TEXT: y#"  CHAPTER ONE
  PARTNERSHIP
  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events
  portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance
  to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
  Copyright # 1992 by Bill Fawcett & Associates
  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this
  book or portions thereof in any form.
  A Baen Books Original
  Baen Publishing Enterprises
  P.O. Box 1403
  Riverdale, NY 10471
  ISBN: 0-671-72109-7
  Cover art by Stephen Hickman
  First printing, March 1992
  Fourth printing, December 1994
  Distributed by Simon & Schuster
  1230 Avenue of the Americas
  New York, NY 10020
  Printed in the United States of America
  To ordinary human ears the slight crackle of the
  speaker being activated would have been almost in-
  audible. To Nancia, all her sensors fine-tuned for this
  signal, it sounded like a trumpet call Newly graduated
  and commissioned, ready for service #  and apprehen-
  sive that she would not be able to live up to her family's
  high Service traditions# she'd had little to do but wait.
  He's coming aboaifl now, she thought in the split second
  of waiting for the incoming call And then, as the unmis-
  takable gravelly voice of CenCom's third-shift operator
  rasped across her sensors, disappointment flooded her
  synapses and left her dull and heavy on the launching
  pad. She'd been so sure that Daddy would find time to
  visit her, even if he hadn't been able to attend the formal
  graduation of her class from Laboratory Schools.
  "XN-935, how soon can you be ready to lift?"
  "I completed my test flight patterns yesterday,"
  Nancia replied. She was careful to keep her voice level,
  monitoring each output band to make sure that no
  hint of her disappointment showed in the upper
  frequencies. CenCom could perfectly well have com-
  municated with her directly, via the electronic network
  that linked Nancia's ship computers with all other
  computers in this subspace #  and via the surgically
  installed synaptic connectors that linked Nancia's
  physical body, safe behind its titanium shell, with the
  ship's computer #  but it was a point of etiquette
  
  among most of the operators to address brainships just
  as they would any other human being. It would have
  been rude to send only electronic instructions, as if the
  2
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  brainships were no more human than the Al-control-
  led drones carrying the bulk of Central Worlds'
  regular traffic.
  Or so the operators claimed. Nancia privately
  thought that their insistence on voice-controlled traffic
  was merely a way to avoid the embarrassing com-
  parison between their sense-limited communication
  system and a brainship's capabilities of multi-channel
  communication and instantaneous response.
  In any case, it was equally a point of pride among
  shellpersons to demonstrate the control over their
  "voices" and all other external comm devices that Helva
  had shown to be possible, nearly two hundred years ago.
  Nancia knew herself to lack the fine sense of musical
  timing and emphasis that had made Helva famous
  throughout the galaxy as "The Ship Who Sang," but this
  much, at least, she could do; she could conceal her disap-
  pointment at hearing CenCom instead of a direct
  transmission from Daddy to congratulate her on her
  commissioning, and she could maintain a perfectly
  professional facade throughout the ensuing discussion
  of supplies and loading and singularity points.
  "Il?s a short flight," CenCom told her, and then paused
  for a moment "Short for you, that is. By normal FTL drive,
  Nyota ya Jaha is at the far end of the galaxy. Fortunately,
  there's a singularity point a week from Central that wifl flip
  you intolocal space."
  "I do have full access to my charts of known decom-
  position spaces," Nancia reminded CenCom, allowing
  a tinge of impatience to color her voice.
  "Yes, and you can read them in simulated 4-D, can't
  you, you lucky stiff!" CenCom's voice showed only
  cheerful resignation at the limitations of a body that
  forced him to page through bulky books of graphs and
  charts to verify the mapping Nancia had already
  created as an internal display: a sequence of three-
  dimensional spaces collapsing and contorting about
  PARTNERSHIP 3
  the singularity point where local subspace could be
  defined as intersecting with the subspace sector of
  Nyota ya Jaha. At that point Nancia would be able to
  create a rapid physical decomposition and restructur-
  ing of the local spaces, projecting herself and her
  passengers from one subspace to the other. Decom-
  position space theory allowed brainships like Nancia,
  or a very few expensive AI drones equipped with
  metachip processors, to condense the major part of a
  
  long journey into the few seconds they spent in Sin-
  gularity. Less fortunate ships, lacking the metachips or
  dependent upon the slow responses of a human pilot
  who lacked Nancia's direct synaptic connections to the
  computer, still had to go through long weeks or even
  months of conventional FTL travel to cover the same
  distance; the massive parallel computations required
  in Singularity were difficult even for a brainship and
  impossible for most conventional ships.
  "Tell me about the passengers," Nancia requested.
  When they came aboard, presumably one of her pas-
  sengers would have the datahedron from Central
  specifying her destination and instructions, but who
  knew how much longer she would have to wait before
  the passengers boarded? She hadn't even been invited
  to choose a brawn yet; that would surely take a day or
  two. Besides, picking CenCom's brains for informa-
  tion on her assignment was better than waiting in
  tense expectation of her family's visit They would cer-
  tainly come to see her off . . . wouldn't they? All
  through her schooling she had received regular visits
  from one family member or another #  mostly from
  her fether, who made a point of how much time he was
  taking from his busy schedule to visit her. But Jinevra
  and Flix, her sister and brother, had come too, now
  and then; Jinevra less often, as college and her new
  career in Planetary Aid administration took up more
  and more of her time.
  4
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  None of them had attended Nantia's formal gradua-
  tion, though; no one from the entire, far-flung, wealthy
  House of Perez y De Gras had been there to hear the
  lengthy list ofhonors and awards and prizes she'd gained
  in the final, grading year ofher training as a brainship.
  /(wasn't enough, Nancia thought. / was only third in my
  class. If rd placed first, iffd won the Daleth Prize.... No
  good would come of brooding over the past She knew
  that Jinevra and Flix had grown up and had their own
  lives to lead, that Daddy's crowded schedule of busi-
  ness and diplomatic meetings didn't leave him much
  time for minor matters like school events. It really
  wasn't important that he hadn't come to see her
  graduate. He would surely make time for a personal
  visit before liftoff; that was what really counted. And
  when he did come, he should find her happy and busy
  and engaged in the work for which she had trained.
  "About the passengers?" she reminded CenCom.
  "Oh, you probably know more about them than I do,"
  the CenCom operator said with a laugh. "Tney're more
  your sort of people than mine. High Families," he
  clarified. "New graduates, I gather, off to their first jobs."
  That was nice, anyway. Nancia had been feeling just a
  bit apprehensive at the thought of having to deal with
  some experienced, high-ranking diplomatic or military
  
  passengers on her first flight It would be pleasant to
  carry a group of young people just like her #  well, not
  just like her, Nancia corrected with a trace of internal
  amusement. They would be a few years older, maybe
  nineteen or twenty to her sixteen; everybody knew that
  softpersons suffered from so many hormonal changes
  and sensory distractions that their schooling took several
  years longer to complete. And they would be softpersons,
  with limited sensory and processing capability. Still,
  they'd all be heading off to start their careers together;
  that was a significant bond.
  She absently recorded CenCom's continuing in-
  PARTNERSHIP 5
  strucu'ons while she mused on the pleasant trip ahead.
  "Nyota ya Jaha's a long way off by FTL," he told her
  unnecessarily. "I expect somebody pulled some strings
  to get them a Courier Service ship. But it happens to
  be convenient for us too, being in die same subspace as
  Vega, so that's all right"
  Nancia vaguely remembered something about Vega
  subspace in die news. Computer malfunctions... why
  would that make the newsbeams? There must have
  been something important about it, but she'd received
  only the first bits of the newsbyte before a teacher can-
  celed the beam, saying something severe about the
  inadvisability of listening to upsetting newsbytes and
  the danger of getting the younger shellpeople upset
  over nothing. Oh, well, Nancia thought, now that she
  was her own ship she could scan the beams for herself
  and pick up whatever it had been about Vega later. For
  now, she was more interested in finding out what Cen-
  Com knew about her newly assigned passengers.
  "Overton-Glaxely, del Parma y Polo, Armontillado-
  Perez y Medoc, de Gras-Waldheim, Hezra-Fong,"
  CenCom read off the list of illustrious High Family
  names. "See what I mean?"
  "Umm, yes," Nancia said. "We're a cadet branch of
  Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and the de Gras-
  Waldheims come in somewhere on my mother's side.
  But you forget, CenCom, I didn't exactly grow up in
  those circles myself."
  "Yes, well, your visitor will probably be able to give
  you all the latest gossip," CenCom said cheerfully.
  "Visitor!" Of course he came to see me off. I never doubted
  it for an instant.
  "Request just came in while I was looking up the
  passenger list. Sorry, I forgot to route it to you. Name
  of Perez y de Gras. Being a family member, they told
  him to go right on out to the field. He'll be at the
  launching pad in a minute."
  
  6
  Arme McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  Nancia activated her outside sensors and realized
  that it was almost night... not that the darkness made
  any difference Co her, but her infrared sensors picked
  up only the outline of a human form approaching the
  ship; she couldn't see Daddy's face at all. And it would
  be rude to turn on a spotlight. Oh, well, he'd be there
  any minute. She opened her lower doors in silent
  welcome.
  CenCom's voice was an irritation now, not a wel-
  come distraction. "XN? I asked if you can lift off within
  two hours. Your provision list is more than adequate
  for a short voyage, and these pampered brats are
  kvetching about having to wait around on base."
  "Two hours?" Nancia repeated. That wouldn't give
  her much time for a visit #  well, be realistic; it was
  probably more time than Daddy could spare. But
  there were other problems with leaving so soon. "Are
  you out of your mind? I haven't even picked a brawn
  yet!" She intended to get to know the available brawns
  over the next few days before choosing a partner. "Hie
  selection process was not something to be rushed
  through, and she certainly didn't want to waste the
  precious minutes of Daddy's visit choosing a brawn!
  "Don't you young ships ever catch the newsbeams? I
  told you Vega. Remember what happened to the CR-
  899? Her brawn's stranded on his home planet #
  Vega 3.3."
  "What a dreary way to name their planets," Nancia
  commented. "Can't they think of any nice names?"
  "Vegans are ... very logical," CenCom said. "The
  original group of settlers were, anyway #  the ones
  who went out by slowship, before FTL. I gather the
  culture evolved to an extremely rigid form during the
  generations born on shipboard. They don't make a lot
  of allowances for human frailty, litde things like names
  being easier to remember than strings of numbers."
  "Makes no difference to me" Nancia said smugly.
  PARTNERSHIP 7
  Her memory banks could encode and store any form
  of information she needed.
  "You should get along just great with the Vegans,"
  CenCom told her. "Anyway, this brawn is out in Vegan
  subspace, no ship, nothing in the vicinity but a couple
  of old FTL drones. OG Shipping ought to be able to
  divert their metachip drone from Nyota, but as usual,
  we can't contact the manager. So it's either waste
  months of Caleb's service term by sending him home
  FTL, or provide our own transport. You're it. You can
  drop off your friends and relations on the planets
  
  around Nyota ya Jaha #  I'll transmit a databurst of
  your orders after we get through chatting #  and then
  proceed to Vega 3.3 to pick up your first brawn. Very
  neat organization. Psych records suggest the two of
  you ought to make a great team."
  "Oh, they do, do they?" said Nancia. She had her own
  opinion of the Psych branch of Central and the intrusive
  tests and questionnaires with which they bombarded
  shellpersons, and she had no intention of being hustled
  by Central into forgoing her right to choose a brawn just
  because some shelltapper in a white coat thought they
  knew how to pick a man for her# and because she was a
  convenient free ride for a brawn who'd already lost one
  ship. Nancia was about to turn up her beam to CenCom
  and favor the operator with a few choice words on the
  subject when she felt her visitor stepping aboard. Well,
  there'd be time for that argument later; she could think
  about it on the way out. Agreeing to transport the CR-
  899's stranded brawn back to Central wouldn't commit
  her to a permanent partnership, and when she returned
  from this voyage she'd have plenty of time to choose her
  next brawn.., and to tell Psych what they could do with
  their personality profiles.
  Meanwhile, her visitor had ignored the open lift doors
  in favor of climbing the stairs to the central cabin, taking
  the last steps two at a time; Daddy made a point of keep-
  8
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  ing in shape. Nancia activated her stairway sensors and
  speakers simultaneously.
  "Daddy, how nice of you #  "
  But the visitor was Flix, not Daddy. At least, from
  what Nancia could see of his face behind the enor-
  mous basket of flowers and fruit, she assumed it was
  her little brother: spiky red hair in an old-fashioned
  punk crown, one long peacock's feather dangling
  from the right earlobe, fingertips callused from hours
  of synthcom play. It was her little brother, all right.
  "Flix," She could keep her vocal registers level, to
  conceal her disappointment; but she couldn't for the
  life of her think of any words to add.
  " 'S'okay," Flix said, his voice coming slightly muf-
  fled from the stack of Calixtan orchids and orange
  Juba apfruits that threatened to topple over him from
  the insecurely stacked basket. Nancia slid out a tray
  from a waist-level cabinet just in time. Flix staggered
  into the tray, dropped the basket on it and sat back-
  wards on the floor with a look of mild surprise. Two
  glowing orange apfruits fell off the towering display
  and rolled towards Nancia's command console, reveal-
  ing a bottle of Sparkling Hereot in the center of the
  
  basket. "Know you'd rather have Daddy. Or Jinevra,
  Somebody worthy of the honor you do House Perez y
  de Gras, You deserve 'em, too," he added after a
  sprawling dive to retrieve the Juba apfruits. "Deserve
  a brass marching band and a red carpet instead of this
  thing." He brushed one hand across the soft nap of the
  sand-colored, standard-issue synthorug with which
  Nancia's internal living areas were carpeted.
  "You #  you really think I didn't disgrace the
  House?" Nancia asked. She had been wondering if that
  was why nobody had come to see her graduated and
  commissioned. Daddy had always spoken of her
  graduation with the words, "When you win the
  Daleth...." And she hadn't done that.
  PARTNERSHIP 9
  Flix turned his head toward the titanium column
  and gave Nancia the same disbelieving, slightly con-
  temptuous look he'd bestowed on the beige
  synthorug. "Stupid," he mourned. "Only member of
  the family I can stand to talk to, our Nancia; only one
  who doesn't give me hours of grief about giving up my
  synthcomposing for a Real Career, and it turns out she
  has worse problems than a few little malfunctioning
  organs. If you hadn't been popped into your shell at
  birth I'd suspect you were dropped on your head as a
  baby. Of course you've done the House proud, Nancia,
  what do you think? Third in academics and first in
  Decom Theory and taking so many special awards
  they had to restructure the graduation ceremony to
  make time for your presentations #  "
  "How did you know about that?" Nancia
  interrupted.
  Flix looked away from the titanium column. Of course
  she could still see his expression perfectly well from her
  floor-level sensors, but it would have been rude to
  remind him of that He looked embarrassed enough as it
  was. "Had a copy of the program," he mumbled. "Meant
  to show up, as long as I happened to be on Central
  anyway, but... well, I met these two girls when I was
  doing a synthcom gig in the Pleasure Palace, and they
  taught me how to mix Rigellian stemjuice with Benedic-
  tine to make this wonderful fizzy drink, and ... well,
  anyway, I didn't wake up until the graduation ceremony
  was about over."
  He scowled at the carpet for a moment longer, then
  brightened up. "Another thing I like about you, Nan-
  cia, you're the only relative I've got who won't burst
  into a long diatribe about how I could lower myself by
  playing synthcom at the Pleasure Palace. Of course, I
  don't suppose you have any idea what those places are
  like. Still, neither does Great Aunt Mendocia, and that
  doesn't stop her from sounding off."
  10
  
  "     Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  11
  He got to his feet and began pulling things out of
  the basket. "So ... since I was unavoidably detained at
  the Pleasure Palace ... and Jinevra's off at the tail end
  of nowhere investigating a Planetary Aid fraud, and
  Daddy's in a meeting, I thought I'd just drop by while
  you were waiting for assignment and we'd have a little
  private party."
  "What meeting?" Nancia asked before she could
  stop herself. "Where?"
  Flix looked up from the basket, surprised. "Huh?"
  "You said our father was in a meeting."
  "Yes, well, isn't he always? No, I don't know
  where; it's just a logical deduction. You know how
  full his dayplanner program is. Y'know, I often
  wondered," Flix rattled on as he unpacked the bas-
  ket, "just how the three of us got born. Well,
  conceived, anyway. Do you suppose he sent Mother
  a memo? Please come by my office this morning. Can work
  you in between ten and ten-fifteen. Bring sheets and pil-
  low" He reached the bottom of the basket and
  pulled out two scratched and faded datahedra.
  "There! I know you think I'm a selfish bastard,
  bringing fruit and champagne to somebody who
  doesn't eat or drink, but actually I have covered all
  contingencies. These are my latest synthcomposi-
  tions #  here, I'll drop them in your reader.
  Background music for the party, and you can play
  them on the trip to entertain yourself.
  As the jangling sounds of Flix's latest experimental
  composition rang out in the cabin, he held up a third
  datahedron and smiled. Unlike the first two well-worn
  hedra, this was a glittering shape with a slick commer-
  cial laser-cut finish that spattered rainbows of light
  across the cabin. "And here #  "
  "Let me guess," Nancia interrupted. "You've finally
  found somebody to make a commercial cut of your
  synthcompositions."
  Flix's smile dimmed perceptibly. "Well, no. Not ex-
  actly. Although," he said, brightening, "I do know this
  girl who knows a chap who used to date a girl who did
  temporary office work for the second VP of Sound
  Studios, so there are distinct possibilities in the offing.
  But this is something quite different. This," he said,
  sounding almost reverent, "is the new, improved, vast
  ly more sophisticated version of SPACED OUT, not due
  for public release until the middle of next month, and
  
  I won't tell you what I had to do to get it,"
  Nancia waited for him to tell her what the thing was
  about, but Flix paused and beamed as if he was expect-
  ing some immediate reaction from her.
  "Well?" he said after a few seconds. His spiky red
  hair began to droop around the edges.
  "I'm sorry," Nancia confessed, "but I have no idea
  what you're talking about."
  Flix shook his head mournfully. "Never heard of
  SPACED OUT? What do they teach them at these
  academies? No, no, don't tell me." He held up one
  hand in protest. "I know. Decomposition theory and
  subspace astrogation and metachip design and a lot of
  other things that make my head hurt But 1 do think
  they could have let you have a little time off to play
  games."
  "We did play," Nancia told him. "It was in the
  schedule. Two thirty-minute periods daily of free play
  to improve synapse/tool coordination and gross
  propulsion skiUs. Why, I used to love playing Stall and
  PowerSeek when I was in my baby shell!"
  Flix shook his head again. "All very improving, I'm
  sure. Well, this game" #  he grinned# "is absolutely, one
  hundred per cent guaranteed not to improve your mind.
  In feet, Jinevra claims playing SPACED OUT can cause
  irreversible brain damage!"
  "It can?" Nancia slid her reader slots shut with a
  click as Flix approached. "Look, Flix, I'm not sure #  "
  12
  Arme McCaffrey #s? Margaret Ball
  "Consider our big sister," Flix said with his sunniest
  smile. "Go ahead, just call up an image from her last visit
  Don't you think anything she disapproves of must be
  worth a try?"
  Nanria projected a lifesize Jinevra on the screen that
  filled the center wall of the cabin. Her sister might
  have been standing beside Flix. Trim and perfect as
  ever, from the hem of her navy blue Planetary Techni-
  cal Aid uniform to the smooth dark hair that fell
  perfectly straight to just the regulation 1/4 inch dis-
  tance from her starched white collar, she was the
  pattern of reproach to every disorderly element in the
  universe. Nancia couldn't remember just what had
  caused the disapproving glint in Jinevra's eyes or the
  tight, pinched look at the corners of her mouth at the
  moment this image had been stored, but in this projec-
  tion she seemed to be glaring right at Flix. One of the
  red spikes of his retro-punk hair crown wilted under
  the withering gaze of the projection.
  
  Nancia felt sorry for him. Jinevra had never
  bothered to conceal her opinion that their little
  brother was a wastrel and a disgrace to the family.
  Daddy, she suspected, felt much the same way. The
  weight of the Perez y de Gras clan's disapproval would
  have been crushing to her. How could she join them in
  condemning Flix? She'd heard stories enough about
  his wild tricks #  there were times when Jinevra and
  Daddy seemed to have nothing else to discuss on their
  brief visits #  but to her he was still the tousle-headed
  toddler who'd hugged her titanium shell every time he
  came for a visit, who'd waved and yelled as enthusiasti-
  cally as if she were a real flesh-and-blood sister who
  could cuddle him on her lap, who'd screamed with
  glee when she carried him around the school track for
  a quick round of PowerSeek with her classmates.
  And what harm could it do her to try the stupid game?
  "You'd like it, Nancia," Flix said hopefully as the
  PARTNERSHIP 13
  projected image of Jinevra faded into a blank screen.
  "Really. It's the best version SpaceGamers has ever
  "  released. It's got sixty-four levels of hidden tunnels,
  and simulated Singularity space, and holodwarfs...."
  "Holodwarfs?"
  'Just look." Flix dropped the glittering datahedron
  into the nearest reader slit #  fanny, Nancia couldn't
  remember having decided to open that reader, but she
  must have done so. There was a soft whirring noise as
  the contents of the datahedron were read into com-
  puter memory, then Flix said, "Level 6, holo!" and a
  red-bearded dwarf appeared in the middle of the
  cabin, brandishing a curved broadsword whose hilt
  glittered with a shower of refracted colored light. Flix
  dropped to one knee as the dwarf's broadsword
  slashed through the space where his head had been,
  rolled towards a control panel and shouted, "Space
  Ten laser armor!"
  A shape of light beams bent into impossible curved
  paths around him. The dwarf bent and thrust his
  sword through a gap between the rapidly weaving
  lights #
  And vanished.
  So did the lights.
  Flix got to his feet, aggrieved. "You cut the game offl
  And I was winning!"
  
  "I, umm, I don't think I'm quite ready for the holo-
  dwarfs," Nancia apologized. "I have this automatic
  reaction to seeing people I love attacked."
  Flix nodded. "Sorry. I guess we'll have to bring you
  up to speed slowly. Want to start at Level 1, no holos?"
  "That sounds... better."
  And it was better. In feet, after a few rounds, Nancia
  found herself actually enjoying the silly game, al-
  though she still had trouble making sense of the rules.
  "What am I supposed to do with the Laser Staff?"
  "It helps you walk uphill through the gravity well."
  14
  Anne McCaffrey #f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  15
  "That's dumb. Lasers don't have anything to do
  with gravity."
  "Nantia. It's agame. Now, be sure to ask the simugrif
  for the answers to the Three Toroid Triples; you'll
  need them after you reach the trolls' bridge...."
  As Flix instructed her in the rudiments of the game,
  Nancia discovered that the actual game program used
  very little of her computing power. She was easily able
  to scan CenCom's databurst about her coming pas-
  sengers while they played. At the same time she
  activated the ship's enhanced graphics mode to fill the
  three wall-size screens in the central cabin with color
  images of the game and of their play icons. Flix had
  chosen to be, of all things, a brainship, careening
  through imaginary asteroid belts in search of the Mys-
  tic Rings of Daleen. Nancia preferred to imagine
  herself as Troll Slayer, the long-limbed, bold explorer
  who strode through gravity wells and over mountain
  ranges with laser staff and backblasters.
  "Nancia, you can't slay that troll yet!"
  "Why not?"
  "Because he's in ambush behind the rocks. I can see
  him, but you can't."
  "I can so. I can see everything in this game. It's part of
  my main memory now, remember?"
  "Well, your play icon can't. He's just a man. He
  hasn't got multi-D vision. And you see that blinking
  blue light? The program rules are warning you that
  
  he's going to die of hypothermia if you don't get him
  into some kind of shelter soon."
  "Why doesn't he just increase his fuel #  oh. I
  remember. You softpersons certainly are limited in
  your fuel allocation capabilities." Nancia went ahead
  and bent her laserstaff to take out the hiding troll, as
  well as three of his fellows, then sent her play icon
  under the trolls' snow bridge. Behind three hidden
  doors and through a labyrinth there was a nice warm
  cave now uninhabited, where Troll Slayer could rest
  and refuel.
  "Nancia, you're cheating!" Flix accused. "How did
  you find that place so quickly, without making any
  mistakes?"
  "How could I not find it? The game maps are in my
  main memory too, remember? All I had to do is look."
  "Well, couldn't you not look? To be fair?"
  "No, I could not," Nancia said in a tone that should
  have effectively closed off further discussion. Cut off
  her consciousness from a part of the ship's computer
  memory? The single worst experience of her entire
  life had been the partial anesthesia required while ex-
  perts completed her synaptic connections to the ship.
  There was nothing, absolutely nothing a shellperson
  hated more than losing connections! Flix ought to un-
  derstand that without her telling him.
  'Just shut down that memory node for a little while,"
  Flix wheedled.
  He never did know when to stop. And the idea of
  shutting down her own nodes made Nancia so uncom-
  fortable that she couldn't bear to discuss it with him.
  "Listen, softshell, I'd have to cut off more than one
  node to bring myself down to your computational level!"
  "Oh, yeah? Come outside and say that again!"
  "Sure, I'll come outside. I'll take you right up to the
  Singularity point and let you find your own way out of
  the decomposition!"
  "Aah, relying on brute force again. It's not fair." Flix
  appealed to the ceiling. "Two big sisters, and they both
  pick on me all the time!"
  "We had to do something to keep you under con-
  trol #  " Nancia shut down her vocal transmissions
  abruptly. There was an incoming beam from Central.
  "XN? Message relay from Rigellian subspace." Abrief
  pause, then the image of Nancia's father appeared on
  the central screen opposite her pillar. On the left-hand
  
  16
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Batt
  PARTNERSHIP
  17
  screen Flix's brainship icon flipped and rotated in an
  endless, mindless loop against the glittering stars of deep
  space; on the right, Troll Slayer stood frozen with one
  foot lifted to step across the threshold of the hidden cave.
  Between them, a tired man in a conservative green and
  blue pinstripe tunic smiled at Nancia.
  "Sorry I couldn't come to your graduation, Nancia
  dear. This meeting on Rigel IV is vital to keeping
  Central's economy on the planned graph for the next
  sixteen quarters. I couldn't let them down. Knew
  you'd understand. Hey, congratulations on all those
  awards! I didn't have time to read the program in
  detail yet, but I'm sure you've done House Perez y de
  Gras proud, as always. And I think you'll like your first
  assignment. It'll be a chance for you to get to know
  some of the younger members of the High Families #
  a very fitting start for our own Courier Service star.
  Eh? What's that?" He turned towards his left, so that
  he seemed to be speaking to the frozen Troll Slayer
  icon. "The Secretary-Particular? Oh, very well, send
  him in. I'll need to brief him before the next session."
  Eyes front again. "You heard that, I suppose, Nan-
  cia? Sorry, I have to go now. Good luck!"
  " Daddy, wait# " Nancia began, but the screen went
  blank for a moment. The old image of the snow bridge
  and the trolls reappeared and she heard the voice of
  the CenCom operator.
  "Sorry, XN. That was a canned message beam.
  There's no more. And your passengers are ready to
  board now."
  "Thank you, Central." Nancia discovered to her
  horror that she had lost all control over her vocal
  channels; the trembling overtones that surrounded
  her speech made her emotional state all too apparent.
  A Perezy de Gras does not weep. And a brainship could not
  weep. And Nancia had been well trained to repress the
  son of unseemly emotional displays that softpersons
  indulged in. All the same, she very much did not want
  to talk to anybody just now.
  Flix seemed to have sensed her mood; he silently
  packed up the basket of fruit and sparkling wine and
  patted Nancia's titanium column as if he thought that
  she could feel the warmth of his hand. For a moment
  she had the illusion that she did feel it.
  
  " I'd better get out of the way now," he said." Can't have a
  Fterez y de Gras brainship caught partying on her maiden
  voyage, can we?"
  He paused on the stairs. "Y'know, Nancia, there's no
  regulation says you have to greet your passengers the
  minute they step aboard. Let 'em find their cabins and
  unpack on their own. There'll be plenty of time for social
  chitchat on the way out."
  Then he was gone, a redheaded blur vanishing into
  the darkness, a whistled melody lingering on the night
  air outside; and moments later, the bright lights of a
  spacepad transport shone in Nancia's ground-level
  sensors and a party of young people tumbled out,
  laughing and talking all at once and waving glasses in
  the air. One of them stumbled and spilled the liquid
  over Nancia's gleaming outer shell; from a fin sensor
  she could see the snail-trail of something green and
  viscous defacing her side. The boy swore and shouted,
  "Hey, Alpha, we need a refill on the Stemerald over
  here!"
  "Wait till we're inside, can't you?1 called back a tall
  girl with ebony skin and features sharp and precise as
  an antique cameo. Right now her handsome face was
  etched with lines of anger and dissatisfaction, but as
  the fair-haired boy looked back over his shoulder at
  her she gave him a bright smile that wouldn't have
  deceived Nancia for a minute.
  They were all still talking #  and drinking that sticky
  green stuff#  as they crowded into the airlock lift without
  even asking permission to board. Well, she had left the
  18
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU
  PARTNERSHIP
  19
  entry port open after Flix's departure; maybe they con-
  sidered that an implied welcome. And Nancia had heard
  that softpersons #  at least those outside the Academy # .
  didn't observe the formality that governed greetings and
  official exchanges in the Courier Service and other
  branches of Central's far-flung bureaucracy. She wasn't
  one to take offense yet, not when she herself was hardly
  ready for introductions to this bunch of strangers.
  As they trooped out of the airlock and into the
  central cabin, Nancia played a game of matching faces
  to the names Central had given her. The short red-
  haired boy with a face like a friendly gargoyle had
  Flix's coloring and the flashing smile that reeled girls
  in to Flix like trout on a hook; he must be one of the
  
  two related to Nancia's family. "Blaize?" the black girl
  called. "Blaize, I can't open this." She held out a plastic
  pouch full of shimmering green liquid, and Nancia
  winced in anticipation as the redhead tore off the
  sealstrip with two short, strong fingers. But not a drop
  spilled on her new, official-issue beige carpeting# not
  now, anyway.
  "Here you are, Alpha," the boy said as he handed it
  back, and Nancia matched their faces with the names and
  descriptions that had come in CenCom's databurst The
  red-haired boy must be Blaize Armontillado-Perez y
  Medoc, of a family so high that they barely deigned to
  recognize the Perez y de Gras connection. And for some
  puzzling reason his first posting was to a lonely Planetary
  Technical Aid position on the remote planet of Angalia;
  she would have expected anybody from a three-name
  Family to start off somewhere near the top of whatever
  Central bureaucracy he chose. As for the ebony princess,
  with her sharp clever face that would have been beautiful
  if not for the discontented expression, she had to be
  Alpha bint Hezra-Fong. The short burst transmitted
  from CenCom identified her as a native of the warm,
  semi-desert world ofTakla, with high marks in her medi-
  cal research program, and no hint as to why she'd chosen
  to take a five-year sabbatical in the midst of training to
  run the Summerlands Clinic on Bahati.
  As they passed the pouch of Stemerald back and
  forth, Nancia was able to identify the other three from
  their casual conversation without having to introduce
  herself. The slighdy pudgy boy with a halo of overlong
  brown curls clustering around his red face was Darnell
  Overton-Glaxely, going to Bahati to take charge of OG
  Shipping from the cousin who'd been administering
  the business during DarnelTs minority. The other girl,
  the sleek black-haired beauty whose delicate bones
  and slightly tilted eyes suggested a family connection
  with the Han Parma branch of the family, would be
  Fassa del Parma y Polo. The del Parma y Polo clan con-
  trolled all the major space construction in this
  subspace, and now it appeared they were sending this
  delicate little thing out to establish the family's rights in
  Vega subspace as well. The girl was probably, Nancia
  reflected, stronger than she looked. At any rate she
  was die only one refusing the pouch of Stemerald as it
  went around the circle, and that was a good sign.
  And the last one #  Nancia let her sensors take in the
  full gk>ry of Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, the cousin she'd
  never met From die crown of his smoothly cropped yel-
  low hair to the gleaming toes of his black regulation-issue
  shoes, he was the epitome of the perfect Space Academy
  graduate: standing straight but not stiff, eyes moving in
  full awareness of what each ofhis companions was doing,
  even in this moment of repose conveying a sense of
  dangerous alertness. Like Nancia, he was newly
  graduated and commissioned. And like her, he'd ranked
  high in his class but not first; first in technical grades, the
  
  databurst said, but only second overall because of an in-
  explicable low mark in Officer Fitness #  whatever that
  might be.
  When she'd first scanned the databurst, during Flix's
  20
  Arme McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  sflly computer game, Nancia had been looking forward
  to meeting her cousin Polyon. He was the only one of the
  group with whom she felt that she had much in common.
  As two High Families members trained for a life of service
  to Central, just setting out to meet their destinies, they
  should have felt an instant sense of kinship. Now,
  though, she felt strangely reluctant to introduce herself
  to Polyon. He was so tense, so watchful, as though he
  considered even this laughing group of other young
  people in the light of potential enemies.
  And, she reminded herself, he had personally con-
  sumed at least two-thirds of the recently opened
  pouch of Stemerald, plus Central only knew what else
  before coming on board. No, it wasn't a good time to
  introduce herself and tell Polyon of their family con-
  nections. She would just have to wait.
  "Hey, guys, look at the welcoming committee!"
  Blaize interrupted the chatter. He was staring past
  Nantia's titanium column, at the triple-screen display
  of the SPACED OUT game that Nancia had absentmin-
  dedly left up after Flix's abrupt departure. The
  concealed visual sensors between the screens showed
  Blaize's freckled, snub-nosed face alight with pure,
  uncomplicated joy.
  Blaize moved slowly across the soft carpet until he sank
  into the empty pilot's chair that should have been
  reserved for Nancia's brawn. "This," he said reverently,
  "has got to be the biggest, best SPACED OUT I've ever
  seen. Two weeks will go like nothing with this setup to
  play with." The game control channels were still open,
  and as Blaize identified himself and took control of the
  brainship icon, Nancia let the underlying game program
  alter the brainship's course to zoom in on Troll Slayer's
  world. The brilliance of the graphic display drew the
  other passengers to look over Blaize's shoulder, and one
  by one, with half-ashamed comments, they let them-
  selves be drawn into the game.
  PARTNERSHIP
  21
  "Well, it beats watching a bunch of painbrains dose
  themselves silly in the clinic," Alpha murmured as she
  took a seat beside Blaize.
  Nancia had hardly recovered from the shock of this
  
  callous comment when Darnell, too, joined the game.
  Til have to copy the mastergraphics off this program
  and have somebody install it on all OG Shipping's
  drones," he said, animating Troll Slayer. "Anybody know
  how to break the code protection?"
  "I," said Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, "can break any
  computer security system ever installed." He favored
  Darnell with a slanting, enigmatic side glance. "If it's
  worth my while..."
  Oh, you can, can you? thought Nancia. We'll see about
  that. Software game piracy wasn't exactly a major
  crime, but a newly commissioned Space Academy of-
  ficer ought to have a stronger ethical sense than some
  commoner who hadn't had the benefit of a High
  Families upbringing and an Academy training. She
  felt distinctly less eager than she had been to introduce
  herself to her handsome cousin.
  Polyon turned his head and treated Fassa del Parma
  y Polo, still lingering beside the door, to a brilliant
  smile. "Now you, little one, could make just about any-
  thing worth my while."
  Fassa moved towards the game controls with a
  sinuous, gliding motion-that riveted Blaize and
  DarnelTs attention as well as Polyon's. "Forget it,
  yellowtop," she said in a voice as sweet as her words
  were stinging. "A second-rate Academy officer with a
  prison-planet posting doesn't have enough to keep me
  interested. I'm saving it for where it'll do me some
  good,"
  Nancia briefly shut down all the cabin's sensors.
  How had she gotten stuck with these greedy, amoral,
  spoiled brats? She had a good mind to put off intro-
  ducing herself indefinitely. From the freedom of their
  22
  Arene McCaffrey fcf Margaret Bad
  comments, they must be assuming she was only a
  drone ship with no power to understand or act on any-
  thing but a limited set of direct commands.
  But she would still need to know what they were up
  to. She opened one auditory channel and heard Blaize
  leading Darnell and Polyon in a raucous chorus of,
  "She never sold it, she just gave it away!" while Fassa
  glowered and slithered off to her cabin.
  Nancia had the feeling this would be one of the
  longest two-week voyages any brainship had ever
  endured.
  CHAPTER TWO
  polyon
  
  Nancia watched curiously as Polyon de Gras-
  Waldheim sauntered into the central cabin. The other
  passengers were still sleeping off their departure-
  night Stemerald party, snoring and thrashing as the
  last doses of the stimulant worked its way out of their
  exhausted bodies. Polyon had recovered remarkably
  early. Like any good Academy graduate, he'd been up
  at 0600 ship's time, washed in the shower cubicle and
  dressed in his neatly pressed undress grays before
  presenting himself in public. Nancia had shut down
  visual sensors in the cabins to allow her passengers the
  privacy they would be expecting, but the auditory sen-
  sors brought her enough small sounds to enable her to
  follow Polyon through his early-morning routine.
  Nancia caught her first glimpse of Polyon as he
  swung down the passageway to the central cabin. This
  was public space; she had no compunction about leav-
  ing all sensors activated here. And Polyon de
  Gras-Waldheim was certainly a treat for the sensors.
  Just a shade under two meters tall, with his golden hair
  ruthlessly cropped in the Academy bristle cut, he was a
  happy blend of the best in the Waldheim and de Gras
  family lines: Waldheim height and rugged strength, de
  Gras refinement and quick awareness. Nancia felt a
  moment of regret. Polyon was a Space Academy
  graduate; he might have been her brawn.
  A de Gras-Waldheim? jeered an inner voice. What are
  you dreaming of, girl ? A young man who combined those
  two bloodlines could look fiar higher than command of
  24
  Arme McCajfrey &? Margaret Baft
  PARTNERSHIP
  25
  a single brainship. He should have been destined for a
  staff position somewhere, being groomed for high
  command.
  The short databurst of information about her pas-
  sengers and their destinations didn't explain why,
  instead of joining a Fleet General staff, Polyon was
  headed out to be the technical overseer for a prison
  metachip plant in a remote subspace. Oh, well, there
  must be some good reason for the assignment. Maybe there's
  more going on in Vega subspace than I realized. Nancia
  remembered that interrupted newsbyte about Vega
  and her resolve to study it in depth, now that she was
  her own ship, fm Courier Service now; fd better start keep-
  ing up with public affairs. But just at the moment,
  watching her cousin was more interesting than pulling
  up files of old newsbeams.
  Polyon glanced about die cabin and his body relaxed
  
  imperceptibly as he scanned the area; a human observer
  might not have noticed die slight change, but Nancia #
  by now scanning for muscle tension and autonomic
  nervous system response as well as for the usual visual
  and auditory cues #  was immediately aware of his
  relaxation. That must be Academy training, that alert-
  ness upon entering any unfamiliar territory. She should
  have expected no less of one trained in the High
  Families' tradition of service; just as she should not have
  been surprised that Polyon wakened at a regulation
  hour, no matter what he'd been indulging in the night
  before. The other passengers might be soft and self-
  indulgent, but this one, at least, was a credit to his
  training. That's the de Gras blood in him, she thought with a
  trace of smugness; Daddy had always stressed the value
  of Nancia's connection, through her mother, with the
  House of de Gras.
  Polyon glanced once more around the room# if he
  hadn't been a de Gras-Waldheim, Nancia would have
  described his second look as furtive #  and then sat
  down, not in the pilot's chair facing the central con-
  sole, but in one of the spectator seats to the side of die
  room. He nodded once, sharply, as if to say, "That's all
  rieht, then," and spoke in a low voice that no softper-
  son could have heard.
  "Computer, open master file, pass 47321-Aleithos-
  Hex242."
  The automatic security system that guarded the
  ship's main computer acknowledged Polyon's com-
  mand. Hardly believing what she observed, Nancia let
  the computer act without overriding it. How had
  Polyon learned the master file password? Perhaps
  there was a secret side to her mission, something only
  another member of the High Families could be trusted
  to know and to reveal at the proper time. TTiat would
  explain Polyon's near-furtive way of approaching the
  cabin. It would also explain his crude behavior last
  night; naturally, as an undercover agent, he'd have to
  be sure to blend in with his fellow passengers.
  Or ... there might be no such explanation
  forthcoming. Now that he had master file access,
  Polyon was typing, moving the touchscreen icons, and
  issuing verbal commands in a rapid low stream that
  rivaled even a shellperson's multi-channel capacity.
  And he still hadn't acknowledged her as anything
  more than a droneship. What was going on? Nancia
  waited and watched, following Polyon's maneuverings
  through her computer system while her external sen-
  sors kept track of his bodily movements.
  Piece of cake, Polyon thought as his fingers darted
  from keyboard to touch-screen, setting up his user ac-
  count with system privileges that would allow him
  access to any data in the ship's computer. Easy as debug-
  ging a kid's first program. Now for the tricky stuff#
  
  persuading the security system to treat him as a
  privileged user on the Net. Once linked to that sub-
  26
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  27
  space-wide communications system, he would be abi<
  to find out anything he wanted to know abou
  anybody who'd ever linked into the Net
  Voice commands wouldn't work here; just as wejj
  he didn't want to be overheard by any of those snui];
  time snoops he was stuck with on this voyage. H;;
  fingers flashed over the keys, rattling out commands a:
  fast as his excellent brain could analyze the result,
  Hmm, security block here . . . but having alrea^
  granted himself user privileges on the ship's system
  he could take a look at the object code in the blockin;
  program itself. He could even "fix" it. "Here a patdi
  there a patch," Polyon hummed as he entered a sligl i
  ly revised version of the object code, "everywhen -.
  trapdoor, dum-de-dum-de-dum." As the system ;>
  cepted and ran the revised program, Polyo;
  humming switched to a triumphant version of, "1;
  the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo!"
  Not quite accurate, of course; he intended to win fo
  far more than the proceeds of a single night's ol=
  Earth-style gambling. He would show them #  all
  them. Starting with #  but definitely not finishing wi >
  #  the lamebrains who'd shipped out with him. Polyo
  knew why he was being posted to a second-rate assigi
  ment in a third-rate solar system #  his memori
  skittered like frightened mice over the surface of th
  ugly scene with the Dean #  but there must be sorr
  reasons why all these other pampered darlings oft)
  High Families were going into semi-exile. He woui
  start by finding those little secrets, and then... wc:l
  then maybe even these rich brats could be useful in t>;
  Grand Plan.
  And after them.., the Nyota system. All of Ves.
  subspace. Central. Why not? Polyon thought, dazzk
  by the grandeur of his own desires. If there was on
  thing he'd learned while he was growing up, it ws
  that you could get away with nearly anything if you dt
  most of it while people weren't watching and used
  your charm when they did watch.
  And where charm didn't work... there were other
  means of persuasion. Polyon smiled grimly and
  tapped into Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's med school files.
  \Vhat cfftM Polyon be doing? Nantia watched and
  
  waited as he redefined the ship's security system, reached
  out to the Net, scanned his fellow-passengers' files.
  Ought she to stop him? Discretion was the first thing a
  Courier Service brainship learned, the first and last com-
  ponent of duty. She hadn't been briefed on what to do
  with a passenger who started manipulating the Net as if it
  were part of his personal comsystem. He was redefining
  the security parameters now... no matter, she could
  change those back whenever she chose. So for he hadn't
  touched her personal data areas, didn't show any signs of
  knowing that her synaptic connections to the ship's com-
  puter allowed her to follow everything he was doing.
  Could it be that he really thought her a drone ship?
  Maybe not. At least, he wasn't sure. Now that he was
  through playing with the Net, Polyon sent out an ex-
  ploratory tendril of code to report on other activities
  linked into the ship's computer... a patch that would
  reveal the exact location and extent of Nancia's con-
  nections within the ship.
  A Hale late to check that, my lad! Didn't the Space Academy
  teach you to look for ambushes before you started maneuvers ?
  Self-protection was an automatic response, more
  deeply ingrained even than discretion. Nancia closed
  down pathways and redefined access codes in a single,
  instinctive wave of activity that left Polyon staring at a
  blank screen and touching a keyboard that no longer
  responded to his search commands.
  Darnell
  Darnell Ovetton-Glaxely moaned gently as he caught
  28
  Arme McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  29
  sight of his puffy face, a distorted reflection in the
  polished curve of synthalloy along the ship's central cor-
  ridor. It was too early in the morning to face mirrors,
  especially curving ones that made his reflection swell and
  shrink and ripple like waves on the damned ocean. Dar-
  nell moaned again and reminded himself that the
  artificial gravity of space was practically like being on
  Earth; it was only his imagination making him feel sick.
  This was really nothing like being aboard one of the old-
  style oceangoing vessels that had been the start of OG
  Shipping, back when they were still a planetbound local
  corporation. His old man had made him go on one of
  those monsters once, with some crap about remember-
  ing the family's roots. Darndl had taken a lot more crap
  from the old man when he puked his guts out before the
  ship left harbor.
  Well, there wouldn't be any more of ihat\ Dear Papa
  
  was history now, and so was the unexplained space-
  station collapse that had killed him and left OG
  Shipping in the hands of its directors until Darnell
  finished school. And last night's Stemerald debauch
  was also history# if only he could convince his queasy
  stomach and pounding head of that!
  It wasn't fair that he should suffer like this after what
  had only been a perfectly reasonable indulgence to
  celebrate the end of schooling and the start of his new
  career. A pity neither of the girls had seen fit to continue
  the celebration in the logical manner. Well, they had two
  weeks to planetfall; they'd come around and see his at-
  tractions soon enough. After all, it wasn't as if he had any
  serious competition on this droneship. De Gras-
  Waldheim was handsome enough, but a cold fish if
  Darnell had ever seen one. Something frightening about
  him, with those intense blue eyes burning like dry ice
  under the stiff Academy haircut. As for the Medoc boy,
  Blass or Blaze or whatever his name was, no girl was
  going to waste time on a kid with a face like a friendly gar-
  e. No> it would be old Darnell to the rescue again, the
  n man on board widi the social skills to entertain two
  lovely ladies all the way to their destination planets
  around Nyotayajaha.
  And he could hear sounds in the central cabin. Was
  one of the girls up and about already? Darnell sucked
  in his gut, threw his shoulders as far back as they
  would go, and glanced at his reflection in the synth-
  ailoy wall once again. His face wasn't really soft and
  pufly like that, he told himself; it was a trick of the dis-
  torted reflection. Made him look middle-aged and
  flabby and tired. Nonsense. He was the handsome
  young heir to OG shipping and he was fit to take on
  anybody or anything....
  But not, maybe, that cold fish, Polyon de Gras-
  Waldheim. Darnell clutched at the doorway and tried to
  stop his impulsive movement into the central cabin. His
  legs kept going while his arms tried to haul him back.
  "Oh, come on in, OG," Polyon said impatiently, his
  back to the door. "Don't just cling to the doorframe
  waving your tentacles like a seasick jellyfish."
  Seasick.
  Jellyfish.
  Darnell gulped down a wave of nausea and
  reminded himself again that space travel on a grav-
  enhanced drone was not like being on an actual
  moving, swaying, shifting oldstyle sea vessel.
  "What are you doing?"
  Polyon released the chair controls and spun slowly
  round to face Darnell, long limbs relaxed as if to em-
  
  phasize his comfort in this environment. "Just. ..
  playing games," he said with a queer smile. 'Just a few
  little games to pass the time."
  "What'd you do, crash the SPACED OUT gameset so
  badly you lost the screens?"
  "Something like that," Polyon agreed. "You can
  help me start it up again, if you like."
  30
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  31
  It was the closest thing to a friendly overture Darnel!
  had heard from Polyon since they met the previous
  night. Maybe, he thought forgivingly, maybe the poor
  guy didn't know how to make friends. Coming from a
  stiff-backed upper-crust lot like the de Gras-
  Waldheims, spending his life at military boarding
  schools, you couldn't expect him to have the savoir
  vivne and easy social manners that Darnell prided him-
  self on displaying. Well, he'd help old Polyon out, be
  his friend on this litde jaunt.
  "Sure thing," he said, walking on into the room with
  a careful soft step that didn't jar his aching head. He
  sank into one of the cushioned passenger chairs,
  "Nothing to it, I used to play this stuff all the time in
  prep school. Tell you what #  if I help you get into the
  computer, maybe you'll help me get into something
  else?" He winked laboriously at Polyon.
  "What exactly did you have in mind?" The man
  didn't have a due how to make light conversation.
  "Two of us," Darnell explained cheerfully, tapping
  away at the console keys. "Two of them. The black one
  is more your size. But I need a strategy to get into the
  del Parma skirt's pants. Tactics, maneuvers, advance
  and retreat #  Got any suggestions?" Not, Darnell
  thought, that he really needed any help, but there was
  nothing like a round of good, bawdy male-to-male
  bonding talk to cement a friendship. And since Polyon
  evidently wanted to be friends, Darnell was more than
  ready to meet him halfway.
  " I'm afraid you're on your own there," Polyon said dis-
  tantly. "I've... never had occasion to study the problem."
  He nicked an invisible speck of dust off his pressed sleeve
  and affected to study the SPACED OUT screens as Darnell
  brought them back to fill the walls of the cabin.
  The implication was clear; he'd never needed to work
  out tactics with the ladies. Well, of course not. With the
  de Gras-Waldheim name and fortune behind him #
  
  and that muscle-bound, oversized physique #  still, he
  had no call to sneer at somebody who was just trying to
  he friendly. Darnell glowered at the console and
  tapped the commands that would set the game at #
  hmm, not Level 10, his reflexes weren't quite up to the
  interactive holowaniors just yet. Level 6. That should
  be high enough to scramble Polyon's moves and let
  him see what it was like dealing with an expert
  "It's a new version," Polyon said in surprise. "I don't
  remember that asteroid belt.''
  Til bet five credits there's a due to the Hidden Hor-
  rors of Holmdale somewhere in the new asteroids,"
  Darnell offered.
  "No bet on that. But I'll lay you five credits that I/it's
  there, I'll find it first. Choose your icon!"
  Darnell chose one of the play icons displayed along
  the bottom of the central screen. He always liked to be
  Bonecrush, the cyborg monster who stalked the lower
  tunnels of the labyrinth but occasionally blasted out
  into space with his secretly installed jetpacks and per-
  sonal force shield. Polyon, he noticed with pleasure,
  was taking the icon for Thingberry the Martian Mage,
  a wimp of a character if there ever was one. This game
  should be over in no time.
  "So what brings you out to the Nyota system?"
  Polyon asked after a few minutes of seemingly idle
  maneuvering and pointless commands.
  Darnell scowled at the screen. How had Thingberry
  managed to surround two-thirds of the asteroid belt with
  a charm of impenetrability? Very well, he would let
  Bonecrush turn around and use his internal jetpacks as a
  weapon; that should blast through sneaky Thingberry's
  magic. "Taking up the old inheritance," he replied as he
  tapped in the commands that would give Bonecrush
  maximum blasting power. "OG Shipping, you know.
  Can't think why old Cousin Wigran moved the firm's
  32
  Arme McCaffrey &f Margaret BaU
  PARTNERSHIP
  33
  headquarters out to Vega subspace, but I'm sure he'll ex-
  plain everything when I get there."
  "If he can," Polyon agreed. "You have that much
  faith in him?"
  Darnell stealthily maneuvered Bonecrush into range.
  That idiot Polyon was looking at him, not at the screen;
  
  he could get away with murder if he could keep Polyoris
  attention away from the game for a few more seconds.
  "What d'you mean?" he asked, not really listening
  for the answer. "Why shouldn't I have faith in
  Wigran?"
  Polyon looked shocked, and for a moment Darnell
  was afraid he'd noticed Bonecrush's moves on the
  central game screen. "My dear chap! You mean you
  haven't heard? Decom it," he cursed in a low vicious
  tone. "I didn't realize #  Look, Darnell, I shouldn't be
  the one to tell you this. Haven't you been paying atten-
  tion to the newsbytes from Vega?"
  "Management bores me," Darnell told him. "I'll be
  perfecdy happy to draw the profits from the company
  and let Cousin Wigran keep running the store." His
  hands were resting on the key that would activate
  Bonecrush's jet packs. Any minute now he'd execute a
  controlled power surge that should blast a hole right
  through Thingberry's defenses. But he wanted
  Polyon to be watching in the moment of defeat, not
  babbling on about some boring accountant's trial in
  the Vega system.
  "Well, I suppose you'd have to know pretty soon
  anyway," Polyon was saying now. "I hate like hell to be
  the one to tell you, though." He was watching
  Darnell's face more closely than he'd ever looked at
  the game screens.
  "Tell me what?" For the first time Darnell felt a chill
  of apprehension creep over him.
  "It's all been coming out in the trial," Polyon said.
  "That accountant who was skimming his clients'
  credits to play Lotto-Roids? OG Shipping was one of
  his biggest accounts. And your cousin Wigran knew
  exactly what the fellow was doing. He even helped
  kim _ for a share in the cash. Together, they've
  gambled away more than ninety per cent of OG
  Shipping'5 assets. I'm afraid all you're going to inherit
  on Bahati is one over-age AI drone and a bunch of
  debts."
  Darnell's sweaty fingers slipped and punched the
  power key harder than he'd intended. Bonecrush's jet
  packs released their maximum thrust. The blast
  rebounded harmlessly off Thingberry's invisible
  charm-shield and propelled Bonecrush, too depleted
  of power to activate his personal force-shield, into the
  blackness of deep space. His cyborg body exploded
  into a million stars of synthalloy debris.
  "Wow," Polyon said, finally glancing at the dazzling
  light effects on the screen. "This is a great game! Will
  you look at those graphics? What is it, a supernova?"
  
  "Me," said Darnell Overton-Glaxely. A gentleman
  knew when to bite the bullet. "I owe you five credits."
  Blaize
  Oh, no, not another one!
  Nancia briefly shut down all her internal sensors as
  Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stirred in his
  cabin. She had come to the conclusion that her pas-
  sengers were most bearable when they were sleeping it
  off. If only she could flood all their cabins with sleepgas
  and keep them unconscious until they reached the
  Nyota ya Jaha system.... Nancia caught herself in
  mid-thought. She was becoming as bad as they were!
  How could she even think such a thing? Hadn't she
  made perfect marks in all her Integrity and Shell
  Ethics classes? She should have been doubly guarded,
  by family heritage and Academy training, against even
  imagining such a betrayal of her ideals.
  34
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU
  There was nothing to stop her from leaving her in-
  ternal sensors inactive until they reached Nyota ya
  Jaha, though. Nancia considered this briefly before
  deciding against it. True, her passengers wouldn't
  notice anything, since they already assumed she was a
  droneship programmed to carry them in privacy to
  their destination. And it was also true that she would
  rather perform the Singularity transformations that
  carried them through decomposition space without
  the irritating distraction of these ... brats. But she
  shrank from the idea of spending days, more than a
  week, in the isolation of space, with nothing to see but
  the wheeling stars, no other brain to communicate
  with #  for if she opened a beam to Central, her cousin
  Polyon, with his propensity for snooping through the
  ship's computer systems, would be bound to notice the
  comm activity. Brainships were as human as any
  softpersons; Nancia knew that it would be unwise to
  expose herself for so long to the strain of partial sen-
  sory deprivation.
  Besides, she wanted to know what her passengers
  were up to.
  When Nancia reactivated the central cabin's sen-
  sors, Darnell was already stalking down the hall to his
  cabin and Polyon, lips taut with rage, was about to fol-
  low him. "I don't care for that name," he told Blaize.
  Nancia hastily scanned the cabin's automatic
  recording system. Blaize had been teasing his cousin
  by calling him "Polly." Academy records on Polyon de
  Gras-Waldheim mentioned this nickname as the basis
  for several vicious fights that had occurred during
  Polyon's Academy training, including one in which
  Polyon's opponent was so badly injured that he had to
  
  drop out of the officer training program. Witnesses
  had attested that Polyon went on twisting the boy's
  bones and listening to them splinter long after his op-
  ponent was begging for mercy.
  PARTNERSHIP
  35
  Following that incident, Polyon's file had been
  flagged with warning signals that would forever
  preclude his being assigned to a responsible military
  post. . "  and he had been verbally notified of this
  decision in an interview with retired General Mack
  Erricott, Dean of the Space Academy #
  What was sfo doing? Nancia dosed down all her infor-
  mation channels momentarily. Where had all this
  private information come from? She reopened her
  channels and traced the dataflow. It came through the
  Net, and she shouldn't have had access to any of this
  material; it came from the Space Academy's private
  personnel files. Somehow the Net had responded to
  her momentary curiosity by opening up material that
  should have been shielded under the Dean's personal
  password.
  After a moment's confusion, Nancia realized what
  had happened. Polyon's meddling with the ship's
  security system had extended to some very sophisti-
  cated tampering in the Net itself. He had, in effect,
  defined Nancia as the node of origin for a system con-
  troller with unlimited powers to access and change
  files and codes in any computer on the Net. Nancia's
  instinctive intervention had then made the "System
  Controller" identity unavailable to Polyon himself...
  but had left the node definition in place, allowing her
  access to all the files he had scanned, and a great deal
  more besides.
  Nancia felt as embarrassed as if she'd been caught
  peeking into an anesthetized classmate's open shell
  during synaptic remodeling... the invasion of privacy
  was that great. / didn't realize what I was doing! She
  defended herself, and hastily erased the super-user
  node definition before she could be tempted into look-
  ing at anybody else's private files.
  But she couldn't forget the shocking and disturbing
  things she'd just read about Polyon. And she was
  36
  Anne McCaffrey 67 Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  37
  relieved that he'd left the central cabin to Blaize, stalk-
  
  ing back to his own cabin in a pose of offended dignity
  far more impressive than Darnell's pout
  Blaize looked directly at Nancia's titanium column
  and winked. "Bet you thought he was going to beat me
  up, didn't you?"
  Nancia responded without thinking to this, the first
  direct address she'd received since her passengers
  boarded and she lifted off from Central. "I hope you
  weren't counting on me to protect you!"
  Blaize gave a soft, satisfied chuckle. "Not at all, dear
  lady. Until this moment I wasn't even sure what #  or
  who #  you were." He lifted an imaginary cap and
  mimed an extravagant bow. "Allow me to introduce
  myself," he murmured as he straightened again. "Blaize
  Armontillado-Perez y Medoc. And you?"
  It was too late to retreat into the silence that had
  protected her so for. Nancia gave a mental shrug #  no
  more than a quick flashing of connectors #  and
  decided that she might as well converse with the brat.
  She'd been starting to get lonely, anyway; the isolation
  of deep space was too great a contrast after her years of
  comfortable, constant multi-channel input and output
  with her classmates in Laboratory Schools. "XN-935,"
  Nancia said grudgingly. And then, because the call let-
  ters seemed inadequate, "Nancia Perez y de Gras."
  "A cousin, a veritable cousin!" Blaize crowed with
  unabashed delight. "So tell me, cousin, what's a nice
  girl like you doing convoying a rabble of riffraff like
  us?"
  The question was uncomfortably close to Nancia's
  own opinion of her passengers. "How did you know I
  was a brainship?" she countered.
  "The liftoff procedures could have been performed
  by an AI drone. But somehow I didn't really think the
  Medoc clan and the rest of our loving families would
  have sent us off to jaunt through Singularity on auto-
  matic. Wouldn't be fitting to the dignity of the High
  Families, y'know, to have a packet of metachips
  responsible for our safety instead of a human brain."
  "You don't have much respect for your family, do
  you? No wonder they're sending you off to a fringe
  world. They're probably afraid you'll embarrass
  them-"
  For a moment Blaize's freckled race looked cold and
  hard and infinitely sad. Then, so quickly that a human
  eye would hardly have recognized the brief betrayal,
  he grinned and flashed a salute at Nancia's column.
  "Absolutely. Just one minor correction. They're not
  afraid I'll embarrass them. They're bloody sure of it!"
  
  Pulling out one of the padded chairs, he seated himself
  cross-legged in the middle of the cabin, arms folded,
  and beamed at Nancia's column as though he hadn't a
  care in the world. She retrieved the image of his race a
  moment earlier and projected it on interior space,
  comparing the bleak-eyed young man of the record-
  ing with the smiling boy in the cabin. What could be
  hurting him so deeply? Against her will, she felt a
  twinge of sympathy for this spoiled scion, this disgrace
  to the High Families.
  "And do you intend to?" she asked in carefully
  neutral tones.
  "What? Oh# disgrace them?" Blaize shrugged a lit-
  tle too gracefully. Nancia began to wonder how many
  of his seemingly casual gestures were rehearsed. "No,
  it's too late now. Sure, I had fantasies when I was a kid.
  But I'm a little old for running away now, don't you
  think?"
  "What# to join the circus?"
  For another split second, the mobile face before her
  matched the bleak image she'd stored. "No. The Space
  Academy. Actually," Blaize said in a voice as carefully
  neutral as Nancia's own, "I used to think I'd train as a
  brawn #  Don't laugh; it was a kid's idea. But I never
  38
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Batt
  could imagine anything better than working with a
  brainship. To fly between the stars, saving lives and
  worlds, partnered with a living ship to learn the dance
  of space...." His voice cracked on the last word. "I
  told you. Kids have dumb ideas."
  "It doesn't seem like such a dumb idea to me," Nan-
  tia told him. "Why did you give it up? Did somebody
  tell you brawns have to be six feet tall and built like...
  like Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?"
  "Give it up!" Blaize echoed. "I didn't give it up. Iran
  away three times. The first time I actually got into the
  Space Academy, too. Took the open tests, forged
  papers saying I was a war orphan, won a scholarship.
  It was three weeks before my tutor found me." The
  momentary, unguarded joy in his face as he remem-
  bered those weeks wrenched at Nancia's heart. "The
  second and third times they knew where I'd go; there
  was a squad of House Medoc private guards waiting
  for me at the Academy."
  "Your family seems to have been rather violently
  against die idea."
  Blaize's mobile, ugly face twisted into a sneer.
  
  "Wouldn't do for folks in our position, y'know. Not
  quite the thing. My cousin Jillia is in line to be the next
  Planetary Governor of Kaza-uri, and my buddy Hene-
  quin #  m'father's best friend's son," Blaize explained
  parenthetically, "is already in charge of the Vega
  branch of Planetary Technical Aid. A son who's in
  brawn training doesn't quite match up with those stel-
  lar accomplishments for after-dinner bragging."
  "I wonder if my family feels that way," Nancia said.
  Was that why Daddy hadn't made time for her
  graduation?
  "Shouldn't think so. They sent you to Laboratory
  Schools, didn't they?"
  "They didn't," Nancia said, "have many options. I
  would not have survived a normal birth.
  PARTNERSHIP 39
  "Oh. Well. Anyway," Blaize said carefully, "I don't
  think your branch of the family is quite as snobbish as
  ours- And neither one can beat the de Gras-Waldheims
  for exclusiveness. Polly got to go to the Academy, but
  he was supposed to turn into a general, not a lowly
  space jockey; I can't imagine what he's doing on his
  way to administer a metachip plant on Shemali. Must
  have been some scandal at the Academy. I thought I
  knew all the family gossip, but whatever he got into,
  they hushed it up exceedingly well. You probably have
  access to the files, though #  or #  anyway, I bet you
  could find out if you wanted to."
  "I imagine," Nancia said, "they are in need of his
  technical expertise." She felt no impulse whatever to
  share the details of Polyon's Academy problems with
  this gossipy boy. Didn't the High Families train their
  softperson children in any kind of discretion? First
  Polyon, using his computer expertise to hack through
  security checks and find out the other passengers'
  secrets, and now Blaize, turning his charm on her to
  the same end.
  "You don't approve of gossip, do you?" Blaize
  guessed. "All right. Have it your way. You will be a
  suitably discreet Courier Service brainship and a
  credit to the family, and I'll be a nice little PTA ad-
  ministrator on Angalia and try not to disgrace my side
  of the family, and we can all drift on in boredom
  forever."
  "Planetary Technical Aid isn't so bad," Nancia told
  him. "My sister Jinevra is an area administrator, and
  she's only twenty-nine. You could rise rapidly #  "
  "Fromy4ftgtt&a?" Blaize's eyebrows shot up like red
  exclamation marks, giving his face a look of comical
  
  astonishment. "Dear Cousin Nancia, you really don't
  pry, do you? If you'd read my file you would know bet-
  ter than to try and stir up my ambitions for Angalia.
  The sum total of civilization there consists of one PTA
  40
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  41
  office, one coryrium mine, and a bunch of humanoid
  natives with the collective IQ of a zucchini. Asmall zuc-
  chini. It's amazing they even qualify for Planetary Aid;
  somebody must have filled out the FCF wrong, and
  whoever later determined that they didn't have ISS
  forgot to correct the PTA data. The wheels of the
  bureaucracy grind on and on.... So here I go to An-
  galia, less than the dust beneath old Henequin's
  chariot wheels."
  "You should do well enough," Nancia said. "You've
  certainly got the jargon of the bureaucracy down pat"
  She scanned her data files for translations of the initials
  Blaize had used. PTA was Planetary Technical Aid, of
  course, and FCF turned out to be a First Contact
  Form, and ISS #  ah. Intelligent Sentient Status. Nan-
  cia had learned all the regulations for dealing with
  alien sentients in Basic Courier Diplomacy and
  Development 101, but she wasn't used to hearing the
  abbreviations tossed about so casually. Daddy, when he
  visited and told her about his work, was always careful
  to give each bureaucratic office its full name, each offi-
  cial his full tide.
  It was possible, Nancia thought, involuntarily con-
  trasting Blaize's darting, hummingbird speech patterns
  with Daddy's measured delivery #  it was possible that
  her father, Javier Perez y de Gras, was just a bit stuffy. No.
  That was ridiculous. She was getting corrupted by her
  passengers, straying into non-regulation and non-
  approved ways of thinking. Heaven knew what
  indiscretions Blaize would lure her into if they continued
  this conversation.
  "Do you play SPACED OUT?" She filled the three
  wall-size screens with the displays that had tempted
  Polyon and Darnell into the game. "It'll have to be
  solitaire, I'm afraid."
  "Why?"
  "I can't not know the underlying structure," Nancia
  apologized. "You see, the game's part of my memory
  banks now. And I've never learned your softperson
  trick of selectively turning off awareness." She wasn't
  about to try, either. But she could, she told Blaize,
  
  make the solitaire game a little more challenging by
  redefining the maze of tunnels and Singularity nodes
  that connected one part of the SPACED OUT galaxy
  with another.
  "Rules that change as you play?" Blaize hummed in
  delight. "Great idea. Polly will hate it, too."
  That thought seemed to increase his pleasure in the
  game. And while he happily manipulated a solitary
  play icon through the traps and surprises set up by the
  designer, Nancia contemplated the vast loneliness of
  the stars around them and the distance she must travel
  before she could make private contact with another
  shellperson.
  PARTNERSHIP
  43
  "  CHAPTER THREE
  Alpha
  When she awoke after the graduation "party,"
  Alpha bint Hezra-Fong made her way to the main
  cabin and found her traveling companions engaged in
  one of those silly role-playing games. Medical school
  and a demanding research program had never given
  her the time to waste on such frivolities. But there might
  be plenty of time where she was going. Alpha pushed that
  thought to the back of her mind. She would find some-
  thing productive to do; she always did. She might even
  find a way to continue her research.
  For the present, her companions watched the game
  screens, and Alpha watched them. They were consid-
  erably more amusing than the game; especially Blaize
  and Polyon, stalking one another in an ongoing verbal
  battle. Blaize was obviously dying to know why some-
  one Eke Polyon, destined by family and training for a
  high command post, was being sent out to start his
  career on a remote planet of no real military
  importance.
  Alpha rather wanted to know the answer to that lit-
  tle puzzle herself. As part of the powerful and
  high-ranking de Gras-Waldheim clan, Polyon would
  seem like a good person to cultivate. And in some
  ways, Alpha thought, it would be a pleasure to make
  friends with Polyon. He was certainly the most attrac-
  tive man on this ship, the only one worth her time. But
  if he'd disgraced himself at the Academy and been dis-
  owned by his family, she couldn't afford the risk of
  getting dose to him. Some of that scandal #  whatever
  it could have been #  might rub off on her. And she
  couldn't afford any more blots on her record, not after
  the way the medical school had overreacted to that
  trivial business about her research protocols. No, she'd
  
  wait and find out a little more about Polyou before she
  moved on him. And she'd let Blaize Armontillado-
  Perez y Medoc, a born gadfly if ever there was one, do
  the finding out.
  "Shemali's such an obscure spot," Blaize hinted, "for
  a brilliant young man on his way up."
  Polyon stared into the display of distant mountain
  peaks for a moment before he answered. Alpha could
  see a muscle twitching in his jaw. As well as all the muscles
  everywhere else ... those Academy undress grays don't leave
  much to the imagination! Why doesn't he just break the little
  pest in half? But Polyon retained his control. "Yes, it's
  nearly as godforsaken as Angalia, isn't it? My brilliant
  little cousin-on-his-way-up," he added remotely.
  "Ah, but we all know I'm the black sheep of the fami-
  ly," Blaize countered, "a modern-day remittance man.
  You, on the other hand, are supposed to be the pride
  of the de Gras-Waldheims, the last and finest flower of
  those entwined family trees, bursting with military
  potential and #  umm #  hybrid vigor."
  "At least the Academy taught me not to mix my
  metaphors," Polyon said.
  "It must be some super-secret military base," Blaize
  decided aloud. "Nothing less would suit for a de Gras-
  Waldheim's first posting. So classified even the
  droneship doesn't know why you're going there.
  Alpha noticed that his eyes flicked towards the
  central titanium column as though he expected an
  answer through the ship's speakers. Well, she con-
  ceded, it was as likely that the drone would take part in
  the conversation as that Polyon would tell his cousin
  anything he didn't want to. Likelier.
  She yawned and fiddled with the joyball, rolling the
  44
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  45
  SPACED OUT display from the Mountains of Momen-
  tum to Asteroid Hall and back. This conversation was
  boring. Polyon wasn't going to tell them anything. He
  wasn't even going to smash his cousin into the wall. No
  information, no amusement. Alpha was about ready to
  go back to her cabin and take a nap. There was little
  enough else to do on this stupid droneship.
  "No secret military plans," Polyon said. "No secrets
  at all, Blaize, sorry to disappoint you. But if it'll shut
  you up, I'll try to explain what I'm going to do in terms
  
  you'll be able to understand.... Leaving out the tech-
  nical terms, let's just say that I'm going to manage the
  metachip plant attached to the Shemali prison. Gover-
  nor Lyautey is out of his depth. He knows how to run a
  prison. He doesn't know anything about metachip
  manufacturing. And the productivity record shows it
  I'm going to set things straight, that's all."
  Alpha sighed. The man's discretion was so perfect,
  she almost believed him; except that Blaize was right,
  it didn't compute for a de Gras-Waldheim to take a job
  as a factory manager.
  "Ann, now I understand," Blaize almost purred.
  "The governor is to take lessons from you in the finer
  points of chip manufacture, and you're to take lessons
  from him in the finer points of... ahhh... torture and
  degradation of prisoners? Or do I have it wrong?
  Maybe it's the other way round."
  Polyon smiled. "If the governor wants an expert in
  nagging prisoners to death, I'll advise him to send for
  you."
  "What a pity, though," Blaize prodded. "All that
  military training going to waste. Seems the family
  could have arranged something a little better for you.
  Unless there's something you're not telling us about
  your Academy record...."
  Polyon's perfectly shaped ears turned red and
  Alpha raised her head, suddenly alert. The flush of
  rage didn't improve Polyon's looks, but that was all
  right with her; if anything, his face in repose was a little
  tJo perfect And now he looked ready to kill somebody
  _ or tell something. Alpha mentally applauded.
  Blaize had finally hit on a nerve!
  "And what better position might the family have ar-
  ranged foryou, dear cousin?" Polyon inquired. "Save a
  Utde of that pity for yourself. When your posting at
  Angalia is finished #  if you ever do get off that godfor-
  saken planet #  you'll have nothing but your savings.
  Granted, they should be considerable, since there's
  nothing to spend money on there, but how much can
  a PTA-l7's monthly salary add up to?"
  "About as much as a factory supervisor's, I should
  imagine. Face the facts, Polyon. We've both been
  screwed over by our respective families. For once
  you're in the same boat I'm in, regardless of that pretty
  face and stiff back. I know why I'm here. What I'd
  dearly like to know is why they did it to you."
  Alpha, too. She leaned forward, tensing slighdy in
  anticipation of the answer, but Polyon chose to answer
  the first part of Blaize's goading speech rather than the
  second. "Oh, but I've no intention of trying to make it
  on my savings, dear coz."
  
  "What, then?"
  "Metachips," Polyon said meditatively, "are very ex-
  pensive. Not to mention that they're in short supply."
  "Tell me something I don't know," Blaize invited him.
  "I plan," said Polyon, "to... improve on the current
  rationing system."
  Unnoticed in her corner, Alpha nodded thoughtful-
  ly. Polyon had a good point. Metachips were
  exceedingly scarce and costly, and for good reason.
  The metachip manufacturing process involved at least
  three different acids so hazardous to the environment
  that most planets refused to harbor the plants, despite
  the unquestioned financial benefits. Shemali, in-
  46
  AnmMcCaffny & Margaret Baft,
  PARTNERSHIP
  47
  hospitable, cursed with the perpetual biting north
  wind that had given the planet its name, with its one
  land mass dedicated to a maximum-security priso^
  was the only major metachip inanufacturing site in ex-
  istence; ShemaU, where nothing you did could make
  the environment much worse, and where the workers
  bought their lives one day at a time by laboring in the
  metachip plant
  Because who else could you use, in the final
  analysis, but convicts already under sentence of death?
  One of the acids involved, when used in the quantities
  required for manufacturing, released a gas whose ef-
  fects on human tissue were slow, painful, deadly...
  and so far, irreversible. Alpha was an expert on those
  effects; her research at Central Med had been devoted
  to trying various drug therapies to reverse the effects
  of Ganglicide. She might have had a major paper out
  of the work if the school's Ethics Committee hadn't got
  so upset about her testing methods... Alpha clamped
  her lips down on the flare of anger that possessed her.
  That was all in the past. The present was Polyon and
  his plan, which he was explaining to Blaize with a
  wealth of patronizing detail about die adverse effects
  on the economy of the present rationing system.
  "It's ridiculous to have metachips distributed by a
  committee of old men and do-gooders," he declared.
  "Sure, the military is entitled to Erst cut at the chips, but
  after our applications have been satisfied, the remaining
  chips ought to go where they'll do the most good."
  "1 thought that was the object of the rationing sys-
  tem," Blaize remarked. "Companies get Social Utility
  Marks for their intended use of the metachips, and the
  
  chips are distributed in proportion to the SUM.
  What's wrong with that?"
  "Unrealistic," Polyon said promptly. "They're using
  chips for single-body operations like repairing kidneys or
  replacing damaged spinal nerves, when the same chips
  rould R# m#> on> applications that thousands of people
  could use at once. Dorg Jesen would pay millions for a
  handful ofmetas and a promise of steady supply."
  Blai/e began to laugh. "Dorg Jesen? The feelieporn
  jyng? That's your idea of a SUM?"
  "Millions," Polyon repeated himself. "And if you don't
  believe I can think of a socially useful function for all that
  cash#
  "That," said Btaize, "I can believe. But just how do
  you think you'll sneak the feelieporn application past
  the advisory board?"
  "I see no reason why the matter should ever come
  before the board. QA testing for the metachips is one
  of the areas Governor Lyautey asked me to supervise.
  Disposal of the chips that fail QA will presumably also
  fell within my duties." He looked so smug that Alpha
  felt the need to puncture his self-satisfaction.
  "I wouldn't plan on selling defective chips to Dorg
  Jesen if I were you," she interrupted Polyon's gloating.
  "He's been known to rearrange the features of people
  who interfered with his business." Her shiver wasn't
  assumed; one of her first tasks in med research had
  been to diagram the facial injuries on a girl who'd
  refused Jesen's offer of employment Alpha had even-
  tually made a complete inventory of the damage,
  together with holosims of the girl's face before the at-
  tack and as she would look after plastifilm had
  replaced what used to be living flesh.
  Eventually.
  After she rushed out of the lab theater and threw up
  in front of the senior surgical advisor.
  At the time, she'd thought it would be the most
  humiliating thing that could ever happen to her in
  med school.
  Remembering, she barely heard Polyon's bland
  reply that he had no intention of selling defective chips
  to anybody.
  48
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  
  49
  Blaize gave a low, admiring whistle. "Of course. Fitf.
  die the QA parameters one way for Governor
  Lyautey's reports, the other way for sales, and who
  knows what happens to the metachips in between?
  You could make a fortune in 6ve years!"
  "I intend to," said Polyon.
  He was really much too self-satisfied, especially for a
  man who'd left the Academy under some kind of a
  cloud that he was afraid or ashamed to discuss. Alpha
  decided that it would be doing humanity a favor to
  wipe that smug smile off Lieutenant de Gras-
  Waldheim's face. He really shouldn't smirk like that
  Spoiled his looks.
  "I do hope you'll still be able to enjoy your fortune
  by then," she cooed sweetly at Polyon. "Better stay out
  of the way of your convict laborers, though. Nasty acci-
  dents are so easy to arrange in a D-class facility, aren't
  they? But don't let it worry you. Even if you do get a lit-
  tle spot of Ganglicide on your precious skin, I'm sure
  Governor Lyautey will rush you to Bahati for medical
  treatment. And you're lucky to have an expert in
  Ganglicide therapy right there at the Summerlands
  clinic."
  "You." Polyon nodded stiffly. "That was to be your
  thesis topic, wasn't it?"
  Alpha suppressed a start. How had Polyon known
  of her research? Oh, well, the High Families were such
  an inbred group. Probably her aunt Leona had been
  gossiping over the chai tables. But Polyon wouldn't
  know much more than the title of her projected paper;
  the symptoms of Ganglicide exposure were hardly fit
  material for chai-table gossip. She relaxed and
  prepared to enjoy her project of wiping that superior
  smirk off Polyon's face.
  "I had some success with chemical treatments for the
  skin decay," she told him. "Halted the disintegrating
  process, anyway. I'm afraid we couldn't do much to
  verse the effects, though. The skin shreds like paper
  d turns sort ofblue-green. And it spreads very rapidly.
  ifvou get a drop of Ganglicide on one finger while you're
  n Shemali, your arm will look like it's been through a
  per snredder by the time the shuttle delivers you to
  Bahati. Do try to keep it away from your pretty face."
  Polyon's handsome features betrayed only slight
  uneasiness, but there was a knowing look in his eyes.
  
  "you# had to interrupt your research rather sudden-
  ly, didn't you?"
  Alpha silently cursed all interfering, gossiping old
  relatives and friends. Never mind. "More's the pity,"
  she sighed. "I was just getting into the most interesting
  cases. You know, when Ganglicide goes into its gaseous
  form it attacks nerves and brain synapses. Has much
  the same effects on them that it has on the skin; we dis-
  sected a really fascinating case, a senior assembly tech
  from Shemali, as it happens. The inside of his head
  looked like a wet blue sponge. Of course, by the time
  the Ganglicide got that far he was too far gone to know
  or care what was happening to him. A mercy, really.
  Not that we'll ever really know how long he felt the
  pain. Ganglicide goes straight to the pain receptors,
  you know; we can't block the effects with drugs. And
  towards the end he was screaming continuously. Like
  an animal dying under torture." She licked her lips
  and regarded Polyon. He was standing quite still, two
  fingers beating a nervous tattoo on the command
  panel behind him. The dance of his fingertips on the
  sensitive pressure pads made the SPACED OUT screen
  on the far side of the room shift back and forth jerkily,
  displaying alternate images of deep space and of a
  flaming labyrinth where molten lava menaced the
  hapless play icons.
  "If you're nice to me," Alpha added, "I'll promise to
  kill you before the Ganglicide eats out your brains. No
  human being should have to die like that"
  50
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  "Oh, I'll be nice to you," Polyon said. His voice ivas
  still even; he thrust off from the control panel with HVQ
  fingers and floated across the room. As he came closer
  Alpha recognized the look in his eyes. Not frightened
  Wary. Like a hunter waiting for his quarry to burst
  from cover. And as he reached out to encircle her wrist
  with strong, blunt fingers, the look changed to a light
  of triumph. "I think we can be very nice to one another
  lovely Alpha. It's so kind of you to take an interest in
  my career." His voice changed on the last words,
  mocking, savagely amused. "But enough about me.
  Tell us about yourself, why don't you?" He gestured
  towards Darnell and Fassa, floating through the open
  door to join them. "We'd all like to hear about your in-
  terrupted research. And why one of the school's
  brightest young medical researchers chose to donate
  five years of public service to an obscure clinic on
  Bahati You're too modest, Alpha."
  Alpha tossed her head and tried to pull away from
  Polyon, but he was too strong for her. "There's noth-
  ing to tell, really. I was tired #  wanted a change of
  scene. That's all."
  "Is it?" Polyon murmured. "Funny. The way I heard
  it, there were some other people who wanted to
  
  change your scene. The newsnibblers never beamed
  the story, did they? Can't have scandals about a High
  Families girl going out as entertainment bytes. But I
  fancy our friends on board here would find the story
  very entertaining."
  Alpha stared up at Polyon, looking for a hint of com-
  passion in the sharp planes of his face and the ice-blue
  eyes that had seemed so attractive a moment ago. "I
  did nothing to be ashamed of," she whispered. "The
  tradition of scientific experiments #  "
  "Does not include testing Ganglicide on unwitting
  subjects." His voice was so low the others could not
  hear it
  PARTNERSHIP
  51
  Charity cases," Alpha defended herself "Streetbums.
  ne of them were so far gone on Blissto they didn't even
  ow what was happening to them. They were incurable
  __ nothing but an expense to the state as long as they
  Kved. I did diem a favor, making sure their lives ended for
  some purpose."
  "Somehow," Polyon murmured, "I don't think the
  court would have seen it that way. But then, you never
  did come to trial, did you? Hezra clan and Fong tribe
  wouldn't let that happen. Private settlement in the
  med school offices, records sealed."
  "How #  did you find out?" Alpha gasped. He was
  very close to her now, his voice the subtlest vibration of
  sound from lips that almost brushed her cheek. The
  raw power of his will and his anger wrapped about
  her. She felt weak from the spine out. His smile made
  her shiver.
  "That's my little secret," he told her, still smiling. His
  face and gestures might have been those of a
  courtship; Alpha realized that the others in the room
  might imagine they were flirting. That was a relief.
  Anything was preferable to having her humiliation
  made public before these people who were to be her
  constant companions for the next two weeks# having
  them see her as the disgraced failure she was, instead
  of the successful young researcher with a social con-
  science she pretended to be. "You were lucky to get off
  with five years of community service on Bahati,
  weren't you?" Polyon commented, stroking her cheek
  with his free hand. "A commoner would have been
  doing time. Hard time. Who knows, gorgeous, you
  might even have wound up on Shemali #  getting a
  chance to check out Ganglicide at first hand, so to
  speak. Wouldn't our innocent litde friends love to hear
  
  the story?"
  But he was still speaking in a low voice, head partial-
  ly turned away from Fassa and Blaize and Darnell,
  52
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  who had grouped together in the far corner of the
  cabin and were pretending deep interest in a round of
  SPACED OUT.
  "What# do you want?"
  "Cooperation," Polyon said. "Only a little # .
  cooperation."
  Blindly, drowning in a sea of air that somehow gave
  her nothing to breathe, Alpha turned her face up to
  meet Polyon's parted lips.
  "Not that sort of cooperation," Polyon told her,
  laughing gently, "not yet," His eyes measured her with
  a cold glance that made her more afraid than ever #
  and, somehow, more excited too. "Maybe later, if
  you're a good girl. You were too uppity before, you
  know that, Alpha? Now you're the way I like my
  women. Quiet. And respectful. Stay that way, and we
  won't have to discuss any# ah# painful subjects with
  the others. Come with me and follow my lead. That's
  all I expect of you #  for now."
  Submissive, head bowed, Alpha drifted towards the
  three SPACED OUT gamers in Polyon's wake. They
  were still pretending to be totally involved in the game,
  but she felt sure they had avidly witnessed her
  humiliation.
  She would pay them back. That was certain, she
  vowed. Fassa, Darnell, Blaize #  they would all learn
  not to laugh at her.
  She didn't even think of retaliating against Polyon.
  /
  Nancia quietly transferred the recording of the
  scene she'd just witnessed to an offline storage hedron.
  Having those bits in her system made her feel... dirty.
  As if she were somehow implicated in Polyon's sadistic
  games.
  Perhaps she should have interfered. But how ...
  and why? Alpha was just as bad as Polyon, worse even,
  to judge from what he'd revealed of her unauthorized
  PARTNERSHIP
  
  medical experiments. The two of them deserved each
  other. Blaize was the only one of the bunch she would
  care to talk to. The litde redhead reminded her of Flix
  __- and unlike the others, he didn't seem to have any-
  thing wrong with him that a few years away from
  family pressures wouldn't cure.
  And what, exactly, Tvitt you say if you do interrupt? Nan-
  cia couldn't answer her own question. She was a
  Courier Service Ship, not a diplomat! She wasn't sup-
  posed to interfere with her passengers! She should
  have had a brawn on board #  an experienced brawn #
  to break up nasty scenes like the one she'd just wit-
  nessed, to keep these spoiled young passengers happy
  and away from one another's throats for the two weeks
  of the trip. It's not fair! Not on my very first voyage!
  But there was nobody to hear her plaint. They were
  still five days away from Singularity and the decom-
  position into Vega subspace.
  At least I can keep evidence recordings going, Nancia
  thought grimly. If one of the little brats drives another over
  the edge, there'll be plenty ofdatahedra to show what hap-
  pened. But at the moment, the five passengers seemed
  to be getting along reasonably well. Perhaps his sadis-
  tic games with Alpha had momentarily satiated
  Polyon's need for command and control; he had taken
  a play icon and seemed absorbed in that silly role-play-
  ing game. Nancia relaxed . . . but she kept her
  datacorders running.
  " CHAPTER FOUR
  "Why can't I get past the Wingdrake of Wisdom?"
  Darnell griped. He had chosen Bonecrush again, but
  his mighty-thewed play icon was backed into a corner
  where a winged serpent hissed menacingly at him
  every time he tried to move.
  "You should have bought some intelligence for
  Bonecrush at the Little Shop of Spiritual Enlighten-
  ment," Polyon commented. His fingers flicked
  carelessly at the screen as he spoke, sending Thingber-
  ry the Martian Mage to spin an apparently pointless
  web in the night sky above Asteroid 66.
  "I didn't know you could buy intelligence." DarneU's
  lower lip protruded in a definite pout "That wasn't in
  the rule book."
  "A lot of things aren't in the rule book," Polyon said,
  "including most of what you need to survive. And in-
  formation is always for sale... if you know the right
  price. Anything from the secrets of Singularity to the
  origins of planet names."
  "Oh. Encyclopedias. Libraries, Anybody can buy the
  Galactic Datasource on fast-hedra," Darnell whined.
  "But who has time to read all that crud?"
  
  "The price of some kinds of information," Polyon
  said, "is more than the cost of a book and the time to
  read it. I could print out the rules of Singularity math
  for you, but you haven't paid the price of under-
  standing it #  the years of space transformation
  algebra and the intelligence to move the theories into
  multiple dimensions."
  "Oh, come on," Blaize challenged him. "It's not that
  PARTNERSHIP
  55
  compjjcated. Even I know Baykowski's Theorem."
  "A continuum C is said to be locally shrinkable in M
  if and only if, for each epsilon greater than zero and
  each open set D containing C, there is a homeomor-
  phism h of M onto M which takes C onto a set of
  diameter less than epsilon and which is the identity on
  M ___ D," Polyon recited rapidly. "And it's not a
  theorem, it's a definition."
  Nancia quietly followed the discussion with mild in-
  terest. The mathematics of Singularity was nothing
  new to her, but at least when her brat passengers were
  talking mathematics they weren't trying to drive each
  other crazy. And she was impressed that Polyon had
  retained enough Singularity theory to be able to recite
  Baykowski's Definition from memory; common gossip
  among the brainships in training was that no
  softperson could really understand multidimensional
  decompositions.
  "The real basis for decom theory," Polyon lectured
  his audience, "is what follows that definition. Namely,
  Zerlion's Lemma: that our universe can be considered
  as a collection of locally shrinkable continua each con-
  taining at least one non-degenerating element."
  Fassa del Parma pouted and jabbed her play icon
  across the display screen in a series of short, jerky moves.
  "Very useful information, I'm sure," she said in a sarcas-
  tic voice, "but do the rest of us have to pay the price of
  listening to it? All this theoretical mathematics makes my
  head hurt And it's not as if it were good for anything, like
  stress analysis or materials testing."
  "It's good for getting us to the Nyota system in two
  weeks instead of six months, my dove," Polyon told
  her. "And it's really quite simple. In layman's terms,
  Singularity theory just shows us how to decompose
  two widely separated subspace areas into a sequence
  of compacted dimensionalities sharing one non-
  degenerating element. When the subspaces become
  56
  
  Anm McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  57
  singular they will appear to intersect at that element # .
  and when we expand from the decomposition, pon|
  out of Central subspace and into Vega space we go."
  Nancia felt grateful that she'd resisted her impulse
  to join in the conversation. Her Lab Schools classmates
  had been right about softpersons. Polyon knew all the
  right words for Singularity mathematics, but he'd got-
  ten the basic theory hopelessly scrambled. And clearly
  he didn't understand the computational problems un-
  derlying that theory. Pure topological theory might
  prove the existence of a decomposition series, but ac-
  tually forcing a ship through that series required
  massive linear programming optimizations, all per-
  formed in realtime with no second chances for
  mistakes. No wonder softpersons weren't trusted to
  pilot a ship through Singularity!
  "I agree with you," Alpha told Fassa. "Bo-ring. Even
  the history of Nyota is better than studying
  mathematics."
  "You'd think so, of course," Fassa said, "seeing that it
  was discovered and named by your people." The small
  grin on her face told Nancia that this was a jab of some
  sort at Alpha. Hastily she scanned her data notes on the
  Nyota system, but nothing there explained why the
  Hezra-Fong family should take a particular interest in it
  "Swahili is a slave language," Alpha said haughtily.
  "It has nothing to do with the Fong tribe. My people
  come from the other side of the continent #  and we
  were never enslaved!"
  "Will somebody give me a map of this conversa-
  tion?" Darnell said plaintively. "I'm more lost than I
  was during Polyon's math lecture."
  "This particular information," Alpha told him, "is
  free." She drew herself up to her full height, several
  inches taller than Fassa, and favored the top of her
  sleek, dark head with a withering glare, "The system
  we're going to was discovered by a Black descendant of
  the American slaves. In a burst of misguided en-
  thusiasm, he decided to give the star and all the planets
  names from an African language. Unfortunately, he
  was so poorly educated that the only such language he
  knew was Swahili, a trade language spread along the
  east coast of Africa by Arab slavers. He called the sun
  Nyota ya Jaha #  Lucky Star. The planets' names are
  fairly accurate descriptions, too. Bahati means For-
  tune, and it's a reasonably decent place to live #
  green, mild climate, lots of nice scenery that stays put.
  
  Shemali means North Wind."
  polyon groaned appreciatively. "I know. Unlike
  some of us, I did read up on my destination. The place
  is called North Wind because that's what you get for
  thirteen months out of the year."
  "Thirteen months you have in the year? Oh #  I get
  it! Longer rotation period, right?" Darnell beamed
  with pride at his own cleverness.
  "Shorter, as it happens," Polyon said. His voice
  sounded remarkably hollow. "Shemali has a year of
  three hundred days, divided into ten months for con-
  venience. I was being sarcastic about the feet that there
  is no good season."
  "Never mind," Alpha told him almost kindly, "it's bet-
  ter than Angalia. Actually the full name is Angalia! with
  an exclamation point atthe end. Itmeans Watch out!"
  "Dare I ask what that means?" Blaize inquired.
  "It means," Alpha told him, "that the scenery #  un-
  like that of Bahati# doesn't stay put."
  Blaize and Polyon stared at one another, briefly
  companions in misery.
  Polyon was the first to recover himself. "Oh, well,"
  he said, turning back to the game screen, "you see the
  value of information, Darnell #  and the fact that it
  isn't always in the Galactic Datasource. And some of
  the information that isn't #  ah #  publicly available #
  is the most valuable of all." With delicate gestures he
  58
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  nudged the joyball while the fingers of his left hand
  tapped out codes to enlarge and strengthen
  Thingberry's magical net. "You need to think of ways
  to trade for that kind of information. For instance
  your shipping company #  such as it is #  could offer
  discreet transport for parcels that don't get on the cargo
  list, or that go by a slightly misleading name# in some
  cases, disinformation or the lack of information is as
  valuable as actual data."
  "Who'd want that?" Darnell objected. "And who
  cares, anyway? Can't we just play the game?"
  Polyon favored him with a dazzling smile. "Dear
  boy, this is the game #  and a far more rewarding one
  than SPACED OUT. Why, I can think of any number of
  people who might want a #  suitably discreet #  cargo
  carrier service. Myself, for starters."
  "Why you?"
  
  "Let's just say that not all the metachips going off
  Shemali are going to be in the SUM rationing board's
  records," Polyon said.
  "So? What's it worth to me to oblige you?"
  "I could pay you back with Net contacts. I can work the
  Net like no hacker since the days of the first virus
  breeders. It's an unsecured hedron to me. How soon
  could you rebuild OG Shipping if you knew ahead of
  time about every big contract about to be let in Vega sub-
  space ... and what your opponents' sealed bids were?"
  DarnelFs pout vanished to be replaced by a look of
  stunned calculation. "I could be rich again in five years!"
  "But not, I fancy, as rich as I could be from selling
  metachips," Polyon murmured. Thingberry's web
  glistened on the screen above him, strings of jeweled
  fight looping and floating above the play icons on the
  surface of Asteroid 66. "What would you say to a
  friendly wager? The five of us to meet and compare
  notes, once a year #  to see how we're each doing at
  making lemonade out of the lemons of assignments
  PARTNERSHIP 59
  our dear families have landed us with? Winner to take
  a twenty-five percent share in each of the losers'
  operations #  business, goods, or cold credits?"
  do we decide to stop and make the final
  evaluation?" DarneU asked.
  "Five years #  that's the end of most of our tours of
  duty, isn't it?"
  "You know it is," said Alpha quickly. "Standard tour.
  And," she went on under Polyon's firm gaze, " I think it's a
  fliarvelous idea. I've got my own plans, you know."
  "What?" Darnell demanded.
  Alpha gave him a slow, lazy smile. "Wouldn't you
  like to know?"
  "I'm sure we would all like to know," Polyon put in.
  Adeft twist of the joyball set Thingberry's jeweled web
  spinning over the top half of the display screen. "Will
  you enlighten them, Alpha, or shall I #  er #  con-
  tribute my own scraps of information?" He crooked
  his finger, beckoning to her, and she moved closer to
  his control chair.
  "Nothing much," Alpha said. "But . . . Summerlands is
  a double clinic. One side for the paying customers #
  mostly VIPs #  and one side for charity cases, to improve
  their SUM rating. I've got some ideas for an improve-
  
  ment on Blissto #  something we can give addicts in
  controlled doses. They won't get locked into a cycle of
  craving and ever-increasing hits of street drugs."
  "Hey, / like Blissto," Darnell protested, "and I don't
  get into that cycle."
  "Good," Alpha told him. "You're not an addictive per-
  sonality. Some people aren't that lucky. You've seen
  Blissed-Out cases? Big enough doses, over a long
  enough period of time, until their nervous systems look
  like shredded wheat? My version won't do that. We'll be
  able to take Blissed-Out cases out of the hospital and send
  them out to do useful work as long as they stay on their
  meds. And I'm the one who did all the preliminary
  60
  Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  61
  design work on this drug. Actually, it was a side-effect of
  my work on #  well, there's no need to discuss all the
  boring details of my research," she concluded with a
  sidelong glance at Polyon. "What matters is that I've got
  the formulas and all the lab notes on hedra."
  "But won't Central Meds hold the patent, if you did
  the work there?"
  "When# and if#  it's patented," Alpha agreed.
  "And you can't sell it until it's passed the trials and
  been patented #  so it's no good to you!"
  Alpha's eyes met Polyon's over Darnell's head.
  "Quite true," she agreed gravely, "but I think I may
  find a way to profit from the situation anyway."
  "What about you, Fassa?" Polyon asked. The girl
  had been very quiet since her jab about the slave
  names of the Nyota system. "You going to take this
  boondocks construction company Daddy handed you
  lying down?" His tone invested the question with a
  wealth of obscene possibilities.
  "Double profit on every job," Fassa announced
  calmly. "I've got a degree in accounting. I can fix the
  books in ways an auditor will never catch."
  Darnell whistled appreciatively. "But if you are
  caught #  "
  Fassa coiled herself on the other side of Polyon's
  chair in a series of languorous, sinuous movements
  that drew all eyes to her. "I think," she said dreamily,
  "that I can distract any auditors who may think about
  
  checking the books. Or any building inspectors who
  need to sign off on materials quality." Her slow,
  dreamy smile promised a world of secret delights.
  "There's a lot of money in construction ... if you go
  about it the right way."
  The four of them made a tight grouping now:
  Polyon in the control chair, Darnell standing behind
  him, Fassa and Alpha seated on either side of him.
  Four pairs of eyes gazed expectantly at Blaize.
  "Well," he said, swallowed, and started over again.
  "^h #  PTA doesn't offer quite as much scope for
  creativity as the rest of your outfits, does it now?"
  "You're with us or against us," said Polyon. "Which
  is it to be, little cousin?"
  "Ah # neutrality?"
  "Not good enough." Polyon glanced around at the
  other three. "He's heard our plans. If he doesn't join
  us, he could have some idea of informing...."
  Alpha leaned forward, smiling sweetly. Her teeth
  looked long and very white against her dark skin. "Oh,
  you wouldn't do that, would you, Blaize dear?"
  "I wouldn't even think about it," Darnell put in, tap-
  ping one pudgy fist against his open palm.
  Fassa licked her lips and smiled like a child anticipat-
  ing a treat. "This could be interesting" she murmured
  to no one in particular.
  Blaize glanced around the circle of faces, then looked
  towards Nancia's titanium column. She kept her silence.
  Nothing had actually happened yet; if these brats at-
  tempted violence, she could stop it in seconds with a flood
  of sleepgas. And Blaize knew that as well as she did. Nan-
  cia saw no reason to give up her anonymity just to
  reassure him. He'd been brave enough when he was
  picking on Polyon alone; why, for heaven's sake, couldn't
  he stand up to the rest of them?
  "But then, Blaize never did have the guts to do
  something as decisive as telling" Polyon dismissed his
  cousin with a brief nod. "We'll let him think it over...
  all the way to Angalia. It'll be a long couple of weeks,
  little cousin, with nobody to talk to. And a much longer
  five years on Angalia. Hope you enjoy life among the
  veggie-heads. 1 shouldn't think anybody else in the
  Nyota system will have much to do with you." He
  swiveled to face the SPACED OUT display, and the other
  three turned with him.
  "Oh #  don't leap to assumptions so fast. I'm with
  62
  AnmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  
  you, definitely with," Blaize babbled. "There are pos-
  sibilities #  I just haven't had time to think them over
  yet The coryrium mine, for instance #  it hasn't been
  properly developed #  maybe I could get a part inter-
  est in that. And PTA makes regular food drops to
  Angalia, who's to say how much of the food gets dis-
  tributed to the natives and how much gets
  transshipped to some place that can pay for it..." He
  spread his hands and shrugged jerkily. "I'll think of
  something. You'll see. I'll do as well as any of you!"
  Polyon nodded again. His fist closed over the joyball
  and Thingberry's jeweled web spiraled down to
  enclose Asteroidland, trapping the others' play icons
  in a tissue of glittering strands. "Done, then. Five of us
  together. Here, we'd better each have a record." He
  drew a handful of minihedra from the pocket of his
  Academy   grays   and   dropped   them   into   the
  datareader. One by one, Alpha, Fassa, Darnell and
  Blaize identified themselves by hand and retina print
  and spoke aloud the terms and conditions of the wager
  they'd agreed to. Polyon retrieved the minihedra after
  the recording was over and handed one faceted black
  polyhedron to each of them, keeping the last for him-
  self "Better store them someplace safe," he suggested.
  Fassa clipped her minihedron inside a silver wire
  cage that hung from her charm bracelet among tin-
  kling bells and glittering bits of carved prismawood.
  She alone seemed in no particular hurry to escape
  Polyon's influence; while the others jostled to reach
  the exit door, Fassa fiddled with her charm bracelet
  and tried out the shining black minihedron in various
  places, as if her only concern was to see where it would
  show to best advantage.
  As Alpha, Darnell and Blaize left the central cabin,
  Nancia wondered whether Polyon's quick actions and
  mesmerizing personality had made them forget that
  he alone, of the five, had not recorded his intentions
  PARTNERSHIP
  63
  on the minihedra. Or were they simply afraid to chal-
  lenge him?
  that it mattered. She had the entire scene
  recorded. From several angles.
  "You'll see," Blaize repeated over his shoulder as he
  left. TH do better than any of you."
  "Small time, little man," Alpha sneered on her way
  down the corridor, "small-time plans for a small per-
  son. You'll be the loser, but who cares? Somebody has to
  
  lose."
  "She's wrong, you know," Polyon commented to
  Fassa. "Four of you have to lose. There'll be only one
  winner in this game." And he too left, twiddling his
  black minihedron between two fingers and humming
  quietly to himself.
  Fassa
  The gleaming black surfaces of the minihedron
  flashed in the central cabin lights as Fassa turned her
  arm this way and diat, admiring the effect of the stark
  blackness against the jumble of silver and prismawood
  trinkets. The hedron was as black as Fassa's own sleek
  hair and tip-tilted eyes, an admirable contrast to the
  whiteness of her creamed and pampered skin. In its
  hard glossy perfection she saw a miniature of her-
  self. . . beautiful, impenetrable . . .
  A shell full of dangerous secrets,
  Fassa stared at the mirror-smooth surfaces of the
  minihedron and saw her face reflected and distorted in
  half a dozen directions at once, a shattered self looking
  out, trapped in the black mirrors that distorted her
  lovely features to a mask of pain and a silent scream.
  No! That's not me #  that can't be me. She dropped her
  arm; the jingling silver bells on the bracelet tinkled a
  single discordant peal. Pushing off from the strange
  titanium column that wasted so much cabin space, Fassa
  floated into a corner between display screens and a
  64
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU
  storage locker. "Blank screens," she ordered the ship.
  The dazzling display of SPACED OUT graphics faded
  away, to be replaced by a black emptiness like the sur-
  faces of the minihedron. Fassa stared into the flat
  screen, lips parted, until the reflection of her own
  beauty reassured her. Yes, she was still as lovely as
  she'd always believed. The distorted reflections from
  the minihedron had been an illusion like the dreams
  that troubled her sleep, dreams in which her lovely
  face and perfect body peeled away to reveal the
  shrunken, miserable creature underneath.
  Reassured, she stroked the charm bracelet with two
  fingers until she touched the sharp faceted surface of
  the minihedron. I keep my secrets, avid you keep yours, little
  sister. As long as she had the shield of her perfect
  beauty between herself and the world, Fassa felt safe.
  Nobody could see beyond that to the worthless thing
  inside. Very few tried; they were all too mesmerized by
  the outer facade. Men were rutting fools, and they
  deserved no better than to have their own folly turned
  
  back on them. If she could use their desire for her to
  enrich herself, so much the better. Gods knew her
  beauty had cost her too much in the pastl
  Mama, mama, make him stop, wailed a child's voice
  from the recesses of her mind. Fassa laughed sourly at
  the memory of that folly. How old had she been then?
  Eight, nine? Young enough to think her mother could
  stand up to a man like Faul del Parma y Polo, could
  make him give up anything he really wanted #  like his
  daughter. Mama had closed her eyes and turned her
  head away. She didn't want to know what Faul was
  doing to their lovely little girl.
  Ugly little girl. Dirty little girl, whispered another of
  the voices.
  All the same, it had been Mama who stopped it, in a
  way. Too late, but still #  her spectacular and public
  suicide had ended Paul's private games with his
  PARTNERSHIP
  65
  daughter. Jumping from the forty-second story bal-
  cony, Mama had shattered herself on the terraces of
  the Regis Galactic Hotel in the middle of Faul del
  Parma's annual company extravaganza, the oneatt
  the gossipbyters attended. And the news and gossip
  and rumor and innuendo that surrounded the suicide
  of del Parma's wife had been splashed all over the
  newsbeams for weeks thereafter. Why should she kill
  herself? Faul del Parma could give a woman every--
  thing. There was no history of mental instability. And
  everyone knew Faul del Parma never so much as
  looked at another woman, he only cared for his wife#
  well, one didn't hear so much about the wife, did one?
  A homebody type. But he went everywhere with that
  lovely little daughter at his side, only thirteen but a
  heartbreaker in the making....
  It occurred to a dozen gossipbyters at once that the
  daughter should be interviewed. And that had stopped
  it. Faul del Parma had whisked his daughter into a
  very exclusive, very private boarding school where no
  gossipbyters could find her and ask inconvenient
  questions.
  Fassa twisted the minihedron on its clasp. Tkankyou,
  Mama. Even now, six years later, the story of the del
  Parma wife's suicide still made an occasional gossip-
  byte. Even now, Faul del Parma didn't want to risk
  having Fassa anywhere near him. So now that she was
  graduated from the expensive, exclusive school, he'd
  found a position for her with the least of his com-
  panies, Polo Construction, based on a planet in Vega
  subspace. And Fassa had practiced her bargaining
  skills for the first time.
  
  "I'll take it. But not as your subordinate. Make over
  Polo Construction to me, and I'll go out to Bahati and
  manage the company and never trouble you again.
  Call it a graduation present."
  Call it a bribe for going into exile, Fassa thought, twist-
  66
  Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Batt
  ing the minihedron back and forth until the sharp angles
  of the facets bit into her thumb and forefinger. Because
  when Paul had balked at giving her complete ownership
  of the company, Fassa had leaned elegantly on his desk
  and speculated aloud about her chances of getting a posi-
  tion with one of the major newsbeamers. '"They're aU very
  interested in me," she teased her father.
  "Interested in picking up sleazy gossip about our
  family," Faul snapped. "They've no interest in you for
  your own abilities."
  Fassa smoothed her gleaming black hair back from
  her face. "Some of my abilities are very interesting," she
  told him. She let her voice drop down into the husky
  lower register that seemed to produce such an effect
  on her male teachers. "And the del Parma y Polo family
  is always news. I bet some of the major newsbeam com-
  panies would just love to serialize a book by me. I could
  tell them all the secrets I learned from my father...."
  "All right. It's yours!" Faul del Parma y Polo slapped his
  hand on the palmscanner beside his deskcomp, jabbed
  the hardcopy pad with his free thumb and ejected the
  finished minihedron with a glare for his daughter.
  "You won't object if I scan it first?"
  "Use a public scanner. You can't be sure of mine," Faul
  pointed out "I might have programmed it to give a false
  readout You'd better start thinking smarter if you want
  to make a success of this business, Fassa. But don't worry
  # it's all there. Ownership transfer and my palmprint to
  back it up. I wouldn't cheat you. I don't want you coming
  back to this office."
  "Don't you, Daddy dear?" Fassa twisted forward over
  the desk, sinuous and flowing in her formfitting
  sheath of Rigellian spiderspin. She leaned dose
  enough to let Faul breathe in the warmth and subde
  perfume of her skin... and was rewarded by a flash of
  pain and desire in his eyes.
  "Ta-ta, Daddy dearest." She slid from the desk and
  PARTNERSHIP 67
  clasped the minihedron inside a coryciurn heart that
  dangled from her charm bracelet "See you around...
  
  Idon't think."
  "I wonder," Faul said hoarsely, "how many of those
  Htde charms contain men's hearts and souls."
  "Not many #  yet." Fassa paused at the door and
  gave him a sparkling smile. "I'm starting the collection
  with you."
  Now, three days out from Central, she had already
  added a second hedron to the collection. Fassa jingled
  the charm bracelet reflectively. Each of the sparkling
  bits of jewelry was a clasp or a cage or an empty locket,
  waiting to receive some trinket. She'd collected the
  charms over those lonely years at boarding school,
  spending the lavish birthday and Christmas checks
  from Faul on expensive custom-made baubles. One
  for each time that Faul had come to her room at night
  Only twenty-three hi all; strange, she thought, that
  less than two dozen carefully chosen nights over a
  period of four or five years could make you rot away
  from the inside. Twenty-three shining jewels, each as
  perfect and beautiful in its own way as Fassa was in
  hers; each as empty inside as she was.
  No, not any more. Two of them are filled. Fassa pushed
  off from the wall with the tips of her fingers and floated
  gently through the main cabin, twirling the charms
  around her wrist Before she was done, she'd fill every
  charm with something... appropriate.
  Andthenwhat?
  No answers to that, no conceivable end to the future
  she'd mapped out for herself.
  Blaize
  The central cabin was empty; Polyon's buddies had
  all slunk off to their cabins to think over their wager
  and its probable consequences. Good. Blaize knew he
  could perfecdy well have talked to Nancia from the
  68
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU
  privacy ofhis own cabin, but somehow it seemed more
  real to come here and speak directly to the titanium
  column that contained her shell.
  Besides, she wasn't answering him from the cabin.
  He thought maybe she'd turned off the cabin sensors
  to give her passengers privacy.
  He cleared his throat tentatively. Now that he was
  here, and not so confident of his welcome, it seemed
  rather strange to be talking to the walls. Sort of thing
  that got you shipped off for a nice rest in a place like
  Summerlands Care, Inc. Blaize shivered. Not for him,
  
  thank you. If he ever did need medical treatment, he'd
  make sure to go to a clinic where that snake Alpha bint
  Hezra-Fong vtasnot operating.
  "Nancia? Can you hear me?"
  The silence was as absolute as that of the empty,
  black space outside the brainship's thin skin.
  "I know you're listening," Blaize said desperately.
  "Watching, too. You have to be. / wouldn't close my
  eyes or turn my back on somebody like Cousin Polyon,
  and I don't believe you'd risk letting him sneak into
  your control cabin unobserved."
  His wild gestures as he made the last statement al-
  most overbalanced him in the ship's light grav field.
  He grabbed at a handrail and made a dancer's turn
  into the center of the cabin, recovering from the near-
  stumble as gracefully as a cat correcting a mis-timed
  jump. Nancia's titanium column coruscated in rain-
  bow reflections of the cabin lights, sparkling and
  dancing around him. And she did not reply.
  "Look, I know what you're thinking, but it's not like
  that. Really." Blaize grasped a chair back to steady
  himself "I mean, what could I do? Did you expect me
  to call them all criminals and wrap myself in my own
  integrity? They could've spaced me before we got to
  Angalia, and called it an unfortunate accident"
  Silence.
  PARTNERSHIP
  69
  "All right," Blaize conceded. "They probably
  wouldn't have spaced me. Especially if I told them you
  were a brainship and could bear witness against
  them."
  Silence.
  This was worse than the time he'd been locked in his
  room for a month.
  "But that would have meant telling on you," Blaize
  pointed out, "and you didn't really want them to know
  you've been listening, did you?"
  Silence.
  "Well, what did you expect me to do, anyway?
  They'd all have hated me." Blaize's voice cracked.
  "Isn't it bad enough I have to go out to Angalia and
  spend the next five years handing out PTA boxes to
  some walking veggies? Do I have to start by losing my
  only friends in the whole star system?"
  
  Nancia answered at last. "They are not your friends,
  and you know it."
  Blaize shrugged. "Best imitations I've got. Look,
  I've spent my whole life being the family black sheep,
  the one nobody bothers with, the one nobody likes
  much, nobody respects. Can you blame me for want-
  ing to change that? Just once in my life I want to
  belong"
  "You do," Nancia told him. "As far as I'm concerned,
  you do indeed belong with the rest of this amoral brat-
  pack. And as for respect,.. you can add me to the list
  of people who don't respect you. I don't believe you
  ran away from home three times, either. You haven't
  got the gumption to cross the street without somebody
  holding your hand."
  "I did so!"
  Silence.
  "Once, anyway. And if I had run away again, it
  would've been just like I said. They'd have been wait-
  ing for me at the Academy. So what was the point? And
  70
  Arme McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU
  what difference does it make? Worked out the same as
  if I'd actually done it, didn't it?"
  Silence.
  filaize decided to go back to his cabin before some-
  body drifted in here and caught him talking to the
  walls.
  "One more thing," he called as he pushed off for the
  return. "I did win that scholarship. Under the name of
  Blaize Docem. You can check Academy records on
  that!"
  Nancia maintained her silence. All the way to
  Angalia.
  CHAPTER FIVE
  Singularity
  The neighborhood of the brainship collapsed inward
  on itself, spiraling down tornado-like to the Singularity
  point where Central Worlds subspace could momentari-
  ly be defined as intersecting Vega subspace. The ship's
  metachip-augmented parallel processors solved and op-
  timized the set of equations represented in a
  thousand-square matrix of subspace points, dropped
  out of that subspace into Decomposition, rode the col-
  lapsing funnel of spaces with a new optimization
  
  problem to choose and resolve every tenth of a second.
  To Nancia, Singularity was how she envisioned the an-
  cient Earth sport called "surfing"; balanced at the
  non-degrading point where decomposing subspaces
  met, she recognized and evaluated local paths so quickly
  that the massive optimization problems blurred together
  into a sense of skimming over a wave that was alwaysjust
  about to crash beneath her.
  The Singularity field test she'd taken at the
  Academy had been simpler than this. There, she'd had
  to deal with only one set of parallel equations; here,
  the sequence of equations and diminishing subspaces
  streamed past her in an incessant flow. It was chal-
  lenge, danger, joy: it was what she had been trained
  for. She swept over matrices of data and guided them
  to the ship's processors, choosing and resolving the
  ever-changing paths to Singularity with an athlete's
  single-minded concentration.
  The same newsbeam that showed Nancia the sport
  of "surfing" had also had a section on a diving com-
  72
  Ante McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  \
  PARTNERSHIP
  73
  petition. The dean lines of the divers' movements, the
  seconds during which they hurtled through the air as
  though they could give their bodies the lift and
  freedom of brainships, fascinated Nancia; she'd
  viewed the beam over a dozen times, marveling at
  what softpersons would go through for a few seconds
  of physical freedom. "Didja see how he ripped that
  dive!" the newsbyter had jabbered after one athlete's
  performance, then explaining that the term referred
  to the clean way the diver had entered the water
  without a single splash.
  Nancia ripped a perfect dive through Singularity
  and came out into Vega subspace.
  For her passengers, with nothing to do during Sin-
  gularity and no way to filter the barrage of sensory
  data, the transition was markedly less pleasant. The
  few seconds of decomposition and reformation
  seemed like hours of wading through air gone viscous,
  picking their way among shapes distorted out of all
  recognition, in a place where colors hummed on the
  air and light bent around corners.
  They gasped with relief when the ship broke
  through into normal space again.
  
  Nancia watched them staggering and rubbing their
  eyes and ears. She was rather surprised by the inten-
  sity of their reactions; the trainer who'd accompanied
  her through her Singularity test had not seemed to be
  bothered by the few seconds of sensory distortion. Per-
  haps practice made a difference to how softpersons
  took Decomposition. Polyon's first words after the
  return to normal space suggested this might be the
  case.
  "Well, mes enfants" said Polyon, "how did you like
  your first Decomposition? It's been so long since my
  first training flights that I've forgotten how it affects
  newcomers."
  "Once is enough," said Darnell with feeling. "If I
  ever go home again, I'll take the six months of travel by
  FTL. Or better yet, I'll walk."
  Fassa nodded vigorous agreement, then winced as if
  she wished she hadn't moved her head so soon.
  "Have a Blissto," Alpha offered. "Works on hang-
  overs #  ought to help with Singularity headaches
  too."
  Darnell snatched the small blue pills out of her hand
  and downed six of them in a single desperate gulp.
  Fassa started to shake her head and then obviously
  thought better of it. She waved Alpha's hand away
  with a languid gesture. "Never touch drugs."
  "More fool you," said Alpha. "I know more about
  side effects than any of you, and I promise you a few
  blues won't do any harm. Just wish I'd thought of it
  before we entered Singularity. Blaize?"
  "Excellent idea," Blaize said hollowly, accepting the
  offered pills. Unlike Darnell, he made his way to the
  far side of the cabin and found a half-empty bottle of
  Stemerald to help him choke down the pills. "Almost as
  good an idea as walking. Don't think I ever really ap-
  preciated Earth before." His skin was pale green under
  the spattering of freckles.
  Polyon chuckled. "May have been a blessing in dis-
  guise that you weren't allowed to go in for brawn
  training, little one. Apparently you haven't die stomach
  for it. Now when you imagine combining frequent
  Decom hops with Mil Spec meals of boiled synthoprot
  and anonymous vitacaps that all smell like cabbage# "
  Fassa clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for
  the door. Darnell swallowed convulsively two or three
  times. "Would you mind very much not mentioning
  food just now?" His last words were slurred and
  relaxed; the Blissto was already taking effect.
  "At least not till I've had my own blues," Alpha
  
  added, pouring a handful of the shiny blue pills down
  her throat.
  74
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  Fassa didn't quite make it to the privacy of her cabin.
  Silendy, Nancia extruded probes that captured and
  vaporized the resulting mess. She activated the release
  latch on Fassa's cabin door so that it irised open in
  front of the girl.
  "T-thank you," Fassa hiccuped into the wet doth
  Nantia's second probe held out. "I mean #  I know
  you're just a droneship, so this is silly, but# oh, thank
  you anyway." She collapsed on her bunk, a huddle of
  misery. Nancia closed down the cabin sensors, trans-
  mitted a shut command to the door iris, and left Fassa
  to recover on her own. At least, she thought, the girl
  had the strength of character to abstain from mind-
  rotting drugs. And the manners to thank whoever
  helped her, even a supposedly inanimate droneship.
  Her stated intention of using sex to get concessions for
  her company was appalling, as were her manners in
  general; but maybe she was a shade less repellent than
  the rest of Nantia's young passengers.
  They had completely ignored Fassa's distress, Nan-
  cia noted. Polyon was playing a solitaire round of
  SPACED OUT and the other three were giggling over a
  new bottle of Stemerald. Nancia wondered uneasily
  what the mix of stimulants and depressants was likely
  to do to a softperson's nervous system #  and what else
  Alpha might have smuggled aboard. Maybe it had
  been a mistake to turn off the cabin sensors; these
  people didn't deserve privacy.
  But then, what business was it of hers if they wanted
  to drug themselves into a stupor? They'd be much
  nicer that way, after all. Nancia herself could conceive
  of nothing more horrible than voluntarily scrambling
  one's synapses, but softpersons did, by all reports,
  have very strange tastes.
  Besides, they were much easier to put up with now
  that they were too doped to do anything but giggle
  softly and spill their Stemerald. Nanria's housekeep-
  PARTNERSHIP
  75
  ing probes mopped up the green puddles on the cabin
  floor; her passengers ignored the probes and their
  cleanup activity, and she, as far as possible, ignored the
  passengers.
  Because now, at last, there was somebody else to talk
  
  to-
  Within seconds of her emergence from Singularity,
  Nancia had initiated a tightbeam contact with Vega
  Base. By the time Fassa was cleaned up in her cabin
  and the odier passengers busy with their own peculiar
  amusements, she had gone through the recognition
  sequences and the official messages and was happily
  chatting with Simeon, the managing brain of Vega
  Base.
  "So how did you like your first voyage?" Simeon
  inquired.
  "Singularity was..." Nancia couldn't find words for
  it; instead she transmitted a short visual burst of colors
  melting and expanding like soap bubbles, iridescent
  trails of light joyously spiraling around one another. "I
  can't wait to jump again."
  Simeon chuckled. "You're one of the lucky ones,
  then. From all I hear, it doesn't take everyone that
  way."
  "My passengers didn't seem to enjoy it much," Nan-
  cia conceded, "but who cares?"
  "Even brainships don't always get such a kick out of
  Singularity,11 Simeon told her.
  Nancia found that hard to believe, but she remem-
  bered that Simeon was a stationary brain. Embedded
  in die heart of Vega Base, his only experience of travel
  would have been the jump that brought him here
  from Laboratory Schools #  as a passenger, like any
  softperson. Perhaps she shouldn't go on about the joys
  of Singularity to someone who could never experience
  the thrill of managing his own jumps.
  Besides, Simeon wanted to pursue something else.
  76
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  "You don't seem to care much for your passengers'
  comfort"
  Again words foiled Nancia. She damped the colors
  of her visual burst to a muddy swirl of greenish browns
  and grays. "They're not... very nice people," she
  finally answered. "Some of the things I overheard
  them discussing on the trip... Simeon, could I ask you
  a hypothetical question? Suppose a brainship hap-
  pened to learn that some people had unethical plans.
  Should she report them?"
  "You mean, like a plot to murder somebody? Or
  high treason# an attempt to overthrow Central?"
  
  "Oh, goodness, no, nothing like thatl" How could
  Simeon sound so calm while discussing such dreadful
  things? "At least, I don't think #  I mean, suppose they
  weren't planning to hurt anybody, but what they
  meant to do was morally wrong? Even illegal?" Alpha's
  plans to profit from a drug that should have been
  credited to Central Meds, Polyon's idea of creating a
  black market in metachips #  no, Nancia assured her-
  self, her passengers were nasty and corrupt as all
  get-out, but at least they weren't violent
  "Hmm. And how might this brainship have found
  out about her passengers' plans?"
  "I #  they thought she was a droneship," Nancia
  said, "and they discussed everything quite freely. She
  has datacordings of it all, too."
  "I see." Simeon sounded quite disapproving, and for
  a moment Nancia thought he shared her shock at her
  passengers' plans. "And has it occurred to you, young
  XN-935, that masquerading as a droneship in order to
  eavesdrop on High Families' conversations is a form of
  entrapment? In fact, given that the passengers in-
  volved an High Families and very close to CenCom,
  the act of taking surreptitious datacordings could even
  be interpreted as treason. What if they'd been discuss-
  ing vital military secrets?''
  PARTNERSHIP
  77
  "But they weren't #  I didn't #  Listen, VS-895,
  they're the criminals, not me!" Nancia shouted.
  "Ouch."
  Simeon's reply was almost an electronic whisper.
  "Turn down your waveforms, would you? That
  nearly jolted me out of my shell."
  "Sorry." Nancia controlled her impulses and chan-
  neled a clean, tight beam at Simeon. "But I don't see
  what you're accusing me of."
  "Me? Nothing, XN, I assure you. I'm just trying to
  warn you that the courts may see things rather dif-
  ferently. Now, I don't know what your young
  passengers have been up to, and 1 don't particularly
  care to know. You haven't seen much of the world yet,
  or you'd realize that most softpersons have some way
  or other to get a little extra out of every situation in
  which they find themselves,"
  Nancia mulled that over. "You mean #  are they all
  corrupt, then?"
  Simeon chuckled. "Not all, Nancia, just enough to
  
  make it interesting. You have to understand the poor
  things. Short lifespan, limited to five senses, single-
  channel comm system. I expect they feel cheated
  when they compare themselves with us. And some of
  them translate that feeling into trying to get extra
  goodies for themselves."
  Nancia had to agree that what Simeon said made a
  lot of sense. She tried to emulate his attitude of lofty
  detachment while she went about the business of land-
  ing her passengers at their assigned stations in the
  Nyota ya Jaha system. Since four of them still thought
  her a droneship and the fifth knew she wasn't speak-
  ing to him, it was easy enough to remain aloof.
  Nancia made each planetary landfall an exercise in
  split-second timing and perfect orbit-matching. It was
  good practice, it kept her concentrating on her own
  business and not on that of her passengers, and if the
  78
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Baft
  rapid maneuvers involved gave them a bumpy ride #
  well, so much the worse. She took pride in making the
  actual moments of touchdown as gentle as the landing
  of a feather. At least, Bahati and Shemali went that way.
  When she reached Angalia, she couldn't quite restrain
  her impulse to give filaize a good shaking on the way
  down. He was pale and sweating by the time they came
  to a bumpy halt on the mesa that served as Angalia's
  spacefield.
  "That," he said as he collected his baggage, "was not
  necessary."
  Nancia preserved an icy silence #  literally. Each
  moment that Blaize delayed, she lowered her internal
  temperature by several degrees.
  "You could at least send a housekeeping probe to
  help me with all this stuff," he complained, gripping a
  box of novelhedra with fingers that were rapidly turn-
  ing blue with cold.
  "^fou're not my mother, you know," he said while lean-
  ing on the button to the lift. "Nobody asked you to pass
  judgment on my moral standards. Just like nobody asked
  me if I wanted to come out to this godforsaken place."
  "I guess it would be too much to expect anybody to
  have a little sympathy," he said as the lift sped downward.
  Nancia tilted the hatchway floor so that Blaize's
  carefully stacked boxes of supplies tumbled out as
  soon as he stepped onto the surface of Angalia.
  "I know what you're thinking," he shouted from the
  red dust of the mesa top, "but you're wrong about me!
  
  You're all wrong! I'll show you!"
  Nancia was pleased that her assignment made no
  mention of collecting the previous PTA administrator,
  the one whom Blaize had been sent to relieve. Ap-
  parently, not being a member of the High Families, he
  was expected to wait for the regularly scheduled PTA
  transport rather than taking advantage of a brainship
  for the Courier Service. Hard on him, Nancia
  PARTNERSHIP
  79
  thought, but quite appropriate. She would proceed
  directly to Vega 3.3, collect this stranded brawn, and
  return to Central for a real assignment# with a brawn
  of her own choosing. Thank goodness she was
  through being used as a substitute droneship for the
  convenience of the rich and powerful!
  She discovered her error when she was halfway
  from Nyota ya Jaha to Vega 3.
  "What do you mean, another little errand?" she
  blasted poor Simeon.
  "Turn it down," came Simeon's low-intensity
  reminder. "It wasn't my idea and you don't have to
  shout like that Anyway, what difference does it make?
  you were going to Vega 3 anyway."
  "I was going to 3.3, not 4.2," Nancia pointed out,
  and this reminded her of another grievance. "Why
  can't these people give their suns and planets real
  names, anyway? This Vega numbering system makes
  me feel like a machine."
  "They're great believers in efficiency," Simeon said.
  "And logic. You'll see what I mean when you pair up
  with Caleb."
  "Hmph. You mean, when I transport the man# for
  that's all I've agreed to. Efficiency!" Nancia grumbled.
  "That's a new word for misuse of the Courier Service.
  Why, it's a whole different solar system and an extra
  stop to pick up this governor Thrixtopple and his
  family, not to mention having to feed them all the way
  back to Central. Time and fuel and ship's stores
  wasted. My fuel belongs to the Courier Service," she
  said, "and so does my time."
  "What about your soul?" inquired Simeon, return-
  ing to a normal-intensity beam. "Oh, never mind. I
  keep forgetting how new you are, XN. Wait till you've
  been around the subspaces a few hundred years.
  You'll start understanding how the rules have to be
  bent to accommodate people."
  80
  
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaU
  "You mean, to accommodate softpersons," Nancia
  corrected proudly. "I've never asked for an exception
  or a favor in my life, and I'm not about to start now."
  Simeon's responding burst of discordant waves and
  clashing colors was the electronic equivalent of an ex-
  tremely rude word. "I can see why Psych thought you
  and Caleb would be a good match," he said. Infuriat-
  ingly, he shut down transmissions on that comment,
  leaving Nancia to wonder all the way to Vega 3.3. Why
  did Psych see fit to match her with a brawn whose
  major accomplishment so far had been the loss of his
  first brainship? Was there something wrong in her
  profile, some instability that made it appropriate to
  assign her an incompetent brawn? This Caleb soft-
  person was probably going to be stuck doing
  interplanetary hops and minor errands# like picking
  up Governor Thrixtopple# for the rest of his Service.
  And Central Psych wanted to stick her with him and his
  flawed record! It wasn't/air. Nancia brooded about it
  all the way to Vega 3.3.
  Her first sight of Caleb did nothing to restore her
  confidence in this assignment. Courier Service records
  said that he was only twenty-eight #  young for a
  softperson #  but he walked slowly and carefully, as if
  he were already old and tired. His Service uniform
  looked as if it had been designed for a larger man; the
  tunic hung loosely from broad but bony shoulders, the
  trousers flapped about his shins. Short, scraumy and
  sour-faced, Nancia mentally catalogued as he made his
  halting way up the stairs. And why couldn't he use the toft,
  if he's too out of shape to walk up one/light of stairs?
  His greeting to her was correct but lifeless. Nancia
  responded in the same tone. Listlessly, they went
  through the Service formulas until Nancia displayed
  the orders beamed from Vega Base.
  Caleb exploded. "Detouring to pick up that lard-
  bottomed junketer and his family? That's not a Courier
  PARTNERSHIP
  81
  Service job. Why can't Thrixtopple wait for the next
  scheduled passenger transport Uke anyone else?"
  Nancia sent a ripple of muddy brown rings across
  the screen where their orders were displayed.
  "Nobody told me anything," she responded verbally
  for Caleb's benefit. "Stop here, go there, take these
  kids to the Nyota system, collect a stranded brawn on
  Vega 3.3, pick up the governor of 4.2 and take him
  back to Central. / don't know why he rates a special
  deal; he's not even High Families."
  
  "No, but he's been working this subspace for a long
  time," Caleb told her. "Probably has more pull than
  half a dozen empty-headed aristos with their double-
  barreled names."
  "We are not all," Nancia said, "empty-headed. Per-
  haps you failed to read your orders in detail?" She
  flashed her full name on the screen to get his attention.
  "Oh, well, you can't help your birth," Caleb said ab-
  sent-mindedly, "and I suppose a good Lab Schools
  training will make up for a lot. Are you ready for lift-
  off? We can't waste time gossiping if we have to fit this
  extra stop into the itinerary."
  I give him ten minutes after we reach Central to get himself
  and his bags off me and make room for a brawn with some
  manners, Nancia vowed to herself as she drove her en-
  gines through a harder and faster takeoff than she
  would normally have imposed on a softperson pas-
  senger. No, that's too generous. Five minutes.
  She felt slighdy regretful when she peeked through
  Caleb's cabin sensors and saw him struggling to sit up
  after the takeoff, white and shaken. But she wasn't
  sorry enough to change her basic position on brawn
  assignments.
  "There's one thing we should have settled before
  liftoff," she announced without preamble.
  "Yes?" Caleb didn't bother turning his head to look
  at the cabin speaker. Of course, he was an experienced
  82
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  #  if incompetent #  brawn; he would know that she
  would be able to pick up his words from any direction.
  Still, Nancia felt vaguely ruffled #  as if she were being
  ignored even as he replied to her.
  "Transporting you back to Central Worlds is my offi-
  cial assignment, and I cannot refuse it. But I do not
  wish you to construe this as formal acceptance of you
  as my brawn. I have no intention of waiving my rights
  to free choice of my own brawn just because this match
  is convenient for Central."
  Now what ailed the man? He had just begun to
  regain some color after the high-G lift-off; now his face
  was drained again, still as a mask #  or a corpse. Nan-
  cia began to wonder if this brawn would live to see
  Central. If he wasn't fit enough to make the journey, some-
  body should have warned me.
  "Of course," said Caleb in a voice so level and
  drained of meaning that it could have issued from any
  
  housekeeping drone, "no one would expect you to
  waive that right. Particularly for me." He turned his
  head and for the first time looked direcdy at the sensor.
  "Shut down sensors to this cabin, please, XN. I wish to
  rest In privacy," he emphasized. He lay down again
  with one arm flung over his face. After a moment he
  rolled over and lay facedown on the bunk, as if he
  didn't trust Nancia not to peek at him.
  "Simeon? Shellcrack, Simeon, I know you're pick-
  ing up my beams. TALK TO ME!"
  "You're an excessively demanding young thing,
  XN-935, and you're shouting again."
  "Sorry." Nancia was so glad to have got some
  response from the Vega Base brain that she immedi-
  ately lowered the intensity of her beam to match
  Simeon's almost inaudible burst. "Simeon, I need to
  know about this brawn they've saddled me with."
  "So scan the newsbeam files."
  PARTNERSHIP
  83
  "I did. There's nothing in them. Not what I need to
  know, anyway." The files had been enlightening in
  their own way, with their lurid stories of a ship and a
  man almost destroyed by a sudden radiation burst, the
  brawn's limping, months-long journey homeward in
  his crippled, brainless ship and the hero's welcome he
  had received when he arrived at Vega 3.3 with the sur-
  vey data he'd been sent to gather. The tale of what
  Caleb had gone through, the months of solitude and
  deprivation and the lingering effects of radiation
  poisoning, had done much to reshape Nancia's feel-
  ings towards the pallid brawn who'd boarded her on
  Vega 3.3. She felt a grudging respect for the man she
  saw spending hours in her exercise facility, working
  out with gyroweights and spring resistors to restore
  wasted niusdes.
  The man who had accepted her initial hostile at-
  titude as no more than his due, who'd shut her out of
  his mind at once and had not spoken a word to her
  since. They had traveled in silence through the three
  days it took to move between the suns of Vega 3 and
  Vega 4, while Nancia waited impatiently for Simeon to
  resume communications so that she could ask what
  she wanted to know. Finally she'd begun battering at
  the Vega Base brain's frequencies with ever-increasing
  bursts of communication that must have given him the
  equivalent of a softperson's "headache."
  Nancia condensed the newsbytes she'd read and
  transmitted them in three short bursts to Simeon, just
  to convince him she'd done her homework.
  
  "So what else do you want to know?"
  "How. Did. He. Lose. His. Ship?" Nancia punctuated
  each word with a burst of irritated static
  "You read the newsbytes."
  "WE'RE SHIELDED AGAINST #  sorry." She
  started over at normal intensity. "We're shielded
  against radiation. He shouldn't have been harmed,
  84
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  unless he was being careless #  leaving the ship
  without checking radiation levels? And there's no way
  his ship could have been affected. What could have got
  through her column?"
  "His column, in this case," Simeon corrected, as if
  that mattered.
  Unless Caleb used the access code to open his brninskip's shdL.
  That was the nightmare, that was what she wanted reas-
  surance about. No brawn was supposed to know both
  the syllables and the musical tones that comprised his
  brainship's access codes. One sequence was given to the
  brawn on assignment, the other deeply classified in
  CenCom's codes. But Polyon's casual dabbling in the Net
  had left Nancia deeply suspicious of computer security
  systems. Any code invented could be broken... and how
  else could the CL-740 have been lost to something as
  minor as a radiation burst?
  "Nothing did get through the column," Simeon told
  her. "The CL-740 was one of the first Courier Service
  ships commissioned, though. Three hundred years
  ago they didn't know as much as we do about shielding
  the synapse connectors. The radiation burst they were
  subjected to wasn't enough to harm the major ship's
  systems, but it fried the connections to die shell,
  leaving CL-740 in total isolation #  unable to com-
  municate or to receive signals, completely unable to
  control the ship. Caleb brought the ship back on
  manual controls, but by the time they got to Vega the
  CL-740 had gone mad from sensory deprivation,"
  "But the Helva System #  " Nancia protested. It had
  been a long, long time since any brainship had been
  subjected to sensory deprivation; shell-internal
  metachips, named for the legendary brainship who'd
  survived the ordeal and suggested the modification,
  should have been invulnerable to any outside
  interference.
  "The Helva modifications are not universal, though
  PARTNERSHIP
  
  85
  God knows they should be." Simeon sounded very
  tired. "It's a traumatizing procedure for those of us
  who aren't lucky enough to have it built into our first
  design, young'un. Some of the older brainships, those
  who'd paid off and continued in the Courier Service as
  free agents, had a right to refuse retrofitting. CL ...
  exercised that right"
  "Oh." It was a brain's worst nightmare, that being cut
  off from the world with a thoroughness no softperson
  could even imagine. Nancia dosed down all her sensors
  for a moment, imagining that absolute blackness. How
  long would she be able to bear it? No wonder her super-
  visor at Lab Schools had canceled the first newsbyte
  about the CL-740. No wonder the newsbyte files made
  available to her now had been censored. No one wanted
  a brainship to start thinking about the worst that could
  happen. Nancia didn't want to think about it any longer.
  With an internal shudder she threw open all her sensors
  and comm channels at once.
  The minor clatter of everyday life was a warm, reas-
  suring tide about her, connecting her with the rest of
  humanity, the rest of all sentient life. Nancia
  catalogued the details with surprise and gratitude.
  How strange and wonderful all this is ... to see, hear, feel,
  think, know... and I have been taking it all for granted! For
  a moment, the smallest input was precious to her, a gift
  of life. Caleb was hanging between two spring-resis-
  tors in the gym, the display screens in the central cabin
  were dancing with their elegant geometric screen-
  saver patterns, the stars outside burned with then-
  distant fire, Vega 4 was a ruddy glow before her, some-
  one was chattering between Vega 4.3 and 4.2 about
  Central synthsilk fashions. Someone else was crying
  into a satellite link....
  And Simeon was still talking. "Levin." The databits
  transmitted like a whisper. "His name wasn't CL-740.
  His name was Levin, and he was my friend."
  86
  At Vega 4.2, Governor Thrixtopple and his family
  spilled aboard Nanria like a pack of cruise passengers,
  dropping their luggage anywhere for the patient ser-
  vants who followed to pick up, commenting loudly on
  any feature of Nancia's interior that caught their
  attention.
  "Hey! Look at these display screens! The youngest
  Thrixtopple, a weasel-faced brat in his early teens, lit
  up on sight of the three wall-size display screens in the
  central cabin. "Sis, where's my SPACED OUT hedron? I
  could play all the way home #  "
  "/don't have to keep track of where you drop all
  your junk," his older sister whined. "Mama, there's
  
  only one storage bin in my cabin. My Antarxian ruffe
  will get all wrinkled!"
  "Who cares? They still won't make any difference to
  your ugly face!" Thrixtopple Junior stuck out his
  tongue at his sister. She hurled a globe of something
  pink and slushy at him; he ducked out of the way and
  Caleb caught the globe in a neat one-handed catch.
  "Now, kiddies," Thrixtopple Senior mumbled,
  "mustn't upset your mother or the servants." He held
  out one skinny hand to receive the pink globe his
  daughter had thrown; glance and gesture included
  Caleb among those "servants." Nancia bristled. He
  might not be her official brawn, she might still have
  her reservations about the way Psych was trying to
  throw the two of them together for the convenience of
  CenCom, but Caleb was still a trained brawn and
  deserving of more respect than that!
  "Governor Thrixtopple, I'm afraid I will have to ask
  all of you to enter your personal cabins and strap
  down for lift-off now," Caleb said tonelessly.
  "Already? Why, these clumsy servants haven't begun
  to unpack for me yet! I'm not nearly ready to send
  them away!" Trixia Thrixtopple complained without a
  PARTNERSHIP
  87
  word of gratitude or fere well to the servants who had,
  presumably, waited on her through the twenty years
  of Governor Thrixtopple's service. It was dear where
  her daughter had learned that penetrating whine.
  "My apologies, ma'am," Caleb said, still without any
  inflection that they could react to, "but I am bound by
  regulations. Section 4, subsection 4.5, paragraphs ii to
  iv. Courier Service ships are not permitted to dally for
  any reason; a prolonged stop here could upset urgent-
  ly needed communications elsewhere."
  He personally escorted the Thrixtopple family to
  their bunks and made sure each of them was secured
  against the high-grav stresses of lift-off. Nancia kept
  the cabin sensors open to double-check every move,
  but Caleb made no mistakes.
  Once the passengers were strapped down and their
  luggage stowed, Caleb returned to the central cabin
  and waved one hand towards the door. "Would you
  close us off, please, XN?" He sighed with exaggerated
  relief. "If only we could keep them out of here for the
  entire flight. People like that are a disgrace to Vega.
  Why, they didn't even have the manners to greet you!"
  "Neither did the passengers I took on the way out,"
  Nancia told him. "I was beginning to feel invisible."
  
  "Not to me," Caleb told her. His eyes scanned the
  entire cabin with a look of longing that surprised Nan-
  cia. "Never to me.... If I don't get a new assignment,
  this could be my last voyage on a brainship. And we
  had to be saddled with these, these ..." He threw up
  his hands as though words failed him.
  "It is a pity," Nancia agreed, "but there's no reason
  we can't be professional about doing our jobs, is
  there?" While she made conversation with Caleb, she
  was rapidly reviewing the volumes of Courier Service
  regulations with which her data banks had been
  loaded upon commissioning. There should have been
  something in the third megahedron.... Ah, there it
  88
  Anne McCaffreytf Margaret BaU
  was. Precisely what the situation called for. But she
  wouldn't mention it now. Caleb was eager to escape
  the surface of Vega 4.2 before the Thrixtopple family
  started complaining about their restraints, and she
  couldn't blame him.
  In deference to Caleb's weakened condition, Nanria
  made this lift-off as slow and gentle as she could. After
  all, it wasn't his fault that Psych Central was practically
  forcing their personal codes into one datastream. And
  she didn't want to kill the man on the way home.
  When they entered freefall again, Caleb unlatched
  himself from the support chair and moved about the
  cabin with none of the languor he'd shown after the
  previous lift-off. "Being gentle with the civilians? he
  inquired. "I seem to recall that you can lift consider-
  ably fester than that when you're so inclined, XN."
  "I... um... I didn't see any need to hurry," Nancia
  muttered. Damn the man! Too stiff-necked to admit
  that he, too, could benefit from a slightly gentler
  takeoffl
  Caleb looked faintly amused. "No. Considering that
  now there's no excuse to keep them strapped in, and
  we'll probably have the brats in our laps until you
  reach Singularity.... I wouldn't have wanted to hurry,
  either."
  As if on cue, the Thrixtopple boy punched through
  the iris-opening of the door. Nancia winced at the
  damage to her flexible membranes. She left the door
  iris open so that Governor Thrixtopple, proceeding
  down the corridor at a stately pace behind his son,
  wouldn't inflict further violence on her.
  "Ok, we're in space now, lemme play with the com-
  puter!" the boy demanded.
  Nancia slid her datareaders shut as the boy ap-
  proached and deliberately blanked her screens. Tm
  
  sorry, young sir. Courier Service Regulations, volume
  XVIII, section 1522, subsection 6.2, paragraph
  PARTNERSHIP
  89
  mcmlii, strictly prohibit allowing unauthorized pas-
  sengers access to the ship's computer or free
  movement within the central cabin. The prohibition is
  intended as a protection against illegal interference
  with Courier Service property."
  "Hear now, you #  you talking shell, that's not
  meant to apply to people like us!" Governor Thrixtop-
  ple blustered as he entered the cabin.
  "The official orders which were transmitted to me
  by CenCom at the beginning of this voyage make no
  reference to your family, Governor Thrixtopple,
  Nancia replied. She paused slightly between words
  and gave her voice a slight metallic overtone to make
  the Thrixtopples feel they were talking to a machine
  that could not be threatened or bribed. "I am not
  myself authorized to change such orders save on direct
  beam from Central Command.
  "But Vega Base told you to ferry us to Central!"
  "And I am always happy to do my good friends at Vega
  Base a favor," Nancia replied. "Nevertheless, it is not in
  my power to change regulations. Should Central Com-
  mand retroactively authorize you to access my
  computers, I will# retroactively #  permit you to have
  done so. In the meantime, I must request that you return
  to your personal cabin areas. I should be reluctant to en-
  force the order, but you must know that I retain the
  power to flood all life support areas with sleepgas,"
  Governor Thrixtopple grabbed his son's collar and
  dragged him out of the central cabin. The iris of the
  door membrane slid together.
  "That," said Caleb reverently, "was brilliant, XN.
  Positively brilliant. Ah #  I suppose there is such a
  regulation?"
  "Of course there is! You don't think I'd IwT
  "My deepest apologies, ma'am. It was only that I
  had no personal recollection of the paragraph in
  question# "
  90
  Anne McCaffivy & Margaret Ball
  I understand that softperson brains are quite
  limited in their storage and retrieval powers," Nancia
  said loftily. Then she relented. "It took me several
  
  minutes of scanning to find something applicable,
  actually. And I never would have thought of it if you
  hadn't quoted regulations to get them out of here
  before lift-off."
  "If it weren't for meals," Caleb reflected aloud, "we
  wouldn't have to speak to them again all the way back
  to Central...."
  "I have the capacity to serve meals from any room in
  the living quarters," Nancia informed him. Unlike the
  older models ... She cut that thought offbefore voicing
  it. It would be sheer cruelty to remind Caleb of what he
  had lost
  "Okay, XN, try this one." Caleb manipulated the
  joyball to bring up a display of a double torus contain-
  ing two simple dosed curves. Three disks labeled Al,
  B, and A2 contained sections of the torus. "You're in
  Al; A2 is your target space. Find the Singularity points
  and compute the decompositions required."
  "No fair," Nancia protested. "It's never even been
  proved that there is a decom sequence that'll navigate
  that structure. Satyajohi's Conjecture." She quoted
  from her memory banks, "If h is a homeomorphism of
  E3 onto itself that is fixed on E3 #  T, need one of
  h(Jl), h(j2) contain an arc with four points of A+B
  such that no two of these points which are adjacent on
  the arc belong to the same one of A and B? If so, the
  decomposition space H does not yield E3, And in this
  application," she reminded Caleb, "E3 is equivalent to
  normal space."
  Caleb blinked twice. "I didn't expect you to know
  Satyajohi's Conjecture, actually. Still #  let me point
  out, XN, it's only a conjecture, not a theorem."
  "In one hundred and twenty-five years of deep-
  PARTNERSHIP
  91
  space mathematics it's never been disproved," Nancia
  grumbled.
  "So? Perhaps you'll be the first to find a counter-
  example.''
  Nancia didn't think there was much point in even
  trying, but she set an automatic string-development
  program to race through the display, illuminating
  various possible Singularity paths as lines of brilliant
  blue light, then letting them fade out as the impos-
  sibility of one after the other was proved. There was
  something else on which she very much wanted
  Caleb's advice, and now #  with the Thrixtopple fami-
  ly intimidated into staying in their cabins, and Caleb in
  as good a mood as she'd ever seen him after his
  
  demonstration of Satyajohi's Conjecture #  now was
  the best time she could have to bring it up.
  "I haven't been commissioned very long, you know,
  Caleb," she began.
  "No, but you're going to be one of the best," Caleb told
  her. "I can see it in the way you handle little things. I
  wouldn't have thought of finding a regulation to get the
  Thrixtopples out of our hair. And I don't think I'd have
  tested Satyajohi's Conjecture the way you're going about
  it right now, either." Two possible Singularity lines
  flashed bright blue and then vanished from the screen as
  he spoke, while a third snaked through Al and into the B
  disk around the double torus.
  "Some things," Nancia said carefully, "get more
  complicated than that. In mathematics a conjecture
  either is or isn't true."
  "The same is true of Courier Service Regulations,"
  Caleb pointed out
  "Yes, well... not everything. They don't tell you
  what to do if a brainship happens to hear her pas-
  sengers making illegal plans."
  "If you've been eavesdropping on Governor Thrix-
  topple in his cabin," Caleb said sternly, "that's a
  92
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Batt
  dishonorable action and I hereby formally request you
  to stop it immediately."
  "Oh, I haven't," Nantia assured him. "But whatif#
  if a brainship had some passengers who didn't know
  she was sentient, and they liked to sit in the central
  cabin and play SPACED OUT, and they just happened
  to discuss some possibly illegal plans while they were
  doing it?"
  "Oh #  a hypothetical case?" Caleb sounded
  relieved, and Nancia felt the same way. At least he
  hadn't guessed immediately, as Simeon had, that she
  was talking about her own previous experience.
  Everything Nancia had learned or seen of Caleb# the
  newsbeams of his heroic solo return to Vega, the
  dedication with which he put himself through a gruel-
  ing exercise program, his respect for Courier Service
  regulations #  made her think of him as a man of
  supreme integrity, one whose word she could trust
  under any circumstances. She would not have wanted
  to hear him laugh at her as Simeon had done, or sug-
  gest #  as Simeon had done #  that her own actions in
  this instance had been morally culpable.
  "Well, in such a case# if it ever arises #  you should
  
  remember that a sentient ship is morally obliged to
  identify herself as such to her passengers at the first
  opportunity."
  "That's not in the regulations," Nancia defended
  herself against a charge Caleb didn't know he had
  made.
  "No, but it's common sense. Anything else would be
  like #  like me hiding in a closet to catch Governor
  Thrixtopple counting his ill-gotten gains from bribes
  while in public office." Caleb said this with so much
  disgust in his voice that Nancia shrank from pursuing
  die subject.
  So, evidently, did Caleb. He looked up at the central
  display screen, where a network of dim gray lines
  PARTNERSHIP
  93
  showed Nantia's repeated attempts to compute a path
  of Singularity points through the topological con-
  figuration he'd defined.
  "Let's just take it that Satyajohi's Conjecture is
  upheld in this particular case," he suggested, "and
  now it's your turn to put up a problem. I don't know
  why we're discussing hypothetical ethical problems
  that are never likely to arise when we could both be im-
  proving our Decom Math skills. Nor do I understand
  why #  " He bit his lip and blanked out the screen with
  a swift roll of the joybalL
  "Why what?" Nancia asked.
  "Your turn to pose a problem," Caleb reminded her.
  "Not until you finish that sentence."
  "All rightl I don't understand why you're asking for
  ethical guidance from a brawn whose greatest achieve-
  ment to date has been the loss of his first ship!" Caleb
  bit out the words with a frustrated savagery that
  aroused Nancia's sympathy. She remembered
  Simeon's grief for his lost friend Levin, the CL-740.
  How stupid she had been.
  "I'm sorry," she told Caleb. "1 should have realized
  that discussing such issues would remind you of Levin.
  Do you miss him so very much?"
  Caleb sighed. "It's not that, XN. Levin was a good,
  competent brainship, and he trained me when I was a
  new brawn, and I'll always owe a debt of gratitude to
  him. But we weren't #  we never just talked, like this,
  you know? Five years I served with him, and I don't
  feel I ever really got to know him. No, I'm not in
  mourning for Levin. But he had a right to look for-
  
  ward to hundreds more years of service, and I lost him
  that time. And I myself had rather hoped to spend
  more than five years as a brawn."
  "You may yet," Nancia pointed out. "Just because
  you haven't got a ship assignment yet# "
  "And what brainship is going to accept the brawn
  94
  Atme McCaffrey 6? Margaret BaH,
  who let the CL-740 die?" Caleb snapped back. "You
  yourself have made that little point tolerably dear, XN.
  Now drop it Next problem, pleasel"
  Nancia started transmitting to CenCom #  on a
  private beam #  the moment she exited Singularity
  and entered Central Worlds subspace. She wanted to
  have everything arranged, with no possibility of argu-
  ment, before Caleb was ready to leave the ship.
  All proceeded as planned. Dahlen Rahilly, her Ser-
  vice Supervisor, requested permission to enter even
  before the Thrixtopple family had gathered their
  numerous items of luggage and departed.
  "Arrogant snit," Rahilly commented as they
  watched the last of Governor Thrixtopple's bony
  shoulders through Nancia's ground viewport. "He
  could at least have credited you with a bonus for doing
  him the favor of this quick transport home."
  "I didn't expect it," Nancia replied with perfect truth.
  The only bonus she expected# or wanted #  was sufl in
  his cabin, using the cabin comm board to enter a job ap-
  plication letter that somehow kept getting wiped from his
  personal file storage area. This was his third attempt, and
  Nancia could tell by the emphatic way Caleb's voice
  snapped out the words for the dictaboard that he was
  losing patience. If she didn't get matters settled soon, he
  would quit trying to use the ship's comm system and
  make his application personally, at CenCom offices. And
  that wouldn't suit her at all.
  "Well... there will have to be a few changes. Paper-
  work," Rahilly said. "We ... weren't expecting this,
  you know, XN. In feet, VS at Vega seemed quite cer-
  tain that you had formally refused the assignment"
  "He ... may have misinterpreted my words," Nan-
  cia said demurely. "How soon can it be arranged?"
  Shellcrack! While she was talking to Rahilly, Caleb had
  managed to dictate the complete text of his application
  PARTNERSHIP
  95
  
  letter. He was getting ready to transmit it to CenCom.
  That mustn't happen... not yet Nancia shut down all
  outgoing beams at once.
  "Oh, we can finish the paperwork in a day. If you're
  sure that's what you want?"
  "I am," Nancia said firmly. There was another party
  to be consulted, but Rahilly didn't seem to think that
  would be necessary.
  Caleb stalked into the central cabin, brows drawn
  together. "XN, what do you mean by shutting down
  my beam to CenCom?"
  "Your beam?" Nancia replied. "Oh, dear. All my ex-
  ternal beams seem to have lost power for a moment"
  "Well have a tech out to fix the malfunction imme-
  diately," Rahilly promised.
  "Oh... I don't think that will be necessary," Nancia
  told him. "I've been investigating while we talk, and I
  believe I have found the source of the problem. It
  should be easy enough to correct internally." All she
  needed to do was reopen the power gate....
  "Very well, CN-935." Rahilly sketched a Service salute
  in the general direction of Nancia's titanium column,
  "The remaining paperwork will be completed within the
  day, and then you and Brawn Caleb will be requested to
  hold yourselves ready for a new assignment# there was
  one pending, actually; Central wiU be happy not to have
  to wait while you choose a brawn."
  He left as soon as the last word was snapped out,
  and Nancia was grateful for that. Caleb was staring
  around the cabin with an expression she could not
  read. If he was going to be angry with her for going be-
  hind his back, she'd just as soon have it out in private.
  "I... don't understand," he said slowly. "You aren't
  waiting to choose a new brawn? You're going to go out
  solo again?"
  "Hardly that," Nancia told him. "I've had enough of
  solo voyages, thank you very much; I find that I much
  96
  AnmMcCaffrey & Margaret Ba&
  prefer to travel with a partner."
  "Then..."
  "Didn't you hear the man? From now on I'm the
  CN-935. I've decided that Psych Central was right,"
  Nancia said. It was a struggle to keep her voice projec-
  tions calm and even. "We make a very good team."
  
  Caleb was still speechless, and Nancia felt her one
  fear approaching.
  "If... if that's all right with you?"
  "All right, all right, all rigktl" Caleb exploded. "The
  woman gives me back my life #  and with the perfect
  brain partner# and she wants to know if it's all right? I
  #  Nancia #  oh, wait a minute, would you? There's
  something I've got to take care of before you restore
  external beam transmissions."
  He hurried off to his cabin, presumably to erase the
  job application letter that had taken so long to create,
  and Nancia permitted herself a small coruscating dis-
  play of stars and comets across her three wide screens.
  It was going to be all right.
  More than all right. "Nancia," she repeated to her-
  self. "He finally called me Nancia."
  CHAPTER SIX
  Angalia, Central Date 2750:
  Blaize
  Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc stared in dis-
  belief at his new home as the exit port of the XN-935
  slid shut behind him. The mesa top that had served
  Nancia as a landing field was the only level bit of solid
  ground in sight. Behind the mesa was a wall of crumb-
  ly, near-vertical rock that rose in jagged peaks to block
  out the morning sun. The long black shadows of the
  mountains fell across the mesa and down into a sea of
  oozing glop that looked like the Quagmire of Despair
  as displayed in the latest version of SPACED OUT. The
  only variation in the brownish sea was that at a few
  locations large, lazy bubbles rose from the glop and
  burst with a sulfurous stink.
  At the very edge of the mesa, cantilevered
  precariously out over the Quagmire of Despair, was a
  gray plastifilm prefab storage facility. Bulging brown
  sacks stenciled with the initials of Planetary Technical
  Aid hung from hooks on one side of the shack, dan-
  gling right out over the sea of glop. On the side of the
  shanty nearest Blaize, the plastifilm roof had been ex-
  tended with some sort of woven fronds to create a
  sagging awning. Beneath this awning lounged an im-
  mensely fat man wearing only a pair of sweat-stained
  briefs.
  Blaize sighed and picked up the nearest two pieces
  of his kit. Staggering slighdy under a gravity consider-
  ably higher than ship's norm, he made his way
  98
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  
  towards the obese guardian of Angalia.
  "PTA tech-trainee Armontillado-Perez y Medoc,
  sir," he introduced himself. Who is this guy? He's got to be
  one of the corydum miners. They're the only humans on An-
  gatia #  except, of course...
  "And the top of the morning to you, Sherry, me lad,"
  - said the sweating man-mountain cordially. "Never was
  so glad to see anybody in m'life. Hope you enjoy the
  next five years here."
  "Ah #  PTA Grade Eleven Supervisor Harmon?"
  Blaize hazarded. Except my new boss.
  A richly alcoholic wheeze almost knocked him off his
  feet. "You see anybody else around here, kid? Who
  d'you think I am?"
  "The corytium mine #  "
  "Dead. Defunct Abandoned. Kaput, all gone splash,
  stinko," Grade 11 Supervisor Harmon said with relish.
  "Went bust. Owner sold the mine to me for a case of
  spirits before he pulled out."
  "What went wrong?"
  "Labor. Company couldn't keep miners here for
  love nor money. Not that they offered much love #
  even a corycium miner ain't desperate enough to try
  and get it on with a Loosie, heh, heh, heh." Another
  wave of alcohol-flavored breath washed over Blaize.
  "Loosie?"
  "Homosimlis Lucilla Angalii to you, m'boy. The veg-
  heads Lucilla Sharif discovered, damn her soul, and
  reported as possibly intelligent on the FCF, double-
  damn her, and for her sins we're stuck administering
  Planetary Technical Aid to a bunch of walking zuc-
  chini. All the company I've had since they closed the
  mine. And aHyou'U have for the next five years. Next
  PTA transport comes by here is taking me off-planet."
  Harmon looked enviously at the sleek length of the
  XN-935, her tip now gleaming in the sun that peeked
  over the jagged mountains. "Nice perks you High
  PARTNERSHIP
  99
  Families kids get, transport like that. I don't suppose
  you could persuade that brainship #  "
  "I doubt it," Blaize said.
  Harmon chortled. "No, didn't much sound like it,
  way you come out yelling and screaming over your
  
  shoulder, with it dumping your luggage after you. You
  musta pissed it off real handsome. No matter. Next
  PTA shipment oughta be along any day now. And
  when it comes, my new assignment should be ready."
  He stretched luxuriously, took a deep drink from the
  bottle beside him, and sighed with anticipated content-
  ment. "Reckon I've earned myself a nice long tour of
  duty on Central, in a nice office tower with air con-
  ditioning and servos and no need to pay any bloody
  attention to bloody nature unless you happen to feel
  like looking out the window. Sit down, Madeira-y-
  Perez, and don't look so miserable. Do your five years
  and maybe they'll post you back in civilization. You're
  in luck, coming when you did."
  "I am?" The sun was over the mountain by now, and
  it was hot on the mesa. Blaize pulled his largest grip
  under the shade of the awning and sat down on it
  "Sure. Today's feeding time at the zoo. Put on a real
  show for you, the Loosies will." Harmon waved again,
  this time as if beckoning the cliff that towered above
  them to come on down. Blaize stared in shock as crag-
  gy bits of mountain broke loose and trickled down to
  the mesa top, shambling like crazy puppets made of
  rocks and wire. Strange costumes #  no, they were
  naked; that was their skin he was looking at.
  "Yaohoo! Feeding time! Whoeel" Harmon yodeled,
  simultaneously jerking the cord that ran along the side of
  the PTA prefab. One of the sacks overhanging the muddy
  basin opened and brownish-gray ration bricks spilled out
  in a torrent, piling up in the mud below the mesa,
  The Loosies scurried to the edge of the mesa and let
  themselves down into the muddy sea, fingers and toes
  100
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  clinging to crevices in the rocks. The first ones down
  threw themselves on the ration bricks as if they were
  greeting a long-lost lover; the later arrivals piled on
  top of them, swinging uncoordinated limbs and wrig-
  gling to burrow into the muddy heap of rations.
  Blaize felt a rumbling vibration coming up through
  the soles of his feet.
  "Look out!" Harmon roared.
  Blaize jumped and Harmon chuckled. "Sorry to
  startle you, kid. You wouldn't want to miss the other
  big show of Angalia." He pointed to the western
  horizon.
  It seemed to be moving.
  It was a wall of water. No, mud. No #  Blaize strug-
  
  gled for the right word and could only find the one
  that had first occurred to him: glop.
  The "Loosies" had ignored Harmon's shout as if
  they were deaf, but something #  perhaps the rum-
  bling vibration that Blaize felt #  alerted those still at
  the bottom of the quagmire. They swarmed up the
  sides of the mesa, clutching their ration bricks in teeth
  and fingers. The last one got out of the way just before
  the advancing tide of glop struck the mesa.
  The whole desperate, squirming consumption of
  ration bricks had taken place in total silence. Now, less
  than three minutes later, it was over and the mesa was
  surrounded by a sucking, slimy tide of glop. As Blaize
  watched, the tide receded, sliding back down the sides
  of the mesa until the new mud melted into the same
  soggy configuration of puddles and bubbles that had
  greeted him on arrival.
  "That was a small one," Harmon said with regret.
  "Oh, well, there'll likely be some better ones before
  you go. Bound to be, in feet."
  In response to Blaize's questions he explained,
  without much interest, that the erratic climatic pattern
  of Angalia produced a constantly moving band of
  PARTNERSHIP
  101
  thundershowers in the mountains which surrounded
  this central basin. Whenever the storms stayed in the
  same place for a while, the rainfall built up into a flash
  flood which raced across the plain, picking up mud as
  it went, and sweeping away anything that might be
  foolish enough to remain in its path.
  "Terraforrning," Blaize mused. "Dams to catch the
  rainfall and release it slowly..."
  "Expensive, and who'd bother? Nothing here to
  repay the investment. Besides," Harmon explained,
  "it's fun. Damn sure ain't much else to watch out
  here!"
  Blaize gathered that one of Harmon's amusements
  was trying to predict the times of the mud-floods so
  that he could feed the natives just before one, forcing
  them to scramble first for ration bricks and then to save
  themselves from the tide of mud.
  "Ain't it the damnedest thing?" he demanded as the
  rock-like natives climbed back to their mountain
  heights, some clutching a few ration bricks for later
  consumption, some still chewing the last mouthfuls of
  their haul. "You ever see anything like it?"
  "Never," Blaize admitted. Are the #  the Loosies starv-
  
  ing'? Is that why their skin hangs loose like that? Or is that their
  normal appearance ? And how does this fat creep get away tuith
  putting them through sitch a degrading performance1?
  "I know what you're thinking, Port-Wine-y-Medoc,"
  the fat man said, "but wait'll you've done six months
  out here, you'll forget all the PTA regs about respect-
  ing the natives' dignity and all that crapola. Damned
  Loosies don't have any dignity to respect, anyway.
  They're a bunch of animals. Never developed agricul-
  ture # or clothing# or even language."
  "Or lies," commented Blaize.
  "What?" For a moment Harmon looked startled,
  then he chuckled and wheezed with amusement.
  "Righto. No language, no lies #  gotta say that for
  102
  Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU
  them, anyway! But they're ootpeople, young Claret-
  Medoc. Waste of resources, this whole operation #
  some paperpusher's mistake. Only encourages the
  veg-heads to breed more little veggies. We oughta pull
  outa here and let 'em starve on their own, /ask me."
  "Maybe they could be trained to work the mine,"
  Blaize suggested.
  Harmon snorted. "Yeah, sure. I did hear about
  some prisoners in olden times who amused themselves
  trying to train their pet rats to run errands. You could
  do that sooner'n you could teach a Loosie anything,
  kid. I tell you, there's just three amusements on An-
  galia: feediri time for the Loosies, drinkin' time for me,
  and playing computer games. And I've mapped every
  damn level of the Maze of the Minotaur so many times
  I can't stand to look at it no more."
  Blaize felt in his pocket The datahedron recording
  the wager wasn't the only item he'd copied from
  Nancia's computer. "Does your computer# "
  "Yours now, Sake-ArmontUlado," Harmon inter-
  rupted with a cheerful belch. "PTA issue.
  "Does it have enough memory and display graphics
  to run SPACED OUT? Because," Blaize said, "I just hap-
  pen to have a copy of the latest version here.
  Pre-release #  it's not even on sale at Central yet" He
  winked at Harmon.
  "Is that so!" Harmon oozed to his feet "C'mon in-
  side, Burgundy-Champagne. Pass the time in a li'l
  friendly game until my transport gets here. He
  scratched his bare chest, squinting at Blaize with the
  rudiments of a thoughtful expression on his face.
  "Have to name some stakes, of course. No fun playing
  
  for nothing."
  "My sentiments exactly,'' Blaize agreed. "Lead the way.1
  Five days later, exactly as scheduled, the PTA
  transport touched down to deliver new supplies and
  to pick up Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon for the
  PARTNERSHIP
  103
  months-long FTL journey to his new assignment.
  Blaize remained behind with the Loosies and his
  winnings: two partially depleted cases of Sapphire
  Ruin, Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon's hand-woven
  palm-frond sun hat, and the title to an abandoned
  corycium mine.
  Deneb Subspace, Central Date 2750:
  Nancia and Caleb
  "That," said Caleb as he and Nancia left Deneb
  Spacebase, "was one of our more satisfying
  assignments."
  "Out of a grand total of two?" Nancia teased him.
  But she agreed. Their first scheduled run out of
  Central, delivering medical supplies to a newly settled
  planet, had been worthwhile but hardly challenging.
  And they had both been apprehensive about this as-
  signment: transporting some semi-retired general,
  another High Families representative, into the middle
  of a particularly nasty conflict between Central Worlds
  settlers and Capellan traders. But General Micaya
  Questar-Benn had proved completely different from
  the spoilt High Families children Nancia had taken
  out to Vega subspace on her first assignment. Short,
  competent, unassuming, the general had won Caleb's
  heart at once with her in-depth knowledge of Vega's
  complex history. She'd proceeded to spend much of
  the short run to Deneb subspace talking shop with
  Nancia; half the general's body parts and several
  major organs were cyborg replacements, and she was
  interested in the possibility of improving her liver
  functions with one of the newer metachip implants
  such as kept Nancia's physical body healthy within its
  shell. Nancia had never envisioned herself discussing
  something so personal with anybody, let alone a high-
  ranking army officer, but something about General
  Questar-Benn's unassuming manner made intimate
  104
  Asms McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  talk unthreatening and easy.
  Nanria wasn't too surprised to learn that before she
  and Caleb had even prepared for the return journey,
  
  General Questar-Benn had drawn human and Capellan
  antagonists into negotiations and worked out a settle-
  ment that would allow each side to feel they had "won."
  "And here I thought we were warmongering,
  delivering somebody with authority to send in the
  heavy armored divisions!" Caleb went on.
  Nancia chuckled. "The galaxy could do with a few
  more 'warmongers' like Micaya Questar-Benn. Ready
  for Singularity, partner? Central should have a new as-
  signment for us by now."
  Bahati, Central Date 2751:
  Alpha
  Alpha bint Hezra-Fong stared down in distaste at
  the writhing body of her experimental subject. What
  had gone wrong? The molecular variations of Blissto
  which she'd been preparing should have rendered the
  patient calm and tractable. Instead he was contorting
  his limbs and moaning uncontrollably, trying to break
  the restraint straps on his stretcher.
  Alpha tightened the straps until the patient stopped
  thrashing and passed a medscanner over his forehead.
  She frowned at the results. Instead of generating
  soothing hormones, Blissto.Rev.2 was invading and
  replicating itself within the man's nervous system like a
  cancer gone wild.
  "Damn! I haven't got time for this," she muttered.
  Quickly she considered her options. If she could keep
  the patient alive and in isolation for a few days, per-
  haps she would be able to find out what was causing
  this invasive replication and find a way to stop it. But if
  anybody questioned her work #
  The man's convulsions increased. One leg broke the
  reinforced restraint strap and kicked out wildly.
  PARTNERSHIP
  105
  "Too dangerous," Alpha decided. She pressed a
  hypospray to the man's neck and watched his body sag
  back against the stretcher. His eyes rolled upwards and
  the thrashing stopped.
  So did all other movement.
  Alpha had papers prepared for just such an emergen-
  cy. Tlie clinic director was an old fool, too lazy to check
  her reports; nobody else would dare to question her.
  Charity Patient B.342.iv would be listed as having died of
  heart feilure brought on by a preexisting medical condi-
  tion which the clinic had not had time to reverse.
  The only trouble was, that made the third such
  
  death in the year since Alpha had begun testing her
  improved version of Blissto. Sooner or later, if she
  didn't get the drug dosage right, somebody was going
  to notice the string of identical sudden-death reports
  and ask questions.
  Alpha seriously considered returning to ex-
  perimenting on rabbits. But rabbit cages stank, and
  taking care of the beasts was a lot of work, and there
  was even more probability that somebody would ques-
  tion her sudden interest in raising pets.
  She'd just have to think up a few more excuses for
  sudden deaths on the charity wing. A little variation in
  the paperwork would help disguise these unfortunate
  accidents.
  Procyon Subspace, Central Date 2751:
  Caleb and Nancia
  "This is boring,'1 Nancia complained as she watched
  workers on Szatmar II unload die cases of vaccine she
  and Caleb had transported there.
  "It is important to see that children's vaccinations
  are kept up regularly," Caleb told her.
  "Yes, but it's hardly an emergency. At least, it
  wouldn't have been one if PTA would keep its records
  up to date." A horrified bureaucrat had discovered
  106
  Arme McCaffrey &? Mwgore Ball
  that some incompetent named Harmon, working out
  of PTA on Central Worlds, had forgotten to ship last
  year's supplies of vaccine to any PTA client planets in
  the Procyon subsystem. In consequence, Nancia and
  Caleb were getting an extended tour of that subsys-
  tem, delivering measles and whooping-cough vaccine
  to several dozen settlements on widely scattered
  planets. "I've got a good mind to speak to my sister
  about this idiot Harmon," Nantia grumbled. 'Jinevra
  would never tolerate such inefficiency in her own
  branch of PTA; maybe she can get Central to transfer
  Harmon to a spot where he can't do any harm."
  "Nancia, you wouldn't seriously consider using
  your family connections for personal interest!"
  Caleb sounded shocked. Nancia apologized imme-
  diately. She hadn't realized that trying to get an
  incompetent bureaucrat ousted came under the head-
  ing of "personal interests." But Caleb was doubtless
  right; he always was. And she felt quite guilty as he lec-
  tured her about the consequences of being flighty and
  expecting glamorous assignments. He was right about
  that, too. Service loyalty demanded not only that she
  go where she was needed, but that she do so willingly
  
  and cheerfully.
  Nancia closed her loading dock and tried to lift off
  for their next vaccine delivery with a willing and
  cheerful heart,
  Bahati, Central Date 2752:
  Darnel!
  Darnell leaned back in his upholstered stimuchair
  and activated the interoffice transmitter. "You may
  send Hopkirk in now, Julitta mlovely."
  "Oh, Mr. Overton-Glaxely!" Julitta's delighted gig-
  gles came clearly through the transmitter. Darnell
  activated the double display screens as well and en-
  joyed two views of his secretary. The top screen
  PARTNERSHIP
  107
  showed her tossing her pretty yellow curls and preen-
  ing with delight at his compliment; the lower screen
  displayed her shapely legs, crossing and recrossing
  restlessly beneath the desk. Darnell noted with
  pleasure that J ulitta's petiskirt had ridden up almost; to
  her waist Such a delightful, twitchy tittle girl.
  Darnell considered Julitta, like the second display
  screen and die vibrostim units in his executive chair and
  the view of Bahati from his glass-walled executive office,
  to be one of the perks appropriate co a Man Who Had
  Made It He let Hopkirk wait awkwardly in front of his
  desk while he contemplated with equal delight his own
  rapid success, his immediate plans for Julitta, die view of
  her legs in the lower display screen, and the fact that
  Julitta didn't know about die second screen.
  "Hopkirk, I've got a job for you," Darnell ordered.
  "Productivity in the glimware plant dropped by three
  thousandths of a percent last month, I want you to get
  out there and send me a full report of any contributing
  factors.''
  "Yes, Mr. Overton-Glaxely," the man called Hopkirk
  murmured.
  "It's probably cumulative worker fatigue due to the
  poor design of the assembly line," Darnell continued
  Ah, that was better; a flash of pain crossed Hopkirk's
  features. Six months ago the man had owned,
  designed, and managed Hopkirk Glimware,
  producers of fine novelty prismaglasses for the luxury
  trade. And managed it damn poorly, too, Darnell
  thought; the place would have gone bankrupt soon
  enough anyway, even without his interference. Now it
  was a profitable, if small, addition to Darnell's revital-
  ized OG Shipping (and other) Enterprises.
  
  "Questions, Hopkirk?" Darnell snapped as the man
  remained standing instead of speeding to his task.
  "I was just wondering why you did it diis way," Hop-
  kirk said.
  108
  ArmeMcCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  "Did it what way?"
  Hopkirk shrugged. "You know and I know that
  Hopkirk Glimware would have done all right if you
  hadn't manipulated the Net to bring my stock prices
  down and cut off my credit"
  "That's a matter of opinion," Darnell told him.
  "Admit it, Hopkirk. You're an engineer, not a
  manager, and you didn't know how to run the com-
  pany. It would have crashed eventually in any case. All
  I did was help it along."
  "But why do it this way? Why ruin me when you
  could have bought the company for a fair price and
  still made your profit?"
  Darnell was pleased that the man didn't argue the
  basic point He'd been an incompetent manager and
  he knew it
  "You're a brilliant businessman," Hopkirk went on.
  "Look at how you turned OG Shipping around in just
  a year!"
  With a little help from my friends... Darnell quashed that
  thought Sure, Polyon's ability to hack into the Net and
  get advance information had been useful. But it was also
  true that Darnell had discovered within himself a true
  talent for efficiency. Cut out the deadwood! Fire the in-
  competent, the lazy, and those who've merely foiled to get
  results! And know everything! Those were DarnelTs new
  mottoes. Those who'dbeen fired talked about the Reign
  ofTerror. Those who hadn't been fired yet didn't dare to
  talk. And OG Shipping prospered ... leaving Darnell
  free to amuse himself again.
  There was Julitta, of course. There were an infinite
  number of JuHttas. But Darnell had discovered that no
  number of willing girls could give him quite the thrill
  of victory that his business manipulations brought
  He regarded Hopkirk thoughtfully. The man
  seemed to intend no offense; perhaps he honestly
  wanted to understand the workings of Darnell Over-
  PARTNERSHIP
  109
  
  ton-Glaxel/s brilliant mind. A laudable impulse; he
  deserved an honest answer.
  "Sure, I could have done it straight," he said at last
  "Would have taken a little longer. No prob. But," he
  winked at Hopkirk, "it wouldn't have been as much
  ftm... and that way I wouldn't have had you working
  for me, would I? Get on with the job, Hopkirk. I've got
  another assignment for you when you get back."
  Now that he'd as good as admitted his illegal use of
  the Net to Hopkirk, Darnell thought, the man had to
  go. It had been fun to keep him around for a little
  while, using him as a clerk and gofer, but one couldn't
  risk disgrunded victims getting together to compare
  notes. Once OG Glimware was taken care of, Darnell
  would "reward" Hopkirk with a free vacation at Sum-
  merlands Clinic. The Net revealed, among other
  things, that Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's patients on the
  charity side of Summerlands had an unusually high
  death rate. He'd "suggest" to Alpha that it would be
  convenient for both of them if Hopkirk never came
  back from Summerlands. That way nobody would talk
  about Darnell's use of the Net; and in return, he'd get
  Polyon to fix the Net records so that nobody would
  raise inconvenient questions about the number of
  charity patients Alpha had lost
  Achernar Subspace, Central Date 2752:
  Caleb and Nancia
  "I wonder if he'll really be able to resolve anything,"
  Nancia said thoughtfully as she and Caleb watched
  their latest delivery being greeted at Achernar Base on
  Charon. The short, spare man whom they'd brought
  halfway across the galaxy wasn't doing much to take
  control of his first meeting with the Charonese offi-
  cials. He was just standing there on the landing field,
  listening to the speeches of welcome and accepting
  bouquets of flowers.
  110
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  "None of our business," Caleb reminded her.
  "Central said, take Unattached Diplomatic Agent
  Forister to Charon, and do it fast. They didn't say to
  evaluate his job performance. And we've got another
  assignment waiting."
  "Don't we always?" But the little group of pompous
  Charonese officials that surrounded Forister was
  moving off now, leaving the spacefield clear for
  Nancia's liftoff
  "It's just that I like to feel we've accomplished some-
  thing," she lamented as Caleb strapped down for
  liftoff, "and I do feel this Charonese situation calls for
  
  somebody a bit more ... more forceful." Somebody
  like Daddy, for instance. With his brisk, no-nonsense
  manner and willingness to enforce his decisions, Javier
  Perez y de Gras would have made short work of
  Charon's seven feuding factions, the continual war be-
  tween the Tran Phon guerrillas and all seven
  provisional governments, and the consequent
  destruction of Charon's vital quinobark forests. He'd
  have been using Nancia's comm facilities and working
  the Net every minute they weren't in Singularity,
  preparing for his descent on the Charonese, arming
  himself with every last detail of the conflict, softening
  up the principal offenders with stern warning
  messages.
  This Forister had spent the three days of the voyage
  reading ancient books #  not even disks, but some ac-
  count of an Old Earth war too minor to have been
  transcribed to computer-readable format. And when
  he wasn't reading about this place called Viet Nam, he
  wasted his time in relaxed, casual conversation with
  her and Caleb, chatting about their families and
  upbringing, their hopes and dreams. Too soft to stop a
  war, Nancia thought contemptuously. Oh, well, Caleb
  was right #  the results were none of their business.
  They were Courier Service; they went where they
  PARTNERSHIP
  111
  were sent, quickly and efficiently. Sticking around to
  report on the failure of the resulting mission was not
  in the CS job description.
  Bahati, Central Date 2753:
  Fassa
  "You can't just leave me like this!"
  Fassa del Parma y Polo paused at the door and blew
  a mocking kiss at the gray-faced, potbellied man who
  was looking at her with such pain in his eyes. "Watch
  me, darling. Just watch me." She touched her left
  index finger to the charm bracelet on her wrist.
  There'd been an empty prismawood heart there, just
  the right size to hold the minihedron recording this
  stupid bureaucrat's sign-off on the Nyota ya Jaha
  Space Station contract. "Our business is done." All
  their business, including those boring maneuvers on
  the man's synthofur rug. At least it hadn't taken too
  long. These old guys had dreams of grandeur, but they
  really couldn't do much when they did get the chance.
  You're past it, sweetheart, and the future belongs to me. Some-
  thing uncomfortable writhed under the triumphant
  thought, some question as to why she exulted so much
  in the moral destruction of a small-time civil servant
  old enough to be her father; but Fassa pushed the
  question away with the ease of long practice. She had
  got what she wanted. It was as simple as that
  
  "But we were going to live together. You were going to
  quit this messy, unfeminine job, now that you've got
  enough money to pay for your sister's metachip pros-
  thesis, and we were going to retire to Summerlands..."
  Fassa laughed out loud. "What, me? Spend my last
  hundred years tending to some old man in a Summer-
  lands retirement cottage? You've been popping too
  much Blissto, my friend." She paused to let the rejec-
  tion sink in before delivering her final warning. "And
  don't even think about blowing the whistle on me.
  112
  Arms McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  Remember, you've got more to lose than I have." She
  always set it up that way.
  There was an unwelcome surprise waiting for her
  when she reached her offices. Two, in feet. One was
  minor; some kid was slumped in the corner sackback
  chair in the outer office, fiddling with forms. Employment
  applications were supposed to be handled in a different
  office; the kid should have been sent there to begin with.
  Before she had time to point this out, her secretary
  lowered his head and apologetically informed her that
  Bahati CreditLin insisted on one more palmprint
  before they would release the final payment for the
  space station construction into her Net account. Just a
  formality, the secretary quoted the CreditLin officials.
  Fassa's brows snapped together as the man assured
  her there was nothing to worry about. "Inspection?
  What inspection? Everything's been passed and
  signed by Vega Base." Or rather, by the befuddled old
  fool she'd just left, who hadn't even bothered to take a
  transport up to the station and walk its corridors in
  person, much less assign a qualified engineer to the
  task of a detailed structural inspection.
  "That's what I told them," the secretary said, "and
  I'm sure this will take no time at all, since Vega's en-
  gineering division has already signed off on all the
  main structural elements. Just a formality," he
  repeated. "It seems there's been a new law passed;
  CreditLin is obliged to send one of its own inde-
  pendent inspectors to verify that our construction
  meets standards before they can transfer the credits."
  A new law... Damn! I thought all the Bahati Senators had
  been paid off. Do I have to do everything myself?
  Fassa suppressed the thought with a quick frown.
  She'd deal with the legislature later. For now# so there
  was one more fool of a man to deal with, to wheedle and
  distract and please into forgetting the obvious checks that
  would reveal her substandard materials. Annoying, that
  
  PARTNERSHIP
  113
  was all. She didn't like surprises. But it would, after all, be
  one more minihedron to fill her charm bracelet
  Fassa caught a flicker of movement in the corner, just
  enough to distract her for a moment The kid in the sack-
  back was stretching, rising out of the enveloping chair.
  Notnow. Go away. I ^w other things to thJnkaboiU.
  "Miss del Parma y Polo?"
  Not such a kid; a man grown, older than she was
  herself#  but not by so very much. Fassa took in his
  appearance with growing appreciation. Broad
  shoulders, legs long enough to carry off his out-
  rageously psychepainted Capellan stretchpants, black
  hair and eyes whose blue was set offby slashing streaks
  of ochre face paint. A pretty peacock of a man. Maybe I'll
  hire him after all, even if he did bypass the employment office.
  Who cares whether he can do anything? Keep him around just
  to look at.
  "I should introduce myself now, I guess." He smiled
  down at her and enveloped her hand in his. "Sev
  Bryley, chief inspector for Bahati CreditLin. I reckon
  it'll be a pleasure working with you, Miss del Parma."
  Cor Caroli Subspace, Central Date 2753:
  Caleb and Nancia
  Caleb slammed one fist into the opposite palm and
  paced the width of the central cabin, growling deep in
  his throat. He paused opposite a purple metalloy
  bulkhead with silver-gilt stenciled borders and raised
  his fist again.
  "Don't even think about it," Nancia warned him.
  "You'll only hurt your hand and damage my nice new
  paint job."
  Caleb lowered his fist. A reluctant smile twitched at
  the corners of his lips. "Don't tell me you like the paint
  job?"
  "No. But it seemed suitable for our role. And I don't
  wish to return to Central looking as if I'd been through
  114
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  a clawing match with some of Dorg Jesen's popsies,
  thank you very much."
  They had been undercover for this mission, Caleb
  posing as a debauched young High Families scion who
  
  wanted a cut of Dorg Jesen's secret metachip supply. In
  return, he was to have offered the feelieporn king secret
  information on certain of his High Families customers.
  "Could be dangerous," Rahilly had warned them,
  back on Central Base. '[Jesen doesn't like awkward
  questions. Try to keep the meetings on shipboard.
  Nancia, you'll have to protect yourself and Caleb if
  Jesen tries anything."
  But they hadn't even lured Jesen into one ship-
  board meeting. He'd taken one look at Caleb's vidcom
  image, listened to Caleb's stiff delivery of the speech
  he'd been assigned to make, and burst out laughing.
  "Pull the other one, it's got bells on," he taunted Caleb.
  "And next time Central decides to send someone to in-
  vestigate me, tell them not to make it an Academy boy
  with a Vega accent you could cut with a knife, in a
  brainship with a tarted-up central cabin. If you're
  High Families, I'll eat my..."
  Nancia cut the sound transmission at that point.
  "Perhaps," she said now, "undercover work is not
  our metier"
  "I hate lies and spying," Caleb confirmed moodily.
  "We should have refused this mission." He looked up
  with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. "Unless... did you
  get anything?"
  Nancia had used the brief minutes of the vidcom link
  to insert feelers into Jesen's private computer system, so
  private that it didn't even have a Net connection. Central
  had surmised he might have such a system in addition to
  the open accounts he maintained via Net, but nothing
  could be checked until they arrived planetside.
  "Nothing," she told him. "I did get into his supply
  acquisition database, but all the metachips in the
  PARTNERSHIP
  115
  records there show perfectly legitimate Shemali Base
  control numbers."
  Caleb made a fist again. "Then you didn't get into
  the right records. Somebody's counterfeiting
  metachips, and Jesen could lead us to the source ...
  could have led us. He must be keeping three sets of
  books. Do you think if I got him on vidcom again..."
  An incoming transmission reached Nancia, and she
  activated her central display screen. Dorg Jesen's nar-
  row face appeared. "Been doing a litde research of my
  own," he announced, almost pleasantly. "Got your
  Central ID now to add in to my report. CN-935, lift
  your Courier Service tail fins offplanet in fifteen
  
  minutes and we'll forget this episode ever happened.
  Otherwise I'll file a formal complaint with CS, charg-
  ing you and your brawn with entrapment.''
  "You can't win them all," Nancia tried to soothe
  Caleb when they were offplanet and on their way back
  to Central. "We do many things well. Lying doesn't
  happen to be among them, that's all." But fm lying,
  right now, by saying nothing. Nancia made an internal
  playback of the datacordings she'd made four years
  earlier, on her maiden voyage. There was Polyon,
  cheerfully announcing his plan to slip metachips past
  the SUM board and sell them to unauthorized opera-
  tions like Dorg Jesen's feelieporn empire. If only Caleb
  knew what she knew, he could make a report to
  Central that would send them straight to Shemali.
  Except... he wouldn't do it In the four years of then-
  partnership, Caleb had never once wavered or com-
  promised his moral principles. He would never stoop to
  using a datacording made without the knowledge or con-
  sentofthe passengers. And he would neverrespectNancia
  again,oncehe knew whatshe'd doneon thatfirstvoyage.
  Sadly, Nancia ended the replay and slapped five
  more levels of security classifications on the datacord-
  ing. Caleb must never know. But there must be some
  116
  way to point Central's investigations towards Shemali,
  to stop them thinking in terms of counterfeit
  metachips and start them thinking about the prison
  factory.
  Shemali, Central Date 2754:
  Polyon
  Polyon slapped the palmboard built into his
  armchair and activated a vidcom link with Bahati.
  "Summerlands Clinic, Alpha bint Hezra-Fong,
  private transmission, code CX22." That would
  scramble his message so that only someone with the
  CX22 decoding hedron would be able to see and hear
  anything but gibberish. "Alpha, my sweet, you were
  just a tad premature in announcing that you'd
  finished your Seductron research. The free sample
  you sent up has one of my key techs too blissed-out to
  do any useful work. I've no idea when he'll stop con-
  templating his toenails, so you'd better find out# and
  fast Unless you want to be the next test subject." He
  smiled sweetly into the vidcom unit. "I can arrange it,
  you know."
  The next message went to Darnell, using a similar
  scrambling technique. In a few words Polyon in-
  formed Darnell that IntraManager, the small
  commlink manufacturing company Darnell was
  presently trying to take over, was not to be touched.
  
  "It's one of mine," he said pleasantly. "I'm sure you
  wouldn't have made a takeover move if you'd known
  that, would you now? By the way# did I show you the
  latest vids of the metachip line?" A tap of his fingers on
  the palmboard called up a datacording from the lowest
  circles of Hell: suited and masked workers toiling amid
  clouds of poisonous green steam. This was the last and
  most dangerous phase of metachip assembly, when
  the blocks between the polyprinted connection pat-
  terns were burned off with a quick dip into vats of acid.
  PARTNERSHIP
  117
  The burn-off process released a gaseous form of
  Ganglicide into the atmosphere. Before Polyon's time,
  this phase had been handled #  rather badly #  by
  automated servos that misjudged the depth and
  timing of the burnoff phase, dropped metachip
  boards, and quickly self-destructed in the poisonous
  atmosphere. Expensive and wasteful. By contrast,
  prison workers in protective suits could process more
  than three times as many metachips in a session, and
  only a few of them were lost each year to leaks in the
  suit sealing.
  "See the third man from the left, Darnell?" Polyon
  spoke into the vidcom while the images unreeled. "He
  used to be High Families. Now he's a Shemali assem-
  bly worker. How are the mighty fallen, eh?"
  He cut the connection on that #  an implied threat
  was ever so much more effective than a specific one.
  Actually, Polyon had no idea who the masked workers
  on the line might be. They were the scum of the prison
  system, the expendables who had neither tech train-
  ing nor business sense to justify keeping them in the
  safer areas of design and preprocessing. And while
  there was indeed a High Families convict on Shemali,
  the man had been sent there for a particularly revolt-
  ing series of crimes involving the torture of small
  children. Polyon didn't really think he could frame
  Darnell for something like that and make it stick;
  anybody would see the rich boy didn't have the guts to
  torture anybody.
  But I won't need to, will I? The threat witt be enough to
  keep old Darnell in line.
  The last call was to Fassa. He was lucky enough to
  catch her in person. Polyon enjoyed the sight of Fassa's
  eyes widening while he explained in detail just how
  unhappy he felt about the collapse of his new
  metachip assembly building, how personally hurt he
  was to discover that Polo Construction had supplied
  118
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  
  the substandard materials used in the building, and
  exactly what he might do to assuage his sense of loss
  and betrayal. The only trouble with the live connec-
  tion, Polyon thought, was that he didn't get to finish
  outlining the list of things he could do to Polo Con-
  struction as a company and to Fassa personally. Before
  he was half through, she was stammering apologies
  and practically begging to be allowed to rebuild the as-
  sembly facility. Free of charge, naturally.
  Polyon graciously accepted the offer.
  Just one more item ofbusiness to clear up. "Send in
  4987832," he commanded.
  A few minutes later, a pale-faced man in the prison
  uniform of green coveralls came into the office. He
  gave Polyon a confident smile. "Thought it over, have
  you?"
  "I most certainly have," Polyon agreed. He smiled
  and shrugged with palms outspread. "Can't say I'm al-
  together happy about the idea #  but I see you leave
  me no choice. You're a clever fellow, 4987832- Who
  were you, before?"
  ^ames Masson," the prisoner said. "Head of re-
  search for Zectronics #  you've heard of them? No?
  Well, it's a large galaxy. But it so happens I personally
  directed the metachip design effort there. That's how I
  happened to recognize the changes you've introduced
  in the chips."
  "My hyperchips will be fester and more powerful
  than die old metachips by at least two orders of mag-
  nitude," Polyon said. "They'll revolutionize the
  industry. It didn't take any genius to recognize that.
  The genius was in figuring out how to do it."
  "And that's not all the hyperchips will do, is it, de
  Gras-Waldheim? Industry isn't the only thing about to
  suffer a... revolution."
  Polyon inclined his head slighdy. "YouTI have a glass
  of Stemerald with me, to celebrate our arrangement?"
  PARTNERSHIP
  119
  Masson's eyes widened and he licked his lips. "Why,
  I haven't tasted Stemerald in #  in #  well, it must be
  ten years! Not since I came here! I must say, de Gras-
  Waldheim, I didn't think you'd take our little
  arrangement so well."
  Polyon's back was to Masson as he poured out the
  Stemerald into two sparkling globes from OG GUmware.
  
  "A lot of men would be petty about cutting me in on
  the profits," Masson babbled on, accepting his globe
  and draining it between words, "but that's you High
  Families type, you know how to accept defeat gra-
  ciously. And after all, giving me a small cut isn't much
  when you think of what it would do to your plans if I
  told Governor Lyautey about all the hyperchips'
  programming." He swallowed the last drops of
  Stemerald, ran his tongue round his lips once more to
  savor the taste, then sat back with the slightly dazed ex-
  pression of a man who'd just had his first strong drink
  in ten years.
  "As I said," Polyon repeated, "you leave me no
  choice in the matter." He frowned quickly. "You have
  honored your end of the agreement, haven't you,
  Masson? No word to anyone else?"
  "No word," Masson agreed. He spoke more slowly
  now. "I wouldn't... want... anyone else .., cutting
  in ..." His eyes glazed over and he sat staring into
  space with a blissful smile on his face.
  "Very good. Now, Masson, I have a special task for
  you." Polyon leaned forward. "Hear and repeat! You
  will go to the dip chambers."
  "I... will... go... to... the... dip ... chambers,"
  Masson droned.
  "I want you to make a surprise inspection. You will
  not announce yourself."
  "... not... announce... 'self."
  "You do not need a protective suit."
  Masson nodded and smiled. All the intelligence had
  120
  Anne McCaffrey &? Mwgorrf Ban
  left his face now. Polyon felt a twinge of regret. The
  man had been brilliant; would be again, if the
  Seductron wore off. He could have been a useful sub-
  ordinate if he hadn't made the mistake of trying to
  blackmail Polyon. But as it was ... well, there was no
  point in waiting, was there? Damn Alpha. If she'd only
  developed the controlled Seductron she kept promis-
  ing, with doses ranging from ten-minute zaps to a state
  of mindless, permanent bliss, there would be no need
  for this last distasteful step.
  Polyon finished his orders to Masson and snapped a
  dismissal. "Go. Now!"
  Masson stood unsteadily and left Polyon's inner of-
  fice. Polyon sat back and began sketching a metachip
  linkage plan with one forefinger, tracing glowing
  
  paths across the design screen.
  Five minutes later, his vidcomm lit up to show the
  face of the afternoon shift supervisor. "Lieutenant de
  Gras-Waldheim? Sir? There's been a terrible accident.
  One of your designers just... the man must have
  gone mad, he walked right into the dip room without a
  suit... if only he'd knocked they could have kept him
  waiting in the outer lock until the gases were cleared
  out... they didn't even know he was there.... The
  room was filled with Ganglicide in gaseous form, he
  didn't have a chance...." Screams sounded in the
  background. "Oh, sir, it's terrible!"
  "A most distressing accident," Polyon agreed.
  "Begin the paperwork, 567934. And don't blame
  yourself. Sometimes it just takes them like that, you
  know, the lifers. Better any death than a lifetime on
  Shemali, they think, and who knows? Perhaps they're
  right. Oh, sorry, 1 forgot #  you're a lifer too, aren't
  you?"
  He didn't start laughing until the connection was
  broken.
  "  CHAPTER SEVEN
  Spica Base, Central Date 2754:
  Caleb and Nancia
  Nancia limped into Spica Base on half power, depend-
  ent on Caleb for reports on the lower deck damage
  where her sensors had self-destructed to preserve her
  from shock when the asteroid struck them.
  "Freak accident," commented the Tech Grade 7
  who came out to survey the damage in person.
  Nancia mourned the sleek gloss of her exterior finish,
  now pitted and gouged around the torn metal shreds of
  the entrance hole. "Ishould have takena different route."
  "Freak ship." The tech snapped his IR-Sensor gog-
  gles down, hiding his eyes behind a band of black
  plastifilm. "Ain't natural. Ship talks, pilot don't."
  "The correct terms, as I'm sure you are aware, are
  'brainship and 'brawn,' " Nancia said frostily. "Caleb
  is... it's none of your business. Just leave him alone,
  okay?" She'd seen him plunged into these unreason-
  ing depressions before, whenever one of their
  missions was less than one hundred percent success-
  ful. He'd retreated into himself without speaking for a
  week after the disastrous undercover assignment with
  Dorg Jesen, while Nancia tried to tempt his appetite
  with fancy dishes from the galley and interesting tid-
  bits of news picked up from the gossipbeams.
  "I'll need somebody at the other end to help me link
  the hyperchips into the ship's system," the tech
  
  protested. "Somebody who knows the ship. My guys
  are good, but this is a small base. They ain't never
  122
  Anne McCaffrey #f Margaret Ball
  worked on a talking ship before. And nobody's got that
  much experience with hyperchips. They might not in-
  terface with these sensor setups just like the old
  metachips did."
  "Then," said Nancia, "perhaps you should explain to
  them that a talking ship can, in fact, talk. There's no need to
  trouble my brawn for information; 111 manage the installa-
  tion myself" She didn't feel nearly so cheerful and carefree
  as she tried to sound; the thought of some dolt like this tech
  fooling around with her synaptic connectors made her feel
  sick and weak. But she did not want him bothering Caleb.
  One thing she'd learned in the last four years of partner-
  ship was that Caleb only stayed depressed longer ifhe was
  forced to talk to people before he was ready to.
  The tech grunted acquiescence and twiddled some-
  thing she couldn't see, "Sensor connection to
  OP-N1.15, testing."
  "If you mean can I see what you're doing," Nantia
  responded, "the answer is no."
  The tech gaped but recovered himself quickly.
  "Hah! OP-N1 series . . . optic nerve connections?
  Sorry, lady #  ship #  whatever you are. What I'm
  looking at, see, it's just schematics. 1 didn't think ..."
  His voice trailed off for a moment. "Awesome, really,
  when you think about it that way. That there's zperson
  somewhere inside this steel and titanium."
  "Correction," Nancia said. She was becoming used
  to this tendency among softpersons; they insisted on
  equating her with the body curled inside the titanium
  column, as if that was all there was to her. "I am a per-
  son. That's my lower deck vision you're twiddling with
  now, and I'd very much like to have it #  Thank you!"
  A partial visual field opened as she spoke. Now she
  could see the tech again, and one gloved hand reach-
  ing up into the tangle of fused metal and wires that
  had been her lower deck sensory system.
  "OP-N 1.15 restored," the tech noted. "Now if#  say,
  PARTNERSHIP
  123
  this is going to be easy. Don't need this stuff" He clipped
  a test meter to his belt and used both hands to rejoin
  severed wires. "OP-N1.16 functioning now? Good. 17?"
  He worked through the full series rapidly, while Nancia
  kept him informed of the status of each repair.
  
  "Thank you," she said again when he'd restored her
  full optic series for the lower deck. "It's... most trou-
  bling, being unable to look at a part of myself"
  "Imagine it would be," the tech agreed. "Glad to
  help a lady, any time."
  Nancia noted that in the course of one short repair
  session she had advanced from "unnatural talking
  ship," to "person" to, apparently, "lady in distress." By
  the time the repairs are finished, he'll be wanting to sign up for
  brawn framing... and most distressed to learn he's over age.
  "And this is just the beginning," the tech promised.
  "We'll have you fixed up good as new in a day or so.
  Better than new, really. You had any hyperchips in-
  stalled before? Thought not. They're #  I dunno #
  about a thousand times better than the old line
  metachips. You're gonna like this, ma'am." His fingers
  twisted, seating one of the new chips. It felt strange to
  see the movements without feeling the slight pressure
  and hearing the dick as the chip slid into place.
  "Can you feel anything when I do this?"
  "No# yes. Oh!"
  "Hurt you?"
  "No. Just #  surprised." Nancia felt as if her sensors
  had been turned up to full volume, without sacrificing
  the slightest accuracy. Every movement was dear; the
  world sparkled like crystal around her. "How many
  more of those do you have? Can you replace my upper
  deck sensor chips too?"
  The tech shook his head regretfully. "Sorry, ma'am.
  It's a new design out of Shemali. There's not enough
  hyperchips out yet to go around to all the folks who
  need them for repairs, let alone bringing in functional
  124
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  equipment and retrofitting it. Shemali Plant estimates
  it'll be a good three-four years before they can
  produce enough to retrofit all the Fleet ships."
  "Oh. Of course." Nancia remembered the plan
  Polyon had described on her maiden voyage. "I sup-
  pose," she said, feeling very crafty, "I suppose a lot of
  the chips are failing QA tests? It being a new design,
  and all," she added hastily.
  The tech shook his head. "No, ma'am. Actually,
  these new chips don't fail in testing near as often as the
  old design. Pretty near the full production run is being
  cleared for distribution, most times. It's just that even a
  
  year's full production runs out of Shemali don't
  amount to that much when you consider all the places
  the chips have to go these days. It's not just the Fleet,
  y'know. Hospitals, Base brains, cyborg replacements,
  defense systems #  seems like we just about couldn't
  run the galaxy without "em!"
  Nancia felt first disappointed, then relieved. She had
  expected Co hear that the new design somehow caused a
  great many metachips to foil in the QA phase and that
  nobody knew what became of the substandard chips
  rejected by the SUM ration board. That would have been
  evidence she could mention to Caleb, something to steer
  his mind in the direction of Polyon's illicit activities
  without revealing that she already knew about the plan.
  Instead, it seemed that Polyon had given up his plan
  altogether. He was brilliant. Perhaps the hyperchip
  design was his idea; and perhaps, Nancia thought op-
  timistically, he had forgotten his original notion of
  stealing metachips in favor of the honest pleasure of
  seeing his design accepted and used galaxy-wide.
  Angalia, Central Date 2754
  The third annual progress meeting of the Nyota
  Five was held on Angalia, an arrangement which
  pleased no one #  least of all the host
  PARTNERSHIP
  125
  "It was your idea to rotate the annual meetings,"
  Alpha bint Hezra-Fong pointed out, somewhat snap-
  pishly, when Blaize apologized for the primitive
  accommodations. "We could have been comfortably
  settled in a Summerlands conference room, but nooo,
  you and Polyon had to fuss that it wouldn't be fair if
  you two had to travel to Bahati every time just to suit
  the three of us who had the good luck to be stationed
  there. So we have to rotate. Two nice meetings on
  Bahati, now this godforsaken dump, and next time,
  stars help us, Shemali. You and your bright ideas!
  Send someone to unpack for me #  you must have
  some help around the place, surely?"
  " 'Fraid not," Blaize said with a sunny smile. He was
  beginning to enjoy the prospect of Alpha's discomfort
  on Angalia. Rotating the meeting sites had really been
  Polyon's idea, not his, but Alpha was obviously afraid
  to take out her bad temper on Lieutenant de Gras-
  Waldheim. Blaize glanced sidelong at Polyon, very
  straight and correct in his Academy dress blacks, and
  admitted to himself that he didn't blame Alpha. Given
  a choice of tongue-lashing the enigmatic technical
  manager of Shemali MetaPlant, or the little red-haired
  runt from PTA, who wouldn't choose to lash out at the
  PTAwimp?
  
  But this understanding didn't make him love Alpha
  #  or the rest of the Nyota Five, including himself#
  any better.
  "Welcome," Blaize said with a sweeping bow that in-
  cluded all four of his guests, "to the Angalia Tourist
  Center. A modest facility, as you can see #  "
  Darnell's snort of laughter testified to the truth of
  that statement
  " #  but vastly improved from its humble begin-
  nings," Blaize finished. "If the winner were to be
  chosen on the basis of progress rather than of absolute
  wealth, I'd have no doubt of succeeding next year."
  126
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball
  And that, by God, was the absolute and unvarnished
  truth! The rest of them might sneer at Blaize's long,
  low bungalow with its thatched roof and thatch-
  shaded balcony, the garden of native ferns and grasses
  and the paved path leading from there to the
  corycium mine. Never mind. He knew what it had
  taken to create these amenities from the mud-hole that
  Supervisor Harmon had left him with.
  "All done with native labor?" Fassa interrupted his
  explanation. "But everybody knows the Loosies are
  too stupid to do anything useful."
  Blaize put one finger to the side of his nose and
  winked, a gesture borrowed from an old tri-D show
  called Fagm and His Gang. "Amazing what even a veg-
  head can do with the proper... incentive," he drawled.
  "Where d'you store the whips and spiked sticks?"
  That was pudgy Darnell, bright-eyed as if he actually
  expected Blaize to produce a panoply of torture in-
  struments and demonstrate their use.
  "You've no subtlety, Overton-Glaxely," Blaize
  reproved the man. "Think. The #  er #  Loosies were
  starving when I came here, kept alive only by PTA ra-
  tion bricks. The task of distributing the ration bricks,
  naturally, belonged to the PTA representative on An-
  galia. Me."
  "So?" Darnell really was amazingly slow. Not for the
  first time, Blaize wondered how he'd made such a suc-
  cess out of OG Shipping and the smaller corporations
  that OG Enterprises had swallowed up over die years.
  "So, Blaize drawled, "I saw no reason togrw away
  PTA ration supplements when they could perfectly
  well be used to train the natives. We have a simple rule
  of life now on Angalia, my friends #  no work, no eat"
  He pointed towards the entrance to the corycium
  
  mine. "And it's not just applied to building the master's
  bungalow. I hold the title to that mine. United
  Spacetec abandoned it because they couldn't keep
  PARTNERSHIP
  127
  human miners on Angalia. / use the native resources
  to mine the native resources, so to speak #  you'll see
  the day shift coming out in a few minutes."
  "And you pay them with ration bricks, which come
  free via PTA?" Alpha gave Blaize an approving smile
  that chilled him to the bone. "I must admit, Blaize,
  you're not as stupid as you look. Anything you make
  from the corycium mine is profit, free and dear."
  Blaize opened his mouth wide in simulated shock.
  "Dr. Hezra-Fong! Please! I am deeply shocked and dis-
  illusioned that you should think such a thing of me.
  Any profits accruing from the corycium mine natural-
  ly belong to the natives of Angalia." He waited a beat
  before continuing. "Of course, since the natives of An-
  galia do not have Intelligent Sentient Status, they can't
  have bank accounts #  so the credits do, perforce, go
  into a Net account in my name. But held in trust for
  the Loosies# you understand?"
  The others chuckled knowingly and all agreed that
  they did indeed understand, and that Blaize was a
  clever lad to have found such a good way of covering
  his tail in the event of a PTA inspection. All but Polyon
  de Gras-Waldheim, who was tapping one finger
  against the seam of his black trousers and staring at the
  thunderclouds on the horizon.
  "You've done pretty well, considering," Darnell ad-
  mitted, "but with creatures as dumb as these, surely
  you have #  er #  discipline problems?" He was get-
  ting that whips-and-chains expression again.
  "If he does, maybe regulated doses of Seductron
  would be the answer," cooed Alpha. "I've just about
  got the bugs worked out of the dosage schedule now,
  and it might be interesting to test it on non-humans."
  Blaize forced himself to smile. Time for his
  demonstration. He'd planned it beforehand, in case
  there was need to make an additional impression on
  the others, but had hoped it wouldn't be necessary.
  128
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  Messy, it would be. And wasteful. But apparently they
  still weren't convinced of his firm control over the
  Loosies.
  
  "Thanks, Alpha, but Seductron wouldn't quite do
  the trick; the Loosies are passive and malleable
  enough already. What they need is occasional stimula-
  tion, and that," he said with a low laugh, "that I can
  arrange for myself." He raised one hand in the air and
  brought it down with a swift chopping motion.
  Two of the tall rock pillars beside the garden wall
  moved forward in the shambling, awkward gait char-
  acteristic of the Loosies. With movement, their
  features and humanoid shapes could be clearly seen,
  although until a moment earlier they had blended in
  with the real stones making up the rest of the wall. Be-
  tween them they hauled a third "rock," a native whose
  double-jointed legs sagged under him and whose flap-
  ping liplike folds of skin opened and closed with a
  mimed display of silent terror.
  "They may not talk," said Blaize, "but they've
  learned to understand simple sign commands quite
  well. Most of them have, anyway. This fellow in the
  middle dropped a serving dish when he was waiting
  on me at dinner yesterday. I've been saving him to
  make an example of in front of the miners, but since
  there's an audience here already" #  he allowed his
  eyes to roam lazily over his four co-conspirators #
  "why wait any longer for the pleasure?"
  He pointed over the side of the mesa with a
  deliberate downward motion, three times repeated.
  The two Loosie guards bobbed their square heads and
  half carried, half dragged their prisoner over the edge.
  "You make 'em throw themselves over the cliff?"
  "Not at all," Blaize cackled. "Too fast, that'd be.
  Come and watch!"
  By the time everybody had crowded around the low
  wall at the mesa's edge, the three Loosies were already
  PARTNERSHIP
  129
  down on the mud flats, approaching one of the areas
  where bubbles rose and burst in the glop with a stench
  of sulfur. The two guards hauled the prisoner to the
  edge of this bubbling area and thrust him into the soft
  mud. As he writhed and struggled to escape, they
  picked up the long sticks that had marked the site of
  the bubbles and used them to thrust him back into the
  steaming mud.
  "Natural hot springs under there," Blaize ex-
  plained. "Very hot. Takes a couple of hours to cook
  'em through. Fortunately, the Loosies are real patient
  Those two I use as guards will keep pushing him down
  until he quits trying to get out, even if it takes most of
  the evening."
  
  He turned away from the spectacle of torture and
  bowed once again to his guests. "Well, ladies and
  gendemen," he inquired with a benign smile, "shall we
  begin the business meeting?"
  Even Polyon, Blaize noted, was pale against the
  dead black of his uniform; while the other three were
  shocked into silence. So much the better. It would be a
  while, he thought, before any of them underestimated
  little Blaize again.
  After the shocking scene Blaize had just provided,
  the third annual progress meeting began more quietly
  than the previous meetings had gone. The underlying
  tensions in the group were still present, however, and
  all the sharper for another year's fermenting.
  As host, Blaize claimed the honor of giving the initial
  report While Polyon gazed over his head in unfeigned
  boredom and the two girls sat pale and silent, he began
  reciting facts and figures to back up his earlier assertions.
  In earlier years he'd had little to report This year he was
  at last coming into his own. He fancied a glimmer of
  respect in Polyon's eyes as Blaize explained how he was
  using the first profits from the corycium mine to finance
  130
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret BaU
  the purchase of heavy mining equipment that would
  open up even more of the planet for exploitation. Dar-
  nell twitched and muttered to himself during this pan of
  the report, but he didn't explode until Polyon pointedly
  inquired as to how Blaize had financed the initial startup
  costs of the mine.
  "Reselling surplus PTA shipments," Blaize replied
  prompdy.
  "Dear me," commented Polyon, "I thought the #
  ah #  'Loosies' were starving. Didn't this move reduce
  your potential worker population somewhat?"
  "Waste not, want not," Blaize waved his hand in
  vague circles. "There's a lot of surplus in any
  bureaucracy. I just #  as you might say #  cut the fat
  out"
  It was perhaps unfortunate that his eyes met
  DarnelTs at this moment, and that the airy circles his
  hand was sketching could have been taken for an in-
  dication of DarnelTs growing paunch.
  "The hell you did!" Darnell exploded, surging to his
  feet on a wave of red-faced fury. "Cut it right out of my
  hide, you mean!" He turned to the others as if appeal-
  ing for their sympathy. "Little bastard blackmailed me
  to ship extra food here # free #  while he was selling
  
  the supplies that ought to've gone to the natives!"
  This accusation did not have quite the effect he
  might have been hoping for.
  "Really, Darnell?" asked Polyon with bright-eyed in-
  terest. "And what were you doing that he could
  blackmail you for, I wonder?"
  Darnell puffed and stammered and Alpha inter-
  rupted him. "Who cares? I'm delighted somebody finally
  nailed you. Ever since you took over Pair-a-Dice I've
  wanted to pay you back!"
  "What do you care whether I buy out a crummy
  casino?"
  "That 'crummy casino,' " Alpha informed him, "just
  PARTNERSHIP
  131
  happened to be my primary outlet for Seductron at
  street prices. The gambling was only a front #  once
  you pay the Bahati cops off for a gambling operation,
  they're too dumb to check and see if that's really where
  all the money is coming from. Pair-a-Dice #  Paradise
  __ get it, stupid? That's the street name for
  Seductron."
  "I thought you didn't have the dosage schedules
  worked out yet!" Fassa sounded appalled.
  Alpha shrugged thin, elegant shoulders. Her face
  was sharp as a knife under the elaborate Nueva Estrel-
  la style of tight braids piled high in a prismawood
  spiral frame. "So a few Blissto addicts go out happy.
  Who cares? I've got to start making something off
  Seductron before next year. Even if I work around all
  the side effects, it's too late to patent it now. So it's street
  deals or nothing." This reminded her of her
  grievance. "And since you took over my best outlet,
  Pudge-face, it's been nothing. You owe me!"
  "So do you," Fassa told Blaize, "Del Parma was low
  bidder on the corycium processing plant. By govern-
  ment regulations you ought to've given us the job.
  How much did the winning contractor slip you under
  the table?"
  "That," Blaize replied stiffly, "is between the two of
  us, and nothing to do with you, Fassa! Besides, know-
  ing what I do about del Parma's construction methods,
  what made you think I'd be fool enough to let you
  build a latrine trench on Angalia?"
  "Huh! Angalia already is a latrine trench! Ha-ha-
  ha!"
  
  Nobody except Fassa paid the least attention to
  Darnell's lame jest. She whirled and stabbed a long
  iridescent corycium-sheathed fingernail at his chest.
  "And you! Remember the Procyon run? That's the last
  time OG Shipping gets any del Parma business!'
  Darnell smoothed down his green synthofur jacket
  132
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  and smirked. "Can't see what you're complaining
  about," he replied. "Switching good construction
  materials for substandard ones is standard practice for
  del Parma."
  "Only," Fassa said, "when / keep the profit. I'm not
  running a charitable association for the benefit of OG
  Shipping."
  "Can't see why not," Darnell leered. "The word is
  you've been charitable to enough of Bahati's male
  population already."
  Fassa sat down abruptly, holding her head in her
  hands. "Don't remind me," she wailed, "as if you and
  everybody else cheating me weren't enough, can't I at
  least forget about that inspector from CreditLin for a
  little while? I gave him what he wanted, the space
  station's paid for, I can't understand why he won't go
  away."
  "I can," suggested Blaize helpfully. "Fraudulent QA
  records, shoddy materials, slipshod building practices,
  non-union workers..."
  "Cheat!"
  "Bloodsucker!"
  "Shark!"
  The meeting dissolved into the usual chaos while
  Polyon sat back, arms crossed, and murmured,
  "Naughty children."
  "  CHAPTER EIGHT
  Kailas, Procyon Subspace, Central Date 2754
  The Central Diplomatic Services office tower was a
  lacework of steel and titanium needles, wrapped in
  translucent green synthofilm that trapped and
  redistributed natural light in a soft, unchanging glow.
  Midnight or noon, the CDS offices on Kailas were lit by
  a gentle, slightly green-tinged light that was energy-
  efficient, situation-appropriate, and psychologically
  proven to be simultaneously soothing and
  inspirational.
  
  It made Sev Bryley feel as if he was about to suffer a
  recurrence of the jungle rot that had attacked his skin
  on Capella Four. He tried not to think about the light
  It was a minor matter, not worth wasting the precious
  minutes this important man had granted him.
  "Youhate this, too, don'tyou?" the important man said.
  "Sir?"
  An impatient grunt "The blasted light Something
  Psych and EcoTech dreamed up between them. Makes
  me feel as if I were back on Capella Six."
  "For me it was Four," Sev confessed.
  Another grunt. "Different war, same jungle. I'd
  open a window if this place had windows. Can't peel
  plastifilm open, more's the pity."
  "It's very good of you to make time to see me at all,
  sir," Sev said cautiously. So they had a common back-
  ground #  service in the Capellan Wars? Was that why
  this highly placed diplomat had given a mere private
  investigator ten minutes out of his crowded schedule?
  "Not at all. Do the same for any friend of the family
  134
  Arme McCaffrey 6f Margaret Baft
  PARTNERSHIP
  135
  who needed help. So. What's your problem, d'Aquino?"
  Sev stiffened. "I didn't intend to call on family con-
  nections, sir#  "
  "Then you're a damned young fool," said the gray-
  haired man in the conservative blue tunic. "I've been
  checking your Net records. Your full name is Sevareid
  Bryley-Sorensen d'Aquino# why didn't you use it when
  you requested this appointment? You could have gotten
  in to see me three days sooner. And why me, if you didn't
  mean to call on High Families connections?"
  "I was not aware that there was a relationship be-
  tween our families. Sir," Sev said stiffly. "I came to
  Kailas because it was the nearest world with any CDS
  representatives high-ranking enough to deal with my
  problem. And I approached you because you have the
  reputation of being one of the two Central Worlds offi-
  cials on this planet who cannot be bribed, threatened,
  or suborned."
  "So you found two honest men, my Diogenes? I'm
  
  flattered."
  "Sir. My name is Bryley, not Dio #  whatever."
  "A classical reference. No matter. What do they teach
  them in University these days? But then, you didn't
  finish your schooling. Why didn't you cash in your
  veteran's benefits after Capella IV to complete your
  education at Central's expense?"
  Sev tried without success to conceal his surprise.
  "The Net can supply #  um# rather a lot of detail,"
  his interlocutor explained gently. "Even about a
  rather obscure private investigator who's recently lost
  his position with Bahati CreditLin #  yes, I found out
  about that too. Something about a gambling scandal at
  the Pair-a-Dice, wasn't it?"
  "It was a lie!" Sev leaned forward, burning with in-
  dignation at the memory. "My supervisor #  he had
  anonymous letters about me. I know who sent them,
  but I can't prove it,"
  "And who might that be?"
  The same man who transferred credits into my Net
  account and played under my name at Pair-a-Dice #
  or maybe he sent one of his flunkies to play the part.
  When I went to the casino, they wouldn't tell me any-
  thing about the man who used my name."
  "No. They beat you #  rather badly# and threw you
  out into the ecocycler in the back alley." The gray-eyed
  man surveyed Sev with eyes that took in every feint mark
  of healing bruises and scraped skin. "Lucky you didn't
  wind up being recycled into somebody's rose garden; we
  suspect that's what has happened to a few other people
  who annoyed the proprietor of that particular estab-
  lishment So. \bu came to your senses, crawled out of the
  ecocycler before it began its chop sequence, got treat-
  ment for your more obvious wounds from some shady
  blacklisted ex-doctor among your underworld friends,
  and... came halfway across the galaxy to wait three days
  for an interview with me. Want me to get you reinstated
  with Bahati CreditLin, is that it? Favor for a friend? Teach
  them not to act on anonymous accusations against a
  High Families lad #  even one who's rebelled against his
  background and is working incognito?"
  "Sir!"
  "It can be arranged, you know," said the gray-eyed
  man, watching Sev closely. "A word from this office,
  and Bahati CreditLin will reinstate you, full back pay,
  no questions asked. If that's what you want..."
  "No, sir."
  The gray-eyed man nodded briskly. "Good. I didn't
  
  think so, but one has to be sure. You want to track
  down the people who framed you, then."
  "More than that." Sev dropped his eyes. "I think I
  know who framed me. And why. But it's a long story,
  and there are High Families involved. That's why I
  came to you, sir. Somebody without that background
  might be tempted to shove everything under the car-
  136
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  137
  pet for fear of offending someone powerful. And of
  those in Central Administration who are High
  Families #  well #  " He spread his hands helplessly." I
  don't know the lineages and their reputations. The
  only two people whose integrity everyone is absolutely
  sure of are you and General Questar-Benn #  and
  she's on some kind of secret assignment, nobody
  would tell me where."
  "How flattering," purred the gray-eyed man.
  Belatedly, Sev realized the implications of his words.
  "Sir. I didn't mean #  1 am most grateful that you
  agreed to see me, truly I am."
  "Take that as read. Now why don't you tell me
  what's going on?"
  Sev's cheekbones reddened. His tongue felt like a
  wad of cotton in his mouth. Where could he begin? In
  this cool green-lit office, the madness that had seized
  him on Bahati seemed like a dream.
  "There was #  a girl."
  "Ann. You know, there quite often is, in such cases.
  And you #  made a fool of yourself?" He looked at Sev
  sympathetically. "You know, I can remember the urge
  to make a fool of oneself over a young lady. I'm not so
  old and dried-up as all that. But if this story is going to
  be personal, perhaps you'd feel easier continuing it in
  a less formal environment? Sometimes I go across
  town for lunch #  there's a cafe in Darkside. Nothing
  fancy. But at least it gets one out of this damned jungle
  light-
  Fifteen minutes later, feeling somewhat as if he'd ac-
  tually been through the ecocycler's processing
  sequence, Sev and the man he'd come to see were
  seated at a table in the back of a cavernous, dimly lit
  cafe. The one window that might have admitted a little
  sunlight was curtained by dusty streamers of glitzrib^
  bon and prismawood light-dangles. In one corner of
  the room, a weedy boy with long red hair tied in z\
  
  black velvet bow tinkered with his synthocom set,
  producing occasional bursts of strident sound that
  grated on Sev's eardrums.
  Even his sleazy story seemed no more than normal,
  here. He wondered if that was why they'd come to this
  dingy place. It seemed an odd setting for a man who
  spent his working life meeting with presidents and
  kings and generals.
  "It's quiet here," said the only honest man on Kailas,
  "and more to the point, I know there won't be any un-
  authorized datacordings made of our conversation;
  I'm acquainted with the proprietor of this place. She
  has quite a number of visitors who don't want their dis-
  cussions overheard or recorded."
  "I can believe it," said Sev with feeling.
  "So. If that answers your curiosity about why we
  came here #  why don't you tell me about this girl?
  "She was #  " Sev stopped, swallowed, searched again
  for a place to begin. "She is head of a construction com-
  pany based on Bahati. Their most recent contract was for
  a space station to catch Net signals and route small-pack-
  age traffic between Vega subspace and Central. As pan of
  my routine duties for Bahati Creditlin, I was asked to do
  a final walk-through inspection of the station. It was# it
  should have been just a formality; the head of Contracts
  Administration had already signed off on the work."
  "I take it," murmured the gray-eyed man, "there
  were, in fact, some deficiencies in the construction
  methods?"
  "It was a. joke" Sev's hands moved freely and he for-
  got his nervousness as he sketched the discoveries he'd
  made. "Oh, everything looked good enough on the
  outside. Fresh new permalloy surface skin. Interior
  corridors painted and glowlit, shiny new sensor
  screens to scan the exteriors. But once I opened up a
  few panels and started looking at what was behind the
  fresh paint# " He shook his head, remembering. "She
  138
  Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  139
  tried to distract me. No. That's not fair. She... did dis-
  tract me. For a while." Three days and nights in Fassa
  del Parma's private cubicle on her personal transport
  ship, wheeling around the space station, watching the
  blazing dance of the stars through the clear walls
  above and below and around their own dance...
  
  Sev felt himself on fire again, remembering. And
  regretting. Even now, some part of him wanted noth-
  ing better than to be back on the Xanadu with Fassa del
  Parma y Polo. Whatever the cost.
  "She was... annoyed," he said slowly, "when I told her
  I'd have to complete the inspection according to form."
  He looked up at the man seated across the table, search-
  ing for a hint of condemnation in the level gray eyes. "I
  should have done the inspection immediately. I'd given
  her three days." No, shegave them to me. Three days FU never
  forget. "She'd had her people working overtime to con-
  ceal their cheap work. Panels behind panels. Fake safety
  numbers stenciled on the recycled supporting beams.
  Warning signs about chemical danger areas in front of
  the rats' nests they called an electronic system #  as
  though that would've stopped me!" Sev snorted.
  "If 7 had put up signs warning of chemical dangers,"
  the other man commented, "I would have made sure
  that you did indeed run into such dangers the first time
  you removed a panel. Nothing fetal, of course. Certainly
  nothing really nasty, like gaseous Ganglicide. Maybe a lit-
  tle sinoidal stimulant Or Capellan fungus spores."
  "She thought of that," said Sev grimly. "So, unfor-
  tunately for her, did I... I wore a chem-pro suit and
  gas mask while I checked out the electronics."
  "And?"
  "The place never should have passed the most cursory
  inspection," Sev said tonelessly. "ltdidn't pass mine. I
  transmitted a full report via the Net #  enough to stop
  payment on the space station and put Polo Construction
  under investigation. The lady was, ummm #  not
  auo>-"# # #       i
  right ear. Nothing more than the feint memory ol scars
  now, but the lines still tingled whenever he thought of
  Fassa. Being clawed by Fassa del Parma wasn't nearly as
  much fun as the things they'd done on the Xanadu, but it
  vras still a remarkably stimulating experience. Even now,
  Sev reckoned he would rather have a fight with Fassa
  than party with any six other girls ofhis acquaintance.
  Not that the opportunity was likely to come his way
  again....
  "You said your report should have shut down the
  space station," his companion prompted gently. "In-
  stead...?"
  "Damned if I know." Sev spread his hands. "When I got
  i i^__^jrt "-""!rvM-f wa crone. All mv fifes had been
  erased by some treaic computer HIUUUIA.UUU, ""." ___,
  had bothered to copy it to a datahedron first... or so they
  
  said. And I was up on charges of sexual harassment.
  Specifically, faUingtocompletea schedukdinspection, and
  .i_# # # ;# #  Vr>& Hf>l Parma v Polo with a bad inspection
  jportifshe didn't comply witnmy pci vci itw^v-suv#
  "She got there first," the other man murmured.
  "She's fast," Sev admitted grudgingly. "And smart.
  And ... well, it doesn't matter. Not now." FU never get
  back on the Xanadu now. And if I did, she'd nail me to a wall
  and flay me. Slowly.
  "It was her word against mine, no evidence on either
  side. Or so my supervisor told me. Asecond inspection, a
  second honest inspection, would have found the same
  flaws I detailed in my report. But they weren't going to
  send me, not after her complaints. And while they were
  waffling around looking for somebody else with the tech-
  nical background to do the inspection, Senator Cenevix
  pushed a special bill through his committee. He's in
  charge of the Ethics Committee," Sev explained. "This
  140
  Arme McCaffrey G? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  141
  bill made second inspections in the same class as trying a
  man twice for the same crime #  placed a construction
  company under the protection of the old double jeopar-
  dy rule. So we weren't allowed to go back and collect the
  evidence. Then the letters started coming #  about me
  gambling at the Pair-a-Dice #  and, well, you know the
  rest of it."
  "What I don't know, though, is what you expect me
  to do about it You've said you don't want me to get you
  reinstated at Bahati CreditLin #  and I think that's a
  good idea; if you went back to the Nyota ya Jaha sys-
  tem, I don't think your life would be worth much. And
  you must know Central doesn't interfere with other
  worlds' internal legislative affairs. If this young lady
  has bribed a senator, that's most deplorable, but we
  must wait for the people of Bahati to recognize the feet
  and remove him by due electoral process."
  "Not," said Sev grimly, "if I can get incontrovertible
  evidence of what she's been up to."
  "My dear boy, you'll never get close to a Polo Con-
  struction job again. From what you've told me, I'm
  quite sure she's too bright to let you anywhere near
  her operations."
  "True," Sev agreed."/ haven't a chance of catching her
  now. And there aren't many investigators #  male or
  female #  whom I'd guarantee to be immune to Fassa's,
  
  umm, methods of distraction." He paused for a moment
  of brief; intense, almost painful memory. "Maybe none,"
  he concluded, opening his eyes again. "But a brainship
  would be safe enough, don't you think?"
  "Tell me," said the gray-eyed man, "exactly what
  you have in mind." He hadn't moved by so much as
  the flicker of an eyelash, but Sev could sense the sud-
  denly heightened interest. He outlined his plan,
  accepted several corrections and emendations to the
  basic strategy, and all but held his breath with hope
  and excitement. It had been a long shot, coming to this
  man, and one he hadn't really expected to pay off.
  "I thinkitcanbedone," was the final verdict "I think it
  should be done. And I do believe I can arrange it."
  "Then it only remains to find a brainship capable of
  carrying out the plan."
  "Any Courier Service ship would be capable" There
  was a hint of reproof in the level, passionless voice.
  "But we can do better than that. You want integrity,
  brains, diplomatic skills, and the ability to pass as a
  droneship. There's one ship fairly recently commis-
  sioned #  about five years #  that should suit your
  purposes. I can guarantee her personal integrity, you
  see, and that's what is most important in this opera-
  tion. For the rest #  "a brief, ironic smile that puzzled
  Sev #  "well, let's just say I've been following this par-
  ticular ship's career with some interest."
  He stood, and Sev followed suit. As they passed the
  music platform, the synthocommer broke into a
  raucous burst of primitive melody# annoying, Jar too
  loud, but with a compelling rhythm behind the raw
  sounds. Sev rather liked it, but his companion dosed
  his eyes and shuddered faintly.
  "I apologize," he said as the door closed behind them,
  "for the music. It's not one of the cafe's attractions, in my
  opinion. Still, it is the other reason why I come here."
  Sev frowned in puzzlement.
  "You'd think a young man of High Families stock,
  with a good education and a family eager to help him
  get started in a worthwhile profession, could find some
  better career than playing synthocom in a dusty bar on
  the wrong side of town, wouldn't you?"
  It was dearly a rhetorical question. Sev nodded his
  head in agreement.
  "So," said the only honest man on Railas, "so would
  I. But evidently my son is of a different opinion."
  PARTNERSHIP
  143
  
  CHAPTER NINE
  Rahilly, Nancia's CS supervisor, ordered her to take it
  easy while she was getting used to the hyperchip im-
  plants. "Cruise back to Central and take your time about
  it," he ordered her. "You'll have several assignments to
  pick from when you get here, but there's nothing urgent
  and no reason for you to strain yourself with too many
  Singularity transitions while you're getting up to speed
  with your new capabilities." So Nancia chose a lengthy
  return route that required only one very small transition
  through Singularity, while she reveled in the enhanced
  clarity and speed of thought she enjoyed wherever the
  hyperchips had been installed.
  After the jump she was inclined to grumble at the.
  caution displayed by the Courier Service.
  "That was the best jump I've ever made," she told
  Caleb. "Did you feel how cleanly I ripped that dive into
  Central subspace?"
  "Ripped a dive?" Caleb inquired.
  Nancia realized that in all their time together, she'd
  never discussed how she felt about Singularity, or
  mentioned the Old Earth-style athletic metaphors that
  came to her when she was diving through decompos-
  ing three-space. "It's ... a term athletes use," she
  explained. "There were some newsbytes of the Earth
  Olympics once . . . anyway. I just meant it was a per-
  fecdy wonderful jump. Don't you think so?"
  "It was over faster than most," Caleb allowed. "Let's
  see what our next assignment is."
  They had a choice of three, but as soon as Nancia
  scanned the beam she knew there was only one she
  wanted to take. Abrainship was needed for an under-
  cover assignment investigating the methods of BLEEP
  Construction Company on planet in the star system
  CENSORED. The matter must be handled with ex-
  treme discretion; details would be available only to the
  brainship accepting the assignment.
  "Two weeks travel. One major Singularity point. I
  bet I know where it is," Nancia said.
  "That could describe any number of routes," Caleb
  pointed out.
  "Yes, but..." Nancia created a pattern of dancing
  lightstrings on her central panel. She would have been
  willing to bet her four years' accumulated pay and
  bonuses that at least one of the spoiled brats she'd
  carried out to the Nyota ya Jaha system was im-
  plementing the plans she'd discussed. Fassa del Parma
  
  y Polo. Polo Construction. Bahati. Hadn't there been
  something on the newsbytes about a delay in financing
  the new space station off Bahati, some question about
  the inspection? ... It had to be Fassa's company. And
  here, at last, was Nancia's chance to stop one of the un-
  ethical litue beasts. "Caleb, let's take this one. I like it"
  Caleb sniffed disapprovingly. "Well, I don't Under-
  cover # that's next door to espionage. Vega Ethical Code
  considers it the same thing, in feet. I didn't sign on to
  Courier Service to become a dirty, sneaking spy." He
  made the word sound obscene. "And look at this.'' He
  overrode Nancia's pattern of dancing lights to display a
  copy of the assignment description on the central screen.
  A laser pointer highlighted the wait-code inconspicuous-
  ly marked on the top left corner of the message header.
  "See that? Somebody specifically routed this assignment
  to us, even if it meant waiting three weeks for us to come
  back from Spica subspace by the longest route. With a lit-
  tle checking the Net we could probably find out who #
  no, that would be unethical," Caleb conceded with a
  small sigh. "But I don't like it, Nancia. Smells of High
  144
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  145
  Families meddling and pulling strings. I think we ought
  to take one of the other two assignments. Something
  that's presented in a straightforward manner, something
  we can do without compromising our integrity."
  But even Caleb couldn't work up much enthusiasm
  for their other two choices.
  The first, they were warned, might be a relatively
  long-term assignment. A ship was required to
  transport the Planetary Technical Aid inspection com-
  mittee on its five-yearly rounds, remaining at each
  planet while the committee inspected the situation and
  prepared a report.
  "I guess there are worse chores," he said. "And maybe
  it wouldn't take so long. If they do this trip every five
  years, the last inspection ship should have been coming
  back just before you were commissioned. Want to check
  the records and find out how long the round trip took?"
  Nancia began checking the Courier Service's open
  records while Caleb studied the third assignment
  choice. "Taking a bull to Cor Caroli subspace? This is a
  Courier Service assignment?"
  "Improving agriculture," Nancia suggested, and
  then, "but they can't be serious. Surely all we'd have to
  take out is a sperm sample."
  
  But it turned out, when they checked, that nobody
  had ever successfully taken a sperm sample from
  Thunderbolt III, the prize bull bufialo of die Central
  Worlds Zoo. And since die only surviving cow bufialo
  was on Cor Caroli VI, and since the zoo keeper diere
  claimed Shaddupa suffered from terrible Singularity
  stress and couldn't possibly handle spaceflight, the
  preservation of the species required that Thunderbolt
  III be transported to Cor Caroli VI.
  " I think even a PTA committee would be better com-
  pany than Thunderbolt Three," Caleb commented.
  "Nancia, isn't there any CS record of how long the pre-
  vious inspection tour lasted?"
  "I just found it," Nancia told him. She'd had to check
  through more years of records than she anticipated.
  "And?"
  "And they should be returning some time next year.
  They're still out in Deneb subspace. I've been reading
  the interim reports. It seems the PTAbylaws prohibit die
  inspection committee from leaving any planet until diey
  have all agreed to and signed the report for that planet
  'And?'
  This time Nancia did sigh. "Caleb, it's a committee."
  Three hours later Sevareid  Bryley-Sorensen
  d'Aquino came aboard to explain his plan in detail.
  "1 don't like the paint job," Nancia complained
  when the retrofitting was done.
  Caleb glared at her control panel. She wished he
  would turn around and look at her central column,
  now hidden behind fake bulkheads. "It was your idea
  to travel under false colors. Don't complain now."
  "It's not being disguised as an OG Shipping
  droneship I mind," Nancia said. "It's Darnell's choice
  of colors. Puce and mauve, ugh!"
  That wasn't quite true. She did mind the OG Ship-
  -----. # .-..-, Lm. ., j~wfAr\v
  feeling to Know mat suangwio ."v,^".# #  #  __
  see pan of Darnell Overton-Glaxelys rapidly growing
  empire. But she wasn't about to admit that to Caleb,
  not after arguing so hard to convince him that they
  should take the assignment.
  Sev Bryley's plan had been simplicity itself. Fassa del
  Parma seduced men when she needed to, but she was
  economical with herself as with all Polo Construction's
  resources: very few strangers were allowed dose enough
  to the construction company's operations to become any
  sort of a threat. Herworkers were fanatically loyal to her#
  
  "Let's not discuss that part," Caleb had interrupted
  Sev at this point. "It's not fit for Nancia to hear."
  146
  Anne McCaffrey #ff Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  147
  "I believe," Sev said carefully, "that their loyalty is pur-
  chased by stock options and high financial bonuses. Not
  to mention the feet that a number of them are rumored
  to be wanted by Central under other IDs; somebody
  seems to be doing a fine business in supplying Fassa with
  lake Net identities for her workers."
  Polyon. Nancia remembered the ease and dexterity
  with which he'd hacked into the Net accounts via her
  own computer. And that had been five years before. He
  was probably much, much better at it now. She could tell
  Sev Bryley where to look for the Net forger... or just
  drop him a hint. A hint might be enough for this deter-
  mined young man; look how quickly he'd dredged up
  the connection between Polo Construction and OG
  Shipping, the very basis for their hastily executed plan.
  Fassa's business required heavy transport facilities.
  For the most part Polo Construction ran their own
  ships, but when she had too many contracts Fassa
  rented droneships from OG Shipping. The drones
  were the safest way for her to transport illicitly ac-
  quired materials; there would be no witnesses except
  her own men, loading materials at one end, and the
  customer's men unloading at the other end of the run.
  Neither would be inclined to bear witness against a sys-
  tem that brought them so much profit
  Sev had worked out all this from a combination of
  studying partial Net records, interviewing anybody
  with even casual interest in Polo Construction, and
  putting the bits together with his own flashes of bril-
  liant insight. He lacked just one thing: the testimony of
  an unimpeachable eyewitness to confirm his deduc-
  tions. Somebody needed to see the substitution of
  materials going on... somebody whose integrity could
  not be questioned... somebody who could get close to
  operations without warning Fassa.
  The integrity of Courier Service brainships was beyond
  question. And Fassa, accustomed to the services of the
  suspect thatbehind painted ovuiuieausiiiju ciupvy r^o^u^
  docks there resided a human brain with the sensor
  capacity to hear and see all that went on aboard the ship ...
  and the intelligence to testify about it later.
  "It's a brilliant plan," Nancia declared when Sev first
  
  explained it.
  "1 don't like it," Caleb glowered. "Sending Nancia
  out alone #  without me to tell her how to do things?
  What if she panics?"
  "I won't panic." Nancia made her voice as calm and
  soothing as possible.
  "And I'll be with her," Sev pointed out. "1 won't risk
  coming out where they can see me, but I'll track every-
  thing via Nancia's sensor screens and send her cues if
  she needs help."
  Caleb folded his arms. "That," he said grimly, "is not
  a satisfactory solution. Why can't I go too? I'm her
  brawn. I should be wherever she is."
  "Minimizing the risks," Sev said briefly. Actually, his
  original plan had called for the brainship to go complete-
  ly unattended, just like a drone. But he was damned if he
  would miss out on the culmination of his careful plans.
  He trusted himself to have the self-control to stay out of
  sight until Fassa had completely incriminated herself; he
  didn't trust Caleb to display the same good sense. But ex-
  plaining all that would hardly mollify the brawn.
  Caleb appealed directly to Nancia. "You're too
  young," he said. "You're too innocent. You won't
  recognize their dirty tricks until too late. You #  "
  "Caleb" Sev Bryleys voice cracked like a gunshot The
  brawn stopped his rompulsive pacing around the narrow
  perimeter of the remodeled cabin. "You aren't helping
  Nanria," Sev said once he had Caleb's attention. "Don't
  make her nervous. Why don't you go to the spaceport bar
  and have a drink? I'll join you as soon as Nancia arid I have
  run through her final checklist ofinstrucdons."
  148
  Antw McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  149
  Caleb opened his mouth for an angry retort and
  then shut it again. Nantia wished she had a sensor that
  could report on the rapid ticking of his brain. He was
  thinking something behind that quiet, tight-Upped ex-
  terior # but what?
  "Consumption of intoxicating beverages is against
  the Vega Ethical Code," Caleb said at last, and Nancia
  relaxed connections that she hadn't realized were so
  tight. Whatever Caleb's thoughts, they weren't leading
  him into a fight with Sev that would very likely abort
  the mission at this late date. "I'll, I'll, I could have a
  
  vegosqueeze, though."
  "You do that, then," Sev agreed. "See you in a few
  minutes."
  He leaned against a fake bulkhead, arms folded.
  The temporary wall squeaked in protest and Sev
  straightened up quickly. "Crummy construction job
  they did on your interior," he remarked as Caleb's
  footsteps echoed down the central stairs.
  "Then it should m-match the rest of the work around
  P-Polo Construction." Where had that stammer come
  from? Nancia ordered her vocal circuits to relax. They
  only tightened up farther, making the next sentence
  come out in a squeak. "What final checklist?"
  "What? Hmm? Oh, there isn't one. I just wanted to
  get Caleb out of the way. He was making you nervous,
  wasn't he?"
  "I'm fine," Nancia said, this time more gruffly than
  she had intended.
  "You'll need to get better control over your vocal ]
  registers if you want to sound like a dronetalker," Sev '\
  warned. "Drones' synthesized voices don't wobble." '
  He sank to the cabin floor, long legs folding under him
  with no apparent strain, and gazed at the fake wafl con-
  cealing Nancia's titanium column. "Undercover work is
  always a strain,'' heconfided. "I used to do half an hour of
  yoga meditation before taking on a false identity."
  Nancia rapidly scanned her data banks. Apparently
  yoga was an old-style Earth exercise designed to induce
  tranquility and spiritual enlightenment.
  "Too bad you can't do the same thing," Sev
  commented.
  "A brainship can do anything you softpersons can,"
  Nancia snapped, "only better! Tell me about thisyoga."
  Sev grinned. "Well. Maybe you can. It just requires a
  little translation. Let's see, start with regular breathing...
  Not heavy," he said reprovingly as Nancia flushed dean
  air in and out through her ventilation ports, "just
  regular. Even. Smooth. That's the idea. Now dose
  your... umm, deactivate your visual sensors."
  Usually Nancia hated the blackness that accom-
  panied temporary loss of visual sensor connections.
  But this time it was voluntary. And Sev's voice con-
  tinued, low and soothing... and it was restful not to be
  scanning her remodeled interior.
  Caleb must be exiting her lower entry port now; if she
  opened an external sensor she'd be able to see him walk-
  
  '" >" ("      l_l^-_ ___J__ ".!_#  ~n.^cmn-r+ rvanli# il
  the exercise now; Sev's patient instructions were work-
  ing. She felt perceptibly less nervous as she followed his
  suggestions to feel the energy in her lower engines and
  let it flow through her propulsion units without actually
  releasing it A warm glowing sensation bathed her fins
  and exterior shell. Caleb's near-quarrel widi Sev, the ap-
  proaching confrontation off Bahati, even the exciting
  suspicion that Daddy had personally recommended her
  for this assignment... all these doubts and fears and
  hopes seemed very small and far away. Nancia con-
  templated herself, a tiny speck in the universe; as was the
  planet on which she sat, the sun that lit the sky around
  them. All little floating dots in an infinite pattern; dots
  winked out or came into existence, but the pattern
  swirled on and on forever....
  150
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball
  "Restore full sensor connections." Sev's calm order
  was like a gentle wake-up call. Nancia opened her sen-
  sors one by one, feeling anew the wonder of existence.
  The gritty spaceport floor beneath her landing gear,
  the smell of engine oil in the air outside, the sights and
  sounds of an ordinary working spaceport were all
  bright and trembling with new meaning.
  "I think you'll do now," Sev said with satisfaction.
  "I think so, too," Nancia agreed.
  Out of habit, Nancia lifted offas gently as if she were
  carrying a full committee of Central Worlds diplomats.
  Just because she was decked out in the revolting colors
  of OG Shipping didn't mean she had to slam on-and
  off-world like a mindless drone. Besides, rapid move-
  ment would destroy the trance of peace in which she
  was still floating. And, she thought guiltily, it would
  also bounce Sev around. If Caleb had been aboard, his
  comfort would have been her first thought; Sev
  deserved the same consideration.
  The work of outfitting her as an OG drone had been
  done at Razmak Base in Bellatrix subspace. Razmak
  possessed the very useful quality of being located just
  one hour's spaceflight away from a Singularity zone
  opening directly onto Vega subspace near Nyota ya
  Jaha; Nancia would not have to risk a long flight
  during which some authentic OG Shipping employee
  might notice and report her presence. She arced
  through the sky like a silver rainbow and made one
  sleek rolling dive into Singularity.
  The disadvantage of this particular transition, from a
  softperson's point of view, was that the transition
  through Singularity was subjectively longer than usual.
  Sev had considered this a reasonable tradeoff for the ad-
  vantages of Razmak Base; Nancia hoped he would feel
  the same way when they exited into Vega subspace.
  
  For herself, Nancia had been looking forward to the
  PARTNERSHIP
  151
  jump- She skimmed the rolling waves of collapsing sub-
  space, dove and surfaced and spiraled through the
  spaces until the decomposition funnel drew her whirling
  into its shrinking space. Systems of linear equations fol-
  lowed their orderly dance; space shrank and expanded
  about Nancia, colors sang to her and the inexorable
  regularity of the mathematical transformations unfolded
  with the beauty of a Bach fugue. She came out into Vega
  subspace with an exuberant shout of joy, the golden
  notes of a Purcell trumpet voluntary echoing through
  concealed passages and empty loading bays,
  "CUT THAT OUT!"
  The outraged shout, echoing where no human
  voice should have sounded, was like a spattering of
  high-frequency power along Nancia's synaptic
  connectors.
  She opened all sensor connections at once. The world
  was a faceted diamond of images: painted bulkheads,
  pseudosteel corridors, Sev still strapped to his bunk for
  the Singularity transition, the central cabin viewed from
  three angles at once: all framed by the external sensor
  views ofblackness spattered by the fire of distant suns.
  And Caleb, coming from one of the angles where
  temporary walls blocked Nancia's sensor view of her
  own interior, resplendent in his Courier Service full-
  dress uniform and still green in the face from the
  extended period in Singularity. Nancia dosed down all
  the other sensors and expanded the image of Caleb.
  Her brawn wasn't usually inclined to Service frip-
  peries; she had forgotten just how fine a man could
  look in the uncomfortable full-dress black and silver of
  the Courier Service, with the stiff collar forcing his jaw
  up and the silver-and-corycium braid winking in rain-
  bow lightfires every time he drew a deep breath.
  "You've developed a distaste for classical musk?" It
  was the only thing she could think of to say #  the only
  thing that was even remotely safe to say.
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  "You were half a tone flat on the high notes," Caleb
  informed her, using the same carefully remote voice
  that Nancia had employed. "And much too loud."
  
  "I suppose I should apologize for the unintended
  assault on your delicate sensors," Nancia said. "I had
  turned off the cabin speakers, and I wasn't aware that
  there was another softshell aboard."
  "Awhat?"
  Had Caleb really spent four and a half years as her
  brawn without ever once hearing the slang term that
  sheUpersons used for mobile humans? Nancia rapidly
  reviewed a selection of their communications. It was
  indeed possible. She had never realized how much of
  her communication she censored for Caleb's benefit,
  how careful she'd been to avoid offending against his
  standards of speech and action.
  Maybe she'd been too careful, if he thought he
  could get away with a stunt like this.
  "I think you can figure out what the term means,"
  Nancia told him. Then, as she absorbed the emotional
  impact of what Caleb's action meant, her hard-won
  control cracked like a faulty shell. "Caleb, you idiot,
  you could have been killedl What if I'd lifted off at full
  speed? Hiding in that corner, you'd have been
  bounced around like three dice in a cup!"
  "You never do bruising takeofls or landings," Caleb
  pointed out. "Too fond of showing off your land-on-
  an-eggshell, turn-on-a-dime navigational skills."
  Nancia was momentarily distracted. "What's a
  dime?"
  "I'm not sure," Caleb admitted. "It's an Old Earth
  phrase. I think it refers to some kind of small insect.
  Want to check your thesaurus? We could call up the
  Old English language files via the Net, too. Something
  to pass die time."
  "Stop trying to change the subject! Why didn't you
  tell me you were going to be aboard?"
  "Would you have let me come?"
  "Well. " . no," Nancia admitted. "I'd have had to tell
  Brytey. Your presence could compromise the mission,
  Caleb, don't you realize that? I'm supposed to be an
  unmanned droneship, remember?"
  "I know," Caleb said. "Don't worry. I won't com-
  promise the bloody mission. But I couldn't let you face
  this gang of diieves alone, Nancia. Don't you see that?"
  She wasn't alone; she had Sev, who knew all about
  investigative work and undercover missions. But she
  couldn't very well berate Caleb for wanting to protect
  her, could she?
  
  "Just keep out of sight," Nancia said finally. "Please,
  Caleb?" Oh-oh. Sen is using his cabin. He isn't going to Uke
  that. "Work it out with Sev. If one of you can hide, I
  guess two of you can. But# he's in charge for this mis-
  sion. I agreed to that, and you'll have to do the same."
  She took the set of his jaw and the brief upward jerk
  of his head for all the assent she was going to get
  "Oh. One other thing."
  "Yes?"
  "Why," Nancia inquired, "did you choose to wear
  full Service uniform for this little jaunt? Not that it isn't
  becoming, but I'd have thought something a little less
  conspicuous...."
  Caleb explained, patiently and at length, about tradi-
  tions of honor on Vega. There seemed to be some
  connection in his mind between wearing uniform and
  being taken for a spy. Or not taken for a spy. Nancia
  couldn't quite follow the argument, and when he went
  from Vega history to Old Earth stories about somebody
  called Major Andr#, she quit trying. Caleb was Caleb. His
  sense of honor wouldn't let him send his brainship
  without him into what he considered a dangerous and
  morally ambiguous situation. Apparently his sense of
  honor also wouldn't let him dress sensibly for the oc-
  casion. His sense of honor was a royal pain in the
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  synapses at times, but it was part of Caleb. Part of what
  she respected in him.
  While Caleb discussed the laws of war, the concept of
  a just war, the Truce of God, and the Geneva Conven-
  tions, Nantia found and activated her files of baroque
  brass music. With all speakers off, she ran the Purcell
  trumpet voluntary through her comm channels three
  times and was going on for a fourth before Caleb final-
  ly ran out of things to say.
  Fassa del Parma paced the loading dock of Bahati
  SpaceBase II, biting her lip. Ever since that near-
  debacle over SpaceBase I, she had been unwilling to
  delegate the ambiguous details of her business. That
  had been a near thing. Who'd have thought Sev
  Bryley would be so persistent? She'd taken him aboard
  the Xanadu and given him what he wanted, hadn't
  she? And when that hadn't proved sufficient to shut
  the man up #  Fassa stopped pacing and bit her lip. All
  she'd wanted from Darnell was to fake a minor gam-
  bling and embezzling record that would discredit Sev
  with his employers. There'd been no need to go as far
  
  as he had, even if Sev had come sniffing around the
  Pair-a-Dice to find out who was framing him. There
  were other ways to discourage people besides dump-
  ing their unconscious bodies in a recycling bin. She
  should have recognized DarnelTs sadistic tendencies,
  she should have remembered the whispers about
  mysterious disappearances from the Pair-a-Dice.
  Oblivious to the soft thump and the vibration
  through the base walls that announced the docking of
  DarnelTs OG Shipping drone, Fassa leaned her head
  against the wall for a moment. It gave slightly where
  her forehead pressed against it; that was what hap-
  pened when you replaced the contracted synthosteel
  with steel-painted plastiflim. Not that she cared. Not
  that anybody cared about anything. That was how the
  world was, and nobody bothered to stop any of the
  corruption. Why should she trouble herself about one
  man caught up in the general unfeeling way of the
  world? Nobody had ever cared about her> had they?
  Certainly not Sev Bryley. All he'd been after was a
  scandalous case that would build up his career. He'd
  taken what she offered and then attacked her again as
  if none of it meant anything. Well, it didn't.
  Did it?
  Fassa blinked rapidly and activated the series of locks
  that would automatically check on the seal between an
  attached ship and the spacebase itself, equalize pressures
  and open the spacebase for loading and unloading. She
  hadn't economized on that part of the work. She was
  dever enough to keep well above standards on any part
  of a contract that might jeopardize her personal safety.
  Clever enough, she thought as the spacebase doors irised
  open, to handle any problem that came up ... except,
  maybe, her own memories.
  Which were no problem!
  She was about to call the loading crew to shift the
  permasteel beams and other expensive materials onto
  Darnell's drone when a thought stopped her. You
  couldn't be too careful these days. She walked through
  the spaceport iris, through the extruded pressure
  chambers and into the empty loading bays of the OG
  Shipping droneship.
  Everything seemed to be as it should. The loading
  layout was rather strange, but Darnell had a habit of
  taking ships from the other companies he acquired
  and retrofitting them to suit his own needs. Certainly
  there was plenty of space. And everywhere she looked,
  on columns and walls and internal panels, Fassa saw
  the puce-and-mauve logo of OG Shipping stenciled.
  Rather sloppily stenciled, in some cases: lines wobbled
  and droplets of paint spattered the borders of the sten-
  cils. Looked like a rush job. Darnell didn't take the
  
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  trouble to oversee his people personally as she did
  hers, she thought, and the difference showed.
  "Droneship, are you prepared to accept cargo?" she
  queried the air.
  "Prepared. To accept. Cargo. Begin. Transfer." The
  answer came back from a speaker somewhere behind
  her, metallic and uninflected like all AI speech. Fassa
  remembered reading that AI linguists were perfectly
  capable of designing a more human-sounding speech
  system, especially with the help of the sophisticated
  metachips of Shemali design, but that marketing for-
  ces wouldn't let them release it. Drones and other AI
  devices weren't supposed to sound too human; it
  made people nervous.
  "Credit transfer, please," Fassa requested briskly.
  Darnell had stiffed her on one load of supplies, resell-
  ing it and pocketing the profit himself and blandly
  denying that any of his drones had been anywhere
  near SpaceBase I. And her own excessive caution, her
  own refusal to leave any records behind, had given her
  no way to fight him. Now she demanded payment in
  advance before a single roll of synthosteel made it onto
  one of the bastard's drones.
  "Your credit transfer will be. Approved. As soon as
  the. Loading is complete."
  Fassa grinned to herself. That speech had sounded
  considerably more like human inflections than most
  dronetalk did. She wouldn't put it past Darnell to have
  diverted some of the new metachips for frivolous ap-
  plications like improving dronetalk. He hadn't got it
  quite right, though. She could still tell she was talking
  to a machine.
  And she wasn't about to let a damned droneship
  cheat her out of the rights to this expensive shipment!
  "Credit transfer to be produced when loading is
  twenty-five percent complete," she said, "as by usual
  agreement. Or I stop loading there and you don't
  leave SpaceBase until the credit slip is approved."
  "Agreed." The last word from the droneship had a
  very human sound of resignation to it. Darnell had
  been fooling with the Shemali metachips in his ships;
  Fassa was now willing to bet on it
  
  She still felt a vague unease about the operation, but
  brushed it off. She was just brooding over the Sev
  Bryley fiasco, that was all. No reason to suppose any-
  thing like that would happen again #  not with the
  number of senators and bankers and inspectors Fassa
  now had personally dedicated to her welfare. Fassa ac-
  tivated the spacebase's comm link and called her
  hand-picked loading crew to complete the transfer.
  With drone-powered lifters and other automated
  devices, loading the construction materials was a quick
  job, calling for no more than three men, all of them
  bound to Fassa by personal loyalty #  and by the stock
  which they had vested in Polo Construction, Those stock
  options were an expense Fassa regretted, but it was
  necessary to ensure the absolute silence ofher assistants.
  Once again, while the men went about their business,
  she cursed the underlying chauvinism of contractors
  who insisted on building their lifters to the specifications
  of a six-foot, muscular male body. There was no reason
  the lifters couldn't be designed so that their controls were
  within the reach and strength of a smallish woman; the
  real muscle involved here came from the machines, not
  from the men. But Fassa was too small to operate the
  machines. When she calculated what this one feet was
  costing her in stocks and bonuses to keep her loading
  crews silent, she was tempted to start her own heavy
  machinery factory, with lifters and forks and cranes all
  built so that anybody could operate them at the touch of a
  button.
  Someday, she promised herself. When I have enough
  money. When I feel strong enough... and secure enough...
  when I am enough.
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  Somehow she felt that such a day would never arrive.
  But the twenty-five percent mark on transfer had ar-
  rived ... and it was time to claim her credit slip. Fassa
  motioned to die loading crew to stop. While they waited
  in position, lifters frozen in mid-arc, she walked back into
  the partially filled cargo bays of the droneship.
  "Credit transfer," she rapped out "Now!"
  "Regret that I do not have facilities to issue credit
  slips in loading bay area," the droneship replied. "Re-
  quest that del Parma unit transfer self to cabin area to
  receive payment."
  The inflections were almost human, but the
  awkward wording was pure dronespeak. Smiling as
  
  she waved her hand before the lift-door sensors, Fassa
  reflected that she would have to recommend some bet-
  ter linguists to Darnell.
  The lift-door irised open and Fassa, wrapped in her
  satisfied thoughts, took one step forward before she
  took in the glitter of silver and corycium braid against
  the deep-space black of a Courier Service uniform.
  Startled, she flung herself backwards, but the
  uniformed man grabbed her sleeve just before she was
  out of reach. Fassa fell back onto the loading dock
  floor, dragging her assailant with her. He landed
  heavily on her midsection, knocking the breath out of
  her. Where were the damned loading crew? Couldn't
  they see something had gone wrong?
  "Fassa del Parma #  I arrest you #  in the name of
  Central Worlds #  for embezzlement of SpaceBase #
  construction and supplies," the bastard wheezed. Both
  his hands were around her wrists now, pinning her to
  the floor. Fassa gasped for breath, brought up a knee
  into the brute's crotch, and wriggled free in one move-
  ment. Her brain had never stopped working. So there
  was a witness! Darnell had double-crossed her? All
  right; dispose of the witness, that was the new prob-
  lem, then she would deal with the rest
  "Kill that man!" she screamed at the dumbstruck
  idiots on her loading crew. She raced towards the
  safety of the spacebase.
  The droneship's loading doors slammed shut. How
  had the bastard managed to transmit the command?
  He should still be writhing in agony.
  He was. But as Fassa looked, he rose to his knees.
  "Under# arrest, he panted.
  "That's what you think," Fassa said with her
  sweetest smile. What did this fool think, that she was
  too weak and sentimental to kill a man face to face? He
  was still on his knees, and she was standing, and the
  needier in her left sleeve slid into the palm of her hand
  with the cool solid feel of revenge. Time slowed and
  the air shimmered about her. The Courier Service
  brawn was lunging forward now, but he'd never reach
  her in time. Fassa aimed the needier until she saw a
  face neatly framed in the viewfinder. Who was he? It
  didn't matter. He was a total stranger, he was Sev, he
  was Senator Cenevix, he was Paul del Parma. All turn-
  ing green around her, and her fingers almost too weak
  to squeeze the needier; what was happening? Fassa
  swayed on her feet, squeezed the needier handle and
  saw an arc of darts ripping wildly through the thick
  green clouds that surrounded them now. So dizzy ...
  her eyes wouldn't stay open to track the darts to their
  target... but she'd been too dose to miss. So close.,.
  Fassa collapsed in the cloud of sleepgas with which
  
  Nancia had, just too late, flooded the closed loading
  bays. So did Caleb, going down just in front of Fassa
  with his black and silver uniform all spoiled by blood.
  PARTNERSHIP
  161
  "  CHAPTER TEN
  "Don't gas the lift! Don't gas the lift!"
  The shouted commands, coming from a dosed-off
  area behind the fake walls, startled Nancia. She shifted
  views rapidly, cursing the quick and dirty remodeling
  job that had left large areas of her own interior cut off
  from her visual sensors.
  Sev Bryley, white-faced, appeared from behind one
  of the puce-and-mauve pseudoboard walls. "I'll get
  him out of the loading bay," he snapped without so
  much as a glance towards Nancia's sensor unit. "You
  can keep the sleepgas confined to that area?"
  "Yes, but# "
  "Don't have time for a mask." Bryley was in the lift
  now, and Nancia could watch him on die agonizingly
  slow passage down to the loading dock. His chest rose
  and fell rapidly as he took the deep, rapid breaths of
  clean air that would keep him going in the loading bay.
  Nancia kept the lift door on three-quarter pressure,
  just enough to let Bryley squeeze through the flexible
  opening that shut behind him. At the same time she
  flushed the loading bay with the ventilation system on
  high power, replacing as much sleepgas as she could
  with dean air.
  Sev's back and shoulders bulged awkwardly half
  through the lift door. Nancia released the flexible
  membrane just long enough to let him drag Caleb
  through into the lift. She kept the ventilation system
  on high for the long seconds of the ride back. By the
  time the lift was at cabin level, she could find no
  measurable trace of sleepgas in the air. But Sev had
  inhaled enough to make him slump against the wall,
  too woozy to carry himself and Caleb farther.
  "Antidote... ?"
  "In the corridor," Nancia told him. "In the c&rridorF
  She had no housekeeping servos within the lift itself.
  Sev had to stagger forward, out of the lift, fetching up
  against the freshly painted corridor wall with a thump.
  At least it was one of Nancia's true walls; only a few
  steps away from Sev was an opening from which the
  servos could dispense stimulants and medical aids. Sev
  took two gasping breaths of the dean air, reached into
  
  the shallow dish presented by the opening in the wall,
  grabbed a handful of ampules and crushed them
  under his nose.
  "More," he commanded.
  "You've already exceeded  the recommended
  dosage."
  "1 need a dear head now" Sev growled.
  Was there more blood on Caleb's uniform? Impossible
  to tell what he'd been hit with, or how bad the damage
  was. Nancia sent another set of stim ampules to the servo
  tray. Sev broke these more cautiously, one at a time. After
  the third deep breath of pungent stimulant, he dropped
  the rest back in the tray. "Medical supplies!"
  "What?"
  "I'll tell you when I know." He was on his knees,
  blocking Nancia's view as he peeled back the front of
  Caleb's spoiled uniform. "Something to stop bleed-
  ing ... there shouldn't be so much from a needier ...
  ahh. The ..." he used a Vega slang term that was not
  in any of Nancia's vocabulary hedra. "She loaded it
  with anticoagulant. And . . . other things, I think.
  Analyze?" He dropped a torn and bloody strip of doth
  into the servo tray. Nancia transferred it to the medical
  lab and replaced it with ampules of HyperClot which
  Sev injected directly into Caleb's veins.
  "Thats stopped the bleeding," he said finally, rising
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  to his feet. "But I'm not happy about his color. Does
  that look like normal sleepgas pallor to you?"
  "No." The one word was all Nancia could manage.
  "Me neither. Can you analyze what else was in the
  needier?"
  "No. Organics of some sort, but it's too complex for
  me." Concentrating on the technical problem helped
  to steady her voice. "I haven't the facilities here. I am
  contacting Murasaki Base for Net access to medtechs."
  But Murasaki Base could suggest only that she
  transport Caleb to the nearest planet-based clinic as
  quickly as possible. If Fassa's needier had been loaded
  with Ganglicide #
  
  "It wasn't Ganglicide," Nancia said quickly. "He'd be
  dead by now. Besides, no one would do such a thing."
  "You might be surprised," said the infuriatingly
  calm managing brain of Murasaki Base. "But I agree,
  probably not Ganglicide. There are, however, slower-
  acting nerve poisons which, untreated, can be just as
  fetal. From what you report of his convulsive reaction,
  I would suggest immediate medical treatment by
  someone experienced with nerve poisons and their
  antidotes."
  "Thanks very much," Nancia snapped. Sev had
  wrapped Caleb in all the blankets he could collect, but
  nothing stopped Caleb's incessant nervous shivering.
  And every once in a while his spine arched backward
  while he cried out in delirium. "We came from Raz-
  mak Base in Bellatrix subspace. You're not seriously
  suggesting I take a man in this condition through Sin-
  gularity, are you?"
  "There happens to be an excellent clinic on Bahati,1
  the Murasaki Base brain replied. "If you were calm
  enough to check the Net records I'm transmitting,
  CN, you'd see that the assistant director there has a
  strong background in nerve poison research. With
  your permission, I will alert the Summerlands clinic to
  receive an emergency patient for the direct care of Dr.
  Alpha bint Hezra-Fong."
  Time stopped. Snatches of conversation forgotten
  for nearly four years echoed in Nancia's memory. An
  gxbert in Gangliade therapy right there at the Summerlands
  dime.. "  testing Ganglicide on unwitting sitbjects ... so far
  vane on BUssto they didn't even know what was happening to
  them..-
  She had the full conversations recorded and safely
  stored away. She didn't need them. Her own human
  memory was mercilessly replaying words she'd tried to
  forget
  Did she dare put Caleb in Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's
  hands?
  Did she dare not take him to the clinic?
  There was really no choice.
  They were only a few minutes from Bahati, but the
  time seemed like hours to Nancia. She blessed the
  multiprocessing capability that allowed her to perform
  multiple tasks at once. While one bank of processors
  controlled the landing computations, Nancia assigned
  two more to maintaining the comm link with Murasaki
  
  and opening a new link with Bahati. She reached the
  director of Summerlands and explained her require-
  ments while simultaneously assimilating Murasaki
  Base's calm instructions.
  The combination of Fassa's arrest and Caleb's
  wounds presented a complex political problem. Nan-
  cia was almost grateful for the complications; they
  gave her something to think about during the endless
  minutes before touchdown.
  Courier Service policy strictly prohibited the
  transport of prisoners on a brainship with no brawn.
  Nancia thought it was a silly policy, born of fears that
  were decades out of date. Earlier, less cleverly designed
  brainships might have been vulnerable to passenger
  takeover, but she was well protected against any little
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  tricks that Fassa might come up with. The auxiliary
  synaptic circuits known as the Helva Modification
  would prevent any attempt to dose off her sensory
  contact with her own ship-body.
  All the same, Murasaki Base informed Nancia, the
  regulations existed for good reason and it was not up
  to a brainship to pick and choose which Service regs
  she would obey.
  "All right, all right." Had Caleb twitched again? Sum-
  merlands Clinic personnel were standing by to collect
  him as soon as they landed. Bahati Spaceport was issu-
  ing final landing instructions. "Ill hand Fassa del
  Parma over to Bahati authorities."
  "That you will not," the Murasaki Base brain in-
  formed her. "I've been in contact with CenDip while
  ' you were fussing over your brawn. The young lady is a
  political hot potato."
  "Awhat?"
  "Sorry. Old Earth slang. Never thought about the
  literal meaning ... let's see, I think a potato is some
  kind of tuber, but why anybody would try to ignite
  one... oh, well." Murasaki Base dismissed the intrigu-
  ing linguistic question for later consideration. "What it
  means is that nobody really wants to handle her trial.
  Well, you can see for yourself, can't you, Nancia? If
  you're going to try a High Families brat and send her
  to prison, you don't do it out on some nowhere world
  at the edge of the galaxy. You bring her back to Central
  and you are very, very careful that all procedures are
  
  followed. To the letter. CenDip has strict instructions
  that nothing is to go wrong with this case; there's a cer-
  tain highly placed authority who has taken a personal
  interest in stopping High Families corruption."
  "You can tell your highly placed authority to #  "
  Nancia transmitted a burst of muddy tones and discor-
  dant high-pitched sounds.
  "Can't,"  said  Murasaki  Base  rather smugly.
  "Softshells can't receive that kind of input Fortunately
  for them, I might add. Where did a nice brainship like
  you pick up that kind of language?"
  Nancia landed at Bahati Spacefield as gently as a
  feather floating in the breeze. She opened her upper-
  level cabin doors and waited for the spaceport workers
  to bring a floatube. They'd already been informed of
  the reason why she didn't want to open the lower
  doors; the equipment should have been ready and
  waiting# ah! There it was now.
  "Well, then, just inform your 'highly placed
  authority,' that a few little things have already gone
  wrong with this operation," Nancia told Murasaki
  Base. "And if I can't transport del Parma without a
  brawn, and I can't hand her over to Bahati, what am I
  supposed to do with her?"
  "Wait for your new brawn, of course," Murasaki
  Base informed her.
  "And just how long will thai take?" They were load-
  ing Caleb onto a stretcher now.
  "About half an hour, if he can pack as quickly as he
  should."
  "What?"
  In answer, Murasaki Base transmitted the CenDip in-
  struction bytes directly. "Senior Central Diplomatic
  service person ArmontiUado-y-Medoc, Forister, current-
  ly R&R at Summerlands Clinic, previous brawn status
  inactivated upon joining CenDip Central Date 2732,
  reactivated 2754 for single duty tour returning prisoner
  del Parma y Polo, Fassa, to Central Worlds jurisdiction,"
  Before taking Caleb away, the Summerlands med-
  techs were running tests and dosing him with
  all-purpose antidotes. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong had
  come personally to oversee the operation. Nantia's
  sensors caught her dark, sharp-featured face from
  several angles while she leaned over Caleb. Her ex-
  pression showed nothing but keen professional
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  interest: no hint of any evil plans to use Caleb as an un-
  witting experimental subject
  And no compassion.
  And now he was going into the floatube, beyond
  Nanria's sensor range.. .beyond her help. WhenwasSev?
  Nancia scanned the sensor banks until she located him in
  one of the passenger cabins that had been concealed be-
  hind her fake paneling. He was guarding a groggy Fassa
  who had just begun to comeoutofthesleepgas.
  "Sev, I need you to go with Caleb," Nancia
  announced.
  "CN-935, please acknowledge receipt of formal or-
  ders," Murasaki Base input on another channel.
  "Can't," Sev answered without looking round.
  "Have to guard the prisoner. Check regulations."
  Nancia knew he was right The same stupid CS regs
  that forbade her to transport Fassa without a brawn
  would also forbid her to take sole charge of a prisoner.
  "Are regulations more important than Caleb's life?"
  "Nancia, he's getting the best possible medical care.
  What are you worried about?"
  "CN-935 RESPOND!" Murasaki Base shouted.
  The floatube was a speck on the horizon. They weren't
  stopping at the spaceport; they were taking Caleb direct-
  ly to Summerlands. Where Alpha bint Hezra-Fong could
  do anything, anything at all, to him, and Nancia wouldn't
  even know until it was too late....
  "Instructions received and accepted," she trans-
  mitted to Murasaki Base in one short burst. "Now
  GETTHAT BRAWN ON BOARD!" Forister Armon-
  tillado-y-Medoc? Nancia remembered the short, quiet
  man she'd transported somewhere, years earlier, to
  solve some crisis. The one who'd spent all his time on
  board reading. No matter what his records said, he
  wasn't her idea of a brawn. But who cared? The sooner
  he was here, the sooner Sev could be released from
  guard duty to go watch over Caleb.
  Fassa was choking on the bottom of a lake. Weeds
  twined around her ankles, and the dear air was impos-
  sibly far away, miles above the green water that
  pressed her down and pushed at her mouth and ears
  and nose widi gentle, implacable persistence. She tried
  to kick free of the weeds; they clung tighter, reaching
  
  up past ankle and calf and knee with green slimy
  fingers that pressed dose against her thighs. When she
  looked down, the weeds shaped themselves into pale
  green faces with open mouths and dosed eyes. All the
  men who'd given her their hearts and their integrity
  and pieces of their souls were there on the bottom of
  the lake, and they wanted to keep her there with them.
  Her chest was bursting with the need to breathe. If she
  gave back their souls, would they let her go?
  She tried to strip off the charm bracelet on her left
  wrist, but the catch was stuck; tried to break the chain,
  but it was too strong. Green lake water seeped into her
  mouth with a bitter taste, and black spots danced
  before her eyes. She tugged the chain over her hand,
  scraping a knuckle raw, and flung it at the hungry
  ghosts. The sparkling charms of corydum and iridium
  floated lazily down among the muddy weeds, and
  Fassa was released to rise through rings of ever-
  lightening water until she broke the surface and
  breathed in the air that hurt like fire in her lungs.
  She was lying on a bunk in a spaceship cabin. Sev
  Bryley was seated cross-legged on the opposite bunk,
  watching her with unsmiling attention. And the burn-
  ing in her lungs was real, as was the throbbing pain in
  her head; sleepgas hangover. Now she remembered:
  surprise and violence and a fool who'd been where he
  had no business, and the gas flooding the cargo bay
  while she tried to hold her breath.
  It all added up to a failure so crushing she could not
  bear to think about it yet. And Sev, the man who'd
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  ArmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  never given her a piece of his soul to keep in her
  charm bracelet #  was he the one who'd engineered
  this disaster?
  "What are you doing here?" she croaked.
  "Making sure you came out of the sleepgas without
  complications," Sev said. His voice sounded thin and
  strained, as if he were trying to reach her from a great
  distance. "Some people have a convulsive reaction. It
  looked for a while like you were going to be one of
  them."
  And that had worried him? Perhaps he still cared for
  her a little, then. Perhaps her experiment of taking
  him aboard the Xanadu hadn't been a total failure,
  after all. Fassa stretched, experimentally, and saw the
  way his eyes followed her movements. Perhaps some-
  thing could yet be salvaged from this catastrophe.
  After all, they were alone on the droneship...
  "Not convulsions," she said, languorously wriggling
  
  her toes and proceeding upward, muscle by muscle, to
  make certain that every inch of her own amazing body.
  was back under her command again. Just bad dreams."
  "What sort of dreams?" Sev inquired.
  Fassa sat up, rather more quickly than she had in-
  tended, and fell back against the cabin wall. "The sort
  that make you afraid to die."
  "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all," Sev
  agreed with no change of tone, and Fassa felt a stab of
  regret. She could have liked this man who so quickly
  picked up on her thoughts, capping her unvoiced
  quotations. If only he weren't so obstinately on the
  wrong side! Ah, well, perhaps that could be changed.
  It would damn well have to be changed if she hoped to
  get out of this, she reminded herself
  "Speak for yourself," she told him. "My conscience
  isn't all that troubled; I've done nothing more than
  what everybody does, just trying to get ahead by my
  own efforts." Wrong tone, wrong tone. She didn't want
  PARTNERSHIP
  169
  to argue with Bryley; she wanted to seduce him. No.
  Reeded to seduce him. That was all.
  And she wasn't going to get anywhere in her present
  condition. Fassa pushed sweaty, matted dark hair away
  from her forehead with a genuine moan of pain.
  "God, I must look like hell," she said. "Would you
  mind very much getting out of here so I can clean up?"
  "Yes," said Sev, "I would. You're not to be left un-
  guarded until we return to Central. Orders from
  CenDip."
  Fassa moaned again. If CenDip was interesting itself
  in her case, she was worse off than she'd thought.
  Never mind. Central was a long way off. For the
  present she was alone on a droneship with this gor-
  geous hunk, and with any luck at all she'd make him
  change his allegiances before the official transports ar-
  rived to carry her to trial.
  After only a little pouting and posing she managed
  to persuade Sev that propping himself against the wall
  outside her cabin would be adequate to fulfill his
  guard duty. It was, Fassa thought with satisfaction, a
  beginning. Now he would feel that this cabin was her
  territory. When he came in again, it would be at her in-
  vitation ... and invitations could lead to all sorts of
  interesting things. She washed from head to foot, kick-
  ed her stained and crumpled clothes in a corner under
  the bunk, splashed a little extra cool water over her
  face, and wrapped a sheet around herself in lieu of
  fresh clothes. This would be a real test of her abilities.
  
  No cosmetics, hair combed straight with no styling, a
  scratchy Service-issue sheet instead of a clinging gown,
  and this bare cabin for a romantic setting!
  "fossa baby, you're so sweet, I just can't resist you," Paul
  del Parma used to moan when he came into her room
  and buried himself in her. And she'd been aji
  awkward, sullen Uttle girl then, with her black hair in
  thin tight braids. She'd worn the ugliest, plainest
  170
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret BaU
  clothes she could find, but that didn't put Faul off.
  For the first time Fassa deliberately summoned up
  the memories she'd tried for so long to bury, seeking
  the confidence she needed to go on. She really was ir-
  resistible to men. Faul del Parma had proved that,
  hadn't he? Even knowing it was wrong, even knowing
  she hated it, he'd still refused to let her alone.
  "It'severytkfngaboutyou, the way you walk, the way you smile
  up atme with those bigsooty lashes hatfcoveringyour eyes"
  Instead of giving her confidence, die memories
  made Fassa feel grimy. She must have invited him, not
  with words, but with something about the way she
  walked and looked at him. Somehow she'd made
  Daddy want her without even knowing it. She was a
  bad little girl and if Mama ever found out...
  Somewhere in the back of her mind, Mama screamed
  and fell endlessly through the glittering interior atrium
  of the hotel, tumbling in a cloud of gauzy draperies. And
  it was all her fault. Fassa cried out once and threw some-
  thing across the cabin with all her might, and Sev Bryley
  burst through the unlatched door.
  "What's the matter? What happened?"
  His arms went around her and Fassa rested against
  the fresh starched fabric of his shirt, feeling the strong
  beat of his heart beneath her face. For some reason she
  was crying; she couldn't stop crying for long minutes
  while Sev just held her. Not easing her backwards
  towards the bunk, not letting his hands slide artfully
  downward in a disguised caress. Just holding her.
  "Well," Fassa said finally, gulping down the last of
  her sobs, "I told you; 1 have bad dreams."
  "You seemed wide awake when I left you."
  Fassa drew a shaky deep breath. "I #  I'm afraid to
  be alone just now," she said. It happened to be true.
  "Could you stay with me?"
  "As it happens," Sev told her, "I was going to
  
  anyway." He released her, as if sensing that she was
  PARTNERSHIP
  171
  recovered for the moment, and moved a step back-
  ward. Fassa sighed again, with a little more
  forethought this time, and watched his eyes. Yes, he
  was aware of what those deep breaths were doing to
  the sliding knot that held the sheet together between
  her breasts, and he couldn't take his eyes off the
  creamy skin that contrasted with the stark white of the
  sheet. Good. She had a job to do, here; she had best
  think about that and nothing else, or she'd never win
  this man to her side before she was taken away for trial.
  "Oh, that's right," she said, allowing a tear to creep
  into the corner of one eye; not difficult, in her present
  shaky mood. "I forgot; you're my jailer, aren't you?"
  Sev looked uncomfortable at this assessment, as
  she'd wanted him to. "I wouldn't put it quite like that
  But someone does have to stay widi you until..."
  "Until the end," Fassa finished for him. "What sort
  of sentences are in favor these days? Will it be hard
  labor, do you think?" She tossed her head and gave
  him her Christian-facing-the-lions look, all nobility
  and virgin defiance. At the same time she moved
  slightly so that the sheet molded over one thigh, giving
  him (she hoped) visions of what sort of hard labor she
  might be good for.
  "You'll have a fair trial," Sev told her, "and a chance
  to speak in your own defense."
  "Will I?" Fassa challenged him. "Look at me. Don't
  you think there'll be some old judge who'd just love to
  see me mindwiped? They'll be thinking what a pity it is
  to waste such a beautiful body, keep the body, just wipe
  out the personality and start over."
  "Oh, I'm sure they won't do that," Sev said, but he
  sounded less righteously certain than he'd been a mo-
  ment before. Fassa mentally applauded her own
  cleverness. There wasn't much point in trying to con-
  vince Sev that she was innocent of the charges against
  her, not when he was Central's prime witness. Much
  172
  Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Bail
  better to switch the topic to the corruption at all levels
  of government. Sev knew something about that. Let
  him stew over the assertion that she couldn't possibly
  get a fair trial, let him think #  as he must be thinking
  now #  about the danger that she'd end up as the
  mindwiped toy of some corrupt official.
  
  "You know it happens," Fassa said in a low voice.
  "You know how much cheating there is in the govern-
  ment. Everybody wants something for himself. One of
  them will want me, and then #  " She blew a kiss into
  the air with a mocking smile. "Bye-bye, Fassa del
  Parma!" Time to let the sheet fell to the ground, giving
  Sev a good look about what some dirty old man would
  get if he didn't get there first. She moved towards him,
  inch by inch, watching the color rise in his sharp fea-
  tures, watching the blue eyes darken with desire. "You
  could at least say good-bye properly, Sev, my love," she
  whispered.
  She paused, eyes closed, awaiting the warmth of his
  arms about her and his mouth on hers.
  "I think not," said Sev Bryley, and while Fassa's eyes
  flew open in shocked disbelief he took the two steps
  that brought him to the cabin door.
  Once outside the cabin, Sev reactivated the
  guardlock mechanism that would prevent Fassa from
  leaving. He leaned against the wall and wiped his
  forehead with the back of one hand. It wasn't much
  help; he still felt as hot as if he'd just done a ten-mile
  run in the Capellan jungle. He needed a cold shower.
  And that ten-mile run might not be a bad idea, either,
  except he couldn't leave Nancia alone to guard Fassa.
  He could get some extra help, though #  and some
  insurance against temptation. "Nancia?" he said in a
  low voice, looking upward at the angle between ceiling
  and roof where her auditory sensors were installed.
  "Nancia, I think you'd better activate full sensors
  PARTNERSHIP
  173
  within Fassa's cabin. I know it's a breach of the
  prisoner's privacy, but this is a very dangerous woman.
  And, Nancia? You'd better keep the sensors on at all
  times. Even when I'm with Ms. del Parma."
  Sev thought that over and decided he hadn't
  worded that last request strongly enough. "Especially
  when I'm with Fassa," he rephrased.
  "I'd already done that, Sev," Nancia responded
  from the wall speaker. "Don't worry. Everything has
  been observed and recorded."
  "Excellent," said Sev between his teeth. "I'm sure that
  little scene will be vasdy amusing to somebody who's not
  troubled by hormonal urges. Now, if you don't mind,just
  keep watching Fassa and let me know if she tries any-
  thing. I'll be in the ship's exercise room."
  "What for?"
  
  "Taking care of my hormones," Sev said. He
  stamped off to improve his weight-lifting record.
  "FN-935, Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc requests
  permission to come aboard."
  "Permission granted."
  Even to her own ears, Nancia sounded brusque. After
  a grudging nanosecond's thought she added formally,
  "Welcome aboard, Forister Armontilladoy-Medoc."
  The short, spare man whom she'd last seen heading
  into the tangled planetary conflicts of the Tran Phon
  guerrillas on Charon dropped three heavy pieces ofbag-
  gage onto the lift with a grunt of relief. Pm getting an old
  man who can't even carry his own luggage without getting out of
  breath. But as if to contradict die unspoken criticism,
  Forister waved the lift upwards with his luggage and took
  the circular stairs. Nancia watched his progress from sen-
  sor to sensor. He moved with quick, neat steps,
  economical of his motions. You couldn't say he was
  bounding up the stairs, but he did get to the top more
  quickly dian she'd expected; and there wasn't a gray hair
  174
  Anne McCafjrey 6? Margaret Bail
  out of place or a drop of sweat on his forehead when he
  entered the central cabin.
  "Greetings, Nancia," Forister said. Unlike Caleb, he
  looked directly at the titanium bulkhead that housed
  Nancia's human body and brain. His direct gaze was
  rather disconcerting to Nancia, who'd been used to Caleb
  wandering round the ship and addressing her without
  turning his head, counting on her efficient sensor system
  to pick up his words wherever he might be. She took a mo-
  ment to look over this strange elderly brawn and prepare
  her response. Light eyes in a tanned fece, with a network
  of crinkles around the eyes as if he were accustomed to
  looking deeply at whatever he saw; hints of red and ginger
  in the graying hair; a light, erect, relaxed stance, as if he
  were prepared to move in any direction at a moment's
  notice. He may do. But he's not Caleb!
  "You seem remarkably fit for someone who's just been
  recuperating at Summerlands," Nancia said at last
  Forister grimaced. "Oh, I'm fit enough, if that's
  what's been worrying you, FN. The stay at Summer-
  lands was not for any medical reasons."
  "Then what? The orders I received said you were
  there for R&R."
  "Um. Yes. Well, they would, wouldn't they?" Forister
  said, maddeningly, while Nancia wondered if the man
  
  ever gave a straight answer to anything. Maybe that was
  trained out of you in the diplomatic service.
  At last he vouchsafed one more sentence that could
  be considered an explanation. "My last posting for
  CenDip was... shall we say, stressful, and things didn't
  work out as well as I'd hoped."
  "Charon?" Nancia asked.
  The brawn blinked once, surprised. "Why, no. Why
  #  oh, I remember. I had the honor of being
  transported to Charon by you, didn't I? Some years
  ago #  you were the CN-935 then, as I recall. My con-
  dolences on the loss of your partner."
  PARTNERSHIP
  175
  "It's only temporary," Nancia said. "Which reminds
  me. I wouldn't wish to hurry your unpacking, but as
  soon as you're ready, I'd like you to take over guarding
  the prisoner. Sev Bryley is needed at Summerlands to
  look after my brawn."
  "As you wish." Forister did not quite dick his heels
  together as he executed a perfect bow in the direction
  of the titanium column. He wheeled, collected his bags
  from the open lift and marched down the hall to the
  brawn's cabin #  Caleb's cabin #  leaving Nancia with
  the feeling that she had been unpleasantly brusque.
  She opened a speaker in the cabin.
  "If you don't object, we could continue our conver-
  sation while you unpack."
  "No objection," said Forister. He was slighdy out of
  breath now, after lifting the heavy bags to his bunk.
  What on Earth did the man travel with? A fortune in
  Corycium bars buried beneath his underwear? The
  first things he drew out of the bags were commonplace
  enough: CenDip formal dress and spare shirts,
  toiletries and a handful of laser-printed datahedra.
  He might not object, but he wasn't being very help-
  ful either. Well, she hadn't been as friendly as she
  might; it was up to her to make the first move. "What
  was your last posting, then, if it wasn't Charon? And
  why did you pick Summerlands?"
  "Summerlands has a very good reputation as a rest
  facility," Forister said. "I expect you're unduly worried
  about your former brawn; the medical staff there is
  top-quality."
  "It's not their technical skills I'm worried about,"
  Nancia told him. There was movement in Fassa's
  cabin. She had been keeping the sensors there down
  to monitor level; now she activated full pick-up and
  
  saw that Sev had gone in to talk to Fassa. The girl was
  fully dressed this time, and they were sitting on op-
  posite bunks; she didn't think Sev would encounter
  176
  Arme McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  any real problem. All the same, she captured their
  quiet conversation and listened to it with one ear while
  she watched Forister and wished he would hurry up
  with his unpacking. Now he had got to the hottom
  layer of the first bag, and she saw what had weighed
  his luggage down so: nothing but a lot of antiques.
  One antique book after another, kilos and kilos of
  them, and doubtless no more information in the lot of
  them than could be stored in a few facets of a
  datahedron! There was no accounting for tastes.
  "Isn't Summerlands rather remote for a man of
  your importance?" Nancia probed. She knew she was
  being pushy, but she didn't care. If Forister was in with
  Alpha and her criminal friends, she didn't dare set him
  to guard Fassa #  nor did she dare send him back to
  the clinic to watch over Caleb. She would have to get
  on the datastream to Murasaki Base at once.
  "I've family in the Nyota system," Forister told her.
  "I was hoping to make a brief visit after I left Summer-
  lands. And I'd a friend at the clinic."
  "Alpha bint Hezra-Fong," Nancia surmised. She
  might as well face all the bad news at once.
  "Good God, no!" Forister seemed genuinely
  startled. "If that's what you think of the company I
  keep, no wonder you've been so hostile. Somebody
  else entirely, I assure you."
  "Who?"
  "I'm not at liberty to say just now. If all goes well #  "
  Forister broke off and rather fussily adjusted the port-
  able folding shelf where he had stowed his books,
  lightening the spring-bindings that would keep them
  in place in case of any rapid ship's movements. "But
  whether it comes off or not," he said, more slowly, "I
  won't be here to help. And I won't have any free time
  afterwards to visit in this system. I'll be on my way back
  to Central with you, and once I land there, God knows
  what six urgent assignments will be waiting." He
  PARTNERSHIP
  177
  looked up, direcdy into Nantia's primary cabin sensor.
  "So you see, dear lady, this assignment is no more to
  my liking than it is to yours. I hope we can sink our dif-
  ferences for the duration #  "
  
  "Hush" The conversation in Fassa's cabin had sud-
  denly become very interesting; Nancia didn't want to
  have to wait and replay it, she wanted to know what
  was going on right now.
  It appeared that Fassa was trying to plea bargain with
  information on some of the other young people who'd
  been involved in that vicious wager. She began by hinting
  to Sev that she might be able to inform on a whole gang of
  criminals in the Nyota system if doing so would get her a
  reduced sentence. Sev, quite properly, told her that he
  wasn't authorized to make such promises.
  MOh, what the hell," Fassa said wearily at last." If I'm
  going down, I won't go alone. You might as well know
  everything. At least then you'll see that I'm not the
  worst of the bunch by a long shot."
  She began telling Sev all she knew about Darnell
  Overton-Glaxely and the ways in which he'd worked his
  illegal Net access, first to bring in shipping bids that were
  always just a shade lower than those of his competitors,
  then to destroy the credit and acquire the stock of any
  small businesses he felt like adding to his empire.
  "AU very interesting," Sev told her. "But if Overton-
  Glaxely is as clever as you say at accessing private Net
  datastreams, he'll have been clever enough to leave no
  traces of his taps."
  "Oh, he's not clever at all," Fassa said. "He was
  taught how to tap into the datastream #  "
  "By?" Sev prompted gentiy.
  Fassa shook her head. She had gone rather white
  about the lips. "It doesn't matter. Nobody you're likely
  to catch up with. Not me, if that's what you're think-
  ing; I haven't got that kind of brains."
  "I never suspected you had," Sev said, rather too
  178
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaS
  solemnly. Fassa gave him a suspicious glance. His lips
  were twitching. She aimed a mock blow at him.
  "That's right, insult my intelligence!"
  Sev caught her wrist and held it for a long moment
  while Nancia wondered if it was time to interrupt. At
  last his fingers relaxed. Fassa subsided onto her bunk.
  There was a white ring about her wrist where Sev had
  held her; she rubbed it absently while she went on
  talking. "Never mind about the Net, then. There's
  other ways to prove it. One of the men Darnell ruined
  found out a little too much about his methods, and
  
  Darnell sent him to Summerlands."
  At that point Nancia decided that Forister had better
  hear this too. Whatever she thought of the man as a re-
  placement for her Caleb, he was a trusted CenDip
  senior civil servant. He had friends in Summerlands.
  And he seemed to share her opinion of Dr. bint Hezra-
  Fong. She piped the input from Fassa's cabin through
  her speakers in Forister's cabin. After a moment's
  stunned silence, Forister sat down amid the piles of an-
  tiques on his bunk and listened carefully.
  "Darnell thought Alpha would kill the man for him.
  She'd had a bunch of accidents with the tests she ran
  on her charity patients; she was getting quite good at
  faking death certificates with innocent-seeming causes
  of death. She used to boast about it at our annual
  meetings. One more wouldn't have been any problem
  for her. But she didn't kill him. She keeps him so full of
  Seductron that he doesn't know who he is, and when-
  ever she wants Darnell to do her a favor, she threatens
  to cut the man's Seductron dosage."
  "His name?' Sev demanded.
  Fassa looked down. "I'd like some assurances that
  you'll see my sentence reduced."
  "You know I can't do that," Sev told her
  She twisted her fingers together. "You could lose the
  records of this last trip, though. Without your tes-
  PARTNERSHIP
  179
  timony and the recordings, there woulan't be any
  hard evidence against me." She looked up, eyes bril-
  liant with unshed tears. "Please, Sev? I thought you
  cared for me a little."
  "You were wrong," said Sev in a voice as dead and
  even as any droneship's artificially generated speech.
  "Then what do I have? Why should I give you a
  damned thing?" Fassa pounded on the yielding sur-
  face of the bunk in frustration. Her fists sank into the
  plasmaform and left momentary dents that smoothed
  out as soon as she lifted her hands. "Oh, all right. Go
  ahead and see me mindwiped, or sent to prison until
  I'm too old to care," she said wearily. "Why should the
  others get away with it when my life is ruined? The
  man's name is Valden Alien Hopkirk, and he used to
  own Hopkirk Glimware right here on Bahati. Is that
  enough for you, or would you like his Central Citizen
  Code as well?"
  "Any little thing you can tell us would be much ap-
  preciated," said Sev carefully.
  
  "Well, I don't happen to know his CCC, so you're
  out of luck!" Fassa snapped. "Wait #  wait #  there's
  more."
  "There is?"
  "Find Hopkirk, and you'll have evidence on Alpha
  and Darnell both," Fassa said rapidly. "But there's
  another one you ought to get. His name's Blaize...."
  In the brawn's cabin, Forister lowered his head to
  rest on his clenched hands. "Blaize Armontillado-
  Perez y Medoc," he whispered. "No. No."
  Fve family m the Nyota system... I was going to visit after
  fleft Sunrnierhnds ...
  Nancia cut off the audio transmission to Forister's
  cabin and shut down her own sensors there. She lis-
  tened alone while Fassa babbled out the details of
  Blaize's felonious career on Angalia; the diverting of
  PTA shipments, the slave labor and torture of the na-
  180
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt
  rive population he was supposed to be guarding.
  Some day Forister would have to know and face
  those details, but not yet. She would leave him alone
  until he requested the recordings of this conversation,
  and then she would let him listen in privacy.
  And so Nancia was the only witness when Fassa's
  confessional came to an abrupt ending. After she
  finished the tale of Blaize's misdeeds, Sev probed her.
  "I've looked up the records of that first voyage," he
  said, almost casually. "There were five of you in it
  together, weren't there? You, Dr. bint Hezra-Fong,
  Overton-Glaxely, Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, and
  one other. Polyon de Gras-Waldheim, newly commis-
  sioned from the Academy. What was his part in the
  wager?"
  Fassa clamped her lips shut and slowly shook her
  head. "I can't tell you any more," she whispered.
  "Only #  don't let them send me to Shemali. Kill me
  first. I know you never cared for me, but as one
  human being to another# kill me first Please."
  "You're wrong in thinking I never cared for you,"
  Sev said after a long silence.
  "You said so yourself."
  "You asked if I liked you a little," he corrected her.
  "And I don't. You're vain and self-centered and you
  
  may have killed a good man and you've yet to show
  any interest at all in Caleb's fete. 1 don't much like you
  at all."
  "Yes, I know."
  "Unfortunately, he went on with no change of ex-
  pression, "likeitornot# and believe me, I'm not at all
  happy about the situation #  I do seem to love you.
  Not," he said almost gently, "that it'll do either of us
  much good, under the circumstances. But I did think
  you ought to know."
  CHAPTER ELEVEN
  Caleb recovered with amazing speed. Two hours after
  his arrival at the clinic, forty minutes after Alpha bint
  Hezra-Fong had analyzed the poisons in his blood and
  slapped on stimpatches of the appropriate antidotes, the
  nervous convulsions had stopped. Nancia knew exactly
  when that happened, because by then she had thought
  to send Sev Bryley to Summerlands with a contact button
  discreetly replacing the top stud in his dress tunic and a
  second contact button to clip onto Caleb's hospital gown.
  While Forister remained on board as a nominal guard
  for Fassa, Sev lounged about the public rooms at Sum-
  merlands trying to look like a worried friend-or-relative
  and chatting up the recuperating VIPs. Nancia watched
  the clinic from two angles: the convulsive shuddering
  view of a cracked white ceiling, emanating from Caleb's
  contact button, and the repetitive views of artificial potted
  palms and doddering old celebrities to whom Sev talked.
  On the whole, the potted palms were more valuable than
  the celebrities; at least they didn't waste Sev's time with
  their reminiscences of events a century past
  "None of these people know anything about
  Hopkirk," she whispered through Sev's contact button.
  "I've noticed," he replied as the senile director
  emeritus of the Bahati Musical College, aged one
  hundred seventy-five Standard Central Years, tottered
  away for his noon meds.
  "Can't you do something more productive?"
  "Give me time. We don't want to be obvious. And
  stop hissing at me. They'll think I'm talking to myself
  and hearing voices."
  182
  Anne McCaffrvy & Margaret Ball
  "From what I've seen of these befuddled gentry,
  that'll make you fit right in."
  "Only," said Sev grimly, "if they don't hear the voices
  too."
  
  Nantia hated to leave him with the last word in an
  argument, but she was distracted at that moment.
  Something had happened #  or stopped happening.
  Caleb's sensor button was no longer transmitting a jig-
  gling view of the cracks on the ceiling; the image was
  still and perfectly dear.
  Not quite still. A regular, gende motion assured her
  that he still breathed.
  A moment later, two aides exchanged a flurry of
  rapid, low-voiced but mainly cheerful comments over
  Caleb's bed. Nancia gathered that the news was good;
  his (three-syllable Greek root) was up, his (four-syl-
  lable Latin derivation) was down, they were putting
  him on a regular dosage of (two-word Denebian
  form), and as soon as he was conscious they were to
  start him on a physical therapy routine.
  She complained to Forister about the jargon.
  "Now you know how the rest of the world feels
  about brains and brawns," he said soothingly. "You
  know, there are people who think decomposition
  theory is just a little hard to follow. They accuse us of
  mystifying the mathematics on purpose."
  "Huh. There's nothing mystical about mathe-
  matics," Nancia grumbled. "This medical stuff is
  something else again."
  "Why don't you translate the terms and find out
  what they mean?"
  "I didn't have a classical education," Nancia told
  him. "I'm going to buy one when we get back to
  civilization, though. I want full datahedra of Latin,
  Greek, and medical terminology. With these new hy-
  perchips I should be able to access the terms almost as
  fast as a native speaker."
  PARTNERSHIP
  183
  Somebody shouted just out of visual range of
  Caleb's sensor button. The view of the hospital ceiling
  swayed, blurred, and was replaced by glass windows,
  green fields, and a white-clothed arm coining from the
  left. "Here," said a calm, competent voice just before
  Caleb bent over the permalloy bowl before him and
  gave up the contents of his last meal.
  The contact button gave Nancia a very clear, sharply
  detailed close-up view of the results.
  After that, though, he recovered his strength with
  amazing speed. Throughout the day Nancia followed
  his sessions with the physical therapist. At the same
  rime she tracked Sev while he prowled the hallways of
  
  Summerlands Clinic and listened for any scrap of in-
  formation about a patient named Valden Alien
  Hopkirk.
  By mid-afternoon a new aide was able to assure
  Caleb that there would be no permanent nerve
  damage as a result of the attack.
  "You're weak, though, and we'll need to retrain some
  of the nerve pathways; the stuff your space pirate used
  was a neural scrambler. Damage is reversible," the aide
  said briskly, "but I'd advise a prolonged course of
  therapy. You certainly won't be cleared to act as a brawn
  for some time. Has your ship been notified?"
  "She knows everything that goes on here," said
  Caleb, placing one finger briefly on the edge of the
  contact button.
  Nancia got a good look at the aide's face. The man
  looked thoughtful, perhaps worried. "I... see. And,
  um, I suppose the button has a dead-man switch?
  Some alarm if it's inactivated or removed?"
  "Absolutely," Nancia responded through the contact
  button before Caleb could tell the truth. Some such ar-
  rangement would be a great safeguard for Caleb, and
  she wished Central had thought of it. But failing that,
  the illusion of the arrangement might give him some
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  protection. She went on through the tiny speaker, ig-
  noring Caleb's attempts to interrupt her. "Please
  notify all staff concerned of the arrangement. I would
  be sorry to have to sound a general alarm just because
  some ignorant staff member accidentally interfered
  with my monitoring system."
  "That would indeed be ... unfortunate," said the
  aide thoughtfully.
  After he left, Caleb said quietly into the contact but-
  ton, "That was a lie, Nancia."
  "Was it?" Nancia parried. "Do you think you know all
  my capabilities? Who's the 'brain' of this partnership?"
  "I see!"
  Nancia rather hoped he didn't. At least she'd
  avoided lying direcdy to Caleb. That was some-
  thing ... but not enough.
  She had never before minded her inability to move
  about freely on planetary surfaces. Psych Department's
  testing before she entered brainship training showed
  that she valued the ability to fly between the stars for
  more than the limited mobility of planet-bound crea-
  tures. "I could have told them that," Nancia responded
  
  when the test results were reported to her. "Who wants to
  roll about on surface when they could have all of deep
  space to play in? If I want anything planetside, they can
  bring it to me at the spaceport"
  But they couldn't bring her Caleb. And she couldn't
  go to the Summer-lands clinic to watch over him.
  Nancia could see and hear everything that passed
  within range of those buttons. She could even send in-
  structions to the wearers. But she could not art. She
  was reduced to fretting over the slow progress they
  were making and worrying about the medications
  being inserted into Caleb's blood stream.
  "Haven't you found anything yet?" she demanded
  of Forister. Since Fassa had spent the day crying quiet-
  ly in her cabin, Forister interpreted his "guard" duties
  PARTNERSHIP
  185
  rather liberally. He was on board and available in case
  of any escape attempt, but he told Nancia that he saw
  no reason to waste his time sitting on a hard bench out-
  side Fassa's cabin door. Instead, he sat before a
  touchscreen in the central cabin, inserting delicate
  computer linkages into Alpha's clinic records and
  scanning for some hint of where she'd put the witness
  they needed.
  Forister straightened and sighed. "I have found," he
  told her, "four hundred gigamegs of patient charts,
  containing detailed records of all their medications,
  treatments, and data readouts."
  "Well, then, why don't you just look up Hopkirk
  and find out what she's done with him?" Nancia
  demanded.
  In response, Forister tapped one finger on the
  touchscreen and slapped his palm over Nancia's
  analog input. The data he had retrieved was shunted
  directly into Nancia's conscious memory stores. It felt
  like having the contents of a medical library injected
  directly into her skull. Nancia winced, shut down her
  instinctive read-responses, and opened a minuscule
  slit of awareness onto a tiny portion of the data.
  It was an incomprehensible jumble of medical ter-
  minology, packed without regard for paragraphing or
  spacing, with peculiar symbolic codes punctuating the
  strings ofjargon.
  She opened another slit and "saw" the same tightly-
  packed gibberish.
  "It's not indexed by patient name," Forister ex-
  plained. "Names are encoded #  for privacy reasons, I
  suppose. If the data is indexed by anything, it might be
  
  on type of treatment. Or it might be based on a hashed
  list of meds. I really can't find any organizing principle
  yet. Also," he added, unnecessarily, "it's compressed."
  "We know he's being kept quiet by controlled over-
  doses of Seductron," Nancia said. "Why not... oh." As
  186
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  187
  she spoke, she had been scanning the datastream.
  There was no mention of Seductron. "Illicit drug," she
  groaned. "Officially, there's no such treatment. She'll
  have encoded it as something else."
  "I should have taken Latin," Forister nodded.
  "Capellan seemed so much more useful for a
  diplomat... Ah, well."
  "Can you keep hacking into the records?" Nanria
  asked. '"There might be a due somewhere else."
  Forister looked mildly offended. "Please, dear lady.
  'Hacking' is a criminal offense."
  "But isn't that what you're doing?"
  "I may be temporarily on brawn service," Forister
  said, "but I am a permanent member of the Central
  Diplomatic Service. Code G, if that means anything to
  you. As such, I have diplomatic immunity. Hacking is
  illegal; whatever I do is not illegal; hence, it's not hack-
  ing." He smiled benignly and traced a spiraling path
  inward from the boundaries of the touchscreen,
  wiping the previous search and opening a new way
  into the labyrinth of the Summerlands Clinic records.
  "/ should have taken logic," Nancia muttered. "I
  think there's something wrong with your syllogism.
  Code G. That means you're a spy?" Caleb would never
  forgive her for this. Consorting with spies, breaking
  into private records... The feet that she was working
  as much to save him as to track down criminals
  wouldn't palliate her offense in his eyes.
  "Mmm. You may call me X-39 if you like." Hum-
  ming to himself, Forister smoothed out the path he
  had begun and traced a new, more complex pattern
  on the touchscreen.
  "Isn't that rather pointless," Nancia inquired,
  "seeing that I already know your name?"
  "Hmm? Ah, yes #  there we go!" Forister chuckled
  with satisfaction as he opened his access to a new seg-
  ment of Summerlands Clinic's computer system.
  
  "Supremely pointless, like most espionage. Most
  diplomacy, too, come to think of it. No, we don't use
  code names. But I've always thought it would be
  rather fiin to be known as X-39."
  "Have you indeed, fungus-brain?" Alpha bint
  Hezra-Fong muttered from the security of her inner
  office. "How'd you like to be known as Seductron Test
  Failure 106 Mark 7? If I'd known who you were #  "
  She bit off the empty threats. She knew now. And if
  Forister made the mistake of coming back to Summer-
  lands for any reason, she'd have her revenge.
  Neither Forister nor Nancia had thought to check
  Nancia's decks for transmitters #  and even if they
  had, they might not have recognized Alpha's personal
  spyder, a sliver-thin enhanced metachip device that
  clung to any permalloy wall and, chameleon-like,
  mimicked the colors of its surroundings. In all the fuss
  attendant on getting the wounded brawn into the
  floatube, Alpha had found it easy enough to leave one
  of the spyders attached to Nancia's central corridor.
  From there it picked up any conversation in the
  cabins, although the voices were distorted by distance
  and interference.
  At the time, Alpha hadn't been exactly sure what in-
  stinct prompted her to plant the spyder; she had just
  felt that the amount of Net communications traffic
  concerning this particular brainship and brawn sug-
  gested they were more important than they looked.
  Infuriatingly, the datastreams coming from Central
  over the Net were in a code Alpha had not yet suc-
  ceeded in breaking, so the spyder was her only source
  of information.
  So #ar, though, it had proved a remarkably effective
  tool. Alpha preened herself on her cleverness in drop-
  ping one of the expensive spyders where it was most
  needed. She drummed her fingers on the palmpad of
  188
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret BaH
  PARTNERSHIP
  189
  the workstation while she mentally reviewed what
  she'd done so far and the steps she'd taken to
  counteract the danger. The rhythm of her fingertips
  was repeated on the screen as a jagged display of
  colored lines, breaking and recombining in a hypnotic
  jazzy dance.
  First had come the surprising sound of Fassa del
  Parma's voice. While admiring the dramatic range
  Fassa put into pleading with her captor, Alpha hadn't
  
  been too surprised when the girl rapidly broke down
  and began spilling what she knew about her com-
  petitors. She'd always felt the del Parma kid didn't
  have what it took to make it in the big time. Too emo-
  tional. She cried in her sleep and then she gloated over
  her victims. Real success came from being like Alpha
  or Polyon, cool, unmoved, above feeling triumph or
  fear, concentrating always on the desired goal.
  Fortunately, Fassa didn't know much; she'd been
  too stupid to think much beyond her personal con-
  cerns. Alpha was willing to bet the little snip had never
  thought of compiling a dossier on each of her com-
  petitors, with good hard data that could be traded in
  emergency. All she had were gossip and innuendo and
  stories from the annual meetings. Blaize was nasty to
  the natives, Alpha had developed an illicit drug, Dar-
  nell was less than totally ethical in his business
  takeovers.
  Hearsay! Without hard evidence to back up the
  stories, Central would never make charges like these
  stick, and they were too smart to try. Alpha grinned
  and slapped her open hand down on the palmpad,
  jolting the computer into a random display of medical
  jargon and meaningless symbols mixed with sentences
  pulled at random from patient reports. She'd
  prepared that program years ago, as protection
  against a computer attack like the one Forister was
  trying now. And to judge from the snippets of conver-
  sation between him and Nancia, it was working. They
  would waste all their energy trying to decipher a code
  that had no meaning.
  And while they worked, Alpha would take steps to
  deal with the one piece of hard evidence Fassa had
  pointed out to them. Her fingers drummed fester; she
  slapped the palmpad again to enter voice mode.
  "Send Baynes and Moss to my office #  no, to Test
  Room Four," she said. Baynes could safely be pulled
  off the task of watching that brawn for a while; Caleb
  was too weak to be any danger, and anyway he was
  protected by his brainship's monitor button.
  Alpha didn't think her office was infested with
  spyders; she was absolutely certain about Test Room 4,
  a gleaming permalloy shell with no crack in the walls,
  no furnishings but the permalloy benches and table.
  Alpha had commissioned the building of this room out
  of her profits from the first illicit street sales of
  Seductron. The official purpose of the lab room was
  for Alpha's experiments on bioactive agents; the ex-
  treme simplicity of its design was to aid in complete
  sterilization of the chamber after experiments were
  completed.
  It served well enough for these purposes. And the
  contractor who'd installed nets of electronic impulse
  
  chargers behind the permalloy skin, making the room
  impervious to any known external monitors, had suf-
  fered a fatal overdose of Blissto shortly after the
  completion of the room. Alpha shook her head and
  sighed with everyone else that she'd never have
  guessed the man was an addict. And the secret of the
  room was safe.
  Baynes and Moss really were addicts. Alpha had
  "cured" their Blissto addiction, found them jobs at the
  clinic, and then explained to them that the Blissto ad-
  diction had only been replaced by a much more
  serious drug, a variant of Seductron with the unfor-
  190
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  191
  tunate side effect of causing complete nervous collapse
  in victims who were suddenly cut off from their
  regular dosage. Alpha had been experimenting with a
  mildly addictive form of Seductron that would create a
  captive market in anyone who ever tried the stuff;
  Seductron-B4 was an overresponse to the problem.
  She was afraid to release the stuff to street markets.
  But it was incredibly useful in creating willing ser-
  vants. It had only taken one or two delicately timed
  delays in the Seductron-B4 doses to convince Baynes
  and Moss that their only hope of life lay in total loyalty
  to her. She had picked her tools carefully; they had
  enough medical background to be genuinely useful as
  aides in the clinic, but were far too stupid to replicate
  her work on Seductron. If she died or were in-
  capacitated, Baynes and Moss would die too:
  inevitably, slowly, and painfully.
  She felt quiet satisfaction, as always, at seeing two
  men to whom her life was, literally, as valuable as then-
  own. And for all thai little snip fossa vaunts her sex appeal,
  no man who's rutted after her cares about her life the way these
  two care about mine.
  She gave her instructions quickly and confidently,
  expecting nothing but instant obedience. The patient
  carried on Summerlands' lists as Varian Alexander
  was to be removed to the charity side of the clinic at
  once. There was an empty bed in Ward 6, where the
  recovering Blissto addicts and alcoholics were housed;
  he would do very well there for the moment.
  "Excuse me, Doctor, but are you sure #  " Baynes
  began.
  "He'll stand the move," Alpha said.
   Yes, but# "
  
  "It's simple enough even for your drug-logged
  brain, I should think!"
  "It's not Alexander that worries him, Doctor," said
  the quicker Moss. "It's that half-cyborg freak in Ward
  6, Qualia Benton. Been asking a lot of questions, she
  has. Too many."
  Alpha drummed her fingers on the permalloy table.
  Benton. Qualia Benton, Ah, yes. An interesting case,
  presented as an alcoholic veteran of the Capellan Wars
  who was too shaky and brain-damaged to keep up her
  own periodic maintenance on her cyboig limb and organ
  replacements. All parts had appeared to be in good
  working order, but Alpha had approved the series of tests
  and maintenance anyway; Veterans' Aid would pay for
  the work, and if Qualia Benton was too far out of it to do
  her own maintenance, she'd never think to question
  whether the work the clinic charged was absolutely
  necessary# or whether it had even been done.
  "What sort of questions?"
  Baynes shrugged. "Anything. Everything. How do we
  like our jobs. How did we get our jobs. How many rooms
  are there in this wonderful big building, and what all
  goes on here besides taking care of poor old freaks like
  her. Supposing she wanted to get work at a nice clean
  place like this, would we put in a good word for her."
  "No harm in all that"
  "Yeah, but..." Baynes shifted his weight from one
  foot to the other and fell silent.
  Moss took up the story. "Last Friday she was rolling
  about in her bed, claiming she had nervous pains
  something awful in her left foot, which it isn't there
  any more, Doctor, and nothing wrong with the pros-
  thesis connections, I checked 'em out twice. Wouldn't
  go out for exercise with the rest of the winos, so I left
  her while we shoved the others out for their healthful
  walk around the park. Only thing is, I had to come
  back early on account of old Charlie Blissed-Out col-
  lapsed with chest pains and I wanted a floatube to
  bring him back. And I found her on the floor outside
  the staff room. She claimed she'd been trying to work
  the prosthesis and it collapsed on her."
  192
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  "Possibly true," said Alpha.
  "Yeah. But... the staff room door was unlocked. I
  swear I locked up like always, Doctor, but it was open
  then."
  Alpha considered Moss's sweating face for a long
  
  moment He could be trying to cover up his own care-
  lessness in leaving the staff room door unlocked and a
  patient alone in the ward. But he hadn't had to tell her
  about the incident in the first place. He would only be
  risking her anger if he were afraid of something even
  worse #  like a threat to her position at the clinic,
  something that would take her away and end his
  supply of Seductron-B4.
  "Put the two of them in a private room," Alpha
  ordered.
  "Aren't any on the charity side," Baynes objected
  glumly.
  Moss rolled his eyes. "God give me strength," he
  pleaded. "Doctor knows that, Baynes. Forget about
  moving Victor Alexander to the charity side. We're to
  put Qualia Benton in a private room with him on the
  V.I.R side, and don't worry about the feet that Veterans
  Aid won't pay; I reckon she won't be there long
  enough to run up much of a bill. Right, Doctor?"
  He gave Alpha a conspiratorial smile which she did
  not return.
  "Benton's is an interesting case," Alpha said neutral-
  ly. "I wish to investigate this prosthesis trouble myself.
  Any charges incurred will be billed to the experimen-
  tal lab. Meanwhile, I wish you to keep an eye on the
  visitor Bryley. He's supposed to be here as escort to
  that brawn, but he's been spending entirely too much
  time talking to too many people in the pubUc rooms."
  Bryley might not be an immediate threat, but it
  wouldn't do any harm to have Baynes and Moss keep
  an eye on him. As for the other two, Alpha had no in-
  tention of leaving the disposal of her problems to this
  PARTNERSHIP
  193
  pair of bunglers, one stupid and the other trying to
  wriggle himself into her good graces. Nor did she in-
  tend to risk their being able to give direct evidence
  against her, if worst came to the worst
  Qualia Benton might be no more than an alcoholic
  old fool who couldn't keep from snooping into other
  people's business, or she might be considerably more
  than that If the first, she would be no loss; if the
  second, she had to be disposed of immediately. As for
  Valden Alien Hopkirk #  Alpha hated to waste a
  potential tool like Hopkirk, especially after going to
  the trouble of keeping him lightly drugged and avail-
  able for all this time, but she prided herself on the
  ability to face fects and cut her losses. There were sud-
  denly too many people asking too many questions
  around Summerlands.
  
  Alpha dismissed Baynes and Moss and went back
  into her private storage room to prepare. "If you want
  a thing done well, do it yourself," she murmured as
  she prepared two stimpads, each loaded with a mas-
  sive overdose of Seductron-B4.
  The woman known as Qualia Benton knew some-
  thing was wrong when the two aides who were Doctor
  Hezra-Fong's shadows came to transfer her from the
  charity side of the clinic. She'd been ready to act then,
  fingers tensed against the side of her left-leg pros-
  thesis, adrenalin keeping her unnaturally aware of
  every shadow and change of intonation.
  And nothing happened. "You're moving to a private
  room," the big one called Baynes said.
  "Who'll pay?" Qualia Benton demanded in the fret-
  ful, shrill tone to be expected from an old soak whose
  nerves were jangling for just one more drink.
  "Doctor's interested in your case," said the little
  black-haired one, Moss. "She wants to run some spe-
  cial tests. On the clinic, if Veteran's Aid won't cover it
  194
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt
  You could get into the next issue of the Medical Re-
  search Journal."
  "I'm honored," said Qualia Benton politely. She let the
  men transfer her to a wheelchair and rode quiedy down
  the long silent corridors of Summerlands clinic, watching
  the myriad reflections of herself and the aides in the
  polished tiles of floor and walls and ceiling, ready for the
  slightest move that would warn her it was time to act
  It won't happen in the halls. They'll move when Tm in a
  room alone, she told herself. But what if they expected
  her to count on that, and took her by surprise in one of
  these long empty hallways? She dared not relax.
  Even when they wheeled her into a room with two
  beds, the one nearest the window already occupied,
  she was tense with expectation.
  "Here now, you said I was getting a private room!"
  she whined. Qualia Benton would whine; what's
  more, she would be suspicious and distrustful like
  most recovering addicts, almost paranoid. God knew,
  it wasn't hard to fake that part
  "Might as well be private," said the one called Moss.
  "He won't bother you much. Will you, Varian?"
  The patient in the other bed nodded and shook his
  head alternately, smiling with a loose, open-lipped grin
  
  that chilled her spirits. Blissto addict. Or worse... if there is
  anything worse ? And they're maintaining hm in that condition,
  instead of trying to break the addiction. That's criminal!
  Qualia Benton, chronic alcoholic, too woozy to take
  proper care of her own prostheses and replacement
  organs, wouldn't care about somebody else's
  problems. She said nothing.
  The aides helped her into the free bed.
  "Here you go," said the small black-haired man
  cheerfully. He slapped a sum pad downwards; she
  recoiled but could not quite escape the stinging con-
  tact against her shoulder. 'Just a litde relaxation med
  before the tests," he said.
  PARTNERSHIP
  195
  "Don't wanna relax," she muttered. The thickness
  in her speech was natural. She was suddenly finding it
  hard to think. Something was infiltrating her
  bloodstream, something soft as a cloud and warm as
  sunshine, floating her away to the Isles of the Blest #
  bless# bliss #  Blissto! That was it!
  The man in the other bed #  was he really a Blissto
  addict, or had he been drugged in the same manner?
  Foolish, foolish not to have anticipated this. Once the
  aides had caught her out of bed and snooping where
  she had no business, she should have known her time
  at the clinic was limited.
  She set her will to resisting the power of the drug.
  And not only her will. One thing about being under-
  estimated, being seen as an old lush without die sense
  to care for her own artificial organs: Dr. Hezra-Fong
  hadn't, apparently, run any serious tests on those hy-
  perchip-enhanced organs. The Blissto was carrying
  her away; but if she could only gain an hour or two, afi
  might yet be well.
  Did she have that hour's grace? No way to tell; she
  could only watch and wait, and that not very effective-
  ly. The hard hospital pillow beneath her head was soft
  as a Denebian flufftuff. Her left hand still rested
  against the smooth hard prosthesis, but she could
  barely feel the permaskin; the Blissto was interposing
  a fluffy cloud of blissful illusion between her and
  reality.
  Doctor wants to run some tests ... Was that truly all this
  meant? Surely not So important a person as Dr. Hezra-
  Fong, assistant director of Summer-lands, wouldn't go to
  all this trouble to prove that an old lush was faking dis-
  ability. There had to be more going on here.
  By late afternoon Sev noticed that the same two
  
  aides kept walking through the public visiting rooms.
  They were both rather striking in their appearance #
  196
  Arme McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  one a burly, blue-chinned man with a lumbering walk,
  the other neat and quick and given to slicking down
  his black hair with short nervous strokes. And they
  would have looked more natural at a portside bar than
  in a luxury medical clinic.
  Sev reckoned he was supposed to notice them and
  to be scared off. That was annoying. The doddering
  old CenDip widow he was talking to had finally men-
  tioned a patient named Varian Alexander, a Blissto
  addict. That could be an alias for Valden Alien Hop-
  kirk; the information that Alexander had just been
  moved to a semi-private room supported the theory.
  He was ready to get back to Nancia and check out the
  records on this Alexander, and he hated like hell to let
  these two petty thugs think they'd frightened him.
  "You will not start anything with those two," Nancia
  instructed him when he muttered his complaints into
  the contact button. "They're minor. You get back and
  watch Caleb. I'll send Forister to take care of our friend
  Hopkirk."
  "And who," Sev inquired sweetly, "will guard Fassa?"
  Nancia assaulted his eardrums with a burst of static
  that attracted the attention of two other visitors. Glanc-
  ing doubtfully at the artificial Capella fern beside Sev,
  they moved to the other side of the room and seated
  themselves well away from the strange, dour young
  man and his talking plant.
  "You're attracting attention," Sev said sweetly. "Bet-
  ter let me handle this in my own way."
  "Don't blame me if you end up in a recycler," Nancia
  grumbled in an undertone. "And don't expect me to
  send Forister to fish you out of trouble, either. After all,
  as you pointed out, somebody has to guard Fassa."
  "I don't," said Sev loudly and clearly, "need anybody
  to get me out of trouble."
  The other visitors whispered among themselves and
  somebody giggled. Sev felt his face turning red. Two
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  197
  shapes materialized at his elbows, one large and lum-
  bering, one darting in quick as a hummingbird.
  
  "Forgetting your meds again, sonny?" asked the
  small one in a kindly, concerned voice. He turned
  towards the other visitors in the room. "Sorry about
  the disturbance. He hears voices. Should improve
  with therapeu #  ahh!"
  Sev drove one fist into the small man's chin and
  wheeled to confront the big one. A hand like a small
  boulder descended on his head. The room whirled
  around him. An old lady screamed. He saw something
  sharp in the rock-like hand. Shoidd have guessed. The
  danger is never where you're looking. The hand came down
  for a second time, like an earthquake or an avalanche,
  vast, implacable, and as Sev twisted away the needle slid
  into flesh, quiet as a whisper, smooth as sleep.
  When she heard the sounds of the fracas in the
  public waiting rooms, Alpha slipped into the semi-
  private room she'd assigned to Hopkirk and the
  snoopy derelict. Damn Baynes and Moss! Couldn't
  they handle a minor surveillance task without starting
  a fight? There must be something about Blissto that
  permanently destroyed the brain cells.
  Oh, well, at least the disturbance in the waiting room
  would draw everybody's attention; there'd be no incon-
  venient witnesses to her actions here. Not that she
  expected to be here long enough for any problems to
  develop. Hopkirk was grinning in his usual loose-lipped,
  amiable way, and the derelict Benton was limp against
  her pillow in a Blissto dream. Better take care of her first;
  she knew Hopkirk was too sedated to give trouble.
  As she pushed up the old lush's sleeve to apply the
  stimpad, Alpha wondered whether Qualia Benton
  were really a snoop, or just a brain-damaged bag lady
  who'd had the bad luck to stumble into private places
  at the wrong time. Not that it made much difference.
  198
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU
  She wouldn't be answering any questions now.
  The stimpad slapped down on chill, firm flesh. The
  array of needles clicked but did not sink in. Alpha felt a
  moment's cold apprehension. Something is turong here.
  Something is very wrong.
  And Qualia Benton's dark eyes were wide open,
  watching her with amusement.
  "The right arm prosthesis is real lifelike," she said
  cheerfully, "but you won't get stimpad needles
  through the plastiskin. And now #  oh, no, dear. 1
  wouldn't do that. I really wouldn't."
  From under the bedclothes she had produced an
  ugly, snub-nosed needier. Where did thai came from? The
  
  old bitch isn't wearing anything but a hospital gown.
  "Whatever you had in that stimpad, die charge is
  wasted now," Qualia Benton informed her in that
  same cheerful tone. "There should be just enough left
  for a lab on Central to analyze. Please don't try to
  throw it away; I'll want to put it in an evidence bag for
  the trial."
  "Trial," Alpha croaked. "Evidence bag." She backed
  up a step, frozen with horror, while her intended vic-
  tim swung one real leg and one permalloy prosthesis
  out of bed, fussily straightened her gown, and
  produced a plastic bag from under the pillow.
  "Just drop it in here, dear, and don't make any sud-
  den moves. You wouldn't want to startle a poor
  nervous old woman. This needier is set on wide spray,
  and it's loaded with ParaVen. I don't really want to
  paralyze you," she said thoughtfully, "but if neces-
  sary ..."
  Two more backward steps brought Alpha to the
  door. She dropped and rolled into the corridor,
  momentarily out of range of the needier. "Baynesl
  Moss!" she shrieked. "32-A, patient out of control,
  CodeZ,stat!"
  Running feet pounded down the corridor and
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  199
  Alpha dosed her eyes in momentary relief. That heavy
  tread had to belong to Baynes. Let this crazy snoop of a
  woman waste her needier charge on the aides #  then
  Alpha would spirit her away to the violent ward. She
  promised herself a long and entertaining series of ex-
  periments on the bitch, once they got that damned
  needier away from her.
  "Stop right there," the old woman called in a voice
  too clear for her apparent age. "I am a legally con-
  stituted representative of Central Worlds Internal
  Investigation. Any attack on my person is treason,
  punishable by law. You're under arrest"
  "The hell I am," countered a voice that most certain-
  ly did not belong to the thick-witted Baynes. Alpha
  looked up and saw that Bryley man, the one she'd sent
  Baynes and Moss to take care of. "Fm the Central
  Worlds rep here, and you're under arrest. What have
  you done to my witness?"
  "The guy in the next bed?" For the first time, the
  Benton woman sounded uncertain. "He's not going to
  be a lot of good to you. Too blissed-out to know his own
  name. But you're welcome to him, if you want him. I
  expect she was going to kill him next, after she took
  
  care of me."
  "Kill? You?" Now Bryley sounded equally confused.
  From her crouching position, Alpha saw the Benton
  woman bend and fumble along the side of her leg
  prosthesis. A crack opened and she drew out a thin
  holographic strip that shimmered with rainbow colors
  in the hallway lights. So that's where she hid the needier....
  "General Micaya Questar-Benn," the woman intro-
  duced herself. She was standing straighter now,
  without the hunch and the bent leg that had made her
  look so small and helpless before. "Undercover assign-
  ment for Central, checking out the suspiciously high
  death rate on the charity side of Summerlands. My col-
  league Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc should be
  200
  Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Bail
  somewhere around; he can vouch for me. And you?"
  "Sevareid Bryley-Sorensen, on temporary assign-
  ment to investigate fraud in a Bahati construction
  company." He looked down at Alpha; she had a dizzy-
  ing glimpse of blue eyes and an expression as if the cat
  had dragged in something better left in a back alley. "I
  think our cases may be connected. I was here to collect
  Valden Alien Hopkirk, witness to a case of criminal Net
  interference by one of the del Parma girl's friends.
  Apparently this 'lady1 is another of the gang; she's
  been concealing the witness and #  from what you say
  #  keeping him too doped up to testify. You think she
  was going to kill him?"
  "We'll have to wait until that stimpad in her hand
  has been analyzed for drug traces," General Questar-
  Benn said mildly, "but I certainly don't think she was
  dispensing routine meds. Fortunately, she slapped the
  stimpad on my upper-arm prosthesis. I think I was
  supposed to be too drugged to notice her; one of those
  thugs she uses for aides dosed me with Blissto, or
  something like it, about an hour ago."
  Alpha slowly uncurled herself and stood up. If she
  was lost, she'd go with that much dignity. She was half
  a head taller than this Sev Bryley; it helped, a litde, to
  look down on him.
  "So what are you," she demanded, "a robot?
  Nobody's immune to Seduc #  Blissto," she caught
  herself. No reason to give away information.
  General Questar-Benn chuckled. "No, dear girl,
  I'm not quite as badly off as the Tin Woodman. The
  valves may be helped along by hyperchips, but I still
  have a heart #  something that appears to have been
  left out of your makeup. But the fiver and kidneys are
  
  replacements, and last year I had a new hyperchip-
  enhanced blood filtering function installed so that I
  could monitor my own internal prostheses. If you'd
  shown up right after your goon drugged me, I might
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  201
  have been in trouble. But an hour was more than
  enough time to filter the drug out of my bloodstream."
  Alpha glowered at her and Bryley impartially. "And
  what about you?" she demanded of Bryley. "You
  looked like a man, but I guess you're another fucking
  cyborg freak."
  "I am a man," Bryley said mildly. "I'm also fast #
  and I learned Capellan hand fighting in the war. Your
  big thug tripped over his own feet #  with a litde help
  #  and slapped himself with the stimpad he was
  aiming at me. I don't know what was in it; perhaps
  you'd like to tell me whether he'll survive the ex-
  perience? As for the litde one, he collided with one of
  those big ceramic pots you've got decorating the wait-
  ing room. He'll have one hell of a headache when he
  wakes up, but he'll be in perfectly good shape to testify
  against you."
  "No, he won't," Alpha snapped. "You don't know as
  much as you think you do! The man's addicted to #
  something you won't be able to supply. Without his
  next fix, he'll die in agony before the week's out!"
  Bryley raised one eyebrow. "Then," he said cheer-
  fully, "we'd better make sure to get his testimony on
  datahedron before he dies, hadn't we? Thanks for the
  warning."
  "  CHAPTER-TWELVE
  "Hospitals!" General Questar-Benn made the word
  sound like an expletive. "No offense, Thalmark, but
  those damn gowns are just a plot to make patients
  helpless and submissive. Thanks for bringing my
  uniform, Bryley."
  "I have a feeling it would take more than that to
  make you submissive, General," Galena Thalmark
  said with a slight inclination of her head.
  Sev and Micaya had met in what used to be Alpha
  bint Hezra-Fong's office, now occupied by the ad-
  ministrative assistant who'd first alerted Central
  Worlds to the surprising death rate in Summerlands'
  charity wards. This morning Galena Thalmark looked
  ten years younger than the harried, overweight
  woman who'd greeted Micaya and smuggled her into
  the wards in the disguise of die alcoholic "Qualia Ben-
  ton."
  
  "I can't express my thanks to you both," she said,
  pushing dark curly hair away from her round face, "so
  I won't try. General Questar-Benn, you have my sin-
  cerest apologies for the dangers you experienced."
  "Part of the job," said Micaya.
  "All the same, we should have been more alert. I
  should have had staff I could trust watching you at all
  times," said Galena.
  Micaya nodded without further comment. She was
  favorably impressed by Galena's quick command of
  the situation, even more impressed by the feet that the
  young woman had taken full responsibility for
  problems which were hardly of her making. It wasn't
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  203
  her fault that the aging director of Summerlands had
  left more and more power in the hands of Dr. Hezra-
  Fong, allowing the charity side to become disastrously
  understaffed and letting a deplorable lack of discipline
  infect the whole clinic.
  "Clinic's problems weren't your fault, Thalmark,"
  Micaya said at last, "but they're about to be your prob-
  lem. The director must have been senile to let all this
  go on under his nose. High Families, of course, politi-
  cally unwise to fire him, but I've had one of my aides
  compose a nice letter of resignation for him. Want the
  spot? Can't guarantee it, you understand," she added,
  "but I've some influence at Central."
  Galena Thalmark flushed becomingly and mur-
  mured her thanks. "Meanwhile," she said, shuffling
  papers until she'd recovered her composure, "I'm glad
  to report that Mr. Hopkirk is responding quite well to
  treatment. Dr. Hezra-Fong has supplied us with full
  details of the drugs used to keep him sedated. We're
  steadily lowering the dosage and watching him for
  seizures, but so far there have been no complications. He
  should be quite lucid and competent to make a deposi-
  tion on datahedron within the next forty-eight hours."
  "Good work!" Micaya exclaimed.
  Galena Thalmark nodded. "Whatever her other
  failings, Dr. Hezra-Fong is a brilliant biomedical re-
  searcher. I feel obliged to tell you that without her full
  cooperation and guidance, we would not have been
  able to reverse the effects of the treatment so rapidly."
  She looked up into Micaya's eyes. "She requested that
  this feet be formally noted on her dossier."
  "It will be," Micaya promised. "But I doubt that it'll
  bear much weight against the rest of the record."
  
  Galena bit her lip. "All those deaths," she mur-
  mured. "If only I'd seen what was going on from the
  first..." Micaya nodded in sympathy.
  "Don't torture yourself," she told the younger
  204
  Aims McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU
  woman. "You weren't even at Summerlands when she
  began. You had every reason to trust your superiors;
  it's to your credit that you suspected something as
  soon as you did and called in the proper authorities to
  put a stop to it Don't second-guess yourself!"
  The last words were barked out in a parade-ground
  intonation that made Galena's head snap up.
  "I mean it," Micaya told her more gently. "My dear,
  I've commanded soldiers in battle. I've seen brave men
  and women die because of orders I gave; and some-
  times those orders were wrong. You mourn the
  deaths, you do the best you can, and #  you go on.
  Otherwise, you cannot be of service."
  Galena Thalmark looked thoughtfully at the older
  woman, standing erect and composed in her plain
  green uniform. Some of her battle wounds were
  visible, the permalloy arm and leg. Others were buried
  in the surgical history that Galena had read: the inter-
  nal replacements for kidneys and liver, the hyperchip
  implant in one heart valve and the blood-filtering
  function. And as a doctor, Galena could assess just how
  many hours of painful surgery and retraining had
  gone into reconstructing Micaya's body after she sus-
  tained each of the original wounds.
  ""Vbu go on," Micaya repeated softly, "and... you serve
  as best you can. I believe that you will make an excellent
  director for Summerlands, Dr. Thalmark. Don't let
  regrets and hindsight cripple you; we need you here and
  now, not relivinga past that cannot be changed."
  "I can see why you're a general," said Sev thought-
  fully as they boarded the flyer that was to transport
  them from Summerlands. "If we'd had a commanding
  officer like you on Capella Four...."
  General Questar-Benn's high cheekbones flushed a
  shade darker. "Don't delude yourself. Making per-
  suasive speeches is only a small part of the art of war."
  "Oh? Seems to me I heard enough of them when I
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  205
  
  served on Capella. There may have been more going
  on in the staff rooms, but I never rose high enough in
  the army to see the whole picture. That's what I like
  about EL work," Sev added thoughtfully, "now lam
  the whole picture. Or was." He looked directly at
  Micaya. Til consider myself under your command for
  the rest of this operation."
  "The rest #  but my assignment's over," protested
  Micaya.
  "Is it?"
  It has been a long time since a young man looked at
  her so intently #  and back then, Micaya thought with
  an amusement that she did not allow her features to
  reflect, the last man to look at her like that had wanted
  something quite different. Ah, well. They always
  wanted something, didn't they?
  "Fassa del Parma and Alpha bint Hezra-Fong came
  out to the Nyota system on the same transport," Sev
  went on. "So did Darnell Overton-Glaxely. They've all
  been helping each other get rich by the quickest and
  dirtiest means they could arrange. There were two
  others on that transport #  Blaize Armontillado-Perez
  y Medoc, and Polyon de Gras-Waldheim. Fassa's al-
  ready implicated Blaize #  the one who was posted to
  Angalia. Don't you see? You're holding one thread
  into this tangle; I'm holding another one."
  "You think that together we could unravel it?"
  Sev gave her a flashing grin that was all but wasted
  on his present purpose. "Or take Alexander's solution,
  and cut the Gordian knot. This corruption ought to be
  cut off," he argued. "Don't tell me it's just a small part
  of what 'everybody does.' I don't care. This is the part I
  can see, that I can do something about. I have to see
  this through!" He stopped, looking momentarily em-
  barrassed by his own intensity. "And I had hoped," he
  went on in a somewhat quieter voice, "I had hoped
  that you would want to join us. Lead us."
  206
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Bail
  The flyer skated to a perfect landing just outside
  Nantia's opened entry bay.
  "Come with me?" Sev suggested.
  "I've got a scheduled transport to Kailas. Back to my
  desk job."
  "You can change that," he said confidently, and
  grinned at her as he would at a contemporary. "Come
  on, Micl You don't really want to go back to shuffling
  papers on Kailas, do you?"
  
  Micaya rubbed the back of her neck. She felt
  generations older than this intense young man: tired,
  and dirty from the corruption of Summerlands, and
  not very interested in anything except a long bath and
  a massage. "Damnit," she said wearily. "You'renotbad
  at persuasive speeches yourself, Bryley-Sorensen. I
  suppose you think I can get your brainship's orders
  changed so that we can go on to Angalia, instead of
  transporting del Parma straight back to Central?
  "It makes sense, doesn't it?"
  "Sense," said Micaya, "has never been a compelling
  argument for any bureaucracy. All right. You win. ill
  see what I can do towards persuading Central to reas-
  sign both Nancia and me. I must admit, I'd like to see
  the end of this case." Despite her weariness, she felt a
  smile beginning deep inside her. "Besides, your ship's
  brawn owes me a rematch at tri-chess."
  "Caleb?"
  "Forister," Micaya corrected him. "Nancia's been as-
  signed a replacement brawn, remember? Forister
  ArmontiUado-y-Medoc. We were working together on
  this Summerlands business, until Central pulled him
  off the case to brawn Nancia back to Central." She
  stopped in the open landing bay. "Wait a minute.
  What did you say the other boy was called #  the one
  who went to Angalia?"
  Sev didn't have time to answer; a second flyer
  pounced down on the landing strip, and a messenger
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  207
  in the white uniform of Summerlands came running
  toward them.
  "Tried to raise you in the air," he panted. "Your
  driver's comm unit must have been defective.
  Hopkirk's testified!"
  "The devil he has! Already?"
  "He seemed rather eager to do it. Dr. Thalmark
  thought it would do more harm to restrain him than to
  let him speak. His deposition's on datahedron #  and
  there are a few honest men left on Bahati, Mr. Bryley;
  two of them are going to arrest Overton-Glaxely now.
  Since he'll likely be sent back to Central for trial, they'd
  like a representative of Central to accompany them
  now, just to make sure everything's in order."
  "You mean, to make sure there's somebody else to
  blame if his family goes out for revenge," Sev
  muttered.
  
  "I'll go," Micaya said. "No one will question my
  word."
  "Til go," Sev corrected her. "I've already annoyed so
  many High Families, one more makes no difference.
  You go catch up on your tri-chess."
  "I always did like subordinates with plenty of initia-
  tive," Micaya said wryly. But she was tired, and
  worried about the possible connection between Blaize
  and Forister. Well, they'd have some privacy for a little
  while, with Sev Bryley off to collect his prisoner and
  Fassa del Parma locked in her cabin. She would have to
  ask Forister just how close the relationship might be #
  and whether he really wanted to brawn a ship headed
  for Angalia to arrest one of his relatives.
  Forister was happily unpacking a special order from
  OG Glimware when Micaya Questar-Benn requested
  permission to board.
  "We've got company coming," Nancia warned him.
  "And isn't there something unethical about buying
  208
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret BaU
  something from a firm while you work to arrest its
  owner?"
  "Can't think what," said Forister, whistling under his
  breath, "but if you find anything in CS regulations, be
  sure and let me know. Anyway, OG Glimware is the
  only company this side of Antares that does this par-
  ticular specialty work." He peeled away the last
  opaque shrinkwrapping to display his purchase: a
  foot-high solido of a lovely young woman, every fea-
  ture sharply delineated in the fragile prismatic
  carving. Her chin was lifted almost defiantly; she
  greeted the world with a smile whose reflection danced
  in her eyes; a short cap of curly hair, so finely carved it
  seemed the separate strands might lift in any passing
  breeze, crowned the uplifted head that gazed out at
  worlds beyond any human vision.
  "Ah #  very nice," Nancia said slowly, as Forister
  seemed to be waiting for some reaction. "Relative of
  yours?" His records didn't say anything about a girlfriend,
  and isn't he rather old for this one?
  "A very distant connection, like most of the High
  Families scions. But she may become more than that
  #  my friend, I hope. Perhaps my partner." Forister set
  the solido on the ledge above the pilot's control panel
  and turned to smile at Nancia's titanium column. "It's
  a genetic extrapolation, actually; shows what a certain
  young woman I know would have looked like if she'd
  grown up normally, without the one genetic anomaly
  
  that made her unable to survive outside a shell. Her
  name is... Nancia Perez y de Gras."
  Nancia didn't know how to respond to that revela-
  tion. She couldn't respond. Caleb never wondered what I
  would have looked like ... never thought of me as a person.
  Even thinking that was disloyal... but what could she
  say to Forister?
  She was spared the necessity by the opening of the
  airlock. General Questar-Benn's somber face startled
  PARTNERSHIP
  209
  them both. "This pan of the mission's completed," she
  announced. "Hezra-Fong's on her way here #  under
  guard #  and Bryley has gone off to arrest Overton-
  Glaxely. He's suggested that we should request a
  change in Nancia's orders, to investigate the other two
  passengers she brought to the Nyota system before
  returning to Central. Thought I should consult you
  first, Forister."
  Forister's face went gray. "I will accept any orders is-
  sued by Courier Service as long as I brawn this ship."
  "Know that," Micaya told him. "But I need to know
  more. Exactly what is the connection between you and
  this boy on Angalia? Distant relative? How much con-
  flict of interest are we looking at?"
  "He's my nephew." Forister dropped into the pilot's
  seat
  "Can I rely on you?"
  Nancia watched and listened without intruding into
  the conversation. She had liked General Questar-
  Benn on their previous meeting, but now she felt the
  general was pushing Forister too hard. For the first
  time since he'd come on board, he was looking his age;
  the bristly graying hair lay flat, the sparkle of mischief
  that had made his face so familiar to Nancia had disap-
  peared. Of course, she realized with a shock of
  recognition, that was why she felt as though she knew
  Forister already. It wasn't just his previous trip to
  Charon. It was die sparkle in his eyes as he hummed
  and hacked his way into Summerlands' medical
  records. That redheaded boy Blaize had just the same
  expression when he was planning mischief.
  But Forister had the integrity so disastrously missing
  from Blaize's makeup. He hadn't tried to argue away
  Fassa's stories implicating his nephew, and now he would
  not evade the duty of confirming those stories.
  "You don't have to come with us," Micaya told him.
  "We can get another brawn assigned to this ship.
  
  210
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  You're due a real R & R tour after that undercover
  work at Summerlands #  "
  Forister lifted his head and gazed at her with flat
  gray eyes. "You took all the risks at Summerlands," he
  said in a voice so drained of feeling that it made Nancia
  distinctly nervous. She increased the magnification of
  her local sensors until she could see the pulse throb-
  bing in Forister"s temple and hear the soft pounding of
  his heart. The man was under far too much strain.
  "I WAS USELESS," his amplified voice crashed
  upon her, and Nancia hastily retreated to a normal
  sensor level, nerve endings twitching from the grating
  sounds. "Couldn't even find computer records to back
  you up. If anyone deserves a term of rest, Mic, it's you.
  And if anyone must prove my nephew's dishonor," he
  finished wearily, "let it be me. We won't be able to keep
  it in the family# I know that# but I need to know ex-
  actly what he's done and how we can make
  reparation."
  "It's not good to be personally involved in your
  cases," General Micaya Questar-Benn murmured.
  "First rule of Academy."
  Forister's spine straightened. "No. The first rule
  is... to serve. That's all I ask of you. A chance to serve,
  to make some reparation if any can be made. Besides,"
  he added with just a trace of the old snap in his voice,
  "you won't find another brawn this side of Bellatrix
  subspace."
  "Oh, come now," Micaya said. "You people with
  brawn training always overrate yourself. I'll wager
  there are half a dozen qualified brawns in Vega sub-
  space alone."
  Forister straightened another infinitesimal fraction
  of an inch. "Not qualified for the new hyperchip-en-
  hanced brainships. Our Nancia's got the
  enhancements, haven't you, my dear?" As always, he
  turned his head towards the titanium column when
  PARTNERSHIP
  211
  addressing her, just as if he were inviting another
  softshell #  so&person, Nancia corrected herself#  to
  join in the conversation.
  "My lower deck sensors and port side nav controls
  have the hyperchips," she told him, "and I'm using
  them in some of the processing banks. I'm on a waiting
  
  list for the rest."
  "There you are, then," Forister told Micaya. "You
  need me. And 1 #  need to do this."
  "You need this assignment like I need another pros-
  thesis," Micaya muttered, but she sat down again with
  the air of one who'd given up argument. "And just how
  do you happen to be qualified for the new chipships,
  anyway? You've been CenDip for #  "
  "More years than either of us chooses to specify,"
  Forister interrupted her. "And the term is brainships,
  Mic, not 'chipships.' Let's not offend our lady."
  "It's all right," Nancia cut in. "I'm not offended. Really."
  "But I am," said Forister. He took a deep breath and
  straightened. Nancia could almost see him pushing
  the pain he felt deep inside, replacing his diplomat's
  mask. When he turned his head to speak directly to
  her, he looked almost untroubled #  if you didn't focus
  your sensors on the tiny lines of strain and worry
  around his eyes. "You are my lady now, Nancia, at least
  for the duration of this mission. And no one speaks
  casually of my brainship."
  Micaya blew out her pursed lips with an ex-
  asperated sigh. "You never answered my question.
  How come you're qualified for the newest models of
  brainships, when you've been out of the brawn service
  for... years?"
  "I read a lot," Forister said with an airy wave of one
  hand. "Ancient guerrilla wars, new compunav sys-
  tems, it's all grist to my mill. I'm a twentieth century
  man at heart," he told Micaya, referring to the Age of
  the First Information Explosion. "A man of many in-
  212
  Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  213
  terests and unguessed-at talents. And I like to keep
  current in my field# all my fields."
  "A man of unguessed-at bullshit, anyway," Micaya
  retorted. "Okay. You're in. At least I'll have someone to
  beat at tri-chess on the way over to Angalia."
  Forister snorted. "You mean someone to beat you.
  Your ego has increased out of all proportion to your
  skill, General. Set 'em up!"
  Nancia watched with curiosity as General Questar-
  Benn drew a palm-sized card from her pocket. Forister
  
  grinned. "Brought your portable game board, I see."
  The general tapped the slight indentations on the sur-
  face of the card and it projected a hologram of a
  partitioned cube, shimmering with rainbow light at the
  edges. Another series of taps produced the translucent
  images of playing pieces aligned at two opposing edges of
  the cube. Nancia twiddled with her sensor magnification
  and focus until she could make out the details. Yes, those
  were the standard tri-chess pieces: she recognized the
  age-old triple ordering. Pawns in the first and lowest
  rank; above them, the King and Queen with their
  Bishops and Knights and Castles. Above them the
  highest rank was poised to swoop down over the
  gamecube, the Brainship and Brawn with their support-
  ing pieces, the Scouts and Hovercraft and Satellites. The
  images were blurred and kept flickering in and out,
  giving Nancia a sensation of tight bands pulled across her
  sensor connections if she tried to look at them for any
  length of time.
  "Pawn to Brain's Scout 4,2,w Forister grunted a
  standardized opening move.
  Nothing happened.
  "My portable set isn't equipped with voice recogni-
  tion," Micaya apologized. "You'll have to tap in the code."
  As she indicated the row of fingertip-sized indenta-
  tions, Nancia hummed softly #  her substitute for the
  rasps and hawks of "throat-clearing" with which
  softshells began an unscheduled interruption. Both
  players looked up, and after a startled moment
  Forister inclined his head to Nancia's titanium
  column.
  "Yes, Nancia?"
  "If you'll give me a moment to study the configura-
  tion," Nancia suggested, "I believe I can replicate your
  play-holo with a somewhat clearer display. And I, of
  course, can supply the voice recognition processing."
  Even as she spoke, she assigned a virtual memory
  space and a graphics co-processor to the problem.
  Before the sound of her voice had died away, a new
  and much clearer holographic projection shimmered
  beside the original one. Forister exclaimed in delight
  at the perfect detailing of the miniaturized pieces;
  Micaya put out her hand as if to touch a perfectly
  shaped litde Satellite with its three living and storage
  globes, complete with tiny access doors and linking
  spacetubes.
  "Beautiful," Forister sighed in delight. "But won't
  this take too much processing capability, Nancia?"
  "Not when we're just sitting dirtside," Nancia told
  
  him. "I don't even use that processor when we're
  doing regular navigation. Might have to shut down
  briefly when we're in Singularity, that does take some
  concentration, but#  "
  Forister closed his eyes briefly. "That's perfectly all
  right, Nancia. To tell you the truth, it never occurred
  to me to play tri-chess in Singularity anyway."
  "Me either," said Micaya, looking slightly green at
  the very thought. "You don't want to think about spa-
  tial relationships at a moment like that"
  "I do," said Nancia cheerfully.
  Less than two Central Standard Hours later, Sev in-
  terrupted the first tri-chess game to deliver a subdued
  Darnell Glaxely-Overton for transport to Central. "He
  214
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  215
  broke when I showed him the hedron of Hopkirk's
  evidence," he told the others after Darnell had been
  confined in a cabin. "Funny #  almost as if he'd ex-
  pected somebody to come after him one of these days.
  Spent most of the flyer trip back telling all he knows
  about the other three. Here's the recording.''
  "Four," Nancia corrected Sev as he slid a datacard
  into her reader.
  "Three," Sev said again. "Fassa. Alpha. And . ..
  Blaize." He carefully avoided looking at Forister as he
  pronounced the last name.
  "Neither of them has said anything implicating
  Polyon de Gras-Waldheim?'' Nancia couldn't believe
  this.
  Sev shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe there isn't any-
  thing to say. You never know, there could be one good
  apple in this barrel of rotten ones."
  Not Polyon. But Nancia refrained from voicing her
  protest. After the conversations she'd heard on her
  maiden voyage, she was convinced that Polyon de
  Gras-Waldheim was completely amoral. But would it
  be ethical to reveal those conversations? Caleb had
  been so adamantly against anything that even sug-
  gested spying, she'd never even thought of telling him.
  But that had been five years ago. She had changed;
  she now saw shades of gray instead of the neat black
  and white of CS rules. Even Caleb might have
  changed; after all, he'd consented to this undercover
  
  mission.
  Under protest
  He might feel doubly betrayed if she chose to violate
  his ethical code when he wasn't even here to censure
  her for it.
  Perhaps she could put off the decision for a little
  longer "It might be worth going by Shemali anyway,"
  Nancia suggested. "You never know. We might find
  some evidence linking de Gras-Waldheim with the rest
  I
  of the crew." We'd have that evidence already, if they weren't
  -}:    oft terrified to say a ward against him.
  "Possibly," Sev agreed. "Meet me there, after An-
  galia?"
  "I thought you were coming with us!" Micaya Ques-
  tar-Benn half rose from her seat, putting one hand
  right through Nancia's tri-chess hologram.
  "I was," Sev agreed. "I am. I'll meet you on Shemali.
  Something's come up."
  He was gone before any of them could question
  him, taking the stairs three at a time and whistling as
  he went. Nancia briefly considered slamming her
  lower doors on him and holding him until he ex-
  plained exacdy what he was up to.
  She wouldn't do that, of course. It would be an un-
  ethical and unconscionable abuse of her abilities, the
  sort ofbullying she'd been warned against in the ethics
  classes that were pan of every shellperson's training.
  But it was a sore temptation.
  "Something," Micaya said thoughtfully, "has made
  that young man extremely happy. I wonder what it
  was. Nancia, is there anything earth-shaking in that
  datacard of Darnell Overton-Glaxer/s testimony?"
  Nancia had started scanning just before Micaya
  spoke. "There isn't even anything interesting," she
  said, "unless a sordid record of petty bribes and cor-
  ruption and bullying fascinates you."
  "Ah. Overton-Glaxely did strike me as the cheap sort"
  "You might want to examine his statement your-
  self," Nancia suggested. "You may see something I've
  overlooked."
  Micaya nodded. "I'll do that. But I doubt I'll find
  anything. Bryley said there wasn't any evidence
  
  against de Gras-Waldheim, so whatever is taking him
  to Shemali, it can't be our business. Damn that boy!
  Oh, well, I suppose we'll find out when we reach
  Shemali."
  216
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  "But first," Forister said, "we have a task to complete
  at Angalia." His face was gray and still again; the
  momentary animation brought on by the tri-chess
  game had vanished. He looks like a man with a deadly dis~
  ease. Is family honor so important to him ? Nancia wondered
  how she'd feel if her sister Jinevra were found to have
  corrupted her branch of PTA and embezzled the
  department's funds.
  Impossible even to imagine such a thing. Well, then,
  what if Flix #  she couldn't think what Flix might do,
  either, but what if he had got in with the wrong crowd
  #  like Blaize #  and had done something that would
  force her to hunt him down, arrest him, send him to
  Central for years of prison without his beloved musk?
  The pain of that thought shook Nancia so deeply
  that for a moment the even hum of the air stabilizers
  was broken and the co-processor handling the tri-
  chess hologram faltered. The gamecube image
  shivered, broke apart in rainbow fractures, then
  solidified again as Nancia gained control of herself and
  her systems.
  If even imagining Flix in trouble hurt her so deeply,
  how could Forister face the reality of Blaize's crime?
  He couldn't, she decided, and it was up to her and
  Micaya to distract him whenever possible.
  "General Questar-Benn, it's your move," she said.
  "What? Oh# Scout to Queen's Bishop 3,3," Micaya
  said. The move took one of Forister's Satellites and left
  a probability path to his Brains hip. Nancia calculated
  the possible moves without conscious effort.
  "You have only two moves that will not put your
  Brainship in check within the next five-move se-
  quence," she warned Forister.
  "Two?" Forister's eyebrows shot up and he bent
  over the gamecube. "I saw only one."
  "Foul!" Micaya complained. "I challenged the
  brawn, not the brain. 
  PARTNERSHIP
  217
  "We work as a team," Nancia told her.
  
  She certainly hoped that was true. For Forister's
  sake #  for both their sakes. He didn't need to get
  through this grief alone; she was there to steady him.
  "Ah. I see what you mean." Forister bent over the
  board and surprised Nancia with a third move, one so
  apparently disastrous that she had not even con-
  sidered it in her initial calculations.
  With a subdued whoop of glee, Micaya Questar-
  Benn took Forister's second Satellite #  and watched
  dumbfounded as he proceeded to shift an uncon-
  sidered knight from the second rank and place her
  Brainship in check.
  "Thank you for the hint, Nancia," Forister said.
  "Until you forced me to consider the alternative move,
  I hadn't even thought of using the Jigo Kanaka ad-
  vance in this situation."
  "I ... ah ... you're quite welcome," Nancia
  managed to tell him between the three subsequent
  moves that brought the game to its slashing con-
  clusion, with Micaya's forces immobilized, her Brawn
  taken and her Brainship checkmated.
  Perhaps Forister didn't need quite so much help as
  she'd anticipated.
  PARTNERSHIP
  219
  "  CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  Nancia's landing on Angalia was one of the worst
  she'd ever executed. The planet took her completely
  by surprise.
  Initial navigation maneuvers went normally. It
  wasn't until she was in visual range of the landing field
  that she became confused. The green terraced cliffs
  behind the mesa and the grassy basin surrounding it
  looked nothing at all like her memories of the landing
  five years ago. Could she possibly have miscalculated,
  come down in some hitherto unknown section of the
  planet?
  Nancia called up her files from that first landing and
  superimposed the stored images on the green
  paradise below her. Yes, this had to be the Angalia
  landing field. The topographical features were a per-
  fect match with her internal map. And there, at the
  edge of the mesa, was the plastifilm prefab hut with its
  sagging awning of woven grass, looking if anything
  slightly more derelict and tottering than it had ap-
  peared five years ago.
  Intent on her image comparison, Nancia drained
  
  computing power from the navigation processor,
  forgot to monitor the approach, and came embarrass-
  ingly close to making a new crater on Angalia's landing
  field. She corrected the descent, hopped into mid-air,
  and came down more slowly the second time. Her
  auditory sensors picked up a variety of crashes,
  groans, and complaints from the cabins where Micaya
  and the three prisoners were housed.
  "Apologies for the rough landing," she began, but
  Forister cut off her speakers for a moment and over-
  rode her. "Local turbulence," he said. "Nancia
  recovered superbly, but even a brainship can't com-
  pensate for all the freak conditions on Angalia."
  He swept his open hand over the palmpad with a
  caressing gesture, restoring speaker control to Nancia,
  and smiled at her benignly.
  "I didn't need you to cover for me," Nancia trans-
  mitted a vibrant whisper through the main cabin
  speakers.
  "Didn't you? I thought we were a team. If you can help
  me play tri-chess, I certainly have the right to preserve
  you from apologizing to those overindulged brats."
  "I #  well, thank you," Nancia conceded.
  "Think nothing of it. By the way, what did happen
  just now?"
  "I was distracted. This place doesn't look the way it
  did last time I landed." Nancia switched all her screens
  to external mode. Forister gazed appreciatively at the
  triple-screen display of a grassy paradise ringed by
  flowering terraces.
  "What on earth is that?" Fassa cried from her cabin.
  Darnell and Alpha joined her exclamations of
  surprise.
  Nancia was gratified by this response. The screens
  in the passenger cabins weren't as dramatic as her
  central cabin's display walls, but at least they showed
  enough of Angalia to confirm that she wasn't losing
  her mind #  or if she was, she wasn't alone. None of
  the prisoners had been expecting Angalia to look like
  the Garden of Eden.
  "Do I take it," she asked mildly, "that the planet has
  changed since your last visit?"
  "It certainly has," Fassa said. "Are you sure it's the
  same place? Only last year #  oh, I see."
  A prolonged silence followed. For once in her life
  Nancia longed for a softperson's physical extrusions.
  
  220
  AttneMcCaffrey & Margaret Batt
  It would be enormously satisfying to take Fassa by the
  shoulders and shake her out of the trance in which she
  had fallen. MP%y couldn't softpersons keep transmitting
  datastreams while they were processing?
  She had to content herself with blinking Fassa's
  cabin lights and assaulting her with raucous bursts of
  music from Flix's latest sonohedron.
  "Do I take it," she inquired when satisfied that she
  had the girl's attention, "that you recognize some
  salient features?"
  "Yes... I think so, anyway." Of course, Fassa would
  have no control over the visual detail, not to mention
  the accuracy, of whatever images she'd stored from
  her previous visit. She would be dependent on
  whatever her non-enhanced biological memory could
  provide. Recognizing this, Nancia didn't count on
  learning much.
  "Those gardens on the side of the mountain," Fassa
  said. "He had the terraces in place a year ago, but
  nothing was planted. I thought it was something to do
  with the mine."
  Nancia switched the signals going to Fassa's display
  screen to show the mine entrance. Blue-uniformed
  figures moved in and out, pushing wagons on railings
  that curved around the side of the mountain. A mag-
  nified display showed that the figures were shambling
  Angalia natives, neady dressed in blue shorts and
  shirts and working together with the precision of a
  choreographed dance. One native heaved a sack from
  the mine entrance and tossed it over his head; another
  casually moved into place just in time to catch it; by the
  time he'd turned, a third native had backed his wagon
  down the rail system and into place to receive the load.
  "Amazing," Nancia commented. "I thought the An-
  galians couldn't be trained."
  "Blake," Forister said hollowly, "has certainly been a
  busy little boy."
  PARTNERSHIP
  221
  "It doesn't look all that bad so far," Nancia pointed
  out  Fassa, do you #  or the others #  recognize any-
  thing else?"
  She let the display screens sweep over a panoramic
  view of the mesa and the surrounding countryside.
  Suddenly Fassa gave a cry of recognition. "Oh, God,
  
  he's left the volcano!"
  Nancia halted the display and studied it. An evil-
  looking bubble of brown and green mud heaved and
  burst and formed again, roiling continuously in the
  midst of the tall grass covering the rest of the basin.
  "I don't suppose planting flowers would do much to
  disguise it," she agreed.
  "You don't understand." Fassa sounded close to
  tears. "That's how he controls them #  how he makes
  them do things for them. If the Loosies don't please
  him, he cooks them alive in that boiling mud! I saw it
  done last time #  I'll never forget those screams."
  "Alpha? Darnell?" Nancia queried the other two.
  "That's right," Darnell told her. "Revolting."
  Alpha nodded silently, the movement barely visible
  to Nancia's visual sensors.
  She could think of no more encouraging words for
  Forister.
  Micaya persuaded Forister to let her confront Blaize
  initially. "I'll wear a contact button," she promised
  him. "You and Nancia can see and hear everything
  that goes on."
  "It's my duty# " Forister began.
  "Mine too," Micaya interrupted him. "The young
  man is more likely to confess if he doesn't think he can
  bring family influence to bear."
  "He can't," Forister said grimly. "I'm not here to in-
  tercede for him."
  "Yes, but he doesn't know that," Micaya pointed out-
  Nancia kept all her external sensors trained on
  222
  Anne McCajfrey & Margaret Ball
  Micaya'as the general picked her way along a path of
  rounded volcanic stones to the door of the permalloy
  hut. On both sides of the path, feathery grasses and
  blazing tropical flowers grew in exuberant, uncon-
  trolled patterning, throwing up their seed-heads and
  blooms above Micaya's crisp silver-sprinkled hair.
  Nancia recognized Old Earth species mixed with
  Denebian starflowers and the singing grasses of
  Fomalhaut II, a joyous blaze of pink and orange and
  purple flowers.
  Micaya entered the hut and Nancia's field of vision
  
  contracted to the half-circle covered by the contact
  button. In the shadowy hut, stacked high with papers
  and bits of machinery, Blaize's red head glowed like a
  burning ember before the computer screen that held
  his attention.
  "Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc," Micaya said
  formally.
  "Urn. PTA shipment? I'll sign for it in a minute. Just
  got to finish this one thing...."
  The contact button's resolution wasn't enough for
  Nancia to read the words on the computer screen, but
  she recognized the seven-tone response code that
  chimed out when Blaize slapped his open hand on the
  palmpad. An interplanetary transmission #  no, inter-
  subspace; he had just sent something to ... Nancia
  rummaged through her files and identified the code. To
  Central Diplomatic headquarters? What could they have to
  do with Angalia, a planet where no intelligent sentients
  existed? Had Blaize's net of corruption drawn in some of
  her father's and Forister's own colleagues?
  "There!" As the last notes of the code chimed out,
  Blaize swung round, a seraphic smile on his freckled
  face. "And what #  "
  His expression changed rapidly and almost comical-
  ly at the sight of Micaya Questar-Benn in full uniform.
  "You," he said slowly, "are not PTA."
  PARTNERSHIP
  223
  "Quite correct," said Micaya. "Your activities have
  attracted some attention in other quarters."
  Blaize's jaw thrust out and his freckles seemed to
  take on a glowing life of their own. "Well, it's too late.
  You can't stop me now!"
  "Can't I?" Micaya's tone was deceptively mild.
  "I've sent a full report to CenDip. I don't care who
  your friends in PTA may be, they'll have to leave An-
  galia alone now."
  "My dear boy," said Micaya, "haven't you got it back-
  wards? You're the one employed by Planetary Technical
  Aid. Or rather, you were."
  Nancia had been so caught up in the dialogue, she
  never noticed when Forister slipped out of her central
  cabin and made his way down the stairs. She was as
  starded as Blaize when Forister appeared in the door-
  way of the hut, just on the periphery of her view from
  the contact button.
  
  "Uncle Forister!" Blaize exclaimed. "What's going
  on here? Can you help# "
  "Don't call me uncle," Forister said between his
  teeth. "I'm here with General Questar-Benn to stop
  you, boy, not to help you!"
  Blaize went green between the spattering of freck-
  les. He closed his eyes for a moment and looked as if he
  wanted to be sick. "Not you too?"
  "You didn't think family feeling would extend so far
  as helping you exploit and torture these innocents?"
  "Torture? Exploit?" Blaize gasped. "I #  oh, no.
  Uncle Forister, have you by any chance been talking to
  a girl named Fassa del Parma y Polo? Or Alpha bint
  Hezra-Fong? Or Darnell #  "
  "All three of them," Forister confirmed, "and #
  what the devil is so funny about that?"
  For Blaize had all but doubled up, snorting with
  repressed laughter. "My sins come back to haunt me,"
  he gasped between snorts.
  224
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  225
  "I don't see what's so funny about it." Pollster's own
  face had gone white and there was a pinched look
  about the corners of his mouth.
  "You wouldn't. Not yet. But when I #  Oh, Lord!
  This is one complication I never #  " Blaize sputtered
  into hysterical laughter that ended only when Forister
  slammed a fist into his belly. Blaize was still crowing
  and wheezing for breath when a second blow to the
  jaw knocked his head back and flung him in an undig-
  nified collapse against the rickety table where his
  computing equipment had been stacked. Blaize's legs
  folded under him and he slid gendy to the floor. Be-
  hind him, the table rocked and wobbled dangerously.
  The palmpad skated to one corner of the table top and
  hung on a splinter. A shower of flimsy blue hardcopies
  fluttered down over Blaize in a gentle, rustling rain of
  reports and accounting figures and FTA instructions.
  Forister snatched one sheet as it drifted down and
  studied the column of figures for a moment, brows
  raised. When his eyes reached the bottom of the page, he
  looked tired and gray and showed every year ofhis age.
  "Proof positive," he commented as he passed the
  paper to Micaya, "if any was needed."
  
  Micaya held the paper where Nancia could focus on
  it through the contact button. The figures wobbled
  and danced in Micaya's hand; grimly Nancia compen-
  sated for movement and enlarged the blurred letters
  and numbers until she too could read the flimsy.
  It was a statement of Blaize's Net account balance
  for the previous month. The pattern of deposits and
  withdrawals of large sums made no immediate sense to
  Nancia, but one thing was clear: any single figure was
  considerably larger than Blaize's PTA salary, and the
  total at the bottom was damning #  more than thirty
  times as much credit as he could have accumulated if
  he'd saved every penny ofhis legitimate pay.
  "Uncle Forister," said Blaize from the floor, tenderly
  massaging his aching jaw, "you have got it all wrong.
  Trust me."
  "After the evidence before my eyes," Forister spat
  out, "what could you possibly say that would incline
  me to trust you?"
  Blaize grinned up at him. His lip was bleeding and one
  ftont tooth wobbled alarmingly. "You'd be surprised."
  "If you were thinking of a small bribe out of your ill-
  gotten gains," Micaya told him, "you can think again."
  She lowered her head to speak directly into the contact
  button and Nancia hastily reduced the amplification,
  Softshells never could quite understand that they
  didn't need to shout at a conduct button; the speaker
  might be tinny, but the input lines were as powerful as
  any of a brainship's on-board sensors. "Nancia, please
  enter the Net with my personal ID code. That's Q-
  B76, JPJ, 450, MIC. Under that code you will be
  authorized to freeze all credit accounts under the per-
  sonal code o# let me see...." She squinted at the top
  of the flimsy, peering to make out a code sequence that
  Nancia could read perfectly well with the vision cor-
  rectors damping down movement and enhancing
  blurred letters. "Oh, never mind, I guess you can read
  it," Micaya recalled a moment later.
  "Correct," Nancia sent a vocal signal over the con-
  tact link.
  "Don't do that!" Blaize scrambled to his feet, sway-
  ing slightly. "You don't understand# "
  Forister moved to one side more rapidly than Nan-
  cia had ever seen him step, a blur of motion that placed
  him between Blaize and Micaya with her copy of the
  account balance. "I understand that you've been ex-
  ploiting nonintelligent sentients to enrich yourself,"
  he said. "You can make your explanation to the
  authorities. Nancia, I want you to file a formal record
  of the charges now, just in case anything goes wrong
  
  here."
  226
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  227
  "Done," Nancia replied.
  Blaize shook his head and winced at the motion. "Ow.
  No. Uncle Forister, you really have got the wrong end of
  the story. And there's no way you can have me up on
  charges of#  what did you say? #  exploiting nonintel-
  ligent sentients. On the contrary. The Loosies are
  entitled to Intelligent Sentient Status and I can prove it#
  and nobody can stop me now; I've just sent the final
  documentation to CenDip. Even if you silence me,
  there'll be an independent CenDip investigation now."
  "Silence you, silence you?" Forister looked at Micaya.
  His gray eyebrows shot up. "No question of that. We
  don't deal in coverups. You'll have the opportunity to
  say anything you like at your trial. And so will I, God
  help me," he murmured, so low that only Nancia's
  contact button picked up the words. "So will I."
  "If you people would just listen" said Blaize, ex-
  asperated, "there wouldn't be any need for a trial. Didn't
  you hear what I said about the Loosies being intelligent?"
  Micaya shook her head. "You've been here too long
  if you've started to cherish that illusion. Face the facts.
  On the way here I downloaded the survey reports off
  the Net. The native species don't exhibit any of the key
  signs of intelligence #  no language, no clothing, no
  agriculture, no political organization."
  "They've always had language," Blaize insisted.
  "They've got clothing and agriculture now. As for a
  political organization, just think about PTA for a
  minute and then ask yourself if that's any proof of
  intelligence."
  Micaya laughed in spite of herself. "You have a
  point. But we didn't come here to argue ISS certifica-
  tion standards# "
  "Maybe not," said Blaize, "but since you are here,
  and #  " He looked suspicious for a moment "You're
  not working with Harmon, are you?"
  "Who?"
  Micaya must have looked surprised enough to con-
  vince Blaize.
  "My predecessor here #  my supervisor now.
  
  Crooked enough to hide behind a spiral staircase,"
  Blaize explained briefly. "He's the reason #  well, one
  of the reasons #  I had to do things in this way. Al-
  though even an honest PTA supervisor probably
  wouldn't have approved. I have bent a few regula-
  tions," he admitted. "But just do me the favor of taking
  a brief tour of the settlement. 1 think you'll understand
  a lot better after I show you a few things."
  Micaya looked at Forister and shrugged. "I don't see
  any harm in it"
  "I suppose if we don't go along, you'll apply for a
  mistrial on the grounds that you weren't allowed to
  show evidence in your defense?" Forister inquired.
  Blaize's face turned almost as red as his hair. "Look.
  You're in contact with your brainship via that button.
  If it's inactivated, or if she sees anything she doesn't
  like, the full recording can go over the Net to Central
  at once. What will it cost you to listen to me for once in
  your life, Uncle Forister? God knows nobody else in
  our family ever bothered," he added, "but I used to
  think you were different"
  Forister sighed. "I'm listening. I'm listening."
  "Good! Just come this way, please." Blaize pushed
  between Forister and Micaya and flung the door of the
  hut open. Sunlight and gaudy flowers and a thousand
  shades of green danced before them, all the brighter
  for the contrast with the shabby interior of the hut
  Blaize started down the path, talking a mile a minute
  over his shoulder as the other two followed him. Nan-
  cia activated the failsafe double recording system that
  would transmit every word and image direcdy to Vega
  Base as well as to her own storage centers.
  "The Loosies never developed spoken language be-
  cause they're telepaths," Blaize explained. "I know, I
  228
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  know, that's hard to prove directly, but just wait till you
  watch them work together! When the CenDip team
  gets here, they should bring some top Psych staff.
  Open-minded ones, who'll arrange tests without as-
  suming from the start that I'm lying. Mind you, it took
  me a while to figure out myself," he babbled
  cheerfully, turning from the main path to a secondary
  one that wound through head-high reeds, "especially
  at the beginning, when they all looked alike to me. I
  was so damn bored, and those croaking noises they
  make got on my nerves, so I started trying to teach a
  couple of them ASL."
  "What?" Micaya interrupted.
  
  "It's an antique hand-speech, used for the
  incurably deaf back before we learned how to direct-
  install auditory synapses on metachip and hook
  them into the appropriate brain centers," Forister
  told her. "Blaize always did have strange hobbies.
  But teaching the Loosies a few signals in sign
  language doesn't prove they're intelligent, boy. A
  couple of twentieth-century researchers did that
  much with chimpanzees."
  "Yeah, well, that's all I hoped to achieve in the
  beginning," Blaize said. "Believe me, after a couple of
  months on Angalia, a signing chimp would have
  seemed like real good company! But they picked it up
  like# like a brainship picks up Singularity math. That
  was the first surprise. I was teaching three of them
  who sort of hung around #  Humdrum and Bobolin
  and Gargle." He flushed briefly. "Yeah, I know they're
  damn silly names, but I didn't know they were people
  then. 1 was just copying some of the strangled noises
  they made when I would talk to them and they'd try to
  talk back, before I realized they'd never developed the
  vocal equipment for true speech #  that was when I
  started on the sign language #  sorry, I'm getting
  mixed up. Where was I?"
  PARTNERSHIP
  229
  "Teaching Humdrum to sign 'Where ration bar?'"
  Forister told him.
  Blaize laughed. "Not bloody likely. His first sentence
  was more like, 'Why did Paunch Man throw ration
  bars in mud and treat us like animals, and why do you
  make stacks and hand them to us one at a time with
  proper respect?'"
  He stopped and turned to face them, his freckled
  face dead serious for once. "Can you imagine how it
  felt to hear a question like that coming from somebody
  I'd been thinking of as #  oh, like a trained spider to
  while away the hours of my prison sentence? I knew
  then that the Loosies weren't animals. Figuring out
  what to do about it," he said, resuming his progress
  through the reeds, "took a little longer."
  "I deduced the telepathy when I noticed that a week
  after Humdrum caught on to ASL, every Loosie who
  showed up for rations was signing to me. Fluently. He
  couldn't have taught them the rudiments that fast;
  they had to have been picking the signs and the lan-
  guage structure out of his mind as the lessons
  progressed. In fact, they told me as much when I asked
  about it. Which wasn't all that easy. ASL doesn't have a
  sign for 'telepathy,' and since they don't know English,
  I couldn't spell it out. B ut eventually we got our signals
  straight."
  
  "If they were as intelligent as you claim, and had a
  system of communication, they should have advanced
  beyond their primitive level without intervention,"
  Micaya objected.
  "Easy for you to say," Blaize told her. "I wonder how
  well you or any of us would do if we had evolved on a
  planet where the only surface fit for farming is
  rearranged by violent floods once a week, where the
  caves we used for shelter crumbled and were shattered
  by periodic quakes? They had a hunter-gatherer cul-
  ture until a few generations ago #  a small population,
  230
  Artne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  not more than the planet could support, ranging
  through the semi-stable marshlands on the far side of
  this continent"
  "Then what?"
  "Then," Blaize said, "they were discovered. The first
  survey thought they might be intelligent and re-
  quested Planetary Technical Aid support By the time
  the second survey team came along, this PTA station
  had been handing out unlimited supplies of ration
  bricks for three generations, and the culture was effec-
  tively destroyed. Instead of small bands of
  hunter-gatherers, you had one large colony with no
  food-gathering skill. There were far too many for the
  existing marshlands to support, with nothing to do
  and no hope of survival except to collect the ration
  bricks. The second survey, not unnaturally, decided
  they weren't intelligent. After all, nobody on the sur-
  vey team was stuck here long enough and lonely
  enough to try signing to them. But they recom-
  mended on humanitarian grounds, or kindness to
  animals, or whatever, that we not discontinue PTA
  shipments and starve them to death."
  "But if they're intelligent#  " Forister objected again.
  They are. And they can build for themselves. They
  just needed a# a place to start" Blaize pushed the last
  of the feathery reeds aside with both arms and stepped
  to one side, inviting Forister and Micaya to admire die
  view of the mine. "This was the first step."
  From this vantage point, Nancia observed, they
  could see far more of die mine's operations than had
  been visible from the landing field. Teams of blue-
  uniformed workers were scattered across the hillside
  and grouped under the roofs of the unwalled process-
  ing sheds #  twenty, forty, more than fifty of them,
  divided into groups of four or five individuals who
  worked at their chosen tasks with perfect unanimity
  and wordless efficiency.
  
  PARTNERSHIP
  231
  "Could you train chimps to do that?" Blaize
  demanded.
  Forister shook his head slowly. "And I suppose the
  mine is the source of your prodigious wealth?"
  "It's certainly the source of the credits in that Net ac-
  count," Blaize agreed.
  "Exploiting intelligent sentients isn't any better dian
  exploiting dumb animals."
  Blaize ground his teeth; Nancia could pick up the
  clicks and grinding sounds through the contact but-
  ton. "I. Am. Not. Exploiting. Anybody," he said.
  "Look, Uncle Forister. When I got here, the Loosies
  didn't have ISS. They couldn't be owners of record for
  the mine, they couldn't have Net accounts, they
  couldn't palmprint official documents. Of course my
  code is on everything! Who else could front for them?1
  "And your code is also," Micaya pointed out, "as-
  sociated with the illegal resale of PTA ration shipments
  that were supposed to be distributed to the natives."
  Blaize nodded wearily. "Needed money to get the
  mine started again. I tried to get a loan, but the banks
  wanted to know what I was going to do with it When I
  told them I was going to revive the Angalia mines they
  told me I couldn't do that because there was no source
  of labor on the planet, because the CenDip report said
  Angalia had no intelligent sentients. Without credits, I
  couldn't start the mine. And without the credits for the
  mine, I couldn't #  well, we'll get to that in a while.
  Look, I falsified a few PTA reports. Said the popula-
  tion had tripled. Ration bars aren't exactly a hot item
  in international trade," he said dryly. "I had to have a
  targe surplus to bargain with. Fortunately, I had an
  outlet right at hand. That bastard Harmon was keep-
  ing the Loosies at semi-starvation level so he could
  trade some of their ration bars for liquor. I had to have
  a little talk with the black market trader to convince
  him I wanted hard credits instead of hard liquor, but
  232
  Arme McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball
  eventually he ... um ... came around to my way of
  thinking."
  "Don't tell me how you persuaded him," Forister
  said quickly. "I don't want to know."
  Blaize grinned. "Okay. Anyway, you've seen the
  
  mine; now I want to take you on a tour of Project Two.
  Well have to go up the mountain for that, I'm afraid; I
  want you to get the long view."
  The path up beside the mine was steep, but
  switchbacks and steps made it easier than it looked
  from a distance. As they passed the mine door, several
  Loosies looked up from their work to smile at Blaize.
  Their loose-skinned, grayish hands moved rapidly
  back and forth in flickering gestures that Nancia cap-
  tured as imageflashes for later interpretation. For now,
  she was willing to accept Blaize's translation.
  "They're asking who my mentally handicapped
  friends are, and whether you'd like a ride down to the
  processing sheds," he explained.
  As he spoke, the team working at the mine's mouth
  filled a wagon with chunks of ore and poised it at the
  head of the rails swooping down into the valley. The
  three workers perched on top of the ore, hands grip-
  ping the sides of the wagon, and a member of the next
  team gave them a shove that started them off on a
  roller-coaster glide down the hill, swerving around
  rocks and dipping into hollows.
  "Lost a few that way, at the start," Blaize com-
  mented, "before I remodeled the rail track so that the
  dips wouldn't throw anybody off."
  The vegetation thinned out above the mine, giving
  them a view of the terraced gardens that replaced clifls
  and rocks wherever a shovelful of soil could find a
  place. Micaya sniffed appreciatively and commented
  on the pungent aroma of the herbs growing in the
  mini-gardens.
  At the top of the mountain they enjoyed a
  PARTNERSHIP
  233
  panoramic view of what had been the Great Angalia
  Mud Basin, now a grassland in which fields of grain
  shared space with brightly colored blossoms.
  "This'll be our first year's crop," Blaize said. Td just
  finished the necessary preparations for planting last
  year, when those nitwits I came out with were here for
  the meeting. None of them noticed anything different,
  of course. But if your brainship can call up files of the
  first survey #  "
  "She can do better than that," Forister told him.
  "She's been here herself. Nancia, do you observe any
  changes here? Apart from the growing things, that is?"
  Blaize paled between his freckles. "Nanria?"
  
  "You have some problem with my brainship?"
  Forister inquired mildly.
  "We... didn't part on the best of terms," Blaize con
  fessed in a strangled voice.
  Nancia was feeling rather more kindly towards
  Blaize now, but she wasn't quite ready to admit that to
  him. "Horizon shows changes between all major
  peaks," she reported in the neutral, tinny voice forced
  on her by the contact button's limitations. "Magnifica-
  tion of one area of variation shows new construction of
  rammed earth and boulders blocking a system of gul-
  lies that appears now to be under 17.35 meters of
  water...."
  "Lake Humdrum," Blaize said. "My first terraform-
  ing effort. Trouble was, I had to block all the outlets,
  and build up reservoir walls, before I could guarantee
  the floods wouldn't crash through the mud basin.
  Then we needed irrigation ditches down into the
  basin. And silt collection systems, so that the soil the
  floods used to carry down here would still reach the
  basin and renew its topsoil. You want to come back
  down now? I want to show you the grain samples and
  the test results. It's not quite ripe yet, of course," he
  chattered as he led the way down the path, "but it's
  234
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  going to beaprime crop. Amaranth-19-hyper-J Rev 2,
  if that means anything to you. High in protein, loaded
  with natural nutrients, super yield from that rich top-
  soil. We should be able to feed ourselves and have a
  surplus to sell. That's why I waited until now to claim
  Intelligent Sentient Status for the Loosies; I wanted to
  be sure we would be self-sufficient in case PTA decided
  to curtail the ration shipments. And I didn't dare start
  planting until the whole flood control system had been
  put in place and tested. The Loosies would never have
  trusted me again if they'd put in a crop and seen it
  washed away. We needed a lot of heavy-duty ter-
  rafbrming equipment; sucked up all the mine's profits
  for the first three years."
  They reached the bottom of the mountain and
  Blaize set off at a brisk walk towards the hut. Forister
  took his arm and gently urged him away from the hut,
  towards the edge of the mesa. "I'd like to get a closer
  look at this grain crop of yours before we go inside," he
  suggested.
  But they didn't wind up standing in the best place to
  assess the grain; they came to the edge of the mesa just
  above the ugly volcanic mud hole that disfigured the
  basin, with its lazy bubbles roiling and tumbling just
  before the sticky surface of the mud.
  
  Forister eyed Blaize warily. "You've been forcing the
  natives to work in a corycium mine owned by you."
  "Persuading," Blaize corrected.
  "They believed your promises to use the profits for
  their own good ?"
  Blaize flushed. "I don't think they fully understood
  what I had in mind at the beginning. Most of them,
  anyway. Humdrum and Gargle got the idea, but they
  never believed it would work."
  "Then... ?" Forister left the question dangling.
  "I think," Blaize said almost inaudibly, "I think they
  did it because they like me a little."
  PARTNERSHIP
  235
  "Other reasons have been suggested," said Forister.
  Blaize looked blank for a moment, then noticed the
  direction of Forister's gaze. He was staring down at the
  volcanic mud bubble.
  "Oh. Fassa del Parma again?"
  "And Dr. Hezra-Fong," said Micaya, "and DarneD
  Overton-Glaxely. You've still to dear up their allega-
  tions of torture."
  "I #  I see." With a sudden leap, Blaize jumped
  away from Forister and Micaya to perch on a boulder
  sticking halfway out from the side of the mesa. "You
  want proof that I didn't torture Humdrum?"
  "It won't do any good to produce some other native
  and claim he was the one you tortured publicly, and
  that he recovered," Micaya told him, "just in case you
  were thinking of that. You've no way to prove you
  didn't murder and bury the one witnesses saw you tor-
  turing."
  "Well, it was Humdrum, all right, and he'll tell you
  so, but I see your point," Blaize agreed. He fumbled at
  the front of his tunic; die synthofilm sides parted and
  he folded the garment neatly. "My best tunic," he ex-
  plained politely, "you'll understand I don't want to
  ruin it"
  "What are you doing? Come back, boy!" Forister
  called, just too late; Blaize had skidded down a couple
  of feet and was clinging to a rock ledge barely out of
  reach.
  iJust a minute," Blaize panted in between some
  strange contortions. His synthofilm trousers collapsed
  
  in a shining heap around his ankles; he kicked diem
  upwards and they snagged on a thorn bush.
  "Blaize, don't do this." Micaya spoke in tones of quiet
  authority that seemed for a moment to weaken
  Blaize's will. He paused on the ledge, his milk-white
  skin almost glowing against the dull hues of the vol-
  canic pool beneada him.
  236
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  "I have to," he said calmly. "It's the only way."
  Before either of them could argue further, he leapt
  from the ledge in a spiraling, awkward dive that ended
  with a resounding smack in the center of the heaving
  mud. White arms and legs splayed out, red head still,
  for a moment he seemed to have been stunned or
  killed outright by the fell. Then he kicked and wrig-
  gled vigorously, sinking deeper into the bubbling glop
  with each movement.
  "Hold still,'1 Forister called, "we'll get a rope to you
  #  we'll do something #  "
  Blaize turned over onto his back. A thick layer of
  mud coated his body, barely preserving the decencies.
  He thrashed around in what Nanria belatedly recog-
  nized as an attempt at the backstroke.
  "Come on in, Uncle Forister," he called up. "The
  mud's fine today!"
  "Are you all right?" Micaya shouted while Forister,
  for once, struggled to find his voice.
  "Couldn't be better. Mud's just at sauna heat today."
  Blaize stretched and wriggled luxuriously and
  grinned up at them through mud-spattered cheeks. "I
  don't usually dive from that high up #  knocked the
  breath out of me for a minute #  but I thought you
  needed the demonstration. Care to join me?"
  Micaya looked quizzically at Forister. The brawn
  kicked off his shoes and rolled his trouser legs up. "Oh,
  I'm going down, all right," he said between clenched
  teeth. "It's the quickest way to get my hands on that
  boy. And then I'm going to #  to #  " Words failed him.
  "Torture him in a boiling mud hole?" Micaya
  suggested.
  CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  Nancia deliberately slowed her speed for the short
  hop from Angalia to Shemali. She needed time to
  check her records, time to access the Net and look for
  evidence of Polyon's scam. Somewhere in all the past
  
  five years' records of metachip and hyperchip transac-
  tions there must be some clue to his criminal activities
  #  for she could not believe he had totally given up on
  the plans he'd announced during her maiden voyage.
  Not Polyon de Gras-Waldheim.
  Even Net access was not always instantaneous, par-
  ticularly when one was gathering and collating all the
  public records on sale, transfer or use of hyperchips in
  the known galaxy. Nancia idled and hoped that her
  passengers would not notice how long the voyage was
  taking.
  Fortunately, they all seemed wrapped up in their
  own concerns. Fassa, Alpha and Darnell were all being
  held in separate cabins, dealing with the long spells of
  solitary imprisonment in their own ways. Alpha re-
  quested medical and surgical journals from Net
  libraries and studied the technical material Nancia
  downloaded for her with intense concentration, just as
  if she thought she would be permitted to practice her
  chosen profession again. Not if I have anything to say
  about it, Nancia vowed silently. But the truth was, she
  didn't have much to say. She could record her tes-
  timony and the images she'd received via contact
  buttons, and those depositions would go into evidence
  at Alpha's trial. But after that, all would be up to those
  softpersons who controlled the high courts on Central.
  238
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  239
  Most of them were High Families; half of them had
  some connection, kinship or financial, with the Hezra-
  Fong clan. Alpha might very well be free #  not
  immediately, but in five years or ten or twenty, a mere
  blip in the life of a High Families girl with fewer than
  thirty chronological years behind her and access to the
  best rejuv technology to expand her life span dose to
  two hundred years.
  Not for me to decide, Nancia reminded herself, and
  turned her attention to the other two. As a safety
  precaution she kept sensors in all their cabins active at
  all times, but she tried not to pay too much attention
  unless the sensor receptors flashed to indicate unusual
  activity.
  DarnelTs activities were usual enough, Nancia sup-
  posed, for someone enslaved to a softperson's pitifully
  limited array of sense-receptors. He had requested
  Stemerald, Rigellian smokefowl and an array of Dorg
  Jesen's feelieporn hedra; Nancia had supplied nonal-
  coholic nearbeer, synthobird slices, and the hedra
  which Forister told her were the nearest things to porn
  
  in her library. Darnell spent most of his time reclining
  on his bunk, washing down synthobird and candied
  brancake with the nearbeer and watching a remake of
  an Old Earth novel over and over again. Nancia
  couldn't understand what he saw in the datacorded
  adventures of this Tom Jones, but then, it was none of
  her business.
  Blaize was confined in the cabin opposite Darnell's.
  After hah0 an hour's furious argument about who
  would look after "his" Loosies while he was being
  shipped back to Central, he'd accepted Nancia's
  promise to see that her sister Jinevra personally over-
  saw whoever was sent to replace him on Angalia. "One
  thing about the Perez line, they're hopelessly honest,"
  he said in resignation. 'Jinevra may not be creative,
  but at least she won't let that swine Harmon get his
  hooks into them again. You do realize that if this year's
  harvest foils, all my work will be wasted?"
  "I realize, I realize," Nancia told him patiently.
  "Trust Jinevra." And as she sent out a general Net call
  to Jinevra and explained the situation to her sister, she
  wondered guiltily just how different she was from the
  rest of the High Families brats. Daddy had pulled
  strings to get her sent on this assignment. Now she was
  calling in favors owed her in Courier Service, and
  making her sister feel guilty, so that she could interfere
  in what should have been left to the normal channels
  of PTA administration.
  But "normal channels" left the Loosies without the
  kind of aid they needed. Nancia sighed.
  "Will there never be a bureaucracy that does what
  it's supposed to without sinking into corruption and
  inefficiency?' she asked Forister.
  "Probably not," he replied.
  "You sound like Simeon #  advising me to accept
  corruption because it's everywhere!"
  Forister shook his head. "Not in the least. I'm advis-
  ing you not to waste energy being surprised and
  shocked about the predictable. No system, anywhere,
  is proof against human failings. If it were #  "he
  forced a tired smile #  "we'd be computers. Your hy-
  perchips may be foolproof, Nancia, but the human
  pan of you makes mistakes #  and so do all of us. For-
  tunately," he added, "humans can also recognize and
  correct mistakes# unlike computers, which just go on
  until they crash. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like access
  to your comm system for a while. I want to see what I
  can do to prevent Blaize from crashing."
  While Blaize's explanations had satisfied all of them
  on an emotional level, he still had some legal problems
  to face. No matter how excellent his motivation, the
  feet remained that he had falsified PTA reports, sold
  
  PTA shipments on the black market, and transferred
  240
  Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU
  PARTNERSHIP
  241
  the profits into his personal Net account To leave him
  on Angalia while the others were shipped back for trial
  would have seemed like the worst kind of favoritism.
  All Forister could do was to make sure that all the facts
  were on record for the trial #  not just how Blaize had
  obtained the money, but what he had done with it and
  how he had improved the lives of the people he was
  sent to aid.
  "They are people," Forister reported to Blaize with
  satisfaction.
  "Of course they are! Couldn't you tell that?"
  "What I thought, or what you thought, is beside the
  point," Forister told him. "What counts is CenDip's
  decision. And there must be at least one intelligent
  man in CenDip, because your report has already been
  received and acted on. The Loosies have ISS as of
  yesterday. And the decision's palmprinted by no less a
  person than the CenDip Secretary-Universal, Javier
  Perez y de Gras."
  Nancia heard that with great satisfaction and turned
  her attention to her last prisoner. Fassa was spending
  most of this voyage just as she had spent the trip from
  Bahati to Angalia, crouched on her cabin floor, arms
  around her knees, staring at nothing and ignoring the
  food trays Nancia extruded at the dining slot. Un-
  touched bowls of soup, baskets of sliced sweet bread,
  tempting fruit purees and sliced synthobird in glow-
  sauce went back into the recycling bins to be
  synthesized into new combinations of proteins and
  carbohydrates and fats. To all Nantia's gentle sugges-
  tions of food or entertainment Fassa replied widi a dull
  "No, thank you," or "It doesn't matter."
  "You must eat something," Nancia told her.
  "Must 1?" Fassa seemed obscurely amused. "No,
  thank you. I've had enough of men telling me what I
  must do and what I must be. Who cares if I get too
  skinny to appeal to anybody?"
  "I'm not a man," Nancia pointed out "I'm not even
  a softperson. And my only interest in your body is that
  I don't want you to get sick before..."
  "Before my trial," Fassa finished calmly. "It's all
  right You needn't be tactful. I'm going to prison for a
  
  long time. Maybe forever. As long as they don't put me
  on Shemali, I don't care."
  "What's the matter with Shemali?" Nancia asked.
  Fassa clamped her lips together and stared at the
  cabin wall. Her creamy skin was a little paler than
  usual, tinged with green shadows. "Nothing. I don't
  know anything about Shemali. I didn't say anything
  about Shemali."
  Nancia gave up on Fassa for the moment After all,
  there were other ways to find out what was up on
  Shemali. Reports on hyperchip production and sales
  should soon be coming in over the Net. A few in-
  vigorating hours of compiling evidence against Polyon
  would calm her and leave her better able to cheer up
  Fassa.
  She felt a sneaking sympathy for the girl after read-
  ing her records. Growing up in the shadow of Faui del
  Parma couldn't have been easy. Losing her mother at
  thirteen, spending the next five years in a boarding
  school with not a single visit from her father, then sent
  out to Bahati to prove herself.... Nancia thought she
  understood how Fassa might feel. But I didn't turn
  criminal to impress my family, she argued with herselt
  Your family, she replied, wouldn't have been impressed.
  Besides, she'd had it better than Fassa. Daddy and
  Jinevra and Flix had dropped in regularly during the
  eighteen years Nancia spent at Laboratory Schools. It
  was only after graduation that Daddy had lost interest
  in her progress....
  Softpersons could cry, and it was said that tears were
  a natural release of tension. Nancia looked up the
  biomed reports on the chemical components of tears,
  242
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  243
  adjusted her nutrient tubes to remove those chemicals
  from her system, and concentrated on the Net records
  of hyperchip sales and transfer.
  There was absolutely nothing there to incriminate
  Polyon. Two years after his arrival at Shemali, his new
  metachip design had been approved for production
  and christened the "hyperchip" in tribute to its im-
  proved speed and greater complexity. Since then,
  production of hyperchips had increased rapidly in
  each accounting quarter, so rapidly that Nancia
  couldn't believe Polyon was siphoning off any of the
  supply for his personal use. The manufactured hyper-
  
  chips were subjected to especially stringent QA testing,
  but no more than the expected ratio failed the test...
  and all the failures were accounted for; they were sent
  off-planet for disposal and destroyed by an inde-
  pendent recycling company that had, so far as Nancia
  could discover, no links whatsoever with Polyon, the
  de Gras or Waldheim lines, or any other High
  Families. The hyperchips that passed QA were in-
  stalled as fast as they were released, and every sale
  passed through the rationing board. Nancia knew
  from personal experience how difficult it was to get
  them; ever since her lower deck sensors and graphics
  coprocessors had been enhanced with hyperchips,
  she'd been pushing without success to get the hyper-
  chips installed in the rest of her system. Micaya
  Questar-Benn, when questioned, told Nancia that her
  liver and heart-valve filter and kidneys all ran on hy-
  perchips, installed when the metachip-controlled
  organs began to fail. But she, too, had been unable to
  get hyperchips to replace the smart chips in her exter-
  nal prostheses; that wasn't an emergency situation,
  and the ration board had refused to approve the
  surgery or the supplies.
  Polyon had been nominated twice for the Galactic Ser-
  vice Award for the contributions his hyperchip design
  bad made in areas as diverse as Fleet brainroom control,
  molecular surgery, and information systems. Even the
  Net, that ponderous, conservative communications sys-
  tem that finked the galaxy with news and information
  and records of everything ever done via computer #
  even the managers of the Net were slowly, conservatively
  augmenting key communications Sanctions with hyper-
  chip managers that had significantly speeded Net
  retrievals. The gossipbyters speculated openly that
  Polyon would receive the coveted GSA this year, the
  youngest man #  and the handsomest, said Cornelia
  NetUnk coyly #  ever to hold one of the corycium
  statuettes. Speculation also ran rampant on which distin-
  guished post he would surely accept after the
  presentation of the GSA. It seemed such a waste for such
  a talented young man #  and so handsome, Cornelia in-
  evitably added #  to be stuck out at the back of beyond
  running a prison chip manufacturing plant Yet so far,
  Polyon had refused with becoming modesty even to dis-
  cuss offers of other positions.
  "StarFleet assigned me to this post, and my honor is
  in serving where I am assigned," he declared when-
  ever asked.
  Nancia resisted the temptation to imitate a softper-
  son raspberry at the files. Shellpersons, with near-total
  control over their auditory/speaker systems, didn't
  need to sink to such childish levels....
  "ThpSHt," she declared. There was somettmg wrong
  on Shemali; she knew it, even if she couldn't prove it.
  
  Perhaps their unannounced visit would give her the
  data she needed.
  Despite her slowdown to cruising speeds, Nancia
  reached Shemali while she was still mulling over how
  to identify herself to the spaceport crew. Arrival of a
  Courier Service brainship was an unusual event on
  these remote planets; she didn't want to alert Polyon,
  244
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  245
  give him a chance to cover up# whatever there was to
  cover up, and there must be somethingl Nancia
  thought.
  In the event, the decision was made for her.
  "OG-48, cleared for landing from orbit," the bored
  voice of a spaceport controller crackled over her comm
  link while Nancia hovered and wondered how to in-
  troduce herself without alarming anybody.
  She quickly scanned her external sensor views.
  There were no other ships visible in orbit around
  Shemali, and any OG ship on the far side of the planet
  should have been out of commlink range. They must
  be speaking to her #  oh, of course! Nancia chuckled
  to herself. Since the sting operation offBahati, she'd
  been far too busy to demand a new paint job. The
  mauve-and-puce pseudowalls of an OG Shipping
  drone still cluttered her interior; the OG stencil was
  presumably still prominently displayed on her exter-
  nal skin. Darnell Overton-Glaxely had a reputation
  for picking up and retrofitting ships from any possible
  source. Her sleek CS shape would be unusual for a
  shipping line's vessel, but apparently not unusual
  enough to rouse any suspicion in the spaceport con-
  troller. As he droned on with landing instructions,
  Nancia thought she recognized the calm, level,
  uninflected voice. Not that voice specifically, but the
  feeling of detachment from worldly cares. Since when
  do Blissto addicts hold responsible spaceport positions? I knew
  something was very wrong here. And we #  Forister and
  Micaya and I# are going tofmd out what!
  She settled on the landing pad with a sense of exul-
  tation and adventure. Then, as she took in her
  surroundings, the bubbles of joyous feelings went as
  flat as long-opened Stemerald.
  "Ugh! What happened to this place?" Forister ex-
  claimed as soon as Nancia cleared her display screens
  to give him a view of Shemali from the spaceport.
  
  The permacrete of the landing pads was cracked
  and stained, and the edge of the "crete had a ragged
  hole eaten into it, as though somebody had spilled a
  drum of industrial biocleaners and hadn't bothered to
  clean up the results before the microscopic biocleaners
  ate themselves to death on permacrete and paint. The
  spaceport building was a windowless permacrete
  block, grim and forbidding as any maximum-security
  prison# which, of course, described the whole planet.
  Beyond the spaceport, clouds of green and purple
  smoke billowed into the air. Presumably they were the
  source of the greenish-black ashes which had drifted
  over every surface visible to Nancia.
  While they waited for the spaceport controller to iden-
  tify himself and welcome them to Shemali, a blast of wind
  shrieked across the open landing field, catching the ashes
  and tossing them into whirling columnsof pollution that
  collapsed as rapidly as they had arisen.
  Nancia's external monitors recorded the wind
  temperature at 5 degrees Centigrade.
  "Shemali deserves its name," she murmured.
  "What's that?"
  "North Wind," Nancia said. "Alpha knows the lan-
  guage from which all the Nyota system names come. She
  mentioned the translations once... a long time ago."
  "Is the rest of the planet like this?"
  Nancia briefly replaced the view of the outside with
  magnified displays of the images she'd taken in while
  descending from orbit. At the time she'd been too ex-
  ercised over the problem of an appropriate greeting
  formula to worry much about the surface problems of
  the planet. Now she and Forister gazed in horrified
  silence at stagnant pools in which no living thing
  stirred, valleys eroded from the brutal road cuts lead-
  ing to new hyperchip plants, swirling clouds of dust
  and ash blanketing woods in which the trees died and
  no birds sang.
  246
  AnnsMcCaffrey &MargaretBall
  "I didn't know that one factory could do so much
  damage to a planet," Forister said slowly.
  "Looks as if there are several factories operating
  now," Micaya pointed out. "All running at top capacity,
  I'd guess, with no concern for damage to the environ-
  ment ... and Shemali's winds will have distributed the
  polluting waste products planet-wide."
  "Did nobody visit Shemali before recommending
  
  Polyon for a GSA? Probably not," Forister answered
  his own question. "Who wants to come to a prison
  planet in a minor star system? And his records are
  good, you said, Nancia?"
  "The public records are excellent," Nancia replied,
  "It appears that Polyon de Gras-Waldheim has truly
  been making every effort to see that the maximum
  quantity of hyperchips is manufactured and that they
  are distributed as widely as possible." At incalculable cost
  to the environment- But that's not a crime....not legally, not
  here anyway. If Central cared about Shemali, they wouldn't
  have located the prison metachip factory here to begin with.
  A pounding on the lower doors reverberated
  through Nanria's outer skin. She switched back to ex-
  ternal auditory and visual sensors. The ones on her
  landing braces gave her a narrow view of whoever was
  making this commotion ... a gaunt man wrapped in
  tattered rags that looked like the remnants of a prison
  uniform, gray smock and loose trousers, and with
  more rags draped over his head and bound about his
  fists.
  He was calling her name. "Nancia! Nancia, let me
  in, quickly!"
  On the edge of the landing field, two bulky figures
  in gleaming silvercloth protective suits moved slowly
  forward, awkward and menacing. The silver hoods
  covered their faces like helmets, the silver suits glit-
  tered around them like armor. But the weapons in
  their raised hands were not knightly lances, but nerve
  PARTNERSHIP
  247
  disruptors, bulky squat shapes more menacing than
  any iron lance point.
  Nancia slid open the lower doors. The fugitive col-
  lapsed against the opening doors and fell into the
  cargo bay. As one of the silver-suited figures raised its
  nerve disruptor, Nancia slammed the doors shut
  again. The rays bounced harmlessly against her outer
  shell; she absorbed the energy without conscious
  thought. All her attention was on the ragged prisoner
  who was now pushing himself to his knees, slowly and
  painfully unwinding the rags from around his face.
  "That may not have been a wise decision," Forister
  commented mildly. "We don't wish to become
  embroiled with the local authorities. Prison disputes
  aren't part of our mission."
  "This man is," Nancia replied. She switched the dis-
  play screens to show what her sensors were picking up
  in the cargo bay. Micaya Questar-Benn was the first to
  gasp in recognition.
  
  "Young Bryley-Sorensen! How did he get into
  Shemali prison . . . and out again . . . and in such
  condition?"
  "That," said Nancia grimly, "I should very much like
  to know."
  Sev pulled himself upright by one of the support
  struts that crisscrossed the cargo bay. "Nancia, don't let
  anybody else in. There's #  you don't know #  terrible
  things on Shemali. Terrible," he repeated. His eyes
  rolled up and he slid to the floor again.
  "Forister, Micaya, get him out of the cargo bay
  before those two guards or whatever come knocking
  on my doors," Nancia snapped. "No, wait. I have an
  idea. Take his clothes offfirst and leave them there."
  "Why?"
  "Don't have time to explain. Just do it!" She set her
  kitchen synthesizers to work and turned on the in-
  cinerator. What she had in mind would never work if
  248
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  Shemali were a decendy run prison. But what she'd
  seen of the ravages wreaked on the planet matched
  what she remembered of young Polyon de Gras-
  Waldheim's ruthless personality, and Sev's last gasped
  words were all the confirmation she needed.
  While Forister and Micaya stripped the unconscious
  Sev and manhandled him into the lift, Nancia ex-
  panded her sensor reception to examine him more
  closely. She recorded everything for future analysis,
  taking particular note of the horrible skin lesions that
  disfigured both Sev's arms and one leg. Dark bruises
  flowered in purple and blue and green on his ribs and
  stomach, and his back was crisscrossed with swollen
  weals that oozed red as the other two softpersons
  moved him. His breathing was shallow and irregular
  and he showed no sign of regaining consciousness
  while they dragged him to the lift.
  What had they done to him on Shemali? Nancia
  knew how to treat the surface injuries; but this was a
  planet of nerve gas and acids. The lesions on his arms
  and legs frightened her. So did his desperate, ragged
  breath pattern. This went beyond the superficial in-
  juries and known diseases she was qualified to treat
  What they wanted was a doctor ... and there hap-
  pened to be one on board.
  Nancia flashed her images of Sev to Alpha's cabin.
  There was a cry of dismay, then a strangled sob. Fassa's
  voice, not Alpha's. Nancia realized that in her hurry,
  
  she'd transmitted the same display to all the passenger
  cabins. Already Darnell was cursing about the inter-
  ruption of his vid. She switched off the receptors from
  his cabin and displayed images of the other three
  prisoners so that she could watch their faces while she
  consulted with Alpha.
  "Dr. Hezra-Fong," Nancia said formally, "we have just
  brought aboard a prisoner with the severe injuries you
  see. I fear Ganglidde poisoning. Can you treat him?"
  PARTNERSHIP
  249
  "That's not Ganglicide," Alpha said confidently.
  "Minor acid burns, that's all. But there may be some
  lung damage. I can't be sure from these vids. And with
  the location of those bruises, I'm worried about kidney
  damage and internal bleeding. Transport him to the
  medtech center. I'll have a look."
  She was cool and quick and competent; Nancia ad-
  mired those qualities unwillingly. But could she be
  trusted with Sev's health?
  Alpha pushed on the dosed cabin door and turned
  back to the sensor port. Her fine, sharp-featured face
  was pinched with annoyance. "FN-935,1 cannot diag-
  nose and treat this man by remote control! If you're
  interested in his health, I strongly suggest you open
  this door and allow me to do my job!"
  But what else would she do? Nancia wondered.
  "Let me go with her," Blaize suggested.
  "And me." Fassa's large eyes were filled with tears.
  Acting, or desperation? There was scant time to
  dedde.
  Nanda instinctively trusted Blaize, but she wasn't
  sure how reliable he might be. He tended to go along
  with the majority. And if she let both Fassa and Blaize
  out with Alpha, the prisoners would be the majority
  among the softpersons.
  And whatever Fassa's crimes, Nancia somehow
  doubted that she would do anything to hurt Sev
  Bryley-Sorensen. Not after the scenes she had wit-
  nessed between them. Not after she'd watched Fassa
  sink into a depression between Bahati and Shemali,
  convinced that Sev had deserted her and that she
  would never see him again.
  "Fassa del Parma y Polo will accompany and assist
  Dr. Hezra-Fong," Nancia announced with a mental
  prayer that she was making the right decision.
  While the two women raced down the corridor to meet
  
  Forister and Micaya at the lift, Nancia slowly opened her
  250
  Anne McCaffrey &1 Margaret Ball
  lower cargo doors six inches. The silver-suited guard
  who stood outside had his fist raised to bang on the door,
  he lowered it now, but aimed his nerve cttsruptor into
  what he could see of the cargo bay.
  "And what can I do for you?" Nancia asked icily.
  "Drone OG-48, you are harboring an escaped
  prisoner," the guard said. "Return him to our custody
  now, or it'll be die worse for you. Your owner won't ap-
  prove this, you know."
  Nancia managed an icy laugh that chilled her own
  sensors. "This is not a drone. You'll meet us in good
  time. As for that diseased bundle of rags that begged
  entrance, it has been disposed of appropriately. It
  looked as if it had Capellan jungle rot and Altair
  plague #  not to mention Old Earth lice. Did you think
  we'd leave something like that cluttering up this nice
  dean ship?"
  "Don't try to lie to me," the guard warned. "This
  ship has been under surveillance from the moment of
  landing. The prisoner has not left the ship."
  "Who said anything about leaving? There are its
  clothes #  if you can call those rags clothes," Nancia
  added disparagingly. She slid the cargo doors open
  another ten inches, just enough to let the guard
  squeeze in edgewise. "And here's the rest of your
  fugitive." She opened the disposal slot and extruded
  the contents. A pitiful little heap of organic ash, par-
  tially burnt protein, and charred bone fragments
  spilled out onto the tray. The guard stepped back,
  every line of his body expressing horror. Nancia
  wished she could see his face behind the silver per-
  mafilm and the finely woven breath mesh.
  "What's the matter?" she inquired. "He was dying
  anyway, you know."
  The guard stumbled towards the doors, making
  retching sounds behind his mask. "I thought de
  Gras-Waldheim was a cold one," he said between
  PARTNERSHIP
  251
  gagging noises, "but you OG Shipping types are
  worse yet."
  Nantia's last and most spine-chilling laugh followed
  
  him out onto the landing pad.
  "Don't you want to take the remains back?" she
  called after him.
  She slammed the cargo doors shut before he
  could answer, just in case he overcame his distaste
  and came back for the "remains." It would never do
  to let a lab get hold of the synthesized "bone" and
  algal-protein "flesh" that she had first created, then
  charred in the incinerator.
  PARTNERSHIP
  253
  "  CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  "Stimpad! Drug stores!" Alpha snapped over her
  shoulder. Nancia silently extruded die required
  equipment from her medtech drawers. Alpha's slim
  dark fingers darted among the ampules supplied and
  loaded the pad with a combination of drugs. Nancia
  recognized a general nervous stimulant, a breathing
  regulator, and at least two kinds of anesthetic.
  "Er #  are you sure those will work all right in com-
  bination?" she asked apologetically. Alpha was the
  doctor. But Nancia had been rigorously trained in the
  minor first aid and holding techniques she might ex-
  pect to need until she could get an ailing brawn or
  passenger to a clinic; and one thing her instructor had
  been very, very firm about was the danger of unex-
  pected side-effects from mixing two or more drugs.
  "You wanted an expert," Alpha snapped, "you got
  one. I've got to stabilize his condition before I can treat
  the superficial lesions and check for internal damage.
  This should keep him breathing ... if anything will.
  We haven'ta lot of time to waste, you know."
  Quietly, Fassa del Parma slid between Alpha and
  Sev's unconscious body, now prone on the padded ex-
  amining bench that slid out of one wall in the narrow
  medtech chamber. "If the combination is harmless,"
  she said, "try it on me first"
  "Don't be silly," Alpha sneered, "you've less than
  half his body mass. You'll be out of it for two days if I
  give you the same dose I've prepared for Bryley!"
  "Then just use half the stimpad," Fassa suggested.
  She pulled one sleeve down over her shoulder, expos-
  ing an expanse of creamy white skin, naked and vul-
  nerable. "Here. I won't move. But I want to see a
  demonstration before you stick anything into... Sev."
  She gulped on his name, but otherwise her com-
  posure was unbroken.
  
  Nancia, who alone had the luxury of viewing the
  scene from several angles, thought she saw Sev's
  eyelids flutter at the sound of Fassa's voice. Neither of
  the young women noticed; they were too intent on one
  another. From the door, Micaya Questar-Benn
  watched in concern. Behind her, Forister glanced up
  at one of Nantia's hall sensors. "Time to intervene?"
  he mouthed soundlessly.
  "Wait a minute," Nancia whispered back, the merest
  thread of sound.
  Alpha stared at Fassa's calm face and the exposed
  shoulder she was offering. Her own face worked
  angrily. "1 ought to take you up on it," she said, "you
  interfering dolt. Always were soft on men, weren't
  you? All right, then!" She tossed the loaded stimpad in
  the general direction of a disposal chute; Nancia ex-
  tended the chute's wing-edges and caught the thing
  before it slid down into the recycling chamber. She
  wanted to have an independent lab analyze the first
  mix when they got to a civilized planet
  Alpha prepared a second stimpad loaded with nodi-
  ing more than a common stimulant. "Happier with
  this?" she asked the air, brows raised sarcastically.
  "Yes, thank you," said Nancia and Fassa simul-
  taneously. But Fassa still insisted that Alpha inject her
  with a sample of each medication she used to treat Sev.
  "You're a fool," Alpha muttered, too low for General
  Questar-Benn to hear; Nancia had to amplify her audio
  sensors to catch the thread of speech. Alpha bent over Sev
  as she spoke, swabbing widi short vicious strokes at die acid
  sores on his arms and legs. "He was in bad enough
  shape... ifhe'd never waked up, there' d be that much less
  254
  AsmeMcCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  evidence against you and me both. Do you fed that grate-
  ful to him for doing his best to put you in prison?"
  "I've already killed once," Fassa said. "That's
  enough for me. What's that?"
  "Antibiotic spray. Relax," Alpha told her. "We had
  our chance to get rid of some evidence, you blew it, it's
  too late now. Got that freak of a general and the old
  fert brawn peering over our shoulders, ready to slap
  me with a malpractice suit on top of everything else.
  I'll do my best to patch your detective up for you #
  and my best," she added with simple pride that was
  quite undiminished by her criminal record, "my best,
  Fassa dear, is very good indeed."
  It was, too. Within the hour Sev was reclining on pil-
  lows, sipping camtea loaded with so much sugar and
  
  chalker that it was hardly recognizable, and explaining
  to Forister and Micaya the extent of what he'd un-
  covered on Shemali and why he'd been in such
  desperate straits when Nancia landed.
  "I made a few mistakes," he admitted with a
  grimace. "Disguising myself as a prisoner on an in-
  coming transport seemed like the only way to slip onto
  Shemali unnoticed. It worked, too. But there were a
  few things I hadn't counted on after that."
  Sev had expected his faked "prison" records, show-
  ing expertise in metachip mathematics and computer
  network operation, to earn him a prison job some-
  where in the administration, where he'd have a chance
  to poke around in Polyon's records and find what he
  was looking for. The position he was assigned to
  looked promising #  but as soon as he started his
  search, everything had gone wrong.
  "Ah #  you didn't say exacdy what you were looking
  for on ShemaU," Forister hinted courteously.
  Sev took a long gulp of his scalding camtea,
  coughed, gasped, and lay back looking a little weaker.
  "Not important. Important thing is, more going on
  PARTNERSHIP
  255
  than you can guess from outside. Don't have it all
  myself... but enough...."
  Polyon's entire computer system was laced with
  coded traps and alarms; the first time Sev tried to ac-
  cess secure data, Polyon and his trusties were alerted
  and caught him in the act before he'd more than
  downloaded a handful of innocuous records. Sev then
  showed them his Central Worlds pass and explained
  that he was on an investigative mission having nothing
  to do with Polyon or Shemali.
  "They didn't believe me," he sighed. "Even though
  it happened to be true."
  "Then what were you doing?" Micaya Questar-Benn
  demanded.
  "Later." Sev went on with his story. The trusties had
  beaten him up, stripped him, located and disabled the
  thin sliver of spyderplate which he'd meant to use as a
  distress beacon to Nancia in case he got into trouble.
  "Those things are supposed to start emitting an all-fre-
  quencies distress signal hooking into the Net if they're
  damaged," Sev complained. "So at first I wasn't too
  worried. But then when you didn't come, and it got to
  be two days, I thought I might be on my own."
  "De Gras-Waldheim must know some way to disable
  
  them," Forister nodded.
  "Reasonable," Nancia put in from the speaker. "He
  invented them. They're essentially single-purpose
  hyperchips #  and nobody knows more about hyper-
  chips than Polyon."
  Sev's next discovery was that Polyon had stepped up
  the new plants' production of hyperchips by ignoring all
  safety precautions. Sent to the hyperchip burnoff lines,
  where prisoners' life expectancy amid the clouds of
  nerve-destroying gas could be measured in days rather
  than years, Sev had resolved to make a break for freedom
  when the first ship touched down on Shemali #  espe-
  cially when he recognized the slim lines of Nancia's
  256
  Anne McCaffrey Gf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  257
  Courier Service hull behind the disguising frieze of OG
  Shipping logos and mauve stripes. The escape hadn't
  been too difficult; all the other prisoners had been ter-
  rorized out of even thinking about escape, and the
  guards were lazy and careless and unwilling to spend
  much time in the burnoffrooms.
  "And besides," finished Forister with a grin, "nobody
  would expect a prisoner on the run to go to an OG
  Shipping drone for help. Nancia, your paint job has
  served us well. I don't suppose you'd consider keeping
  it after this is over?"
  "Most certainly not!" Nancia told him. "And it
  wouldn't work, anyway. When we've finished in the
  Nyota system, there won't be any more OG Shipping.
  But# what do we do now?"
  SeVs story had demonstrated enough irregularities to
  justify arresting Polyon twice over. But he was just one
  man, with no datacordings or comp uter records to exhibit
  in proofofhis story. If they took Polyon away now without
  making sure of their evidence, Sev predicted that Shemali
  would be cleaned up by the time they got back.
  "Impossible," said Forister with feeling.
  Sev nodded weakly. "Not the planet's surface, I
  grant you. But you can be sure there'll be nothing in-
  side the factories for an investigative committee to
  quarrel with. It'll all be clean assembly lines, strict
  safety features."
  "And the prisoners who've already been damaged
  by exposure to acids and gases?"
  
  "I don't think," said Sev somberly, "that any of them
  will be able to testify by that time."
  "Then we'll have to go down now and get the
  evidence," Forister said.
  Sev shook his head. "Won't work. He's clever #
  there's a VIP tour arranged #  the disfigured
  prisoners and the dangerous work lines are all kept
  well out of sight. Mostly at the secondary plants hidden
  backplanet I know how to find one of the worst plants.
  I was there. But without me, he'll whisk you from one
  end of the central prison factory to the other, and you
  won't see anything, and every time you try to turn
  around there'll be six guards in your way. I'll have to
  go with you." He tried to raise himself from the pil-
  \ows, started coughing and fell back again.
  "You can't!" Fassa exclaimed.
  "May have to," said Micaya Questar-Benn. "Duty."
  She and Sev nodded at one another. "You two, she
  jerked her head at Fassa and Alpha #  back to your
  cabins now. Nothing to do with you #  shouldn't have
  let you hear this much."
  "Wait!" Fassa cried as Forister took her by the arm.
  "There has to be another way. It won't work, taking
  Sev with you, can't you see that? Even if he were
  stronger, the sight of his face will warn Polyon at once
  that there's something wrong. None of you# none of
  us will get away alive."
  "Oh, come now," said Forister gendy. "Your friend
  can't be that dangerous."
  Fassa's face hardened. "If you don't believe me, ask
  the others. Alpha?"
  Alpha bint Hezra-Fong nodded once, reluctandy.
  Fassa looked up at the room sensor. "Nancia, can
  you connect us with Blaize and Darnell? Just for a
  moment?"
  Both men agreed with Fassa's assessment of the
  situation.
  "Then whatom we do?" Forister demanded. "Damn
  it, I'm not going to turn tail and run off-planet for fear
  of some spoiled High Families brat who's got hold of
  some dangerous toys!"
  "I think," Fassa said slowly, "that you're going to use
  me." She was very pale. "Take Alpha back to her cabin,
  and I'll explain what I think we can do." She looked
  apologetically at Alpha.
  258
  
  Anne McCaffrey &f Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  259
  "Traitor! When Polyon finds out# "
  Fassa's lips were pinched. She was not pretty at all
  now. But she was almost beautiful, in a cold remote
  way. "I'll have to take that chance, won't I?"
  "Better you than me," Alpha said. She turned to go.
  "All right. Lock me up. I don't even want to hear this
  plan. Maybe he won't hold it against me, if I'm not
  even here when you discuss it." She didn't sound too
  hopeful of that.
  When Fassa explained her plan, there was a brief silence
  while Forister,NanciaandMicaya all thoughtit over.
  "You think he'll fell for it?" Forister queried.
  "He thinks Nancia is an OG drone," Fassa pointed
  out "He believes her passengers cremated Sev for
  being a nuisance; if he hadn't swallowed that story,
  believe me, we'd be hearing from him by now." She
  gave them a strained smile. "Murderers in the escort of
  OG shipping #  what better credentials could you
  have? And with me to front the introductions# "
  "I won't let you!" Sev said hoarsely.
  "Fassa stays on board Nancia," Micaya interrupted.
  "That's understood." She looked at the girl. "No of-
  fense, Fassa. But from the ship, we can monitor what
  you say. And I think you'd better wear these." She bent
  over briefly, fiddled with the prosthesis replacing her
  left leg, and straightened with two lengths of shining,
  thread-fine wire. "Hold out your wrists."
  Fassa obeyed and Micaya encircled each wrist with a
  length of the wire. Where she twisted the ends shut,
  the wires seemed to collapse and seal invisibly upon
  themselves.
  "Tanglefield? Is that really necessary?"
  Micaya nodded. "Security measure, no more. Field
  won't be activated unless we run into trouble on
  Shemali. Clear, Nancia?"
  "Affirmed."
  Micaya touched her synthetic arm. "I've got a port-
  able tanglefield generator built in here," she told
  Forister. "Might come in handy on Shemali. Want
  some wires?"
  
  Forister took a handful of the gleaming wires and
  regarded them dubiously. "I prefer to solve my
  problems more elegandy than this."
  "Me, too." Micaya tugged her dark green pants leg
  down over the prosthesis. "Isn't always possible,
  though. Everybody tells me there'll be terrible political
  complications if we harm a hair on the head of this
  High Families brat. So ..." She patted her prosthetic
  leg again and straightened. "I've stashed the needier.
  Agree with you, taking him out straightaway would be
  simpler, but you insisted on doing this by the book."
  "That wasn't," Forister said, "quite what I meant by
  an elegant solution."
  Micaya regarded him with a hint of amusement on
  her solemn, dark face. "Know it. Usually is the most
  'elegant' way, though. Leave little tyrants to run loose,
  they grow up into big tyrants. Then you get the Capel-
  lan mess, or something like. Wars," she pointed out,
  "aren't elegant." She nodded once to Fassa, by way of
  apology. "Understand, not accusing you of treachery,
  just not taking chances. Want you to be warned #  "
  "That a secret signal to Polyon will do me more
  harm than good," Fassa finished calmly. "You don't
  trust me. That's all right. / wouldn't trust me, either."
  She was white to the lips now, and her hands were
  shaking, but she led the way from the medtech room
  without pausing.
  Nancia could see that Sev was fretting enough to
  damage himself by trying to go after them, so she
  switched displays to give him visual and auditory sen-
  sor taps to the main cabin.
  Fassa was still pale when Nancia initiated the signal se-
  quence that would open a comm link with planetside
  authorities, but she managed the promised introduc-
  260
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  tions with perfect composure. For Polyon's benefit
  Forister and Micaya became Forrest Perez and Qualia
  Benton, a pair of potential hyperchip customers with
  cash to invest in the operation. She hinted delicately that
  "Qualia Benton" was really a high-ranking general from
  Central, and Micaya started forward to stop her. Forister
  laid one hand on Micaya's arm. "Trust the young lady,
  Mic," he murmured. "She has #  er #  more experience
  in this sort of thing than you or I."
  So it proved. Far from being alarmed by Micaya's
  military standing, Polyon accepted her presence with
  Fassa, on an OG ship, as proof that she was as corrupt
  
  as his friends. And he was clearly delighted to have
  made the contact. Within minutes he was arranging to
  meet Fassa's "friends" and give them a tour of the
  newest hyperchip plant
  "I don't know why, but Polyon's always been eager to
  get more hyperchips sold to the military," Fassa told the
  others after she cut the contact. "It's not the money,
  either; he offered Space Academy a cut rate once, but the
  Ration Board stopped him. 1 knew your rank would be
  the thing to draw him in, Micaya. A back door into the
  military supply system is Polyon's dream."
  "I suppose he wants to impress his old teachers and
  classmates by making sure they all use his inventions,"
  Forister surmised.
  Nancia was confused. "But surely he doesn't
  imagine that selling hyperchips on the black market is
  the way to high standing in the Academy?"
  AU three softpersons laughed tolerandy, and Nancia
  heard a weak chuckle from the sensor link to the med-
  tech cabin where Sev rested. "Investigate the sources of a
  few High Families fortunes some time, Nancia," Sev
  recommended to her. "Money washes dean of most any
  taint# and more rapidly than you'd believe possible."
  "Not," Nancia said, "in the Academy. And not in
  House Perez y de Gras, either."
  PARTNERSHIP
  261
  Nancia fussed over Forister and Micaya until the last
  minute, fitting them out with contact buttons,
  spyderplates, and every other remote protection device
  she could think of. "I don't know what good you think
  this will do," Forister complained. "De Gras-Waldheim
  disabled Sev's spyderplate without alerting anybody,
  didn'the?"
  "Sev didn't have me monitoring him," Nancia
  pointed out.
  She should have confined Fassa to her cabin before
  the other two left, but she didn't have the heart to.
  "Somebody should stay with Sev," Fassa pleaded.
  "Oh, let the child stay with him," Forister put in unex-
  pectedly. "She's not worth much as a hostage anyway. If
  even half of what Sev told us about the hyperchip factory
  conditions is true, Polyon de Gras-Waldheim is a mur-
  derer a dozen times over who'd think nothing of
  sacrificing a ship full ofhis former friends."
  Fassa nodded. "Yes, that's about right. Except #  I
  wouldn't say he'd 'think nothing of it.' He'd probably
  enjoy it."
  
  "Why didn't any of you tell us about Polyon before
  this?" Nancia demanded. "You were all babbling your
  stupid heads off, pointing the finger at one another to
  get some credit for your own plea bargains, and you
  never warned us about Polyon."
  "Afraid to," Fassa said sadly.
  "So afraid that you let Sev go off to Shemali without
  a word of warning? I'd never have let him go un-
  monitored if I'd guessed."
  "I didn't know Sev had gone to Shemali," Fassa
  defended herself. "Nobody told me anything. I didn't
  even know he wasn't on board when we left Bahati. All
  I knew was that he didn't come to see me again, and I
  thought, I thought... and quite right, too; why should
  he bother with someone like me?" Tears filled her
  eyes; Nancia thought that for once they were genuine.
  262
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  "Fassa del Parma, you are a prime idiot!" Sev's
  weary, hoarse whisper startled all of them; Nancia had
  forgotten that she'd left the connections between the
  main cabin and the medtech room wide open. "Get in
  here and hold my hand and smooth my fevered brow.
  I'm an injured man. I need attention."
  "Call Alpha. She's a doctor," Fassa gulped.
  "I wantyou. Now are you coming, or do I have to get
  up and get you?"
  Fassa fled. And Nancia watched, satisfied, and feel-
  ing only a little bit like an eavesdropper, as she burst
  through the door of the medtech room. Hadn't Sev
  given her explicit instructions to keep full sensors
  open whenever he was with Fassa del Parma?
  Those two were too wrapped up in each other for
  Fassa to pose any danger to anybody. All the same, Nan-
  cia kept those sensors open while she concentrated most
  of her attention on the images and sounds coming in
  from Pollster's and Micaya's contact buttons. Polyon was
  losing no time; he'd met them on the landing field in a
  flyer that swooped directly to the newest hyperchip
  production facility, a squat featureless building set in a
  valley that might have been beautiful before Polyon's
  construction teams sliced through the earth and the
  waste products from his factory killed off the trees. Now
  the building stood alone at the top of a sloping hill ringed
  round by stagnant, poisonous-looking waters and the
  broken stumps of dead trees. Nancia felt her sensors con-
  tracting in repulsion at the image.
  "General, can you handle this flyer?" she mur-
  
  mured through Micaya's contact button.
  "I'm glad to see you have such up-to-date equip-
  ment, de Gras," Micaya said loudly for Nancia's
  benefit. "I tested the prototype versions of this flyer
  recently, but I had no idea the model was in general
  distribution already."
  Good. Micaya would be able to bring the three of
  PARTNERSHIP
  263
  them back. Nancia listened in on Sev's and Fassa's con-
  versation while Polyon landed the flyer and took
  Forister and Micaya into the factory.
  "You think too much," Sev was saying firmly to
  Fassa." I meant what I told you before, and I still mean
  it. You idiot, I went to Sheniali on your account!"
  "On my account?" Fassa echoed, sounding as if she
  was unable to think at all.
  Sev nodded." Here I'd been pacing Nancia's corridors
  every night, trying to think out a way to save you, and
  then Darnell gave me a due. He said you'd contracted to
  build a hyperchip factory for Polyon, and that when the
  original building collapsed you replaced it free of charge.
  I thought if I could prove that, your lawyer might argue
  that you never intended to do substandard work# that
  any problems with your buildings were the result of in-
  competence, of sending a young girl to manage a
  business she was unfamiliar with #  and that he could
  prove it by demonstrating how willingly you'd made res-
  titution when a problem was brought to your attention.'
  Fassa smiled through her tears. "If s a lovely, lovely ar-
  gument, Sev. Unfortunately, not a word of that is true, I
  am," said Fassa, "or rather, I was an extremely competent
  contractor." She sniffed. "Damn Daddy. He accidentally
  sent me into a business I had a real talent for."
  "That being the case," said Sev softly, "why the hell
  couldn't you just be a contractor, instead of slinking
  around in those dresses that kept falling off your
  shoulders and driving middle-aged men crazy?"
  Fassa's face hardened. "Ask Daddy." She tried to
  turn away, but Sev had hold of both her hands.
  "I guessed some time ago," he said. "And ... I've
  been checking old gossipbytes. Was that why your
  mother killed herself?"
  Fassa nodded. Tears were streaming down her face
  unchecked. "Well, then. You won't want to have any-
  thing more to do with me. I understand. I'm not, I'm
  264
  
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Batt
  not... it's not just Daddy, you know. There've been all
  those other men...." She gulped down a sob.
  For a man who'd been on the verge of collapse a few
  hours earlier, Sev demonstrated remarkable powers of
  recovery. Nancia was impressed by the strength with
  which he drew Fassa into his arms against her resis-
  tance. "You," he said deliberately, "are the woman I
  love, and nothing that happened before today matters
  in the slightest to me." He paused for a moment and
  Nancia blacked out her visual sensors. She didn't real-
  ly think that the requirements of surveillance on Fassa
  included watching Sev Bryley-Sorenson kiss her as
  desperately as a man in vacuum gasping for oxygen.
  On Shemali, Micaya Questar-Benn had finally per-
  suaded Polyon to drop die sanitized V.I.E tour of his
  factory. She didn't believe he could produce enough hy-
  perchips to satisfy her requirements, she told him, and
  what was more, she didn't believe he would be able to ex-
  tend the factory's production fast enough for her. The
  safety requirements mandated by the Trade Commission
  simply took too long to set up and maintain.
  Polyon suggested that the Trade Commission could,
  collectively, do something anatomically impossible for
  the individual members. And if the General wanted to
  see just how fast he could turn out hyperchips, he
  added, she and her friend could just follow him.
  They'd have to wear protective gear, though, he said,
  struggling into a silverdoth suit himself as he spoke.
  While Micaya and Forister put on the suits provided
  for guests, Micaya commented innocently that the cost of
  suiting up an entire production line of prisoners must be
  prohibitive, and that she didn't see how they maintained
  the dexterity necessary for the assembly process while
  working from inside the bulky silvercloth gloves.
  Polyon chuckled and agreed that the difficulties
  posed were enormous.
  PARTNERSHIP
  265
  On board, Sev and Fassa were talking again; Nancia
  discreetly tuned in to their conversation, but there
  wasn't much in it to require her attention. Fassa was
  gloomy about the prospect of years in prison. Sev
  wasn't any too cheerful about it himself, but he as-
  sured Fassa that he'd wait for her.
  "I don't think they let murderers out," Fassa said.
  "Unless they decide to mindwipe me."
  "Fassa, you are not a murderer. Caleb isn't dead."
  
  Fassa's slender body became quite still. "He isn't?"
  "You were right," Sev said. "Nobody tells you any-
  thing. He isn't dead. He isn't even seriously iU; he was
  in therapy for nerve damage when I left Bahati."
  "Latest bulletins from Summer-lands say that he
  should recover full function quite soon and will
  probably be restored to active brawn status within the
  next few weeks," Nancia confirmed.
  Sev and Fassa broke apart and looked up at the
  overhead speaker.
  "Nancia!" Sev exclaimed. "I didn't know you were
  listening."
  "You gave me the orders yourself," Nancia
  reminded him.
  "Oh. Well." Sev thought. "Can I cancel the orders?
  Will you obey me if I do?"
  "I really shouldn't."
  "Lock the door on us both," Sev suggested. "I don't
  mind. But please, could we have some privacy now?
  This voyage back to Central is likely to be my last
  chance to be alone with my girl for a long, long time."
  Fassa looked ridiculously happy for someone feeing
  trial and a stiff prison sentence. Nancia left them to it.
  She didn't have much to occupy her on Shemali,
  either. Micaya and Forister hadn't waited to take the
  full tour of the hyperchip assembly line; a few images
  266
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  of prisoners working unshielded with skin-destroying
  acids, in rooms that leaked poisonous gas, were all the
  evidence they needed to bolster Sev's detailed
  eyewitness testimony. The datacordings were par-
  ticularly damning when accompanied, as they were,
  by Polyon's pleasant, cultured voice explaining just
  how he had cut costs and speeded up production by
  condemning the prisoners in his care to lingering,
  painful deaths by industrial poisoning. By the time
  Nancia had scanned those images, Micaya had already
  slapped tanglewires around Polyon's wrists, ankles,
  and even his neck. With die ankle field activated, she
  read him the formal statement of arrest
  "You can't do this!" Polyon protested. "Do you know
  who I am? I'm a de Gras-Waldheim. And I have Gover-
  nor Lyautey's approval for everything I've done here!"
  
  "My brainship has already transmitted a request for
  drug testing on Lyautey and all other civilian personnel,''
  Forister told him. "I suspected Blissto when I heard your
  spaceport controller talking. What did you do, make ad-
  dicts of anybody who could blow the whistle on you?"
  ""You can't arrest me" Polyon repeated as though he
  hadn't understood a word.
  Micaya Questar-Benn had a smile that would have
  chilled steel to the snapping point. "Want to bet, son?
  Walk in front of me. Slowly, now. Wouldn't want the
  tanglefield to think you're trying to escape and cut off
  your feet; it's too quick and easy a death for your sort"
  And when Polyon opened his mouth again, she activated
  the extended tanglefield from the neck wire to keep him
  from flapping his tongue about any more.
  As they left the assembly lines, a ragged cheer went
  up from the prisoners behind them.
  "  CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  To Polyon's shock and amazement, the cyborg freak
  and her partner actually managed to convince Gover-
  nor Lyautey that they were entitled to arrest a de
  Gras-Waldheim and take him away. "Convince" was
  probably too strong a word. Polyon recognized with
  rueful amusement that he'd been caught in his own
  trap. The governor, like all the civilians left on
  Shemali, was constantly dosed with Alpha bint Hezra-
  Fongs Seductron. Since Lyautey was in a nonessential
  job, Polyon kept his maintenance level of Seductron so
  high that the governor did little but nod amiably and
  agree with whoever spoke to him last
  Somebody must have figured that out and thought
  of this way to use it against him. With his mouth
  covered by tanglefield, Polyon could do nothing but
  listen while this Micaya Questar-Benn and her partner
  rattled off official-sounding words, flourished their
  forged credentials #  they had to be forged# and took
  him away in the very flyer he himself had sent to pick
  them up at the spaceport
  They considerately removed the tanglefield from
  his mouth as soon as the flyer took off. Polyon main-
  tained a dignified silence during the short flyer hop
  back to the spaceport, but his brain was working
  furiously. He refused to believe that this "arrest' was
  real Real Central agents had their own transport, they
  didn't hitch a ride on an OG cruiser or get a conniving
  little whore like Fassa del Parma to front for them. This
  had to be some trick cooked up by Darnell and Fassa to
  get control of the hyperchips. He had no intention of
  268
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  
  giving them or their friends the amusement of seeing
  him struggle and protest. Later, when he'd figured out
  their game, he would turn the tables and make them
  squirm. Darnell would be easy to break, but Fassa...
  he smiled unpleasantly at the thought of exacdy how
  he'd take the pride out of her. He'd never yet
  threatened Fassa physically. Maybe it was time to start
  Then, as the flyer came gently down on the landing
  pad, he blinked and saw the ship for a moment sil-
  houetted against the bright sky, only sleek lines and
  smooth design, without the contusing detail of the OG
  colors and logo, and he knew where he'd seen a ship
  like that before.
  "Courier Service," he groaned, and for the first time
  he began to believe that he was really under arrest
  "Got it in one," said the spare, quiet man who'd
  accompanied General Questar-Benn, offering Polyon
  his hand to help him to the ground. "Time I intro-
  duced myself. Forister Armonttllado y Medoc, brawn
  totheFN-935.M
  "Kftt a brawn, old man?" Polyon sneered. TU believe
  that when I see it!" He refused the offer of the steadying
  hand and swung himself out of the flyer, feet together,
  hands in front of him, still with athletic grace. Even widi
  his hands and feet constrained in tanglefields, he still had
  his strength and his natural balance.
  "You'll not have to wait long," Forister replied mild-
  ly. "I'll introduce you to my Brainship as soon as we're
  aboard."
  Polyon maintained a grim silence while these two
  escorted him to the ship's lift, up to the passenger level
  and down a depressing mauve-painted corridor to the
  cabin where he was to be confined. Once there, he
  leaned against the wall and waited. The brawn Forister
  and the cyborg Micaya withdrew, leaving him still con-
  fined in the double tanglefield about wrists and ankles.
  "Wait!" he cried out "Aren't you going to #  "
  PARTNERSHIP
  269
  The door irised shut behind them with a series of
  dicks along the concentric rings, and a moment later a
  sweet female voice spoke from the overhead speaker.
  "Welcome aboard the FN-935," she #  it #  said. "I
  am Nancia, the brainship of this partnering. Your ar-
  rest is legal under Central Code #  " and she reeled off
  paragraphs and statute references that meant nothing
  to Polyon. "As a prisoner awaiting trial on capital
  crimes, you may legally be confined by tanglefield for
  the duration of the voyage, which will be
  approximately two weeks. General Questar-Benn has
  
  transferred the tanglefield control function to my
  computer; if you will give me your word not to attempt
  damage to me or to your fellow passengers, I will
  release the tanglefield now and allow you the freedom
  of your cabin."
  Polyon glanced over the narrow space and laughed
  sardonically. "You have my word," he said. Words
  were cheap enough.
  As soon as he spoke the electronic field ceased
  vibrating. His wrists and ankles prickled with return-
  ing life; an uncomfortable sensation, but far, fer better
  than being electronically bound hand and foot for the
  next two weeks.
  The brainship blathered on with threats about
  sleepgas and other restraints that could be applied if
  he gave it any trouble; Polyon didn't bother to listen.
  He had too much to think about Besides, he didn't in-
  tend to do anything the brainship could see. He wasn't
  that stupid.
  Unobtrusively, under cover of flexing his wrists to
  restore full movement, he patted his breast pocket and
  felt the reassuring lump right where it should be,
  where he always carried a minihedron with the latest
  test version of his master program. He was clever,
  Polyon thought. Too clever by half for this pair to
  master for long.
  270
  Anne McCaffrey 6f Margaret Batt
  Oh, he'd make some trouble for this interfering
  brainship and its doddering brawn, all right, just as
  soon as he got the chance. But it wasn't trouble that
  they would be able to see or hear coming, and there
  wouldn't be a damned thing they could do about it
  once he'd started. Damn them! He wasn't ready for
  this; he was still two to three years short of having
  everything in place. How much would it cost him to
  make his planned move ahead of schedule?
  Impossible to calculate; he'd just have to go ahead
  and find out later. Whatever the cost, it couldn't be as
  great as that of going tamely back to Central for trial
  and imprisonment. It had always been a gamble,
  Polyon comforted himself. He'd always known that
  one day somebody might figure out about the hyper-
  chips, and that he'd have to move fast if that occurred,
  At least now, even if the move was being forced on
  him, it was forced by some ignoramuses who didn't
  even guess how he might retaliate. He would have the
  advantage of surprise on his side.
  If only he'd had time to implement Final Phase!
  
  Then he could have started everything right now, with
  a spoken word of command. As it was, he'd have to get
  this minihedron into a reader slot before he could
  make his move.
  There weren't any reader slots in this cabin; and he
  was supposed to be confined here until they reached
  Central; and if he tried to break out of the cabin, the
  damned brainship would drop him with sleepgas or a
  tanglefield before he got to any place with reader slots.
  Polyon bared his teeth briefly. He did love a chal-
  lenge. He still had his voice, and his wits, and his
  charm, and sensor contact with the brainship and her
  brawn. He set to work with those tools to dig himself
  an impalpable tunnel to freedom, placing each word
  and each request as carefully as a miner shoring up
  the loose earth in the tunnel roof.
  PARTNERSHIP
  271
  In die long dragging hours until they reached the Sin-
  gularity point for transition into Central subspaoe, there
  wasn't much to do but play games or read. Forister and
  Micaya began another tri-chess contest; Nancia obliging-
  ly created the holocube for them and maintained a
  record of the moves, but warned them that some of the
  game data might be lost if she needed to call on that par-
  ticular set of coprocessors during Singularity.
  "That's all right," Forister said absently. "Mic and I
  have been interrupted by all sorts of things in our
  time. Aren't you partnering me, then?"
  "I don't think I'd better," Nancia replied with real
  regret. "I think I should monitor our passengers.
  They've been allowed a great deal of freedom, you
  know."
  Micaya snorted. "Freedom! They're free to move
  within their cabins, that's all. Granted, I wouldn't cut
  'em that much slack, but#
  "That," said Forister, "is why you keep having politi-
  cal problems. You never cut the High Families any
  slack, and they resent it."
  "Shouldn't," said Micaya. "I'm one of them."
  "That doesn't help," Forister said, almost sadly.
  "Anyway, Mic, you're not seriously worried about a
  ship's mutiny?"
  "From those spoiled brats?" Micaya snorted. "Ha!
  Even that de Gras boy, for all the others were so scared
  of him, trotted aboard like a little lamb. No, there's not
  a one of them has the brains #  saving your Blaize,
  maybe #  or the guts to try anything, now that we've
  
  cut off their special deals."
  "Blaize wouldn't try anything," Forister said sharply.
  "He's a good boy."
  Micaya patted Forister's arm. "I know, I know. Con-
  vinced me. But he did rip off PTA, And what's worse to
  my mind #  he didn't speak up about the others. Have
  272
  Anne McCaffrey &f Afargaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  273
  to answer for that, though it's less, all told, than the rest
  of this precious crew have to stand trial for."
  "I understand," Forister said glumly.
  Sev Bryley-Sorenson stretched out his long legs.
  "Think I'll work out for a while," he announced to no
  one in particular.
  Tfoud think it was him going back for trial, to look at
  the long face on the boy," Micaya commented as Sev
  whisked himself down the corridor to the exercise room.
  "Can't be much fun," Forister said gently, "being in
  love with a girl who's likely to be unavailable for the
  next fifty Standard Years. And he doesn't have much
  to take his mind off it. He's not the type for tri-chess."
  "Not bright enough, you mean. True," said Micaya
  with a trace of complacency. "And too bright for that
  silly game the prisoners are playing. Doesn't leave him
  much, you're right."
  "Do you really have to monitor the prisoners all the
  time, Nancia?" Forister looked at her column with the
  smile that always melted her best resolutions. "Surely
  they'll do no damage while they're all wrapped up in
  that idiotic game. And if you think it's unfair to Micaya
  for you to partner me ... we could play three-
  handed?"
  Nancia had to concentrate a litde harder for this dis-
  play, but after a moment of intense processing the
  holocube shimmered, twisted, danced around its central
  core and reformed as a holohex, with three separate
  triple rows of pieces formed at opposing edges.
  And in his cabin, Polyon de Gras-Waldheim stopped
  listening to the conversation in the central cabin and
  rejoined the SPACED OUT game that was currently
  helping his fellow prisoners to forget their troubles.
  Persuading Nancia to open the comm system so that
  the five of diem could play from their cabins had been
  
  his first move. Now, at least, he could talk to the otbers.
  But he hadn't dared say anything beyond standard
  game moves while Nancia was conscientiously
  monitoring them.
  The display screen showed that three of the game
  characters had managed to lose themselves in the Troll
  Tunnels. Polyon's own game icon was still at the mouth
  of the tunnels, awaiting a command from him." I know
  how we can get out of the tunnels," he said.
  "How? I've tried every exit the system shows.
  They're all blocked," Alpha complained.
  "There's a secret key," Polyon told her. "I have it
  But I can't get to the door it unlocks from here."
  "I never heard anything about a secret key," Darnell
  announced. "I think you're bluffing." His game icon
  bounced angrily back along one of the Troll Tunnels,
  spitting sparks as it went.
  "You wouldn't," Polyon said smoothly. "I'm the
  game master. This secret key can even override your
  character, Fassa."
  Fassa had taken the Brainship icon for this game.
  "I don't see how," Fassa responded. "Show me?"
  "I told you. I can't get to where I can use it. If any of
  you can get me out of this blind alley, though #  "
  "You're not in a blind alley!" Darnell interrupted.
  "You're standing right at the entrance to the Troll Tun-
  nels! Why don't you move your icon on into the
  tunnels?"
  "And get lost like the rest of you? No, thanks."
  Polyon waved his hand over the palmpad and shut off
  the bickering voices of the gamesters. He brooded in
  silence for a while. Why had he ever bothered with
  such an inept bunch of conspirators? They were too
  stupid to pick up on his veiled hints. They thought he
  was interested in playing a game \
  Blaize, now; Blaize was brighter than the others,
  and he'd taken no pan in the brief exchange. Polyon
  tapped out a series of commands that would give him a
  private comm link to Blaize's cabin. At least he could
  274
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  hack into Nancia's system to that extent from the key.
  board; though it was nothing to the power that would
  be his once he'd made his way to a reader slot with his
  minihedron.
  While he thought out his approach to Blaize, he was
  
  startled by a crackle of sound. The idiot thought he'd
  achieved a private channel to the lounge! And what
  was he planning to do with it? Polyon scowled, then
  began to listen attentively. It seemed that Blaize was
  too bright to make a good tool.
  But he might still be an excellent pawn, in a game
  whose moves he'd never see....
  "Uncle Forister?" Blaize switched comm channels to
  the lounge. "I need to talk to you."
  "Talk," Forister grunted. He was just putting the
  final touches to a truly beautiful strategy, designed to
  pit Micaya's and Nancia's Brainship pieces against one
  another while he moved unopposed to control all ver-
  tices of the holohex.
  "Privately."
  "Oh, all right." Forister got up and stretched. "Nan-
  cia, can you store the holohex until I get back? I
  wouldn't want to tire you by asking you to maintain
  the display while we're not actually playing."
  Nancia chuckled. "You mean you don't want to
  leave the holohex set up where we can study the posi-
  tions and figure out what nasty trap you're getting
  ready to spring on us this time."
  "Well..."
  The holohex folded in upon itself and became a sheet,
  a line, a point of dazzling blue light that then winked out
  of existence. "All right. We're approaching the Sin-
  gularity point, anyway; I really shouldn't be playing
  games now. Need to check my math," Nancia said cheer-
  fully. "Be sure and get back in time to strap yourself in.
  You softpersons get so disoriented in Singularity."
  PARTNERSHIP
  275
  "And you shellpersons get so uppity about it,"
  Forister retorted. "All right. You'll warn us in plenty of
  time, I assume?"
  "And monitor you while you're in die cabin," Nancia
  said. "Don't look like that; it's for Blaize's protection as
  well as yours. If you're left alone with him, the
  prosecution might try to discredit your testimony, say
  you'd been bribed or suborned."
  "They won't have much respect for his uncle's good
  word anyway," said Forister gloomily, going on down
  the passageway to find out what Blaize had in mind.
  Nancia triggered the release mechanism on the door
  just long enough for him to slide dirough.
  
  "I think Polyon's planning something," Blaize said
  as soon as Forister entered the cabin. He sat at the
  cabin console, one hand quivering over the palmpad
  without actually starting a program., all red-headed
  intensity like a fox at a rabbit hole.
  "What?1
  "I don't know. He wants to get out of his cabin. He
  keeps telling us that he can fix everything if only he could
  get out for a few minutes. Listen!" Blaize ran the heel of
  his hand over the palmpad and brought up a datacord-
  ing of the last few transmissions between the SPACED
  OUT gamesters. From the cabin console he couldn't ac-
  cess enough memory to store images as well as voices; the
  players' words crackled out through the speaker, disem-
  bodied and robbed of half their meaning. Forister
  listened to the recorded exchange and shook his head.
  ^Just sounds like a few more moves in that dumb
  game of yours to me, Blaize."
  "It's a move in a game, all right," Blaize said grimly,
  "but he's not playing the same game as the rest of us.
  Damn! I wish I'd been able to capture the images and
  the icon moves too. Then you'd see,"
  "See what?"
  "That what Polyon was saying made absolutely no
  276
  Anne McCaffrey fef Margaret, Ball
  sense in the context of the actual game moves." Blaize
  dropped his hands in his lap and looked up at Forister.
  "Can Nancia keep Polyon under sleepgas until we
  reach Central?"
  "She can," Forister replied, "but I've yet to see any
  reason why she should. This case is going to have all the
  High Families buzzing like uprooted stingherbs as it is;
  it'll only be worse if we give them some excuse to allege
  mistreatment of prisoners."
  "But you heard him!"
  "Didn't make any sense to me," Forister allowed,
  "but nothing about that silly game makes sense, in my
  humble opinion. Come on, Blaize. Can you seriously
  see me explaining to some High Court judge that I
  kept a prisoner stunned and unconscious for two solid
  weeks because something he said in the course of a
  children's game made me nervous?"
  "I suppose not," Blaize agreed. "But #  you'll be
  careful?"
  "I am always careful," Forister told him.
  "And #  I don't think you should talk to him. The
  man's dangerous."
  
  "1 know you four are scared of him," Forister agreed,
  "but I think that's because you've been away from
  Central too long. He's nothing but an arrogant brat who
  was given more power than was good for hun. Like some
  other people I could name. Now if you'll excuse me, it's
  nearly time to strap down for Singularity."
  He nodded at the wall sensors and Nancia silently
  slid the door open for him.
  Once he was in the passageway again, she spoke in a
  low voice.
  "Polyon de Gras-Waldheim requests the favor of a
  private interview."
  "He does, does he! And I suppose you think I ought
  to take Blaize's warning seriously, and insist on having
  Micaya as a bodyguard before I talk to him?"
  PARTNERSHIP
  277
  "I think you're reasonably able to look after your-
  self" Nancia said, "especially with me listening in. It's
  not as if you were piloting a dumbship. But there's not
  much time; I'll be entering the first decomposition se-
  quence in a few minutes.'1
  "All the better," said Forister. "I won't have to spend
  too long with him. I'll talk with him until you sound
  the Singularity warning bell, if that's all right. Can't do
  much less. Visited Blaize #  have to visit any of the
  others who request it."
  When Forister entered, Polyon was lying on his
  bunk, arms folded behind his head. He turned at the
  soft sound of the sliding door, jumped to his feet and
  brought his heels together with a military precision
  that Forister found almost annoying.
  "Sir!"
  "I'm not," Forister said mildly, "your superior of-
  ficer. You needn't click your heels and salute. You
  wanted to tell me something?"
  "I #  yes #  no #  I think not," Polyon said. His blue
  eyes looked haunted; he pushed a wayward strand of
  golden hair back from his forehead. "I thought #  but
  he was my friend; I can't do it. Even to shorten my own
  sentence #  no, it's impossible. I'm sorry to have dis-
  turbed you for nothing, sir."
  "I think," Forister said gendy, "you'd better tell me all
  about it, my boy." It was hard to reconcile the haunted
  creature before him with the monster who'd made
  Shemali prison into a living hell. Perhaps Polyon had
  
  some explanation he wished to proffer, some story about
  others who'd conceived the vicious factory system?
  It took him a good five minutes of gentling Polyon's
  overactive sense of honor, all the time listening
  anxiously for the Singularity warning bell, before he
  coaxed the boy into letting out a name.
  "It's Blaize," Polyon said miserably at last. "Your
  nephew. I'm so sorry, sir. But #  well, while we were
  278
  AmneMcCaffrey & Margate Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  279
  playing SPACED OUT he was boasting to me of how
  he'd pulled the wool over your eyes, convinced you he
  was innocent of any wrongdoing #  "
  "Not quite," said Forister. He spoke very evenly to con-
  trol the twist of pain that squeezed his chest "He did sdl
  PTA shipments on the black market That's wrongdoing,
  in my book, and hell be tried for it on Central"
  Polyon nodded. His look of suffering had not abated.
  "Yes, he said that was the story he'd given you. Then I
  thought# if you didn't know #  perhaps I could trade
  the information for a reduction in my own sentence."
  "What information?" Forister asked sharply.
  Polyon shook his head. "Never mind. It doesn't mat-
  ter. I've enough on my conscience already," he said,
  raising his head and staring at the wall with a look of
  noble resignation that Forister found intensely irritat-
  ing. "I won't compound my crimes by informing on a
  friend. It's all on this minihedron# well, never mind."
  "What," asked Forister with the last vestiges of his
  patience, "what exactly is supposed to be on the mini-
  hedron?'' He stared at the faceted black shape Polyon
  held in his hand, dark and baleful like the eye of an
  alien god.
  "The true records of how Blaize made his fortune,"
  Polyon said. "It's all there #  he thought he'd con-
  cealed his tracks, but there were enough Net links for
  me to find the records. I'm very good with computers,
  you know," he said with a boy's naive pride. "But when
  I begged him to tell you the truth, he laughed at me.
  Said he had you convinced of his innocence and he
  saw no reason to change the situation. That was when
  I thought #  but no," Polyon said, averting his face as
  he thrust out the minihedron towards Forister, "I don't
  want any favors."
  
  Forister felt as queasy as though they had already
  entered Singularity. Was this why Blaize had tried so
  hard to keep him from talking to Polyon? He'd wanted
  to keep Polyon drugged and unconscious until they
  reached Central; he'd had that silly story about Polyon
  using the SPACED OUT game as a cover for some land
  of plot But what good would it do to keep Polyon from
  talking for two weeks, when his evidence #  whatever
  it might be# would come out anyway at the trial?
  Just# you take this. Read it once. Then keep it safe
  #  or wipe it if you want to," Polyon said,"/ don't care.
  I just wanted to hand it over to #  to somebody
  honorable." His voice broke slighdy on the last word,
  and Forister thought there was a gleam of moisture in
  the corners of his eyes. "God knows, I can scarcely
  claim that for myself. You take it. You'll know what to
  do with the information."
  "What is it?"
  Polyon shook his head again. "I don't #  I can't tell
  you. Go and read it in privacy. Just drop it into any of
  the ship's reader slots and have a look at the informa-
  tion. Then I'll leave it up to you to decide what should
  be done. And I don't," he said, almost savagely, "I don't
  want to profit from it, do you understand? Say you got
  it from somebody else. Or don't say where you got it
  Or destroy it. Do what you want #  it's off my con-
  science now, at any rate!"
  He dropped back onto the bunk and buried his
  head in his arms. Overhead, the silvery chime of the
  first warning bell sounded. "Five minutes to Sin-
  gularity," Nancia announced. "All passengers, please
  fie down or seat yourselves and secure free-fall straps.
  Tablets for Singularity sickness are available in all
  cabins; if you think you may be adversely affected by
  the transition, please medicate yourself now. Five
  minutes to Singularity."
  Polyon fumbled without looking up, caught his
  free-fall strap and buckled it around himself. "Sin-
  gularity," he said bitterly, "doesn't make me sick. But
  what's on that minihedron does."
  280
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  Forister left the cabin with a sparkling black mini-
  hedron clutched in his hand, the facets cutting into his
  palms, his head awhirl with doubts.
  "What a magnificent acting job!" Nancia com-
  mented with a low laugh.
  "You think Polyon was lying?"
  "I'm certain of it," she told him. "You know Polyon.
  You know Blaize. Is it credible for an instant that Blake
  could have committed crimes that would turn Polyon's
  
  stomach?"
  "I #  don't know," Forister groaned. He dropped
  into the pilot's chair and stared unseeing at the console
  before him. Micaya Questar-Benn tactfully pretended
  to polish the gleaming buckle on her uniform belt.
  "Up to now, I'd have said #  but I'm biased, you
  know."
  "Well, I'm not," Nancia said decisively. "I don't know
  what Polyon's going on about, but whatever it is, I
  don't believe a word of it"
  Forister laughed weakly. "You're biased too, dear
  Nancia." He stared at the sparkling surface of the
  minihedron, the polished opaque facets that gave
  nothing away, and sighed deeply. "I suppose I had bet-
  ter find out what this is."
  "Can't it wait until after Singularity?" Nancia said,
  but too late. Forister had already dropped the
  datahedron into the reader slot. Automatically, her
  mind already on the vortex of mathematical transfor-
  mations ahead, Nancia absorbed the contents of the
  minihedron into memory. Something strange there,
  not like ordinary words, more like a tickle at the back
  of her head or an improperly positioned synaptic
  connector #
  She rode the whirlwind down into Singularity, balanc-
  ing and coasting along constantly changing equations
  that defined the collapsing walls of the vortex.
  Something was wrong; she sensed it even before she
  PARTNERSHIP
  281
  lost her grasp on the mathematical transformations.
  She had never experienced a transition like this one.
  What was happening? Sounds as slimy as decaying
  weed whispered and snickered in her ears; colors
  beyond the edges of human perception rasped at her
  like fingernails being drawn over a blackboard. The
  balance of salts and fluids surrounding her shrunken
  human body swirled crazily, and a dozen alarm sys-
  tems went off at once: Overload! Overload! Overload!
  She couldn't optimize the path; spaces decomposed
  around her and shot off in an infinity of different
  recompositions, expanding in every path to lights and
  chaos that could tear her apart. The hyperchip-
  enhanced mathematics coprocessors returned
  gibberish. Her brain waves were strung out on the
  grid of a multi-dimensional matrix. Something was
  trying to invert the matrix. No computations matched
  previous results, and all directions held danger.
  Nancia shut down all processing at once. The grat-
  
  ing colors and stinking noises receded. She hung in
  blackness, refusing her own sensory inputs, balanced
  on the point of Singularity where decomposing sub-
  spaces intersected, with no way forward and no way
  back.
  PARTNERSHIP
  283
  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  Polyon was pacing the narrow space of his cabin, too
  impatient to strap himself in for Singularity, waiting
  for some sign that Forister had taken the bait, when
  the air shimmered and thickened around him.
  He opened his mouth to curse his luck. The ship
  had entered Singularity before that thick-headed
  brawn ambled to a reader slot
  The air distorted into glassy waves, then became al-
  most too thin to breathe. The cabin walls and
  furnishings receded to specks in the distance, then
  swam around him, huge menacing free-flowing
  shapes. Polyon's curses became a comical growl en-
  ding in a squeak.
  Damn Singularity! There was no chance that
  Forister would drop the datahedron into a reader now,
  he'd be safely strapped into his pilot's chair like a good
  little brawn. By now, too, the ship's reader slots would
  probably be shut down for Singularity #  and even if
  by some miracle he could persuade Nantia to accept
  the hedron, he still would not be able to enter the Net
  until the transformations were over and they had
  returned to normal space. No, he would have to wait
  until after the subspace transformation to implement
  Final Phase #  and this transformation would bring
  the brainship into Central subspace, close to all the aid
  that Central Worlds and their innumerable fleets
  could give.
  He reminded himself that this made no difference
  whatsoever. The basic nature of the gamble remained
  the same. Either his plan had advanced far enough to
  succeed despite the way they were forcing his hand, or
  jt hadn't. If it had, then the fleets of Central would be
  obedient to him and not to their former masters. If it
  hadn't #  well, then, annihilation would be a little
  quicker than if he'd moved from the remote spaces
  around Nyota, that was all.
  He had only to sit and wait. And waiting out a single
  transformation through Singularity should be noth-
  ing to him. He had already spent patient years waiting
  on Shemali, planting his seeds, watching them grow,
  seeding the universe, ever since he had the flash of
  brilliance which at once conceived the hyperchip
  
  design and saw how it could be twisted to his own ends.
  But this waiting was harder than all those years in
  which he had at least been doing something to further
  those ends; and it seemed longer; and there was some-
  thing disturbing about this particular ship's
  decomposition. Singularity wasn't supposed to be this
  bad. Polyon breathed and gagged on a sickly swirl of
  colors and smells and textures, looked down at the
  wavering distortions of his own limbs and closed his
  eyes momentarily. That was a mistake; Singularity
  sickness heaved through his guts. What was the mat-
  ter? He'd been through plenty of decompositions
  during his Academy training, not to mention passing
  through this very same Singularity point on die way
  out to Vega subspace. Had he so completely lost con-
  ditioning in the five years on Shemali, to be gagging
  and puking like any new recruit now?
  No. Something else was wrong. This decomposition
  was lasting too long. And some of the visual distortions
  looked oddly familiar. Polyon fixed his eyes on one small
  sector of the cabin, where braces supporting an extruded
  shelf formed a simple dosed curve of permalloy and plas-
  Ofilm. As he watched, the triangle ofbrace, waU and shelf
  elongated to a needle-shape with one thin eye, stretched
  out into an open eye as big as the wall, squeezed into a
  284
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  285
  rotating pinpoint of light with absolute blackness at its
  center, and opened again into the original triangle.
  Needle, eye, pinpoint, triangle; needle, eye, pinpoint, tri-
  angle. They were caught in a subspace loop, perpetually
  decomposing and reforming in a sequence which
  preserved topological properties but which made no
  progress towards the escape sequence leading to Central
  subspace.
  A loop like that couldn't have happened, shouldn't
  have happened, unless the ship's processors had shut
  down. Or #  a wild hope tantalized him #  unless the
  ship's processors were too busy with some other prob-
  lem to navigate them out of Singularity.
  A problem like assimilating a worm program which
  would turn over all control to a single user, effectively
  cutting the brain off from her own body and its
  processing.
  Polyon swallowed his unspoken curses and plunged
  across the cabin. He had some trouble locating the
  palmpad and holding his hand steady over it, but even-
  tually he managed to match his shrinking and bending
  
  arm with the erratic loop of the ballooning palmpad. He
  slapped the surface twice. "Voice control mode!"
  His own voice boomed oddly in his ears, the
  soundwaves distorted by the perpetual twisting of space
  around him, but evidently there was something un-
  changing in the voice patterns which his worm program
  still recognized. "Voice control acknowledged," an un-
  dulant voice boomed and twittered from the speakers.
  "Unlock this cabin door." The first time the words
  came out as an unrecognizable squeak; the next,
  something close to his normal speaking voice emerged
  and the computer acknowledged the command. But
  nothing happened. A moment later the quavering
  vocal signal of the program responded with a shrill
  squeak that gradually became a groaning boom.
  "Unable to identify designated entity."
  Polyon was beginning to catch on to the rhythm of
  the subspace loop. If he kept his eyes fixed on any
  known point, like the triangle of shelf and wall and
  brace, he could recognize when they were passing
  through the decomposition closest to normal space. If
  he spoke then, residual subspace transformations still
  distorted his voice, but at least the computer could
  recognize and accept his orders.
  He waited and spoke when the moment was right
  "Identify this cabin."
  Lights flashed on the cabin control panel, rose and
  fluttered like fireflies trailing the liquid surface of the
  panel, swam into elongated hieroglyphics of an un-
  known language, and sank back into the panel's
  surface to become a pattern signaling failure.
  "No such routine found."
  Polyon cursed under his breath, and the subspace
  transformation loop twisted his words into a grating
  snarl. Something was wrong with his worm program.
  Somehow it had foiled to complete its takeover of the
  ship's computer functions.
  "General unlock," he snapped on the next loop
  through normal space.
  His cabin door irised halfway open, then screeched
  and wobbled back and forth as die smooth internal
  glides had jammed on something. Polyon dove
  through, misjudged distances and clearance in the
  perpetual liquid shifting of the transformations, crack-
  ed a solid elbow on the very solid edge of the half-open
  door, landed on a bed of shifting sand, rolled, and
  found his feet in what was again, briefly, the solid pas-
  sageway outside the cabin.
  
  "Out! Everybody out!" The loop stretched his last
  word into a howl. At least it got their atterUwn. A green slug
  oozed through one of the other doors and became Dar-
  nell, vomiting. Farther away, Blaize's red head blazed
  under lights that kept changing from electric blue to ar-
  >86
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  287
  ificial sun to deepest shadow. Fassa was a china dol]
  vhite and neat and compact and perfect, but as the loop
  >rogressed she grew to her normal stature.
  "What's happening?" The loop snatched away her
  vords, but Polyon read her lips before the next phase
  itretched them into rubber. He waited for the next
  lormal-space pass.
  "Get Alpha. Don't want to have to explain twice."
  Fassa nodded #  Polyon thought it was a nod #  and
  lucked into the cabin nearest hers. Darnell quivered
  md resumed his form as a giant green slug. The pas
  lageway elongated into a tunnel with Blaize at the far
  ;nd, somehow aloof from the group.
  Fassa reappeared, shaking her head. "She won't move.
  [ #  " She was bright, Fassa del Parma was; in rnid-sen-
  :ence, as space shifted around her, she waited until the
  lext normspace pass to complete her sentence."#  think
  ihe'stoo frightened, rmscared too. What's# "
  Polyon didn't have time to waste listening to obvious
  questions. When the next normspace passed through
  Iiem, he was ready to seize the moment. "I'm taking
  >ver the ship, is what's happening," he said over the
  ail-end of Fassa's question. "Any function on this ship
  iiat uses my hyperchips is under my command now.
  Fhe reason# "
  Shift, stretch, contract, waver, back to normal for a
  few seconds.
  " #  for this long transition is that the ship's brain is
  nonfunctional, can't get us out of Singularity."
  Darnell wailed and vomited more loudly than
  sefore, drowning out Polyon's next words and wasting
  rtie rest of that normspace pass. Polyon waited, one
  rooted foot contracting as he tapped it, stretching and
  looping over itself like a snake, then deflating again
  into the normal form of a regulation Academy boot.
  "I can pilot us out of Singularity," he announced.
  'But I need to be at the control console. May have
  
  some trouble there. You'll have to help me take out the
  brawn and the cyborg.M
  "Why should we?" Blaize demanded.
  Polyon smiled. "Afterwards," he said gently, "I won't
  forget who my friends are."
  "What good #  " Darnell, predictably, wanted to
  know, but the transformation loop washed away his
  question. And when normspace came round again,
  Blaize was closer to the rest of them; close enough to
  answer for Polyon.
  "What good will his favor do? Quite a lot, I should
  imagine. It's not just the hyperchips on this ship, is it,
  Polyon? All the hyperchips Shemali has been turning
  out so fast have the same basic flaw, donft they?"
  "I wouldn't," said Polyon, "necessarily define it as a
  flaw. But you're right. Once we're out of Singularity
  and ready to access the Net again, this ship's computer
  will broadcast Final Phase to every hyperchip ever in-
  stalled. Ill have #  "
  They'd all caught on to the rhythm of the transfor-
  mation loop by now; the wait through three distorted
  subspaces was becoming part of normal conversation-
  al style.
  " #  control of the universe," he finished on the
  next pass through normspace. Blaize had come
  closer yet; stupid little runt, trying to move during
  transformations.
  "And we'll be your loyal lieutenants?" Blaize asked.
  "I know how to reward service," Polyon said non-
  committally. Into a GangUdde vat with you, troublemaker,
  as soon as I have the power.
  "Not if I know it," Blaize mouthed as normspace slid
  away into the first distortion. He swung a fist at Polyon,
  but before it landed his hand had shrunk to the size of
  a walnut, and on the next dip through normspace
  Polyon was ready for him with a return blow that sent
  Blaize to the deck. By the time he landed, it was soft as
  288
  Ame McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  289
  quicksand, a pool in which Blaize swirled, too dizzy to
  rise immediately.
  "Stop me," Polyon said to the other two as
  
  normspace passed through, "and you die here, in Sin-
  gularity, because nobody else can get us out of it. Try to
  stop me and fail," and he smiled again, very sweetly,
  "and you'll wish you had died here. Are you with me?"
  Before they could answer, a new element entered
  the game; a hissing cloud of gas, invisible in
  normspace, clearly delineated as a pink-rimmed flood
  of rosy light in the first transformational space. It en-
  gulfed Blaize and he stopped twitching, lay like one
  dead in the yielding transformations of the deck.
  Sleepgas. And he couldn't shout through the loop to
  warn them. Polyon clapped both hands over his
  mouth and nose, saw that Fassa did the same, jerked
  his head towards the central cabin. That door too was
  half open. He made for it, staggering through mud
  and quicksand, swimming through air gone thick as
  water, lungs aching and burning for a breath. Fell
  through, someone pushing behind him, Fassa, and
  Darnell after her. Forget Blaize, the traitor, and Alpha,
  by now sleepgassed in her cabin. Polyon gasped and
  with his first burning breath called, "General lock!"
  The control cabin door irised shut with a strange jerky
  motion, as if it were fighting its own mechanism, and
  Polyon found his feet and surveyed his new territory.
  Not bad. The only passenger he'd been seriously
  worried about was Sev Bryley-Sorensen. But Bryley
  wasn't here. Good. He was locked out, then, with
  Alpha and Blaize; probably sleepgassed, like them.
  The other two were bent over their consoles, probably
  still trying to figure out why doors were opening and
  closing without their command, trying to flood the
  passenger areas with sleepgas #  well, they'd suc-
  ceeded there, but much good it would do them nowl
  Through the transitions he saw them turning in their
  seats, open mouths stretching like taSy in the second
  subspace, then shrinking to round dots in the third.
  Normspace showed the cyborg freak making a move
  that wasn't part of the transformation illusion, right
  arm darting towards her belt. Polyon snapped out a
  command and the freak's prosthetic arm and leg
  danced in their sockets, twisting away from the joining
  point; her flesh-and-blood torso followed the agoniz-
  ing pull of the synthetic limbs and she rotated half out
  of her seat. Another command, and the prostheses
  dropped lifeless and heavy to the floor, dragging the
  body down with them. Her head cracked against the
  support pillar under the seat Polyon stepped forward
  to take the needier before she recovered. Space
  stretched away from him, but his arm stretched with it,
  and the solid heavy feel of the needier reassured him
  that his fingers, even if they momentarily resembled
  tentacles, had firm hold of die weapon.
  With the next normspace pass he was erect again,
  holding the needier on Forister. "Over there." With a
  
  jerk of his head he indicated the central column. Some-
  where behind there the brain of the ship floated widiin a
  titanium shell, a shrunken malformed body kept alive by
  tubes and wires and nutrient systems, Polyon shuddered
  at the thought; he'd never understood why Central in-
  sisted on keeping these monsters alive, even giving them
  responsible positions diat could have been filled by real
  people like himself. Well, the brain would be mad by now,
  between sense deprivation and the stimuli he'd ordered
  its own hyperchips to throw at it; killing it would be a
  merciful release. And it would be appropriate to kill the
  brawn at die foot of the column.
  But not yet. Polyon was all too aware that he didn't
  know everything there was to know about navigating a
  brainship. He would need full support from both
  computers and brawn if he was to get them out of this
  transition loop alive.
  290
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  291
  He studied the needier controls, spun the wheel
  with his thumb, glanced at Darnell and Fassa. Which
  of them dared he trust? Neither, for choice; well, then.
  which was more afraid of him? Fassa had been show
  ing an uppity streak, asking him questions when sht
  should have been listening. Darnell was still green-
  faced but appeared to be through vomiting. Polyoi.
  tossed him the needier; it floated through normspact
  and Darnell caught it reflexively just before the transi
  tion shrunk it to a gleaming line of permalloy.
  "If either of them makes a move," Polyon said
  pleasantly, "needle them. I've set it to kill... slowly.'
  In fact he'd left the needier as Micaya had it, set &
  deliver  a   paralyzing  but  not  lethal  dose  of
  paravenin; but there was no need to reassure his
  captives overmuch. "Now ..." He removed hi
  uniform jacket, draped it neatly over the swivelsesi
  where Micaya had been sitting, and sat down i:,
  Forister's chair before the command console. Trans;
  tions exaggerated the slight flourish of his wrist -
  into a great ballooning gesture, spun out his sleeve
  into white clouds of fabric that floated over an ;
  dwarfed the other occupants of the cabin.
  "What do you think you're doing?" Forister criec
  His voice squeaked through the fourth transitio
  space and fell with a thud on the last word.
  Polyon smiled. He could see his own teeth and ha:
  gleaming, white and gold, in the mirror-bright pane.
  "I," he said gently, "am going to get us out of Sir
  gularity. Don't you think it's time somebody did it?"
  
  His reflection narrowed, gave him a squashed fee
  like a bug, dulled the bright gold of his hair and turne :
  his teeth to green rotting stumps. The control pan<
  shrank under his hands, then swelled and heaved lit
  a storm-tossed sea. As normspace approached Polyo
  darted in, tapping out one set of staccato commanc
  with his right hand, passing the left over the palmpa
  to call up Nancia's mathematics coprocessors, rattling
  out the verbal commands that would bring the whole
  ship around, responsive to his commands and ready to
  sail the subspaces out of this Singularity.
  She was sluggish as any water-going vessel lacking a
  rudder and taking in water, half the engines obeying
  bis commands, the other half canceling them. The
  mathematics co-processors came online and then dis-
  appeared before he'd entered the necessary
  calculations, shrieking gibberish and sliding away in a
  jumble of meaningless symbols. The moment of
  normspace passed and Polyon ground his teeth in
  frustration. In the second transformation the teeth felt
  like squishy, rotting vegetables inside his mouth, then
  in the third they became needles that drew blood, and
  by the time normspace returned he had learned not to
  give way to emotion.
  He made two more attempts at controlling the ship,
  waited out three complete transition loops, before he
  pushed the pilot's chair back from the control panel
  "Your brainship is fighting me," he told Forister on
  the next pass through normspace.
  "Good for her!" Forister raised his voice slightly.
  "Nancia, girl, can you hear me? Keep it up!"
  "Don't be a fool, Forister," Polyon said tiredly. "If
  your brainship were conscious and coherent, she'd
  have brought us out of Singularity herself."
  He used the remaining seconds in normspace to tap
  out one more command. The singing tones of
  Nancia's access code rang through the room. Forister's
  face went gray. Then the transition spaces whirled
  about them, monstrously transforming the cabin and
  everything in it, and Polyon could not tell which of the
  distorted images before him showed the opening of
  Nancia's titanium column.
  On the next pass through normal space he saw that
  the column was still closed. Transition must have
  292
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball
  garbled the last sounds in the access sequence. He
  typed in the command again; again the musical tones
  
  rang out without their accompanying syllables; again
  nothing happened.
  "You'd better tell me the rest of the code," he said to
  Forister on the next normspace pass.
  Forister smiled #  briefly; something in the expres-
  sion reminded Polyon of his own ironic laughter.
  "What makes you think I have it, boy? The two parts
  are kept separate. I didn't even know how to access the
  tone sequence from Nancia's memory banks. The
  syllables probably aren't encoded in her at all; they'll
  be on file at Central."
  "Brawns are supposed to know the spoken half of
  the code," Polyon snapped in frustration.
  "I asked to have it changed just before this run,"
  Forister claimed. "Security reasons. With so many
  prisoners on board, I feared a takeover attempt# and
  with good reason, it seems."
  "I do hope you're lying," Polyon said. He clamped
  his mouth shut and waited through the transition
  loop, marshaling his arguments. "Because if Central's
  the only source for the rest of the code, we're all dead. I
  can't tap the Net and hack into the Courier Service
  database from Singularity #  and I can't get us out of
  Singularity without neutralizing the brain."
  "You mean, without killing Nanria," Forister said in
  a voice emptied of feeling. His eyes flickered once to
  the cabin consol. Polyon followed the man's gaze and
  felt a moment of fear. A delicate solido stood above the
  control panels, the image of a lovely young woman
  with an impish smile and clustering curls of red hair.
  Polyon had heard of brawns who developed an
  emotional fixation on their brainship, even to the
  point of having a solido made from the brainship's
  genotype that would show how the freakish body
  might have matured without its fatal defects. He
  PARTNERSHIP
  293
  hadn't guessed that Forister was the sentimental type,
  or that he'd have had time to grow so attached to Nan-
  da. The idiot might actually think that he'd rather die
  than kill his brainship.
  "There's no need to clutter the problem with
  emotionalism," Polyon told him. How could he jolt
  Forister out of his sentimental fixation? "With partial
  control of the ship to me and partial control to Nanria,
  neither of us can navigate out of Singularity.''
  Damn the transition loop! Forister had caught on to
  the rhythm by now; and the necessary wait while three
  
  distorted subspaces composed and decomposed
  around them gave him time to think.
  "I've a better suggestion," the brawn said. "You say
  you can navigate us out; well, we all know Nancia can.
  Restore full control to her, and #  "
  "And what? You'll drop charges, let me go back to
  running a prison factory? I've got a better career plan
  than that now."
  "I wasn't," said Forister mildly, "planning to make
  that offer."
  The rhythm of collapsing and composing subspaces
  was becoming natural to them all; the necessary
  pauses in their conversation no longer bothered
  Polyon.
  "I had something like your own offer in mind,"
  Forister continued at the next opportunity. "Release
  Nancia's hyperchip-enhanced computer systems, and
  she'll get us out of Singularity #  and you'll live.
  "How did you guess?"
  Forister looked surprised. "Logical deduction. You
  designed the hyperchips; you tricked me into running
  a program that did something peculiar to Nancia's
  computer systems; the failure reports I read just
  before you came in showed precisely the areas where
  she has had hyperchips installed, the lower deck sen-
  sors and the navigation system; you've since exercised
  294
  Anne McCaffrey SjMargxret Ball
  voice control on Micaya's hyperchip-enhanced pros-
  theses. Clearly your hyperchip design includes a back
  door by which you can personally control any installa-
  tion that uses your chips."
  "Clever," Polyon said. "But not clever enough to get
  you out of Singularity. I assure you I'm not going to re-
  store full computing power to a brainship who is
  probably mad by now."
  "What makes you think that?"
  Polyon raised his brows. "We all know what sensory
  deprivation does to shellpersons, Forister. Need I go
  into the details?"
  "Take more than a few minutes in the dark to upset
  my Nanda," Forister said levelly.
  Polyon bared his teeth. "By now, old man, she's had
  considerably more than that to deal with. The first
  thing my hyperchip worm does is to strike at any intel-
  
  ligence linked to the computers in which it finds itself
  The sensory barrage would make any human break
  the link at once. I'm afraid that 'your' Nancia, not
  being able to escape the link that way, will have gone
  quite mad by now. So #  I think# if you want to live#
  you'll tell me, now, the rest of the access code."
  "I think not," Forister said calmly. "You've made a
  fetal error in your calculations."
  The transition loop stifled all talk for the endless
  winding, looping moments of passage through shrink-
  ing and distorting spaces. Polyon ignored the sensory
  tricks of spatial transformations and thought furiously.
  When normspace returned, he reached up from his
  chair to grasp the solido of Nancia as a young woman.
  Deliberately, watching Forister's face, he dropped the
  solido on the deck and ground the fragile material to
  shards under his boot-heel.
  "That's what's left of 'your' Nancia, old man," he
  said. "Are you going to let your love for a woman who
  never lived kill us all?"
  PARTNERSHIP
  295
  Forister's face was lined with pain, but he spoke as
  evenly as always. "My #  feelings #  for Nancia have
  nothing to do with the matter. Your error is much
  more basic. You think I'd rather set you free with the
  universe in your control than die here in Singularity.
  This is incorrect."
  He spoke so calmly that it took Polyon a moment to
  understand the words, and in that moment die transi-
  tion loop warped the room and disguised the
  movements in it. When they passed through
  normspace again, Fassa del Parma was standing be-
  tween Forister and Darnell, as if she thought she could
  shield the brawn from a direct needier spray.
  "He's right," she said. "I didn't have time to think
  before. You're a monster."
  Polyon laughed without humor. "Fassa, dear, to
  righteous souls like Forister and General Questar-
  Benn we're all monsters. I should have remembered
  how you sucked up to them before, helping them trick
  me. Did you think that would save you? They'll use
  you and throw you away like your father did."
  Fassa went white and still as stone. "We don't all take
  such a simple-minded view of the universe," Forister
  said. "But, Fassa, you can't #  "
  Darnell's fingers were twitching. Polyon nodded.
  Slowly, too slowly, Darnell raised the needier. He gave
  Forister ample time to grasp Fassa by the shoulders
  
  and spin her out of danger. As Forister moved, the
  cabin seemed to lurch and the lights dimmed. Gravity
  fell to half-normal, then to nothing, and as Fassa spun
  into midair the reaction of Forister's thrust pushed
  him in the opposite direction. The spray of needles
  went wide, but one bright line on the for edge of the
  arc stung through Forister's sleeve and bloodied his
  wrist. The blood danced out across the cabin in bright
  droplets that the transition loop pulled out into bloody
  seas; Polyon watched a bubble the size of a small pond
  296
  Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret Ball
  float inexorably toward him, settle around him with a
  clammy grip, then shrink to a bright button-sized stain
  on his shut front.
  Fassa floated back to grasp Forister's flaccid body
  and cry, "Why did you do that? I wanted to save you!"
  "Wanted him #  to kill me," Forister breathed. The
  paravenin was fighting the contractions of his chest.
  "Without me #  no way to get Nancia's code. Trapped
  here, all of us #  better than letting him go? Forgive
  me?"
  "Death before dishonor." Polyon put a sneering
  spin on the words, letting the maudlin pair hear what
  he thought of such brave slogans. "And it will be death,
  too. See how the ship's systems are failing? What do   i
  you think will go next? Oxygen? Cabin pressure?"
  In the absence of direct commands, gravity and
  lighting should have been controlled by Nancia's "
  autonomic nervous functions. Forister groaned as the \
  meaning of this latest failure came through to him.
  "She's dying anyway. With or without your help,"
  Polyon drove the point home. "And you're not dead yet
  I lied to you. The needier was only set to paralyze.
  Now let's have the access code before Nancia stops
  breathing and kills us all."
  Forister shook his head with slow, painful twitches.
  "Come here, Fassa, dear," Polyon ordered.
  "No. I stay with him."
  "You don't really mean that," Polyon said pleasantly.
  "You know you're far too afraid of me. Remember
  those shoddy buildings you put up on Shemali? You
  replaced them free of charge, remember, and I didn't
  even have to do any of the interesting things we dis-
  cussed. But if I'd threaten you with flaying alive for
  cheating me over a factory, Fassa, just think for a mo-
  ment what I'll do to you for interfering with me now."
  
  The transition loop was almost a help; the pauses it
  forced gave Fassa time to consider her brave stand.
  PARTNERSHIP
  297
  Go on, Fassa," Forister urged when normal speech
  possible again. "You can't help me now, and I've
  no wish to see you hurt for my sake."
  Thank you for the information," Polyon said with a
  courteous bow. "Perhaps I'll try that next But I think
  we'll begin with an older and dearer friend for quick
  results. Darnell, bring the freak# no, 111 do it; you keep
  the needier on Fassa, just in case she gets any silly ideas."
  Holding onto the pilot's chair to keep himself in
  place, Polyon turned and aimed a loose kick at Micaya
  Questar-Benn. The cessation of ship's gravity had
  freed her of the artificially weighted prostheses that
  held her down, but the arm and leg were still flopping
  loose, free of her control. She was as good as a cripple
  #  she was a cripple, disgusting sight
  "I want Forister to get a good view of this," he told
  her politely. "Lock prostheses."
  This to the computer; a signal to the hyperchips
  clamped Micaya's artificial arm and leg together.
  "Lay a finger on Mic #  " Forister threatened, strug-
  gling vainly against the effects of the paravenin.
  "I won't need to," Polyon said with a brilliant smile.
  "I can do it all from here."
  A series of brisk verbal commands and typed-in
  codes caused the portion of the ship's computer that
  Polyon controlled to transmit new, overriding instruc-
  tions to the hyperchips controlling Micaya's internal
  organ replacements. The changes had the full dura-
  tion of a transition loop to take effect. When they
  returned to normspace, Micaya's face was colorless
  and beads of sweat dotted her forehead.
  "It's amazing how painful a few simple organic
  changes can be," Polyon commented gaily. "Little
  things like fiddling with the circulation, for instance.
  How's that hand, Mic, baby? Bothering you a bit?"
  "Come a little closer," Micaya invited him, "and find
  out" But now Polyon had drawn attention to her one
  298
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  
  299
  remaining hand; they could all see ho wit had changed
  color. The fingernails were almost black, the skin was
  purplish and swollen.
  "Keep it like that for a week," Polyon said, "and
  she'll have a glorious case of gangrene. Of course, we
  don't have a week. I could trap even more blood in the
  hand and burst the veins, but that might kill her too
  fast. So I'll just leave it like that while you think it over,
  Forister, and maybe we'll start working on the foot as
  well. Fortunately, the heart's one of her cyborg re-
  placements, so we don't have to worry about it failing
  under the increased demands; it'll go on working . . .
  as long as I want it to. Want to hear how well it works
  now?"
  A word of command amplified the sound of
  Micaya's artificial heart beating vehemently, the pulse
  rate going up to support the demands Polyon was
  making on the rest of her system. The desperate,
  ragged double beat echoed through the cabin, droned
  and drummed and shrilled through a complete transi-
  tion loop, and no one spoke or moved.
  For a heartbeat, no more, Nantia found silence and
  darkness a welcome relief from the stabbing pain of
  the input from her rogue sensors. Is this what Sin-
  gularity is like for softpersons? But no, it was worse than
  that. In the confused moments before she shut down
  all conscious functions and disabled her own sensor
  connections, she had been aware of something much
  worse than the colorshifts and spatial distortions of
  Singularity; the malevolence of another mind, in-
  timately entwined with her own, striking at her with
  deliberate malice.
  He means to drive me mad. If I enable my sensors ogam, he'll
  bleak desperation of die thought came from somewhere
  iar back in her memories. When, how, had she ever felt
  so utterly abandoned before? Nantia reached out, un-
  thinking, to search her memory banks #  then stopped
  before die connection was complete. If sensors could be
  turned into weapons to use against her, could not
  memory, too, be infiltrated? Access the computer's
  memory banks, and she might find herself "knowing"
  whatever this other mind wanted her to believe.
  Is it another mind ? Or a part of myself? Perhaps Fm mad
  already, and this is the first symptom. The flashing, dis-
  orienting lights and garbled sounds, the sickening
  whirling sensations, even the conviction that she was
  under attack by another mind #  weren't all these
  symptoms of one of those Old Earth illnesses that had
  ravaged so many people before modern electrostim
  and drug therapy restored the balance of their tor-
  tured brains? Nancia longed to scan just one of the
  
  encyclopedia articles in her memory banks; but that
  resource was denied her for the moment. Paranoid
  schizophrenia, that was it; a splitting off of the mind
  from reality.
  Let's see, now #  she reasoned. IfTm mad, then it's safe to
  look up the symptoms and decide that I'm mad, except that
  presumably I won't accept the evidence. And ifTm not mad, I
  daren't check memory to prove it. So we'd better accept the
  working hypothesis that lam sane, and go on from there. The
  dry humor of the syllogism did something to restore
  her emotional balance. Although how long I will remain
  sane, urtder these circumstances...
  Better not to think about that. Better, too, not to
  remember Caleb's first partner, who had gone into irre-
  versible coma rather than face the emptiness that
  surrounded him after the synaptic connections between
  his shell and the outside world had been destroyed. As a
  matter of sanity, as well as survival, Nancia decided, she
  would make the assumption that somebody had done
  this to her, and concentrate on solving the puzzle of who
  had done it and how they could be stopped.
  300
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  PARTNERSHIP
  301
  A natural first step would be to reopen just one sen-
  sor, to examine the bursts of energy that had come so
  dose to disrupting her nervous system.... I can't! the
  child within her shrieked in near-panic. You can't make
  me, I won't, I won't, fUstay safe in here forever.
  That's not an option, Nancia told herself firmly. She
  wanted to say it aloud, to reassure herself with the
  sound of her own voice; but she was mute as well as
  deaf and blind and without sensation, floating in an
  absolute blackness. Somehow she had to conquer that
  panic within herself.
  Poetry sometimes helped. That Old Earth dramatist
  Sev and Fassa were so fond of quoting; she had plenty of
  his speeches stored in her memory banks. On such a night
  as this . . . Nancia reached unthinking for memory,
  stopped the impulse just in time. She didn't know that
  speech; she had stored it in memory. Quite a different
  thing. Try something else, then. Icouid be bounded in a nut-
  shell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that 1
  have bad dreams.... Not a good choice, under the cir-
  cumstances. Maybe ... did she know anything else?
  What was she, without her memory banks, her sensors,
  her powerful thrusting engines? Did she even existatall?
  That way lies madness. Of course she existed.
  Deliberately Nancia filled herself with her own true
  
  memories. Scooting around the Laboratory Schools
  corridors, playing Stall and Power-Seek with her
  friends. Acing the math finals, from Lobachevski
  Geometry up through Decomposition Topology, play-
  ing again, with all the wonderful space of numbers
  and planes and points to wander in. Voice training
  with Ser Vospatrian, the Lab Schools' drama teacher,
  who'd taught them to modulate their speaker-
  produced vocalizations through the full range of
  human speech with all its emotional overtones. That
  first day they'd all been shy and nervous, hating the
  recorded playbacks of their own tinny artificial voices;
  Vospatrian had made them recite limericks and non-
  sense poems until they broke down in giggles and
  forgot to be self-conscious. Goodness, she could still
  remember those silly poems with which he'd started
  off every session....
  And quite without thinking or calling on her artifi-
  cially augmented memory banks, Nancia was oft
  jjtfc
  !$"     The farmer's daughter had soft brown hair,
  ? ?     Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese,
  ' 1     And I met with a poem, I can't say where,
  Which wholly consisted of lines like these...."
  There was a young brainshxp of Vega.... "
  "Fhairson swore a feud against the clan MTavish;
  Marched into their land to murder and to rafish,
  for he did resolve to extirpate the vipers
  Withfour-and-twenty men andftue-and-thirty
  thirty pipers..."
  Nancia went through Ser Vospatrian's entire reper-
  toire until she was giggling internally and floating on
  the natural high of laughter-produced endorphins.
  Then, floating quite calmly in her blackness, she set
  about testing her sensor connections one by one.
  She got the mental equivalent of burned fingers and
  light-blinded eyes more than once during the testing
  process, but it wasn't as bad as she had feared. The
  lower-deck sensors were completely useless, as were
  her navigation computer and the new mathematics
  and graphics co-processors she'd just invested in.
  Everything, in fact, that contains hyperchipsfrom Shemati...
  and with that deduction, Nancia knew just who was
  striking at her and why.
  She opened the upper deck sensors one by one, first
  taking in the sleeping bodies tumbled in the pas-
  302
  
  Anne McCaffrey & Margaret BaU
  sageway and cabins. Sev, slumped over the isometric
  spring set in the exercise room with his hands and feet
  still in the springholders; Alpha, strapped in her cabin-
  Blaize, floating just above the passageway deck, with
  an angelic expression on his sleeping face and a nasty
  bruise coming up on his chin.
  Mutiny. And somebody released sleepgas. But which side}
  She opened the control cabin sensors slowly, cautious-
  ly. The port side sensors wavered and gave an erratic
  display. Somehow Polyon's hyperchips must be work-
  ing to contaminate the entire computer system. 2 don't
  have much time....
  Even less time than she'd thought, Nancia realized
  as she took in the standoff in the control room.
  General Questar-Benn disabled #  of course, the hyper-
  chips in her prostheses #  and Darnell holding her
  needier on a defiant Forister while Polyon sat in the
  pilot's chair and played his commands on the com-
  puter console. That, at least, she could do something
  about. Nancia struck back, sending her own com-
  mands to the computer, disabling the console section
  by section, garbling Polyon's commands as they came
  in. He tapped out a sequence she did not know; she
  traced it to its source and with shock recognized her
  own access code. The musical tones were already
  sounding in the cabin. But the accompanying syllables
  weren't stored in the same location.... They have to be
  somewhere, though. In some part of memory not accessible to
  my conscious probe. Otherwise my shell wouldn't recognvze
  and open to them. Nancia felt proud of herself for figur-
  ing that out, then cold and sick as she wondered how
  long it would take Polyon to make the same deduction.
  And if the syllables aren't where lean consciously retrieve
  them, how can I block Polyon against doing so ?
  She felt queasy from the repeated looping through
  four decomposition spaces, but there was no safe way to
  leave the loop until she regained full computing and
  PARTNERSHIP
  303
  navigational facility, first, let's repair the damage..,. Nancia
  worked furiously, permanently disabling the sections of
  her computer system that had been contaminated by the
  Shemali hyperchips, finding alternative routings to ac-
  cess the processors that remained untouched. At the
  same time the worm program unleashed by Polyon
  squirmed deeper into her system, changing and mutat-
  ing code as it went, erasing its own tracks so that she could
  only tell where it had been by the sudden flares of dis-
  orienting sense input or the garbled mathematics where
  it had been. She had to find and stop that code before she
  could do anything else.
  
  Deep in the intricacies of her own system, Nancia
  agonized as Darnell struck down Forister.
  Don't listen. Don't think about that. She would need all
  her concentration to disable Polyon's rogue code,
  more concentration than she'd ever brought to bear
  on the comparatively trivial problems of subspace
  navigation. Nancia remembered Sev Bryley's training
  in relaxation and deliberately, slowly calmed herself,
  drawing energy away from her extremities and center-
  ing her consciousness on the internal core of light
  where she existed independent of computer and shell
  and ship. With some remote part of her awareness she
  sensed the failure of gravitational systems and the
  dimming of lights, the shock and concern of her pas-
  sengers,   but   she   could   not   afford   to   divert
  consciousness to those semi-automatic functions now.
  The automatic datacording routines Nancia had set
  up continued to operate as Polyon began Micaya's tor-
  ture. Nancia could not counter his commands without
  breaking her trance; she could not even restore gravity
  and lights to reassure Forister. Ignoring Micaya's pain
  was the hardest thing she had ever done. For the moment,
  Micaya does not exist. Nothing exists outside this place, this mo-
  ment, this center. There was the rogue code; she
  annihilated it in a blaze of energy, destroying deep
  304
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret BaU
  memory in the process; like an amputation, she thought,
  the shaft of pain and the nagging ache afterwards. Now
  to restore lost functions... Ruthlessly she cutback on the
  frills and luxuries of her programming, reducing the
  power that normally fed her autonomic functions. Lights
  dimmed even further in the control cabin, and the
  softpersons made comments about an acrid smell in the
  air. They would just have to put up with it; she needed
  that processing power to restore her crippled nav
  programs. Three of the four major math coprocessors
  were lost; the graphics processor could double for one of
  them. No time to think about the others. Naritia erased
  unnecessary programs and dumped others to
  datahedron, making space in what little remained of her
  memory for the processes she had to have. Would that be
  enough? No chance for tests, no time for second
  thoughts. She struck back, once, with everything she
  had; felt hyperchips shriveling to blank bits of permalloy,
  felt inactive sensors and processors become dead weights
  instead ofliving systems.
  Some animals will gnaw off their own limbs to get out of a
  trap....
  No time to mourn, either. With the "death" of the hy-
  perchips within Nancia's system, the transmissions that
  tortured Micaya's cyborgans ceased. The sound of her
  amplified heartbeat ended between one drum beat and
  the next. Forister groaned. He thmks fm dead. He would
  
  be reassured in a moment Nancia activated full artificial
  gravity; Darnell fell to the deck from his wall perch, Fassa
  went to her knees. Polyon staggered but remained stand-
  ing. Nancia beamed commands to the tanglefield wires,
  Darnell, Polyon and Fassa were frozen in place, nets of
  moving lights encompassing the tanglefield keys at their
  wrists and ankles and necks. Finally, Nancia spared a tittle
  power to bring up the cabin lights and freshen the air.
  "FN-935 reporting for duty," she said. "I apologize
  for any temporary inconvenience...."
  PARTNERSHIP
  305
  "Nanda!" Forister sounded dose to tears.
  "General Questar-Benn, can you take the pilot's
  seat?" Nancia requested, "I may need a little help to
  navigate us out of Singularity."
  "Do my best" Micaya's breathing was still ragged,
  and she leaned heavily on the chair beside her, but she
  limped to the pilot's seat without help, the prostheses
  once again responding to her own brain's electrical
  impulses. "What can I do?"
  "I am operating with only one mathematics coproces-
  sor," Nancia told her, "and my navigation units are
  nonfunctional When I start the drives, we will move out
  of this transition loop and into the expansion of whatever
  subspace we happen to be in. I'll try to maintain a steady
  path through the subspace options, but I may need you
  to aid in the navigation. Since the graphics processor is
  undamaged, I will throw up images of the approaching
  subspaces. Rest your hand on the palmpad and give me a
  direction at each branch."
  "Do my best," Micaya said again, but Nancia noticed
  it was the prosthetic hand she rested on the palmpad;
  the other hand was still an ugly purple color, with
  blackened moons on the swollen fingertips. She
  remembered what Polyon had said about gangrene.
  How much had his hyperchips accelerated Micaya's
  metabolic processes? Get her to a medic., .but I can't do
  that, unless somebody helps me surf out of Singularity... and
  we daren't waitfor the paravenm to wear offfbrister....
  .    Then Nancia had no more energy to spare for wor-
  . rying about Micaya or anything else but the waves of
  
  transformations that broke over her head, tossed and
  tumbled   her  gasping  through  subspaces   that
  j,deformed her body and everyone within, streams of
  [calculations that escaped her processors. Lost and
  choking, she sensed a firm hand guiding her up-
  | wards... out... She crunched the last numbers into a
  tractable series of equations and broke through the
  306
  Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret Ball
  chaos of uncountably infinite subspaces into the
  blessed normalcy of RealSpace.
  Before she had rime to thank Micaya, a tightbeam
  communication assaulted her weakened comm center.
  "Back so soon, FN? What's the matter? I thought you
  were headed for Central."
  It was Simeon, the Vega Base managing brain. "We
  had a small virus problem," Nancia beamed back.
  "Returned for... repairs."
  The rest of the story could wait until she had ab-
  solute privacy. There was no need to alert the galaxy to
  the fact that an unknown number of their computer
  systems were contaminated by Shemali hyperchips.
  "Is everything under control now?"
  "You could say that," Nancia replied dryly, turning
  up her remaining sensors and looking over her inter-
  nal condition. Half her processors burned out,
  sleeping bodies littering the passenger quarters, three
  High Families brats secured in tanglefield and mad as
  hell, Forister twitching with the pins-and-needles of
  paravenin recovery, and a crippled general bringing
  them safe into RealSpace #
  "Yes," she told Simeon. "Everything's under
  control."
  "  CHAPTERMGHTEEN
  In the days of repair work drat followed, Nancia began
  to understand just how much Caleb must have hated
  being grounded on Summerlands while she went on
  with a new brawn to complete the task they had begun.
  Now she, too, was "convalescent" and temporarily out of
  the action. To protect herself from the insidious effects of
  Polyon's hyperchips she had, in effect, crippled herself^
  rendering large parts of her own system inoperable; to
  
  keep the worm program he had implanted from contact-
  ing other hyperchips once they got out of Singularity
  and could make Net contact again, she had slashed
  through her own memory, ruthlessly excising whole sec-
  tions of memory banks and operating code.
  "It's a miracle you made it back here in one piece,"
  Simeon of Vega Base told her, "and you're not leaving
  Base until you've had a very thorough overhaul and
  repair. Those aren't my orders, they're a beam from
  CS. So no argument!"
  "I wasn't planning to argue," said Nancia with, for
  her, unaccustomed meekness. Indeed, after the
  stresses of that prolonged stay in Singularity, followed
  by the limping return voyage on one-third power, she
  had very litde desire to do anything but park herself in
  orbit around Vega Base and watch the stars wheel by.
  Or so she told herself She was tired and injured; she
  wasn't up to the stressful task of transporting the prisoners
  and witnesses back to Central for trial It was for more sen-
  sible to prepare a datahedron of her own testimony,
  something that could be sent back on the bright new
  Courier Service ship that came to collect theothers.
  308
  Anne McCaffrey 6? Margaret BaU
  Til miss you," Forister said, "but you'll be back in
  action soon, Nanria. Why, at the speed Central works,
  you'll probably be returning before the trial's over!
  And if you don't" #  he hefted the gleaming weight of
  the megahedron in one hand #  "this is as good, for all
  legal purposes, as having you there. You've trans-
  ferred datacordings of everything that happened on
  board or that you perceived through your contact but-
  tons, right? Should be the most complete #  and most
  damning# record we could ask for."
  "It #  may not be as complete as you expect," Nan-
  da said. "I have some memory gaps, you know."
  "Yes, I know. But having you there in person #
  well, via contact button, I suppose #  wouldn't make
  any difference to that, would it? If something's been
  lost from your memory banks, it won't come back
  under cross-examination."
  That was true enough, Nancia supposed; and if the
  damage to her memory banks were the only cause of
  gaps in the recording, there'd be no reason at all for
  her to undergo cross-examination. The subject was
  not one she wished to discuss in any detail. She said
  good-bye to Forister, tried to control the twinge of
  loneliness she felt when the new CS ship took off, and
  went back to her observations of the stars of Vega sub-
  space. Stars were restful; bright and calm, in
  unchanging patterns as familiar to her as# as #
  
  Nancia discovered that she could no longer
  "remember" the names of the constellations as they
  appeared in Vega subspace. She had never spent long
  enough in this subspace to establish the look of the sky
  in her own human memory; and the navigational
  maps that she relied on had been erased. So had her
  tables of Singularity points and decomposition algo-
  rithms, her Capellan music recordings....
  "Do you know, I'm sorry I used to laugh at softper-
  sons," she said thoughtfully to Simeon while the techs
  PARTNERSHIP
  309
  buzzed about her, removing the melted blobs that had
  been hyperchips, restoring connections and sensors,
  building in new blank memory banks to be loaded with
  whatever information she requested. "I never realized
  how crippled they are, having to rely on no more skills
  and information than they can store in an organic brain."
  "It's not nice to laugh at the handicapped," Simeon
  agreed gravely. "I trust this has been a learning ex-
  perience for you, young FN. Would you like me to
  help you prepare a list of data requests for your new
  memories?"
  "Yes, please," Nancia said, "and" #  this she did
  remember, the frustration of listening to the medical
  jargon of the techs at Summerlands working on Caleb
  #  "do you think I can afford a classical education?
  Latin and Greek vocabularies and syntax?"
  "I'll indent for the Loeb Classical Hedron," Simeon
  said. "That has twenty-six Old Earth languages plus all
  the major literature."
  "And #  " she didn't want to go too far into debt# "a
  medical set? Pharmacology, Internals, and Surgical?"
  "Should be standard equipment on any ship gets
  into as much trouble as you do," Simeon agreed.
  "Yes, but can I afford it? I've lost some accounting
  data; I don't know how my credit stands with Courier
  Service #  "
  Simeon came as near to a laugh as Nancia had ever
  heard from him. "FN, trust me, the bonus for this last
  job, plus the hazardous service pay, will cover any frills
  you want to request and go a long way towards paying
  off your debt to Lab Schools. Pull off a couple more
  like this and you'll be a paid-off shell, your own
  woman. In fact," he added thoughtfully, "there's no
  reason why you should pay for the classical and medi-
  cal hedra. I'll just slip those in as pan of the
  replacement list, which is charged to Central #  "
  
  "No," Nancia said firmly. "That's how it starts."
  310
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Sail
  "How what starts?
  "You know. Darnell. Polyon. Everything."
  "Oh. Well, I sec what you mean, but it is a gray area,
  you know..."
  "Not," Nancia said, "for House Perez y de Gras. I'D
  buy the extra skills hedra myself, out of my bonus.
  From the figures you just beamed up, I'll have more
  than enough to pay honestly for those 'frills' and any
  other expenses I may incur during this stay."
  But that was before she discovered the item that
  would strain her budget to its limits.
  Nancia's repairs were nearly finished when Caleb,
  now walking without a stick and looking even more
  muscular than before, landed at Vega Base and re-
  quested permission to come aboard. Nancia exclaimed
  in delight at the bronzed, fit young man she saw step-
  ping out of the airlock.
  "My goodness, Caleb, you look as if you'd never
  been ill a day in your life."
  "There wasn't much to do at Summerlands, Caleb
  said dismissively. "It's a sin to waste time; I worked out
  in the physical therapy rooms most of die time while
  they were fussing over final tests and declaring me fit
  for duty again. What's our next assignment?
  "Our?"
  "You didn't think I'd desert you? You made some er-
  rors of judgment while I was away, Nancia, but
  nothing that can't be repaired. In fact," Caleb added,
  looking around the gleaming interior from which all
  traces of OG Shipping's mauve and puce had finally
  been removed, "it looks as if the repairs are just about
  finished."
  "They are, but Caleb, I #  I'm partnered with
  Forister now," Nancia said. She felt guilty as she said
  the words; suppose Caleb felt that she was rejecting
  him? But it was the simple truth. Her call sign was FN-
  935 now, not CN.
  PARTNERSHIP
  311
  "Temporary assignment," Caleb brushed that aside.
  
  "Now I've been pronounced fit again, Forister can go
  back into comfortable retirement. No need for him to
  continue straining himself in tasks he's really not up
  to. Take this last debacle. You're not to blame, Nancia,
  being young and inexperienced, but you must see that
  it was handled all wrong. If..."
  While Caleb blithely explained the mistakes Forister
  had made and how he, with the benefit of hindsight,
  could have done so much better, Nancia attempted to
  control some new and unfamiliar sensations.
  Simeon, she tightbeamed to the managing brain, is
  there a malfunction in my repaired circuits ? My sensors show a
  temperature rise and high conductivity, and I'm picking up a
  strange buzzing m some of the audio circuits.
  The Vega manager's reply was a few seconds
  delayed. Fascinating, he beamed back while Caleb con-
  tinued his speech. Yoursynaptic connectors are picking up
  direct emotional signals. What an unusual coupling #  that's
  not supposed to happen. You must have done something to your
  connections while you were fighting the hyperchip attack.
  What are you talking about ? Is it dangerous ? Fix it! Nan-
  cia demanded.
  Simeon transmitted a chuckle over the audio circuit,
  stopping Caleb in mid-peroration.
  "What was that? Is Central trying to contact us?"
  "No, just a #  a message from one of the repair
  techs," Nancia improvised. "You were saying?"
  "Well, try not to let it happen again," Caleb said ir-
  ritably. "We've got to get our future relationship
  straight, Nancia; surely that's more important than
  some last-minute twiddling with your repairs? Now
  listen. I don't want you to feel guilty over what's past."
  "Why should I?" Nancia asked, startled. "Oh, be-
  cause I didn't report the conversations I heard on my
  rst voyage, and stop those young criminals before
  ley got properly started? Well, I do feel guilty. That
  312
  Anne McCaffrgy Gf Margaret Ball
  was a bad mistake." But one Caleb had encouraged
  her to make.
  "I don't mean that at all!" Caleb said. "You acted
  with perfect propriety in keeping those conversations
  private. I mean die way you've been rocketing around
  the Nyota system, bearing false witness, pretending to
  be something you're not, encouraging breaches of
  
  PTA regulations on Angalia, getting involved in all
  sorts of violence and mixing with very questionable
  people indeed #  "
  Simeon, I know Tm overheating. Can't you send a tech out
  to fix my circuits?
  There's nothing to fix, Nancia, but Lab Schools will want to
  study just how you achieved it. Briefly, you've created a mind-
  body feedback hop between your cortex and the ship# one that
  carries emotional as well as intellectual and motor impulses.
  You mean #  ?
  You're a little more like a softperson than the rest of us, Nan-
  da #  or, you might say, a little more human. You're angry, my
  dear, and your connections are showing it. Flushed, ears buzz-
  ing, breathing faster, higher fuel consumption # yes, Td say
  you're in a roaring snit. And not without cause. You've out-
  grown that righteous little snip, Nancia. When are you going
  to shut him up and kick him off you?
  " #  but you were misled, and I myself bear some of
  the fault, having allowed you to persuade me against
  my better judgment into the first false step on the
  downward path of deception," Caleb finished his sen-
  tence without being aware of the split-second
  exchange between Nancia and Simeon. "Now that
  you've seen what such things can lead to, I'm sure
  you'll repent of your errors. And I want you to know
  that I freely and completely forgive you. We'll never
  speak of this again# 
  "You're darned right, we won't!" Nancia interrupted.
  "Go find yourself a ship to match your morals, Caleb!"
  "What do you mean?"
  PARTNERSHIP
  313
  To calm herself down, Nancia took a moment to
  convert her entire Vega subspace map to Old Earth
  linear measurements and back. By multiple precision
  arithmetic routines. In surface-level code. She was on
  the verge of hurting Caleb's feelings. And she wasn't
  quite angry enough to do that. The inexperienced
  young brainship who'd teamed with Caleb five years
  ago would have accepted his self-righteous lecture as if
  he were laying down Courier Service regulations. It
  wasn't Caleb's fault, or her fault either, that she'd out-
  grown his narrow black-and-white view of the world.
  Forister had taught her the value of shades of gray and
  die duty of perceiving them. And if now she felt more
  truly partnered with that spare, sardonic, aging brawn
  than with the young man who'd shared her first ad-
  ventures #  well, there was no reason Caleb should
  suffer unnecessarily on that account.
  
  Her overheating circuits cooled down and the buzz-
  ing in her ears stopped as she calmed herself with
  tranquil, fixed equations.
  "It wouldn't work, Caleb," she said at last. "You may
  . forgive me, but the past would always be between us.
  You'd do better to find another brainship, one that has
  never betrayed your high ideals." Preferably one that
  ^hasn't been commissioned for more than ten minutes.
  "For myself# " Nantiasighed, "sadderbutwiser,"f/iaft
  \true, anyway, "I think it is more appropriate for me to peti-
  j tion Central that my temporary partnership with Forister
  be made permanent, or to find another brawn if Forister
  I chooses to retire now." Please, please, doritlet himdo that.
  "Well." At least Caleb's speech-making impulses had
  [been knocked out temporarily. "If you really uiink..."
  "I do," said Nancia, "and," she added firmly, "I will pay
  (the penalty fee for requesting a brawn reassignment. It's
  not fair diat you should bear any part of that burden."
  But it was a little disappointing to see how quickly
  I Caleb accepted the offer....
  314
  Anne McCaffrey ## Margaret BaS.
  The trial of the Nyota Five, as the gossipbyters had
  dubbed Nanda's first passengers, was still in progress
  when she landed at Central Base some weeks later.
  The solitary journey back, with no brawn or pas-
  sengers to distract her, had given Nantia plenty of time
  to think .. . perhaps too much. She had no way of
  knowing how the trial was progressing or how the
  court had reacted to the testimony presented; in
  deference to High Families sensibilities, newsbeamers
  were not permitted in the courtroom and die gossip-
  byters had nothing but speculations to report. She
  didn't even know if the court would wish her cross-ex-
  amined on the deposition she'd sent back on
  datahedron. Well, if they did, she was available now.
  And diere'd be no new assignment until Forister was
  released from testifying and free to brawn her again. If
  he still wanted to, once he'd heard what was on her
  deposition... and what wasn't
  Nancia didn't have much time to brood over that
  possibility; she had hardly touched down at Base when
  a visitor was announced.
  "Perez y de Gras requesting permission to board," the
  Central Base managing brain warned her in advance.
  That was a welcome surprise! The last Nancia had
  heard from Flix was a bitstream packet from Kailas,
  mostly consisting of pictures of the seedy cafe where
  
  he'd found a synthocomming gig. He must have quit
  #  or been fired.... Well, she wouldn't ask him about
  diat Nancia opened her outer doors and set die wall-
  sized display screens in the lounge to show the
  surprise she'd been preparing for him.
  "Flix, how lovely, I didn't know you were ..." she
  began joyfully as the airlock slid open. The words died
  away to a faint hiss from her port speaker as she took
  in die sight of the trim, gray-haired man who stood in
  the open airlock, surveying her interior with cool gray
  PARTNERSHIP
  315
  res. Nancia hastily blanked out the moving displays
  liner new, holo-enhanced, super-detailed SPACED
  )UT and replaced them with some quiet, correct im-
  !jes of still life paintings by Old Masters.
  "As far as I know," said Javier Perez y de Gras, "he
  isn't. Although doubtless, now that I've been reas-
  signed to Central, your litde brother will find another
  squalid position on this planet from which to annoy
  me with the sight of his failure."
  "Oh." Nancia hadn't previously compared the pat-
  tern of Flix's jauntings from gig to gig with her father's
  diplomatic assignments. Now she made a hasty scan of
  her restored memory banks and found a surprising
  number of correspondences. That was something
  she'd have to ask Flix about. Just now she really didn't
  feel up to discussing it with Daddy.
  "I don't suppose," she said carefully, "that was what
  you came to see me about? Flix's career, I mean?"
  Her father sniffed. "I don't consider that a career. You
  have a career, Nancia my dear, and by all accounts you've
  done quite well Co date #  a few errors in judgment, per-
  haps, but nothing that maturity and experience won't# "
  This time Nancia knew what caused the flush of heat
  diat swamped her upper deck circuits and the red haze
  that trembled in her visual sensors. For a moment she
  didn't speak, fearing that she would be unable to control
  her voice; she could not look at Daddy without seeing
  Caleb and, shadowy in her imagination, Paul del Parmay
  Polo. Just another man, seeing in her nothing but a tool
  to serve his plans, coming to give her a rating on how well
  or ill she'd done for him. Were all men like that?
  "Exactly what errors of judgment were you thinking
  of?" she inquired when she had her vocal circuits
  under control again. Not that she hadn't made plenty
  of mistakes for Daddy to pick at....
  But what he complained of was the last thing she'd
  been worried about
  
  316
  Anne McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
  "At least, fortuitously, some other ship performed
  the service of transporting them back to Central,"
  Daddy said. "But from what I've heard at the trial, you
  were quite prepared to perform that service yoursel#
  You shouldn't lower yourself that way, Nancia. A Perez
  y de Gras shouldn't be used as a prison ship to
  transport common criminals."
  "In case you've forgotten, Daddy," Nancia replied,
  "those 'common criminals' are the very same people I
  transported to the Nyota system on my maiden
  voyage... and didn't you pull a few strings to arrange
  that assignment for me?"
  Javier Perez y de Gras sat down heavily in one of the
  comfortably padded cabin chairs. "I did that," he said.
  "I thought it would be nice for you to have some
  young company ... young people of your own class
  and background ... for your first voyage. An easy as-
  signment, I thought."
  "So did I," Nancia said. Some of the sadness she felt
  crept into her voice; whatever she'd done to her feed-
  back loops, it seemed to work both ways. She could no
  longer maintain the perfectly controlled, emotionally
  uninflected vocal tones she had prided herself on
  producing before the hyperchip disaster. "So did I.
  But it turned out... rather more complicated than
  that. And I didn't know what to do. Maybe I did make
  some 'errors in judgment.' I didn't have a lot of advice,
  if you recall. "Just a taped good-luck message from a man too
  busy and important to come to my graduation.
  "I recall," her father said. "Call that my error, if you
  like. Once you'd made it through Lab Schools to
  graduation and commissioning, you seemed to be
  doing so well, and I was worried about Flix. Still am,
  for that matter." He sighed. "Anyway, there you were,
  off to the start of a glorious career, and my other two
  children had problems aplenty."
  "Not Jinevra!" Nancia exclaimed. "I always thought
  PARTNERSHIP
  317
  she was the perfect example of what you wanted us to
  become."
  "I wanted you to become yourselves," her father
  said. "Apparently I didn't communicate that to you.
  Jinevra's a paper-doll cutout of the ideal PTA ad-
  ministrator, and I don't know how to talk to her any
  
  more. And as for Flix #  well, you know about Flix. I
  thought he needed attention more than you. Thought
  a few suggestions, maybe an entry-level position in
  some branch of Central where he could work himself
  up and someday amount to something ... of course
  he'd have to give up fooling around with the
  synthcom...." Javier Perez y de Gras sighed. "Flix
  never has straightened out. I don't know, perhaps he
  feels neglected on account of all those years when I
  took every free moment to visit you at Lab Schools. I
  didn't have that much time for him then. Even the day
  he was born, I was at Lab Schools, watching you be
  fitted for your first mobile shell. Seemed he needed me
  more than you.... I thought it was time to redress the
  balance."
  Nancia absorbed the impact of this speech quietly.
  For the first time, looking at her father's worn face, she
  began to comprehend how much time and effort he
  must have really given to his family over the years.
  Since their mother had quietly retired to the haven of
  Blissto addiction in a hush-hush, genteel clinic, he had
  tried to be both father and  mother to three
  obstreperous, brilliant, demanding High Families
  brats. Another man might have leaned too hard on his
  children for emotional comfort; another career
  diplomat might have shunted the children into ex-
  clusive boarding schools and forgotten about them.
  But Daddy was no Faul del Parma, to use and abuse
  and forget his children. He'd done the best he could
  for them ... within his limitations .,. snatching mo-
  ments between meetings, suffering long tiring
  318
  AnneMcCaffrey &MargaretBaU
  rerourings between assignments to spend a day or two
  on their planets, juggling a diplomat's unforgiving
  schedule to work in graduations and school plays.
  "An error of judgment, perhaps," Javier Perez y de
  Gras said when the silence had lasted too long, "but
  never... please believe me... an error of love. You're
  my daughter. I only wanted the best for you." And
  rising from his padded chair, he laid one hand briefly
  on the titanium column that enclosed and protected
  Nancia's shell.
  "Requesting permission to come aboard!"
  There was no identification this time, but Nancia
  recognized Forister's voice, even though there was
  something unfamiliar about the way he drew the
  words out She activated her external sensors and saw
  not only Forister but General Questar-Benn standing
  on the landing pad.
  "Request permission to come aboard," Forister
  repeated. He was pronouncing his words very careful-
  ly. And Micaya Questar-Benn was standing very
  
  properly, stiff as if she were on a parade-ground. A
  suspicion began to grow in Nancia's mind.
  She slid open the lower doors and waited. A mo-
  ment later the airlock door opened and Micaya
  Questar-Benn stepped into the lounge. Very slowly
  and carefully.
  Forister followed. He was holding an open botde in
  one hand.
  "You are drunk," Nancia said severely.
  Forister looked wounded. "Not yet. Wouldn't get
  drunk before I came back to share the news with you.
  Just... happy. Very happy," he expatiated. "Very,
  very, very... where was 1?"
  "Looking at the bottom of a bottle of Sparkling
  Heorot, I suspect," Nancia told him.
  Forister's wounded expression intensified. "Please!
  PARTNERSHIP
  319
  Do you think I'd toast the best brainship on Central in
  that cheap stuff? It's only fit for, for..."
  "Starving musicians?" Nancia suggested. Some day
  she would have to have a serious talk with Daddy about
  Flix; suggest that he stop finding Flix promising career
  openings and just let the boy be a synthocommer. But
  this latest visit of Daddy's hadn't seemed the right time to
  bring the subject up. And she couldn't beam him now;
  Forister had other things on his mind. What there was
  left ofhis mind, she corrected with a shade of envy.
  "I'll have you know," Forister announced with a
  flourish, "this is genuine Old Earth wine! Badacsonyi
  Keknyelu, no less!"
  Nancia's new language module included not only
  Latin and Greek but a sprinkling of less well-known Old
  Earth tongues. She skimmed the Hungarian dictionary.
  "Blue-Tongue Lake Badacsony? Are you sure?"
  "Believe him," Micaya Questar-Benn chimed in. Like
  Forister, she was taking great care with her consonants.
  "If it's as good as the red stuff, it's worth every credit he
  paid for it What was the red stuff called, Forister?"
  "Egri Bikaver."
  "Bull's Blood from Eger," Nancia translated. "Oh,
  well. You know, sometimes I don't really mind not
  being able to share softshell pleasures. Er #  what are
  we celebrating?"
  
  "End of the trial! Don't you follow the newsbytes?"
  "Not lately. They never have much to say," Nancia
  equivocated. And if there were any questions about my
  deposition, I don't want to hear them.
  "Well, they do now." Forister pulled himself erect
  and stood in the center of the lounge swaying slightly.
  "Sentencing was this morning. Alpha bint Hezra-Fong
  and Darnell Overton-Glaxely got twenty-five years
  each. They'll do community service on a newly
  colonized planet# under strict guard."
  "Alpha may be some use to the colonists," Nancia
  320
  Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt
  commented, "but I don't know what a bunch of poor
  innocent colonists have done that they should be sad-
  dled with Darnell."
  "Farming world," Forister said cheerfully. "They
  need a lot of stoop labor. As for the rest# " He sobered
  briefly. "Polyon's back to Shemali."
  "What?"
  "Working the hyperchip burnofflines," Forister
  said. "The new manager's worked out a failsafe way to
  disable the virus Polyon built into his hyperchip
  design. So the factories are to continue production...
  under somewhat more responsible management I'm
  afraid the supply of hyperchips is going to dip for a
  while; you probably won't be able to replace the ones
  you burned out for some time, Nanda."
  "I can deal with that," Nancia said dryly. It would be
  a long time indeed before she let any chip designed by
  Polyon de Gras-Waldheim within connecting distance
  of her motherboards!
  Forister still hadn't mentioned the two people whose
  fete concerned her most "And Blaize?" It couldn't be too
  bad, or Forister wouldn't be celebrating like that
  "Five years' community service," Forister told her.
  "Could be worse. They've dug up a planet in Deneb sub-
  space #  son of like Angalia, only worse, and the only
  sentient life form resembles giant spiders, and nobody's
  ever been able to communicate with them. Blaize was
  moaning and groaning, but I suspect he can't wait to start
  teaching the spiders ASL. We'll have to drop by after the
  next assignment and see how he's doing."
  "Next assignment?"
  "Here's the datacording." Forister dropped a
  hedron into Nancia's reader slot. She scanned the in-
  
  structions while he and Micaya broke open the bottle
  of Badacsonyi Keknyelu. The three of them had been
  assigned as a team to Theta Szentmari... a very, very
  long way from Central, through three separate Sin-
  PARTNERSHIP
  321
  gularity points. One Singularity transition brought
  them briefly into Deneb subspace.
  "And what," she inquired, "do we do when we get
  there?" Assuming they still uxxnt me as a bmmship... I suppose
  they do. But tufty hasn't anybody said a word about fiissa ?
  "Sealed orders." Forister tossed a second hedron
  into the reader; Nancia found to her chagrin that she
  ; could not decrypt the information on this one. "Sup-
  posed to be self-decrypting when we pass through the
  third Singularity," Forister explained. "Apparently
  ^whatever's going on there is too hot to explain on
  central... they're that worried about leaks. They've
  "een discussing the possibility of making the three of
  is a permanent investigative team for hot little scan-
  ' Is like whatever is wrong on Theta Szentmari."
  "And what," Nancia asked carefully, "do the two of
  you think about that? Now that the trial's over?
  id... you never did tell me about Fassa."
  "Ah, yes, Fassa." Forister's merry twinkle diminished
  -Jightiy. "Sev's going out to Rigel IV with her, did you
  [know that? He says hell try to pick up El. or security
  work there, wait out her term."
  "Twenty-five years?"
  "Ten. They recommended clemency in view of her
  apparent rehabilitation ... helping us trap Polyon,
  and that very moving attempt to defend me when
  Polyon was holding us all hostage inside Singularity.
  Most of which came through brilliantly in your image
  datacordings, Nancia." Forister smiled benignly.
  "There were a few gaps, though."
  Here it comes. She'd been trying not to think about
  that aspect of the trial. "I did tell you I'd suffered some
  memory loss," Nancia reminded him.
  "So you did, so you did.... Anyway. The court wasn't
  sure what to make of all that; she'd already been arrested,
  after all, and she could just have been trying to put herself
  in the best possible light for the trial. But there was one
  322
  Arme McCaffrey & Margaret BaU
  thing from earlier, well before she was arrested, that con-
  vinced them she wasn't quite as seltcenteredly fraudulent
  as her partners in crime." Forister twinkled. "Itseemsthat
  
  when a factory she built on Shemali collapsed, she put up
  the new building free of charge. Sev Bryley brought that
  into evidence. Now, it seems to me that J heard Polyon
  saying he'd terrorized her into that replacement But
  Polyoris trial was over before Sev brought out the story of
  the Shemali buildings, so he couldn't be recalled for cross-
  examination. And one of those little blips in your
  datacording happened just at the moment when Polyon
  was explaining that little matter to us."
  Nancia felt a glowing heat from all her upper-deck
  circuits. "I did tell you I'd suffered some memory loss,"
  she repeated.
  "Very conveniently arranged, though."
  "All right. I canceled that part of the datacording. I
  #  Fassa's had problems to deal with worse than any-
  thing you or I ever faced," Nancia said. "From what I
  overheard, keeping watch on her and Sev #  you don't
  know what her father did to her."
  "I can guess," Forister said.
  "Well, then. It doesn't excuse what she did, I know
  that. And it would kill her to have all that brought out
  in court. But #  she hasn't had many breaks," Nancia
  said. "She never knew what it was to have a loving
  family behind her." Fve been so much luckier #  even if I
  didn't know it for a little while. "I thought she deserved
  that much of a second chance."
  Silence followed this statement.
  "I #  it was dishonest," Nancia admitted. "And I
  know that. And if you two don't want to be partnered
  with me any more..."
  "Knew about the buildings already," Micaya
  pointed out "We were there too, if you recall, /didn't
  see any need to stand up in court and contradict Sev's
  rather touching evidence. Neither did your brawn
  PARTNERSHIP
  323
  here." She threw her head back and drained her glass
  of imported wine in one gulp. Forister winced.
  "Then# " Nancia was confused.
  Forisfcer patted her titanium column. "It was... in die
  nature of a test, you might say," he told her. "Mic, here,
  thought you'd been with Caleb too long, absorbed too
  much of his black-and-white attitude to be as flexible as a
  good investigative team needs to be. We may be feeing
  some delicate assignments. Need to make some judg-
  ment calls# can'trely on CS regulations to answer every
  question. Now / thought you had the maturity to make
  your own moral judgments# including knowing when
  to keep silent After all, you didn't lie about any of Fassa's
  
  wrongdoing; all that evidence is dear in your deposition.
  \bu just# balanced# what you couldn't say about her
  tragic childhood, against what you didn't have to say
  about her work on Shemali."
  "You don't despise me for it?"
  "I did the same thing," Forister pointed out, "and
  without benefit of your inside information on Fassa's
  childhood."
  "Then #  it wasn't wrong?"
  "You're an adult now, Nancia. You use your own
  judgment What do you think?" Forister asked.
  Nancia was still thinking when they reached the first
  Singularity point on the run to Theta Szentmari. With
  Forister and Micaya strapped down in their cabins, she
  arced through the collapsing spaces in an effortless flash-
  ing dive. Space and time twisted and reformed about her
  as she chose their path through continually changing
  matrices of transformations. For the few seconds of per-
  fect, gliding, dangerous transition she danced and swam
  in her own element, making her own decisions.
  As she continued to do for the rest of her career.
  #  THE END #
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/M/Mccaffrey, Anne/Anne McCaffrey - Ship 2 - Partner Ship.pdf