It was partly ordinary anxiety, he told himself: he relied on Justin; they had not been apart since the incidents around Ari's death, and separation naturally brought back bad memories.

But he was not legally Justin's ward. He was Reseune's; and as long as Justin was not there to obstruct Administration and to use Jordan's leverage to protect him, he had no protection and no rights. Justin was at risk, traveling completely in the hands of Reseune Security—which might arrange an incident; but much more likely that they might take an azi down to the labs where they could question him or, the thing he most feared, run tape on him.

There was no good in panic, he told himself, since there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about it, nowhere he could hide and nothing he could do, ultimately, to stop them if that was what they intended.

But the first night that he had been alone with all the small lonely sounds of a very large apartment and no knowledge what was happening on the other side of the world, he had shot himself with one of the adrenaline doses they kept, along with knock-out doses of trank, in the clinical interview room; and taken kat on top of it.

Then he had sat down crosslegged at the side of his bed, and dived down into the innermost partitions he had made in himself, altering things step by step in a concentration that slicked his skin with sweat and left him dizzy and weak.

He had not been sure that he could do it; he was not sure when he exited the haze of the drug and the effort, that the combination of adrenaline and cataphoric would serve, but his heart was going like a hammer and he was able to do very little more after that than fall face down on the bed and count the beats of his heart, hoping he had not killed himself.

Fool was the word for a designer who got into his own sets and started moving them around.

Not much different, though, from what the test-unit azi did, when they organized their own mental compartmentalizations and controlled the extent to which they integrated new tape. It was a question of knowing one's own mental map, very, very thoroughly.

He turned off the computer, turned off the lights and locked the office door on his way out, walking the deserted hall to go back to that empty apartment and wait through another night.

Azi responses, dim and primal, said go to another Supervisor. Find help. Take a pill. Accept no stress in deep levels.

Of course doing the first was extremely foolish: he was not at all tempted. But taking a pill and sleeping through the night under sedation was very, very tempting. If he sedated himself deeply enough he could get through the night and go meet Justin's plane in the morning: it was only reasonable, perhaps even advisable, since the trank itselfwould present a problem to anyone who came after him, and if they were going to try anything at the last moment—

No, it was a very simple matter to delay a plane. They could always get more time, if they suddenly decided they needed it.

Mostly, he decided, he did not trank himself because he felt there was some benefit in getting through this without it; and that thought, perhaps, did not come from the logical underside of his mind—except that he saw value in endocrine-learning, which the constantly reasonable, sheltered, take-a-tape-and-feel-good way did not let happen. If it were an azi world everything would be black and white and very, very clear. It was the grays of flux-thinking that made born-men. Shaded responses in shaded values, acquired under endocrine instability.

He did not enjoy pain. But he saw value in the by-product.

He also saw value in having the trank in his pocket, a double dose loaded in a hypospray, because if they tried to take him anywhere, he could give them a real medical emergency to worry about.

iii

Nelly, Ari reflected, was still having her troubles.

"We have to be careful with her," Ari said to Florian and Catlin, in a council in Florian and Catlin's room, while Nelly was in the dining room helping Seely clean up.

"Yes, sera," Florian said earnestly; Catlin said nothing, which was normal: Catlin always let Florian talk if she agreed. Which was not to say Catlin was shy. She was just that way.

And Nelly had taken severe exception to Catlin showing Ari how to do an over-the-shoulder throw in the living room.

"You'll hurt yourself!" Nelly had cried. "Florian, Catlin, you should have better sense!"

Actually, it was Florian who was the one with the complaint coming, since Florian was the one on the floor. He was being the Enemy. Florian was all right: he could land and come right back up again, but Catlin wasn't teaching her what to do next, just first, and Florian was lying down being patient while Catlin was showing her how to make sure he wouldn't get up.

Nelly had heard the thump, that was all, and come flying in after Florian was down in the middle of the rug. Catlin was demonstrating how to break somebody's neck, but she was doing it real slow. If Catlin was really doing it and pulling it, she was so fast you could hardly see what she did. Catlin and Florian had showed her how to fall down and roll right up again. It was marvelous what they could do.

Sometimes they played Ambush, when they had the suite to themselves. You turned out the lights and had to find your way through.

She was alwaysthe one who was Got. That was all right. She was getting harder to Get and she was learning things all the time. It was a lot more fun than Amy Carnath.

Florian showed her a whole lot of things about computers and how to set Traps and do real nasty things with a Minder, like blow somebody up if you had a bomb, but they kept those down in the Military section. She knew about voice-prints and how the Minder knew who you were, and how handprint locks were linked into the House computer, along with retina-scans and all sorts of things; and how to make the electric locks open without a keycard.

Florian found out a lot of things, real fast. He said the House residential locks were all a special kind that was real hard to get past. He said that uncle Denys' apartment had a lot of interesting stuff, like really specialspecial locks, that were tied in somewhere Florian couldn't trace, but he thought it was Security: he said he could try to find out, but he could get in trouble and they were Olders and he would do it only if she wanted.

He wouldn't tell her that until they were outside, because he and Catlin had found out other things.

Like the Minder could listen to you.

It was a special kind, Florian had told her: it could hear anything and see anything, and it was specially quiet, so you never knew; and specially shielded, with the tape functions somewhere outside the apartment. The lenses and the pickups could be small as pinheads, the lenses could be fish-eyed and the pickups could be all kinds, motion detection and sound. "They can put one of those in the walls," Florian said, "and it's so tiny and so transparent you can't see it unless you go over the walls with a bright light sort of sideways, or if you've got equipment, which is the best, but they have real good focus. Then they can digitalize and you can get it a lot tighter than that. Same with the audio. They can run a voice-stress on you. If they want something they can get it. That's if they want to. It's a lot of work. Most Minders are real simple and you can get into them. The ones in the House are all the complicated kind, all security, all built-ins, and it's really hard to spot all the pickups if they set them into the cement between stones and stuff. "

That had made her feel real upset. "Even in the bathroom?"she had asked.

Florian had nodded. "Especially, because if you're setting up surveillance, they're going to try to go places they don't think they'll have a bug. "