Space Stations

FOLLOW THE SKY by Pamela Sargent

ALONZA’S earliest memory of her mother was also her last.

They crouched together in a shadowed space near a wall, Alonza and her mother Amparo, looking out at a brightly lighted corridor filled with people. Men and women hurried past them, a few chattering at the people nearest them, others striding along without speaking while staring straight ahead. On the other side of the corridor, holo images of meat pies, pastries, fruits, flatbreads, and colorful bottles appeared over the heads of the passersby, hung there for a few seconds, then vanished. Occasionally, a hovercar filled with people floated past, scattering the crowds with a sharp whistling sound.

Amparo clutched a small satchel. Her hand trembled slightly as she handed her daughter a bracelet. “Listen to me,” she whispered to Alonza, leaning closer. “Hang on to that bracelet for now—don’t drop it.”

Alonza tried to put the bracelet on, but there was no clasp, and she was unable to bend the thin band of metal tightly enough to secure it around her wrist. “It won’t stay on,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to go on. Put it in your pocket—just make sure you hang on to it until—”

“Amparo,” Alonza said, suddenly afraid. Her mother’s forehead glistened with sweat, and she was panting, gasping for air. Maybe she was ill. Alonza thrust the bracelet into one of the side pockets of her tunic.

“Listen to me, child,” Amparo said. “Go down this corridor, and look for a bin. Make sure no one sees you when you ditch the bracelet, then keep walking. When you get tired, sit down somewhere and act like you’re waiting for somebody. I’ll find you later. Got that?”

Alonza nodded.

“Then go.” Amparo pushed her toward the stream of people.

Alonza darted among the forest of trousered legs, and was almost struck in the face by an arm swinging a small bag. There was no clear path through the throng. She slowed her pace, but kept going, breaking into a sprint whenever a space opened up, then slowing down again.

Amparo had sent her after the woman whose satchel they had taken. Alonza had gone up to the woman to distract her while Amparo got ready to grab the stranger’s bag, but this time something had gone wrong. Amparo had moved too quickly, knocking the woman to the floor. The woman had tried to get up and had struck Amparo in the knee, and then Amparo hit her over the head with the pouch full of small stones and pebbles she usually carried in case she had to stun somebody from behind with a quick blow. Alonza remembered her mother standing over the woman’s still body, looking angry and then frightened.

Sometimes Amparo just grabbed a duffel or a bag from her target right away. Sometimes she waited nearby while Alonza pleaded with the mark for directions to a gateway or whimpered that she was lost and couldn’t find her mother, and then Amparo swiped the bag while her mark was still talking to Alonza. Once in a while, Amparo was able to back someone into a corner and threaten her victim into giving up an identity bracelet and personal code before knocking the mark out with a drug implant slapped against an arm. That kind of job was riskier, but often more rewarding.

“Always pick somebody smaller than you who looks nervous and afraid,” Amparo had explained to a couple of her younger friends who were visiting a few nights ago. “Best luck I’ve had is with students who look like it’s their first time away from home, or with old people. They’re so scared of getting hurt that they’ll give you their codes as soon as you ask.”

Alonza thought of the time when her mother had come back to their room with three necklaces and two jackets bought with the credit and codes of a stolen identity bracelet.

Usually Amparo might be able to make one or two purchases before a victim came to and reported a bracelet stolen, but there had been more loot that time. Amparo had been in the middle of her sixth transaction when she had seen that funny look in the merchant’s eyes that told her that her stolen credit was now blocked and that a security guard was on the way.

Always know when to run: Amparo had often told her that.

She had gone far enough by now. Alonza looked back; she could no longer see the place where she and her mother had been. There was a recycling bin to her right, but too many people were loitering near the shiny metal receptacle. She turned away and kept going until the corridor branched into two more long gated hallways. People were lining up at the gates for the suborb flights.

At last she came to a stretch of gates and waiting areas that were nearly empty of people.

She hurried to the nearest bin and dropped the stolen bracelet into a slot, then continued down the long lighted passageway. Her feet were beginning to hurt. Amparo had traded a stolen belt for the shoes, which were made of synthaleather, but the leather had molded itself to its former owner’s feet and had never fit Alonza’s very well.

She was far enough away from the bin now. Alonza moved toward one of the empty waiting areas and sat down on one of the smaller cushions, wondering how long it would take Amparo to find her.

“Stay in one place,” Amparo had always told her, “and sooner or later I’ll find you.”

Alonza sat there, listening to the announcements in Anglaic, Arabic, Espaqol, and other languages. “Twelve-twenty suborb to Toronto, gate fifty-two, now boarding.” “Two zero five, suborb to Damascus, gate forty-seven, now boarding.” “Sixteen thirty-one, shuttle flight to the Wheel, leaving at thirteen-oh-two from gate ninety-five.”

The Wheel! Alonza thought of the space station high above the Earth and was soon lost in a familiar daydream. Someday, when she was older, she would board one of the shuttles and travel to the Wheel herself, to wander its curved corridors and loiter in its lounges before boarding a torchship to another place, maybe Luna or the Islands of Venus. Her daydream was formed mostly of images and experiences drawn from a mind-tour called “Journey to the Wheel,” one of the mind-tours anyone was free to call up without having to spend credit, even people like her and her mother who had to live on Basic and steal anything else they needed. Most of the free mind-tours she had seen bored her; either they were designed to teach some sort of skill like homeostat repair or else they were filled with action scenes that tired her out and were often hard to remember later.

But “Journey to the Wheel” was different. It kept her interested even when there wasn’t really that much going on, when she was feeling and seeing what it was like to travel in a shuttle, floating weightlessly up against the harness that held her to her seat while viewing the distant pale circular tube with spokes that was the Wheel. The end of the mind-tour always left her with a tired but happy feeling of expectation, of feeling that something wonderful was about to happen to her.

Maybe people who went to other places, who didn’t just do their traveling with bands around their heads so that the cybers could feed them a mind-tour’s images and sensations, had that kind of happy feeling all the time. She imagined leaving the room she shared with Amparo and never having to return to the maze of apartment buildings, cubicles, and shacks where the homeostats rarely worked and the air was always too hot and smelled of sand and dust. Maybe—

“Going to Shanghai, child?” a woman’s voice said in Anglaic.

Alonza looked up. A woman with short dark hair and a kindly smile was gazing down at her.

“No,” she replied hastily.

“But this is the waiting area for that suborb flight.”

“I’m waiting for my mother,” Alonza said. “She told me to wait here.” She glanced down at her hands and saw, too late, that she had forgotten to pull the long sleeves of her tunic over her wrists. The woman would notice that she was not wearing an identity bracelet.

But the stranger did not look down at her hands, but instead continued to stare at Alonza’s face.

“I see,” the woman said.

“She didn’t want me to get lost,” Alonza added.

“Of course. Well…” The woman turned away and sat down on a cushion near the wall.

Alonza waited as more people entered the lounge and settled themselves on the cushions around her. Among them were two Linkers, dressed in long white formal robes and kaffiyehs, each with the diamondlike gem on his forehead that marked him as one of the few who had a direct Link to Earth’s cyberminds; the two men sat together, and those making their way past them nodded respectfully in their direction. A few of the people were eating small rolls and pieces of fruit, and drinking from small bottles; Alonza, feeling very hungry, wondered if she could risk begging or stealing some food. Nearly every seat was taken by the time she started worrying about Amparo.

Her mother should have been here by now, Alonza thought. Soon all these people would begin to board the suborb, and somebody else would wonder what she was doing here.

Already a gray-haired man was watching her with a puzzled look on his face, while a guide wearing dark blue overalls and a badge hanging over his chest had come by a couple of times already, slowing down to glance at her both times.

A space in the back wall opened. A man came through the opening and stepped to a counter as the doorway behind him closed. He wore a dark blue shirt; like the guide, he had a badge that said “Port of San Antonio” on the top and “Nueva Republica de Texas” on the bottom. Alonza knew how to read a little, and she had seen those words often enough to recognize them immediately.

The man peered at the screen of his console, apparently checking the passenger list. That meant that everyone here would be lining up in a few minutes, having their bracelets scanned and their identities and credit confirmed, and then heading for the doorway that led to the field outside.

She was suddenly frightened, afraid to move from her cushion. Then she saw the guide walking toward her with another man at his side, a tall thin pale-haired man in the black uniform of a Guardian, with a stun wand hanging from his belt.

“Is your name Alonza Lemaris?” the man in the Guardian uniform asked.

She nodded. If he knew her name, it meant that her mother had been caught.

“Come with me,” the man said.

They took her to a small room. The guide left them there alone, and the Guardian asked her a lot of questions, keeping his hand around his wand the whole time, but terrified as she was, she knew that Amparo would want her to say as little as possible. “I’m waiting for my mother. She told me to wait there for her. She told me not to get lost.” She kept saying the same thing over and over and at last the Guardian stopped pacing and sat down in front of her.

“Listen to me, you little bitch,” he said angrily. “We’ve already got your mother on assault, credit theft, and ident theft. If we put her to the question, we can probably get a lot more out of her, but she wouldn’t be the same afterward, and you’re the only one who can stop us from doing that kind of damage to her. So you can begin telling me about what kinds of things she’s been up to, and we’ll find some work for her to do while she’s serving her sentence that won’t be too hard on her, or else we can start interrogating her until she breaks down and confesses. She won’t be of much use to anybody after that.

Some people get so messed up in their minds afterward that they end up killing themselves.”

“I want to see her,” Alonza said softly.

“You won’t see her until after she’s finished her time, and that’s going to be long from now. Get this through your head—you’ll probably never see her again. The only favor you can do for her now is to tell me exactly what she’s done, what you’ve seen her do, what you’ve done together.”

Amparo had always been terrified of getting caught, of being interrogated by Guardians.

They would put a band on your head, her mother had told her, one of the slender silver ones like the ones people used to access a mind-tour, and then they would dig into your mind, force you to confess, find all kinds of ways to hurt you and make you scream in pain until you told them the truth. That was why it was so important never to get caught; better to be dead than in the custody of Guardians preparing to question you.

“She didn’t do anything,” Alonza insisted, staring at the gold lieutenant’s bars on the man’s shoulders. “She told me to wait for her, that’s all.”

The Guardian stood up and slapped her in the face. The blow shocked her more than it hurt her. “You’re a stubborn one,” he muttered, sounding almost pleased. “I guess we’ll let you visit with your mother after all.”

He led her out of the room, gripping her arm tightly. A hovercar with another Guardian was waiting for them. They rode through the hallways of the port to another room, where two more Guardians were waiting with Amparo.

Her mother was bound to a chair. A console with a screen sat in front of her. “I didn’t say anything,” Alonza cried out, trying to free herself from the man holding her arm, but Amparo did not seem to hear her. Then one of the men in the room stepped toward Amparo and held out a circular silver headband.

Amparo screamed. Her scream was so sharp and piercing that Alonza froze.

“Tell them!” her mother shrieked. “Tell them anything they want to know!”

Alonza told the Guardians about the woman and how Amparo had struck her and where she had ditched the bracelet they had stolen from her. The men asked her more questions about other marks they had taken things from, and Amparo, who was sobbing by then, told Alonza to answer those questions, too. When Alonza had finished telling the Guardians about what they had stolen over the past months and how they had obtained the goods, the pale-haired Guardian told her that her mother would be doing useful labor for the Nomarchies of Earth while serving out her sentence. They did not say anything about a hearing, how long a sentence Amparo would get, or how unpleasant the useful labor would be.

“What about my daughter?” Amparo asked hoarsely.

“That’s none of your business, woman. We’ll take care of her. She’ll be a lot better off than she was with you. She’ll be a better citizen of her Nomarchy when she grows up, and by then she’ll forget about you.”

The Guardian had been right. Alonza had been cared for afterward, and supposed that she had grown up to be a better citizen than she would have been otherwise.

Her memory of her mother grew fainter over time. In the first years after her mother’s arrest, while she was still living in the children’s dormitory, Alonza had occasionally tried to find out where Amparo was being held, but the cyberminds always blocked those channels so that she could not get an answer, and then the teaching image on her screen would order her to get back to her lessons. After a while, she stopped asking about Amparo. When she was older, after the officers in charge of the dormitory had decided that she and a few of her friends showed enough promise to be sent to a school for more lessons in academic subjects instead of being trained for satellite repair, she rarely thought of her mother.

The pale-haired Guardian had been right when he told her that she would be better off in the dormitory than with Amparo. There had been the opportunity for schooling, and since the Guardians often recruited from the children housed in the dorms while their parents served time, she had eventually been trained at an officers’ academy for the important work of being one of the protectors of Earth’s biosphere and its peace. Had she remained with her mother, she would have grown up to be another one like her, a mosquito as they were called in their crowded neighborhood near the port, one of those who lived by stinging any unwary travelers passing through San Antonio. Had she stayed with Amparo, she would never have made it to the Wheel, certainly not as an officer and as an aide to Colonel Jonas Sansom, the commander of the Guardian detachment at the Wheel, and also the pale-haired Guardian officer who had detained her at the San Antonio port so many years ago.

Alonza Lemaris stood in the small waiting area just beyond the shuttle dock’s bay.

Another group had just arrived, passengers from Earth bound for Venus. Most of the people coming to the Wheel could be left to find their own way to the lounges and bays in the hub where they would wait to board their freighters or passenger vessels, but this group of travelers, who came from a camp outside Tashkent, were an exception.

Guardians were stationed at that camp to keep order, and Guardians traveled with any settlers who left the camp on the shuttle flights to the Wheel. Usually Alonza or one of the other officers met the new arrivals and ushered them to a bay near the dock holding the Habber ship that was to take them on the next leg of their journey to Anwara, the vast space station that circled Earth’s sister planet, but that was not why she had come here this time.

Settlers, Alonza thought; traitors to Earth was what many would call them. She had nothing against the scientists and specialists and workers who were trained for the terraforming Venus Project, who had been chosen to go there and who had proved their worth. But the people from the camp outside Tashkent were another matter. They abandoned their homes and their work and even gave up all of their credit, to go to the camp and wait for passage until a few more workers might be needed inside the domed settlements that were being raised on the still inhospitable surface of Venus. They were, most of them, malcontents willing to leave their own Nomarchies to gamble on getting a chance at making a new world and a new life for themselves. Maybe the Project needed such people, and perhaps the Council of Mukhtars that governed Earth’s Nomarchies had been wise to allow such camps as a social safety valve, but Guardians had to keep order in the camps, and Alonza considered that a waste of their resources.

A door opened and a Guardian pilot in a black uniform entered the waiting area, followed by a man and a woman who wore pins of silver circles on their blue tunics, pins that such people were required to wear in Earthspace so that anyone seeing them would know at a glance what they were. Alonza looked away from the pair as the pilot saluted her.

“Major Lemaris,” he said, “how good of you to greet me. Congratulations on your recent promotion. I hear that it’s well deserved.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Looking up at him, Alonza wondered if the man was only being polite or trying to suck up to her in the hope of gaining some future favor. Hard to tell, but it did him no harm either way.

“As soon as our charges are off the shuttlecraft, my crew and I will speed them on their way to their ship,” the man continued.

“I came here,” Alonza said, “to tell you that their trip has to be delayed. Your passengers will have to stay here, so get them into the lift and shoot them through the spoke to Level B and the lounge next to the assistant director’s office. We’ll keep them under guard there until we can allow them to board their transport.”

“There’s thirty of them,” the pilot said. He glared at the man and woman with the silver pins, as if they were to blame for the delay. “Might be kind of crowded.”

“They shouldn’t be there for more than ten to twenty hours,” Alonza murmured, “thirty at most. They’re from a camp, so they know hardship.”

The pilot shrugged.

“Warn them that it’ll be close to a g there,” she went on, “not the half-g they’ve got here in the hub.”

“I assume that we at least will be able to stay aboard our ship until our departure, since I know the Wheel’s space is limited.” The man in the blue tunic had spoken; he was a small man, barely taller than Alonza, with short dark hair and brown almond-shaped eyes. His companion, a short dark-eyed woman with a cap of thick black hair, stared past Alonza, avoiding her gaze.

“Unfortunately, you can’t go aboard,” Alonza replied, “because a few components in the dock have to be replaced before it’s safe to ferry anybody to your ship.”

The man frowned, looking as though he did not believe her, not that it mattered whether he did or not. He and his companion were Habitat-dwellers, or Habbers as they were derisively called. Their ancestors had abandoned Earth centuries ago for the Associated Habitats, the homes they had made for themselves in space, and there were many who believed that, despite their appearance, the Habbers were no longer truly human, that their genetic engineering had far surpassed what Earth allowed among its people.

Habbers might have their uses; some of them worked with the scientists and specialists of the Venus Project, and having them ferry settlers from the camps to Venus was certainly a convenience. Changing the orbits of a few asteroids so that they would come nearer to Earth and could be more easily mined had been another service of the Habbers to the home world.

Alonza could grant all of that, but loathed the air of superiority that Habbers exuded, as if the resources they provided and the necessary tasks they voluntarily undertook for Earth’s benefit were little more than crumbs thrown to beggars. She thought then of how the home world must seem to Habbers, with its flooded coastlines, melting ice caps, and an atmosphere that was still too thick with carbon dioxide six centuries after the Resource Wars. They probably thought of themselves as fortunate for having abandoned what they must see as a played-out world populated by deluded die-hards. Even these two Habber pilots had that look of superiority in their eyes, the calm steady gaze of people who seemed to lack any turbulent and upsetting emotions.

“Where are we to stay, then?” the female Habber asked.

The woman probably expected to have to stay in the lounge with all the passengers going to Venus. Alonza was silent for a moment, then said, “We want you to be comfortable. I believe that our agreement with the Associated Habitats also requires us not to inflict any unnecessary discomfort on any of you. So we’ve found a room for you in our officers’ quarters. You’ll have to share it, but there are two beds, and a public lavatory just down the corridor.”

“That’s very kind of you,” the male Habber said, and she heard a note of sarcasm in his voice. Being sarcastic was uncharacteristic of such cool and rational types as Habbers, but then this Habber and his companion were not like others of their kind.

After getting their thirty Venus-bound passengers out of the lift and settled in the lounge, Alonza led the two Habbers to their room, which was just three doors from her own quarters. In the three years since she had been assigned here, she had grown used to the gently curving and brightly lit corridors, to the gravitylike acceleration, only slightly weaker than Earth’s, that was imparted by the Wheel’s rotation around its hub, to the pilots and passengers passing end-lessly through this station. Every twenty-four-hour period brought the promise of something new—of an unusually interesting traveler, official visitors, a new detachment of Guardians with intriguing tales of a Nomarchy she did not know that much about, the possibility of a mission that might take her to the L-5

spaceport, to one of the industrial, recreational, and military satellites that orbited Earth, or even to Luna. Her post here often imparted a heightened sense of expectation, of feeling that she was on a journey that would never end. It was as if she were somehow picking up that feeling of anticipation from all of those who passed through the Wheel on their way to other places.

“Your room,” Alonza said to the two Habbers as she pressed the door open for them.

They entered a small room bare of furnishings except for a small wall screen and two cushions in front of two low shelves. “You pull the beds out from the wall.” She demonstrated by pressing a panel and pulling out the lower bunk. “And the lavatory’s four doors down to your right. I hope everything’s satisfactory, but if there’s anything else you need, do let me know.”

“We’re most appreciative,” the male Habber said.

“I’d be most grateful if you would both be my guests at supper in two hours,” Alonza continued. She thought of asking Tom Ruden-Nodell, the physician in charge of the Wheel’s infirmary and the closest friend she had here, to join them, but decided against it. She would get more of a sense of these two by herself.

The Habbers glanced at each other, apparently surprised by her offer of hospitality.

“We’re a bit tired,” the man said. “Perhaps another time—”

“Tired? I didn’t think Habitat-dwellers were as subject to our frailties. Three hours, then?

That should give you time to rest. I look forward to seeing you then. I’ll send a Guardian to fetch you.” Alonza turned and left the room before the man could object again.

“Detain the operative,” Colonel Sansom had said in his message, sent to her over a confidential channel. Alonza had seen the woman’s file, stored under the name she was using. This was a matter Colonel Sansom should have handled himself, but he had left suddenly to go to an asteroid tracking station two days ago, to supervise repairs after a micrometeorite strike had damaged three telescopes, and would not get back to the Wheel for another thirty hours at least. A more easygoing officer might have sent a subordinate to the station, but not the obsessively conscientious Jonas Sansom. Tracking the orbits of asteroids that might threaten Earth was one of the most important duties of Guardians, perhaps the most important. Colonel Sansom would report to his superiors that he had seen to this task personally.

“Just get her away from the others,” Sansom continued, “and into custody as quietly as possible, that’s all. Best if you can handle it by yourself without bringing anybody else into it, so use your judgment.”

That was all. That was more than enough. Alonza was flattered that he trusted her with this task. She must not fail him.

According to the file on her screen, the operative was using the name of Sameh Tryolla.

She had supposedly grown up in the Eastern Mediterranean Nomarchy, attended and then been asked to leave the University of Vancouver in the Pacific Federation for not doing well at her studies in physics, and after that had decided to leave her work as a laboratory assistant in Ankara to go to the camp outside Tashkent. Probably everything in her file was an invention. The image of Sameh Tryolla showed a slim, young olive-skinned woman with long dark-brown hair and large hazel eyes; she looked frail, and hardly more than a girl.

The woman was to be detained, according to Colonel Sansom, because the Guardian Commanders who advised the Council of Mukhtars had abruptly decided to abort her mission. Alonza was to detain her as unobtrusively as possible and hold her until the colonel returned to the Wheel, after which he would take charge of the matter.

Her task seemed simple enough, but there were all kinds of possible complications in carrying it out. Perhaps this Sameh had friends among those traveling with her who might object to seeing her led away without a good excuse. Maybe the Habber pilots who were to take Sameh and the others from the camp to Venus would argue that, since she was technically in their custody until she arrived in Anwara, the Guardians had no right to keep her at the Wheel. Perhaps Sameh would demand a public hearing, claiming that the Guardian force at the Wheel was violating the implicit agreement that had been made with her by allowing her passage from Earth to Venus.

Nothing would prevent her superiors from doing whatever they wanted with Sameh in the end, but any of these possibilities would draw too much attention to the operative.

The Guardian officers close to the Council of Mukhtars wanted no attention drawn to their covert activities. Better for the secret service of the Mukhtars’ personal guard to be no more than the subject of unverifiable rumors, to have even the existence of such a secret service doubted by most of Earth’s citizens.

Alonza closed the file on Sameh Tryolla and secured it, knowing that she would not have to retrieve it again. The whole business had bothered her from the first, and even though Colonel Sansom had not betrayed any uneasiness, she suspected that he was equally puzzled by their orders. Why not find some way to get word to the woman about the change in plans instead of confining her on the Wheel? Why take the risk of calling attention to her by detaining her? For that matter, why not put her out of the way permanently, making her death look like an accident? Why hadn’t she been stopped before she got to the Wheel?

Asking such questions, though, was not part of her assignment; nor was wondering what Sameh Tryolla’s mission might have been. The Council of Mukhtars had many ways of monitoring the progress of the Venus Project and the loyalty of the Cytherians, as the people who lived in the surface settlements and on the domed Islands that floated in Venus’ thin upper atmosphere preferred to call themselves. Alonza had always assumed that one of the Mukhtars’ methods was to plant a few spies among the settlers. She hoped that this was all the Council was doing, that the spies were no more than informers alerting Earth’s rulers of possible difficulties and dissatisfactions that might require their attention.

Irrationally, something inside her insisted upon hoping that Venus might become a place where people could win more for themselves than they were allowed on Earth, that the Cytherians would make something new, that the machinations of the Mukhtars would not dampen their dreams. She had picked up such sentiments from others who had come to the Wheel, the scientists and workers and others who looked forward to the work of terraforming, even knowing that they would never live to see the results of their labors and could only hope that their distant descendants might live on the green and growing world they would create. The terraforming of Venus would redeem Earth and provide a new Earthlike planet for its people. Far in the future, the technology used to transform Venus might even be used to heal humankind’s wounded home world.

Not that Alonza would let such passing thoughts interfere with her duty.

She thought of her own arrival at the Wheel, when Colonel Sansom had welcomed her to her post with a dinner in the officers’ mess. “I thought you might have the makings of a Guardian,” he had told her, “even back in San Antonio. You wouldn’t talk, even with all the scary tales you’d surely been told about Guardian interrogations, not until we took you to your mother and she begged you to talk. First you demonstrated your loyalty, and then you showed your good sense. Adjusting well to the dorms and doing well at your assigned studies only confirmed my original judgment.”

That she had never asked the Guardians about her mother had likely been another point in her favor. She had learned to control her curiosity, to live with knowing that many of her questions would never be answered and that any answers, if she somehow found them, would only bring her trouble.

Alonza did not suppose that she would learn much, if anything, about Sameh Tryolla from the two Habber pilots. The woman was only another one of their passengers; it was unlikely that they had exchanged even a few words with her. But she had to know if they might pose an obstacle to her assignment.

She met them at the entrance to the officers’ mess and led them to their table. Most of the low tables were in the common area, open to all officers and their guests, but Alonza and the Habbers would dine in the smaller adjoining room where Colonel Sansom often entertained visiting Linkers and other dignitaries. She wanted some privacy, so that the Habbers would feel freer to talk.

Keir Renin, the Guardian officer in charge of the camp outside Tashkent, had sent her a confidential message about the two Habbers. The woman went only by the name of Te-yu, not unusual since it was the custom among Habbers to use just one name, but her full name was Hong Te-yu. The man was known as Benzi and also had the surname of

Liangharad. This was the third time that the two were ferrying people from the camp to Venus, and Keir Renin had been given the distinct impression by Te-yu and Benzi that this would be the pair’s last such journey.

What was unusual about these two was that they had not been born and reared in a Habitat. They had close kinfolk on Earth and also among the Cytherians, and had grown up on one of the Venusian Islands. But being given a stake in the Venus Project had not been enough for Te-yu and Benzi, who with several other conspirators had seized control of a shuttlecraft to flee to a Hab not far from Venus.

Few took the risks of fleeing to any of the Habitats and asking for refuge, and some had died in the attempt. Capture meant imprisonment and a forever restricted existence; other failed attempts had ended in death aboard space vessels too limited in range to reach a Habitat. Alonza had never heard of any successful refugees returning to Earth or to the regions of space controlled by the Council of Mukhtars. She wondered why these two had done so, whether they now regretted the choice they had made, if there was some way she might be able to use them.

The two Habbers sat down across from her on their cushions. Alonza folded her legs in front of her, under the table, then studied the pocket screen on the tabletop.

“Do you have any particular preferences?” Alonza asked her guests. “With people coming through here from so many different regions, we have more variety in our cuisine than you might expect.”

The woman named Te-yu shrugged.

“Please feel free to order for both of us, Major Lemaris,” her companion Benzi murmured. He smiled slightly. “No doubt you know what’s best.”

Alonza thought she detected amusement in his smile, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. She found herself suddenly disliking him intensely, then let that feeling go. “We’ll start with chili bean soup,” she said, “and then some fish in a cucumber and dill sauce with rice for the main course. The fish is from one of our protein vats, of course, but it tastes almost exactly like salmon. We’ll end the meal with a few fruit pastries.”

“Sounds delicious,” Benzi said.

“And we can offer you a selection of coffees, herbal teas, and fruit juices.” The officers’ mess served no alcohol, in deference to the Islamic faith of Earth’s dominant Nomarchies and also to keep discipline among the Guardians and the Wheel’s other personnel, although occasionally the pilots or crew members of a freighter could be bribed into surrendering a few bottles of a cargo.

“We’ll have whatever you’re having,” Benzi said.

Alonza touched her screen to order the meal, finding their acquiescence annoying.

Te-yu’s face was composed, and her dark eyes stared past Alonza. In common with the Linkers of Earth, Habbers had Links that connected them directly to their cyberminds; they could call up any data they might need from their artificial intelligences without using the slender silver headbands most people had to wear in order to open those channels.

The Council of Mukhtars restricted direct Links to only a few, to the scientists, specialists, Guardian Commanders, and prominent advisers to the Council who had been trained to use the Links and who had access to channels that were closed to other people.

But Habbers, it was said, were all Linked, all equal in their access to their cyberminds.

Perhaps Te-yu was diverting herself with some data stream or other, or picking up a message from a friend; that might account for the vacant look on her face.

How insulting of her, Alonza thought; it was as rude as coming to dinner, whipping out a pocket screen, and playing a game instead of conversing with one’s companions. “I’m told that you have close kinfolk on Earth,” she said aloud, wanting to get that out of the way.

“Yes,” Benzi said, “and on Venus as well.”

“And do you sometimes miss what you left behind?” Alonza asked.

“You’re asking if that is why I volunteered to ferry people from that camp to Venus?”

Benzi drew his brows together. “Maybe so. I haven’t really examined my possible motivations,”

An orderly came into the small room with a tray, set down the cups of juice, then left.

Having people handle such simple tasks on the Wheel was cheaper than the trouble and expense of maintaining the servos and other mechanisms that performed such jobs elsewhere. Whatever Earth might lack in other resources, it had no shortage of people.

“You might have been taking a risk,” Alonza said, “even with our agreements. Ways might have been found to keep you both on Earth without violating any treaties.”

Te-yu’s eyes focused on her. Alonza finally had her attention. Benzi sipped some juice, then set his cup down. “We thought that most unlikely,” he said.

“But still possible.”

“Just barely.” He frowned for a moment, then drank more juice. She wanted him a bit apprehensive; that would make him and his companion less likely to interfere with her task.

They got through the meal while saying little of any significance. Benzi and Alonza exchanged opinions on the very few mind-tours and virtual concerts they had both experienced. The dinner, better than Benzi had clearly expected, inspired them both to discuss some of their favorite foods. Alonza mentioned in passing that she had been born in San Antonio, and Benzi said that although he had grown up on one of Venus’ Islands, he had been born in a small town on the North American Plains. Te-yu said almost nothing at all.

Alonza walked the two Habbers back to their room, then hurried to the nearest lift. The door slid shut silently; the cage hummed softly around her until the door opened and she knew that she had arrived at the Wheel’s hub.

Alonza welcomed the half-g of the hub, where all the docks were located. She came here often, to look at the ships and imagine herself on an endless journey aboard one; such musings were one of her few indulgences.

She entered the bay area, empty except for two technicians checking some readings, and went to the viewscreen. Often Tom Ruden-Nodell joined her here after a shift of duty at the infirmary, partly because the half-g eased his minor aches and pains. He was another one like her, according to his public record, someone who had been a child living on Basic and what he could scrounge for himself until he caught the eye of a benefactor who, impressed by his quickness and intelligence, had taken him away from his negligent parents and found him a place in a dormitory.

But they never spoke of the past. They sat in the bay and speculated about the travelers who passed through the Wheel and exchanged the stories they had each gleaned from them. There were workers in gray tunics and pants with tales of repairing seawalls and dikes near the flooded cities of New York, Melbourne, or Corpus Christi; Linkers in white robes with gossip about the sexual affairs of those close to the Council of Mukhtars; students and young scientists with stories of their future ambitions told with a mixture of youthful arrogance and insecurity. While listening to them, Alonza often thought of how far she had come from the wretched shantytown of people on Basic that nestled near San Antonio’s port.

“I might put in for a change,” Tom had told her the last time they were here in the hub.

“I’m thinking of making a move to Luna. They’ll need another physician there sooner or later, and there’d be the astronomers and other researchers to exchange ideas with and the engineers and miners to drink with. And one-sixth gravity might be just the thing for my old bones.” She had noticed the deep lines around his eyes then, the graying hair, the weariness his slouch betrayed.

“You’re not that old, Tom,” she said.

“I am that old, Alonza,” and he was right; he was eighty, and could expect another thirty or forty years if his rejuvenation therapy worked as it did for most people, but there were always exceptions, and Tom was already showing many of the signs of age. “Might not be a bad place for a Guardian officer to be posted either,” he added.

“And why is that?”

“Because there isn’t much to do except keep order and look out for people’s safety and maybe round up a few miners and workers when they get a little rowdy.”

“There wouldn’t be much chance for a promotion, though.”

“And not much chance of running afoul of ambitious officers either.” Tom had smiled to himself then, and for a moment Alonza had envied the physician the relatively peaceful life he had won for himself.

More docks had been added to the Wheel in recent years, and now there were fifteen of them filled with the metal slugs of freighters and dull gray torchships; other docks held the shuttles that traveled to and from Earth and Luna. The Habber vessel was unlike the other torchships; it was a slender spire of silver attached to the vast globe that housed its engines. Its passengers would board the vessel, perhaps expecting the diversions that other passenger ships offered, only to find out that they would be in suspension during the entire journey. The Habbers claimed that this was a more efficient way of transporting their passengers, that to have them safely stored in sleepers was more comfortable for them, given the high acceleration of their faster ships, but Alonza also suspected that the Habbers did not want anyone else poking around inside their vessels and maybe finding out more about them.

Alonza moved closer to the viewscreen. Outside the hub, two suited and helmeted figures crawled along the latticework of the dock that held the Habber ship. They had surely noticed by now that the components did not really need to be replaced this soon, according to the readings, but they were well-disciplined Guardian technicians and had not questioned their orders.

Alonza slapped the comm next to the screen. “How’s it going, Starling?”

“I’ve got two more components to go, Major,” the voice of Darlanna Starling replied.

“Richi’s got three.”

“Estimate?”

“Two more hours, maybe three.”

“Both of you better come inside for a break, Starling. That’s an order. When you get too tired, accidents can happen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Get some food into you, maybe a nap if you think you need it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That would give her some more time. Maybe she wouldn’t need much more; maybe this whole business would move along faster than she expected. Go to the lounge where the Venus-bound passengers were waiting, give them some bureaucratic gab, get Sameh Tryolla away from the others on some excuse, and send the two Habbers on their way with their ship.

Doubt bit at her again. It didn’t add up, the secrecy, holding the woman here, going to all this trouble. Alonza pushed those thoughts aside as she left the bay.

The people in the lounge seemed subdued. Some of them lay on the floor, their packs and duffels under their heads, while others sat on cushions. A few had helped themselves to cups of water from the wall dispenser and were drinking it listlessly. Perhaps they were still recovering from the weightless discomforts of the shuttle flight.

Sameh Tryolla was on one of the cushions, her back against the wall, looking even thinner and smaller than she had in her file image. She glanced toward Alonza, then looked away.

“…showed them to the lavatories,” the Guardian on Alonza’s right murmured, “and they haven’t given us any trouble. Might need to get fed soon, though.”

“They don’t have any credit to pay for their food,” Alonza said. The hopeful settlers had been forced to give up all their credit after reaching the camp; it was one way to help cover the expense of housing them while they waited for passage. “Thirty or forty hours on nothing but water won’t kill them,” she went on, thinking of times in her early childhood when she had had even less than that.

“Yeah, but you don’t want them to get weak, Major,” the Guardian said, “or we might get stuck with them for even longer.”

Alonza turned toward the young man. “You’re quite right, Zaleski,” she said as the threads of her plan came together in her mind. “In fact, that’s why I’m here. I’m a little worried after the last message I got from Keir Renin.”

The young Guardian looked puzzled.

“The officer in charge of the camp they came from,” she continued in a softer voice. “He didn’t say so outright, but he implied that the soldiers who gave them their med-scans might have been a bit sloppy.”

Zaleski’s blue eyes widened.

“Oh, I don’t think we really have to worry,” Alonza said hastily. “Renin’s people would have caught anything virulent or potentially lethal. But as long as they’re stuck here, it wouldn’t hurt to scan them all again.”

“Should I call for a couple of paramedics?” Zaleski turned toward the comm near the doorway.

“No,” Alonza replied. “The head physician can handle this.” She could trust Tom, and Colonel Sansom had told her to use her own judgment. “I’ll go to the infirmary and set things up with him.”

“I could call him and—”

“I’d rather not have rumors going around about possibly contagious travelers being here.”

The young Guardian nodded. “Of course, Major Lemaris.”

Tom Ruden-Nodell listened as Alonza told him about the people she wanted scanned and gave him the name of the person she had been ordered to detain. “We’ll bring her back here,” she continued, “and hold her until Colonel Sansom gets back.”

“And we’re to do all this as quietly as possible,” he said.

“Yes. We’ll put her in one of the private rooms, and you can give her something to knock her out. I’ll keep watch over her. It would be better not to involve any of the other medical personnel.”

“Understood.”

Tom had not asked her about why she was to hold the woman, and what Colonel

Sansom wanted with her, but she had expected that. He was safer knowing as little as possible and not risking his usually placid and extremely secure existence.

They left his office together, the physician with a portable scanner under his arm. He said nothing to her during the short walk through the corridor to the lounge. As they entered the room, Zaleski and the three Guardians with him stepped aside and stood at attention.

“I have an announcement to make,” Alonza said. The people sitting on cushions or on the floor looked toward her; those lying down stirred and sat up. “Since you have to wait here anyway until the dock’s repaired, we’ve decided to give you all another med-scan.”

She heard groans, and a couple of men scowled. “Let me assure you that we expect to find nothing, given that you were all scanned before leaving your camp, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful, and we’ve got the time for the extra caution.”

“I’ll tell you what you’ll find out,” a stocky blond man said in accented Anglaic. “We could all use some food. I vomited what little they gave me during that damned shuttle flight.”

Alonza narrowed her eyes as she gripped the handle of the stun wand at her waist. “You won’t be here that much longer. Now line up in front of the ID console and we’ll get this done as quickly as we can.” She turned to Tom as people cleared their throats, stretched, mumbled to one another, and slowly got to their feet.

The stocky blond man held out his braceleted wrist as the ID console’s flat voice recited his name, age, and other particulars. He was scanned first, followed by two bearded fellows in worn brown tunics and baggy pants. Sameh Tryolla was near the back of the line; that was good. They could be done with this, get the operative secured, and send the Habbers and their human cargo on their way in two or three hours.

Tom circled each person with a med-scan wand, moved the wand up and down, stared at the readings on his portable screen for a bit, then gave a quick nod before scanning the next man or woman. The physician seemed his usual thorough self, and it occurred to Alonza then that he might actually find some sort of medical problem in one of these people that had not been caught earlier. The chances of that were vanishingly remote, but could complicate matters for her.

People held their arms out to the console, shuffled toward Tom, stood quietly as he waved his wand over them as though casting a spell, then moved toward the back of the room to lean against the wall and gaze sourly at Alonza and her Guardians.

When it was Sameh Tryolla’s turn, a look of uneasiness flickered across her pretty face.

The ID console gave her age as twenty, which agreed with the data Alonza had seen in her file, but she looked even younger than that.

Tom passed his wand over her, stared at his screen, rubbed his chin, and sighed. “Stand right over there, young woman,” he said, gesturing in Alonza’s direction.

“But why?” Sameh Tryolla asked in the high tiny voice of a child.

“Do as the doctor says,” Alonza said. Sameh Tryolla came toward her and waited at her left as Tom finished scanning the last three people.

“All right,” Tom said, “I’m done, and grateful for your cooperation. Now I better start by saying that nobody here has anything to worry about, but it looks like I’ll have to do a more thorough scan of young Sameh Tryolla here.”

Alonza saw the young woman raise her brows, as if startled, and yet she did not seem that surprised somehow. Her body had not tensed; if anything, she seemed almost relaxed. In her position, Alonza thought, I’d be wondering what’s going on, why I was being singled out, if somebody had found out what I really was. At the very least I’d be worrying about whether or not I actually did have some kind of unexpected and mysterious medical problem.

“There’s nothing the matter with me,” Sameh Tryolla said in her little girl’s voice.

“Now I’m just about certain that’s true,” Tom said reassuringly, “and a complete workup in the infirmary will probably bear that out, but we can’t be too careful. Scan here shows that you’ve got some kind of bacterium in your system that the med-scan program can’t identify. I don’t want you worrying, because people carry all kinds of bacteria as a normal thing, but we just want—”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Sameh said in a softer but steelier voice.

Tom nodded. “We’ll just isolate it and make sure—”

“I understand.” Sameh bowed her head, looking like a child again.

“And what about the rest of us?” the blond man called out. He seemed to have made himself the spokesman for his companions. “What are we supposed to do, wait around here until he runs all his tests on her?”

Alonza stared at him; he glared back. She kept her eyes on him until he finally looked down, then said, “I checked on how the repairs were going just a short time ago, and by now the components have probably been replaced. As soon as I verify that, we’ll get all of you aboard the Habber ship as quickly as we can. If this woman here is cleared by then, as the doctor expects, she’ll join you, and if not, you’ll be on your way without her.”

She waited for somebody in the group to object, to ask what would happen to Sameh Tryolla after that, but no one did. They probably assumed that she would be sent back to the camp, or maybe given some job on the Wheel to earn her keep until another ship arrived to carry former camp inmates to Venus. As Alonza studied their indifferent and bored faces, she realized that nobody here particularly cared what happened to her. Just as well, she thought, since it made her task easier.

“I have to get my pack,” Sameh Tryolla whispered, at last sounding worried.

“Get it, then,” Alonza said. The woman went to the back of the room, picked up a duffel, and slipped the strap over her shoulder. Alonza pressed her hand against the comm next to the door. “Lemaris to Starling.”

“Starling here,” the voice of Darlanna Starling replied.

“How are those repairs coming along?”

“We’ll be done in a hour, Major.”

“Good. We’ll get the passengers ready to board.” She turned to the men at her side.

“Zaleski, go fetch our two Habber guests. Achmed and Jeyaraj, get all these people to the hub. I’ll let you know if this woman will be joining them or not by the time they’re ready to leave.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sameh was silent during the walk to the infirmary. Tom would stall for a while, doing another med-scan and taking his samples, and then Alonza would give the young woman the word. “You won’t be going to Venus; I have to detain you. Those are my orders. No, I don’t know why; all they told me was to hold you until my commanding officer returns.”

Maybe it would be better to simply put her under restraint without explaining anything, but something in Alonza rebelled against that; an operative working for Guardian Commanders deserved more consideration, and it might count against Alonza if the woman complained that she had been badly treated.

Again her doubts nagged at her. Why all this trouble that risked attracting unwanted attention? Why hadn’t Sameh’s superiors found a simpler way of aborting the woman’s mission? Surely they had some way to alert Sameh that her mission had been canceled.

They might have given Alonza a password or some other coded message over a private channel. She would not have to be told what the operative’s original assignment was in order to pass such a message along.

They entered the infirmary. The beds in the ward were empty; the two paramedics on duty greeted Tom with quick nods of their heads. They walked through the ward and continued down a narrow hall with five doors on either side, then stopped in front of one room. The door slid open and the ceiling light brightened to a soft glow, revealing a small room with a wide bed and a wall screen with a holo image of a forest clearing.

“Kind of luxurious quarters,” Sameh said, “for somebody like me.”

“Normally we put Linkers and other dignitaries in the private rooms,” Tom said.

“I guessed that.” Sameh sounded unimpressed.

“We want you to be comfortable,” Alonza added, “and if we should have to isolate you—”

“Can’t think why you should have to do that.” Sameh went to the bed, dropped her duffel on it, and sat down. “If you really thought it was catching, you’d have everybody else in here with me being checked.”

“Not necessarily,” Tom said. “I’ll have to get some more equipment to run the tests, so just rest here until I get back.” He shot Alonza a dubious look before the door slid shut behind him.

Sameh began to rummage in her duffel. Alonza leaned against the wall, resting her hand on her wand. “How long is this going to take?” the young woman asked.

“I don’t know. That’s up to the chief physician.”

“I better be on my way with the rest of them.”

“We’ll do our best to see that you are.”

The comm on the table next to the bed chimed. “Alonza,” Tom’s voice said, “one of the Habber pilots is here. Calls himself Benzi, and he wants to talk to you.”

“Bring him here, then.” Alonza closed the comm’s channel and turned to Sameh. She had known that this might happen, that the Habber would have questions about his passenger. She hoped that he would be satisfied with whatever answers Tom was probably already giving him.

“Dr. Ruden-Nodell and Habitat-dweller Benzi,” the door’s voice announced.

“Let them in,” Alonza said.

The door opened and Tom entered, followed by Benzi. “I think you know why I’m here,”

Benzi said. “I came here with thirty people to transport. I expected to leave the Wheel with thirty.”

“The doctor said—” Alonza began.

“I know what he said, Major Lemaris. If you will provide me with a record of this woman’s med-scan, I can determine what might be done for her aboard our vessel before she’s put in suspension. In any case, it will probably be more than you can do for her here.”

“I don’t care for the implications of that remark,” Tom muttered.

“The Associated Habitats have an agreement with the Council of Mukhtars to transport people from Earth to Venus,” Benzi said. “We don’t interfere with whomever you choose to be our passengers, and we save you the trouble and expense of transporting them. In return, we expect you to allow us to get them to their destination quickly and efficiently.

I’ll admit that there were many among my people who wondered if we should perform this job at all, but we decided to do what we could for those people willing to sacrifice everything they had for the chance at a new life.”

“You just wanted to do the right thing,” Alonza said, “with no ulterior purpose in mind.”

“Believe that or not, as you like. In any case, unless you abide by the agreement we have with your Mukhtars, there will be some of us who will argue that our agreement with you has lapsed, and that we no longer should perform this service for you.”

Tom leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets. Alonza wondered if this Habber could interpret a med-scan record properly. It did not matter; he was Linked to his people’s cybers, and they could interpret the data for him. He would soon find out that Tom was lying.

“I’m glad somebody’s sticking up for me,” Sameh Tryolla said as she got to her feet. She came toward them and gazed at Benzi. “I knew you would come. I want to get out of here.”

Benzi said, “I’d like to see that scan now.”

“Be easier for me to access it from my office,” Tom responded, still stalling for time.

Good old Tom, Alonza thought, grateful for that even if it wouldn’t do them any good in the end. She folded her arms, trying to think of what to say next.

“I’ll come with you, then,” Benzi said as he turned toward the door.

Sameh was standing just behind Benzi as the door opened and Tom stepped into the hall.

Alonza saw the woman’s arm rise in an oddly familiar gesture. In an instant, realizing that there was no time to pull out her wand, she slashed at Sameh with her right arm, chopping her hard on the wrist with the edge of her hand.

Sameh’s arm fell and slapped against her upper thigh. She stumbled back and stared at Alonza, her eyes wide, and suddenly her face contorted, becoming red and then purple.

A harsh gurgling sound came from her throat; her eyes seemed to bulge from her head, and then she fell forward and crumpled to the floor.

Tom was still standing in the open entrance. He pushed past Benzi as the door slid shut, then knelt next to Sameh. His fingers found her neck, then clasped her by one wrist.

“She’s dead,” the physician said. “And I don’t need a scan to tell me that.”

Benzi’s light brown skin had turned yellow. He closed his eyes for a moment, clearly struggling to compose himself, then turned to Alonza. “What happened to her?” he asked.

“Think this happened to her,” Tom replied as he lifted Sameh’s right arm by the edge of her sleeve, revealing a tiny device no larger than an implant or a gem. “Better not touch it. I’m guessing it’s deactivated now, but no sense taking a chance.”

“What is it?” Benzi asked.

“Probably a disrupter of some kind,” Tom said. “Activate the thing, slap it onto somebody, and it disrupts the body’s blood vessels or neurons. Gives somebody a stroke or shuts down their brain, and—”

“You have such things?” Benzi asked.

“Well, there’s one of them right there,” Tom said. “Always knew they were a distinct possibility. We’ve got implants for medical purposes. It wouldn’t take much to make them for other uses.”

“I never heard of such a thing before,” Alonza said softly, although she had heard plenty of rumors and had long harbored the same suspicions as Tom.

“It seems that you may have saved my life,” Benzi said to Alonza. “I’m very grateful.”

Alonza thought of Colonel Sansom’s orders. Get the operative into custody as quietly as possible, he had told her. If he had wanted to keep this matter quiet before, he certainly would not want word about the woman’s attempt on Benzi’s life to leak out now.

Presumably the operative had been sent here for the purpose of killing the Habber, and afterward those who ran the shadowy and mysterious secret service of the Guardians had come to their senses and decided to call off the mission. She wondered what the diplomatic consequences would have been if Sameh had succeeded, and exactly what whoever had given the woman her orders had hoped to accomplish.

There was no question of what Alonza’s own fate would have been had Benzi died.

Colonel Sansom and those above him would have had to punish somebody. The loss of her rank and a court-martial would have been the least of her punishment; any work detail she was assigned to after that would be a lot worse than anything her mother had probably suffered.

She realized then what Sameh’s movements had reminded her of when the woman had moved toward Benzi. Amparo had sometimes moved in the same way, creeping up on her marks when there weren’t other people around, ready for a quick and disabling blow to the back of the head with her pouch of pebbles and small stones.

“You’ll have to store the body,” she said to Tom, “until Colonel Sansom gets back. And I’ll have to make a report.” She turned to Benzi. “I’ll need a statement from you,” she said. “Once it’s recorded, you can board your ship and be on your way.”

“In other words,” Benzi said, “you’d prefer to keep this quiet.”

“Obviously.” Alonza sighed. “You must know that we have our few extremists, people who would prefer that we have nothing to do with your people, but be assured that such folk will be watched even more closely from now on and that you’ll be safe. I don’t know what you intend to tell your own people.” She thought of his Link. “Maybe they already know.”

“My Link was closed—is closed.” Benzi’s face was solemn. “But they will be informed.

This shouldn’t affect our agreements with your Council, since you saved my life. In protecting me, you honored our agreement.”

“My duty,” she said. “It wasn’t out of any particular concern for you.”

“I know, and that speaks well of you and your Guardian training.” For a moment, she thought that he was being sarcastic again, and then he bowed his head to her.

“We’ll go to Tom’s office, and you can give me your report there.” Tom would keep quiet, and Benzi would soon be gone; she strongly doubted that this Habber would ever return to Earth or to the Wheel again.

Tom told his infirmary staff that Sameh Tryolla had unexpectedly died of a stroke, a cause of death verified by a scan of the corpse. Alonza doubted that any of them believed that was the whole story, but they seemed willing to accept it. Benzi’s passengers would simply assume that their former companion was being kept in the infirmary for more tests. She wondered if any of them would try to find out about her in years to come, if they would even be able to call up any records about her fate. Sameh Tryolla might disappear as thoroughly as though she had never existed, which in a sense, she hadn’t.

Where had they found her? But Alonza could guess the answer to that. The woman who had become Sameh Tryolla would have come from the ranks of those on Basic; she would have been someone who could vanish from her earlier life without anyone’s missing her and slip easily into another life. She had probably been a child much like Alonza herself.

After Benzi’s ship had left the Wheel, Alonza sent a short report to Colonel Sansom, promising him a full report when he returned. Things had not gone as he might have hoped, but the operative’s mission had been aborted and the whole business kept quiet.

What still nagged at her was exactly why Sameh had been sent here to kill the Habber, what the purpose of her mission was. Would any Habber have served equally well as her target, or had she been after Benzi in particular? Maybe those using Sameh had wanted to make an example of the man who had abandoned his world for that of the Habbers.

But would they have jeopardized Earth’s treaties with the Associated Habitats simply to punish Benzi? Would they have risked losing their uneasy but enduring peace with the Habbers as well as the loss of the resources and expertise their more advanced technology could provide to the home world?

Sameh Tryolla could not have left the camp outside Tashkent carrying a disrupter in her duffel without the connivance of at least one of the camp’s Guardians. Someone might have slipped the weapon to her at the port in Tashkent, before she boarded the shuttle, but getting it to her earlier so that she could conceal it before leaving for the Wheel would be safer. No security officers at the Tashkent port or aboard the shuttle would have bothered to search any of the travelers, who had already been cleared by Keir Renin and his people in the camp and had been under Guardian supervision ever since.

More unanswered questions—and it was probably best, Alonza thought, to leave them forever unanswered.

Colonel Sansom returned to the Wheel thirty hours after Sameh’s death. Alonza met him at the hub, accompanied him to the infirmary, and sat with him while he perused the full report on a pocket screen in the office of Tom Ruden-Nodell.

“You did well, Major Lemaris,” the colonel said.

“I’m sure any of your officers would have done as well,” she replied.

“I’m not at all sure of that.” His voice was hard.

“One thing puzzles me, though,” Alonza said. “Seems to me that the whole point in using a weapon like a disrupter is to make sure no one knows you’ve used it. I mean, I can see Sameh Tryolla using it if she and her victim were alone. Slap the thing on the Habber, make sure he’s dead, ditch the thing in a recycling slot and nobody’s the wiser.

But to make the attempt in front of witnesses—”

“Obviously she was so intent on her mission,” the colonel interrupted, “that she didn’t consider that, and simply used the means she was given. In any case, what would you have done had she succeeded? Put her under restraint and under guard, go through all the usual procedures—informing me, getting your report together, waiting for diplomats to arrive to try to reassure the other Habbers—”

“Waiting for my own court-martial,” Alonza added.

“Needless to say. And the operative would have been officially charged, sent back to Earth for a hearing, and probably have disappeared after that. Maybe that’s what she was promised if she were caught—a hearing, a sentence, and then a new life and identity.”

“Somebody really wanted that Habber out of the way, then,” Alonza said.

“No, Alonza. Think.” Jonas Sansom leaned forward in his chair and rested his arms on Tom’s desk. “Someone wanted me out of the way.”

She stared across the desk at him. “But—”

“I should have been here to take charge of the situation. I would have been if not for those damaged tracking telescopes, and that was pure chance.”

“So they had to abort Sameh’s mission,” Alonza said, “but they didn’t have a way to tell her—”

The colonel shook his head violently. “No. Saying that the mission had to be aborted was probably part of the plan. It was the way to be certain that I would be there when she struck at the Habber, that I would have to take responsibility for failing to protect him.”

“But why would anybody want to get you?” she asked.

“Perhaps you don’t want to know why, Alonza. I know Earth needs the Habbers and their technology more than we’re willing to admit, and I haven’t made any secret of my opinions. There are others who disagree, who would willingly see Earth become even more impoverished if they could be rid of our agreements with the Habbers. Let’s leave it at that.”

He folded his hands. There was more gray in his blond hair, and the lines on either side of his mouth were deep grooves. “We’re all pawns in the hands of the Guardian Commanders,” he continued, “and there are those who think that Earth may grow too dependent on the Associated Habitats and that the Council of Mukhtars has already made too many concessions to them. An incident involving the death of a Habber we were bound by treaty to protect would have been useful to certain political factions.”

“Well.” She looked away from him for a moment.

“We can continue to be pawns,” Colonel Sansom said, “or we can be the players who move the pieces. Those are the only choices we have, and I know which one I’d rather be. I’m due for a promotion soon, and I’m going to put in for a post that will move me closer to the center of the game. I’ll want my best officers with me.”

“Of course, sir.”

“You’ll probably get a commendation for your recent action. You ought to take advantage of that and put in for duty in Baghdad at headquarters. That’s what I’m going to do, and right now you’re in a position to get whatever post you want.” He stood up.

“I’ll talk to the chief physician now, and then I’ll be in the officers’ mess for dinner with the rest of my staff. Will you join me there in a couple of hours?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You did well, Alonza—Major Lemaris.”

“Thank you, sir.

A torchship slowly floated away from the dark metal latticework of a dock. Alonza watched the ship on the bay viewscreen and for a moment wished that she were one of its passengers. Some months ago, even a few days ago, she would have leaped at any opportunity to rise, to remain on Jonas Sansom’s staff, to be stationed near one of the centers of power.

Now she was thinking of Sameh Tryolla again. Maybe she had been found in a port like San Antonio’s before being shipped off to a children’s dormitory and whatever training was deemed suitable for her. Alonza imagined herself in Sameh’s place, soothed, manipulated, moved across the board, and then discarded.

Always know when to run, Amparo had told her.

There was another choice besides being a pawn or a player, and that was abandoning the game. Colonel Sansom would be dismayed when she put in her request for duty on Luna, and then he would conclude that he had misjudged her, that she did not have the ambition or the stomach for the greater game. But there would be other pawns he could use.

She left the bay and hurried toward the lift, already late for the dinner with the colonel.

Tom would be surprised when she told him that she was going to ask to be stationed on Luna. They might even travel there together, adrift for a time aboard the shuttlecraft taking them to Luna, anticipating the destination that lay ahead of them. They would follow the sky together.