"Fill your plate for a veil, stranger." His voice was a boom. "Bread an extra five mins." He watched as Dumarest made his selection. "Just arrived?"

"It shows?"

"To an experienced eye." The man nodded at the plate which could have held more. "The longer you stay the hungrier you get. Not many students come in here who don't pile their plate as high as it will go. You want wine?" He beamed at Dumarest's nod. "Take a seat and the girl will serve you." His voice rose to a roar. "Trisha!"

She was tall, thin, her face bearing a waxen pallor, the eyes sunk in circles of darkness. Her hair, blonde, hung in a lank tangle. Beneath the rough gown she wore her figure was shapeless. The hands which tilted the flagon over Dumarest's goblet were little more than flesh stretched over bone.

A student, he guessed, working to pay for her tuition, starving herself to pay her fees. She watched as he paid for the wine, added five mins as a tip. As she reached for the coins he dropped a two-veil piece before her hand.

"For you, Trisha." He noted the hesitation, the inner struggle, and added, quickly, "For nothing but your time. Sit and share wine with me. It's allowed?"

"If there's profit in it then it's allowed." She poured a second goblet, watched as Dumarest paid for it, took a cautious sip. "Do I have to drink it?"

"No. I just want to talk."

She said softly, "You could be wasting your time. If you hope to buy me forget it. I'm not that desperate."

"I need a little help," said Dumarest. "I want to save time and fees-there is a charge made for information?"

"You name it and there's a charge." She sipped more wine, relaxing. "What do you want to know?" She listened then looked across the chamber. "Lahee's your man. I'll send him over."

Like the girl he was tall, thin, bearing the same marks of emaciation. He sat and picked up the wine she had left, throwing back his head as he drank without invitation. An accepted member of the fraternity, his robe stained, the capacious pockets bulging, the array of flags and pennants stitched to his breast frayed and faded. A friend, he had been given the chance to win what he could.

"Trisha tells me you want to learn things. Save money at the booths. Maybe I can help."

"If you can't then send me someone who can," said Dumarest. "And pay for that wine before you go."

"It was Trisha's!"

"You want to argue about it?" Dumarest held the other's eyes, spoke more gently as they dropped from his own. "I can guess the system-pass me along for as long as the traffic will bear, right? Well, the chain ends here. You know what I want, can you supply it?"

"Geology," said Lahee. "You want to know all about rocks." He dug into his pockets and produced papers, books, a pen with which he made rapid notations in a neat and precise script. "If you've the money to pay for it the Puden University is the best. Try and get with Etienne Emil Fabull. If he's booked solid you could bribe someone to yield his place. I'll handle it for you if you like." He paused, hopefully, sighed as Dumarest made no answer. "Well, let's run over the other prospects."

He droned on, listing various colleges and instructors, balancing their relative values, touching on the scale of fees and other expenses. Dumarest listened to the list with apparent interest while he studied the speaker. Lahee was older than he had seemed at first; much of the emaciated appearance stemmed from the passage of time as well as from the lack of food. A perpetual student, he had found a niche in this academic jungle and made it his way of life. An accredited student still, but now more a parasite than an eager seeker after knowledge.

But safer to use than a computer.

They could be monitored, fitted with response triggers to check anyone asking a certain type of question or adjusted to file the details of all making inquiries. That risk he preferred to avoid.

As Lahee fell silent Dumarest said, "Thank you. You've been most helpful and I appreciate it."

"Glad to hear it." The man moved the scatter of books and papers before him, gathering them into a neat pile, the sheet he had marked close to one hand. "Would you say half the booth fee was fair?"

"It seems reasonable." Dumarest looked at the books, noting their age and condition. The covers were frayed, the spines cracked and gaping, pages obviously loose-rarities here on Ascelius where there was a vested interest in the elimination of old textbooks and manuals. Undegraded only because of their owners' care. "May I?" He reached for them before Lahee could object. "If you're hungry eat," he suggested. The food he'd bought was still untouched on his plate. "A bonus."

"You'll be careful?" Lahee was anxious despite the hunger which drove him to the food. "Those things are my living."

"I'll be careful."

Dumarest gently turned the pages. Only one book held anything of real interest, but he scanned it as casually as he had the rest. A list of names, subjects and the colleges at which they had been associated dating from some fifteen years earlier to four years from the present. Most of those listed would still be teaching, some could be dead, one in particular certainly was.

Dumarest looked at the name, the college at which the man had taught, one of the answers he had come to find.

Clyne was old, matched only by Higham, beaten only by Schreir. An equal partner in the Tripart which formed the acme of scholastic renown on Ascelius. The original building had long since been overlaid by massive extensions; the rooms, dormitories, laboratories and halls spreading and rearing to form towering pinnacles surmounted by the proudly arrogant flags of emerald blazoned with a scarlet flame. A throbbing hive of industry with teeming students studying as they slept and as they ate on a rigid, three shifts a day schedule. A machine designed to instill knowledge and to set the stamp of achievement with acknowledged degrees.

At times Myra Favre thought of it as a thing alive; the data-stuffed computers the brain, the atomic power plant the heart, the students and faculty the corpuscles flowing through the arteries of corridors, the pulsing nodes of chambers. An analogy born from her early study of medicine before she had realized her lack of suitability for the field, just as she had later learned that physics was not for her, nor geology, nor astronomy. She had wasted years before she had found her niche in administration and friends and good fortune had established her in her present position.

"Myra?" Heim Altaian smiled from the screen of her communicator. "Just an informal word. Convenient?"

A shake of the head and he would break the connection to wait for her return call. Returning his smile she said, "Go ahead."

"Just thought we could discuss a few things. How are you on available space?"

"Short as always. Why do you ask?"

"I've an idea which could expand your potential. Registrations are low on some of our non-industrial subjects and I thought we could arrange a mutually beneficial exchange. Higher number takes over the smaller. Agreed?"

"In principle, yes." She maintained her smile. "You know I'm always willing to cooperate, Heim. Why don't you send over a list of classes and numbers and I'll run a comparison check before making a final decision. Of course you won't send me any deadbeats and debtors, will you?"

"Only honest to God paid-up students, Myra. You know you can trust me."

As she could trust a predator, she thought as the screen went dead, her smile dying with the image. Altaian would unload all the rubbish he could, and she would do the same to him if given the chance-classes which had proved to be failures, instructors not worth their salt, students who hovered on the edge of debt. Always it was the same after a new intake and always there were problems which had to be solved one way or another. A part of her job was to solve them. Another was to insure the financial profitability of the university. Fail on either and Clyne would have a vacancy for someone to fill her place.