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  Truly, this was the man of her dreams. She had been right to let him make love to her.

  She had been right to come to Threshold.

  "One kiss, Dini." He reached for her. "Now, remember, don't mention my name."

  She could hear his heart pounding as she kissed him one last time. "Say good-bye to your kitty for me," she said, and got out of the car.

  She waited until he'd driven away before she walked on unsteady legs toward her hotel and up the stairs.

  Rick had said that the risk was worth it. He said he loved the idea of helping her. Tomorrow he would say he loved her, not just the risk and the challenge. She was sure of it.

  But the closer she got to her father's suite, the more Dini worried that she'd never be let out of there again, except to board the ship that would take her, deflowered, probably pregnant, and obviously defiled, back to Medina where execution in a public square would be her lot.

  She had defiled herself with an infidel, and she was sure everyone could see. Dini Forat closed her eyes in the lift and tried to recall his face. But all she could see were Rick's blue eyes, and the eyes of his ring-tailed cat, which were as deep as the night above his bed and as filled with twinkling stars.

  She could still taste the lettucelike fruit she'd eaten, when she got to the floor where her family's suite was. And she could still see colors in the air.

  If not for Ali-5, who saw her as the lift opened, she might never have gotten out there, but run and hidden somewhere until it was time to call Rick Cummings's number.

  But Ali-5 did see her, and then it was too late. Her dream was about to become a nightmare. The beautiful colors in the air all turned dark and menacing as the bodyguard raced forward to grab her out of the lift before it could close.

  CHAPTER 10

  Other Side of the Law

  All South wanted to do was report his stolen card and ID. He didn't see any reason for the local cops to treat him like a criminal.

  But they did.

  "Look," he nearly snarled in frustration to the sergeant behind the desk when the going got rough, "I came in here of my own accord, because my ID was stolen. How the hell can I show it to you?"

  Then there were two uniforms behind him, and they put their hands on him, and all the rage he'd been working so hard to keep in check came boiling out of him.

  One cop wanted to handcuff him, and South wasn't about to let that happen.

  He knew damn well that you didn't take on a couple of uniforms in a station house, but when he wouldn't put his wrists behind him, the second cop tried to put him in a choke hold. South hadn't been in Africa for nothing. He leaned back into it, elbowed the cop behind him in the gut, and pushed back, kicking out at the second cop as he and the first one fell.

  He happened to catch the second cop under the chin with one booted foot.

  That dropped cop Number Two. But by then there were half a dozen more helping, and he was lying on his stomach with his hands jerked up hard behind him. So he didn't know who hit him or who kicked him or who used the laser on him.

  When he could see something more than the blood rushing into his eyes from a cut on his head, he was looking at a chickenwire-inlaid-glass detention cell about three feet wide by five feet long.

  At first South was relieved that it was private, from the look of the fellows in the cells on either side. But then he watched while three men came in and wrapped a struggling prisoner in something that looked altogether too much like a wet canvas shroud.

  It probably wasn't. This was the future. In Africa, they used to bind guys up in strips of wet canvas and wait for it to shrink. As it shrank, no matter who you were, you remembered whatever they wanted to know.

  Considering that there was somebody sitting in there with the bound guy; and that somebody had either a pocket recorder or a clipboard; and there was a discussion going on—something very African was happening next door.

  On South's other side was a roughneck with a greenish cast to his skin and what looked like a bad case of eczema. This guy kept throwing himself against the glass, head first.

  The cubicles were soundproofed. The silence began to get to South. Finally he said, "Shit, I gotta get out of here," out loud, just to prove he could still hear.

  And a voice from somewhere above said, "Name, please."

  It was some kind of AI, a mechanical voice. He looked up, saw a speaker grill in a ceiling he couldn't reach if he jumped for it, and gave his name.

  Then he sat on the floor, scrubbing the clotted blood out of his eyes as best he could, and had a long discussion with the AI about who he was and where he'd come from. He didn't have his watch any longer, but the dialogue must have gone on for better than an hour, with him and the AI talking in circles about how he could prove who he was, when he remembered the card that the lady reintegration counsellor had given him.

  If he still had it, maybe she'd prove that he was who he said he was.

  They obviously didn't bother with fingerprints, but he remembered retinal scans, so if anybody cared to try, and could contact the lady, she could ID him.

  So, for that matter, could Lieutenant Reice of ConSec, but the AI wasn't programmed to react to that set of sounds. Or else Reice wasn't gettable. Or somebody figured to just let South sit awhile and cool out before they sprung him.

  He'd been told not to land in jail.

  Oh, well, maybe the card would work. It was there, crumpled, in the bottom of his hip pocket when he reached for it. But it hurt like hell to reach back there. He'd cracked a couple of ribs or something, during the brawl.

  What the hell was wrong with him, starting a fight he couldn't win?

  There were tremors running all over him, and his forearms burned as he tried to hold the card steady enough so that he could read it. He had to use both hands.

  He read the name aloud: "Lt. Commander Lydia Jones," and what else was on the card: "PSYOPS/J2/CSC/UNE MEDICAL INTELLIGENCE OFFICE." And then he read out a phone and office extension, telling the AI to "Get hold of this officer, or when they find out what you're doing to me, holding me without cause, there'll be trouble."

  Of course, they had due cause: he'd been pretty rowdy back there.

  The AI crackled and he had a sense that it had gone off line.

  So he said, "Hey, power on. Request legal counsel. Request phone call." Couldn't hurt to try.

  The AI burped back: "Requests denied."

  That was nice. At least he knew how to get it to respond to him. Now if he could only figure out how come he didn't have basic legal rights, he'd be on his way out of here. He hoped.

  After too long staring at the crumpled business card in his hand, he remembered the woman who'd given it to him saying that he didn't have Threshold citizenship. Well, from the full cells around him, he wasn't the only one. When he got out of this, he'd have to look up Sling again and get another tutorial.

  When he felt a little better. His head was pounding, what with the scalp wound he'd taken and the drinking he'd done. He had a bump above his eye the size of a golf ball. And he hurt from his butt to his shoulder.

  Worse, he couldn't do anything but sit here until somebody decided what to do with him. And that meant he had too much time to think. He closed his eyes and leaned his head carefully back against the glass wall, and up popped those funny eyes from the spongejump, looking at him soulfully. So he opened his eyes again.

  He didn't want to go to sleep here. If you thought you might have a concussion, you didn't let yourself go to sleep. He levered himself up against the wall, welcoming the jabs from his ribs and spine. Then he turned to the wall and put his hands flat against it. He used to do calisthenics in his cell in Africa, even though there wasn't room to lie down flat.

  You just had to use some ingenuity. He slid his feet out three feet from the wall he was facing, and did push-ups against the glass, eyes closed, until his heart was pounding as fast as his head and his mouth was so dry that it felt as if he'd been eating needles.
/>   Then he opened his eyes and the green guy next door was staring at him, flat nose flatter against the glass.

  The eyes facing his had oblong pupils.

  The sight scared the hell out of him and he shot back against the far wall, hitting it hard.

  This just wasn't his day.

  He kept trying to put together how he'd gotten himself into this mess, and decided he must have still been drunk.

  Some of those unprounceable beers, especially the blue and red ones, must have more kick than he'd been expecting.

  He started perspiring, then shivering in the empty glass cell. Then the shivers got worse, so that he had to cross his arms and tuck his hands into his armpits, and finally slide down the wall again.

  Nausea swept over him in waves and time lost all meaning. Everything pinwheeled and there were disgustingly sweet pink whorls in the pinwheels. He kept trying to open his eyes and stare at his feet to quiet his stomach, but they wouldn't stay open.

  Somehow, he had to keep from vomiting.

  Right about when he was deciding to let his stomach do its worst, he heard a voice.

  He was slow to look up, so whoever it was had already come into the cell and was leaning over him.

  South heard a grunt. Something pricked his upper arm, and he thought maybe the grunt might have been his.

  Then he was being lifted by one arm, without much gentleness, and a black guy in white was frogmarching him out of the cell.

  He'd have complained but he couldn't find his mouth. But if you couldn't find your mouth, you couldn't vomit. He was sure that the black guy in the white coat had given him a shot, because otherwise, why were the peppermint pinwheels subsiding?

  Nothing seemed to matter very much except that his stomach was feeling better and his head didn't hurt as badly, not even when black fingers pressed an envelope into his grasp and black hands helped him through the police station and down the steps.

  He thought he heard a velvety voice say, "And don't get your ass busted again, fool. Next time, you'll find yourself on a work gang."

  But he was definitely free, and on the street.

  He could feel a building against his back, and he leaned there, using all the strength he had to maintain an upright position, and hopefully a posture that said he was more fully conscious than he felt.

  He kept trying to open the envelope in his hands. He didn't want to lose it. He needed to see whatever was in it.

  In it, when he finally could focus, were his credit card and ID. Or another credit card and ID. And some actual stuff that looked like cash money: coins and engraved papers.

  He put them inside his coveralls, this time, all except for the cash. Then he tried walking. It looked like staggering and lurching, and he had to keep one hand against the wall.

  He knew he was attracting attention, bruised and cut up. But he kept moving. Eventually he found something he could recognize as one of the tube stations, and asked somebody where the ConSec docking bay was.

  The person with the blurry face told him what tube to take, and pointed him in the right direction.

  The rest wasn't hard. You got on the train, or something that looked like a train. It went like hell. You put your head between your knees and took deep breaths to keep from retching.

  When it stopped, you got off.

  The main gate to the docking bays had an AI entry post, but that was all. It never occurred to him that if he put his ID in the slot, he couldn't get through. So he got through fine.

  Every thought that he had was concentrated on survival, and survival was Birdy, his own bunk, a little bright spot called STARBIRD to which he was drawn with the single-minded determination that had gotten him through Africa alive.

  There weren't many people around, on the docking bay. Maybe it was whatever cycle passed for night here. Maybe everybody was busy with some emergency.

  He got lost in the docking bays. There were lots of them.

  Finally he found the ConSec bay, and there he ran right into a stone wall—actually, a metal wall.

  This one wouldn't open for his ID. Wrong service. He walked all the way around the enclosure, craning his neck.

  Either the wire on the top of it was electrified, or it wasn't. There was only one way to find out.

  He jumped for it, fell back, and jumped again, his pulse making his whole skull reverberate.

  No good. Too high. He walked around some more, looking for something he could use to get over that wall.

  He couldn't find anything. Then he thought of something. He went back to the gate and, at the same time he chucked his ID into the slot, he told the AI he was supposed to meet Reice of ConSec inside to inspect the Relic cruiser.

  Something made sense to the AI, either the phrase "Relic cruiser," or Reice's name and service, because it let him through.

  You had to use your head. It was too bad his hurt so much.

  The AI wouldn't give his ID back, but that seemed like some kind of standard procedure: you got it back when you left a restricted area. Instead, it gave him a pass with his entry time logged on it.

  If his face didn't hurt so much, he'd have grinned as he walked down the docking bay looking for STARBIRD. It was difficult to see clearly. The flesh around his right eye was contused; the eye was almost swollen shut. And his head hurt so badly he was squinting in the overhead lights.

  But STARBIRD wasn't hard to find. She was off by herself, wide open. Some quarantine.

  He nearly bolted up the ramp. Inside, he flattened himself against the bulkhead and said, "Birdy. Secure all hatches. Full life support. Ready systems. Engage."

  The ship came to life, her lights rippling on, her hatches sighing shut. Her breath spilled over him. He said, this time in a quavery voice he was barely able to control, "I gotta get some sleep, Birdy. Repel all attempts to gain access. Repeat, no access by anybody outside, no matter what you hear. Wake me if there's any forcible attempt to board."

  What was he going to do about that, if it happened? The testbed didn't have so much as a flaregun aboard.

  He was stumbling toward his bunk, wishing he had his suit. In his suit, he could have repelled a hell of a lot more than he could without it.

  But they had his suit. And he had STARBIRD. Not such a bad trade, if you really thought about it. He flat-palmed his way to his bunk, needing to feel the ship around him as much as he needed her bulkhead's support.

  "Damn, Birdy, it's good to be home. Can we get out of here? Give me a projection on our chances of flying out—or punching out—of this fucking place and finishing our mission."

  "Course to Earth?" Birdy asked him for clarification.

  "Set course to Earth. Don't execute until I say. Include any measures necessary to break free of this obstruction."

  Birdy didn't know what the hell they were stuck inside. He didn't have armaments, but he had sponge capability. Nobody'd ever tried to spongejump from a standstill. It might not work. It might kill bun. It might take all of Threshold with him, if he punched into spongespace while in a Threshold docking bay.

  Weapons at hand were just that. Birdy would plot him a course. That was what the AI did. "And, Birdy: If anybody comes around here asking for me while I'm sleeping, tell anyone making inquiries that I demand to talk with somebody in charge—somebody I can negotiate with. And don't take any orders from anybody but me, no matter how those orders come to you. If our survivability is threatened, ignore anything else I've said and blast us out of here or jump us out of here. Clear?"

  "Yes, Captain. Calibrating . . . please wait."

  Sitting on his bunk, South put his head gingerly in his hands. You bet he'd wait. He was going to get some sleep, and he didn't care if he dreamed that his mother and father were big-eyed, sad-mouthed aliens.

  Then he was going to wake up and take control of his goddamn situation: Either find somebody he could reason with, or get Birdy to break him out of here.

  The worst thing that could happen was he'd get himself dead trying. An
d he already was as good as dead. According to Threshold's bureaucracy, he'd been dead nearly five hundred years.

  So he didn't have a whole lot at risk, what with his head pounding like this. Even feeling so bad had its up side: he wasn't afraid to go to sleep anymore.

  Nothing waiting in his dreams could be worse than what he'd just been through while he was wide awake. Anyway, his bunk physiology package was already clucking at him, anxious to get to work analyzing and normalizing his chemistries.

  He woke up once, when Birdy roused him to say that she'd had a communication from outside the ship, in response to South's message, which Birdy had duly sent.

  Birdy reported, "Their response is as follows: Port police will maintain status quo until Director Rowe can come on-site if no aggressive action is taken.' "

  "No shit," South said through sticky lips, rubbing his eyes and wincing because he'd forgotten how beat-up he was.

  "Transmit Captain's response?"

  "No. Let them sweat it."

  And Joe South turned carefully over on his side and went back to sleep, to find his family there, alive and well, welcoming him home after a successful mission with Jenna beaming at his mother's side. Everything looked just the same, and he was so happy to be back home that he didn't even mind the aliens clapping their hands among the little crowd who'd turned out to welcome him at his hometown airport.

  CHAPTER 11

  A Ball of What?

  Riva Lowe had commandeered Customs' B300E Adamson for the trip out to spacedock to view Keebler's artifact. Her choice of vehicles spoke loudly of how nervous she was about whatever the scavenger had towed in from the back of beyond.

  The Adamson was a six-place high-speed pursuit ship with aggressive capabilities such as scalar pulse and neutral-stripped particle beam weapons, as well as kinetics and fifth-force grappling. The ship had a blown air-breather mode for high-speed pursuit even into atmosphere. It had ground-space-sponge capabilities, temporal realignment and classified snooper packages, and electronic warfare pods. In short, it had the capability to blow Keebler's unidentifiable ball to either hot or cold smithereens, or punch it out of human spacetime unharmed.