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 softsh.e.l.l 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.

fc?

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- s.p.a.ce - son of like Angalia, only worse, and the only sentient life form resembles giant spiders, and n.o.body'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 a.s.signment and see how he's doing."

"Next a.s.signment?"

"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 a.s.signed as a team to Theta Szentmari... a very, very long way from Central, through three separate Sin-321.

gularity points. One Singularity transition brought them briefly into Deneb subs.p.a.ce.

"And what," she inquired, "do we do when we get there?" a.s.suming 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 pa.s.s 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 Fa.s.sa."

"Ah, yes, Fa.s.sa." Forister's merry twinkle diminished -Jightiy. "Sev's going out to Rigel IV with her, did you [know that? He says h.e.l.l 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.

& 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 - Fa.s.sa'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 brawn323.

here." She threw her head back and drained her gla.s.s of imported wine in one gulp. Forister winced.

"Then-" Nancia was confused.

Forisfcer patted her t.i.tanium 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 att.i.tude to be as flexible as a good investigative team needs to be. We may be feeing some delicate a.s.signments. 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 Fa.s.sa'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 Fa.s.sa'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 s.p.a.ces in an effortless flash- ing dive. s.p.a.ce 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