Four: 3049 AD

The Main Sequence

They put him into Hospital Block this time. He was under sedation for three days.

Two people were at his bedside when the doctor came to bring him out. The thin, pale, blue-eyed woman with the nervous hands was Amy. The little oriental with the presence of an iceberg was benRabi's friend Mouse.

Amy would sit for a minute, picking at her jumpsuit, shifting this way and that. She would cross and uncross her legs, then would rise and pace around for a minute before sitting again. She did not speak to Mouse. Most of the time she deliberately tried to distance Storm from herself and Moyshe. It was almost as if she saw Mouse as a competitor for benRabi's affection.

The men had shared missions under fire. Sometimes they did not like one another much. Their backgrounds were day and night. Centuries of prejudice had erected walls between them. Yet an indestructible bond had been forged and hammered on the anvils of shared peril. They had guarded one another's backs and saved one another's lives too often to let go.

Mouse waited without moving, with the patience of a samurai.

He was a dedicated Archaicist. He had just encountered his own ancient heritage and, in imagination, was trying the samurai role for size. The code and conduct suited the warrior within him.

But it did nothing for the libertine. And Mouse was a classic of that genre, at least with the opposite sex.

Masato Igarashi Storm did nothing by half measures.

The doctor coughed softly.

"Will he be all right?" Amy demanded. "He'll come out okay? I know what you told me, but... "

Mouse's facial muscles moved slightly. His wan expression spoke volumes about his disgust at her display.

The doctor was more patient. "Just an enforced rest, Miss. That's all it is. There's nothing wrong that rest can't cure. I hear he did a hell of a job feeding realtime to Weapons Control. He just pushed himself too far."

A look flickered across Mouse's stony face.

"What're you thinking?" Amy demanded.

"Just that he's not usually a pusher."

Amy was ready for a fight.

The doctor aborted it by giving benRabi an injection. He began to come around.

Mouse seemed indifferent to Amy's response. But not oblivious. He was an astute observer. He just did not care what she thought.

"Doc," he said, "is there any special reason for sticking with this kind of medical setup?"

The woman held benRabi's wrist, taking his pulse. "What do you mean?"

"It's primitive. Almost Archaicist obsolete. They had sonic sedation systems before I was born. Easier on the patient and staff both."

The doctor reddened. Mouse had been out of the hospital only a few weeks himself. He had spent a month recuperating from a severe wound received from a Sangaree agent who had tried to seize control of Danion. He was not pleased with the quality of medical care, and made no secret of it. But Mouse hated all doctors and hospitals. He could find fault with the finest.

BenRabi had tracked the Sangaree woman down, and had shot her...

Mouse had the nerve to stand toe-to-toe with the Devil and tell him to put it where the sun doesn't shine.

"We have to make do with what we can afford, Mr. Storm."

"So I've been told." Mouse did not pursue it, though he thought Seiners pleading poverty was on a par with Midas begging alms on a street corner.

BenRabi opened his eyes.

"How you doing, Moyshe?" Storm asked, trampling Amy's more dramatic opener. His presence there, betraying his concern, embarrassed him.

The fabric of centuries takes the stamp; they mark the children indelibly. Their legacy remains as invisible and irresistible as the secret coded in DNA. The young Mouse had learned that Old Earthers were pariahs.

Mouse's family had been in Service for three generations. They were part of Confederation's military aristocracy. BenRabi's forebears had been unemployed Social Insurees for centuries.

Neither man considered himself prejudiced. But false truths sown in the fallows of childhood, planted deep, continued to sprout unrealistic real-world responses.

BenRabi had begun bridling his prejudice early. He had to survive. There had been only two Old Earthers in his Academy battalion.

He needed a minute to get his bearings. "What am I doing here?" he demanded.

"You needed rest," Amy told him. "Lots of it. You overdid it this time."

"Come on. I can take care of myself. I know when... "

"Crap!" the doctor snapped. "Every mindtech thinks that. And then they turn up here, burned out. I change their diapers and spoon feed them. What is it with you people, benRabi? You all got egos two sizes too big for a small god."

Moyshe was fuzzy. He tried to say something flip. His tongue felt like it was wrapped in an old sock.

He saw tears in the doctor's eyes. "Did you lose someone at Stars' End?"

"My sister. She came out of creche just before you landsmen came aboard. She was only seventeen, benRabi."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not. You're a mindtech. Anyway, sorry doesn't help. Not when I have to take care of her every day. She was just like you, benRabi. She knew she could handle it. She wouldn't listen either. None of them would. Not even the controllers, who should've known better. They put her back in with only four hours' rest."

BenRabi kept his mouth shut. What could he say? He had been introduced to Contact during the battle at Stars' End. The main Contact room had been a shambles. Dozens of mindtechs had given everything to save Danion.

He never would have seen Contact, or even have discovered its existence, had those linker casualties not been cruel. In those days he had been a distrusted landsman, a convicted enemy spy who was screened from all Seiner secrets. They had drafted him into Contact only because he might give Danion a millimeter's better chance of surviving.

He had made his decision to cross over after Stars' End, virtually in the hatch of the ship designated to return the landsmen contractees to Confederation.

He had waited too long. Half of his personal possessions had departed with the ship. He had not recovered them. The service ship crew had gotten into a row with Customs. The bureaucrats had retaliated, seizing everything not bolted to the ship's frames.

BenRabi took Amy's thin, cool hand. "How've you been, darling? You look tired. How long has it been?" She felt so cold... She was a spooky woman. Why had he fallen in love with her?

He always fell for the strange ones, the neurotic and just plain rotten ones. Alyce, in Academy... What a loser she had turned out to be. And the Sangaree woman, Marya, who had been a vampire in the midst of his last two missions.

"I'm all right now that I know you'll be okay. Moyshe, please be more careful."

She seemed unusually remote. BenRabi glanced at her, at Mouse, and back again. More problems with Mouse? Her dislike for his friend had taken a quantum leap recently.

Mouse did not talk much. The inevitable chess board had accompanied him, but he did not offer to play. Amy's presence restrained him. Chess was one of his great passions, rivaling his passion for seducing a parade of beautiful women.

"Hey, Mouse. Ever wonder what Max is doing these days?" Referring to someone they had known before coming out here was the only way he could think of to pull his friend into the conversation.

"Probably getting richer and wondering why we don't come into her shop anymore. I don't think Beckhart will bother giving her our new address."

"Yeah." BenRabi laughed. "He should have heard the news by now, don't you think? Or pretty soon. He'll foam at the mouth." For Amy's benefit, he explained, "Max was a friend of ours in Luna Command. She ran a stamp store."