"Well, aff. But are you not excited by its coming?"

"No more than I should be. It is, after all, just the next stage of the training."

"But it will decide our lives. Are you not worried about that?"

"Worried? Why should I be worried? Whoever succeeds will become a warrior. Whoever does not will be assigned another role to play, another caste to serve. I am satisfied with whatever comes."

"Are you? Truly, Marthe?"

"Of course. We do what we must to promote the goals of our society. That is the way of the Clan."

Aidan stared at her for a while, watching how calmly she finished up the job of polishing the metal.

"I do believe, Marthe, that you speak the truth. You will accept what comes."

"Of course I will. And so will you."

"I do not know you anymore."

"You never did. Nobody ever really knows anybody."

"I did know you. I did."

"You may think so."

"You will allow that, will you?"

"Yes."

Aidan nodded and walked away from her. He was afraid of what he might have said next. When the Trial was over and they were both warriors, they would have to have a good, long talk. He needed that almost as much as he needed to succeed in the Trial of Position.

* * *

Ter Roshak sat beside the pilot in the skimmer that took the sibko to its new training area. Aidan noticed that the commander never looked back at them, just as he had barely seemed to notice them when he boarded, just as he had always moved among them with supreme indifference except when he had a reason to inflict inexplicable punishment. It was said that he sometimes took out one of the 'Mechs in a Trial, just to mow down a specific cadet who had incurred his displeasure. In some stories he was a ghostlike or even godlike presence swooping down on an unsuspecting cadet and slicing his 'Mech into small pieces. Joanna said they were all lies, these stories, these myths, but—in the tradition of superstitions throughout the known universe—no sensible, forthright, unimaginative training officer could convince cadets of the foolishness of the stories surrounding Falconer Commander Ter Roshak.

On one side of the skimmer's interior, Bret and Rena pressed their faces against the skimmer's viewports, competing to spot bits of terrain or activity in the landscape. Their enthusiasm reminded Aidan that, after all, the four of them were still young, still barely out of childhood.

Occasionally Aidan looked out his window, noted that most of the landscape resembled the area they left a couple of hours ago. For a while they passed over a large lake, where hundreds of fishermen were casting out nets or dangling complex networks of lines in the water.

Next to him, Marthe scarcely ever looked out. She stared forward or at the screen of a pocket computer, apparently considering something in her studies that she probably had already mastered. Perhaps her academic scores were consistently the best because she was continually verifying what she already knew better than anyone else in the sibko. What drove her to such perfectionism? Aidan wondered. He had a drive to succeed, as did Bret and Rena, but Marthe's was different. With Marthe the drive was obsession.

Marthe had changed physically over the last year or so, as had Aidan. He had grown thicker, putting on weight and girth along with the muscles that came to all cadets in their intense physical training. The training officers insisted that because they would spend so much time sitting in cockpits, they should continue calisthenics, running, marches all of their lives. A fat 'Mech pilot was a 'Mech pilot about to die, was one of Dermot's pithy sayings.

Marthe, while just as strong as Aidan, had become leaner, the physical training providing her a thin and wiry body. Her waist had become so small that he thought he could have encircled it with his hands only, had she ever allowed him near enough to try. (It was a long time since she had agreed to sex with Aidan, even longer since she had initiated the act. In fact, she seemed to have given up that part of her life altogether.) Her face had thinned out, too. Its cheekbones were more angular, looking knife-edged from certain angles. Her eyes had sunken a bit, and like the rest of her personality, seemed more guarded. There was a tightness to her lips and a new jut to her chin. Her skin, stimulated by the outdoor segments of their lives, had reddened. Her high forehead seemed higher, further emphasizing the triangular aspect of her face. All these changes had diminished the once-strong resemblance to Aidan. His face was less triangular, cheekbones more blunt, lips fuller. His skin did not reflect daytime exposure as much as hers did and, in fact, had a pale cast to it.

For him, the worst part of how she looked now came when he glanced toward the front of the skimmer and examined Falconer Joanna. Marthe now held her body in the same straightbacked way as Joanna did, tilted her head in the same just off-center manner, wore the same detached look. The look of disdain in Joanna's expression was only hinted at in Marthe's, but had become stronger as the days went by. He wondered if she would eventually attain Joanna's look and sound of mockery.

As he stared at Marthe in profile, wondering if he could use telepathy to make her turn and look at him, he realized that his feelings for her had undergone as much of a change as hers for him. He thought back to their childhood days, when she had helped him tend Warhawk or when they had shared sibko experiences. At that time, he had known a separate and special affection for her. He remembered the day when he had believed it might be the kind of love that sibparent Glynn had used to embellish her romances. He tried to shake off such thoughts, cursing himself now, as he had a thousand times in his life, for his tendency to dwell in reflection. None of the others in the sibko ever seemed to analyze events as lengthily or deeply as he did.

As he studied Marthe's stiffness, her detachment, her new resemblances to Joanna, he knew he did not love her now and probably never had. Like so many sibko experiences, what he had felt was merely enthusiasm derived from and enhanced by what, after all, was a closed environment. What he had thought was special was no doubt also experienced by the others. Perhaps they, too, had formed imaginary alliances of their own. Endo may have thought he loved Orilna, or Bret felt his attraction to Rena was unique. It was just another kind of childhood play. As Joanna and Dermot had both told the sibko, warriors did not love. Love was for other castes (and very little of it there, Joanna had mysteriously and sarcastically commented). Aidan no longer believed in such a thing as love. He vowed never to think of the subject again. Especially in regard to Marthe.

And yet, Aidan felt saddened by the knowledge that a part of their sibko childhood was gone. Looking away from Marthe, he turned back to the viewport. They were over an ocean now. There were no fishermen or boats or anything but distant agitated birds to draw his attention away from the water.

* * *

"I am Nomad," the short, bearded man said to Aidan. "I am to be your Tech."

"Nomad? A strange name."

"I have drifted from place to place. Techs usually stay put. Thus, they call me Nomad."

"And your real name?"

"I have forgotten it."

"That could not be."

"If you say so. Nevertheless, I am unable to bring it into mind."

"Or you will not, quineg?"

"As you say."

"I think I like you, Nomad."

"That is not a requirement, sir."

The meeting with Nomad was unexpected and disconcerting. A month had passed since the sibko, or the shreds of it, had arrived at Crash Camp, as it was affectionately known. Aidan was not sure it had any real name. It was probably, like most Clan sites, just a complicated identification number or symbol specified for mapping and filing purposes. In that time, they had not been near a single BattleMech, nor had they even seen one, except for one dark and cloudy day, when a final test was going on far away, beyond a thick woods. All they heard then was the distant sound of weaponry and a couple of heavy thuds that were probably 'Mechs falling; all they saw was smoke rising over the tops of the trees and one blown-off Gauss rifle that slowly spun and somersaulted as it flew up in the air until it reached its zenith and plunged abruptly back.