Though War House didn't know it in advance, the Altai was the exception. Her savant would be far too busy directing battle actions to give a running account. And afterward he'd rest, as long as needed, before channeling Soong's debrief.

Soong hadn't told Kunming about his new battle master. War House might forbid following through on it. It seemed to him he would himself, if he were admiralty chief. Because War House hadn't personally tested Charley Gordon. And the battle would involve most of the battle-ready human warships and crews.

And if somehow Kunming found out before the fact, and forbade it? Probably he'd ignore them. He'd spent weeks as Charley's assistant, developing strategies and tactics, modifying and remodifying procedures. But in simulation tests, he'd been a spectator, while Charley interacted with the Altai and the rest of the battle force in ways no one had thought of before.

Early on, the admiral had been visited by anxiety, but the weeks of development and tests had left him quietly confident. Not of victory, but of Charley's genius and skills, and the wisdom of his own decision. The limitations of ships and weapons remained, along with the unknown abilities and resources of the Wyzhnyny.

And that two-edged sword known as Murphy's Law, which threatened both fleets. Soong wondered if the Wyzhnyny recognized Murphy's Law. It seemed to him they must. It was inaccurate, of course. Murphy's Law-"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong"-had been predicated as humor. It was irony, not science. But by changing one word, you expressed a truth: "Whatever can go wrong may go wrong."

In any case you did what you could, and Charley could outdo anyone.

In normal gaming, a battle master gives the battlecomp a general strategy and a set of candidate tactics, via brief code words or phrases, very explicit. The battlecomp takes it from there, until that instruction is overridden by a new code word or phrase. Some gamers sometimes give a single such order. The secret to whatever success they have lies in evaluating the initial situation, and selecting or creating an effective strategy. The exercise itself is run entirely by the battlecomp.

Charley, however, had come to the job with major advantages. His response time was faster than any other human gamer's, perhaps because his responses were mediated by a shorter, faster neural system.

Charley knew the entire catalog of standard command codes, and had added numerous others of his own to make use of his special talents. And no one, to Soong's knowledge, was nearly so nimble with them. Charley could rattle off a sequence of appropriate commands, for a number of units, almost at the speed of thought. "Appropriate" involving the necessary allowances for unit momenta, signal time, equipment response times, and of course his own delivery rate in a command sequence.

The battlecomp could, of course, handle the command function by default. But it could not know what Charley usually knows: the event vectors of the moment. His central genius.

Meanwhile, in simulation, every warship in the fleet was carrying out battle actions bizarre and unimagined, even by the centuries of tactical wizards who'd labored anonymously at War House desks, programming, testing and gaming.

Because creative and imaginative though they'd been, none of them had envisioned a resource like Charley Gordon.

Estimated conservatively, the Provos would arrive in the fringe of the system twelve days before the Wyzhnyny's projected date of arrival. With the short closing jump, and a force no larger than Soong's, hours would be enough to form opening battle formations. So far, Charley's fleet drills had been in the virtual reality of the Altai's shipsmind. The rest of the fleet didn't know there was a new battle master. In the Paraiso System, the entire fleet would participate, its ships coordinated under Charley Gordon's direction, mediated by the Altai's shipsmind.

Soong was on the bridge four hours before scheduled arrival. Already isogravs showed the system's primary, an F9 star without a name of its own, unless you consider catalog numbers. As soon as shipsmind had computed the optimum emergence solution, the admiral ordered an approach course and emergence tick, informing his battle force via that awkward set of phenomena called hyperspace radio.

When that order had been acknowledged, he sent another: all hands were to be out of stasis before emergence, and ready to receive a live, all-hands briefing from the admiral and his battle master. Because the battle plan, tactics and protocols had changed greatly. The fleet's officers and crews needed to be set up for that; informed of what had happened, and how, reassured, and given confidence in the new command situation.

On naval spacecraft, the signal for hyperspace emergence is a gong, mellow and golden, repeated over five seconds.

Then the Provos popped into F-space scattered over a significant period-more than a millisecond-to occupy a million-cubic-mile volume of F-space shaped like a watermelon seed. Against a scintillant backdrop of stars, cold in aspect but hot, hot. The brightest, most vivid, being the molten-yellow primary only four billion miles away.

The admiral gave his people thirty seconds to appreciate the sight. Then he began his all-hands address.

"Officers and crew of the First Provos. We are in the fringe of the Paraiso System, and in a few minutes we'll begin to form battle units. Not the formations we've formed before, but something new. Something better. Something that will enable us to truly raise hell with the enemy when he appears.

"Eight weeks ago I made a discovery. I discovered that one of us is a genius above all geniuses in battle gaming. As a graduating midshipman, I set the Academy's official all-time cumulative scoring record for space-battle games. So I tested and retested this newly discovered genius, then tested him some more. In every test he humbled me, and as a result I've made him battle master. Given him the duty I love best of all, because this will be no game. It will be for real, for the future of humankind."

He paused, letting them absorb it.

"He improves our odds of victory by a factor of ten. So I want to introduce this man to you, this supreme battle master. You need to know him and hear him. He is a gift from the Tao, and one of the finest human beings I have ever known."

Up to this point, the camera had given the viewers a close shot of their admiral, showing him from the waist up. Now the viewpoint backed off, showing him standing beside a wheeled, motorized stand.

"Our new battle master's name is Charley Gordon. Not Admiral Gordon. Not Captain Gordon or Commander Gordon. Charley Gordon, a civilian. He is also our flagship savant."

The admiral's calm features seemed to gaze through the screen at them, as they sat or stood, surprised or puzzled, in messroom, wardroom, engine room, bridge, on battleship, cruiser, corvette… He continued.

"A savant. `Savant' is short for `idiot savant,' because most of them aren't able to function mentally as we do. But all have talents that the rest of us do not.

"Charley Gordon is different. He has savant talents, and he reasons… superbly. He was born in the Brazilian Autonomy, in Rio de Janeiro. As a child he dwelt constantly at death's door, till at age twelve he was bottled, to save his life. Now… "

Their admiral waited again, then gestured at the cart, and the module on its top. "This is Charley Gordon," he said, then indicated the small sensor set that topped it. "He sees and hears his immediate surroundings with these. But through his connections with shipsmind, he sees much more. At will.