Randon held my gaze another heartbeat, then turned to Aikman. "So. We've been over the locations, personnel, and local customs. Is there anything else?"

"I have nothing more, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos." Aikman got to his feet. "If you think of anything, I'll be in my stateroom."

"Thank you," Randon nodded. Aikman nodded back, brushed past me and left.

"He's staying aboard ship?" I asked as Randon waved me to a seat. "I'd have thought HTI would have a guest house for visiting employees."

"They've got half a dozen," Randon said dryly. "But Aikman and DeMont were gracious enough to accept my hospitality instead."

I studied him. "You don't want them out of your sight?"

"Let's just say I don't want strangers wandering in and out of the Bellwether at their convenience. Particularly bigoted ones." He swiveled his computer around to face me. "You can take all this back to your own stateroom and study it at your leisure, but I want to go over the high points with you first."

I nodded. "I take it you'll be wanting me to come along and watch the proceedings?"

He shrugged. " 'Want' is not exactly the word I would use," he said candidly. "To be perfectly honest, I think that having you around promotes a certain amount of mental laziness. In my opinion, Dad overuses you, and it's cost him some of the edge off his old sharpness."

I already knew all that, but I was rather surprised he was willing to admit to it. "I'm sorry you feel that way. If you'd like, I'll stay in the ship."

He waved the offer away. "Thanks, but Dad would have both of us mined for proteins when he found out." Lowering his eyes, he reached again for the computer, already closing the subject in his own mind. "You may be a crutch, Benedar, but two weeks on a crutch won't hurt me."

"I agree, sir." I braced myself. "Though I believe that in most cases two crutches work better than one."

He was sharp, all right. His mind, already on his plans for tomorrow, snapped instantly back on track. "Are you suggesting," he asked quietly, looking up again, "what I think you're suggesting?"

There was, oddly enough, no outrage in his eyes; just a thin layer of ice that was even more intimidating than any anger would have been. But in my own way I was as stubborn as he was, and I refused to back down. "Yes, sir. You have a unique opportunity here, one your father couldn't possibly have anticipated."

"You want me to bring a zombi to a high-level business meeting." The ice in his gaze thickened a bit. "And you want me to believe my father would approve of it?"

"Why not?" I countered. "No one there has to know who or what she is."

"Benedar, she's a condemned killer. Remember?"

"Well, yes," I admitted. "But as long as we keep her away from tall buildings and bombs..."

It had been the right thing to say. Randon's eyes goggled; then, almost grudgingly, he snorted out a chuckle and the ice began to melt. "I trust you realize that if I take a criminal into a meeting with me I'll never live it down."

I shrugged. "A reputation for mild unpredictability can be useful. As your father well knows."

For a long minute he just glared at me in silence. Then he snorted again, gently. "You're not fooling anyone, you know," he said. "I can see through your game. You want me to get as emotionally involved with this little crusade of yours as you are. Making Paquin more useful to me alive than dead would be a good way to start, wouldn't it?"

Sharp, indeed. "I'll admit that's part of it," I agreed without embarrassment. "But the logic still holds. Especially since the HTI people presumably know that I'm coming."

"So they know. What can they do about it?"

"There are several possibilities. Not the least of which would be barring me from the meeting."

"Let them try." But he said it thoughtfully. For a long minute he gazed at me, and I kept my peace and watched the sense of him change. "I'll talk it over with Kutzko later," he said abruptly. "If he thinks it'll be safe enough, I may consider it."

I nodded. "Thank you, sir."

"Uh-huh," he grunted. "Can we get back to the real business at hand now? Thank you. All right; let's start with the basic HTI organizational structure..."

Randon had a tendency to underestimate just how quickly I could assimilate information, and hitting the "high points," as he'd called it, took about an hour longer than was probably necessary. But at last we were done. Dropping the cyl he'd given me in my own stateroom on the way, I made straight for Calandra's cell to give her the good news.

Or what I had expected would be good news.

"No," she said firmly. "I'm not going."

I stared at her, trying through my stunned astonishment to read her. All I could get was anger and disgust, most of it directed at me. "Calandra, maybe you don't understand what this means—"

"Oh, I understand, all right," she growled. "You thought that I'd leap at the chance to get out of this room, to see the universe in all its glory again."

I gritted my teeth. Once again she was reading me with supremely casual ease. "And why not? Any normal person would."

She glared at me. "Well, then, maybe I'm not normal anymore. Maybe when you've been condemned to death you'll have a different outlook on life, too."

For a moment we stood facing each other. A thought occurred to me through the haze, and I reached out with every bit of skill I had... and this time I found it. Well buried beneath all the anger, I found the fear.

In retrospect, it was obvious. Sometime along the line, during or after the months of her trial and appeals, she'd finally resigned herself to her approaching death... and now I was threatening that acceptance. Threatening her once again with uncertainty. "I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I know this isn't going to be easy for you—"

"You know that, do you?" she said sarcastically.

"I'm trying to help you!" I snapped abruptly. What with Aikman and now Calandra, I'd finally had enough. "I'm your friend, Calandra. Whether you believe it or not; whether you like it or not. You're going with us tomorrow because maybe it'll get Randon Kelsey-Ramos on our side."

"Oh, wonderful," she sneered. "Well, it may come as a shock to you, but I don't happen to want your Kelsey-Ramos's help."

"Then you're going to die," I said bluntly.

"There are worse things than death," she shot back. "Such as helping the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else, for instance. If Carillon's money hadn't scraped all the ethics off your precious Watcher label I wouldn't have to tell you that."

A stab of fury slid white-hot through my heart. Fury, strongly edged with guilt. She saw it, and took an involuntary step backward, eyes suddenly wary. "Then don't help," I snarled at her. "You can act like the bottom of a growth tank tomorrow if you want. But you are coming along."

—

She was still standing there, staring at me, as I turned and stomped out.

She was still glowering the next morning when we got into the car with Randon, Dapper Schock, Kutzko, and Daiv Ifversn and headed for Cameo. She was still glowering, and I was still feeling guilty.

Unreasonably guilty, after all, considering that this was nothing less than an attempt to save her life. But the awareness of good motives had always been a feeble kind of comfort with me, and this case was no exception... especially since I wasn't fully convinced I was doing the right thing.

So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the Law and the Prophets... I was certainly willing to obey... but could I really know how I would want to be treated under these circumstances? Calandra was right; without being in her position, I could only guess at what she needed from me.