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lems." She has sandy hair, cropped straight at chin level, and bangs that are
trimmed squarely above her eyebrows. The washed-out gray of her eyes matches
the gray tunic and trou-
sers she wears.
Martel wonders about her obnoxiousness, but answers evenly. "That's right. I
had adjustment problems. But I'm here and ready to work."
She slouches into the lounger behind the console.
"Aren't you the chiever-beaver. Just like that."
Martel waits.
"Sit down. Sit down. Farell's on the board, will be for the next two stans.
Few comments from KarNews on the in-feed.
That's about it. That's all it ever is, except for the specs and the logos,
the gossip pieces, the once-in-a-god-year storm warning. Feed the touries
their home-planet news. We handle
Karnak."
Karnak? The one fax outlet on Aurore handling Karnak, and that's where the
Brotherhood has placed him? He files the point for reference, and turns his
attention to the woman.
Her eyes are bright. Too bright. Cernadine. Do the demi-
gods allow addiction?
Why not? So long as it doesn't impair performance or hurt anyone else.
Cernadine is safe and available. And explains the washed-out look in her eyes.
"Fine. Farell's on the board. You are ... ?"
"Hollie Devero, at your service, Masterfaxer Martel." Her mouth quirks upward
even farther, then twitches into a thin line before she continues. "And how
did a Regent's Scholar with a masterfax rating end up on Aurore, the punkhead
of faxing?"
"You seem to know all the answers. Since I'm not sure, you tell me."
"You're right I do know full feed on you, Marty Martel.
How you actually put a little love into a greeter's life, and how you really
like to take long walks alone on the sands, and how you avoid people. And how
the first things you bought were black tunics and trousers. And you had to
special-order them!"
She laughs and the sound is brittle.
Martel bites his lip. No one should be greeted like this! No one!
"Then you know why I'm here."
Her voice loses its edge. "No. I don't. First new faxer in ten standard years,
first one not even a Guild prentice, and the Guild approves you ... and no
record marks."
Martel probes at the fringes of her thoughts, gently, uncer-
tain how cernadine affects her sensitivity, unsure how sensi-
tive she is.
... say that?... Did I... what... Martel... the one ...
Her curiosity is building against the damping waves of the cernadine, but
Martel senses she does not know what she has just said. How? Why?
Someone else is walking down the corridor from control area the engineer.
Danger. Danger! Danger! DANGER!
Martel strikes, lets his mind go in a blast of energy, lashing at the man in a
way he only half believes.
"Gods! No! . . ." The scream from inside and outside
Hollie Devero catches at the edge of his attack, and he holds back the
darkness ... finds himself staring from a slumped position against Hollie's
console at a man lying facedown, antique slug-thrower gripped in his hand.
Martel knows the man is dying or dead. Maybe.
"You ... you killed him ..." Tears, real tears, tears not from the cernadine,
well from the corners of her eyes.
Even from under the blanket of the drug, he feels the grief, her ties to the
dying man.
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Can he do anything? Has he done too much?
Martel sends his perceptions out, touches the heart, adds strength to the
beat, oxygen, repairs a torn artery, a stripped vein, and, standing back in
his mind and watching himself do the miraculous, finishes by rebuilding a
damaged nerve chain.
His knees wobble as he staggers up and over toward the now-unconscious man.
His vision blurs momentarily as he bends to pick the slugger from a flaccid
hand. He removes the shells and drops the empty weapon on the console.
"You ... owe ... me ... one ... Hollie."
He sits down heavily, concentrating on breathing for him-
self. Half watches the woman as she kneels beside her lover.
"I thought you'd killed him."
"No." / did, but I undid it, and flamed if I know how.
"Why?"
"Why, yourself? Why did" and he picks the name out of her thoughts "Gates want
to kill me? Given the demigods, maybe you owe me two."
Her eyes widen. Her face crumples, gray to match her washed-out eyes. "Why?
Why? Why?"
Martel echoes her thoughts silently, blocking them as well.
Gates Devero had been primed to explode as soon as one
Martel, faxcaster, student, Brother, showed up at the
CastCenter. But the attempt had been direct. Too direct.
Gates was supposed to fail. That meant Martel had been set up to kill the
engineer, which meant ... Martel shivered.
He remembers something Rathe said.
"The gods are jealous, Martel. Jealous."
"Jealous" seems an understatement.
Martel finally answers the question Hollie asked. "Because he was supposed to
fail, Hollie, because he was supposed to fail."
"Oh, gods, no! Why us?"
"Not you. Me. Don't worry. You're safe. So's Gates. A
second time would be too obvious." For now.
"Second time?"
"Forget it. Just tell Gates he tripped."
Martel lurches to his feet, knees solid at last, picks the weapon off the
console, and drops it into a pocket.
"Tripped?"
"Got any better ideas, smart lady?" His voice burns, and the anger in it turns
the gray-faced administrator grayer.
"But the gods ..."
Martel swallows, hard. Only the thoughts count.
"Gates tripped, Hollie. That's all that happened."
And with that his thoughts follow, changing the pictures in her mind, then in
Gates'. Both would remember that Gates tripped.
Martel is sure that the gods will know that the memories are false, should
they check, but what really happened is erased, gone, except in his own mind.
"In answer to your other question," he goes on as if noth-
ing has occurred, "I'm here "
"I don't need to know. I don't want to know."
" because I was Queried by the Emperor and the Grand
Duke of Kirsten."
Hollie turns her head from side to side, slowly, still on her knees by Gates.
"And the only ambition I have is to get paid for being a faxer while I sort
things out."
He looks at the time readout. Almost a full stan has passed since he walked
into the CastCenter.
One stan? One whole stan?
He tightens his lips. Apparently his mental excursion into the physiology of
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one Gates Devero has taken longer than he has realized.
"You'd better help Gates up," he suggests mildly as he lets the engineer wake
and groan. "By the way, am I expected to follow Farell?"
"No. She'll brief you, give you a handful of procedures, and walk you through.
Double duty for her. Double pay.
Doesn't happen enough. So she won't mind."
Martel can tell her thoughts are on Gates, her genuine worry about the fall he
has taken. Martel heads down the cor-
ridor toward the control center.
He scans Farell from outside the control room.
She is dark-haired, from her own mental image relaxed, and, so far as he can
tell, untrapped.
He waits until she finishes the locals and is into the
KarNews feed before opening the portal.
"Martin Martel," he announces quietly.
"Swear I'd locked that."
He looks vacant.
"Guess not." She gives him a half-smile, accented by nat-
urally red lips. "You're Giles' replacement. Our new wunder-
kind from Karnak."
"Green from Karnak," he admits, "and so far as faxing goes, green as gold.
Lots of ratings, a few degrees, and no more than the minimum uncontrolled
airtime."
"No illusions, at least." She gives a fuller smile.
Her arm sweeps the circular room. "This is it. All older than you or me. Just
a reader-feeder op, with enough of us in it to assure the touries that they're
seeing real, live people be-
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