“What sort have we got this trip?” Percy asked, reclining on the nearest bed, his booted ankles crossed. He propped himself up sidelong on his elbow. This was our haven, this room. We could say what we liked with no one listening, so it was safe for him to ask. Lynette had settled sidelong the other way, leaning against him, not flirting, but because we all like touching when we relax, which is the way we are, sexed or not. Percy and Lynn, being crew, and busy all this while, had not yet met Griffin.

I shrugged. That was the kind of impression I had to give about Griffin, that I didn’t have a clear impression, even after all this time. We had gotten used to him down at Brahmani Dali, as much as one could get used to Griffin—which meant we accepted that he would be up to something constantly, and alternately upsetting my lady and pleasing her.

“I don’t like him,” Lance said suddenly. Four months of silence, and: “I don’t like him.” He had never said that before, not even with some of my lady’s absolute worst, who had abused him and any others of us accessible. “I wish she would get rid of him.”

That frankness upset me. It was one thing to think it, but it was another to say it out like that, even here.

“This one,” said Vivien, “this one is different than the others. I think she might marrythis one.”

“No,” I exclaimed, and put my hand over my mouth, guilty as Lance.

“Why else does she have me going over her accounts and letting him into them, and why does she have spies going over his?She said once she might marry him. I don’t think it was a joke. I think she’s really thinking about it. It has to do with that government business last year. This Griffin’s family has influence. And the worlds, Brahman and Sita—position for a natural alliance. The government has other concerns at the moment, can’t afford prolonged trouble in this direction. And besides—she seems to enjoy him.”

Viv looked satisfied. Herposition wasn’t threatened. No one said anything for a while. This move seemed then to have monetary reasons behind it, which we understood: everything my lady did seriously tended to have such reasons in it, so this frightened me more and more. “He’s not so bad,” I said, not that I really believed it, but Lance was beside me and his hand was sweating in mine. “And she’ll get cooler toward him someday. If he stays—it’ll still happen that way, won’t it? And he’s never done anything to any of us, not like that Robert she took up with.”

There was a general muttering, a reflexive jerk of Lance’s hand. Robert had been the worst.

“Maybe she’ll get some favor out of him or his family,” Lynette said, “and then it’ll be like the others.”

“But she talked about marrying,” Vivien persisted, unstoppable. “And she’s never considered that. Ever. Griffin’s intelligent, she says. Someone who could run things in years to come. She’s never talked like that about the others. He’s young.”

More silence and heavier, even from Percy and Lynette, who were generally not bothered with estate finances and problems of that sort. After all, if another owner came into the picture, if Griffin began to involve himself permanently and changed Dela’s way of operating—then the Maidmight not go on making such trips as she did now. So the crew faced uncertainties too.

The Maidmight—the thought came washing over me—might even be sold, and so might we all, being part of a fancy Dela might tire of if she changed her life and stopped taking lovers. Being sold was ... I could not imagine it. I had heard dread whispers that it meant being taken back into the labs for retraining, and that meant they took your mind apart. It was effectively like dying. I didn’t say that aloud. We had enough troubles, all of us. And Lance ... he was old for retraining. Lance could be put down.

I was never inclined to sudden panics, but I had one. I sat there and blanked, and when I came out of it, Lance was tugging at my hand to shake me out of it.

“Elaine?” he said.

I clenched his hand in mine and said nothing.

“We’re going to make jump sooner than usual,” Lynn said. “She’s told us to keep up acceleration all the way. It has to do with him, maybe. Ask Wayne and Modred about particulars: but it’s Delhi.”

The regional capital. The kind of place her ladyship had stayed out of, with her wealth which she had no desire thus far to flaunt near the government.

“Griffin has property on Delhi,” Vivien said.

“What kind?” I asked, heart pounding, because I had heard of establishments on Delhi where a lot of our kind came from. Percivale was one of Delhi’s breeding, so he said; and I knew that Modred was.

“Farms,” Vivien said tautly. “And training centers. Labs. They’ve been talking about taking an interest in that. In shifting assets—Griffin’s wealth and our lady’s can pull hard weight in Delhi Council if they start playing games with banks. Those kind of maneuvers ... Griffin can do. All he has to do is free up some currency. His farms there—”

Then they all seemed to think of selling and being sold, and Percy blanked, and Lynn too, for a moment, like two statues reclining there.

“I think we should get some sleep,” Vivien said, with a stretch of her back. She had spent all shehad to say, and in our matters, that was as far as Vivien’s interest went. She got up and left. Sleep seemed a good idea, because there was certainly nothing pleasant to think of awake. We moved to our beds, all of which were close together, and began to get undressed. Only Lance still sat there, and I felt sorry for him. They psych-set me so that I can’t stand to see someone suffering. Born-men feel; we react; so the difference runs. And Lance was reacting to everything, and especially to this most frightening of the lady’s affairs. I think maybe he would rather have had Robert aboard again. Any of them. It had already been hard on him, this involvement with Griffin, lasting now for four months and promising to go on long—but marryhim ... and all this maneuvering, this trip to Delhi which seemed to make it all more and more like the truth.... All this had surely struck poor Lance to the gut. He wasn’t blanked, and it would have been healthier if he were. He just sat there like he was bleeding inside.

“Come on,” I said, walking back over to tug at his hand. “I want you”—which was a lie. I was tired, but it was his psych-set, and it gave him something to react to that would take his mind off Dela and off his own future at least for the moment. He undressed and we got between the sheets. He made love to me ... he wasgood. What handsome blond Griffin was like I had no idea, but if it were me, or if I were lady Dela, I would have preferred Lance, who was very beautiful and who did sex very well and with endless invention, which was what he was made for.

Only his eyes were sadder than ever and he was not, this time, as good as he could be. His body reacted to his psych set; and that was that, tired or not, up to reasonable limits. But there were times when Lance was thereand times when he was not, and this time he was not. Worry, like everything else, every other disturbance in his patterns, he channelled into his psych-set outlet the way he was healthily supposed to, so he was not breaking down and he didn’t panic, but it was as close to panic as I had ever seen him.

I held him close for a long time afterward and tried to keep his mind on me—which it had never been, all the while—because I likedhim, in a different way than I liked anyone else. I would have called it love, but love—was for the likes of the lady Dela, who could fall into and out of grand and glorious passions, sighing and suffering and flying into rages. We just blank when we’re upset. The least anguish of an emotional sort turns us off like a light going out unless we’re directly ordered to stay around, or unless we’re occupied about some duty. We have better sense than to cause ourselves such pains, and we have better manners than to tease one another too seriously—which, besides, would be interfering with Dela’s property, and rather like vandalism, which we could not do either.