Friday

XXIX

A spaceshipÄa hyperspaceshipÄis a terribly interesting place. Of course it takes very, very advanced knowledge of wave mechanics and multidimensional geometry to understand what pushes the ship, education that I don't have and probably never will (although I would like to back up and study for it, even now). RocketsÄno problem; Newton told us how. AntigravÄa mystery until Dr. Forward came along and explained it; now it's everywhere. But how does a ship massing about a hundred thousand tonnes (so the Captain told me) manage to speed up to almost eighteen hundred times the speed of light?Äwithout spilling the soup or waking anyone.

I don't know. This ship has the biggest Shipstones I've ever seen but Tim Flaherty (he's second assistant engineer) tells me that

they are charged down only at the middle of each jump, then they finish the voyage having used only "parasitic" power (ship's heat, cooking, ship's auxiliary services, etc.).

That sounds to me like a violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy. I was brought up to bathe regularly and to believe that There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch; I told him so. He grew just a touch impatient and assured me that it was indeed the Law of Conservation of Energy that caused it to work out that wayÄ it worked just like a funicular; you got back what you put in.

I don't know. There aren't any cables out there; it can't be a funicular. But it does work.

The navigation of this ship is even more confusii~g. Only they don't call it navigation; they don't even call it astrogation; they call it "cosmonautics." Now somebody is pulling Friday's leg because the engineer officers told me that the officers on the bridge (it's not a bridge) who practice cosmonautics are cosmetic officers because they are there just for appearances; the computer does all the workÄand Mr. Lopez the second officer says that the ship has to have engineering officers because the union requires it but the computer does it all.

Not knowing the math for either one is like going to a lecture and not knowing the language.

I have learned one thing: Back in Las Vegas I thought that every Grand Tour was Earth, Proxima, Outpost, Fiddler's Green, Forest, Botany Bay, Halcyon, Midway, The Realm, and back to Earth because that's how the recruiting posters read. Wrong. Each voyage is tailored. Usually all nine planets are touched but the only fixed feature in the sequence is that Earth is at one end and The Realm, almost a hundred light-years away (98.7 +), is at the other. The seven way stations can be picked up either going out or coming back. However, there is a rule that controls how they are fitted in: Going out the distance from Earth must be greater at each stop, coming back the distance must decrease. This is not nearly as complex as it sounds; it simply means the ship does not double backÄjust the way you would plan a shopping trip of many stops.

But this leaves lots of flexibility. The nine stars, the suns of these planets, are lined up fairly close to a straight line. See the sketch with the Centaur and the Wolf. Looking from Earth, all those stars, as you can see, are either at the front end of the Centaur or close by in the Wolf. (I know the Wolf doesn't look too well but the Centaur has been clobbering him for thousands of years. Besides, I've never seen a wolfÄa four-legged wolf, that isÄand it's the best I can do. Come to think of it, I've never seen a Centaur, either.)

That's the way those stars cluster in Earth's night sky. You have to be about as far south as Florida or Hong Kong to see them at all, and even then, with bare eyes you will see only Alpha Centauri.

But Alpha Centauri (Rigil Kentaurus) really shines out, third brightest star in Earth's sky. Three stars it is, actually, a brilliant one that is the twin brother of Sol, one not as bright that it is paired with, and a distant, dim, small companion that swings around both of them about a fifteenth of a light-year away. Years ago Alpha Centauri was known as Proxima. Then somebody bothered to measure the distance to this inconsequential third cousin and found that it was a hair closer, so the title of Proxima or "Nearest" was moved to this useless chunk of real estate. Then, when we set up a colony on the third planet of Alpha Centauri A (the twin of Sol), the colonists called their planet Proxima.

Eventually the astronomers who tried to shift the title to the dim companion were all dead and the colonists got their way. Just as well, because that dim star, while a hair closer today, will soon be farther awayÄjust hold your breath a few millennia. Being "ballistically linked" it averages the same distance from Earth as the other two in the triplet.

Look at the second sketch, the one with "right ascension" across the top and "light-years" down the side.

I must be the only person out of the hundreds in this ship who did not know that our first stop on this voyage would not be Proxima. Mr. Lopez (who was showing me the bridge) looked at me as if I were a retarded child who had just made another unfortunate slip. (But that did not matter because he is not interested in my brain.) I didn't dare explain to him that I had been snatched aboard at the last moment; it would have blown my cover. However, Miss Rich Bitch is not required to be bright.

The ship usually stops at Proxima both going and coming. Mr. Lopez explained that this time they had little cargo and only a few passengers for Proxima, not enough to pay for the stop. So that cargo and those passengers were put off until the Maxwell warps next month; this trip the Forward will call at Proxima on the way home, with cargo and, possibly, passengers from the other seven ports. Mr. Lopez explained (and I did not understand) that traveling many light-years in space costs almost nothingÄmostly rations for passengersÄbut stopping at a planet is terribly expensive, so any stop has to be worthwhile on the balance sheet.

So here is where we are going this trip (see second sketch again):

first to Outpost, then to Botany Bay, then to The Realm, on to Midway, Halcyon, Forest, Fiddler's Green, Proxima (at last!), and on home to Earth.

I'm not unhappy about itÄquite the contrary! I will get rid of this "most valuable cargo in the galaxy" less than a month after warping away from Stationary StationÄthen the whole long trip home will be a real tourist trip. Fun! No responsibilities. Lots of time to look over these colonies squired around by eager young officers who smell good and are always polite. If Friday (or Miss Rich Bitch) can't have fun with that setup, it is time to cremate me; I'm dead.

Now see the third sketch, declination across the top, light-years down the side. This one makes the routing seem quite reasonableÄ but if you look back at the second sketch, you will see that the leg from Botany Bay to Outpost, which seems on the third sketch to skim the photosphere of Forest's sun, in fact misses it by many lightyears. Picturing this voyage actually calls for three dimensions. You can take the data from the sketches and from the table below and punch it into your terminal and pull out a three-dimensional hologram; it all makes sense seen that way. There is one on the bridge, frozen so that you can examine it in detail. Mr. Lopez, who made these sketches (all but Joe Centaur and the sad wolf) warned me that a flat plot simply could not portray three-dimensional cosmonautics. But it helps to think of these three sketches as plan view, side view, and front elevation, as in visualizing a house from its plans; that is exactly analogous.

When Mr. Lopez gave me a printout of this table, he warned me

that the data are of about grammar-school accuracy. If you aim a telescope by these coordinates, you will find the right star, but for science and for cosmonautics you need more decimal places, and then correct for "epoeh"Äa fancy way of saying you must bring the data up to date because each star moves. Outpost's sun moves the least; it just about keeps up with the traffic in our part of the galaxy. But the star of Fiddler's Green (Nu~2] Lupi) has a vector of 138 kilometers per secondÄenough that Fiddler's Green will have moved more than 1. 5 billion kilometers between two visits five months apart by the Forward. This can be worrisomeÄaccording to Mr. Lopez it can worry a skipper right out of his job because whether or not a trip shows a profit depends on how closely a master can bring his ship out of hyperspace to a port planet without hitting something (such as a star!). Like driving an APV blindfolded!

But I will never pilot a hyperspaceship and Captain van Kooten has a solid, reliable look to him. I asked him about it at dinner that night. He nodded. "Ve find it. Only once haf ye had to send some of de boys down in a landing boat to buy someting at a bakery and read de signs."

I didn't know whether he expected me to laugh or to pretend to believe him, so I asked what they bought at the bakery. He turned to the lady on his left and pretended not to hear me. (The bakeshop in the ship makes the best pastry I have ever tasted and should be padlocked.)

Captain van Kooten is a gentle, fatherly manÄyet I have no tron~ ble visualizing him with a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other, holding off a mob of mutinous cutthroats. He makes the ship feel safe.

Shizuko is not the only guard placed on me. I think I have identified four more and I am wondering if I have them all. Almost certainly not, as I have sometimes looked around and not spotted any of themÄyet the drill seems to be to have someone near me at all times.

Paranoid? It sounds like it but I'm not. I am a professional who has stayed alive through always noticing anything offbeat. This ship has six hundred and thirty-two first-class passengers, some sixty-odd

uniformed officers, crew also in uniforms, and the cruise director's staff of hosts and hostesses and dancing partners and entertainers and such. The latter dress like passengers but they ~re young and they smile and they make it their business to see to it that the passengers are happy.

The passengers: In this ship a first-class passenger under age seventy is a rarityÄme, for example. We have two teen-age girls, one teen-age boy, two young women, and a wealthy couple on their honeymoon. All others in first class are candidates for a geriatrics home. They are very old, very rich, and extremely self-centeredÄ save for a bare handful who have managed to grow old without turning sour.

Of course none of these old dodderers are my guards, and neither are the youngsters. The cruise staff I got sorted out in the first fortyeight hours, whether they were musicians or whatever. I might have suspected that some of the younger officers had been assigned to watch me were it not that all of them stand duty watches, usually eight hours out of twenty-four, and therefore can't take on another full-time job. But my nose does not play me false; I know why they follow me around. I don't get this much attention dirtside but there is an acute shortage of beddable young females in this shipÄthirty young male officers versus four young, single females in first class, other than Friday. With those odds a nubile female would have to have very bad breath indeed not to carry a train like a comet.

But, with all these categories accounted for, I found some men not accounted for. First class? Yes, they eat in the Ambrosia Room. Business travelers? MaybeÄbut according to the first assistant purser, business travelers go second class, not as swank but just as comfortable, at half the cost.

Item: When Jerry Madsen takes me to The Black Hole with his friends, here is this solitary bloke nursing a drink over in the corner. Next morning Jimmy Lopez takes me swimming; this same bloke is in the pool. In the card room I'm playing one-thumb with Tommy shadow is playing solitaire over on the far side.

Once or twice can be coincidence... but at the end of three days I am certain that, anytime I am outside of suite BB, some one of four men is somewhere in sight. He usually stays as far from me

as the geometry of the space permitsÄbut he's there.

Mr. Sikmaa did impress on me that I was to carry "the most valuable package any courier ever carried." But I did not expect him to find it necessary to place guards around inside this ship. Did he think that someone could sneak up and steal it out of my bellybutton?

Or are the shadows not from Mr. Sikmaa? Was the secret broached before I left Earth? Mr. Sikmaa seemed professionally careful... but how about Mosby and his jealous secretary? I just don't knowÄand I don't know enough about politics in The Realm to make any guesses.

Later: Both of the young women are part of the watchful eye over me but they close in only when and where the men cannotÄthe beauty parlor, the dress shop, the women's sauna, etc. They never bother me but I'm tired of it already. I'll be glad to deliver the package so that I can fully enjoy this wonderful trip. Luckily the best part is after we leave The Realm. Outpost is such a frost (literally!) that no groundside excursions are planned there. Botany Bay is said to be very pleasant and I must see it because it is a place to which I may migrate later.

The Realm is described as rich and beautiful and I do want to see it as a touristÄbut I won't be moving there. While it is reputed to be quite well governed, it is as absolute a dictatorship as is the Chicago ImpermumÄI ye had enough of that But for a stronger reason I would not consider asking for an immigrant's visa: I know too much. Officially I don't know any'thing as Mr. Sikmaa never admitted it and I didn't askÄbut I won't stretch my luck by asking to live there.

Midway is another place I want to see but don't want to live. Two suns in its sky are enough to make it special... but it is the Popein-Exile that makes it very specialÄto visit, not to stay. It really is true that they celebrate Mass there in public! Captain van Kooten says so and Jerry tells me that he has seen it with his own eyes and that I can see it, tooÄno charge, but a contribution for charity on the part of a gentile is good manners.

I'm tempted to do it. It's not really dangerous and I'll probably never have a chance like this again in my whole life.

Of course I'll check out Halcyon and Fiddler's Green. Each must be extra-special or they would not command such high prices .

but I'll be looking for the joker in the deck every mimiuteÄsuch as that at Eden. I would hate to ask Gloria to pay a high fee to get me in... then discover that I hated the place.

Forest is supposed to be nothing much for a touristÄno amenitiesÄbut I want to give it a very careful look. It is the newest colony, of course, still in the log-cabin stage and totally dependent on Earth and/or The Realm for tools and instruments.

But isn't that just the time to join a colony in order to feel great gusty joy in every minute?

Jerry just looks sour. He tells me to go look at it... and learn for myself that life in the forest primeval is greatly overrated.

I don't know. Maybe I could make a deal for stopover privilege:

pick up this ship or one of her sisters some months from now. Must ask the Captain.

Yesterday there was a holo at the Stardust Theater that I wanted to see, a musical comedy, The Connecticut Yankee and Queen Guinevere. It was supposed to be quite funny, with romantic-revival music, and loaded with beautiful horses and beautiful pageantry. I avoided my swains and went alone. Or almost alone; I could not avoid my guards.

This manÄ"number three" in my mind, although the passenger list said that he was "Howard J. Bullfinch, San Diego"Äfollowed me in and settled down right behind me... unusual, since they normally stayed as far away from me as the size of a room permitted. Perhaps he thought he might lose track of me after they lowered the lights; I don't know. His presence behind me distracted me. When the Queen sank her fangs into the Yankee and dragged him into her boudoir, instead of thinking about the fun going on in the holotank, I was trying to sort out and analyze all the odors that reached meÄ not easy in a crowded theater.

When the play was over and the lights came up, I reached the side aisle just as my shadow did; he gave way. I smiled and thanked him, then made exit by the forward door; he followed. That exit leads to a short staircase, four steps. I stumbled, fell backward, and he caught me.

"Thank you!" I said. "For that I am taking you to the Centaur Bar to buy you a drink."

"Oh, not at all!"

"Oh, most emphatically. You are going to explain to me why you have been following me and who hired you and several other things."

He hesitated. "You have made some mistake."

"Not me, Mac. Would you rather come quietly... or would you rather explain it to the Captain?"

He gave a little quizzical smile. (Or was it cynical?) "Your words are most persuasive even though you are mistaken. But I insist on paying for the drinks."

"All right. You owe me that. And then some."

I picked a table in the corner where we could not be overheard by other customers... thereby ensuring that we could be overheard by an Ear. But, aboard ship, how can one avoid an Ear? You can't.

We were served, then I said to him almost silently, "Can you read lips?"

"Not very well," he admitted at the same low level.

"Very well, let's keep it as low as possible and hope that random noise will confuse the Ear. Mac, tell me one thing: Have you raped any other helpless females lately?"

He flinched. I don't think anyone can be hit that hard and not flinch. But he paid me the courtesy of respecting my brain and showed that he was a brain, too, by answering, "Miss Friday, how did you recognize me?"

"Odor," I answered. "Odor at first; you sat too close to me. Then, as we left the theater, I forced on you a voice check. And I stumbled on the stairs and forced you to put your arms around me. That did it. Is there an Ear on us here?"

"Probably. But it may not be recording and it is possible that no one is monitoring it now."

"Too much." I worried it. Walk side by side on the promenade? An Ear would have trouble with that setup without continuous tracking, but tracking could be automatic if Mac had a beacon on him. Or I myself might be booby-trapped. Aquarius Pool? Acoustics in a swimming pool are always bad, which was good. But, damn it, I needed more privacy. "Leave your drink and come with me."

I took him to cabin BB. Shizuko let us in. So far as I could tell she stood a twenty-four-hour watch except that she slept when I did. Or I thought she did. I asked her, "What do we have later, Shizuko?"

"Purser's party, Missy. Nineteen o'clock."

"I see. Go take a walk or something. Come back in one hour."

"Too late. Thirty minutes."

"One hour!"

She answered humbly, "Yes, Missy"Äbut not before I caught her glance at him and his scant five-millimeter nod.

With Shizuko gone and the door bolted I said quietly, "Are you her boss or is she yours?"

"Some argument," he admitted. "Maybe `cooperating independent agents' describes it."

"I see. She's quite professional. Mac, do you know where the Ears are in here or will we have to work out some way to defeat them? Are you willing to have your sordid past discussed and recorded on tape somewhere? I can't think of anything that would embarrass meÄafter all, I was the innocent victimÄbut I want you to speak freely."

Instead of answering he pointed: over my couch on the lounge side, over the head of my bed, into my bathroomÄthen he touched his eye and pointed to a spot where the bulkhead met the overhead opposite the couch.

I nodded. Then I dragged two chairs off into the corner farthest from the couch and out of line of sight for the Eye location he had indicated. I switched on the terminal, punched it for music, selected a tape featuring the Salt Lake City Choir. Perhaps an Ear could reach through and sort out our voices but I did not think so.

We sat down and I continued, "Mac, can you think of any good reason why I should not kill you right now?"

"Just like that? Without even a hearing?"

"Why do we need a hearing? You raped me. You know it, I know it. But I am giving you this much of a hearing. Can you think of any reason why you should not be summarily executed for your crime?"

"Well, since you put it that wayÄ No, I can't."

Men will be the death of me. "Mac, you are a most exasperating man. Can't you see that I don't want to kill you and am looking for a

reasonable excuse not to do so? But I can't manage it without your help. How did you get mixed up in so dirty a business as a gang rape of a blindfolded, helpless woman?"

I sat and let him stew and that's just what he did. At last he said, "I could claim that I was so deep into it by then that, if I balked at raping you, I would have been killed myself, right then."

"Is that true?" I asked, feeling contempt for him.

"True enough, but not relevant. Miss Friday, I did it because I wanted to. Because you are so sexy you could corrupt a Stylite. Or cause Venus to switch to Lesbos. I tried to tell myself that I couldn't avoid it. But I knew better. All right, do you want my help in making it look like suicide?"

"Not necessary." (So sexy I could corrupt a Stylite. What in the world is a Stylite?Ämust find out. He seemed to mean it as a superlative.)

He persisted. "Aboard ship you can't run away. A dead body can be embarrassing."

"Oh, I think not. You were hired to watch over me; do you think anything would be done to me? But you already know that I intend to let you get away with it. However, I want explanations before I let you go. How did you escape the fire? When I smelled you, I was astonished; I had assumed that you were dead."

"I wasn't at the fire; I ran for it before that."

"Really? Why?"

"Two reasons. I planned to leave as soon as I learned what I had come for. But mostly on your account."

"Mac, don't expect me to believe too many unlikely things. What was this you had come there to learn?"

"I never found out. I was after the same thing they were after:

Why you had gone to Ell-Five. I heard them interrogate you and I could see that you did not know. So I left. Fast."

"That's true. I was a carrier pigeon... and when does a carrier pigeon know what a war is about? They wasted their time, torturing me."

Swelp me, he looked shocked. "They tortured you?"

I said sharply, "Are you trying to play innocent?"

"Eh? No, no, I'm guilty as sin and I know it. Of rape. ButI didn't

have any notion that they had tortured you. That's stupid, that's centuries out of date. What I heard was straight interrogation, then they shot you with babble juiceÄand you told the same story. So I knew you were telling the truth and I got out of there. Fast."

"The more you tell me, the more questions you raise. Who were you working for, why were you doing it, why did you leave, why did they let you leave, who was that voice that gave you ordersÄthe one called the MajorÄwhy was everybody so anxious to know what I was carryingÄso anxious that they would mount a military attack and waste a lot of lives and wind up torturing me and sawing off my right tit? Why?"

"They did that to you?" (Swelp me, Mac's face was utterly impassive until I mentioned damage done to my starboard milk gland. Will somebody explain males to me? With diagrams and short words?)

"Oh. Complete regeneration, functional as well as cosmetic. I'll show youÄlater. If you answer my questions fully. You can check it against how it used to look. Now back to business. Talk."

Mac claimed to have been a double agent. He said that, at the time, he was an intelligence officer in a quasi-military hired out to Muriel Shipstone Laboratories. As such, and working alone, he had penetrated the Major's organizationÄ "Wait a minute!" I demanded. "Did he die in the fire? The one called the Major?"

"I'm fairly sure he did. Although Mosby may be the only one who knows."

"Mosby? Franklin Mosby? Finders, Incorporated?"

"I hope he doesn't have brothers; one is too many. Yes. But Finders, Inc. is just a front; he's a stooge for Shipstone Unlimited."

"But you said you were working for Shipstone, tooÄthe laboratories."

Mac looked surprised. "But the whole Red Thursday ruckus was an intramural fight amongst the top boys; everybody knows that."

I sighed. "I seem to have led a protected life. All right, you were working for Shipstone, one piece of it, and as a double agent you were working for Shipstone, another piece of it. But why was I the bone being fought over?"

"Miss Friday, I don't know; that is what I was supposed to find out. But you were believed to be an agent of Kettle Belly BalÄ"

"Stop right there. If you are going to talk about the late Dr. Baldwin, please do not use that dreadful nickname."

"Sorry. You were thought to be an agent of System Enterprises, that is to say, of Dr. Baldwin, and you confirmed it by going to his headquartersÄ"

"Stop again. Were you part of the gang that jumped me there?"

"I am happy to say that I was not. You killed two and one died later and none of them was unhurt. Miss Friday, you're a wildcat."

"Go on."

"KetÄ Dr. Baldwin was a mugwump, a maverick, not part of the system. With Red Thursday being mountedÄ"

"What's Red Thursday got to do with this?"

"Why, everything. Whatever it was that you carried was bound to affect the timing, at least. I think the Council for SurvivalÄthat's the side Mosby's goons were working forÄgot the wind up and moved before they were ready. Perhaps that's why nothing much ever came of it. They compromised their differences in the boardrooms. But I've never seen an analysis."

(Nor had I, and now I probably never would. I longed for a few hours at the unlimited-service terminal I had had at Pajaro Sands. What directors if any had been killed on Red Thursday and its sequelae? What had the stock market done? I suspect that all really important answers never get into the history books. Boss had been requiring me to learn the sort of things that would eventually have led me to the answersÄbut he had died and my education stopped abruptly. For now. But I would still feed the Elephant's Child! Someday.)

"Mac, did Mosby hire you for this job? Guarding me in this ship.

"Eh? No, I've only had that one contact with Mosby and that under a phony. I was hired for this through a recruiter working for a cultural attach‚ of the Ambassador for The Realm in Geneva. This job isn't one to be ashamed of, truly. We are taking care of you. The best care."

"Must be dull with no rape."

"Ouch."

"What are your instructions about me? And how many of you are there? You're in charge, are you not?"

He hesitated. "Miss Friday, you are asking me to tell my employer's secrets. In the profession we don't do that... as I think you know."

"Fiddlesticks. You knew when you walked in that door that your life depended on answering my questions. Think back to that gang that jumped me on Dr. B~ildwin's farmÄthink what happened to them. Then speak up."

"I've thought about it, many times. Yes, I'm in charge... except, possibly, for TillyÄ"

"Which one is Tilly?"

"Sorry. Shizuko. That's a professional name. At UCLA she was Matilda Jackson. We all had been waiting in the Sky High Hotel almost two monthsÄ"

`We,' plural. Name them. Ship's roster names. And don't try to stall me with guff about the mercenary's code; Shizuko will be back in a few minutes."

He named themÄno surprises; I had spotted them all. Clumsy. Boss would never have tolerated it. "Go on."

"We waited and the Dirac warped without us and only twentyfour hours before warping time for the Forward we were suddenly alerted to leave in the Forward. Then I was supplied with color holos of you for us to studyÄand, Miss Friday, when I saw your picture, I almost fainted."

"Pictures were that bad? Oh, come, now."

"Huh? No, they were quite good. But consider where I saw you last. I thought that you had died in that fire. I, uh, well, you might say I had grieved over you. Some at least."

"Thank you. I think. Okay, seven, with you in charge. This trip isn't cheap, Mac; why do I need seven chaperons?"

"I had thought that you might tell me. Not that it is any of my business why you are making this trip. All I can tell you are my instructions. You are to be delivered to The Realm in perfect condition. Not a hangnail, not a bruise, not a sniffle. When we arrive, an officer of the palace guard comes aboard and then you're his prob

1cm. But we don't get paid our delivery bonus until you've had a physical examination. Then we are paid, and we deadhead home."

I thought about it. It was consistent with Mr. Sikmaa's worry over the "most valuable package a courier ever carried"Äbut there was something phony about it. The old belt-and-suspenders redundantbackups principle was understandableÄbut seven people, full-time, just to see that I did not fall downstairs and break my neck? It did not taste right.

"Mac, I can't think of anything else to ask you now, and ShizukoÄI mean `Tilly'Äis due back. We'll talk later."

"Very well. Miss Friday, why do you call me Mac?"

"That's the only name I've ever heard you called. Socially, I mean. At a gang rape we both attended. I'm reasonably sure that you are not `Howard J. Bullfinch.' What do you prefer to be called?"

"Oh. Yes, I was Mac on that mission. But I'm usually called Pete."

"Your name is Peter?"

"Uh, well, not exactly. It'sÄPercival. But I'm not called that."

I refrained from laughing. "I don't see why not, Pete. Brave and honorable men have been named Percival. I think that's Tilly at the door, anxious to bathe me and to dress me. One last word: Do you know why you are still breathing? Not dead?"

"Because you let me pee. Thank you for letting me pee before you handcuffed me to that bed."

He suddenly looked wry. "I got chewed out for that."

"You did? Why?"

"The Major intended to force you to wet the bed. He figured that it would help to make you crack."

"So? The bloody amateur. Pete, that was the point at which I decided that you were not totally beyond hope."