to the commander."

Mirelle reappeared, as if by magic, bearing a tray with tiny sandwiches and cookies in fanciful shapes.

"Fleur says you're quite welcome to stay, but she doesn't think she'll be free for several hours. That's an old customer, with her daughters-in-law, and they come to gossip as much as for advice. She's very sorry. You will have a snack, won't you?"

For courtesy's sake, Sassinak took a sandwich. Mirelle hovered, clearly uneasy about something. When Sassinak insisted on leaving, Mirelle exhibited both disappointment and relief.

"You will come again?"

"When I can. Please tell Fleur I was honored to meet her, but I can't say when I'll be able to come onplanet again."

That should give Sassinak time to think, and if she hadn't made a decision by the next required conference, she could always go by a different street. Outside again, she found herself thinking again of Dupaynil, simply because of his specialties. She wished she had some way of getting into the databases herself, without going through Aygar, and without being detected. She would like very much to know who "Fleur de Paris" was, and why her name was supposed to be a joke.

In his days on the Zaid-Dayan, Dupaynil would have sworn that he was capable of intercepting any data link and resetting any control panel on any ship. All he had to do was reconfigure the controls on the escort vessel's fifteen escape pods so that he could control them. It should have been simple. It was not simple. He had not slept but for the briefest naps. He dared not sleep until it was done. And yet he had to appear to sleep, as he appeared to eat, to play cards, to chat idly, to take the exercise that had become regular to him, up and down the ladders.

He had no access to the ship's computer, no time to himself in the compartments where his sabotage would have been easiest. He had to do it all from his tiny cabin, in the few hours he could legitimately be alone, "sleeping."

And they had already found one of his taps. It frightened him in a way he had never been frightened before. He was good at the minutiae of his work, one of the neatest, his instructors had said, a natural. To have a but like Ollery find one of his taps meant that he had been clumsy and careless. Or he had misjudged them, another way of being clumsy and careless.

He would not have lived this long had he really been clumsy or careless, but he had depended on the confii-sion, the complexity, of large ships. Fear only made his hands shake. Coldly, he considered himself as if he were a new trainee in Methods of Surveillance. Think, he told himself, the nervous trainee. You have the brains or they wouldn't have assigned you here. Use your wits. He set aside the odds against him. Beyond "high," what good were precise percentages? He considered the whole problem. He simply had to get those escape pods slaved to his control.

A crew which had spent five years together on a ship this small would know everything, would notice everything, especially as they now suspected him. But since they were already planning to space him, would they really worry about his taps? Wouldn't they, instead, snigger to each other about his apparent progress, enjoy letting him think he was spying on them, while knowing that nothing he found would ever be seen? He thought they would.

The question was, when would they spring their trap, and could he spring his before? And assuming he did gain control of the escape pods, so that they could not eject his, and he could eject theirs, he still had to get them all into the pods. They would know—at least the captain and mate would know—that the evacuation drill was a fake. So there was a chance, a good chance, that they would not be in pods at all. But thinking this far had quieted the tremor in his hands and cured his dry mouth.

Wiring diagrams and logic relays flicked through his mind, along with the possible modifications a renegade crew might have made. His audio tap into the captain's cabin still functioned. Listening on a still operative tap, he learned that the one that the mate had discovered had fallen victim to a rare bout of cleaning. As far as he knew, and as far as they said, they had not found any of the others. On the other hand, he had found two of theirs. He left them alone, unworried.

The personal kit he always had with him included the very best antisurveillance chip, bonded to his shaver. Through his own taps, he picked his way delicately toward control functions. Some were too well guarded for his limited set of tools. He could not lock the captain in his cabin, or shut off air circulation to any crew compartment. He could not override the captain's control of bridge access. He knew they were watching, suspecting just such a trick. He could not roam the computer's files too broadly, eidier. But he could get into such open files as the maintenance and repair records, and find that the galley hatch had repeatedly jammed. As an experiment, to see if he could do it widiout anyone noticing, Dupaynil changed the pressure on the upper hatch runner. It should jam, and be repaired, widi only a few cusswords for the pesky thing.

Sure enough, one of the crew complained bitterly through breakfast that the galley hatch was catching again. It was probably that double-damned pressure sensor on the upper runner. Hie mate nodded and assigned someone to fix it.

On such a small vessel, the escape pods were studded along either side of the main axis: three opening directly from the bridge, and the others aft, six accessed from the main and six from the alternate passage. Escape drill required each crew member to find an assigned pod, even if working near another. Pod assignments were posted in both bridge and galley.

Dupaynil tried to remember if anyone had actually survived a hull-breach on an escort, and couldn't think of an instance. The pods were there because regulations said every ship would carry diem. That didn't make them practical. Pod controls on escort ships were the old-fashioned electro-mechanical relays; proof against magnetic surges from EM weapons which could disable more sophisticated controls by scrambling the wits of their controlling chips.

This simplicity meant that the tools he had were enough. Although, if someone looked, the changes would be more obvious than a reprogrammed or replacement chip. Fiddling with the switches and relays also took longer than changing a chip, and he found it difficult to stay suave and smiling when a crew member happened by as he was finishing one of the links.

The final step, slaving all the pod controls to one, and that one to his handcomp, tested the limits of his ability. He was almost sure the system would work. Unhappily, he would not know until he tried it. He was ready, as ready as he could be. He would have preferred to set off the alarm himself, but he dared not risk it. He played his usual round of cards with Ollery and the mate, making sure that he played neither too well nor too badly, and declined a dice game.

"Tomorrow," he said, with the blithe assurance of one who expects the morrow to arrive on schedule. "I can't stand all this excitement in one night."

They chuckled, the easy chuckle of the predator whose prey is in the trap. He went out wondering when they'd spring it. He really wanted a full shift's sleep.

The shattering noise of the alarm- and the flashing lights woke him from the uneasy doze he'd allowed himself. He pulled on his pressure suit, lurched into the bulkhead, cursing, and staggered out into the passage. There was the mate, grinning. It was not a friendly grin.

"Escape pod drill, Lieutenant Commander! Remember your assignment?"

"Fourteen, starboard, next hatch but one."

"Right, sir. Go on now!" The mate had a handcomp, and appeared to be logging the response to the drill.

It could not be that The computer automatically logged crew into and out of the escape pods. Dupaynil moved quickly down the passage, hearing the thump and snarled curses of odiers on their way to the pods. He let himself into the next hatch but one, the pod he hoped was not only safely under his control, but now gave him control of the others.

On such a small ship, the drill required everyone to stay in the pods until all had reported in. Dupaynil listened to the ship's com as the pods filled. He thought the captain would preserve the fiction of a real drill. If nothing else, to cover his tracks with his Exec, and actually enter and lock off his own pod.

Things could get very sticky indeed if the captain discovered before entering his own pod, that Dupaynil had some of his crew locked away. Four were already "podded" when Dupaynil checked in. He secured dieir pods. It might be better to wait until everyone was in. But if some came out, then he'd be in worse trouble. If tiiey obeyed the drill procedures, diey wouldn't know they were locked in until he had full control.

One after another, so quickly he had some trouble to keep up widi diem, the others made it into dieir pods and dogged the hatches. Eight, nine (the senior mate, he was glad to notice). Only the officers and one enlisted left.

"Captain! There's something..."

The senior mate. Naturally. Dupaynil had not been able to interfere with the ship's intercom and reconfigure the pod controls. The mate must have planned to duck into his pod just long enough to register his presence on the computer, then come out to help the captain space Dupaynil.

Even as the mate spoke, Dupaynil activated all his latent sensors. Detection be damned! They knew he was onto diem, and he needed all the data he could get. His control locks had better work! He was out of his own escape pod, widi a tiny button-phone in his ear and his hand-held control panel.

Ollery and Panis were on the bridge. Even as Dupaynil moved forward, the last crewman checked into his pod and Dupaynil locked it down. Apparently he hadn't heard the mate.

That left the captain and that very new executive officer who would probably believe whatever the cap-tain told him. He dogged down the hatch of his escape pod manually. From the corridor, it would look as if he were in it.

Go forward and confront the captain? No. He had to ensure that the others, especially the mate, stayed locked in. His fix might hold against a manual unlocking, but might not. So his first move was to the adjoining pods where he smashed the control panels beside each hatch. Pod fourteen, his own, was aftmost on the main corridor side, which meant he could ensure that no enemy appeared behind him. He would have to work his way back and forth between corridors though. Luckily the fifteenth pod was empty, and so was the thirteenth. Although the pods were numbered without using traditionally unlucky thirteen, most crews avoided the one that would have been thirteen. Stupid superstition, Dupaynil thought, but it helped him now.

Although he was sure he remembered which crew members were where, he checked on his handcomp and disabled the mate's pod controls next. Pod nine was off the alternate passage. He'd had to squeeze through a connecting passage and go forward past "14A" (the unlucky one) and pod eleven. From there he went back to disable pod eleven and checked to be sure the other two on that side were actually empty. It was not unknown for a lazy crewmember to check into the nearest unassigned pod.

He wondered all the while just what the captain was doing. Not to mention the Exec. If only he'd been able to get a mil-channel tap on the bridge! He had just edged into the narrow cross passage between the main and alternate passages when he heard a feint noise and saw an emergency hatch slide across in front of him. Ollery had put the ship on alert, with full partitioning.

I should have foreseen that, Dupaynil thought. With a frantic lurch, he got his hands on its edge. The safety valve hissed at him but held the door still while he wriggled through the narrow gap. Now he was in the main corridor. Across from him he could see the recesses for pods ten and eight. He disabled their manual controls, one after another, working as quickly as he could but not worrying about noise. Just aft, another partition had come down, gray steel barrier between him and the pods fiirther aft. But, when he first got out, he had disabled pod twelve. Just forward, another.

A thin hiss, almost at the edge of his hearing, stopped him just as he reached it. None of the possibilities looked good. He knew that Ollery could evacuate the air from each compartment and his pressure suit had only a two-hour supply. Less, if he was active. Explosive decompression wasn't likely, though he had no idea just how fast emergency decomp was. He had not sealed his bubble-helmet. He'd wanted to hear whatever was there to be heard. That hiss could be Ollery or Panis cutting through the partition with a weapon, something like a needier.

In the short stretch of corridor between the partitions, he had no place to hide. All compartment hatches sealed when the ship was on alert. Even if he had been able to get into the galley, it offered no concealment. Two steps forward, one back. What would Sassinak have done in his place? Found an access hatch, no doubt, or known something about the ship's controls that would have let her get out of this trap and ensnare Ollery at the same time. She would certainly have known where every pipe went and what was in it, what each wire and switch was for. Dupaynil could think of nothing.

It was interesting, if you looked at it that way, that Ollery hadn't tried to contact him on the ship's intercom. Did he even know Dupaynil was out of the pod? He must. He had normal ship's scans available in every compartment. Dupaynil's own sensors showed that the pods he had sealed were still sealed, their occupants safely out of the fight. Two blobs erf light on a tiny screen were the captain and Panis on the bridge, right ; where they should be. Then one of them started down the alternate passage, slowly. He could not tell which it was, but logic said the captain had told Panis to investigate. Logic smirked when Ollery's voice came over the tatercom only moments later.

"Check every compartment. I want voice report on fnything out of the ordinary."

" He could not hear the Jig's reply. He must be wear-; fag a pressure suit and using its com unit to report..Didn't the captain realize that Dupaynil could hear the ^intercom? Or didn't he care? Meanwhile there was his problem: that emergency partition. Dupaynil decided that the hissing was merely an air leak between compartments, an ill-fitting partition, and set to work to override its controls.

Several hot, sweaty minutes later, he had the thing shoved back in its recess, and edged past. The main passage forward looked deceptively ordinary, all visible hatches closed, nothing moving on the scarred tiles of the deck, no movement shimmering on the gleaming green bulkheads. Ahead, he could see another partition. Beyond it, he knew, the passage curved inboard and went up a half-flight of steps to reach Main Deck and access to the bridge and three escape pods there.

Dupaynil stopped to disable the manual controls on pods six and four. Now only three pods might still be a problem: five and seven, the two most forward on the alternate passage, and pod three, accessible from the bridge and assigned to the weapons tech. Tliat one he could disable on his way to the bridge, assuming he could get through this next partition. Five and seven? Panis might be able to open them from outside, although the controls would not work normally.

How long would it take him? Would he even think of it? Would the captain try to free the man in pod three? At least the odds against him had dropped. Even if they got all three out, it would still be only five to one, rather than twelve to one. With this much success came returning confidence, almost ebullience. He reminded himself that he had not won the war yet. Not even the first battle. Just a preliminary skirmish, which could all come undone if he lost the next bit.

"I don't care if it looks normal," he heard on the intercom. "Try to undog those hatches and let Siris out."

Blast. Ollery was not entirely stupid. Panis must be looking at pod five. Siri: data tech, the specialist in computers, sensors, all that. Dupaynil worked at the forward partition, hoping Ollery would be more interested in following his Exec's progress, would trust to the partition to hold him back. A long pause, in which his own breathing sounded ragged and loud in the empty, silent passage.

Then: "I don't care what it takes, open it!"

At least some of his reworking held against outside tampering. Dupaynil spared no time for smugness, as the forward partition was giving him more trouble than the one before. If he'd only had his complete kit... But there, it gave, sliding back into its slot with almost sentient reluctance to disobey the computer. Here the passage curved and he could not get all the way to the steps. Dupaynil flattened himself along the inside bulkhead, looking at the gleaming surface across from him for any moving reflections. Lucky for him that Ollery insisted on Fleet-tike order and cleanliness. Dupaynil found it surprising. He'd always assumed that renegades would be dirty and disorderly. But the ship would have to pass Fleet inspections, whether its crew were loyal or not.

He waited. Nothing moved. He edged cautiously forward, with frequent glances at his handcomp. The captain's blob stayed where it had been. Panis's was still in the alternate passage near the hatch of pod five. At the foot of the steps, he paused. Above was the landing outside the bridge proper, with the hatches of three pods on his left. One and two would be open: the assigned pods for captain and Exec. Three would be dosed, with the weapons tech inside. The hatch to the bridge would be closed, unless Panis had left it open when he went hunting trouble. If it was open, the captain would not fail to hear Dupaynil coming. Even if he weren't monitoring his sensors, and he would be, jhe'd know exactly where Dupaynil was. And once Dupaynil came to the landing, he could see him out the Open hatch. If it was open.

Had Panis left the bridge hatch open? Had he left the partition into the alternate corridor open? It would fluke sense to do so. Even though the captain could Control the partitions individually from the bridge, over-the computer's programming, that would take a seconds. If the captain suspected he might need , he would want those partitions back so that Panis any freed crewmen had easy access.

He started up the steps, reminding himself to breathe deeply. One. Two. No sound from above, and he could not see the bridge hatch without being visible from it. Another step, and another. If he had had time, if he had had his entire toolkit, he would have had taps in place and would know if that hatch...

A clamor broke out on the other side of the ship, crashing metal, cries. And, above him and around the curve, the captain's voice both live and over the intercom.

"Go on, Sins!"

Then the clatter of feet, as the captain left the bridge (no sound of the hatch opening: it had been open) and headed down the alternate passage. Dupaynil had no idea what was going on, but he shot up the last few steps, and poked his head into the upper end of the alternate corridor. And saw the captain's back, headed aft, with some weapon, probably a needier, in his clenched fist. There were yells from both Panis and the man he had freed.

It burst on Dupaynil suddenly that the Ollery intended to kill his Exec. Either because he thought he was in league with Dupaynil or was using this excuse to claim he'd mutinied. Dupaynil launched himself after the captain, hoping that the crewman wasn't armed. Panis and Sins were still thrashing on the floor. Dupaynil could see only a whirling confusion of suit-clad bodies. Their cries and the sound of the blows covered his own approach. Ollery stood above them, clearly waiting his chance to shoot. Dupaynil saw the young officer's face recognize his captain, and his captain's intent. His expression changed from astonishment to horror.

Then Dupaynil flipped his slim black wire around the captain's neck and putted. The captain bucked, sagged, and dropped, still twitching but harmless. Dupaynil caught up the needier that the crewman reached for, stepping on the man's wrist with deceptive grace. He could feel the bones grate beneath his heel.

"But what? But who?" Panis, disheveled, one eye already blackening, had the presence of mind to keep a firm controlling grip on the crewman's other arm.

Dupaynil smiled. "Let's get this one under control first," he said.

"I don't know what happened," Panis went on. "Something's wrong with the escape pod hatches. It took forever to get this one open, and then Siris jumped me, and the captain—" His voice trailed away as he glanced at the captain lying purple-faced on the deck.

Siris tried a quick heave but the Jig held on. Dupaynil let bis heel settle more firmly on the wrist. The man cursed viciously.

"Don't do that," Dupaynil said to him, waving the needier in front of him. "If you should get loose from Jig Panis, I would simply kill you. Although you might prefer that to trial. Would you?"

Siris lay still, breathing heavily. Panis had planted a few good ones on him, too. His face was bruised and he had a split lip which he licked nervously. Dupaynil felt no sympathy. Still watching Siris for trouble, he spoke to Panis.

"Your captain was engaged in illegal activities. He planned to kill both of us." Even as he spoke, he wondered if he could possibly convince a Board of Inquiry that the entire scheme, including the rewired escape pod controls, had been the captain's. Probably not, but it was worth considering in the days ahead.

"I can't believe..." Again Panis's voice trailed away. He could believe; he had seen that needier in his captain's hand, heard what the captain said. "And you're?"

"Fleet Security, as you know. Apparently that spooked Major Ollery, convinced him that I was on his trail. I wasn't, as a matter of fact."

"Liar!" said Siris.

Dupaynil favored him with a smile that he hoped combined injured innocence with predatory glee. It must have succeeded for the man paled and gulped.

"I don't bother to lie," he said quietly, "when truth is so useful." He went on with his explanation. "When I found that the captain planned to kill me and that you were not part of the conspiracy, I assumed he'd kill you, too, so he wouldn't have to worry about any un-Jhendly witness. Now! As the officer next in command, you are now technically captain of this ship, which means that you decide what we do with Sins here. I would not recommend just letting him go!"

"No." The Jig's face had a curious inward expression that Dupaynil took to mean he was trying to catch up to events. "No, I can see that. But," and he looked at Dupaynil, taking in his rank insignia. "But, sir, you're senior."

"Not on this vessel." Curse the boy! Couldn't he see that he had to take command? Sassinak would have, in a flash.

"Right." It had taken him longer, but he came to the same decision; Dupaynil had to applaud that. "Then we need to get this fellow—Siris—into confinement."

"May I suggest the escape pod he just came out of? As you know, the controls no longer respond normally. He won't be able to get out, and he won't be able to eject from the ship."

"NO!" Dupaynil could not tell if it was fury or fright. "I'm not going back in there. I'd die before you get anywhere!"

"Frankly, I don't much care," Dupaynil said. "But you will have access to coldsleep. You know there's a cabinet built in."

Siris let fly the usual stream of curses, vicious and unimaginative. Dupaynil thought the senior mate would have done better, although he had no intention of letting him loose to try. Panis squirmed out of his awkward position, half-under the crewman, without losing his grip on the man's shoulder and arm or getting between Du-paynil's needier and Siris. Then he rolled clear, evading a last frantic snatch at his ankles. Dupaynil put all his weight on the trapped wrist for an instant, bringing a gasp of pain from Siris, then stepped back, covering him with the weapon. In any event, Siris went into the escape pod without more struggle, though threatening them both with the worst that his illicit colleagues could do.

"They'll get you!" he said, as Panis closed the hatch, Dupaynil aiming through the narrowing crack just in case. "You don't even know who it'll'be. They're in the Fleet, all through it, all the way up, and you'll wish you'd never..."

With a solid chunk, the hatch closed and Panis followed Dupaynil's instructions in securing it. Then he met Dupaynil's eyes, with only the barest glance at the needier still in Dupaynil's hand.

"Well, Commander, either you're honest and I'm safe, or you're about to plug me and make up your own story about what happened. Or you still have doubts about me."

Dupaynil laughed. "Not after seeing the captain ready to kill you, I don't. But I'm sure you have questions of your own and will be a lot more comfortable when I'm not holding a weapon on you. Here." He handed over the needier, butt first.

Panis took it, thumbed off the power, and stuck it through one of the loops of his pressure suit.

"Thanks." Panis ran one bruised hand over his battered face. "This is not... quite... like anything they taught us." He took another long breath, with a pause in the middle as if his ribs hurt. "I suppose I'd better get to the bridge and log all this." His gaze dropped to the motionless crumpled shape of Ollery on the deck. "Is he?"

"He'd better be," said Dupaynil, kneeling to feel Ollery's neck for a pulse. Nothing, now. That solved the problem of what to do if he'd been alive but critically injured. "Dead," he went on.

"You... uh..."

"Strangled him, yes. Not a gentlemanly thing to do, but I had no other weapon and he was about to kill you."

"I'm not complaining." Panis looked steadier now and met Dupaynil's eyes. "Well. If I'm in command? And you're right, I'm supposed to be, I'd best log this. Then we'll come back and put his body..." he finished lamely, "somewhere."

Chapter Nine

Diplo

Although Zebara had said that few oflworlders knew about, had ever seen or heard, Zilmach's opera, Lunzie found the next morning that some of the medical team had heard more than enough. Bias waylaid her in the entrance of the medical building where they worked. Before Lunzie could even say "Good morning," he was off.

"I don't know what you think you're doing," he said in a savage tone that brought heads around, though his voice was low. "I don't know if it's an aberration induced by your protracted coldsleep or a perverse desire to appease those who hurt you on Ireta..."

"Bias!" Lunzie tried to shake his hand away from her arm but he would not let go.

"I don't care what it is," he said, more loudly. Lunzie felt herself going red. Around them people tried to pretend that nothing was going on, although ears Sapped almost visibly. Bias pushed her along, as if she weren't willing, and stabbed the lift button with the elbow of his free arm. "But I'll tell you, it's disgraceful. Disgraceful! A medical professional, a researcher, someone who ought to have a minimal knowledge of professional ethics and proper behavior..."

Lunzie.s anger finally caught up with her surprise. She yanked her arm free.

"Which does not include grabbing my arm and scolding me in public as if you were my father. Which you're not. May I remind you that I am considerably older than you, and if I choose to..

To what? She hadn't done what Bias thought she had done. In some respect, she agreed with him. If she had been having a torrid affair with the head of External Security, it would have been unprofessional and stupid. In Bias's place, in charge of a younger (older?) woman doing something like that, she'd have been irritated, too. She'd been irritated enough when she thought Varian was attracted to the young Ire tan, Aygar. Her anger left as quickly as it had come, replaced by her sense of humor. She struggled for a moment with these contradictory feelings, and then laughed. Bias was white-faced, his mouth pinched tight.

"Bias, I am not sleeping with Zebara. He's an old friend."

"Everyone knows what happens at that opera!"

"I didn't." That much was true. "And how did you know?"

This time it was Bias who reddened, in unattractive blotches. "The last time I came I... ah. Um. I've always liked music. I try to learn about the native music anywhere I go. A performance was advertised. I bought a ticket, I went. And they didn't want to let me in. No one admitted without a partner, they said."

Lunzie hadn't known that. After a moment's shock, she realized that it made sense. Bias, it seemed, had argued that he had already paid for the ticket. He had been given his money back, with the contemptuous suggestion that he put his ticket where it would do him more good than the performance would. He finally found a heavyworlder doctor, at the medical center, willing to explain what the opera was about, and why no one wanted him there.

"So you see I know that no matter what you say..."

Lunzie stopped that with a laugh. They entered the lift with a crowd of first-shift medical personnel and Bias kept silence until they reached their floor. He opened his mouth but she waved him to silence.

"Bias, it came as a surprise to me, too. But they don't... mmm. Check on it. Besides which," and she cocked her head at him, "there's the problem of a pressure suit."

Bias turned beet-red from scalp to neck. His mouth opened and closed as if he were gasping for air, but formed no words.

"It's all right, Bias," she said, patting his head as if he were a nervous boy about to go onstage. "I'm over a hundred years old and I didn't live this long by risking an unexpected pregnancy."

Then, before she lost control of her wayward humor, she strode quickly down the corridor to her own first chore.

But Bias was not the only one to broach the subject.

"I've heard that heavyworlder opera is really something, hmm? Different..." said Conigan. She did not quite smirk.

Lunzie managed placidity. "Different is hardly the word, but you may have heard more than I saw."

"Or felt?"

"Please. I may be ancient and shriveled by coldsleep but I know I don't want to have a half-heavyworlder child. The opera re-enacts a time of great tragedy. I'm an outsider, an observer, and I have the sense to know it."

"That's something, at least. But is it really that good?"

"The music is. Unbelievable; I'm ashamed to admit I was so surprised by the quality."

Conigan appeared satisfied. If not, she had the sense to let Lunzie alone. More troubling were the odd looks she now got from the other team members, and from one of the heavyworlder doctors they'd been working with. She could not say she had no feeling for Zebara. Even had it been true, their tentative cooperation required that she appear friendly. She wondered if she should have feigned a more emotional response to the opera.

And on the edge of her mind, kept firmly away from its center during the working day, was the question of coldsleep. Not again! she wanted to scream at Zebara and anyone else who thought she should use it. I'd rather die. But that was not true. More particularly, she did not want to die on Diplo, in the hands of their Security or in their prisons. In feet, with the renewed strength and health of her refresher course in Discipline, she did not want to die anywhere, any time soon. She had a century of healthy life ahead of her, if she stayed off high-G worlds. She wanted to enjoy it.

The Venerable Master Adept had said she might need to use coldsleep again. She had trained for that possibility. She knew she could do it. But 1 don't want to, wailed one part of her mind to another. She squashed that thought down and hoped it would not be necessary. Surely she and Zebara could find some other way. That night she had no message, and slept gratefully, catching up on much-needed rest.

The next step in Zebara's campaign came two days later, when he invited her to spend her next rest day with him.

"The team's supposed to get together for a progress evaluation." Lunzie wrinkled her nose; she expected it to be a waste of time. "If I go off with you, I'll get in trouble with them."

She was already in trouble with them, but saw no reason to tell Zebara. And that kind of trouble would make it seem his employers' plot was working well. Surely a lightweight alienated from her own kind would be easier to manipulate. She shivered, wondering who was manipulating whom.

Zebara's image grimaced. "We have so little time, Lunzie. Your research tour is almost half over. We both know it's unlikely you'll come back and even if you did, I would not be here."

"Bias has told me, very firmly, that the purpose of this medical mission was not to reunite old lovers."

"His purpose, no. And I respect your professional work, Lunzie. I always did. We know it could not be a real relationship. You must go and I will not live long. But I want to see you again, for more than a few minutes in public."

Lunzie flinched, thinking of the agents who would, no doubt, snicker when they got to that point in the tapes being made of this conversation. If they weren't listening now, in real-time surveillance. She glanced at the schedule on her wall. Only one rest day after this one. Time had fled away from them, and even if she had not had the additional problem of Zebara and her undercover assignment, she would have been surprised at how short a 30 day assignment could be.

"Please," Zebara said, interrupting her thoughts. Was he really that eager? Did he know of some additional reason she must meet him now, and not later. "I can t wait."

"Bias will have a flaming fit," Lunzie said. His face relaxed, as if he'd heard more in her voice than she intended. "I'll have to talk to Tailler. I don't see why you couldn't wait until the next rest-day. Only eight days."

"Thank you, Lunzie. I'll send someone for you right after breakfast."

"But what about?" That was to an empty screen. He had cut the connection. Damn the man. Lunzie glowered at the screen and let herself consider ignoring his messenger in the morning. But that would be too dangerous. Whatever was going on, in his mind, or that of his employers, she had to play along.

When she told him, Tailler heaved a great sigh and braced his arms against his workbench.

"Are you trying to give Bias a stroke, or what? I thought you understood. Granted he's not entirely rational, but that makes it our responsibility to keep from knocking him loopsided."

Lunzie spread her hands. If the whole team turned against her, she could lose any chance of a good position after the mission. And after the mission you could be one frozen lump of dead meat, she reminded herself.

"I'm sorry," she said and meant it. That genuine distaste for hurting others got through to Tailler. "I think they should have studied me for the effects of prolonged coldsleep, instead of stuffing me full of current trends in medicine and shipping me out here. But they said they were desperate, that no one else had my background. Perhaps my reaction to Zebara is partly that, although I think no one who hasn't been through it can understand what it's like to wake up and find that thirty or forty years have gone by. Did you know I have a great-great-great-granddaughter who's older than I am in elapsed time? That makes us both feel strange. Zebara knew me then. Though to me that's the self I am now. Yet he's dying of old age. I know that personal feelings aren't supposed to intrude on the mission, but these are, in a sense, relevant to the work I'm doing. My normal lifespan, without coldsleep, would be twelve to fourteen decades, right?"

"Yes. Perhaps even longer, these days. I think the rates for women with your genetic background are up around fifteen or sixteen decades."

Lunzie shrugged. "See? Even the lifespans have changed since I was last awake. But my point is that each time I've come out of a prolonged coldsleep, I've battled severe depression over the relationships I've lost. The kind of depression which we know impairs the immune system, makes people more susceptible to premature aging and disease. This depression, this despair and chaos, will affect the heavyworlders even more, because their lifespan is naturally shorter, especially on high-G worlds. My feelings —my personal experiences— are what got me scheduled for this mission. While I can't claim that I consciously chose to consider Zebara as part of a research topic, his reaction to my lack of aging and my reaction to his physical decay, are not matters I can ignore."

Tailler stood, stretched, and leaned against the bench behind him. "I see your point. Emotions and intellect are both engaged and so tangled that you can't decide which part of this is most important. Would you say, on the whole, that you are an intuitive or a patterned thinker?"

"Intuitive, according to my psych profiles, but with strong logical skills as well."

"You must have or I'd have said intuitive without asking. It sounds as if your mind is trying to put something together which you can't yet articulate. On that basis, meeting Zebara, spending a day with him, might give you enough data to come to some conclusions. But the rest of us are going to have a terrible time with Bias."

"I know. I'm sorry, truly I am."

"If I didn't believe you were, I'd be strongly tempted to play heavyhanded leader and forbid your going. I presume that if your mind finds its gestalt solution in the middle of the night, you will stay with us instead?"

"Yes—but I don't think it will."

Tailler sighed. "Probably not. Some rest-day this is going to be. At least stay out of Bias's way today and let me tell him tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll get nothing done."

When she answered the summons early the next morning, Zebara's escort hardly reassured her. Uniformed, armed—at least she assumed the bulging black leather at his hip meant a weapon—stern-faced, he checked her identity cards before leading her to a chunky conveyance almost as large as the medical center's utility van. Inside, it was upholstered in a fabric Lunzie had never seen, something smooth and tan. She ran her fingers over it, unable to decide what it was, and wishing that the broad seat were not quite so large. Across from her, the escort managed to suggest decadent lounging while sitting upright. The driver in the front compartment was only a dark blur through tinted plex.

"It's leather," he said, when she continued to stroke the seat.

"Leather?" She should know the word, but it escaped her. She saw by the smirk on the man's face that he expected to shock her.

"Muskie hide," he said. "Tans well. Strong and smooth. We use a lot of it."

Lunzie had her face well under control. She was not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was disgusted.

"I thought they were hairy," she said. "More like fur."

His face changed slightly; a glimmer of respect came into the cold blue eyes.

"The underfiir's sometimes used, but it's not considered high quality. The tanning process removes the hair."

"Mmm.' Lunzie made herself touch the seat again, though she wished she didn't have to sit on it. "Is it all this color? Can it be dyed?"

Contempt had given way now to real respect. His voice relaxed as he became informative.

"Most of it's easily tanned this color; some is naturally black. It's commonly dyed for clothing. But if you dye upholstery, it's likely to come off on the person sitting on it."

"Clothing? I'd think it would be uncomfortable, compared to cloth." Lunzie gave herself points for the unconcerned tone of voice, the casual glance out the tinted window.

"No, ma'am. As boots, now," and he indicated his own shining boots. "They're hard to keep polished, but they don't make your feet sweat as bad.'

Lunzie thought of the way her feet felt in the special padded boots she wore most of the day. By evening, it was as if she stood in a puddle. Of course it was barbaric, wearing the skins of dead sentient creatures. But if you were going to eat them, you might as well use tfie rest of them, she supposed.

"Less frostbite," the man was saying now, still extolling the virtues of "leather" over the usual synthetic materials.

Outside the vehicle, an icy wind buffeted them with chunks of ice. Lunzie could see little through the windows; the dim shapes of unfamiliar buildings, none very tall. Little vehicular traffic: in feet, little sign of anyone ebe on the streets. Lunzie presumed that most people used the underground walkways and slideways she and Zebara had used their two previous meetings.

"The ride takes more than an hour," the escort said. "You might as well relax." He was smirking again, though not quite so offensively as before.

Lunzie wracked her brain to think of some harmless topic of conversation. Nothing was harmless with a heavyworlder. But surely it couldn't hurt to ask his name.

"I'm sorry," she began politely, "but I don't know what your insignia means, nor what your name is."

The smirk turned wolfish. "I doubt you'd really want to know. But my rank would translate in your Fleet to major. I'm not at liberty to disclose my name."

So much for that. Lunzie did not miss the significance of "your Fleet." She did not want to think what "not at liberty to disclose my name" might mean.

Did Zebara not trust her, after all? Or was he planning to turn her over to another branch of his organization and wanted to keep himself in the clear?

Time passed, marked off only by the slithering and crunching of the vehicle's wheels on icy roadway.

"The Director said he knew you many years ago. Is that true?" There could be no harm in answering a question to which so many knew the answer.

"Yes, over forty years ago."

"A long time. Many things have changed here in forty years."

"I'm sure of it," Lunzie said.

"I was not yet born when the Director knew you." The escort said that as if his own birth had been the most significant change in those decades. Lunzie stifled a snort of amusement. If he still thought he was that important, he wouldn't have much humor. "I have been in his department for only eight years." Pride showed there, too, and a touch of something that might have been affection. "He is a remarkable man, the Director. Worthy of great loyalty."

Lunzie said nothing; it didn't seem needed.

"We need men like him at the top. It saddens me that he has lost strength this past year. He will not say, but I have heard that the doctors are telling him the snow is falling." The man stared at her, obviously hoping she knew more, and would tell it. She fixed on the figure of speech.

"Snow is falling? Is this how you say sickness?"

"It is how we say death is coming. You should know that. You saw Bitter Destiny."

Now she remembered. The phrase had been repeated in more than one aria, but with the same melodic line. So it had come to be a cultural standard, had it?

"You are doing medical research on the physiological response of our people to longterm coldsleep, I understand. Hasn't someone told you what our people call coldsleep, how they think of it?"

This was professional ground, on which she could stand firmly and calmly.

"No, and I've asked. They avoid it. After the opera, I wondered if they associated coldsleep with that tragedy. It's one of the things I wanted to ask Zebara. He said we would talk about it today."

"Ah. Well, perhaps I should let him tell you. But as you might expect, death by cold is both the most degrading and the most honorable of deaths we know: degrading because our people were forced into it. It is the symbol of our political weakness. And honorable because so many chose it to save others. To compel another to die of cold or starvation is the worst of crimes, worse than any torture. But to voluntarily take the White Way, the walk into snow, is the best of deaths, an affirmation of the values that enabled us to survive." The man paused, ran a finger around his collar as if to loosen it, and went on. "Thus coldsleep is for us a peculiar parody of our fears and hopes. It is the little cold death. If prolonged, as I understand you have endured, it is the death of the past, the loss of friends and family as if in actual death—except that you are ahVe to know it. But it also cheats the long death of winter. It is like being the seed of a chranghal—one of our plants that springs first from the ground after a Long Winter. Asleep, not dreaming, almost dead! And then awake again, fresh and green.

"When our people travel, and know they will be placed in coldsleep, they undergo the rituals for the dying and carry with them the three fruits we all eat to celebrate spring and rebirth."

"But your death rate in coldsleep, for anything beyond a couple of months, is much higher than normal," said Lunzie. "And the lifespan after tends to be shorter."

"True. Perhaps you are finding out why, in physical terms. I think myself that those who consent to prolonged coldsleep have consented to death itself. They are reliving that first sacrifice and, even if they live, are less committed to life. After all, with our generally shorter lifespans, we would outlive our friends sooner than you. And you, the Director has told me, did not find it easy to pick up your life decades later."

"No."

Lunzie looked down, then out the blurred windows, thinking of that first black despair when she realized that Fiona was grown and gone, that she would never see her child as a child again. And each time it had been a shock, to find people aged whom she'd known in their youth. To find a great-great-great-granddaughter older than she herself.

He was silent after that. They rode the rest of the way without speaking, but without hostility. Zebara's place, when they finally arrived and drove into the sheltered entrance, was a low mound of heavy dark granite, like a cross between a fortress and a lair.

Zebara met her as she stepped out, said a cool "Thank you, Major," to the escort, and led her through a double-glass door into a circular hall beneath a low dome. Its floor was of some amber-colored stone, veined with browns and reds; the dome gleamed, dull bronze, from lights recessed around the rim. All around, between the four arching doorways, were stone benches against the curving walls. In the center two steps led down to a firepit in which flames flickered, burning cleanly with little smoke.

She fallowed Zebara down the steps, and at his gesture sat on the lowest padded seat; she could feel the heat of that small fire. He reached under the seat on his side, and brought out a translucent bead.

"Incense," he said, before he put it on the fire. "Be welcome to our hall, Lunzie. Peace, health, prosperity to you, and to the children of your children."

It was so formal, so strange, that she had no idea what to say, and instead bowed her head a moment. When she looked up, a circle of heavyworlders enclosed her, on the floor of the hall above. Zebara raised his voice.

"My children and their children. You are known to them, Lunzie, and they are known to you."

They were a stolid, lumpish group to look at, Zebara's sons and their wives, the grandchildren, even the youngest, broad as wrestlers. She wondered which was the little boy who had interrupted his meeting. How long ago had that been? But she could not guess.

He was introducing them now. Each bowed from the waist, without speaking, and Lunzie nodded, murmuring a greeting. Then Zebara waved them away and they trooped off through one of the arched doorways.

"Family quarters that way," he said. "Sleeping rooms, nurseries, schoolrooms for the children."

"Schoolrooms? You don't have public schooling?"

"We do, but not for those this far out. And anyone with enough children in the household can hire a tutor and have them schooled. It saves tax money for those who can't afford private tutors. You met only the older children. There are fifty here altogether."

Lunzie found the thought disturbing, another proof that the heavyworlder culture diverged from FSP pol-icy. She had known there was overcrowding and uncontrolled breeding. But Zebara had always seemed so civilized.

Now, as he took her arm to guide her up the steps from the firepit and across the echoing hall to a door, she felt she did not know him at all. He was wearing neither the ominous black uniform nor the workaday coverall she had seen on most of the citizens. A long loose robe, so dark she could not tell its color in the dimly lit passage, low boots embroidered with bright patterns along the sides. He looked as massive as ever, but also comfortable, completely at ease.

"In here," he said at last, and ushered her into another, smaller, circular room. "This is my private study."

Lunzie took the low, thickly cushioned seat he of-fared, and looked around. Curved shelving lined the walls; cube files, film files, old-fashioned books, stacks of paper. There were a few ornaments: a graceful swirl of what looked like blue-green glass, stiff human figures in brown pottery, an amateurish but very bright painting, a lopsided lump that could only be a favorite child's or grandchild's first attempt at a craft. A large flatscreen monitor, control panels. Above was another of the shallow domes, this one lined with what looked like one sheet of white ceramic. The low couch she sat on was upholstered with a nubbly cloth. She was absurdly glad to be sure it was not leather. Fluffy pillows had been piled, making it comfortable for her shorter legs.

Zebara had seated himself across from her, behind a broad curving desk. He touched some control on it and the desk sank down to knee height, becoming less a barrier and more a convenience. Another touch, and the room lights brightened, their reflection from the dome a clear unshadowed radiance like daylight.

"It's... lovely," said Lunzie.

She could not think of anything else. Zebara gave her a surprisingly sweet smile, touched with sadness.

"Did your team give you trouble about visiting me?"

"Yes." She told him about Bias and found herself almost resenting Zebara's obvious amusement. "He's just trying to be conscientious," she finished up. She felt she had to make Bias sound reasonable, although she didn't think he was.

"He's being an idiot," Zebara said. "You are not a silly adolescent with a crush on some muscular stud. You're a grown woman."

"Yes, but, in a way, he's right, you know. I'm not sure myself that my encounters with coldsleep have left me completely... rational." She wondered whether to use any of what the young officer had told her, and decided to venture it. "It's like dying, and being born, only not a real start—everything over birth. Leftovers from the past life keep showing up. Like missing my daughter... I told you about that, before. Like discovering Sassinak. People say 'Get on with your life, just put it behind you.' And it is behind me, impossibly past. But it's also right there with me. Consequences that most people don't live to see, don't have to worry about."

"Ah. Just what I wanted to talk to you about. For I will take the long walk soon, die the death that has no waking, and it occurs to me that for you my younger self—the self you knew—is still alive. Still young. That self no one here remembers as clearly as you do. Tell me, Lunzie, will this self," and he thumped himself on the chest, "destroy in your memory the self I was? The self you knew?"

She shook her head. "If I only squint a little, I can see you as you were. It's hard to believe, even now, that you... I'm sorry..."

"No. That's all right. I understand, and this is what I wanted." He was breathing a little faster, as if he'd been working hard, but he didn't look distressed, only excited. "Lunzie, it is a sentimental thing, a foolish wish, and I do not like myself for revealing it. For having it. But I know how fast memories fade. I had thought, all these years, that I remembered you perfectly. The reality of you showed me I had not. I had forgotten that fleck of gold in your right eye, and the way you crook that finger." He pointed, and Lunzie looked down, surprised to see a gesture she had never noticed. "So I know I will be forgotten—myself, my present self—as my younger self has already been forgotten. This happens to all, I know. But... but you, you hold my younger self in your mind, and you will live... what? Another century, perhaps? Then I will be only a name to my great-grandchildren, and all the stories will be gone. Except with you."

"Are you... are you asking me to remember you? Because you must know I will."

"Yes... but more, too. I'm asking you to remember me as I was, the young heavyworlder you trusted, the younger man you loved, however briefly and lightly. I'm asking you to hold that memory brightly in mind whenever you consider my people. Coldsleep has a Special meaning for our people."

"I know. The escort you sent was telling me."

Zebara's eyebrows rose, then he shook his head. "I shouldn't be surprised. You're a very easy person to talk to. But if anyone had asked me whether Major Hessik would discuss such things with a lightweight, I'd have said never."

"I had to do something to get away from the subject of leather," said Lunzie, wrinkling her nose. "And from there, somehow..."

She went on to tell him what Hessik had explained. Zebara listened without interrupting.

"That's right," he said, when she finished. "A symbolic death and rebirth, which you have endured several times now. And which 1 ask you to endure once more, for me and my people."

The absolute no she had meant to utter stuck in her throat.

"I... never liked it," she said, wondering if it sounded as ridiculous to him as it did to her.

"Of course not. Lunzie, I brought you here today for several reasons. First, I want to remember you... and have you remember me... as I near my own death. I want to relive that short happy time we shared, through your memories. That's indulgence, an old man's indulgence. Second, I want to talk to you about my people, their history, their customs, in the hope that you can feel some sympathy for us and our dilemma. That you will speak for us where you can do so honestly. I'm not asking you to forget or forgive criminal acts. You could not do it and I would not ask. But not all are guilty, as you know. And finally, I must give you what we talked of before, if you are willing to carry it."

He sat hunched slightly forward, the dark soft robe hiding his hands. Lunzie said nothing for a moment, trying to compare his aged face, with all the ugly marks of a hard life in high G, to the younger man's blunt but healthy features. She had done that before. She would do it, she thought, even after he died, trying to reconcile what he had lost in those forty-odd years with her own losses.

He sighed, smiled at her, and said, "May I sit with you? It is not... what you might think."

Even as she nodded, she felt a slight revulsion. As a doctor, she knew she should not. That age did not change feelings. But his age changed her feelings, even as a similar lapse had changed Tee's feelings for her. What she and Zebara had shared, of danger and passion, no longer existed. With that awareness, her feelings about Tee changed from resignation to real understanding. How it must have hurt him, too, to have to admit that he had changed. And now Zebara.

He sat beside her, and reached for her hands. What must it be like for him, seeing her still young, feeling her strength, to know his own was running out, water from a cracked jug?

"The evidence you would believe, about our people's history," he began, "is far too great to take in quickly. You will either trust me, or not, when I say that it is there, incontrovertible. Those who sent the first colonists knew of the Long Winters that come at intervals: knew, and did not tell the colonists. We do not know all their reasons. Perhaps they thought that two years would be enough time to establish adequate food stores to survive. Perhaps those who made the decision didn't believe how bad it would be. I like to think they intended no worse than inconvenience. But what is known is that when our colony called for help, no help came."

"Was the call received?"

"Yes. No FTL communications existed in those days, you may recall. So when the winter did not abate and it became obvious it would not, the colonists realized that even an answered call might come too late. They expected nothing soon. But there was supposed to be a transfer pod only two light months out, with an FTL pod pre-programmed for the nearest Fleet sector headquarters. That's how emergency calls went out: sublight to the transfer point, which launched the pod, and the pod carried only a standard message, plus its originating transfer code."

Lunzie wrinkled her nose, trying to think when they might have expected an answer. "Two months, then. How long to the Fleet headquarters?"

"Should have been perhaps four months in all. An FTL response, a rescue attempt, could have been back within another two or three. Certainly within twelve Standard months, allowing decel and maneuvering time on both ends. The colonists would have had a hard time lasting that long. They'd have to eat all their seed grain and supplies. But most of them would have made it. instead," and he sighed again, spreading his big gnarled hands.

"I can't believe Fleet ignored a signal like that." Unless someone intercepted it, Lunzie thought suddenly. Someone within Fleet who for some reason wanted the colony to fail.

"It didn't!" Zebara gave her hands a squeeze, then stood, the robe swirling around him. "Let me fix you something. I'm thirsty a lot these days." He waved at the selection revealed behind one panel of his desk. "Fruit juices? Peppers?"

"Juice, please." Lunzie watched as he poured two glasses, and gave her the choice of them. Did he really think she worried about him drugging her? And if he did, should she be worried? But she sipped, finding nothing but the pleasant tang of juice as he settled beside her once more.

He took a long swallow, then went on. "It was not Fleet, as near as we can tell. At least, not they that ignored an emergency pod. There was no emergency pod."

"What!"

"We did find, buried in the file, the notation that the expense of an FTL emergency pod was not justified since Diplo was no more than twelve Standard light months from a major communications nexus which could pass on any necessary material. Colonists had wasted, the report said, such expensive resources before on minor matters that required no response. If colonists could not take care of themselves for twelve months, and I can just hear some desk-bound bureaucrat sniff at this point, they hardly qualified as colonists." He took another swallow. "You see what this means."

"Of course. The message didn't arrive somewhere useful in four months. It arrived at a commercial telecom station in twelve months by which time the colonists were expecting a rescue mission."

"And from there," Zebara said, "it was... re-routed. It never reached Fleet."

"But that's..."

"It was already embarrassing. The contract under which the colonists signed on specified the placement of the emergency pod. When that message arrived at the station, it was proof that no pod had been provided. And twelve months already? Suppose they had sent a mission then. What would they have found? From this point we have no direct proof, but we expect that someone made the decision to deepsix the whole file. To wait until the next scheduled delivery of factory parts, which was another two standard years, by which time they expected to find everyone dead. So sad, but this happens to colonies. It's a dangerous business!"

Lunzie felt cold all over, then a white-hot rage. "It's... it's murder. Intentional murder!"

"Not under the laws of FSP at the time. Or even now. We couldn't prove it. I say 'we,' but you know I mean those in Diplo's government at the time. Anyway, when the ships came again, they found the survivors; the women, the children, and a few young men who had been children in the Long Winter. The first ship down affected not to know that anything had happened. To be surprised! But one of the Company reps on the second ship got drunk and let some of this out."

She could think of nothing adequate to say. Luckily he didn't seem to expect anything. After a few moments, he went back to family matters, telling her of his hopes for them. Gradually her mind quieted. By the time they parted, she carried away another memory as sweet as her first. It had no longer seemed perverse to have an old man's hands touching her, an old man's love still urgent after all those years.

Chapter Ten

FSP Escort Claw

Dupaynil led the way back toward the bridge, walking steadily and slowly. The young officer would still be wondering, might still wish he had Dupaynil under guard. Except that there was no guard. He would feel safer with Dupaynil in front of him, calm and unhurried. At the landing outside the bridge, Dupaynil said over his shoulder, "If you don't mind, I'd like to finish disabling the pod locks on pod three."

"Who's in there?"

"Your weapons tech. So far as I know, all the crew were in this with Ollery. They're all dangerous, but this one particularly so."

Pauls frowned. "Suppose we run into something we need to fight?"

"We'd better not. We can't trust him. I don't think he can get out by himself. At least not without your help. But he and Sins had the best chance of figuring out what I did and undoing it, even with the minima] toolkits standard in pods."

"You may be right, but, look, I want to log at least some of this first. And I want you with me."

Dupaynil shrugged and moved onto the bridge. He thought it would be hours before the weapons tech could possibly get out. At the moment, gaining Panis's confidence took precedence. They settled in uneasy silence, Panis in the command seat and Dupaynil in the one in which he'd first seen the master mate.

He said nothing while Panis made a formal entry in the ship's computer, stating the date and time that he assumed command, and the code under which he would file a complete report. The computer's response to change of command, Dupaynil noticed, was to recheck Panis's retinal scans, palmprint, and voiceprint against its memory of him. Dupaynil would have had a hard time taking over if something had happened to Panis. He asked about that.

"Not as ship commander, no sir. You might have convinced it that you were a disaster survivor. You were logged in as a legitimate passenger. But you wouldn't have been given access to secure files or allowed to make any course changes. It would've given you lifesupport access: water, food, kept the main compartments aired up. That's all. And the ship would have launched an automatic distress signal when it dropped out of FTL."

"I see. There are files in the computer, Captain, which will provide evidence needed to confirm Ollery's treachery."

Dupaynil noticed that Panis reacted to the use of his new title with a minute straightening; a good sign. He did not mention that he had penetrated some of the computer's secure files already. Maintenance wasn't what he would call secure. Panis glanced over.

"I suppose you'd like me to access them. Although I'd think that would be a matter for Fleet Security." Dupaynil said nothing and waited. Panis suddenly grimaced. "Of course. You are Fleet Security, at least part of it. Or so you say." Wariness became him. He seemed to mature almost visibly as Dupaynil watched.

"Yes, I am. On the other hand, since I am the officer involved, the one who killed Ollery, you have a natural reluctance to let me meddle in the files, just in case. Right?"

"Right." Panis shook his head. "And I thought I was lucky to be yanked off a battle platform where I was one of a hundred Jigs, to be executive officer on an escort! Maybe something will happen, I said."

"Something did." Dupaynil grinned at him, the easy smile that had won over more than one who had had suspicions of him. "And you survived, acquitted yourself well. I assure you, if you can bring in the evidence that shows just where the agents of piracy are in Fleet, you'll have made your mark."

"Piracy!" Panis started to say more, then held up his hand. "No, not this moment. Let me log the first of it, and we'll get into that later."

This was a ship's captain speaking, however inexperienced. Dupaynil nodded and waited. The Jig's verbal report was surprisingly orderly and concise for someone who had narrowly escaped death and still had ripening bruises on his face. Dupaynil's opinion of him went up another two notches, and then a third when Panis waved him over to the command input station.

"I'd like your report, too, sir. Lieutenant Commander Dupaynil, taken aboard Clow on resupply station 64, Fleet Standard dating... Computer?" The computer checked the date and time, and flashed it on Pani's screen. "Right! 23.05.34.0247. Transfer from the cruiser Zaid-Dayan, Commander Sassinak commanding, with orders from Inspector-General Parchandri to proceed to Seti space on a secret mission. Is that right, sir?"

"Right," said Dupaynil. Was this the time to mention that he thought those orders were iaked? Probably not. At least, not without thinking about it a bit more. He didn't think Sassinak had intended to tangle him with planet pirates or their allies. If he said his orders were faked, that would drag her into it.

"Then if you'll give your report, Commander," and Panis handed him the microphone.

Carefully, trying to think ahead to the implications of his report, Dupaynil told how his suspicions had been aroused by the length of time the crew had been together and the captain's attitude.

"Escort and patrol crews are never left unshuffled for more than one 24 month tour," he said. "Precisely because these ships are hard to track and very dangerous, and small enough for one or two mutineers to take over. Five years without a shuffle is simply impossible. Someone in Personnel had to be in the plot, to cover the records." He went on to tell about setting some surveillance taps and hearing the senior mate and captain discuss his murder. "They said enough about their contacts in both Fleet and certain politically powerful families to convince me that information we've been seeking for years could well be on this ship. Agents aren't supposed to write things down, but they all do it. Names, dates, places to meet, codes: no one can remember all of it. Either in hardcopy or in the computer. And they knew it, because they were afraid I'd get access to those files." He finished with a brief account of his sabotage of the escape pods, and his actions during and after the drill.

"Do you have any evidence now to support these allegations?" asked Panis.

"I have the recording from that audio tap. There may be data in the other taps. I haven't had time to look at diem."

"I'd like to hear what you have," Panis said.

"It's in my cabin." At Panis's expression, Dupaynil shrugged. "Either I would make it through alive to retrieve it or I'd be dead and it might, just might, survive me. Not on my body, which they'd search. May I get it for you?"

He could see uncertainty and sympathized. Panis had had a lot to adjust to in less than an hour. And to him, Dupaynil was still a stranger, hardly to be trusted. But he made the decision and nodded permission. Dupaynil left the bridge quickly, noting that all the partitions were retracted. He went direcdy to his cabin, retrieved the data cube, and returned. Panis was waiting, facing the bridge hatch. Without saying anything, Dupaynil slipped the cube into a player and turned it on. As it played, Panis's expression changed through suspicion to surprise to, at the end, anger.

"Bastards!" he said, when the sound ceased and Dupaynil picked up the cube again. "I knew they didn't like you, but I never thought... And then to be in league with planet pirates! Who's that Lady Luisa they were talking about?"

"Luisa Paraden. Aunt, by the way, of the Randolph Paraden who was expelled from the Academy because Commander Sassinak proved he was involved in theft, sexual harrassment, and racial discrimination against Wefts. They were cadets at the same time."

"I never heard that."

Dupaynil smiled sardonically. "Of course not. It wasn't advertised. But, if you ever wonder why Commander Sassinak has a Weft following, that's one reason. When Ollery was trying to get me to gossip about her, that's one of the things he mentioned. And it made me suspicious: he shouldn't have known. It was kept very quiet."

"And you think there's more evidence in the ship's computer?"

"Yes, you heard what they said. Probably even more in their personal gear. But you're the captain, Panis. You're in legal command. I believe that you recognize we're both in a very tricky situation. We have one dead former captain and eleven live crew imprisoned in escape pods. If we should run into some of the other renegades, especially some of Ollery's friends, we could be shot for mutiny and murder before we ever got that evidence to a court martial."

Panis touched his swelling face gingerly, then grinned. "Then we'd better not get caught."

In the time it took to lug Ollery's body to a storage bay and to disable the controls on the last occupied pod, Dupaynil figured out what to do about his faked orders. He could blame them on the traitor in the Inspector General's office. Sassinak would never reveal the real source. He was fairly sure he could never get Ssli testimony incriminating her. In feet, it was only a guess that she had done it. It was not in the interest of Fleet or the FSP that she be blamed, even though she'd done it. But it was entirely in the interests of the Fleet to bring as many charges as possible against those guilty of conniving at planet piracy.

He thought through the whole chain of events. Would it have made sense for such a traitor to assign him to Claw and get him killed? Certainly, if they considered Sassinak a threat and they knew he'd been working with her. They'd disrupted a profitable scam on Ireta. He'd uncovered one of their agents on the Zaid-Dayan. He was dangerous to them in himself, and they'd taken the opportunity to get him away from Sassinak.

He could almost believe that. It made sense, criminal sense. But if it were true, Ollery or the mate who he suspected of being the senior within the criminal organization, should have known from the beginning about him, should not have needed to discover his taps to suspect him. Of course, there were always glitches in the transfer of data within an organization. Perhaps the message explaining him to Ollery was even now back at the supply station.

Panis had let him do a bit of first aid, a sign of trust that Dupaynil valued. The jig's bruised face wasn't all the damage. He had a massive bruise along his ribs on one side.

"Ollery," he said when Dupaynil raised his eyebrows at it. "That's when I realized, or at least, I didn't know what was going on. Siris had me down, and then I saw the captain with the needier. He yelled for Siris to roll aside, and kicked me, and then you..."

"Yes," said Dupaynil, interrupting that. "And it's going to hurt you to breathe for awhile. Well have to keep an eye on your color, make sure you don't start collecting fluid in that lung. Why don't you start teaching me what I need to know to do the heavy work while we're going wherever we're going? You don't need to be hauling up and down ladders."

He had had Panis fetch a clean uniform from his quarters, and now helped him into it. Ice for the bruises. At least they had plenty of that. He mentioned the bay fiill of water ice and suggested thawing some for showers.

"I'll tell you another thing that bothers me," Dupaynil said with disarming frankness when they were back on the bridge. "I'm no longer sure that my orders to leave the Zaid-Dayan and board this ship were genuine."

"What? You think someone sent false orders?" Dupaynil nodded. "My orders carried an initiation code that really upset Commander Sassinak. She claimed she'd seen it before, years ago, right before someone tried to kill her, on her first cruise. I always thought that initiation code simply meant the Inspector General's office. One particular comp station, say, or a particular officer. But even she thought it was strange that she had to put in at a supply station. That I was being yanked off her ship when she had previous orders that all of us were to appear as witnesses in the Ireta trial." He had explained the bare outline of that toPanis. "I could hardly believe it, but they'd come by IFTL link. No chance of interference. But you heard what they said on tape and what Sins said. If there are high-placed traitors in Fleet, especially in Personnel Assignment, and there'd almost have to be for this crew to have stayed together so long, it would be no trick at all to have me transferred."

"Hard to prove," Panis said, sipping a mug of hot soup.

"Worse than that." Dupaynil spread his hands. "Say that's what happened and they expected me to be killed, with a good excuse, like that malfunctioning escape pod. They still might take the precaution of wiping all records of those orders out of the computers. Suppose they try to claim Commander Sassinak or 1 faked those orders. Then, if I turn up alive, they can get me on that. If I don't, they can go after her. She's caused them a lot of trouble over the years, and I'd bet Randy Paraden still holds a big, prickly grudge where she's concerned. Faking orders or interfering with an IFTL link is big enough to get even a well-known cruiser captain in serious trouble."

"I see. It does make sense they'd want you away from her, with the evidence you'd gathered. And if they could discredit her later..."

"I wonder how many other people they've managed to finagle away from her crew," Dupaynil went on, embroidering for the mere fun of it. "If we find out that one officer's been called away for a family crisis, and another's been given an urgent assignment? Well, I think that would prove it."

Panis, he was glad to see, accepted all this without difficulty. It did, after all, make sense. Whereas what Sassinak had done, and Dupaynil was still convinced she had done it, made sense only in personal terms: he had trespassed on her hospitality. At least his new explanation might clear her and laid guilt only on those already coated with it.

"So what do you think we should do, aside from avoiding all the unknown friends of the late Major Ollery?"

Dupaynil smiled at him. He liked the way the young man referred to Ollery, and he liked the dry humor.

"I think we should find out who they are, preferably by raiding Ollery's files. And then it would be most helpful if we'd turn up at the Ireta trial. Tanegli's trial, I should say. Then we ought to do something about your prisoners before their pod air supplies run out."

"I forgot about that." Panis's eyes flicked to the computer. "Oh, they're still on ship's air. Unless you did something to that, too."

"Didn't have time. But they don't have recycling capacity for more than a hundred hours or so, do they? I don't think either of us wants to let them out, even one by one."

"No. But I can't..."

"You can offer them coldsleep, you know. The drugs are there, and the cabinets. They'd be perfectly safe for as long as it takes us to get them to a Fleet facility."

Panis nodded slowly. "That's a better alternative than what I thought of. But what if they won't do it?"

"Warn them. Wait twelve hours. Warn them again and cut them off ship's air. That'll give them hours to decide and prepare themselves. Are these the standard pods, with just over 100 hours of air?"

"Yes. But what if they still refuse?"

Dupaynil shrugged. "If they want to the of suffocation rather than face a court martial, that's their choice. We can't stop it without opening the pods and I can't advise that. Only Siris has any injuries, and his aren't bad enough to prevent his taking the induction medications."

When push came to shove, though most of them blustered, only three waited until the ship ventilators cut out. The senior mate, Dupaynil noticed, was one of diem. All the crew put themselves into coldsleep well before the pod air was gone. When the last one's bioscans went down, Dupaynil and Panis celebrated with the best the galley offered.

Dupaynil had found that the crew kept special treats in their quarters. Nothing as good as fresh food, but a tin of sticky fruitcake and a squat jar of expensive liquor made a party.

"I suppose I should have insisted on sealing the crew quarters," Panis said around a chunk of cake.

"But you needed to search them for evidence."

"Which I'm finding." Dupaynil poured for both of them with a flourish. "The mate kept a little book. Genuine pulp paper, if you can believe that. I'm not sure what all the entries mean... yet... but I doubt very much they're innocent. Ollery's personal kit had items far out of line for his Fleet salary, not to mention that nonissue set of duelling pistols. We're lucky he didn't blow a hole in you with one of those."

"You sound like a mosquito in a bloodbank," Panis grumbled. "Fairly gloating over all the data you might Sid."

"I am," Dupaynil agreed. "You're quite right; even without this," and he raised his glass, "I'd be drunk with delight at the possibilities. Do you have any idea how hard we normally work for each little smidgen of information? How many times we have to check and recheck it? The hours we burn out our eyes trying to find correlations even computers can't see?"

"My heart bleeds," said Panis, his mouth twitching.

"And you're only a Jig. Mulvaney's Ghost, but you're going to make one formidable commodore."

"If I survive. I suppose you'll want to tap into the computer tomorrow?"

"With your permission." Dupaynil sketched a bow from his seat. "We have to hope they were complacent enough to have only simple safeguards on the ticklish files. If Ollery thought to have them self-destruct if a new officer took command..."

Panis paled. "I hadn't thought of that."

"1 had. But then I thought of Ollery. That kind of smugness never anticipates its own fall. Besides, you had to log a command change. It was regulation."

"Which you always follow." Panis let that lie, a challenge of sorts.

Dupaynil wondered what he was driving at, precisely. They'd worked well together so for. The younger man had seemed to enjoy his banter. But he reminded himself that he did not really know Panis. He let his face show the fatigue he felt, and sag into its age and his usually-hidden cynicism.

"If you mean Security doesn't always follow the letter of regulations, then you're right. I freely admit that planting taps on this ship was both against regulations and discourteous. Under the circumstances..." Dupaynil spread his hands in resignation to the inevitable.

Panis flushed but pursued the issue. "Not that so much. You had reasons for suspicion that I didn't know. Anyway it saved our lives. But I'd heard about Commander Sassinak, that she didn't follow regulations as often as not. If this is some ploy of hers?"

Blast. The boy was too smart. He'd seen through the screen. Dupaynil let the worry he felt edge his voice.

"Who'd you hear that from?"

"Admiral Spirak. He captained the battle platform I v."

"Spirak!" Relief and contempt mixed gave that more force than he'd intended. Dupaynil lowered his voice and kept it even. "Panis, your admiral is the last person who should complain of someone else's lack of respect for regulations. I won't tell you why he's still spouting venom about Sassinak, even though she saved his career once. Gossip was Ollery's specialty. But if you ever wondered why he's got only two stars at his age and why he's commanding Fleet's only nonoperational battle platform, there's a damn good reason. I've seen Commander Sassinak's files, and it's true she doesn't always fight an engagement by the book. But she's come out clean from encounters that cost other commanders ships. The only regulations she bends are those that interfere with accomplishing the mission. She's fer more a stickler for ship discipline than anyone on this ship was."

Now Panis looked as if he'd been dipped in boiling water.

"Sorry, sir. But he'd said if I ever did end up serving with one of her officers, look out. That she had a following, but more loyal to her than to Fleet."

"I don't suppose he told you about the promotion party he gave himself? And nobody came? It's useless to tell you, Panis. Youll have to decide for yourself. She's popular, but she's also smart and a good commander. As for regulations, I felt that my duties entitled me to bend a few on her ship and she straightened me out in short order."

"What'd you do? Put a tap on her?.

Dupaynil gave that a hard look, and Panis suddenly realized what that could mean and turned even redder than before.

"I didn't mean... That's not what..."

"Good." Dupaynil gave no ground with that tone. "I did attempt to monitor some communications traffic without giving her proper notice. We were looking for a saboteur, as I told you. I thought a little snooping along the corridors, in the crew's gym, and so on, wouldn't hurt. She felt differently." That this was only distantly related to what had really happened bothered him not at all. She had been angry. He had put in surveillance devices without her permission. That much was true. "I don't consider myself one of Commander Sassinak's officers," Dupaynil went on. "My assignment to her ship was temporary duty only, a special mission to unearth this saboteur."

He could not tell if this satisfied Panis, and he didn't really care. He had liked the younger officer but suggestive questions about Sassinak rubbed him the wrong way. Why? He wasn't sure. He had not been tempted to involve himself with her. Her relationship with Ford was clear enough. So why did he feel such rage when someone criticized? It was worth thinking over later, when they'd found or not found the evidence he needed, and decided what to do with it.

Dupaynil's excursions into the ship's computers yielded all he could have wished for. He knew his satisfaction showed. He insisted on sharing his findings with Panis so the younger officer would know why.

"Besides," he said, "if someone scrags me successfully, you'll still have a chance to break up the conspiracy. "

"How?" Panis looked up from the hardcopy of one of the more startling files, and tapped it with his finger. "If all these people are really part of it, then Fleet itself is hopeless."

"Not at all." Dupaynil put his fingertips together. "Do you know how many officers Fleet has? This is less than five percent. Your reaction is as dangerous as they are. If you assume that five percent rotten means the whole thing's rotten, then you've done their work for them."

"I hadn't thought of it that way."

"No. Most people don't. But let's be very glad we have to evade only five percent. And let's figure out how to get this information back to some of the 95% who aren't involved in it."

Panis had an odd expression on his face. "I'm not really... 1 mean, my skills in navigation are only average. And the computer in this ship holds only a limited number of plots."

"Plots?"

"Pre-programmed courses between charted points. I'm not sure I could drop us out of FTL, and then get us somewhere else that's not in the computer."

Dupaynil had assumed that all ship's officers were competent in navigation. He opened his mouth to ask what was Panis's problem, and shut it again. He wasn't able to pilot the ship, or even maintain the environmental system without Panis's instructions, so why should he expect everything of a young Jig?

"Does this mean we're stuck with the course and destination Ollery put in?" A worse thought erupted into his mind with the force of an explosion. "Do we even know where we're going?"

"Yes, we do. The computer's perfectly willing to tell me that. We're headed for Seti space, just as your orders specified." Panis frowned. "Where did you think we might be going?"

"It suddenly occurred to me that Ollery might never have entered that course, or might have changed it, since he was planning to kill me. Seti space! I don't know whether to laugh or cry," Dupaynil said. "Assuming my orders were faked, was that chosen as a random destination, or for some reason?"

Panis fiddled with his seat controls and glanced at something on the command screen next to him.

"Well... from where we were, that gives the longest stretch in FTL. Time enough for Ollery to figure out what to do with you and how. Perhaps it was that. Or maybe they had a chore for him in Seti space, in addition to scragging you."

"So, you're saying that we have to go where we're going before we can go anywhere else?"

"If you want to be sure of getting anywhere anytime soon," Panis said. "We've been in undefined space— FTL mode—for a long time, and if we drop out before the node, I have no idea where we might end up. We do have the extra supplies that the crew would have needed, but..."

"All right. On to Seti space. I suppose I could find something to do there, in the way of digging up dirt, although what we have already is more than enough." Dupaynil stretched. "But you do realize that while the personnel listed as on duty with the embassy to the Sek are no. on Ollery's list of helpers, this means nothing.

They could be part of the same conspiracy without Ollery having any knowledge of it."

The outer beacon to the Seti systems had all the courteous tact of a boot in the face.

"Intruders be warned!" it bleated in a cycle of all the languages known in FSP. "Intruders not tolerated. Intruders will be destroyed, if not properly naming selves immediately."

Panis set Claw's transmitter to the correct setting and initiated the standard Fleet recognition sequence. He was recovering nicely, Dupaynil thought, from the shock of his original captain's treachery and the necessity of helping in a mutiny. He did not blurt out everything to the Fleet officer who was military attache at the embassy nor did he request an immediate conference with the Ambassador. Instead, he simply reported that he had an officer with urgent orders insystem and let Dupaynil handle it from there.

"I'm not sure I understand, Commander Dupaynil, just what your purpose here is."

That diplomatic smoothness had once seemed innocuous. Now, he could not be sure if it was habit or conspiracy.

"My orders," Dupaynil said, keeping his own tone as light and unconcerned as the other's, "are to check the shipping records of the main Seti commercial firms involved in trade with Sector Eighteen human worlds. You know how this works. I haven't the foggiest notion what someone is looking at, or for, or why they couldn't do this long distance."

"It has nothing to do with that Iretan mess?"

Again, it might be only ordinary curiosity. Or something much more dangerous. Dupaynil shrugged, ran his finger along the bridge of his nose and hoped he passed for a dandified Bretagnan.

"It might, I suppose. Or it might not. How would I know? There I was happily ensconced on one of the better-run cruisers in Fleet, with a woman commander of considerable personal ah... charm..."He made it definitely singular, but with a tonal implication that the plural would have been more natural, and decided that a knowing wink would overdo his act. "I would have been quite satisfied to finish the cruise with her... her ship." He shrugged again, and gave a deep sigh. "And then I find myself shipped out here, just because I have had contact with the Seti before, without arousing an incident, I suppose, to spend days making carefully polite inquiries to which they will make carefully impolite replies. That is all I know, except that if I had an enemy at headquarters, he could hardly have changed my plans in a way I would like less."

That came out with a touch more force than he'd intended, but it seemed to convince the fellow that he was sincere. The man's face did not change but he could feel a subtle lessening of tension.

"Well. I suppose I can introduce you to the Seti Commissioner of Commerce. That's a cabinet level position in the Sek's court. It'll know where else you should go."

"That would be very kind of you," said Dupaynil. He never minded handing out meaningless courtesies to lubricate the daily work.

"Not at all," the other said, already looking down at the pile of work on his desk. "The Commissioner's a bigot of the worst sort, even for a Seti. If this is a plot of your worst enemy at headquarters, he's planning to make you suffer."

The conventions of Seti interaction with other races had been designed to place the inferior of the universe securely and obviously in that inferior position and keep them there. To Seti, the inferior of the universe included those who tampered with "Holy Luck" by medical means (especially including genetic engineering), and those too cowardly (as they put it) to gamble. Humans were known to practice genetic engineering. Many of them changed their features for mere fashion— the Seti view of makeup and hair styling. Very few wished to gamble, as Seti did, by entering a room through the Door of Honor which might, or might not, drop a guillotine on those who passed through it... depending on a computer's random number generator.

Dupaynil did not enjoy his crawl through the Tunnel of Cowardly Certainty but he had known what to expect. Seated awkwardly on the hard mushroom shaped stool allowed the ungodly foreigner, he kept his eyes politely lowered as the Commissioner of Commerce continued its midmoraing snack. He didn't want to watch anyway. On their own worlds, the Seti ignored FSP prohibitions and dined freely on such abominations as those now writhing in the Commissioner's bowl. The Commissioner gave a final crunch and burp, exhaled a gust of rank breath, and leaned comfortably against its cushioned couch.

"Ahhh. And now, Misss-ter Du-paay-nil. You wish to ask a favor of the Seti?"

"With all due respect to the honor of the Sek and the eggbearers," and Dupaynil continued with a memorized string of formalities before coming to the point. "And, if it please the Commissioner, merely to place the gaze of the eye upon the trade records pertaining to the human worlds in Sector Eighteen."

Another long blast of smelly breath; the Commissioner yawned extravagantly, showing teeth that desperately needed cleaning, although Dupyanil didn't know if the Seti ever got decay or gum disease.

"Ssector Eighteen," it said and slapped its tail heavily on the floor.

A Seti servant scuttled in bearing a tray piled with data cubes. Dupaynil wondered if the Door of Honor ignored servants or if they, too, had to take their chances with death. The servant withdrew, and the Commissioner ran its tongue lightly over the cubes. Dupaynil stared, then realized they must be labelled with chemcodes that the Commissioner could taste. It plucked one of the cubes from the pile, and inserted it into a player.

"Ah! What the human-dominated Fleet calls Sector Eighteen, the Flower of Luck in Disguise. Trade with human worlds? It is meager, not worth your time."

"Illustrious and most fortunate scion of a fortunate family," Dupaynil said, "it is my unlucky fate to be at the mercy of admirals."

This amused the Commissioner who laughed immoderately.

"Sso! It is a matter of luck, you would have me think? Unlucky in rank, unlucky in the admiral who sent you? But you do not believe in luck, so your people say. You believe in... What is that obscenity? Probabilities? Statistics?"

The old saying about "lies, damn lies, and statistics" popped into Dupaynil's mind, but it seemed the wrong moment. Instead, he said "Of others I cannot speak, but I believe in luck. I would not have arrived without it"

He did, indeed, believe in luck. At least at the moment. For without his unwise tapping of Sassinak's com shack, he would not have had the chance to find the evidence he had found. Now, if he could just get through with this and back to FedCentral in time for Tanegli's trial... That would be luck indeed! Apparently even temporary sincerity was convincing. The Seti Commissioner gave him a toothy grin.

"Well. A partial convert. You know what we say about your statistics, don't you? There are lies, damn lies, and..."

And I'm glad I didn't use that joke, Dupaynil thought to himself, since I don't believe this guy thinks that it is one.

"I will save your eyes the trouble of examining our faultless, but copious, records regarding trade with the Flower of Luck in Disguise. If you were unlucky in your admiral, you shall be lucky in my support. Your clear unwillingness to struggle with this unlucky task shall be rewarded. I refuse permission to examine our records, not because we have anything to conceal, but because this is the Season of Unrepentance, when no such examination is lawful. You are fortunate in my approval for I will give you such refusal as will satisfy the most unlucky admiral."

Again, a massive tail-slap, combined with a querulous squealing grunt, and the servitor scuttled in with a rolling cart with a bright green box atop. The Commissioner prodded it and it extruded a sheet of translucent lime green, covered with Seti script. Then another, and another.

"This is for the human ambassador, and this for your admiral, and this, o luckiest of humans, is your authorization to take passage in a human-safe compartment aboard the Grand Luck to human space. To attend a meeting of the Grand Council, in feet. You will have the great advantage of enjoying the superiority of Seti technology first-hand, an unprecedented opportunity for one of your... ah... luck."

It reached out, with the sheets and Dupaynil took them almost without thinking, wondering how he was going to get out of this.

"My good fortune abounds," he began. "Nonetheless, it is impossible that I should be honored with such a gift of luck. A mere human to take passage with Seti? It is my destined chance to travel more humbly."

A truly wicked chuckle interrupted him. The Commissioner leaned closer, its strong breath sickening.

"Little man," it said, "I think you will travel humbly enough to please whatever god enjoys your crawl through the Tunnel of Cowardly Certainty. With choice, always a chance. But with chance, no choice. The orders are in your hand. Your prints prove your acceptance. You will report to your ambassador, and then to the Grand Luck where great chances await you."

Chapter Eleven

Private Yacht Adagio

Ford woke to an argument overhead. It was not the first time he'd wakened, but it was the first time he'd been this clear-headed. Prudence kept his eyelids shut as he listened to the two women's voices.

"It's for his own good," purred Madame Flaubert. "His spiritual state is simply ghastly."

"He looks ghastly." Auntie Quesada rustled. He couldn't tell if it was her dress or something she carried.

"The outward and visible sign of inward spiritual disgrace. Poison, if you will. It must be purged, Quesada, or that evil influence will ruin us all."

A sniff, a sigh. Neither promised him much. He felt no pain, at the moment, but he was sure that either woman could finish him off without his being able to defend himself. And why? Even if they knew what he wanted, that should be no threat to them. Auntie Quesada had even seemed to like him and he had been enchanted by her.

He heard a click, followed by a faint hiss, then a pungent smell began to creep up his nose. A faint yelp, rebuked, reminded him of Madame Flaubert's pet. His nose tickled. He tried to ignore it and failed, convulsing in a huge sneeze.

"Bad spirits," intoned Madame Flaubert.

Now that his eyes were open to the dim light, he could see her fantastic draperies in all their garishness; purples, reds, oranges, a flowered fringed shawl wrapped around those red tresses. Her half-closed eyes glittered at him as she pretended, and he was sure it was pretense, to commune with whatever mediums communed with. He didn't know. He was a rational, well-educated Fleet officer. He'd had nothing to do with superstitions since his childhood, when he and a friend had convinced themselves that a drop of each one's blood on a rock made it magic.

"May they fly away, the bad spirits, may they leave him safe and free..."

Madame Flaubert went on in this vein for awhile longer as Ford wondered what courtesy required. His aunt, as before, looked completely miserable, sitting stiffly on the edge of her chair and staring at him. He wanted to reassure her, but couldn't think how. He felt like a dirty wet rag someone had wiped up a bar with. The pungent smoke of some sort of a floral incense blurred his vision and made his eyes water. Finally Madame Flaubert ran down and simply sat, head thrown back. After a long, dramatic pause, she sighed, rolled her head around as if to ease a stiff neck and stood.

"Coming, Quesada?"

"No... I think I'll sit with him a bit."

"You shouldn't. He needs to soak in the healing rays."

Madame Flaubert's face loomed over his. She had her lapdog in hand and it drooled onto him. He shuddered. But she turned away and waddled slowly out of his cabin. His great-aunt simply looked at him.

Ford cleared his throat, more noisily than he could have wished, and said, "I'm sorry, Aunt Quesada... this is not what I had in mind."

She shook her head. "Of course not. I simply do not understand."

"What?"

"Why Seraphine is so convinced you're dangerous to me. Of course you didn't really come just to visit. I knew that. But I've always been a good judge of men, young or old, and I cannot believe you mean me harm."

"I don't." His voice wavered, and he struggled to get it under control. "I don't mean you any harm. Why would I?"

"But the BLACK KEY, you see. How can I ignore the evidence of my own eyes?"

"The black key?" Weak he might be but his mind had cleared. She had said those words in capital letters.

His aunt looked away from him, lips pursed. In that pose, she might have been an elderly schoolteacher confronted with a moral dilemma outside her experience.

"I suppose it can't hurt to tell you," she said softly.

The Black Key was, it seemed, one of Madame Flaubert's specialties. It could reveal the truth about people. It could seek out and unlock their hidden malign motives. Ford was sure that any malign motives were Madame Flaubert's, but he merely asked how it worked.

His aunt shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not the medium. But I've seen it, my dear. Sliding across the table, rising into the air, turning and turning until it... it pointed straight at the guilty party."

Ford could think of several ways to do that, none of them involving magic or "higher spirits." He himself was no expert but he suspected that Dupaynil could have cleared up the Black Key's actions in less than five minutes.

"One of my servants," Auntie Q was saying. "I'd been missing things, just baubles really. But one can't let it go on. Seraphine had them all in and questioned them, and the Black Key revealed it. The girl confessed! Confessed to even more than I'd known about."

"What did the authorities say, when you told them how you'd gotten that confession?"

Auntie Q blushed faintly. "Well, dear, you know I didn't actually report it. The poor girl was so upset and, of course I had to dismiss her, and she had had so many troubles in her life already. Seraphine said that the pursuit of vengeance always ends hi evil."

I'll bet she did, Ford thought. Just as she had probably arranged the theft in the first place, for the purpose of showing the Black Key's power, to convince Auntie Q.

"As a matter effect," Auntie Q said, "Seraphine felt a bit guilty, I think. She had been the one to suggest that I needed another maid, with the Season coming on, and she'd given me the name of the agency."

"I see." He saw, indeed. What he did not know yet was just why Seraphine perceived him as a threat—or why his aunt had taken in Madame Flaubert at all. "How long has Madame Flaubert been your companion?"

Auntie Q shifted in her seat, unfolded and refolded her hands. "Since... since a few months after... after..." Her mouth worked but she couldn't seem to get the words out. Finally she said, "I... I can't quite talk about that, dear, so please don't ask me."

Ford stared at her, his own miseries forgotten. Whatever else was going on, whatever Auntie Q knew that might help Sassinak against the planet pirates, he had to get Madame Flaubert away from his aunt.

He said as gently as he could, "I'm sorry, Aunt Quesada. I didn't mean to distress you. And whatever the Black Key may have intimated, I promise you I mean you no harm."

"I want to believe you!" Now the old face crumpled. Tears rolled down her cheeks. "You're the first—the only family that's come to see me in years—and I liked you!"

He hitched himself up in bed, ignoring the wave of blurred vision.

"My dear, please! I've admitted my father was wrong about you. I think you're marvelous."

"She said you'd flatter me."

Complex in that were the wish to be flattered, and the desire not to be fooled.

"I suppose I have, if praise is flattery. But, dear Aunt, I never knew anybody with enough nerve to get two Ryxi tailfeathers! How can I not flatter you?"

Auntie Q sniffed, and wiped her face with a lace-edged kerchief. "She keeps telling me that's a vulgar triumph, that I should be ashamed."

"Poppycock!" The word, out of some forgotten old novel, surprised him. It amused his aunt, who smiled through her tears. "My dear, she's jealous of you, that's all, and it's obvious even to me, a mere male. She doesn't like me because... Well, does she like any of the men who work for you?"

"Not really." Now his aunt looked thoughtful. "She says... she says it's indecent for an old lady to travel with so many male crew, and only one female maid. You know, I used to have a male valet who left my ex-husband's service when we separated. Madame Flaubert was so scathing about it I simply had to dismiss him."

"And then she found you the maid who turned out to be a thief," Ford said. He let that work into her mind. When comprehension brightened those old eyes, he grinned at her.

"That... that contemptible creature!" Auntie Q angry was as enchanting now as she must have been sixty years back. "Raddled old harridan. And I took her into my bosom!" Metaphorically only, Ford was sure. "Brought her among my friends, and this is how she repays me!"

It sounded like a quote from some particularly bad Victorian novel and not entirely sincere. He watched his aunt's face, which had flushed, paled, and then flushed again.

"Still, you know, Ford, she really does have powers. Amazing things, she's been able to tell me, and others. She knows all our secrets, it seems. I... I have to confess I'm just a little afraid of her." She tried a giggle at her own foolishness, but it didn't come off.

"You really are frightened," he said and reached out a hand. She clutched it, and he felt the tremor in her fingers.

"Oh, not really! How silly!" But she would not meet his eye, and the whites of hers showed like those of a frightened animal.

"Auntie Q, forgive my asking, but... but do your friends ever come visit? Travel with you? From what my father said, I'd had the idea you traveled in a great bevy, this whole yacht full to bursting."

"Well, I used to. But you know how it is. Or I suppose you don't. In the Navy you can't choose your companions. But there were quarrels, and upsets, and some didn't like this, and others didn't like that..."

"And some didn't like Madame Flaubert," Ford said very quietly. "And Madame Flaubert didn't like anyone who gat between you."

She sat perfectly still, holding his hand, the color on her cheeks coming and going. Then she leaned close and barely whispered in his ear.

"I can't... I can't tell you how horrible it's been. That woman! But I can't do anything. I... I don't know why. I c-c-can't... say... anything she doesn't... want me to." Her breathing had roughened; her face was almost purple. "Or 111 die!" She sat back up, and would have drawn her hands away but Ford kept his grasp on them.

"Please send Sam to help me to the... uh... facilities," he said in the most neutral voice he could manage.

His aunt nodded, not looking at him, and stood. Ford fek bis strength returning on a wave of mingled rage and pity. Granted, his aunt Quesada was a rich, foolish ok) lady, but even foolish old ladies had a right to have friends, to suffer their own follies, and not those of others. Sam, when he appeared, eyed Ford with scant respect.

.Tou going to live? Or make us all trouble by dying aboard?^

"I intend to live out my normal span and die a long way from here," Ford said.

With Sam's help, he could just make it up and into the bath suite. The face he saw in the mirror looked ghastly, and he shook his head at it.

"Looks don't loll," he said.

Sam gave an approving nod. "You might be getting ttnse. You tell Madam yet the real reason you came to

.Tve hardly had a chance." He glared at Sam, without effect. "For people who can't believe in my idle curiosity, you're all curious enough yourselves."

"Practice," said Sam, helping him into clean pajamas. "Madame Flaubert keeps us on our toes."

Ford snorted. "I'll bet she does. How long has she been around?"

"Since about six months after Madam and her Paraden husband had the final court ruling on their separation. The one that gave Madam some major blocks of shares in Paraden family holdings," Sam said. At Ford's stare, he winked. "Significant, eh?"

"She's a... ?" Ford mouthed the word Paraden without saying it.

Sam shook his head. "Not of the blood royal, so to speak. Maybe not even on the wrong side of the blanket. But in her heart, she does what she's paid to."

"Does my aunt know?"

Sam frowned and pursed his lips. "I've never been sure. She's got some hold on your aunt, but that particular thing, I don't know."

"They want her quiet and out of their way. No noise, no scandals. I'm surprised she's survived this long."

"It's been close a few times." Sam shook his head, as he helped Ford brush his teeth, and handed him a bottle of mouthwash. "It's funny. Your aunt's real cautious about some things but she won't do anything, if you follow me."

Scared to do anything, Ford interpreted. Scared altogether, as her friends dropped away year by year, alienated by Madame Flaubert. He smiled at Sam in the mirror, heartened to find that he could smile, that he looked marginally less like death warmed over.

"I think it's about time," he drawled, "that my dear aunt got free of Madame Flaubert."

Sam's peaked eyebrows went up. "Any reason why I should trust you, sir?"

Ford grimaced. "If I'm not preferable to Madame Flaubert, then I deserved that, but I thought you had more sense."

"More sense than to challenge where I can't win. Your aunt trusts me as a servant but no more than that.

"She should know better." Ford looked carefully at Sam, reminded again of the better NCOs he'd known in his time. "Are you sure you didn't start off in Fleet?"

A Sicker in the eyes that quickly dropped before his. "Perhaps, sir, you're unaware how similar some of the situations are."

That was both equivocal, and the only answer he was going to get. Unaccountably, Ford felt better.

"Perhaps I am," he said absently, thinking ahead to what he could do about Madame Flaubert. His own survival, and Auntie Q's, both depended on that.

"Just don't let her touch you," Sam said. "Don't eat anything she's touched. Don't let her put anything on you."

"Do you know what it is, what she's using?" Sam shook his head, refusing to say more, and left the cabin silently. Ford stared moodily into the mirror, trying to think it through. If the Paradens were that angry with his aunt, why not just fall her? Were her social and commercial connections that powerful? Did she have some kind of hold on them, something they thought to keep at bay, but dared not directly attack? He knew little about the commercial side of politics, and nothing of society except what any experienced Fleet officer of his rank had had to meet in official circles. It didn't seem quite real to him. And that, he knew, was his worst danger.

The confrontation came sooner than he'd expected. He was hardly back in his bed, thinking hard, when Madame Flaubert oozed in, her lapdog panting behind her. She had a net bag of paraphernalia which she began to set up without so much as a word to him. A candlestick with a fat green candle, a handful of different colored stones in a crystal bowl and geometric figures of some shiny stuff. He couldn't tell if they were plastic or metal or painted wood. Gauzy scarves to hang from the light fixtures, and drape across the door.

"Don't you think all that's a little excessive?" Ford asked, arms crossed over his chest. He might as well start as he meant to go on. "It's my aunt who believes in this stuff."

"You can't be expected to understand, with the demonic forces still raging within you," she answered.

"Oh, I don't know. I think I understand demonic forces quite well." That stopped her momentarily. She gave him a long hostile stare.

"You're unwell," she said. "Your mind is deranged." "I'm sick as a dog," he agreed. "But my mind is clear as your intent."

Red spots showed under her makeup. "Ridiculous. Your wicked past merely asserts itself, trying to unnerve me."

"I would not try to unnerve you, Madame Flaubert, sweet Seraphine, but I would definitely try to dissuade you from actions which you might find unprofitable... even... dangerous."

"Your aura is disgusting," she said firmly, but her eyes shifted.

"I could say the same," he murmured. Again that shifting of the eyes, that uncertainty.

"You came here for no good! You want to destroy your aunt's lifel" Her plump hands shook as she laid out the colored stones on the small bedside table. "You are danger and death! I saw that at once."

Quick as a snake's tongue, her hand darted out to place one of the stones on his chest. Wrapping his hand in the sheet, Ford picked it up and tossed it to the floor. Her face paled, as her dog sniffed at it.