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 gla.s.s of Stemerald with me, to celebrate our arrangement?"119.

Ma.s.son'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 Ma.s.son 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," Ma.s.son 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, Ma.s.son? No word to anyone else?"

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

"Very good. Now, Ma.s.son, 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,"*

Ma.s.son droned.

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

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

"You do not need a protective suit."

Ma.s.son nodded and smiled. All the intelligence had 120.

&? 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? d.a.m.n 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 Ma.s.son and snapped a dismissal. "Go. Now!"

Ma.s.son 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 a.s.signment with Dorg Jesen, while Nancia tried to tempt his appet.i.te 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.worked on a talking ship before. And n.o.body'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 t.i.tanium."

"Correction," Nancia said. She was becoming used to this tendency among softpersons; they insisted on equating her with the body curled inside the t.i.tanium 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,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 d.i.c.k 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.

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 n.o.body 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 host125.

"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 G.o.dforsaken 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.

6f And that, by G.o.d, 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 gra.s.ses 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?" Fa.s.sa 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 f.a.gm 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 t.i.tle to that mine. United s.p.a.cetec abandoned it because they couldn't keep127.

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.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 pa.s.sive 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.