Partnership by Anne McCaffrey, Margaret Ball Read Free Book Online Page B

casually. Daddy, when he visited and told her about his work, was always careful to give each bureaucratic office its full name, each official his full tide.

    It was possible, Nancia thought, involuntarily contrasting Blaize's darting, hummingbird speech patterns with Daddy's measured delivery — it was possible that her father, Javier Perez y de Gras, was just a bit stuffy. No.
    That was ridiculous. She was getting corrupted by her passengers, straying into non-regulation and non-approved ways of thinking. Heaven knew what indiscretions Blaize would lure her into if they continued this conversation.

    "Do you play SPACED OUT?" She filled the three wall-size screens with the displays that had tempted Polyon and Darnell into the game. "It'll have to be solitaire, I'm afraid."

    "Why?"

    "I can't not know the underlying structure," Nancia apologized. "You see, the game's part of my memory banks now. And I've never learned your softperson trick of selectively turning off awareness." She wasn't about to try, either. But she could, she told Blaize, make the solitaire game a little more challenging by redefining the maze of tunnels and Singularity nodes that connected one part of the SPACED OUT galaxy with another.

    "Rules that change as you play?" Blaize hummed in delight. "Great idea. Polly will hate it, too."

    That thought seemed to increase his pleasure in the game. And while he happily manipulated a solitary play icon through the traps and surprises set up by the designer, Nancia contemplated the vast loneliness of the stars around them and the distance she must travel before she could make private contact with another shellperson.

    PARTNERSHIP

    43

    • CHAPTER THREE

    Alpha

    When she awoke after the graduation "party,"
    Alpha bint Hezra-Fong made her way to the main cabin and found her traveling companions engaged in one of those silly role-playing games. Medical school and a demanding research program had never given her the time to waste on such frivolities. But there might be plenty of time where she was going. Alpha pushed that thought to the back of her mind. She would find something productive to do; she always did. She might even find a way to continue her research.

    For the present, her companions watched the game screens, and Alpha watched them. They were considerably more amusing than the game; especially Blaize and Polyon, stalking one another in an ongoing verbal battle. Blaize was obviously dying to know why someone Eke Polyon, destined by family and training for a high command post, was being sent out to start his career on a remote planet of no real military importance.

    Alpha rather wanted to know the answer to that little puzzle herself. As part of the powerful and high-ranking de Gras-Waldheim clan, Polyon would seem like a good person to cultivate. And in some ways, Alpha thought, it would be a pleasure to make friends with Polyon. He was certainly the most attractive man on this ship, the only one worth her time. But if he'd disgraced himself at the Academy and been dis-owned by his family, she couldn't afford the risk of getting dose to him. Some of that scandal — whatever it could have been — might rub off on her. And she couldn't afford any more blots on her record, not after the way the medical school had overreacted to that trivial business about her research protocols. No, she'd wait and find out a little more about Polyou before she moved on him. And she'd let Blaize Armontillado-Perez y Medoc, a born gadfly if ever there was one, do the finding out.

    "Shemali's such an obscure spot," Blaize hinted, "for a brilliant young man on his way up."

    Polyon stared into the display of distant mountain peaks for a moment before he answered. Alpha could see a muscle twitching in his jaw. As well as all the muscles everywhere else ... those Academy undress grays don't leave much to the imagination! Why doesn't he just break the little pest in half? But Polyon retained his control. "Yes, it's