Isaiah got to his feet. "Yes, Sergeant," he said. "I'll get right on it."

Sergeant Major Pieter Fuentes Singh watched him leave. According to the grapevine, Captain Chatterjee, Division's technical specialist, had said that even bots weren't strong enough to swing 400-pound lions by the scruff, and beat them to death against trees. But this one did.

Fuentes shook his head. Apparently the adrenaline analog system built into them was more effective than the specialists had realized.

Meanwhile, Private Isaiah Vernon had laid to rest any reservations Fuentes might have harbored about the basic humanity of warbots. They felt the human bond. Certainly this one did.

Hanging Around Sagenwerk

This was the third Sevenday in a row that Joseph Switzer had hung around the depot to watch soldiers on pass pile out of coach cars. If he'd gotten to Luneburger's World a few weeks earlier, he wouldn't be in this miserable village. He could have gotten his business done in North Fork.

On Terra, even a backwater like Sagenwerk would have a square with trees, planters, maybe a brass sundial on a granite pedestal. A good bookstore and a nice cafe with outdoor tables, bright awnings, a friendly waitress. And there wouldn't be a railroad reeking with soft-coal smoke and gritty soot.

The depot here had no amenities except a weedy path leading to an outdoor privy with back-to-back rooms, one for men, one for women. Until the soldiers had come to Camp Nafziger, passengers were few, and most trains had only a single coach, inserted at the head of a string of log cars, lumber cars, or boxcars.

Switzer dug his watch from a pocket and snapped the lid open. It was twelve minutes past time, but the train wasn't in sight or hearing. On Luneburger's World, schedules were casual.

Grunting, he rotated his shoulders. He'd gotten a job at the sawmill, stacking lumber, and was still a bit sore. In North Fork he'd found work as a free-lance engineer, but with eleven thousand inhabitants, North Fork was an important regional center. Sagenwerk's only excuse for existing was the sawmill that provided its name. Its population was said to be five hundred. Here a free-lance engineer would draw too much attention, and he'd make too little money to pay for the one-room shack he rented. The war had caused prices to rise.

When he'd left Luneburger's, twenty years earlier at age sixteen, he'd intended never to come back. On Terra he would get an education and interesting work, and live in the 30th century instead of the 19th. And he had. Then this corrupt war had come along, an affront to the All-Soul, fouling the mother world with chauvinism and godless self-justification.

Actually, North Fork hadn't been so bad. It was civilized, with electricity, plumbing, green lawns, shrubs and flowerbeds. The streets were shaded by overhanging trees. Its main lack was people who could carry on a modern conversation; even the All-Soul congregation there was provincial. But the only language you heard was Terran, unless you hung around one of the dwindling old-order congregations.

Here in Sagenwerk, on the other hand, you were more likely to hear the old Bauerndeutsch than Terran, and got scowls if you didn't understand. Bauerndeutsch! A blend of 18th and 19th century peasant Plattdeutsch, Switzerditsch, Volgadeutsch… and old church German. Along with a sprinkling of recent Terran, and a mixture of archaic, germanized Anglic-words necessary to function in 19th and 20th century North America. Gawd! Even then, a millennium ago, Bauerndeutsch had been dying out. The early colonists had revived it as part of their blockheaded ethno-religious chauvinism, as if Jesus had spoken a broken-down peasant German! But gradually it had receded again.

And worse, Sagenwerk was a stagnant pool of bigots! Mention the Church of the All-Soul and you risked a black eye. Say that being "born again" referred to reincarnation, and you'd lose your job before you could pick up your lunch pail. Refer to Jesus as an avatar of the All-Soul, and some ignorant fool on the green chain, who didn't know the meaning of "avatar," was likely to break your face in the name of God.

The town was changing-a result of the war-but even the changes weren't good. Greed was flourishing. The railway had brought in twenty coaches to shuttle soldiers on their days off, though the village was less a magnet than its people had hoped. The rundown old tavern faced competition from a new beer garden. There was a theater still smelling of fresh lumber and paint, and two large houses, refurbished, had been supplied with women and girls from Landfall and other "cities."

Joseph Switzer shook his head. It was his own fault he was here. The project had been his idea in the first place, and no one else in the organization was suited for the assignment. He knew Luneburger's World, and he knew its people. With a little care, he still passed for one of them.

The wail of a train whistle jerked him from his revery, and he looked down the tracks. The train was in sight half a mile west, its locomotive spewing thick black smoke. Unconsciously he curled his nostrils. Instead of stepping out on the platform, he remained beside the depot door, well apart from the collection of young women who also waited. From there he'd be able to see if any of the Jerries he'd met at North Fork got off. Hopefully Wheeler, who'd been responsive and very promising.

Slowing, hissing, sighing, the train drew alongside the platform. Brakes squealed, couplings clashed, cylinders released steam. A conductor swung down from the first car, followed by a stream of uniformed soldiers. And there, the very first of them, was Wheeler, conspicuous by his height.

Instead of going out to him, Switzer waited. Wheeler was walking and talking with another soldier whom Switzer recalled. Elijah somebody. As they passed him, he spoke. "Good morning, Moses," he said. "Good morning, Elijah. Good to see you again."

Today he would get down to business.

Charley Gordon

Admiral Alvaro "Spanish" Soong pressed the button beside the door and waited. An admiral waiting to be let in! he thought. On business, on his own flagship! Ah, the universe we live in.

There was no real irony in the thought. Courtesy was almost always appropriate, within the bounds of circumstance, and rare resources could require special treatment.

The door opened, and Ophelia Kennah looked out at him. As a savant's attendant, she was old-style: her personnel file said she was psychic. The briefing he'd been given on savants stated that many of the new savant attendants were simply empaths trained to act as nurse, hypno-technician and companion. Also, Kennah was fifty-one years old, though slender and still graceful, with calm observant eyes.

She stepped back, and he entered. "Good morning, Ms. Kennah," he said.

"Good morning, Admiral."

The room was large for a ship's quarters, and impressed him as the most aesthetic on the flagship. Though if asked, he couldn't have said why it seemed that way. Near one side stood a sort of wheeled stand, with a 30-inch-long module mounted on it. The module contained cube ports, and on its top a multisensor set. Just now only one of its sensory status lights was on.

"What's he listening to?" Soong asked.

" `Concierto de Aranjuez,' " she answered. "By Joaquin Rodrigo. It's quite old; 20th century."

Spanish, Soong thought. He didn't speak the language, beyond a few courtesies-family heirlooms. His mother's clan had long since abandoned both Spanish and Catalan.

He wondered if he'd ever heard the concerto. He enjoyed music when he had time, but seldom paid attention to who'd composed what. Probably Ophelia Kennah could set the player so she heard it too. She'd probably been listening when he'd rung, and switched off the room speaker before opening the door.