"Then you are a fool."

"Then I am a fool."

His response seemed to stop her for a moment, even to soften her hard gaze. It was only there for an instant, but he thought he saw the old kindness in her eyes, the old closeness that would have led at least to a brief touch. When was the last time they had touched like that?

"Look, Marthe, maybe there is some sense to what they are doing. Maybe we have to experience the, I do not know what to call it, the isolationof the pilot inside his cockpit—and from that we will learn the new closeness, not that of the sibko, but that of the warrior whose concern will be to an assigned unit. It almost makes sense to me—until I see that you are no longer—"

He stopped. He did not know how to say the words to her anymore. She was as remote to him as Falconer Joanna, but unlike Joanna, he was no longer able to embrace her.

"I am sure, Aidan, that even if you are right, everything is being done for our good. We should not question it, but merely, as ordered, become the best warriors we are capable ..."

"Stop! That is what they want you to think. That is why we are not friends any longer."

"You are foolish to think of friendship now."

He wanted to say more to her, but Joanna was walking toward them, and he went past Marthe into the control tower. Glancing back, he saw that Joanna was speaking rather severely to Marthe, but he could not hear the words. In the old days Marthe would have repeated them to him later.

Perhaps Marthe was right. It was foolish to think of friendship now. He had to eliminate those traits that were interfering with his progress as a warrior. The next time he had anyone from his sibko in his sights, with live ammo in his weapon and the orders sanctioning the act, he should shoot, kill. Even if it was Marthe.

10

You are angry with me for criticizing your performance in today's exercise." Joanna's voice was matter-of-fact, a tone unusual for her. "Go ahead. You need not wait for me to tell you to respond when we are alone together here."

He was acutely conscious of the stench in Joanna's quarters. Beneath the permeating scent of the sex act they had just completed were other odors, foul ones. Joanna, for all her discipline on the training fields, was not concerned with hygiene when she was alone. The debris she left on the floor might have remained there for days, had not Aidan regularly picked it up because he could not stand the disorder. The accumulated odors in her bedclothes, whose origins he could only guess at, were not pleasant to contemplate.

"You remain silent, eyas. Why?"

"You never call me by my name here."

"And that is why you are silent. How odd!"

"No, it is not why. I just noticed. You called me eyas, one of your nicer derisive terms."

She smiled. Like the matter-of-factness, another rarity.

"You are considering who you are. Let me tell you right now that you should not. Who you are is not important. You are a machine, just as much as the machine you will inhabit—if indeed you do succeed in becoming a warrior.

"The word is MechWarrior, correct? However you say it, the emphasis is on the first syllable, on the 'Mech. The warrior ofthe 'Mech, MechWarrior. The warrior who serves the 'Mech. The warrior who isthe 'Mech.

Does that sound like someone who should worry about whether or not someone says his name?"

"I suppose not."

"That sounds suspiciously like sullenness, another trait unbecoming in a warrior. You have problems, eyas, quiaff?"

"Aff. As you continually remind me."

She sat up suddenly. The frayed old blanket she used as a bedcover fell away from her chest. Once he had viewed her small, well-shaped breasts with some interest, but too much time with her had removed any sensual reactions. Now he noticed more the sweat dripping from her chin onto her chest. There was a long scar running from just below her neckline to the side of her left breast. He had touched that scar so many times, but had never asked how it had come about.

"Sometimes," she said, her voice quiet, a third phenomenon of the night, "I question my choice to allow you to talk to me when you are here. In my room it might be better to continue the customs of the parade ground. What I am going to tell you now, I will tell you only once, and never again, not for the rest of time."

She grimaced and reached for her tunic, which she had casually thrown onto a bedside table before getting into the bed. Pulling it over her head slowly, she began her little speech while clothing still hid her face.

"Eyas— Aidan,I chose you the very first day you arrived here. I saw in your eyes, in the way you held yourself, in the slight hint of defiance even when you thought your face was completely at rest, that the warrior's potential was in you. I was also intrigued by your seriousness, by the look of an adult in your face even when in the midst of that childish team tussle. You revealed an intensity that never let up. I liked that, was even attracted to it. That is why I tried to beat you to a bloody pulp that day. But you never lost the intensity, and you showed your defiance. I liked that, too."

The tunic on, she pulled on the partial jumpsuit that had become her trademark for the cadets. It was a faded silver garment with combat patches on pockets.

"In my own sibko I was the defiant individual, I think even more so than you. I never liked any of the others, while you show a certain vestigial loyalty to your sibkin, what is left of them. All I ever wanted was to become a warrior and get away from the others. I thought I would find genuine camaraderie in the ranks of real warriors, but all I found was even more people in the universe I could cheerfully hate. And I have accepted that, instead of wondering, as others might, if something was wrong with me rather than the others."

She smoothed out the wrinkles in her clothing with a device she had bought in a bazaar on some other planet. It was a round cylinder with a handle. It set off small electrical sparks when it touched the cloth, but she attacked each wrinkle methodically with smooth even strokes, and they smoothed out.

"I have used my hate well in my military career; it has given me a certain, well, impetus. And, frankly, I suspect it is easier for one to hate everyone rather than to struggle with the problems that other, kinder emotions can bring.

"But once in a while, I have a different feeling about someone. I suppose it is just a lesser form of my hate. Whatever it is, I have been cursed with you this time around. What this means is that I would favor one of two things happening: I would like to crush you, bash you into the ground so hard that your subsequent mental deficiencies allow you only the most menial, dirt-swallowing job when you leave here. OrI would like to see you become a warrior, fulfilling your potential instead of letting your personal defects conquer you.

"Oh, I recognize that you are different from the rest. And I know that you have formed an unnatural, shall we call it affection, for Cadet Marthe. I have, I think, ruined that, for her good as well as yours. She will become a warrior, and you will not stop that with your silly, romantic yearnings. And for you, she is no longer an obstacle.

"I saw the bond between you two immediately, and I struggled to break it. I am happy that I did. No, do not even comment. It is not for you to question what I do, even the secrets I reveal to you. I have gone out of my way to be cruel to you, to make the training hard for you, to defeatyou. That is the only way you will succeed, and I know it. You think too much, Aidan, and that will be your downfall."