Despite his serene contentment and the richness of the feeling of going home, Valleroy remained acutely aware of how this morning must feel to Aisha... if she still lived. Imprisoned. She wasn't the type to cower at the prospect of dying. But there were limits even to her courage.

Courage? Yes, Valleroy thought, he'd always admired her for that versatile courage she seemed unaware of having. He remembered the first time he'd seen it in action.

It had been a day very much like this one-sunny, mild, and almost too beautiful. They'd been hardly more than children then, sneaking off for a day alone, exploring some formidable ruins of the Ancients. It had been, Valleroy remembered, the last time they'd ever discussed Simes.

The ruins were nothing more than a huge brooding mound of rubble pierced by an occasional upright skeleton that refused to crumble. But to that air of the inviolate decay of senescent dignity, there was added the haunting terror of the Sime Berserker.

It was there, to that grotesque, treacherous, cave-riddled jungle that changeover victims came to escape being killed during their few vulnerable hours. Not many of them survived, but those who did had created legends of terror that clung to the twisted blocks of artificial stone like a visible pall.

Valleroy liked the place because people refused to go there. It was like his own private property... a unique sensation for him. He knew that he alone possessed the key to safe entry... the starred-cross. For several hours, he and Aisha poked though the outskirts of the forbidden area. Little by little they strayed deeper into the broken ground. On impulse, he invited her to come and see the secret temple he'd built to his own inner spirit... his secret hideaway.

They scrambled over crumbling stone mounded with scraggly vines, tufts of grass, and an occasional bush. It had rained recently, leaving fresh puddles and newly cut gullies to bar his usual paths. He chose his footing with ostentatious ease, acutely aware of the impression he was making on her.

She followed, darting furtive glances toward every tiny sound of scurrying rodent or fleeing bird. He picked a trail a few yards ahead of her, his head high. He moved with all the confident pride of an owner in his private garden. So it was she who found the body.

Her choked gasp brought him back to her in three bounding leaps. To one side of their path and beneath them, a large rain water lake filled a depression that had been quarried for building material. The water was mirror smooth under the blue sky. Near the center of the lake floated a body, face down, arms extended as if groping for something just out of reach-Even from where they stood they could see the bulging ridges that had just been developing along the length of the forearms. They knew they saw the fluid-filled tentacle sheaths swollen to the painful tension that preceded the breakout of the tentacles. This almost Si me had died just before changeover was complete, just before the wrist openings were broken open to release the tentacles that would take selyn.

"Don't worry, Aisha. She's dead. She can't hurt anyone now."

Aisha had given one excruciating shudder, glancing at the surrounding ruins. She had known the danger before she agreed to come. She didn't ask to go back now.

For a few minutes, Valleroy walked beside her, holding her hand. But then the climbing became difficult once more, and they broke into single file. She was a good climber, never wasting a motion nor seeming to tire. She was the only girl Valleroy had ever liked to go places with.

Finally, they arrived at Valleroy's private retreat. It was more than a cave really, lit only by a few broken pieces of mirror set to reflect the outside light. On a sunny day like that one, it was bright and cheerful within.

He held aside the mat of vines he'd cultivated to hide the entrance and motioned her inside.

Her gasp of appreciation was payment enough. She circled the room once, moving from rough-hewn easel he'd built into one corner, past the sketches he'd liked enough to save, to his rock collection spread on a tattered but painfully clean blanket. Her amazed reverence told him she knew the value of what she saw... knew it and treasured it as much as he did.

She paused, transfixed by one of his drawings. It was himself fancied as an adult Sime, standing on a wind-blown hilltop, one tentacled arm raised as if straining to touch a passing cloud. Quietly, he slipped onto the bench before his easel and sketched her as she would look as a Sime.

It had been the first time he had ever committed to paper the form of her loveliness. He drew her as she stood there before him... grave, sensitive, open, undemanding, uncondemning.

When she turned to him, she said wonderingly, "You aren't afraid... of changeover... are you?"

For answer, he handed her what he'd drawn. She looked at it quietly for several minutes, her eyes straying occasionally to the upflung Sime arm in the other drawing. "Maybe you're right, Hugh. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference... for those who survive."

"We're both over sixteen now. Changeover isn't likely for either of us any more."

She turned to the picture of the windswept hilltop. "Are you disappointed?"

Here, in this place, secure from prying ears and the censure of his fellows, Valleroy dared answer, "I don't know."

"You'll probably never know."

"Will you report me?"

"No." She took his hand and ran her fingers along his muscular forearm, pausing at the raw-boned wrist, and then tracing a line down the too delicate, overly fine-boned fingers. For the first time in his life, Valleroy wasn't embarrassed by those hands. "Hugh... maybe... you should have been Sime... maybe you will be... it's happened to seventeen-year-olds, they say."

"Not often."

"But maybe it could... do you still hope?"

"I don't think I ever hoped."

"But you've never hoped not"

"I'm not sure."

"If you don't... become... what are you going to do with the rest of your life? Paint?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Why?"

He couldn't answer that. He tried, but his eye kept going to the windswept hill. It wasn't a well-done painting... the proportions were off... he'd tried too hard to graft his peculiar hands onto a too large wrist... the tentacles weren't right either. But he'd never felt any need to do the painting over with his more mature skill.

She nodded. "Because painting is too personal? Because you're afraid they'd see this in everything you did?"

"Maybe. Or maybe because artists usually starve. I've had enough of that to last a lifetime. I think I'll go into something that pays high with an early retirement The Army, maybe... or the Federal Police Field Teams. When I've earned my retirement pension, I can spend the rest of my life painting. I won't have to show them to anyone... if I don't want to."

Now, Valleroy sat astride his horse, riding calmly beside a Sime through Sime territory. He was here to earn his retirement pension by rescuing Aisha... and all he'd done so far was earn a living by drawing. He thought he ought to feel guilty for enjoying himself so much while Aisha was in such danger. But there had been nothing he could do about finding her. Nothing.

Klyd had spent much of the four days at Imil screening their recently purchased Gens, gathering rumors, and discreetly probing for information. But he hadn't come up with a single concrete lead.

Valleroy felt it was now up to him to take matters into his own hands, but he was helplessly trapped in a strange society. So he rode beside the channel alternately enjoying the day and suffocating with frustration.

At noon, when they settled down in a shady grove to eat lunch, Valleroy said, "To hear Nashmar talk, you'd think the road would be swarming with unlicensed raiders looking for stray Gens, but we haven't seen a soul."

Klyd laughed, swigging at his canteen. "Well, the day is only half gone. Most unlicensed raiders are harvesting the fields now. Later on, they'll be heading home tired and looking for some fun."

"They consider channels excellent sport, too, I hear."

Klyd nodded. "This time of year they'd be looking for Gens, though."

"Why particularly now?"

"There's a brisk black-market trade. Large fields have to be harvested before the weather ruins them. It's cheaper to do the work under augmentation than to hire other Simes. But augmentation consumes selyn at enormous rates... it can double the ordinary Sime's kill rate. There's another factor. The ordinary Sime relishes augmentation. His pen ration doesn't allow him to function at full efficiency very often. It's not quite like entran... but perhaps it is similar. He'll go to the black market if he can afford it. If not, he may go prospecting on his own. I've heard of captives taken in the spring being fed all summer, saved for the harvest."

"Sadists!"

Klyd shook his head. "One of the roots of Zeor's superiority is that I budget each of my Simes a regular schedule of graduated degrees of augmentation. It's more than a pleasure, Hugh, it's a necessity."

"How can Zeor afford it?"

"We have the best channels. We get a higher selyn yield from each general class donor. Our Companions are the best."

"Can raiders tell the difference between an ordinary Householding Gen and a Companion?"