"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 Enlightenment," Polyon commented. His fingers flicked carelessly at the screen as he spoke, sending Thingberry the Martian Mage to spin an apparently pointless web in the night sky above Asteroid 66.
"I didn't know you could buy intelligence." Darnell'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 information 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 understanding 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 complicated. 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 homeomorphism 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 interest. 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 containing 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 sarcastic 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 singular they will appear to intersect at that element—and when we expand from the decomposition, pop! 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 gotten the basic theory hopelessly scrambled. And clearly he didn't understand the computational problems underlying that theory. Pure topological theory might prove the existence of a decomposition series, but actually forcing a ship through that series required massive linear programming optimizations, all performed 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 conversation?" 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 enthusiasm, 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 Fortune, 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 convenience. I was being sarcastic about the fact that there is no good season."
"Never mind," Alpha told him almost kindly, "it's better than Angalia. Actually the full name is Angalia! with an exclamation point at the end. It means Watch out!"
"Dare I ask what that means?" Blaize inquired.
"It means," Alpha told him, "that the scenery—unlike 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 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 subspace . . . and what your opponents' sealed bids were?"
Darnell's 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 light 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 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?"
"When do we decide to stop and make the final evaluation?" Darnell 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 marvelous 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. A deft 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—contribute 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 improvement 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, I like Blissto," Darnell protested, "and I don't get into that cycle."
"Good," Alpha told him. "You're not an addictive personality. 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 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. "Ah—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, tapping one pudgy fist against his open palm.
Fassa licked her lips and smiled like a child anticipating 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 attempted violence, she could stop it in seconds with a flood of sleepgas. And Blaize knew that as well as she did. Nancia 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. I 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 you, definitely with," Blaize babbled. "There are possibilities—I just haven't had time to think them over yet. The corycium mine, for instance—it hasn't been properly developed—maybe I could get a part interest in that. And PTA makes regular food drops to Angalia, who's to say how much of the food gets distributed 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 himself. "Better store them someplace safe," he suggested.
Fassa clipped her minihedron inside a silver wire cage that hung from her charm bracelet among tinkling 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 on the minihedra. Or were they simply afraid to challenge him?
Not that it mattered. She had the entire scene recorded. From several angles.
"You'll see," Blaize repeated over his shoulder as he left. "I'll do better than any of you."
"Small time, little man," Alpha sneered on her way down the corridor, "small-time plans for a small person. 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.
The gleaming black surfaces of the minihedron flashed in the central cabin lights as Fassa turned her arm this way and that, 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 herself . . . 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 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 surfaces 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, and 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 past!
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 Faul's private games with his daughter. Jumping from the forty-second story balcony, Mama had shattered herself on the terraces of the Regis Galactic Hotel in the middle of Faul del Parma's annual company extravaganza, the one all 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 everything. 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. Thank you, Mama. Even now, six years later, the story of the del Parma wife's suicide still made an occasional gossipbyte. 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 companies, 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, twisting the minihedron back and forth until the sharp angles of the facets bit into her thumb and forefinger. Because when Faul 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 position with one of the major newsbeamers. "They're all 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 companies 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 close enough to let Faul breathe in the warmth and subtle 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 clasped the minihedron inside a corycium heart that dangled from her charm bracelet. "See you around . . . I don't think."
"I wonder," Faul said hoarsely, "how many of those little 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 in 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.
And then what?
No answers to that, no conceivable end to the future she'd mapped out for herself.
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 perfectly well have talked to Nancia from the privacy of his 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 was not 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. I 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 almost 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 rainbow 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.
"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 wanting 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 waiting for me at the Academy. So what was the point? And what difference does it make? Worked out the same as if I'd actually done it, didn't it?"
Silence.
Blaize decided to go back to his cabin before somebody 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.