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Huey rolled his eyes slightly and fingered his mustache. "So it's in use on Paffir Haretz. "And possibly on Eyimalia. Yes, it bears looking into."

Greyesar inclined his head a little farther, throwing his face into shadow. "Since we lack the time and knowledge to conduct an investigation, and have no reason to give the information we do have to anyone else, it merits no looking into by this organization. Additionally, your services are still essential to the Uchide. The possibility of success in the venture must be weighed against the likelihood that we would not survive it."

Huey looked up at him. "Do you think so? I had begun to suspect I was immortal." He shook his head. "Well, cheer up, Grey. We've scanned you and there's nothing behind that finely graven visage but the purest organic matter."

"At seventy-eight percent accuracy," Greyesar said. "And since the surgery required for implantation takes perhaps fifteen minutes--is that correct?" He looked at Clark.

Clark said nothing. He wondered why Greyesar, who usually insisted on his full name, now answered to Grey. Did Paula call him that?

"We could easily lose the organic purity of our crania, as you put it," Greyesar went on.

"I take your mimicry as a compliment," Huey replied.

"Additional to that, as I have stressed, is the importance of avoiding any upset to the people who control the signals. That would be difficult unless we knew who they were."

The discussion usually ended here when one or the other wandered off to do something else. Huey would not have known where to begin his investigation. And you, Clark told himself, still going barefoot for her. Moping around stubbing your toes like a widower. If everyone who ever loved Paula had burned their shoes with her, the flames would have burnt the clouds and whole cities been immobilized. He could not have gone barefoot on Paffir Haretz. Greyesar made the affectation supportable.

"All right, king of dreams, tell me where to go," Huey said.

Greyesar had gone back to his map. "Inward," he said over his shoulder.

No wonder these two are at a loss, Clark thought. They knew only Eyimalia, the weapons trade and the contramedical network. He sat back in his chair, trying to get an idea. Don't close with a problem too soon, he thought in Paffir. Then he thought it in Eyimalian and the Intersystems Language. Wake up, he thought. He took the two implants from his pocket.

Huey activated the viewscreen. He smiled at the astral panorama. "Stable in the corridor. Smoothest run in the system here, thought at cost." He nodded significantly at his shipmates.

"Cost?"

"Quite a number of people died constructing it. We lost a nation here," Huey said. "My com relays are at your disposal, Grey." He bent over Clark's shoulder to examine the implants. "These simple fellows are the great secret weapon, hm? Let's have a look."

Clark fitted one of the implants into an analytic beam and projected an image as big as himself onto the wall. Five arm-sized titanium peaks stood out from the main sphere, their broken tips ragged, sides smooth as lava flows. Below, irregular dark ridges showed where the five drops of molten titanium had met in a violent clash and frozen.

"Those projections are the leads. They've all been broken off. Otherwise, they'd extend past the range of the beam, out of the picture, and at their ends they'd be as thin as your fingers," Clark said. "They can be anchored anywhere in the brain. The metal is for amplification."

"I know, I know, but that was two years ago, for Sunny's sake," Greyesar was saying, one side of the com receiver pressed to his outsize head. The giant's eyes darted back and forth to the rythm of the speech or static he heard, occasionally looking toward his companions. Abstraction lent ferocity to his gaze. "Listen," he went on. "You've been with the Uchide for four generations. Now it's going to count."

"Of course we have no inkling where this object was implanted in Paula," Huey said, raising his eyebrows.

"That isn't the one we found in Paula. No, I didn't try to perform an autopsy."

"Did she know?"

"About that thing? She never told me about it." He tipped back in his seat and turned his face to the smoothly illuminated cieling. "I never asked her, though. We scanned every native in sight, but not each other. We just didn't..." He watched the near-mass board chatter and then go blank as they passed a cluster. Since Huey remained silent, he finished, "...look. We assumed the Vars were using them on their Outlander agents."

Huey looked away.

"When it happened, though, Akiva recognized the seizures. He's positive an old priest he knew died the same way." Clark looked at the backs of his hands. The fingers were broader than before, and he had acquired new scars on Paffir Haretz. Lab work would be more difficult now. Well, he could pass the rest of his life examining people for implants. "I can't think of a connection between Paula and the priest," he said.

"Sleep on it. We'll meet in the same place." Greyesar signed off with a wave at the address taker. "All right, Hugh. He has orders. They agree to pay in polly plates and sonics. Half pre."

"Very well, though Resheborian casheeks are considerably--" Huey got up, wheezing slightly for effect. "Let me clear a spot for the new dainties."

"If it comes in as weapons, I know I'll take it off as weapons without any evaporation," Greyesar told his partner as they went into the corridor.

Clark sat watching the screens for a while. All remained blank. The ship was alone. He put Paula's implant into the magnifier. Its outer coating had been partially blasted away and he could see the network of white fibers through gaps in the surface. In one place the metal was deeply gouged. Turning the beam to get a better look at the damage, he saw that the gouging was deliberate. He switched to a lower magnification to read the engraving. It was a Reshecomp registration number.

* * Eyimalia City's streets had never been paved, but packed so hard by the millenia that the occasional rains barely wet them. Pedestrians vied with animal carts for room in the foot-traffic lanes running with no curb along motor routes jammed by cars of all sizes that skittered around and under big trucks or formed convoys behind the buses and trolleys. Despite the motor vehicles' incredible speed and the hordes of children surging in and out of the various lanes with no regard for the overwalks, accidents were so rare that, except during the revolution, traffic fatalities dominated the news if they happened and were investigated with suspicion of foul play.

"A minimum of five years' training is required to obtain a driver's license here. More if you want to drive faster," Greyesar told Clark as they walked. "The Uchide have three high-speed drivers."

"Then why are the roads so full of cars?"

"They aren't."

Clark counted the motor vehicles and convinced himself that pedestrians did outnumber drivers by perhaps thirty to one. There were so many people, and all of the people so big, that he found roads and walkways alike too full. More than half the passersby wore military uniforms. Nearly all carried arms. Once he tripped and they all jumped away from him, afraid whoever had shot him would try again and miss.

Clark was used to being one of the tallest in a crowd, but when he sat in a chair here his feet barely reached the floor. He went to the city library to catch up in the immunosciences and had to call a technician to free him from his headset because the long probes met above his head and shut off the set automatically so that it locked as though he weren't inside. Only after they got the thing loose did he notice the warnings embossed on it.

Snarling, he borrowed a set from the children's section and got an update on the last five months' Reshecomp entries from Drugtown. He had never taken a one-shot update of more than a week's news before. When he finished, the tumult between his ears was so great that he laid his head on the desk and slept until closing time. On the way home he passed the communication office, noticed that it was suppertime on the farm and decided to give his family a call.

His mother answered. She was pulling at her ear as she punched in. He wondered whether she had developed the habit from worry. "Clarkwell!" she yelled. Behind her, people ran forward. "Bring your head closer. Let's see you. Turn around. Show me your hands."

He complied, holding his hands up to the screen, while the family assembled in the background.

"Well, I guess you look all right. We haven't heard from you since--"

She (who, if someone asked how many children she had, usually answered "plenty") now hesitated, actually counting. After a moment she concluded firmly, "It's been five months."

Clark began to mention Huey's New Year message, but she cut him off.

"You know, Clarkwell, we were mad at ourselves after you called last time that we didn't record the call so we could replay it later on." She smiled, but raised one eyebrow in what he knew from childhood to be a warning. She glanced down. There was no yellow disclosure dot at the bottom of the screen. He guessed she meant someone was monitoring the conversation secretly. In the background the kids stood spellbound, clearly forbidden to utter a word.

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CONTINUE.....................

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