This appeal cut through Esmay's worry about her classes. "Come on in," she said. "What's wrong?"

"There's something wrong with Master Chief Vecchi," Brun said.

"Wrong? What kind of wrong?" Esmay, her mind on their previous conversation, had been expecting a

question about Fleet manners.

"Well . . . right in the middle of the lecture today, he suddenly didn't make sense. He was telling us how to secure a line on a derelict in zero gravity, and he got it backwards."

"How would you know?"

Brun had the grace to blush. "I read the book," she said. "His book, actually. Safety Techniques in Space Rescue."

"It slipped his mind," Esmay said. "Everyone makes mistakes sometimes."

"But he didn't know it. I mean, he went right on, explaining things wrong. When one of the jigs

asked if he was sure, Vecchi blew up . . . then got very red, walked out, and when he came back, he said he had a headache."

"Maybe-"

"It's not the first time," Brun said. "A week ago, he actually inserted a Briggs pin upside down."

"Testing you?"

"No-it was his own line, and he was about to move on it when one of the junior instructors-Kim something. Tough little woman, about half my size but can haul me up one-handed. She did. Anyway, she noticed Vecchi's mistake and fixed it."

"Um." Esmay couldn't think why this was her problem, except that anything that bothered Brun was

her problem.

"It bothered her, I could tell. She watched everything else he did, checked it all. Not the usual cross-checks, but as if he were a student."

"How old is Vecchi?"

"What, are you thinking he's just gotten old? He's rejuved, I know that. One of the first enlisted rejuvs."

"When?"

Brun looked disgusted. "I don't have his medical records-how would I know?"

"I just wondered . . . maybe it's wearing off."

"It doesn't work that way," Brun said. Esmay raised her eyebrows and waited. "My father," Brun

went on. "He's rejuved, so is Mother. Their friends . . . so I naturally know how it works."

"And?" Esmay prompted.

"Well, the usual reason for repeating a rejuv is physical. The people I know who've had more than

one certainly didn't have any mental problems. Their personalities don't change, and they're just as alert."

"But wasn't that earlier kind of rejuvenation associated with mental degeneration?"

"Only if you tried to repeat it." Brun made a face. "Mother's second cousin or something did that, and it was horrible. Mother tried to keep me away from her, but you know little kids . . . I thought there must be something special in that suite if they wanted me out of it, so I sneaked in."

"So . . . is Vecchi anything like your mother's cousin?"

"Not . . . exactly. Not as severe, anyway. You don't suppose they made a mistake and gave him the wrong kind of rejuv procedure, do you?"

"I don't know. It would help if we knew more about rejuvenation, and also about the procedure used on Vecchi."

"I thought you could do something, since you're in Fleet."

Esmay snorted. "Not dig into his personnel and medical records-I have no reason to see them, and it's against regulations to snoop."

"Not even . . . unofficially?"

"No." She would stop this right here. "I'm not going to ruin my career to satisfy your curiosity.

If Vecchi is impaired, someone in his chain of command will notice. If I observe something myself, I can report it. But I cannot-and will not-attempt to snoop in his records. You can report it, to-oh-whoever's commanding over there. Who's the senior instructor?"

"A Commander Priallo, but she's on leave somewhere."

"Well, find someone else-whoever is her junior-"

"I'd think you'd care," Brun said.

"I care-" If anything at all was wrong, but this was only Brun's word. "But I have no right to intervene; this needs to go to his commander. I suppose you could tell the Commandant."

"Maybe I will," Brun said, and after a moment sighed and went out. Esmay put Brun's worries out of her mind and tackled her assignments.

When the field exercise team assignments came out the next day, she found Vericour was right. Brun was on her team, and she had the smallest team of all-because her security would have to come along. How would that work? Would they really let her be roughed up? Or would they interfere in the exercise? And what would that do to the scoring?

Meanwhile, Brun maintained an indecent level of energy and enthusiasm. She learned content as fast as anyone Esmay had ever known-Esmay wondered if her intellectual capacity had ever been pushed near its limit. She did not, however, seem able to learn the attitudes that were by now second nature to those young officers for whom they were not first nature. Reprimands slid off her impenetrable confidence; suggestion and example alike had no effect.

"She's a dilettante," Vericour said, in another of those mealtime discussions. "Though what else could we expect from someone of her background? But she takes nothing seriously, least of all Fleet culture."

Anton Livadhi, a cousin of the Livadhi with whom Esmay had served on Despite, shook his head. "She takes us seriously enough . . . but she's not one of us, and she knows it. She wants us to be serious, while she has fun." He had his own team for the field exercise, and they were well up the chart on the evaluations for the preliminary exercises. Esmay's team performance was only middling; Brun fluctuated between brilliant and maddening, and her security could not commit emotionally as team members were supposed to do, and still be guards. They had taken almost twice as long as the fastest team in several exercises.

Esmay began to dread the field exercise itself, four days of intense and dangerous work in the badlands west of the base. She was reasonably sure that Brun's guards wouldn't let her be killed, but that left her and Jig Medars to do the work of an entire team. Two days before the exercise, she left a lecture on ship systems maintenance and found a message on her personal comunit: Lieutenant Commander Uhlis wanted to see her at her earliest convenience. Since she had an hour between classes, that meant right now.

She could hear the angry voices from ten meters down the corridor; Uhlis's door was ajar.

"You have to see that it's impossible." Uhlis sounded annoyed.

"Why?" Brun sounded more than annoyed; Esmay paused, wishing the door had shut firmly.

"Because you're already the target of assassins. The field exercise is by nature dangerous, and it's also impossible to secure. All it would take is one person-just one, with the right skills-to pick you off."

"You mean to tell me that on a base covered with Fleet personnel, you can't even let me do a simple field exercise?" Scorn in that, as if Brun expected to shame Uhlis into changing his mind.

That wouldn't work.

"I mean we will not approve it. Nor will your father; I have already forwarded our decision, and our reasons for it, to him. He agreed."

"That's-that's-the stupidest thing I ever heard!" Brun's voice had gone up another notch. "If I'm a target for terrorists, then it's perfectly clear that escape and evasion is exactly what I need to know. What am I supposed to do if I get kidnapped and need to escape?"

"The escape segment will be available-at least the urban end . . ."

"Fine. So I've broken out of some provincial jail somewhere and have to cover a hundred kilometers to a safe haven, and I have no training?"

"According to your father, you have had ample training in the basics of survival and navigation in the field, both on Sirialis and on Castle Rock. Your field skills are, in his opinion and those of our instructors who reviewed the recordings, equivalent to those of most graduates. So the escape segments should fill out your skills very well."

Silence for a moment. Esmay wondered if she could just walk past the door now, but even as she moved, Brun stormed out, silent but obviously in a rage. She broke stride when she saw Esmay.