CORK
A Battlestar Galactica Fanfic by Paul Robison (Crossover with Gerard F.
Conway's Mindship)
Battlestar Galactica is the property of Glen A. Larson and Universal
Productions (c) 1978
The novel Mindship is the property of the estate of Gerard F. Conway, (c)
1974, D.A.W. Books, Inc.
Spoiler: Mindship, by Gerard F. Conway, D.A.W. Books, Inc. N.Y., N.Y,
1974, All Rights Reserved.
All material herein used without permission of the author. No monetary
gain is intended.
Note: Focuses solely on Apollo. Jolly and Serina are special guest stars
Battlestar Galactica is now the Mentalstar Galactica
No Cylons or battles with Cylons as far as I know.

Prologue: The "Valve"
     We were three sectans out from Sagitara when our Cork blew.
     He was a thin man, as Responsives go, quite gaunt, with lines and
hints of age wrinkling the paper-weight thinness of his skin; but for all
of that, he was a young man, and it showed in the way he moved---easily,
sliding along with that forward shove affected by men new to space, the
lopsided tumble that bumps you off walls and cracks your head against the
low hatches, gives you a hundred bruises and cuts on your first trip out.
Like a mosca on water spinning on gauze wings---he moved like that. He
was a quiet man for a mentalstar Cork; usually the burden of draining the
emotions of a crew makes a man want to talk, but him, never. Occasionally
he would smile, but when he did, the smile would rest only a moment on
his lips, as if waiting to be blown away. I suppose if I were to choose a
word to describe him, a single word, it would be young.
     Like all Corks, he was a Responsive. You could see it in his hands,
the way they fluttered over his lap when he sat in the crew's mess, the
way they touched and lighted on the arms of his chair, rested on his
knees, or moved on to trap themselves under his elbows. His fingers were
long, tapered candles lit from within, always sallow and drained, pink at
the tips where the nails used to be. When he spoke, his hands would jump
and dive, winding tapestries in the smoke-stained air of the lounge where
we sometimes slouched about, chatting and listening carefully to the worn
talkes. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and unobtrusive, and he looked
down, watching his hands. Sometimes he'd stare at them as if they were
apart from him, flesh-tinted avians nestling in his lap. I know that
look.
     Three weeks out from our third port, he blew. We were lucky to get
back to Caprica. Lucky for us. His luch ran out the day he shipped aboard
the Galactica.
     A man can't think of himself objectively, at least that's the way it
is with me. I can't judge my actions; it's too easy to relax the more
important aspects of one's personality and take Hades out on oneself for
the mistakes of one's past. Too easy. We all tend to mark ourselves as
sacrificial victims.

******************************

     I was commanding the Galactica when we first limped in to Virgon.
Half the crew had been blown away by our last jump into Ur space; our
previous Commander had been among the first to go, and because I was his
Captain, I took us up and carried us through and brought us down and kept
us Out. I did all the right things, all the smart things...and we still
lost half our crew.
     By the time we touched down on Virgon, we were a crippled mass of a
mentalstar. Even the Engineer was on the verge of being blown. Somewhere
back during the early moments of the disaster our Cork---this one an old
man way past his third 'juve, a crumpled wreck who'd managed to stick it
through six runs aboard the Galactica with only minor emotional
adjustments; the contrast between him and the Cork we picked up on
Carillon was startling----had cracked up and began fingering the pod
controls in his bay section. Somehow he punched a life-craft node and
ejected himself into hyperspace. Never found him. At that point, we were
all too busy trying to stay alive to go looking for a senile Responsive.
Perhaps we should've sent out a pod, though---after he blew, everything
seemed to crumble at the edges, eating toward our middle like acid rust
on a sheet of cheap tin. It was then that the Engineer began to complain
of stress along the lateral line; it was then that half the crew snapped
and went screaming into madness. I'm beginning to think that we would've
been better off if we had tried to save him after all.
     A Cork is a useful thing aboard a mentalstar. Without one, crews
have a tendency to dissolve in their own insanity. It's the nature of the
game: we need emotion to pass into the Colonial Frontier and we need a
Cork to keep us alive.
     That's why I made finding one a top-level priority when we finally
touched down on Carillon. Some things can't wait on formality.
     In a port, any port, whether it's in the Colonies or the Colonial
Frontier, you'll find three types of human communities: 
          1. Pleasure communities: congregation centers for the less
discriminating Corporeals.
          2. Liver communities: local residents only!
          3. The Communes: the last area you look for when you're seeking
a Receptive.
     That's where I found the new Cork. 

******************************

     I was with the Cook. He pushed through the screen ahead of me,
twisting to hold back the stands and let me through. I ducked under the
low hangings and came up a wreath of sweet smoke tainted by an ancient
odor of dust, the dry, choking flavor of packed earth. It was a basement
room, and it was dark, graying near the center, where candles and oil
lamps tried in vain to alleviate the gloom. I blinked against the smoke
sting and glanced at the unmoving shapes outlined in the dim glow.
     "You found him here?" I asked the Cook.
     "Sure. Where else?"
     "Hey, it's your game." Straightening, I looked around, waiting from
my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Beside me, the Cook hobbled about,
apparently seeking a familiar face---it he could see a face that is. He's
told me that though he wasn't born on Virgon, he considers it his home; I
suppose that's because so many ex-Responsives live there. He'd been my
guide, more or less. I'd received the impression that parts of the
spacedrome were as strange to him as they were to me. I prayed to the
Lords of Kobol this wasn't one of them.
     A figure near the far wall moved, unwinding into a crawlon shape
vaguely resembling a man. The cook moved forward and hooked an arm,
beckoning the house head to him. They spoke in low tones while I settled
myself against a wall latticed with narrow cracks and made a pretense of
relaxing. I was tense because I was a new Commander on his first
independent cruise and I had to make my first crew choices. Sagan, was I
ever tense.
     They came over to me finally, the house head moving in a slow,
stooped slide-walk. I watched him, and in the darkness I saw the left
side of his face, creviced where a set of capillaries had broken. A blown
Cork, one who'd snapped so far from reality the pieces were scattered
like moon dust. His eyes found mine, and he saw my expression. He smiled,
a tug of his lips just slightly askew from the shape of his face.
     "Forget me, Commander, I'm not your man, no, not me," he said in a
broken Receptive's slurry tones. "A quiet boy we've got back here. Fresh
one, no scars, you see, yes, yes." The ruined muscles in his neck slurred
his voice.
     "Let's see him," I said.
     "Back. Wait, hold on."
     He turned and slipped into the shadows. I glared at the Cook, but he
didn't seem to see me.
     Lords of Kobol!
     Then the blown Cork was back, and behind him was another man. No,
not a man: a boy. And just like that, with man coming at me out of the
darkness I snapped! Not on the surface but beneath it, so deep inside me
that I didn't sense it then, or even later when it all surged out. It was
then, right then, that I snapped. It was then that I made my first
mistake and committed my first murder----a homicide of myself and of this
young Cork. Not tangibly. Not so real you could touch it----but real
enough that it would be in my mind forever when I saw it for what it was.
     His hands moved nervously at his sides, finally hooking the loops of
his overjacket and fidgeting in an out of the leather curls. He didn't
look at me, just towards me, and he spoke softly in response to my
questions, almost too low to be heard. I tried to act like the
well-prepared professional.
     "What are you called, boy?"
     He told me.
     "Virgon is your home colony?"
     He shook his head and named a settlement just outside the Colonies.
     "How'd you get here?"
     He's shipped passage. That startled me. Passage from the Frontier to
the Colonies was hardly inexpensive, and twice as expensive to return;
there were many old space travelers caught in the Frontier who'd been
born near the Twelve Colonies, who couldn't return to their homeworld to
die. Not even a non-Colonial trader will take on a man after his fourth
rejuve, and those travelers caught on Virgon were next to cubitless.
Sometimes a charter ship will give mercy passage, but not often, and when
a psi ship does, the man becomes a sort of galley slave, and generally
ends up working harder than he ever had in a life on the spaceways. For
most, though, running to the Colonies is a one-way ticket, and Virgon is
the last stop. It's the final haul, the last jump before death---yet here
was a man little more than a boy who'd shipped passage to the soul dump
of the Colonies. It was odd, more than odd, and I said as much.
     He shrugged and his hands twisted in the loops of his jacket. Virgon
was where he wanted to be.
     "Are you experienced?" I asked. "Have you ever worked on Contract?"
     He'd been on two local runs and had been laid off when the shuttle
lost its in-system permit, something that was constantly happening with
these non-Colonial mentalstars. No Contract with a major company, not
even a slot in the provisional service. Taking him on would've been
tantamount to suicide.
     "Contract him," I said to the Cook, turning to avoid his wild-eyed
stare. I pushed my way out of the commune into the cool night of Virgon.
     I find myself reminded of an old Caprican proverb: "When we cut
ourselves, we use small knives."

******************************

     He was a fair Cork. In time, with experience to back his instincts,
he could've been a good one. He had a natural sense of calm, a quiet
manner that set one at ease, relaxing tightened muscles and soothing
anxieties to a throb rather than a pain. He was a Receptive doing his
job. Just talking with him eased the soul.
     When we were in drive he was everywhere, talking, calming, relaxing,
easing; a mind among our minds, a valve for our combined tensions--a
release. A Cork.
     During those weeks of our first run under my command, I watched him
with half attention. He always seemed to be only a few feet away, a
constantly stabilizing force because of his familiarity. When I was
setting a course or reviewing the flow of the brain waves powering the
ship, he was there, a daggit-soft presence that our previous Corks had
never been. Where they'd been huge, powerful and consuming, he was small,
an undercurrent sewer for our frustrations. He channeled the dirt and the
insanity out of our minds, keeping us, Receptives and Corporeals alike,
on the tightrope between sanity and insanity.
     I say us. That includes the Commander, though he's a Corporeal. Most
of all, it includes the Commander.
     I've heard Corks described as maternal images, psychic wombs into
which the power minds of the ships crawl during times of stress, there to
be cradled and loved. I've heard them likened to sewers as well, draining
the filth of our souls; the poisons that power a mentalstar have to be
sucked away, and so the Cork was the valve that cleansed us all. In a
way, our young Cork was both. The only sane mind in our crew, our valve,
our Cork.
     We were all insane, to a degree. How could we be otherwise? There
can't be a truly sane mind aboard a mentalstar. Corporeal or not; it's a
contradiction in terms. Sane minds don't provide the energy needed to
twirl space and send a ship skidding into Ur space, where all the laws of
our reality exist slightly warped. Sane minds are passage payers, not
crew. Sane minds are useless in space---with one exception: the Cork! If
he blows, he takes everything with him.
     And that's your real one-way ducket.
     I didn't see him again after that nigh tin the commune for two weeks
out from Virgon. I'd been aware of his presence, but there's a difference
between awareness and confrontation. One is unformulated; the other is
stark and real. It's an important difference. It was for me.
     I'd fixed the lines and set the degrees for the dive down the
gravity well to Sagitara; in the Ur the well acts like a magnet on a
mentalstar, providing the pull for a Colony-to-Colony run, so all that's
required is a vector set and a guard crew to watch for magnetic voids.
Going up from Sagitara is another matter, however; you're fighting all
the way, riding light currents while dragging against the gravity of the
galactic core. In a run Out that's a real struggle...and it's during a
run Out that your Cork receives his greatest beating. That's why I found
him in the Crew's Mess sipping a tankard of ambrosa; going In he could
afford to wander outside his station near the Bridge---going Out he'd
have no time for socializing. For now, he could sit there, listening and
drinking, watching with a distant, passive look.
     I went over.
     We made small talk, untroubled talk between a Commander and one of
his officers. He seemed reticent about that part of his life before he
came to Virgon; in passing, when I asked him about his early days before
he left the Frontier he became less talkative. He seemed to wind in on
himself, a slight hardening of the wires in his neck---nothing definite,
just a sudden withdrawal. He circumvented the entire subject with a
single soft phrase, bringing the conversation around to my own past and
me. Strangely, the shift didn't strike me as abrupt. Perhaps I'd wanted
to talk about myself and had only been marking time until the inevitable
return inquiries began. It was friendly and shallow talk. It seemed so.
     I talked about life on my homeworld, a dustbin planet in the western
end of the Frontier. He listened, and is attention seemed to act as a
salve, drawing out things from my past that I'd let rest for years,
things of which I'd been aware, but which for some reason I'd kept
buried:
     Being alone during a dust storm and crouching in a corner of cold
steel while wind pelted the outside walls with a rain of arid, sterile
dust; watching a brother die and being too small to help him, too young
to make the proper moves; then being alone again, never wanting to be
alone again, leaving the planet days later, finally going into space,
being where the walls were still cold steel, where other winds still
pelted the walls with arid, sterile dust, but where you weren't alone,
where there were other minds linking yours to theirs, and theirs to
yours. Speaking of a gut need to stay inside, safe from the naked outside
of vacuum and cosmic dust, to hide within a framework of cozy steel,
running from space into space. I told him about a box I'd seen once that
opened into another box, which flowered to reveal a third box, each layer
peeling away in turn, until there was nothing left but a final cube,
which could not be opened. In languid tones I told him all of this, and
at the time I thought it was all idle conversation, talk between a
Commander and one of his men.
     I see now I wanted him to understand why I had to kill him.
     He listened, and his hands danced at the ends of his arms, alien
hands leading a life separate and aloof from the rest of his body; or
perhaps not so separate after all.
     I didn't ask him about himself again. It seemed distant and
relatively unimportant.
     We talked, and after a while I left.

****************************** 

     We made the run into Sagitara under the line. We'd charted most of
the space assigned to us when the Galactica had left the Cimtar base four
months earlier under a different Commander and a partially different
crew. Now it was time for a trade run, and they'd told us we'd have to
pick up our cargo on Virgon, a shipment of solonite from the factories
there, to the human settlements along the eastern end of the Frontier.
But first, there were two more runs in the center of the Frontier. The
first took us across the celestial plane; five weeks without incident off
ship, and only one incident on.
     The Cook pointed it out. He was a bulky man, the Cook, short and
graying and heavy-jawed, his chin cupped by a webbing of broken
capillaries, yet even so he was a perceptive man. Before the accident
that made him a Corporeal, he'd been one of the best Corks under
Contract. I'd just left the Bridge when he approached and plucked at my
side.
     "The Cork, Commander. I think the poor snitrod's ready to snap."
     "What?!"
     "He's just sitting, not talking to anyone. Something's wrong, I just
know it."
     I stared at him, letting it sink in slowly. The Cork. "All right,
where is he now?" I asked.
     "In the mess. He's just sitting there, Commander. Drinking ambrosa."
     That was bad. I strode down the hall, found myself moving into a
trot, came to the lift shaft and dropped the three levels to the Crew's
Mess. He was sitting by himself just behind the Cook's ambrosa tap,
sipping at a large tankard of ambrosa. He was staring at his hands.
     I asked him, "What's wrong?"
     Nothing. He shrugged and tried a weak smile. I slid onto the bench
opposite him and nervously keyed the remote on the table before me.
Muscles jumped in spasms along the outsides of my ankles as I waited for
the ambrosa: it's a nervous thing I get. I watched the Cork. He kept his
eyes on his hands, occasionally taking a sip of his ambrosa.
     "Cook says there's something the matter..."
     He said no, nothing was wrong.
     I felt uneasy, sitting there with him; everything about him was calm
and gentle---and yet I felt uneasy. I realized that I'd almost
deliberately avoided him since that day in the Mess. Being near him made
me uncomfortable; I couldn't have explained it.
     "Dammit," I said, "say something."
     He did. Quietly he started to talk. Nothing in particular,
commenting first on the smoothness of the run, the attitude of the crew,
who he thought was involved with whom, how much he liked the ship, how
happy he was to be Corking under me, how he liked the Engineer, how he
was glad the others liked him. He rambled, continuing on without saying
anything. His hands drifted across the tabletop as he spoke, brushing it
gently as though smoothing a bed sheet. He talked, and finally I stopped
listening. I didn't want to listen, not really. I pushed away from the
table. He stopped speaking and looked up at me.
     Was something wrong?"
     "No," I answered wearily. "No. Everything's fine. Just OK. I'll see
you later."
     I went out feeling weak. Something nagged at the back of my mind and
I brushed it away, just as I brushed away my last sight of the Cork,
sitting there, watching me leave, his eyes vacant, and apparently
uncaring.

******************************

     I saw him about the corridors of the ship. He moved through the
halls slowly, his head lowered as he took a peripatetic path along the
rim corridors of the vessel, on those decks where the artificial gravity
was activated. Moving like a wraith, he seemed lost in thought, but we
knew that the distant look in his eyes was the look of a Receptive in
contact. He left varying impressions on the crew. Some thought he was
slightly insane, others that he was saner than any of us, and was lost in
our insanity; others simply didn't care. Both extremes, madness and
insanity, were wrong, by my thinking; his mind was a mixture. He was
different, apart from us; dispassionate might have been the word for it,
but for the fact that he was hardly cold. I found him once or twice when
he thought he was alone, shaking himself back and forth and muttering
something low and rhythmic under his breath. In anyone but a Cork, I
would have said it bordered on madness, but the ways a Cork maintains his
sanity sometimes seems stranger than madness...
     That was the way it seemed to me at the time. Now I understand that
I didn't want to recognize his distress; I didn't want to see how he was
crumbling inside. He was the Cork. And I wondered why I picked him.
     So it went. He wandered and listened, and spoke little of
himself---little of substance, little of him---and in his station he took
up our insanities.
     And on our third run, three weeks out from Sagitara, up from the
Frontier, he blew.

******************************

Mind-drive:
     I stand apart from the ship in my analog web, looking down at the
ball of light webbed with a network of power and energy, sparked with
arrows of mental light, a hundred mental waves turning on themselves,
waves on a muddy shore, churning up soot and soil, foaming in coils of
power. Central to that silent storm in the prism of the Cork's
mind-field, which seems to draw the darkness in a whirlpool even as we
generate it, funneling the black richness of our emotions through the
Engineer and out of the ship in a beam that shoves the Galactica through
Ur space, a helix blue and white behind us.
     Behind the ship are the stars. Ahead, the golden glow of hyperspace.
We move through...and in.
     I stand apart from the ship, held in the electric stress of the web
structured about me by the shipboard computers. I guide the mentalstar
with carefully directed bursts of power, power applied through the field
my crew members create around me. I stand apart with my mind, outside the
ship, the noneyes of the Commander's Set overseeing the flow of the
brain-drive.
     Like the Great Starphoenix of the Cosmos, we fly.
     Below, a hundred sick men pour out the filth of their souls, and the
Engineer funnels that filth. Below, a hundred sick minds are filtered
through a sane one, our safety valve, our Cork.
     But here...we fly. The stream of energy pulses, eternal unchanging.
     The Galactica flies.
     I can feel the weight of the Galactic Center dragging at me----a
sensation akin to that one feels when climbing a mountain under a heavy
pack. It sets me aslant. I compensate and the ship shifts, and we move
sluggishly through the stream.
     Images in my mind:
     Twist---
     Squatting in sunlight, sweating from open pores, dying, waiting, and
no one comes. He's dead. My fault. They're all dead: Desert world.
     (Thoughts from the prism: gentle, cool, and draining off the
memory.)
     Twist---
     Dark, cold room around and over me, sounds throbbing in my bones, in
my skull---alone, panicking---
     (His hand comes into my mind and draws away the madness, silken
fingers brushing my thought---cold.)
     Twist----
     The Bridge, chaotic: fires, smashed consoles and screens, the
labored breathing of the madman in the Commander's Set, blood trickling
from his nostrils, a river down his chin. Screaming, I shove him from his
chair, watching his body curl over on itself like paper tossed into a
fire. Screaming still, I clamber into the Commander's Set, knowing I
can't do what I need to, finding the wires, shoving them in---
     (And the Cork comes, plumbing the poisons from my mind, and I am
purged...cleansed...)
     And the ship drives on.

******************************

     On the Bridge, I jerked forward as something took the Galactica and
shook it.
     Walls canted around me. I fell sliding from the Set, catching myself
before the wires could tear from my skin. In the distance alarms wailed.
     Somehow, I was back in the Set, strapping the emergency bands across
my chest. Another shock threw the ship forward. I slammed into the
restraining bands and bounced back, stunned.
     "Engineer...status report." Calm. Tendrils of calm played with the
panic lacing my consciousness. I gripped the armchair, forcing myself to
relax.
     Forcing---
     I cut off the hurried string of numerals from the Engineering
section. "The Cork," I asked, "where is he? I want him on the Bridge with
me. Now."
     "Yes, Commander."
     Punching a key on the board to my left, I studied an exterior view
of the ship. The screen showed a bowl of gray curling to either side,
unmarked but for a puncture of black dead center ahead. A Magnetic Void.
I felt a chill start a slow crawl up my spine.
     "He's not in this section, sir."
     "Then, for Sagan's sake, find him!"
     "Yes sir."
     Not in his section. The implication drove home and fell away. I
stared at the screen, no longer registering the scene of disaster rapidly
approaching. Not in his section!
     "Commander?"
     "What?"
     "We've located him, sir."
     "Where?"
     "In the...ah...Mess, sir. Drinking ambrosa."
     Lords of Kobol!I
     "Get him up here!"
     "Yes, sir."
     The ship lurched forward again: the tidal forces from the stellar
freak ahead: the "Magnetic Void:" a vast area of space where normal
sensors, communications, and even Ur space doesn't work. Few who venture
into them ever get back. They're dangerous bastards, voids. They
bamboozle sensors, rendering them useless, and communications soon lose
their range and break up. Once inside the void, there is only blackness,
and the further you travel, the deeper this gets. It is very rare to
actually find anything within a void, but occasionally rogue planets ore
asteroids can be found there, trapped by the void. The stars can only
shine so far inside a void and as a rough guide, when you can't see the
stars anymore, you most definitely can't communicate outside the void, or
vice versa.
     I sent outs signals to reverse thrust. The image on the screen
flickered, faded, and then enlarged again. I'd need more power. Much more
power, if we were to survive.
     Behind me a pneumatic hiss signaled the entrance of the Cork.
     "Where in Hades were you?"
     He began to explain but I cut him off. "Never mind. You'll be
stationed here. I want you near me when we push past that void."
     He didn't answer. I was busy once more, making course corrections
and feeding new figures into the computer brains that lined the walls of
the Bridge, relaying the discussions and revisions they arrived at along
the mental circuits binding the ship. Around me, the computer hummed, the
screens winked and glowed, and I felt the ship gathering power as its
many minds drew their strength together, preparing.
     During a pause, I glanced up at him.
     He was ready to blow.
     You get to know the look after a while: the slouched posture, the
eyes, the trembling hands fumbling with the buttons and zippers on a
flight jacket. His gaze didn't meet mine. It wasn't a new thing, but now
it seemed to have an unvoiced meaning, where before...
     "Kobol!"
     He didn't seem to hear me.
     I groped in the slot under the left armrest and came up with a hypo
spray kept there for the Commander's use during a hard drive. It was
full. A third of it would be enough. I grabbed his arm and plunged the
needle in, and it was then I sinned; I gave it all.
     But it didn't even faze him.
     "Just stay," I said, "just keep thinking."
     No answer. Didn't he hear me?
     I turned from him and made the connections that would send me over
to brain-drive. I blacked out.
     Black:
     Shrieking:
     Writhing and alive, the void:
     Light.
     Mind-drive:
     It spins from everywhere and it bends in on us, a great obsidian
sore. I throw the ship forward----
     ----boxes, each one flowing into the next, and (a ghostly form comes
and takes my fear away, swallowing it into himself)---
     -----battering past the gravity well, slamming through sees of tidal
pull, while the collapsed sun sinks forever below us, dragging us, Ur
space consumed with heat, wrinkling in the black-pitch energy storm,
bending around us, warping around us, falling from us----
     Twist----
     Seething sun, golden madness leaping now larger always larger----
     (Hands come, take our madness.) (Frail hands, like tissue.) (Tissue
in a maelstrom.) (Breaking.)
     A hundred sick minds pour out their insanity and the sewer swallows
the ichor, and it drives us on, funneled behind us.
     The Magnetic Void erupts.
     I slide the ship around and away---cut forward and pitch into
overdrive.
     And we're gone, splicing from the unreal to the real, in and out
and---gone. Where we'd been, the Magnetic Void blossoms, spreads like
ink, and drains away.
     The ship moved through a fold in space and slid into the graindark
midnight of Outside. We drifted through a sudden calm. In objective
space, the Magnetic Void was light-yahrens distant, already a fading
memory. Around us the stars were brilliant on a velvet sky. There was
silence, blissful silence.
     Silence...
     Silence everywhere...?
     ...no.
     From some dim corner of our collective consciousness there came a
moan of pain and agony, not an audible moan, not a physical scream of
torment---but a whimpering mental whine.
     The Cork.
     I returned to the Bridge, tore off my straps, and swung down to the
Commander's Set. I found him slumped on the floor mili-metrons from my
feet, arms outstretched as though groping for something that was now
forever out of his reach.

******************************

     His mind was gone, lost in the madness I'd forced him to drain. He
lay in a huddle at the foot of the Set, wound in on himself fetuslike,
his pale hair tumbling over eyes that were blank and staring. He'd
clamped down on his tongue sometime during the flight and now a stream of
thick blood dribbled past his lips and onto the floor, where already it
was crusting brown. His clothes were in ragged strips. His arms were
bleeding where he'd struck himself against the sharp edges of the Set. He
was whimpering when I came to him, spitting up blood with each sigh. I
bent quickly, removing the wires from his forehead. I pulled him into a
sitting position. His body was limp and sagging in my hands. I stared at
him and after a time I let him down and left him there to whimper alone,
in silence.

******************************

     Some nights I wake shrieking and huddle under the bed---clothes warm
with my sweat and ask myself---why did I do that, why did I pick him, why
him?
     As yet, I've found no answer, but it doesn't trouble anyone too
greatly anymore. I have release, sort of.
     At night the silken fingers quickly come and take the pain away.

 **************************************************************

Chapter One
Eighth Sectar, Third Day
Colonial Yahren: 7364 

     He'd been awake for centons, lying in the darkness of the room,
watching the dusky glow of his long, torpedo-shaped fumarello crawl
toward his fingertips. The fingers were stained yellow, callused under
each knuckle with a layer of thick white skin. At times, nervously, he
would worry at the callus of his forefinger with the nail of his thumb.
When he was sitting alone in the Crew's Mess aboard ship, or at his
station during drive, or at times like this, lying awake in the early
centons before false dawn, he would worry that lip of skin until the
irritation made the flesh crawl under the callus become inflamed, or
until his nerves were unable to stand the monotony any longer, and then
he would bite the dead skin free. Inevitably, a new callus would form
within a few days and the process would begin anew.
     The storm was over. Now there was only a gentle rain misting the
balcony beyond his window with a faint post-moonlight haze. Apollo looked
at the woman sleeping beside him. She lay turned away on her stomach, her
back bare above the quilt. There was a soft tracing of brown fur across
her shoulders and shoulder blades, just thick enough to be noticed in the
blue light filtering in from outside. The down moved as she breathed.
Just then, as he watched, she shivered and tried, in her sleep, to
snuggle more fully under the covers. Apollo drew them up about her neck.
Her stirrings ceased and she made low throat noises as she shifted once
more, turned her face toward him, and drifted gently back to sleep.
     He stood and drew on his robe, bracing himself against the moist
wind off the Virgon Sea. His legs felt cold, his arms wet. The breeze
tasted like salt, but Apollo new it was only an illusion. The sea
fronting on the tavern district was fresh water, as were most of the
smaller bays of lakes on the young frontier world. He closed his eyes and
welcomed the memory of other planets, especially the clear, crystal
memory of his only visit to the flagship colony, Caprica. He'd spent his
furlon near the sea, on an untainted shore in the eastern hemisphere. The
water had been warm and salty. There'd been a woman...Apollo broke off
the thought, opening his eyes and staring at the motion of the shadow in
the room, and the window showing the industro-community below.
     He was a tall man, a little over two metrons, with hazel-eyes and
long dark hair that curled over his ears and tapered off on the base of
his neck. His arms were well muscled, his shoulders broad and thick, but
his chest was thin, his waist was narrow, and his hips were a bit wider
than normal, all signs of his non-Corporeal background. His legs were
heavy and strong because he'd spend most of his centons off the Atlantia
walking. On the worlds the mentalstar had visited, Apollo had wandered
for centons through forests and deserts, over hills and across plains; it
gave him time to fix a sense of place in his mind, making the planet more
real than it would've been seen only from a port window or studied from
the base of a ship's fin. His wrists were thick and his hands were
callused, and that by itself was odd for a Receptive, especially odd for
a former Cork. Apollo loved to do things with his hands, and had gone out
of his way to find craft work, finally settling on wood carving as a
hobby. His pieces were primitive---he readily admitted it---but they'd
gained some favorable comments particularly from a friend he'd had aboard
the Atlantia, a former art critic who'd worked as Communications
Receptive until he'd blown, the Sagitaran named Jakar, who'd mentioned
something about "an assurance to the work that amazed" him. Apollo smiled
at the memory. He looked at his hands and then tucked them under his arms
and glanced out at the balcony and the port city beyond.
     The air was cool out there. He relaxed against the brick wall,
closing his eyes and trying to visualize the town. It was something he
did when he settled on a planet for more than a day; he tried to place
the buildings and streets in his mind. It gave him a kind of mental
freedom then, to arrange his life around those things---as though he were
studying a new card game, learning, in a way, to play it.
     There: the steeple of worship house. And there: the row of
prefabricated buildings, which had been erected by the Virgon government
for recent immigrants, little white-and-blue dollops on a strip of
yellow-shaded green. And closer: the thick structure of a Colonial
factory complex, the processing and refining plants, the managerial
offices separated from the rest by a rectangular fountain/pool. And also
there, fittingly, the first of the city's taverns, on the same block as
the plant, just half a hectare away from outside the Receptive District,
a small windowless tavern built into an older building's basement. And
here: the newer buildings erected under the provisional government, black
iron balconies set close to pseudo-brick facades. Apollo opened is
dark-brown eyes. It was all there, including the landmark he'd neglected
to remember, accidentally or deliberately: the spacedrome. The ships in
the drome glistened under the arc lights of the maintenance buildings,
their snub prows running with streamers of blue light, the cleansing
autohoses swooping about them in the glow of the bright spots. Apollo
half-turned from the sight and saw instead the Colonial refining plant.
Neither pleased him, but both were the cause of his being there on
Virgon, his reason for picking this planet for his retirement. He rubbed
his hands over his eyes, sighing.
     Behind him the girl moaned. He listened to her rustlings with slight
amusement. He'd slept with socialators before and he knew how foolish it
was to have illusions about them----especially since his abortive affair
with Serina three yahrens before, and even more so, now that he owned a
brothel himself. But still...something of the skirt-chaser nestled within
him, and he turned and watched her movements as she stretched under the
blankets, smiling, almost affectionately. It was simpler to make love to
a woman like this. She was firm bodied, as were all the women in his
brothel; her breasts were heavy, flattening as she shifted to one side,
and there was a coarseness to her features not even makeup could remove,
tight lines at the edges of the mouth and tension in the molding of her
face. Life was rough all over for a Corporeal on Virgon. Even though the
industro-community was a port, its inhabitants rarely found work in
anything but a tourist-service capacity. The refineries employed only
Colonial contractees from off-planet, for reasons Apollo couldn't
comprehend, with the result that hopefuls immigrating to this colony
often found themselves without a job. Many tried for a shipping Contract,
but more often the less qualified Corporeals sought work in one of the
taverns or hotels. How many socialators in the community? Apollo didn't
want to know. In a way he felt responsible for their misfortunes, though
he didn't treat his own women unfairly--yet somehow that didn't matter.
To Apollo, at moments like this one, his very participation in the
economy of the world---regardless of the motives he knew worked within
him, and which he understood---brought out a normally buried sense of
guilt.
     There was a sound in the street below. He stepped to the balcony,
looking over it. A figure drifted by, cape flowing from firm shoulders.
Two men on the opposite corner called again---it was their first call
that had attracted Apollo's attention---and the girl in the cape,
positioning herself by the doorway of the building, motioned them over.
Apollo grunted and turned his gaze to the rooftop.
     He stared at the white buildings of the spacedrome, arranged at
angles to the central mile-square landing strip. He felt nothing, and
sensed pride because of that emptiness. It'd taken him time to heal the
wounds he'd sustained aboard the Atlantia. The six yahrens he'd spent as
a Cork since his eighteenth birthday hadn't been easy for him. He was
glad to forget what he could.
     He turned and reentered the apartment. It was still strange to think
of it as belonging to him. He'd never possessed anything as large as this
building, and it made him uneasy---for a moment. Shrugging off the
gathering concerns, he smiled to himself and walked softly back to the
bed to awaken the sleeping girl.

******************************

     Apollo moved down the short flight of steps into the bar's foyer,
where a man in a high-wasted tunic briefly probed his mind, and,
satisfied that Apollo was a fellow Receptive, took his tip, and led him
into the main lounge. As he walked to the counter Apollo felt the
doorman's eyes on him, admiring his blue tunic and leather trousers; he
smiled, and, still smiling, settled himself on a swivel stood before the
ancient ex-Cork bartender and ordered himself an ambrosa. The old man did
things with glasses, slid a mug across the counter, and accepted the gold
cubit Apollo gave him in return.
     "Any of the others around, Pul?" The ambrosa burned like sunfire in
Apollo's throat, dry and bitter, reminding him it had been yahrens since
he'd enjoyed the sweet taste of centuries-old ambrosa.
     Shrugging bony shoulders, the bartender said, "A few but not many
tonight. Jakar, Wils. The twins were here, but not now. Bad time tonight,
ships out, y'know?"
     Apollo nodded and sipped his brew.
     "Jakar told us you were coming," the old man continued, muttering
through broken lips. "How long Out, huh?"
     "A couple of sectans. Jakar must've left the Atlantia on our last
pass through Virgon, right?"
     Pul passed a hand over his stubbled chin, eying Apollo's empty
tankard. The younger Cork pushed it toward him, asked for one more. The
old man complied and Apollo asked, "How is he, Pul?"
     "Jakar? Now? OK, I guess. Bad for a bit. Couldn't move, too much
trembling, face all swollen, red. Broken bad. But what Hades happens to
us all, y'know?"
     Apollo said yes, he knew, accepted the tankard, and swung down from
the bar, glancing around the shadowed room. In a corner by one of the
draped windows, two men were talking. One had his back to Apollo: red
hair over the thick, florid neck, the collar of a blue Receptive's jump
suit lapping a gray vest that barely stretched between broad shoulders.
Apollo walked over. The man facing him noticed his approach and said
something to his companion. Jakar blinked around, his lopsided face
splitting into a grin when he recognized Apollo. He made room on the
bench, half-turning his face to his friend and making the introductions.
     "This here straight, his name's Apollo. Old buddy, back to back,
sweat same ship five years, the Atlantia. Looks like a fed bovine, hey?
Bet you been slopping off since Jakar left, no one whips you 'round,
huh?"
     Apollo smiled. "Something like that." He gave the older man his
hand. Jakar took it and pressed it loosely. There was something wrong
with the muscles in his wrist. "How are you, Jakar?" Apollo asked.
     "Living, OK. This buddy here, his name's Whyte."
     The two men greeted each other formally. Whyte's eyes were a soft
yellow and seemed somehow out of focus; Apollo realized, startled, tat
the man's right eye was sightless. Whyte's features were devoid of
emotion, though his lips were tucked back in a noncommitted smile as he
shook Apollo's hand.
     Jakar nudged Apollo's hand with his own. "C'mon, drink. We'll get
another."
     Apollo complied and they ordered another round from the console in
their booth. When the tankards came, Apollo started to lift his, but
Jakar stopped him with a toast. "Shipmates," said the broken Receptive,
and both Apollo and Whyte drank with their eyes watching each other over
the rims of their mugs.
     "What now, Bucko?" Jakar asked. "Here good? No more Contracts?"
     "Certainly not this yahren. Never again, if this works out. I've
just about come the route, Jakar; your luck only lasts so long and mine's
been pretty strong, I suppose...but, well...you know."
     "Sure, best that. I guess. Whye, Bucko was good buddy on Atlantia
till last spring, would've been this yahren five together, but I had this
accident, y'know." Jakar flexed the muscles in his arms, smiling with
just a hint of regret. "But Apollo, still goin' him, Righto?"
     "Until now, anyway," Apollo said, uneasily. Jakar's inability to
speak coherently was something he hadn't expected, though he knew he
should've---it was normal with a Receptive who'd collapsed. In fact,
Apollo had almost managed to get the incident off his mind which'd broken
the former art critic; it came back now with Jakar's every slurred word.
"I've gotten myself a lace."
     "Now? Oh, that's right; you quit." The Sagitaran seemed confused for
a moment, finally nodding as though he'd settled something. "You and your
brother, getting together now? You mean place for you two?"
     "My brother?"
     "Sure, him here sectan ago, this bar. Ask Pul. Asking 'bout you,
sure. Hey, didn't find you, huh?"
     Apollo worked on his drink, thoughtfully. He shook his head. "No, he
didn't. The last I knew, he was back home on Caprica, schooling."
     "Well, now here. Or was. Ask Whyte."
     The other Receptive broke in. "What sort of place you got, Apollo?"
     With half-attention, Apollo told the two broken Receptives about the
building he'd bought in the Receptive District. It was a perfunctory
description; in the two weeks since he'd landed on Virgon, he'd given the
report a hundred times to every ex-shipmate he met. He always extended
the same offer of work, and always, it was accepted. He knew what
information would interest his listeners, he knew how to pace all the
elements of the tale, and for a time he'd enjoyed working the reactions
of his audience. But only for a time. For Apollo, the process of telling
a story had become a craft so instinctive it no longer intrigued him, and
a part of him regretted this, more deeply than he would've thought
possible.
     When he'd been Cork aboard the Atlantia, before the run just past,
he'd spent most of his free ship time in the Crew's Mess, spinning long
and involved stories for his mates, each a creation of the moment and
each what they needed to break the tedium of mind-drive. He'd gained a
minor sort of fame, and he supposed there'd been a few disappointed
newcomers on his last run, when he refused to work up a single tale. As
certain as he was that word had gotten around about his storytelling
ability, he was equally certain that word about his accident hadn't been
circulated. Such subjects were taboo, both out of compassion for the Cork
(who was always aware of what was being said and thought about him) and
out of a superstitious notion that if it wasn't mentioned, it hadn't
really happened.
     Thinking about that very effective method of dealing with tragedy,
Apollo wondered briefly if any of the men who'd been with him when Cain
died could even remember how close Apollo had come to breaking. So
complete were those emotional erasures, Apollo reflected as he sipped his
ambrosa and told Jakar and Whyte about his brothel, that it often seemed
as though the bad events were merely dream memories fading away.
     He then remembered his brother, Zac, and realized he'd been
practicing his own emotional erasure. By centering on his own problems,
he'd managed to avoid thinking about his brother's. The boy must've
broken loose, Apollo thought. It was something he'd expected since he
himself had left the family. Zac was an unstable boy: it had been
apparent in the way he moved, and especially in his hands, which were
incapable of rest. Apollo remembered how, when the four members of the
family used to gather for dinner, young Zac would sit with his fingers
knotting and unknotting in his lap until his father allowed the family to
begin eating. They were like pink birds, those hands. Apollo smiled at
the image; it was one Zac would've liked. If the boy were here on
Virgon----
     Apollo shook himself, looked from his own hands to the faces before
him and finished the description of his new project. "Want to come
aboard, Jakar? I could use a friend with a dose of common sense?"
     Jakar tapped both hands on the tabletop, nervously drumming a quick
rhythm, blinking at Apollo, and then at Whyte, and then at his hands.
Apollo glanced at the Sagitaran's fingers, the memory of his brother's
hands still strong in his mind. Jakar's knuckles were red and bloated,
and both little fingers were obviously paralyzed, apparently by the same
nervous disruption that had ruined his forearms.
     "I'm asking you to come with me," Apollo said again, more emphatic
this time, hoping that his tone would tell Jakar what he needed to know.
     The older man stopped tapping, sat one hand in the palm of the
other, and rubbed the two hands together. He was still silent, but the
storm of emotions Apollo felt boiling in the air between them was almost
overpowering---so strong Apollo couldn't determine which emotion was the
dominant one: frustration, anger, love, gratitude, shame, or that other
emotion, the one that Apollo couldn't name. He knew nothing like it in
his own experience, yet it seemed to touch something closed tightly
within him. A sense of...owing? Apollo almost caught it completely, but
then the emotion passed as Jakar regained control. Apollo sighed, pushing
the remainder of the feelings aside: he knew he couldn't afford to open
up fully again, not in the way he'd opened aboard the Atlantia. He wasn't
strong enough yet, not yet. He pressed his hands together and noticed
that his palms were wet. The leather strappings around his wrists were
also moist with sweat, glistening in the dim light.
     Jakar looked at him again, and the Sagitaran's face was stiff and
immobile. He nodded, saying nothing, and glanced at Whyte, who also
nodded, and then Jakar shoved against the table, sliding it back and
easing out past Apollo. The Cork watched as Jakar walked to the bar and
took a drink from Pul. Whyte followed Apollo's gaze and smiled gently
when the Cork turned back to him. Amber eyes smiling: one solid, one
faint.
     "He's had the full route," Whyte said.
     "I know," Apollo answered. Then: "You too?"
     The man's brow furrowed and then grinned again, less sure of himself
for reasons Apollo didn't care to read. "That's why we're together, him
and me. Who else, either of us?"
     "You want in?"
     "Contract pensions go only so far, buddy. Damn right I want in."
     "What about Jakar's pension?"
     "The way he broke, he won't get felgercarb. You know that. You were
there, you saw it happen.
     "You've been supporting him?" Apollo asked; Whyte nodded. "Tell him
I meant the offer. Make him understand. And both of you, be there
tonight. There's going to be a party. A small celebration.
     "We're not good at socializing, Apollo."
     "Stop protecting him, Whyte. Be there." Without glancing at Jakar,
Apollo walked briskly out, pausing at the door to pay his tab and
straighten his vest and tunic, very distinctly aware that on his body, at
least, there were no scars.

******************************

     Behind the bar a narrow alley dropped down a series of wide steps to
a small plaza. Apollo stopped beside the fountain, shifted himself onto
the stone rim, and stared into the waters below. Rectangular bits of
metal were scattered over the bottom of the pool, some unsung genius's
effort to give the fountain an aura of history: green and blue and gold,
the cubits glittered in the moonlight--unaffected by the motion of the
fountain waters, the cubits were only for viewing. Apollo ran his hand
through the water, cooling the heat that throbbed beneath the skin. No
outwards scars, true, but there were reminders.
     Suddenly, his hand clenched into a fist and slammed hard against the
stone rim, splashing water over his thighs. He sat trembling, watching
his image split and reform in the spreading ripples. After a moment
another reflection moved in beside his own. Serina. She tried a smile.
     "Still remembering, Apollo?" Her voice was soft behind him.
     "No memory, Serina. Just a nerve spasm, that's all." He cradled his
bruised knuckles and glanced around at her. "You came up rather quietly
just now."
     "I saw you leaving the tavern. Are you sure you have no memories?
This was our place, one..." She laughed at him, tilting her head as she
moved closer. "I waited for you to come back, that knight. I wanted to
explain. I even went to the spacedrome, but I couldn't find you. I guess
you didn't want me to."
     "If you believe that, what am I supposed to say?"
     He edged off the fountain and stood facing her. She'd lost weight
since the last time he'd been on Virgon, three years before. Her
shoulders were narrower, two sharp strokes under the tan material of her
blouse. Her hips were flat, nudging out only slightly below her waist,
sinking straight into her thighs. She wore a jumper knit from black
synthetic wool: it was frayed beneath her breasts and at her waist. She
went barefoot, apparently no longer attempting to conceal the ruin of her
left foot with boots----perhaps she was proud of the limp she affected,
Apollo thought, proud of the accident that kept her from being a
mentalstar Corporeal.
     She felt him studying her and drew her arms more tightly together
under her bosom. When he continued to stare, she laughed. The laughter
was a return cut, as they each knew the other's weakness.
     "I know I tried to hurt you, Apollo. I was just trying to get back
at you...for being so cold. He didn't mean a thing to me. He was just a
customer."
     "Have you found passage Out yet, Serina?"
     "Who'd take me on, Apollo? Who needs a Corporeal who can't do work?
Oh, I've survived, but it hasn't been good here these past few
months...no jobs, and none of the Colonial plants are
contracting...everything taken Newcomers everywhere for work in the
taverns, so who'd be desperate enough to take me? You?"
     "Maybe," Apollo said. "In a way."
     Her smile faded for a moment, and then returned, a wry upturned
line. "I can't live on might-be's and maybes, Apollo. My pension's almost
run out..." Shivering suddenly, she uncrossed her arms and rubbed her
palms along the sides of her face, as though trying to wake herself from
a half-sleep. She tossed the mane of her auburn hair, eyes him casually.
"How long are you down this time around? Still with the Atlantia?"
     "Not anymore. I'm finished."
     He caught the surge of hope, not so clear as a Receptive's
broadcast, but there: dull and blunt, searching. He cut it out of his
mind. He didn't want to know the reason for the rush of hope inside her.
Practical or emotional, why she cared didn't matter to him. That she did
care was almost enough to touch him---but he jerked away, not wanting
more delusions. He pulled out of the momentary Receptivity.
     "For good?" she asked. "You're done shipping Out?"
     "I almost pushed it one run too many, Apollo. My Contract is up, so
I cashed it in, and now I'm setting up on my own. That's what I meant by
taking you on."
     He explained it all, careful not to look at her again. The last
plaza was paved with cobblestones, new stones, washed clean by the
previous evening's cloudburst. "You can come in with me," he finished.
"I'll need someone experienced to handle the girls."
     "That'd be nice." Her voice was so low he almost missed her answer.
Almost, it was the same girlish voice she'd used when they'd sat on the
balcony of his hotel room that distant summer, holding hands and
pretending to an age they'd left behind centuries before. Apollo brushed
off the feeling of deja-vu.
     "Come to my place tonight," he said. "There's a party. Ask Jakar;
he'll know where." He turned and started to move out of the plaza,
walking quickly. Suddenly he stopped and called back over his shoulder,
"Come tonight, Serina. We'll need you. We'll all need you. Tonight."
     If she answered, he didn't hear.

******************************

     As he came down the main street, Apollo saw a woman with a felus
(cat) sitting in the doorway of a prefab apartment building. The felus
was on her lap and the woman was attempting to pry its mouth open and
feed it a tab of concentrates. The felus was resisting, frantically
pawing at the woman's wrist with a declawed pad and hissing through the
corners of its lips, a sound rumbling in its chest that bristled the long
hairs at the nape of Apollo's neck. The felus had been Reformed. Its eyes
were hooded by thick looming brows, its chest bulging with tufts of black
hair and raised ribs, its back straightened to a humanoid line. To
accomplish this the spinal column had been fused and the legs broken and
then reset in an upright position. However, whoever had done the
Reforming had neglected to reshape the felus's ankles; they were now at
the wrong angle for the legs, effectively crippling the animal. The woman
had dressed the felus in a bright yellow waistcoat and shorts red
knickers; a red hat sat on the felus's lumpy brow, tied under the chin
with a yellow braid. Apollo paused under a streetlamp and watched the
woman and her pet. She persisted in force-feeding the felus until finally
the animal howled and squirmed free. It sprang to the street and stumbled
a few steps on its unbalanced hind legs, and then dropped to its
forepaws, scrambled a foot or two or more, finally collapsing on its back
in the gutter, mechanically stroking the air with its useless, twisted
limbs. The woman said something Apollo couldn't hear, scooped up the
felus and slapped it twice. The poor animal whimpered. It was a sound
Apollo had thought only daggits could make, and hearing it from the felus
caused a violent reaction in the pit of his stomach. He walked briskly
away, trying to wipe out the image of the girl with the felus dangling
limply from her hand, and the implications that echoed in his mind.

******************************

     The pneumatic tissues of the tavern's tent fluttered like the
gossamer wings of a kujaroo in the evening air. Apollo ducked through the
doorway and strolled down an alley flanked on both sides by food and
liquor stalls. Overhead the roof rose and fell silently, settling as he
paused at one gaily curtained stall, filled a plate with steaming meat
and a mug with cold ambrosa, paid a little man with loose, rubbery jowls,
and found himself a seat at the end of a table running lengthwise down
the center of the cluttered, cavernous room. There was a little wind
inside the tent, and the tavern was hot and sticky from the humidity. The
lanterns placed at six-meter intervals were of little help in relieving
the darkness, so at each table several candles had been set to burn on
overage plastic plates. Apollo pushed his candle to one side and began to
work on his meat and brew.
     He could feel the stares of the Corporeals sitting a few meters down
the table. They obviously recognized the beige dress colors of a
mentalstar Cork, and Apollo knew they were all wondering what a Receptive
was doing in a Corporeal tavern. He wondered himself. Perhaps, he
thought, he just needed to be away for a while; the silent pressures of
Receptive District were beginning to unnerve him a little bit, and here,
in the main spacedrome area, where emotions were less sharply developed,
he could relax the psychic barriers all Receptives were forced to erect
in their own company. Perhaps. As he thought it, the released tension
ebbed out of him, like the physical draining he experienced before
falling asleep. He leaned forward and closed his eyes, suddenly conscious
of the hardness of the wood under his elbows, the heat on his neck, the
pressure of one leg crossed over the other. Every physical sensation
crystallized into focus: the nearby sound of spoons against bowls, the
clatter of plates of wood, the undercurrent of voices---all of it seemed
to jump at him, as though he'd removed cotton from his ears and could
suddenly hear unimpeded. He sighed, pushed away from the table, and
walked back to the stalls for another ambrosa.
     The attendant at the stall watched Apollo fill his mug, wait for the
foam to subside, and then fill it a little bit more. Apollo nodded at him
politely as the man took his credit chit. The card slid back out of the
stall's electric eye and was still warm as Apollo returned it to his
pocket, under the attendant's intent gaze. "Is something wrong, sir?"
Apollo asked finally, taking a belt of ambrosa.
     The attendant looked startled. "Oh. No, nothing...You're a
Receptive, aren't you, friend?"
     "Do they pay you to ask questions?"
     "No, just for my eyes. The questions are my idea. They keep things
from getting boring. You are a Receptive, aren't you?"
     Apollo shrugged. "What if I am?"
     The man shifted his weight on the stool and inched forward. "Have to
keep it all moving," he said as the Cork relaxed against the stall wall.
"You don't find many friends on a major colony."
     "You can say that again," said Apollo. 
     "Take that fellow, for instance," the young man said, indicating a
short crewman passing them. "I spent a half-centon with him yesterday,
talking, even stood him a drink. A half-centon. I was interested, that's
all, just trying to make conversation. I thought he was from Sagitara, or
maybe even the Inner Colonies, and I wanted to find out what those
planets were like. Just interested. He took me for a half-centon and a
drink. Then when somebody else comes up to the stall---it was getting
into the dinner hour----he just walks away. Like that. What do you do?
The drink I don't mind. But the time...you spend it, just trying to keep
things moving..." He broke off and resumed his smile. Apollo met it with
a smile of his own. "I mean, what can you do?" 
     "I don't know," Apollo said. He held up his mug and raised his
eyebrows in inquiry. "Drink?"
     The young man grinned and shook his head. "I'll get my own." He did,
and settled back, downing half his ambrosa with a long pull. "I'm not
supposed to," he said, "I'm on duty. But what the hellfire, you know?"
     Apollo laughed. "You just try and keep things moving."
     The attendant blinked at him and nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess you
do."
 
******************************
 
     A short way into the District the streets became cobbled again.
Apollo and the attendant from the tavern tent (who'd introduced himself
as Jolly after he'd shared Apollo's third ambrosa) walked together in the
gutter, taking alternate swigs from the bottle of Virgonese Pernod and
water that Jolly had supplied. It wasn't the best alcoholic beverage
Apollo had ever tried, but it served the purpose, which was to provide
them with something to drink while the talked. The latter was provided by
Jolly, who was eager to gain Apollo's friendship----a not uncommon desire
expressed by many Corporeals toward Receptives; in a way it made a wake
Corporeal feel more important to associate with a Receptive--and though
Apollo didn't think of Greenbean as weak, he recognized the motivation
and accepted it. The young man had a seemingly endless capacity for
monologue. Apollo didn't mind. When the time came for him to speak, he
would speak. Until then, he would listen.
     Jolly was a big man, a heavy man, but his heaviness wasn't the
product of strength: his flesh rounded his waist and crowded his armpits,
and his walk was slow and awkward. From time to time he would nudge into
Apollo when his balance faltered, which was every second step. At one
point Apollo had to grab him to keep the Corporeal from stumbling over
the curb. Each time the young man laughed nervously. He'd become
accustomed to his clumsiness, he said; it no longer bothered him. Apollo
soon realized there were other things that did.
     "Sorry," Jolly said. He braced himself and stepped away from
Apollo's helping hand. "I've been like this for years. Can't understand
why. Almost kept me off the mentalstars, but once I had that
Contract---well, I suppose it did keep me off in the end. No renewals for
Jolly. No, no. Virgon's not so bad, though, don't you think? How long are
you Down this time, you know yet?"
     "Indefinitely," Apollo said. "I've had it, all that bouncing
around."
     "What bouncing around? It's not so bad. You get to see things, wench
it up a bit. You know how it is." He accepted the bottle, gulped at it,
and belched. "Nobody makes you do anything, not really. Machines do all
that. Hades Hole, most of the time you're asleep. All the time in drive,
sometimes, you sleep. What's so bad about that?"
     "You sleep, Jolly. That's what Corporeals are for. You just dream
and love and hate, and clean up the halls and work in the agro-dome, and
lead your lives like any normal man or woman. I don't suppose it's such a
bad life, but it wasn't my life. Do you know how close I came to going
insane this last trip out, Jolly? That close. I still don't know how I
survived. Two of the people I was involved with didn't. A third, a
Communications man who was only my friend, not even a part of the
disaster---he cracked up, snapped because he was close to me. Don't make
the mistake of thinking everyone has it like a Corporeal. Some of us
fight for our lives."
     The young Corporeal was silent, letting the bottle swing at his side
as he walked. Then: "Apollo, I'm sorry. I really am. I must be a terrible
ass, clumsy mouthed too, I guess. I forgot about what you were. I never
met a Cork before, you know that. I'm sorry."
     "No trauma," Apollo said. "Forget it."
     "No, I really am sorry."
     "So am I." Apollo took the bottle then popped the cork. "When did
you first hit Virgon, Jolly?"
     "A yahren ago. Maybe two."
     "Always at that tavern?"
     "Just this past month." He stumbled against a lamppost, caught
himself. "Stupid. Things like that keep me out, job after job. You don't
Contract for crawler jobs, you know. Things are really tight down here,
especially for Corporeals. There's no room at the plants, non-Colonials
take all the jobs---you've got me why. A girl I had a few nights back was
telling me she worked three shifts at once, figuring she'd manage to hold
one job at least if the others fell though----that and sleeping with
every man who carried a big bag of cubits. Not a very optimistic girl,
but practical. She had herself a nice place in the District and she kept
it clean. You can't really ask for more, if you're a Corporeal. No
crawler ever gets a pension or walking time, or anything else----" He
stopped speaking. Apollo glanced around at the sound of a muffled cry.
     Jolly had halted and was hugging the belly of a streetlamp, the
light running over his shoulders and pants in streamers of electric blue.
Apollo saw that the young man was shuddering, his chest heaving. Not
knowing precisely what was wrong, and not wanting to touch the other
man's mind to find out, Apollo could only touch Jolly's shoulder and
supply a moment of pressure to transmit his concern.
     "Sorry," Jolly said, in a soft voice that for an instant reminded
Apollo of Serina. Abruptly Jolly shook his head, "No, I'm not sorry,
really. There's nothing to be sorry about. It was just the thought that
you could go back to the ships and wouldn't, and that I...well, it was a
silly thought, and I guess I am sorry, after all."
     He straightened and palmed his cheeks as Apollo backed away. The
Cork didn't want to meet the young man's eyes; he'd just received an
emotional blast stronger than anything he'd felt since leaving the
Atlantia. There was anguish there, and self-pity, and fear and hate and
confusion---all of it momentary, returning to the subconscious where
Apollo hoped it would remain. He disliked having his mind invaded.
     Jolly drew himself together and stepped into the light of the
streetlamp. "Apollo---are you all right? You look odd."
     "I feel odd," Apollo said. He started to drink from the bottle and
realized it was empty. They crossed the street to a small store where an
old man in a stained and wrinkled undershirt sold them another decanter.
Back on the street they continued in the direction of Apollo's home.
     "I had a family once," Jolly said. "Brothers and sisters. On
Caprica, I would've been considered an only child because I was the
oldest. We were lucky in a way, but my father didn't think so. The Twelve
Colonies aren't the best worlds to raise children on, but you aren't
allow more than one child on the more civilized planets, and mother
wanted quite a few. My father told me that after she died. She was the
one who wanted us, he told me, and he was the stuck with us. I think he
loved us, though. My brothers said no. Neither of them could understand
him, but I could. So could my sister. It's funny, but I think I was the
only one he could never really care for. Too clumsy, you know? More than
I am now. He couldn't accept that."
     "What did he do?"
     "He was an agro-worker on one of the community farms. What else
could you do in the Colonies? He told me once that in the ancient days on
Mother Kobol you had only two ways to escape from the peasant agro-worker
life: you could become a priest or a thief. There was something else,
about squires for knights, but I never understood any of that."
     "Let's sit down," Apollo said. They climbed the steps of a two-story
building with a stone porch, stretched their legs out, and looked east
toward the rainbow lights of the tavern bazaar. The stars over the tents
and lighted alley were opaqued by the city glow. Most of the eastern
horizon was in pitch-blackness, the night sky obliterated by the lights
of the city and the port. The western sky over the plant area and the
nearer Districts, was brilliant and undulled, cloudless and stark with
the richness of the Cyranus Galaxy. Virgon's atmosphere acted like a lens
on clear nights like this, Apollo thought, bringing it all into focus and
shattering the night into vividness. From the porthole of a ship the
stars would seem one dimensional and flat; the exhilaration of a night
sky was something experienced only by planetbound creatures. Those who'd
been there knew the truth.
     "Isn't it lovely?"
     "It sure is," Apollo said.
     "Do you have any family, Apollo? People you've left behind?"
     "Left behind? Sure. A family? Not really. Six yahrens can do odd
things to certain bonds."
     "You think so? You're probably right. You have any sisters?"
     "A brother. My mother and father died three, maybe four yahrens
back. He was a Receptive too; my father, but he never used it. I think it
burned him out from inside.
     Jolly unwound his arms, grunting as the kink slipped in his
shoulders and neck. "Burned out? How do you mean?"
     "You can't let your Recpetivity sit. It'll rot you. Like ambrosa or
anything that ferments if you bottle it up. When you finally tap it,
there's an explosion. Anything that was once there is expelled"----he
unfisted his hands---"and lost."
     "Sound frightening."
     "It sure as Hades is."
     "What about your brother? Is he a Receptive, too?"
     Apollo set the bottle down carefully on the steps beside him. "I
don't know. I haven't thought about it." He shrugged. "It's not a
dominant gene. Fifty-fifty; maybe I used it up for the family. We hadn't
noticed anything by the time I left. Zac was too young for anyone to
tell. It's connected with puberty, except in freak cases. Something about
hormone distribution. The planet you come from counts too; whether it has
a high electromagnetic field. The stronger the field, the weaker your
Receptivity. Caprica's field was pretty weak. I suppose Zac could have
it." He took a sip of the Pernod and returned the bottle to the stoop. "I
guess I'll find out soon enough."
     "What do you mean?"
     "From what I hear, he's on Virgon, looking for me. Tomorrow I
suppose I'll go search for him in the communes, send him packing back to
Caprica. I don't have anything to offer him here. What good would a boy
be in a brothel?" Apollo laughed. "It will be good to see him, though. I
don't really know him anymore; I've been sending him cubits since our
parents died, but that's the only contact I've had with him in years..."
His voice trailed off. He looked down at the bottle. 
     "How'd you get in, Apollo? I mean, get a Contract?"
     "Easily enough. You can sign on at eighteen. I took a yahren's
training, and from there"----he spread his hands---
     "Moved up, rung by run. It's not hard, if you tend toward the
suicidal."
     "Training, hey? They don't train Corporeals, so what----"
     Apollo smiled. Jolly's attempt to change the subject was painfully
transparent----as transparent as Apollo's dislike for talk about his
family must've been.
     "You think a Receptive can just bounce into a mentalstar crew?" he
asked. "You have to work, my friend. It's like being a Corporeal. You
have to train, because if you don't, you can't last a week. You're a dead
man. There are a lot of broken Corks around as proof, men who never
learned to break away, to stand outside. Have you ever been in the
District before?"
     "A couple of times. I can't remember. I was probably drunk."
     "Must've been fun for the crowd around you. Drunken normals blast
like a damned foghorn."
     "Blast?" Jolly blinked at him, eyes glistening from the light on the
building above them.
     "Don't worry about the semantics. Call it broadcasting your
emotions. Have you ever really looked at the Receptives in the Districts,
Jolly?"
     "How do you mean, look?"
     "Their faces."
     "Oh sure. You know, I never mean to stare at anything, but---"
     "But you could see it, couldn't you? There's something shattered
inside them, and it's echoed in their voices, in the way they speak, and
it's sculptured on their faces and their hands. You have to watch the
hands of a Receptive, Jolly. His hands will tell you stories his thoughts
and words can't."
     As Apollo spoke, Jolly took his bottle from his lips and stared at
it, as though the beverage had become suddenly sour. He placed it on the
stoop beside his feet and closed his eyes, leaning his head back and
twisting it from side to side. "I've got a muscle wrong in my neck," he
muttered. He glanced at Apollo. His eyes were in shadow, and his voice
was soft---like Serina's----as he said, "What's wrong with you, Apollo?
You've been a Cork a long time. Why aren't you with the others, the
broken ones?"
     The Cork smiled bitterly, a self-mocking tug at his lips. 
     "I got out before it worked on me," he said. "Bonus Contracts or
not, I wasn't going to spend another term on that ship. I've no desire to
break myself, if I can help it." He rapped his hands together, rubbed
them on his knees. "And I can, Jolly. Believe me, I can."
     "How do you know when you've had enough, Apollo?" Jolly asked. Both
men were speaking quietly; realizing this, Apollo laughed.
     "You can tell. Sometimes something happens which almost pushes you
over the brink, and you know you've had enough. The stupid and greedy
ones stay on for that extra high-risk Contract. The smart Receptives get
out at once. When Sheba died, and Boomer and Jakar broke, and I found
myself looking for a length of strong rope...well, I knew it was time I
cashed in and pulled out."
     He upended the bottle of Pernod, drank, set it down and wiped a hand
over his moustache and beard; he needed a shave again.
     "It was a mixed ship, see, men and women. We cared for each other,
something most mentalstar crews never do. Maybe that was what made us all
so susceptible when things began to go sour. I know all the
theories---sometimes a bisexual mentalstar can be as bad as a single sex
charter, if not worse. But it'd worked for the Atlantia for the twelve
years before I shipped out on her, and it'd worked for most of the six I
spent aboard. Until I came back from a leave on Virgon and mated with a
girl named Sheba.
     "There's one thing a Cork should never do, Jolly, and that's look
into the mind of a woman he's loving. You can see things you never
expected you'd see, and sometimes...things you don't want to see. I
wanted a simple physical mating...she wanted more. She felt more. It
wasn't what I wanted, so I broke off with her. That's when she stared
with Boomer, a Communications man I'd counted among my friends. They
shouldn't have done it, Jolly; not then. Not right after she'd broken up
with me.
     "See, I'm a Cork, and a Cork has to touch everybody's mind.
Everybody, even ex-lovers. Sheba was a Technician, she should've realized
she wouldn't be able to make a clean emotional break...but she tried to;
she tried to transfer her desire to Boomer, who wasn't really strong
enough to take that kind of strain. Both of them were constantly aware of
me, and I was constantly aware of them. We couldn't get away from each
other to heal. We never had that chance. The tension kept building and
building, and one day when we were heading back toward Virgon...it broke.
     "Everything broke: Boomer, Sheba, a friend of mine named Jakar. And
almost, I broke too..."
     Apollo's voice trailed off. In reflex his foot straightened out,
knocking the Pernod bottle over, sending it tumbling down the stone steps
to smash on the pavement below.
     "Sheba died before we made planetfall," he finished. "Boomer and
Jakar were left here in a life station; Boomer died. Jakar's slowly
pulling back together. I kept on with the Atlantia for six more sectans
and then I quit. I had to. Otherwise I'd go insane."
     "I get the picture," said Jolly.
     Apollo spat into the street and looked up at the man sitting next to
him. "You know something, Jolly?" he said. "I think you do."

******************************
 
     The party had been in progress for over a centon. There were thirty
or forty people clustered together in the three rooms of Apollo's private
suite, and the Cork would've invited almost half of them if he'd seen
them. In some cases he had; as it stood, though, most of the present had
heard about he gathering through the District grapevine, and knowing
Apollo from other parties, had felt free to invite themselves. The other
half were either strangers or friends of friends...and some of these were
undesirables, people who for one reason or another were avoided by the
majority of the District population. As he sat perched on the kitchen
sink, seeking a moment's solitude, Apollo decided that perhaps the two
were the same---strangers and undesirables. Apparently those who didn't
know Apollo personally felt no compunction to be polite or careful. In
the morning, Apollo knew, the apartment would be in shambles. It didn't
matter. Enough friends would remain to help set things right. That too
was the way of their crowd.
     Apollo had drawn his feet up and hooked his arms around his knees
and now he peered over them, watching the movements of the three brothers
dancing in the next room. The music was loud, yet at times the voices
around him seemed louder. The moments were few when the melody would
reach him clearly, but at those moments Apollo would close his eyes and
feel himself sway in sympathy with the rushing beat. He was doing this
when a hand touched his wrist. He looked up, smiling, to see Jakar.
     Whyte hovered in the background, his hands tucked self-consciously
into his overjacket pockets. Jakar's expression was stiff and forma, and
his voice was without emotion as he said. "Whyte say you told to come. So
we come. And I take your job, yeah?"
     "I'm glad you're here, Jakar. I really am."
     "Sure. Just the man to liven things up, right? Good thinking, you."
The ex-Communications man sniffed, relaxing visibly. He half-turned and
settled his hip on the edge of the sink. "So what's happening, you in
sink, them dancing out there? How many people and who, huh?"
     "Couple's dozen or so. Some old mates and their friends. You know
them," he said. "But what's wrong with you joining them, Jakar? You can't
play social outcast forever."
     Jakar shook his head slowly. "Something, you. Really something. What
you think, I'm glad the way I am? Think I want everyone know, give me
claps on back, offer money, smiles? Sure, friendly me. Maybe not let them
too near, huh?"
     "Sorry, Jakar. You know that's not how I meant it."
     "Sure, well. Guess everyone's close enough edge, huh. Sure."
     He shoved from the sink and left the room, limping past a couple
entwined in the doorway. Whyte caught Apollo's eye and lumbered over.
"You shouldn't be too rough on him. He hasn't healed over."
     "And your protecting him will help?"
     "Maybe a little."
     Apollo swung off the sink. He brushed arms with two men talking near
the food dispenser console. "You're just helping him stay inside himself,
Whyte. Sure, he's hurt---he's lost a lot these past twelve yahrens, from
what he told me when we were on the Atlantia, together with what happened
to him six sectans ago. Strong people who lose their strength don't
really have much to fall back on, except the sympathy of other people."
He frowned at Whyte, and then turned and moved toward the doorway. "Think
about that the next time you excuse him."
     He located Jolly near the speaker system. The Corporeal was crouched
under the two triangular apertures, clutching his glass in both hands and
eyeing the Receptives moving past him. Apollo slid in next to him and
took the young man's glass. "Thanks," he said, and downed it. "Want
another?"
     Jolly shrugged. "I haven't figured out where to look."
     Apollo led him across the room to a small table bearing the balcony
windows. Pul was there, squatting on a stool and gazing across the
rooftops, his featherlight hair blown back from his forehead by the
evening wind. "Hey, good buddy," said Apollo, "fix my friend a drink."
The old Cork swiveled around and fixed Jolly with a suspicious stare.
     "A normal, Bucko?"
     "I said fix my friend a drink."
     Pul hurried to his feet and worked with glasses and bottles, and
something with ice in it appeared in his hand, topped with a shade of
yellowish green. The old man gave it to Jolly, who tasted it and nodded.
     "Thanks, Pul," Apollo said. He brought Jolly onto the balcony and
found a place by the rail a safe distance from the threesome crouched in
the shadow of the farther wall.
     "Why'd he look at me like that?" Jolly asked.
     "Pul's an old man. He's not too quick."
     "He's not that old, Apollo. Am I crashing something private?"
     The Cork laughed. Despite himself he found Jolly's whipped-daggit
attitude amusing. "No, nothing private, really. You're just not a
Receptive, Jolly. Some people are bothered by that."
     "Does it bother you?"
     "If it did, you wouldn't be here."
     "Who was that old man anyway? A friend of yours?"
     "He's a bartender in the Llyia's, one of the private pubs. I guess
bartending's in his blood; if there's any such thing as a servile
instinct, Pul's got it. If automated bars ever come to Virgon, old Pul
will just wither and die."
     "Is he a Cork?"
     "He was a Cork. He broke about fifteen years ago; some people never
come out of it."
     Jolly was silent, and after a while Apollo went back inside.
     The brothers had stopped dancing, and now a young girl had assumed
their place on the spot of bare flooring. The lights were dim and
improperly directed, so Apollo was unable to make out her face. She was
one of his though; there were ten of them at the party at least. He
studied her from the edge of his bed. Only part of her body was visible
in the shifting light, swathes of skin and strands of hair, all of it
moving and swinging. He looked away. Standing apart from the knot of
unfamiliar people near his bed, in the shadow of the arch that led into
the hall, was Serina.
     She'd changed her clothes. In the semidarkness, and perhaps because
of the drinking he'd done, it seemed to Apollo that she'd recaptured
something of the woman she'd been three yahrens before. She'd done things
with her hair, and she wore a dress of some lightweight material, a
single piece that covered one breast, uplifted the other, rounded her hip
and swirled about again to flow to the floor. She saw him as he
approached and she raised her glass in a mock salute.
     "To the rebellion," she said.
     "Rebellion?"
     "You know, in the Colonial Frontier."
     He smiled and took a drink from a passing cart. "I'm not with it in
spirit, but I'll drink to your toast."
     When she'd finished her teavinol, she said, "It's a fine party,
Apollo."
     "I'd like to say the gallant thing about it because you're here,
Serina, but I don't think you'd take it quite properly."
     "You're right. I wouldn't," she said.
     They smiled at each other, and then someone said something behind
him that made him turn around.
     "I'm Apollo," he said to the portly man who'd asked for him. The man
swung around from the group he'd been querying, sized up Apollo with a
flicker of his eyes, and nodded, as though silently agreeing.
     "I'm Uri, Sire Apollo," the man said. "I represent the Colonies here
on Virgon." The official name of the Colonial commercial organization was
meaningless; all of the small offices belonged to one major licensing
organization, chartered by the Quorum of the Twelve, governing body of
the Twelve Colonies of Mankind. Uri was their representative here.
     "You were invited, Sire Uri?" Apollo asked him.
     "No, uh, I'm afraid I'm not here socially, Sire Apollo."
     "I gave up the Sire when my Contract expired, Uri." Apollo separated
from Serina and moved closer to the squat, red-faced Colonial
representative. "And if this isn't a social visit, then what do you
want?"
     They were attracting a crowd, Uri realized this and apparently found
it disturbing, for he inhaled heavily and removed a packet from his
waistcoat. "You're brother's name is Zac?"
     Apollo felt a chill of premonition. He resisted a temptation to
probe the man's mind and learn what the interruption was all about. He
answered Uri's question carefully: "Yes. Why do you ask?"
     The fat man zipped open the packet and shook out a square wafer and
some gold cubits.
     "These are Zac's effects, Apollo. The cubits are the money he had on
his person at the time of his accident. The wafer is his Contract."
     Apollo accepted the items. Something warm was rising under his ears.
The wafer weighed nothing, the cubits were cool and sharp, biting into
his flesh as his fist closed over. "Accident, Sire Uri? What accident?"
     "Your brother was killed aboard the mentalstar Galactica two days
ago. It occurred while he was acting in his capacity as Cork for that
vessel. The details are all recorded on that wafer. My superiors expect
to hear from you within the next forty-eight centons concerning your
decision on the fulfillment of the terms of your friend's Contract."
     Uri frowned, and then briskly added, "I'm sorry, Sire Apollo. The
Quorum of the Twelve sends its condolences." He left the room, passing
between two of Apollo's former shipmates from the Atlantia. The taller of
the two men glanced from Uri to Apollo, his hands moving at his sides.
Apollo caught the look the Receptive threw him and shook his head;
hurting Uri would do none of them any good. He looked down at his fist
clenched about the wafer and the cubits, and then he brushed past Serina
and hurried down the hallway, hearing the first hesitant whispers
beginning behind him.
     He knew what they'd be saying; not the precise words perhaps, but
the feeling behind those words---and he hated the pity his friends were
going to feel for him. It was just too much, to say nothing of his own.

****************************** 

     He sat on the ledge of the chimney, staring over the rooftops of the
buildings that cupped the spacedrome peninsula. The spotlights of the
spacedrome were swinging in narrow arcs across the cloudless sky, beams
of topaz and sapphire straining against the night. There were the sounds
of the tractors in the distance, or perhaps the cranes rumbling in their
concrete beds, sounds too familiar to an ex-spaceship voyager: a ship
being readied for a morning launch. He hated that sound.
     For a while he examined his hands. They lay in his lap, one resting
loosely on the other, relaxed in a way Zac would never have allowed. The
cubits and the wafer glittered in the moonlight as he looked at them. He
closed his eyes. His mind was empty. He couldn't think.
     When he looked up again, he saw Serina standing in the arch that led
onto the roof from below. She was silhouetted in the glow from the plates
in the stairwell ceiling. She'd spoken his name and he'd turned to her,
but he couldn't recall either the word or the movement. Against the
yellow light she seemed ethereal, hair sparkling in the golden wash.
There were too many shadows for him to make out her face, but her voice,
when she spoke again, was the young voice he'd known years before.
     He didn't understand what she'd said. Once again, the words were
lost. Something seemed to have dropped away inside him; his mind was no
longer able to connect words with their abstract meanings. Finally, she
left the stairwell and came over beside him. Her fingers were cool on his
arm. He showed her the things in his hand, and she took them from him and
slipped them into her shift.
     He tried to say her name. No sound came out. She pressed her head
against his chest and glanced up at him, her features outlined by the
stairwell light. It was Serina. Her features were soft, not the harsh
features he'd seen earlier in the evening. He didn't understand her
expression, but a part of him responded to it and he dropped from the
ledge and stood facing her. Her hands were holding his, and as he slipped
down she drew him closer. He enfolded her tightly, impulsively. His mind
felt sucked clean. He couldn't think, didn't want to think. Serina
pressed against him, whispering, but even though he tried, he couldn't
make sense out of her words.
******************************

     He woke in the morning, conscious of the sunlight filtering in
through the window beside him. He was in his bed and the sheets covering
him were moist with his own sweat. He tried to recall his dream---a
feeling of darkness and pressure---but was unable to summon the details.
He rolled over wearily, feeling a feminine arm pressing into his side.
Remembering Serina, he smiled and shifted to face the woman sleeping next
to him. He ran a hand along her back and she shivered and settled again,
and when he slid his fingers into the warmth of hair at the nape of her
neck, she turned over completely and dropped her hand against his hip,
smiling at him, groggy with sleep. He took her hand away and sat up. 
     "What's wrong?" she asked.
     He didn't answer; he found his robe on a chair and pulled it on as
he walked into the kitchen. He needed java, he thought, and maybe
something stronger. He wondered if Serina had left during the night, and
then wondered if she'd ever been with him at all.
     The java was hot and bitter, and he sat on the dowsill drinking it
for a long time, waiting for the stranger in the next room to leave.

******************************

     An hour later, dressed and warmed by a hot breakfast, Apollo started
toward the distant spacedrome, and the duties that awaited him there.

******************************

Chapter Two
Eighth Sectar, Fourth Day
Colonial Yahren: 7364 

     He was met at the entrance to the Galactica's private docking bay by
a short man dressed in Corporeal blues. There was a moment's wait as the
man examined the Contract wafer and Apollo spent the time studying the
lines of the ship above him. The Galactica had been built more recently
than the mentalstar Apollo had crewed, but still, despite the lack of bow
lights and the addition of another cargo hatch beneath the main airlock,
the Galactica was fairly standard. Its bridge was snug in the center of
the ship, the engines, six main thrusters to lift the ship off a
planetary surface with several smaller thrusters for guiding it within a
primary gravity well, were hung on the underside, and its overall shape
was wonderfully cylindrical. All of the external equipment was painfully
familiar to Apollo. In many ways, the ship was a duplicate of the
Atlantia. 
     Finished running the Contract through a portable scanner strapped to
his waist, the small man returned the wafer to Apollo, noticing the
expression on the ex-Cork's face. The man nodded, his features twisting
in a parody of a smile. Apollo realized that the other man was a blown
Receptive, partially healed.
     "Don't you sense it too?" the man said. "The ship? It's a hate ship,
Sire Apollo. It destroyed your brother; that's why you're here, isn't
it?"
     "You knew my brother?"
     "I was there when the Commander signed him on. He was too young to
understand what sort of ship this was."
     "You were there?" Apollo studied the Corporeal. "Are you the Mate?"
     "Nope. The Cook. We don't have a Mate aboard the Galactica. Just
me."
     "And the Colonial government allows this?"
     "There was no choice. The cargo comes first, yes! That's why the
Commander took your brother. He had to." The Cook sighed. "Maybe."
     Apollo frowned as the short man took his sleeve and drew him up the
ramp into the airlock. The fingers holding Apollo's arm were loose,
twitching; the Cook was agitated beyond his ability to control the finer
movements of his limbs. Once inside the ship, Apollo was led down a
passage lit on four sides by translucent light panels. They came to the
mess and turned in. "I want to talk with you before you see the
Commander," the Cook said. "It's important you understand."
     Apollo wandered across the wide, low-ceilinged Crew's Mess, becoming
aware of the forces present in the room. This was the nexus of the ship,
the focal point for the psychic energies of its crew. The room was
roughly circular, sloping toward a central point, a counter and console
arrangement that Apollo recognized as the main food dispensing area.
Overhead glowplates cast a soft light too delicate to create a shadow.
Apollo walked a few steps into the lounge, peering down at the rows of
tables and booths, aware of the tensions that lived in the room. He felt
himself opening up to the emotions in the Mess in the same way he'd
opened up to the emotions in the Mess aboard the Atlantia. It was
different here, however. The emotions he received were twisted and
misshapen, ugly, inhuman. Waves of hate beat like a drum against him,
within him, and he turned away, cutting off his reception and closing in
on himself while he regained his breath. He felt unclean, as though he'd
been physically assaulted.
     When he finally straightened out, Apollo saw that the Cook had been
watching him, eyes bright and gleaming. "See what I mean?" the small man
asked. "This ship is frakkin' crazy! I've been with her for three
yahrens, and it's always been this way. The first time I stepped aboard I
nearly dropped. It's strong."
     "How do you stand living with it?" Apollo asked.
     "You learn. It's not easy, but it's not hard either. Think about it.
There's nothing here that's not inside each of us."
     "But there's so much...felgercarb."
     "Quite a few crew members have a little of it in them. Even the
Commander."
     "The Commander. I wanted to talk to him." Apollo glanced at his
hands, forcing them to be steady. "About Zac. He was too young to be
contracted, not for something like a Cork's position. You know that, if
you knew him."
     "I knew it, but not the Commander. The whole business was new to
him. He'd been a Mate until our previous Commander was killed. He's never
had to meet a crisis like this before, picking a Cork..." The Cook's
voice faded. He smiled, wrinkling the left side of his face. "Try to
understand him, Apollo. Living in a ship like this can damage a man's
sensibilities...he didn't mean to hurt that poor kid. He seemed strong.
He made a good Cork, until we had that accident."
     "A good Cork, on a ship like this...?"
     "Listen: we hit a Magnetic Void, our Cork was breaking, the
Commander had to hold him together, any way he could. He tried too hard.
You've played the wafer, haven't you? It's all there."
     "The how, yes," Apollo said. "But not the why. I've got to know why
the Commander contracted him. I don't care what happened; that's done,
Zac's buried already...but I need to know why it was done. Showing me
that this ship is insane doesn't tell me any more than I already knew. I
don't believe a Corporeal Commander can be affected that much living
here. There has to be something more. I've got to find out what it is.
You're a Receptive; you can understand that, can't you?"
     The Cook looked at Apollo, his mouth working as he tried to phrase
an answer. "The Commander's changed," he said finally. "He hides inside
himself, but he's a good man. A good Commander, now."
     "Maybe he is," Apollo said. "I'll find out for myself, won't I?"
     "I guess you will," the Cook said with resignation. "I guess you
will."

*******************************

     On Apollo's second knock, the door hissed silently open. He stepped
through into the Commander's quarters and moved down a narrow hallway
that curved with the main corridor of the ship. There were sounds from
the refresher cubicle set apart from the main cabin, the hum of the
cleaner fading as Apollo entered the main room. He waited, standing with
his arms folded and letting his eyes adjust to the bright
lighting---harsh compared to the rest of the ship---as he looked around
at the one-and-one-half room suite.
     The walls were bare, the sparse furniture completely functional, the
only item betraying any real wear being the viewing console tucked off
near the inflatable bed. The console was still turned on when Apollo
entered, though unfocused and untuned; images moved across the screen in
random patterns, the sound too low to be audible. Apollo glanced at it
only briefly as he scanned the room, looked for some hint of the
Commander's personality in his choice of objects and design. The room
looked frankly uninhabited. Apollo shivered, and then laughed at himself
nervously. Intimidated by an empty room.
     "Yes? Can I help you?"
     Apollo turned at the sound of the voice and faced a man roughly his
height and weight though obviously older. Apollo estimated the Commander
to be approaching thirty. The man stood at the door to the 'fresher,
drawing on his jumpsuit and zipping up the suit's front as he stared at
Apollo. Apollo smiled. The Commander started, his eyes widening, a frown
flashing for an instant, and then fading away.
     "I'm sorry," the Commander said, "but for a moment you looked like
somebody I knew. It's nothing. Are you signed aboard? Did the Cook send
you up?"
     "Not exactly, Commander. As a matter of fact, he tried to convince
me not to come."
     The Commander scowled---firmly, this time---and moved across the
room to the viewing console. He flicked the screen off and returned his
attention to Apollo. "He did? Can you tell me why?"
     "I'm Zac's brother."
     "I see."
     "I wanted to talk with you about the way he died."
     "Weren't you told?"
     "Things like that...information gets garbled. I prefer to hear it
from you. You were there when it happened." 
     The Commander's face relaxed and he sighed, settling onto the stool
molded into the desk before the console. His shoulders moved restlessly
as he spoke. "I was there. We made it all the way to Sagitara with our
cargo, we'd shuttled out so some of the human settlements in the western
Frontier, and we were heading back to the outer Colonies. Three weeks out
from Sagitara, he blew. Like that. I tried to save him, but it was
impossible---between keeping the ship together and saving Zac, it was all
I could do to maintain my sanity. There was nothing, nothing I could do
for him." His hands moved over his knees, pulling at the material,
straightening it. "I'm very sorry it happened the way it did."
     Apollo leaned against the wall that ran into the narrow hall,
feeling the muscles in his arms knot as he forced his hands to his sides
and into the loops of his suit. He felt dizzy from the emotions surging
within him. Up to that moment he hadn't truly encountered his friend's
death on a personal level---he'd been shocked, grieved, pained---but
until the Commander had told him in simple words how it had happened, the
death had no gut meaning to Apollo. Now it did. For a brief moment he
closed his eyes and trembled. When he opened them once more, he searched
the eyes of the Commander.
     He wanted to know the reason for what had happened. No more and
certainly no less. It was part of being a Receptive: he was all too aware
of the random nature of events, and how the most well-intentioned plans
may have disastrous effects. What mattered was not the effect but the
intention. He needed to know the Commander's intention in hiring his
brother, and in driving Zac to his death. At that moment it was the
consuming force in Apollo's life.
     He searched the Commander's eyes, but the other man's feelings were
buried too deeply. Nothing was visible, only a cool barrier. Apollo
paused, hesitating. He was not sure he had the stomach for a direct probe
of another man's mind, so soon after leaving the Atlantia. Was there an
alternative?
     No.
     Gathering himself up, he concentrated on the field of the
Commander's mind---and he pushed. 
     His mind drove forward into the Commander's soul.
     There was a moment of darkness for Apollo, during which he
floundered, searching for some common ground of orientation between
himself and the Commander. At last he found it: the mentalstar world, the
crew/officer relationship. Steadied, Apollo plunged deeper, into the
other man's subconscious---and found himself stopped by the mental
counterpart of the barrier he'd seen in the Commander's eyes. Here,
however, it was more than an unemotional attitude. It was a block rising
between the conscious and unconscious. Apollo pressed, but the mindblock
was unyielding. He searched for an opening, but there was none. He tried
to filter through, but couldn't. There was no way past the block, none at
all; he was totally and completely halted.
     He stepped back mentally. It was a psiblock, and not one erected by
a machine----those were clumsy, ill-fitting affairs, useful to hide
select information, but not whole areas of experience. No, it was
psychologically organic, which was, of course, a flat impossibility. The
Commander wasn't a Recpetive, couldn't be, if he were part of Crew
Administration. There were strict Quorum regulations about Receptives
being in charge of a ship, enforced with careful screening of all
applicants to an administrative position. The Commander couldn't be a
Receptive, therefore he couldn't have planted the block himself; it was
too complete.
     Then who? And more importantly for Apollo's purposes: why? What was
the Commander concealing so well that he kept the secret even from
himself? The reason for Zac's death? If so, who would help him hide it?
     Stunned and confused, Apollo withdrew. Less than a second had
passed; the Commander hadn't noticed the changing expression on the
ex-Cork's face. The man was still straightening the material of his
trousers and only now looked up at Apollo.
     "I've already explained it to the Colonial representative here on
Virgon," the Commander said. "There was some discussion concerning my
behavior, but that's all over and done with. They decided I'd acted
rashly, but considering the circumstances surrounding the matter, they
thought my actions perfectly excusable. You should know that they docked
me two sectans' pay for endangering the ship. They think that settled the
matter, and though naturally I'm----saddened about what happened. I agree
with them. There was nothing I could do. Nothing. Don't you understand
that?
     His voice grew lower as he ended his speech, and Apollo had to
strain to make out the last few words. He was still trembling from his
experience inside the Commander's mind, and was already beginning to feel
ashamed for attempting the invasion in the first place. It was against
all codes of conduct to do what he'd done. Apollo felt his face and hands
glowing warm as he listened to the Commander's hurried apology. When it
was over, he nodded quickly.
     "Yes, I understand. Of course I understand, Commander. But, I just
wanted to speak to you about it because you were the last person to see
him alive."
     "He was a fine Cork, Sire Apollo. One of the finest."
     "I am honored."
     "Have you decided what you're going to do with the remainder of his
Contract?"
     "I could buy it out," Apollo said. "I've got a little money save,
though I'd planned to use it on other things."
     "Are you a Receptive yourself?" The Commander eased himself off the
stool and stood crackling his knuckles; he seemed distracted.
     "It runs in the family."
     "So I've been told. You could finish his Contract term yourself,
then, couldn't you?" The Commander's eyes rose and looked fully at Apollo
for the first time. The Receptive shrugged and found himself looking
away. "Let me know when you decide," the Commander said. His eyes began
moving again. "Just about now I could use a good Cork."
 
******************************

     "Is he always like that?" Apollo asked. "He made me feel like a
child, an absolute simpleton."
     Beside him the Cook shrugged. They were walking down the broad
avenue leading from the port area into the tavern district. "It's hard to
say. Sometimes he's worse. He turns on and off; sometimes he sees you,
sometimes not. He was like that with the Cork, your brother, going Out."
     "How well do you know him?"
     "Well, enough, I guess. We came aboard the same time, when the
Galactica was commissioned. He was the First Mate and I was Cook. We
talked sometimes, but not very often."
     "When was that? When the Galactica received her commission?"
     "Fifty-nine. Sixty-one? No, it was sixty-one."
     "She's only been commissioned three yahrens?" Apollo shook his head.
He pointed down the street they were crossing. "Pul's place is down that
way, and the drinks are on the house."
     "Lead on," said the Cook, and crossed the street ahead of him.
 
******************************

     Though it was still early in the day, the Llyia's was partly filled
with crew from the five or six ships staying over at Virgon spacedrome.
Even so, Pul filled Apollo's order promptly and found time to join them
in a toast, raising his own mug to his lips with a trembling hand. "Gets
this way a bit, sometimes," he said when the hand trembled too much and
spilled ambrosa on the bar. "In the mornings not so good. Old, y'know?"
He eyed the Cook, who was watching him rub the liquor into the counter
with a rag. "Who your friend, Apollo?"
     "Calls himself Cook," Apollo said. "He's with the Galactica."
     "Heard many things 'bout that ship, not too good. People speak,
round spacedrome. Here at party last night..." Pul frowned. The muscles
in his cheek jumped and tugged at his lower eyelids. "Wasn't..."
     "That's the one," Apollo said quietly.
     "Drink," Pul asked, in apology.
     "Let me finish this one," Apollo answered. He turned to the Cook a
moment later. "Isn't the Galactica a cargo ship? That's why she's on
Virgon now, right?"
     "Ambrosa. You have it. After Virgon, we head into the Colonial
Frontier, along the eastern spiral."
     "Ohhhh, that bad. Very bad," Pul said, leaning forward. "Colonies
not strong, not there. Heard. Like Sagitara in '28."
     The Cook nodded. "But if the Quorum of the Twelve says go, we go.
The cargo pays for the charting...or so they say."
     "Could we please not talk about that?" Apollo said. "I want to think
about this a moment. Pul? Another ambrosa?"
     The bartender gave it to him and Apollo snipped at the sweet liquid,
staring past the edge of the bar at the pipes winding in the console
behind the counter. He let his gaze travel along the pipes, his mind
drifting back to memories of his years on Caprica. Not much of that time
was left within him. Most of the memories were dulled, but some were
still bright and alive. Caprica. His homeworld.
     It was a cold planet, not semitropical like Virgon, half again as
far from it's G-type star as the mythical planet Earth was said to be
from its native sun---one-point-five parsecs, in contemporary
measurements. During the winters his father would spend most of the day
collecting wood and bargaining for the native mineral called coal. When
summer came---mild summers that were over before they'd really
begun----Apollo's father would bring him out to the fields, where they'd
labor from dawn until sunset to bring in a crop of Roots, the all-purpose
vegetable that had been designed for the Caprican climate by Colonial
botanical engineers---and for which they extracted a harvest percentage.
He remembered the feel of sweat crawling down his spine, and he
remembered the bitter chill that would lodge below his ears, and
remembering, he shivered and sipped at his mug of ambrosa.
     There were other memories; pleasant memories. His brother was six
yahrens younger than he, and Apollo could recall the day and centon of
Zac's birth very clearly. It'd been during the early days of spring, in
7328. They'd received word about the trouble on Sagitara just a sectan
before, which was why the time of yahren remained so clearly fresh in
Apollo's mind. His father had been worried, wondering if the attempted
rebellion would affect the Caprica's attitude toward the other eleven
colonies---and how this would in turn affect the upbringing of Adama's
second child. As it turned out his fears were unfounded. There had never
been any reprisals, at least, none that were apparent to the young
Apollo. His brother was born a week later, small and pink, a wizened old
man's face squinting out of white bedclothes, small hands---even
then---moving and exploring. Mouth squealing. Apollo's initial feelings
were mixed. For some time he had a vague feeling of discomfort, and once,
when he was alone with the infant, he found himself wondering how to
dispose of the child. When he realized what he'd bee thinking, he'd
become upset and then ill, and was unable to go into the fields with his
father for several days. After that he treated Zac with distant respect,
which later hardened into cool reserve.
     Remembering this, Apollo found himself shaking, and he groped for
his glass of ambrosa and downed it in one long swallow. The Cook was
watching him with an odd expression. Apollo ignored him and ordered
another ambrosa, and only after he'd finished half of it did he turn to
the diminutive ex-Receptive.
     "Is something bothering you, good buddy?"
     "Yes," the Cook said. "You are."
     "Don't concern yourself with me, buddy. I'm capable of handling
myself."
     "I know. But it's still bothering me, and you asked. After your
brother died, somebody had to Cork the Galactica. Only one man could. Me.
Yes, I used to be a Cork, nine, ten yahrens back. I broke pretty bad, and
it took me four yahrens to get back even this much"----he gestured with a
hand that moved awkwardly, nervously---"control. Four yahrens, and then I
became a Cook. But after your brother collapsed, the Galactica was
falling, and it needed someone to save it---the same man who saved it
before. Me. You know what that does to a blown Cork? To go back?"
     "I can imagine," Apollo said softly. The Cook's voice was crackling
with emotion as he went on.
     "Sure you can. So listen, maybe you know, maybe you don't. But you
know this much----I can still feel things, and right now, I can feel you.
You're burning red hot inside. They're bad, those feelings you've got.
It's a waste, a hurt. I don't want to feel it with you, but I can't stop
it now, inside of me. You can imagine, I'm sure. But you can't know." He
cut off Apollo again before the Cork could speak.
     "Beware Apollo. You understand pain...but you don't understand
enough. Too much pain inside you, and you can break. Like I broke. Or
like he broke." He swept a hand over to indicate Pul. Ill coordinated, it
caught the rim of his glass and sent the mug spinning off the counter and
into the console. Glass shattered loudly, the spell was broken, and the
room became noisy once more.
     "Sorry about that," the Cook said quietly.
     Pul shuffled over and cleaned up the glass. "Forget it. Breaks all
the time."
     Apollo looked into his own glass and smiled. "If you can read me,
Cook, then you already know what I've decided to do."
     "You've made a bad decision, friend. Trust me."
     "Maybe. Now, how about you telling me where the Commander could get
a psilock."
     "Forget it."
     "Never mind, then. I'll find out for myself," Apollo said. He swung
off the bar stool and stood up; his smile was empty and mechanical this
time, as he added, "I want to know why he killed my brother, and that's
why I'm singing aboard."
     The Cook said nothing. He shook his head once, and then, limping, he
followed Apollo out the tavern door.

******************************

     Jolly was on the third floor of the brothel, in a room opening off
the main hallway, sprawled over one of the suite's large beds, arm draped
across the bosom of the thick-waisted girl whose gray hair had been
tinted a delicate blue. Apollo left the Cook outside and entered the
room, catching the eye of the walking girl and gesturing for her to
leave. She did so, hurriedly. He took her place on the bed beside Jolly
and poked the sleeping Corporeal in the ribs. The young man stirred,
opened his eyes, closed them, and opened them again. 
     "Hello, buddy."
     Jolly jerked to a sitting position, wide-awake. "Where'd she go?"
     "Downstairs, where I sent her," Apollo told him.
     "Frak!" Jolly closed his eyes again. "Did you have to do that?"
     "I'm afraid so. I wanted to speak to you privately."
     "I hate waking up alone," Jolly said. He kept his eyes closed. "That
always happens. I hate it." One eye winked open. "What did you want to
talk about? Did I do something wrong? Hey, if you want me to pay for the
girl---"
     "Oh, don't worry about that. It's on me," Apollo answered. He got up
and bent over the bedside console. "How about some breakfast?" Jolly
nodded and Apollo selected items, punching out their coordinates on the
keyboard. "I just wanted to tell you I'm signing up again. Taking another
Contract."
     Jolly swung his legs off the bed and reached for the container of
hot coffee that had appeared in the food slot. "What?! After all you'd
said to me last night about it being suicide for you?"
     "Things have changed since then," Apollo sat down beside the
Corporeal and picked up the tray of food he'd ordered.
     "Oh. You mean that stuff about your brother?"
     Apollo nodded.
     "But if it's so dangerous for you---"
     "Maybe I overestimated the danger," Apollo said. "I'm not a weak
man. I've always been proud of that."
     "Still. You're lucky you're alive, after being a Cork as long as you
have. That is what you said, isn't it?" Apollo peered at him over the
piece of salted lettuce he was nibbling.
     "That's what I said. I hope I'm wrong. But that's really not what
matters. I wanted you to know, because I want you to take care of this
place for me while I'm gone."
     The Corporeal shook his head. "No. Sorry. I can't do it."
     "If that's the way you feel," Apollo said, standing, stopping in
mid-turn when Apollo's hand caught his arm.
     "You don't understand," the young man said. "It's not because I
don't want to. It's because I'm coming with you."
 
******************************
 
     "I just want her to know," Apollo said. "That's all."
     "You don't have to explain. I understand. I'll wait here. You go
upstairs."
     Apollo left the Cook at the doorway to the tenement and walked up
the two flights of slick vanlithminium steel stairs. The building was not
in disrepair, at least not physically. It was a good building, and would
remain a good building for decades: when the Colonies built these tract
apartments they'd built them to last. Yet the building was in decay: a
spiritual decay, Apollo thought. The building and its occupants had been
abandoned by the colony in favor of a new look, one preferred by its new
provisional government. The older buildings of Colonial construction,
though useful, were treated with contempt. They were now the slums, and
the people within them, the derelicts. Though the people survived, they
didn't live. People like Apollo, fortunate enough to have a job. People
like Serina, who didn't.
     She opened the door and blinked at him, her face puffy with sleep.
She gazed at him a moment and then stepped back, holding onto the door as
he entered the cluttered room.
     "I expected you earlier," she said.
     "Sorry about that. Business at the spacedrome."
     "Sure." She walked across the room, skirting the ragged bedding in
one corner. The bones of her rib cage were visible under her olive skin,
her breasts rising and falling as she limped. "I'd offer you something if
I had anything to offer," she said. She stepped into the fresher by the
kitchen. "I'll be with you in a mili-centon."
     When she came out again, the paleness in her cheeks was gone, her
eyes less bloodshot, and she was looking almost young. "What was your
business?"
     "Zac's Contract," he said. I'm taking it up."
     Something moved behind her eyes. "Why?"
     "To find out why he died."
     "That should be obvious," she said dryly. "You weren't here to stop
him."
     "I didn't come here for a lecture, Serina."
     "I know that."
     "I won't ask you to come along. I can't."
     "I know that too."
     Apollo nodded. "That's all, then. Maybe we'll get together before I
leave."
     "When does the ship launch?" she asked him.
     "In three days. We'll be taking a cargo run along the western Arm,
to most of the worlds of the Colonial Frontier. Charting."
     "That's where the rebels are," she said. Then, about the ship: "Can
you handle it?"
     "I don't know," he said.
     At the door there was a brief moment when her breast touched his
arm; he wondered if he should ask her about the night before, but decided
against it. He didn't want to know. She stepped back and thumbed the lock
for him. The door slid opened. He left. A moment later, the door slid
shut behind him.

******************************

     Apollo wasn't prepared for the Galactica's Mess to be crowded that
evening. It was usual for a mentalstar's crew to take a furlon as soon as
the vessel cleared port, but for some reason the Cook couldn't or
wouldn't explain, the Galactica's crew was different. When Apollo arrived
at the ship in company with the Cook, he found the halls busy with
crewmembers, intense-looking men and women hurrying from cabin to cabin,
pulling on jump suits as they walked, tabbing jackets and brushing back
hair. The Cook left Apollo in the recreation room and went off to prepare
the evening's menu, and after the small gray man had left, the Cork
collared a passing Corporeal and asked him what was happening.
     The boy gave him a brusque once-over, apparently decided that Apollo
belonged on the ship, and answered. "The Commander just released the
route, Sire. From Odap to Tertius, first off. Then down the Colonial
Frontier." Apollo released him with a deeply felt thank you, and the
Corporeal rushed off.
     Tertius. No wonder the crew had gathered for mess. There'd been a
centon or more of excited speculation, Apollo knew. Tertius was one of
three major human settlements in the region. Apollo had never been there
himself, though he'd heard rumors about the planet, stories from
Receptives who'd experienced some of the exotic thrills the settlement
had to offer. If Virgon was an industrial port, with all the economic and
social gestalts such a designation implied, then Tertius was a pleasure
center. According to the more elaborate tales, the Quorum of the Twelve
had written an unlimited charter for the planet, in much the same way
they'd managed to receive full exploitation rights for Virgon's native
ceshafium processing industry. 
     It was going to be an interesting voyage, Apollo decided, in more
ways than meets the eye.
     The Cook reappeared twenty centons after Apollo had settled in the
Rejuvenation Center. Returning with the Cook to the Crew's Mess, Apollo
received a tray and took his place in line. Most of the crew had been
served already and were scattered about the room in groups of five and
ten, talking loudly between mouthfuls of soup and bread. Against one wall
the ship's Receptives were gathered, twelve men and women on one long
bench, supporting their trays on their laps and speaking softly, their
hands moving in both broad and subtle gestures. Apollo filled his plate
and mug then processed his credit chit---though he'd signed aboard that
afternoon, he wouldn't officially be a member of the crew until 0100 the
next day---and crossed the room to join his fellow Receptives. 
     There was room at the end of the bench. One of the women slid over
to make room for him. A moment later the Cook arrived and proceeded to
make introductions. Apollo nodded to each of the Receptives in turn. The
Engineer, Nephicroran, and the chief Technician, a Sagitarian named Tyger
particularly struck him. The Communications agent, Rigel, was the most
cordial, pausing to shift her pet---a small anthropoid with large silver
eyes---to her shoulder before shaking Apollo's hand.
     "You're from Caprica, aren't you?"
     "Guilty as charged," Apollo said.
     "So is Nephicroran. You too should have much to talk about."
     After this she was quiet, her attention returned to her pet, which
she fed with scraps from her plate as Apollo watched her, absorbed.
     "Have you heard?" the Cook asked him, breaking the spell.
     "About Tertius? I have, yes. Your first time there?"
     "Once," the Cook said. "But not about that. I'm talking about the
Colonial Frontier."
     "You're not going to let what Pul said worry you, are you? Don't.
He's just a broken old man trying for a little attention."
     "Still," the Cook said. His muscles remained fixed, his jaw taut
with worry.
     "Still," Apollo said. "It's nothing to be concerned about."
     "What about you, Sire? Have you ever been to Tertius?"
     The voice belonged to Nephicroran, the Engineer. Apollo turned to
him. "No. The last ship I crewed mostly did charting work. We ran the
western Arm."
     "What ship was that, Sire?"
     "The Atlantia, out of Sagitara."
     "The Atlantia?" This time it was the wiry Sagitarian, Tyger. His
bleak eyes rose to meet Apollo's. "Did you say the Atlantia?"
     "That's right," Apollo answered. "You know her?"
     "Someone who crewed her once. Perhaps he still does."
     "What's his name? I know most of the crew."
     "Jakar," Tyger said slowly.
     Apollo felt something tighten between him and the other Receptive.
Like a physical presence something had come into the lounge and gathered
around them, dark and cold. Against his will Apollo felt the alien
emotion invading him, thrusting through the defenses he'd erected months
before and which he'd only recently begun to relax. He clamped down
tightly, shutting off his Recpetivity. There was a flicker in the dark
eyes of the Sagitarian. It faded, to be replaced by emptiness.
     "I know him," Apollo said. "He's had some trouble lately."
     'That's too bad. I would've liked to see him. We could've talked."
Tyger said vacantly. He seemed to have lost interest. "It's been a long
time," he added.
     Apollo said nothing. The other man made him nervous; he seemed to be
drawn into a wiry tightness. His movements were strained as he turned
back to his meal; Apollo was disturbed by that appearance of tension, and
watched the other man for several minutes before looking away.
     Nephicroran brought up the subject of their mutual homeworld and the
two men spent the remainder of the Mess hour talking about Caprica.
Nephicroran (whose name was the last remaining indication, he said, of a
distant connection to the colony's founder) came from the southern
hemisphere, where the temperatures were not quite as intensely cold, but
as the traditions of the colony were planetwide, he and Apollo had much
to talk about. They traded stories about the colonial schools, discovered
that they'd both spent a month at the same correctional facility for
adolescents, and learned that aside from this accident of birthplace,
neither had much in common with the other. Apollo found the conversation
diverting, however, which was more or less what he needed. The pain of
his brother's death was receeding, though slowly. As he had many times
since the incident aboard the Atlantia, Apollo wished for the
intercession of a Cork----something he could never experience. At best,
he could distract himself, but only for a short while and only
superficially, as he was doing with his dialogue with Nephicroran.
     The pain would always remain. There were no Cork hands for him---no
other soul would take the guilt away.
 
**************************************************************

Chapter Three
Eighth Sectar, Fifth Day
Colonial Yahren: 7364

     It was a cool midnight. Apollo took the boardwalk path along the
Virgon shore, listening to the clap and pad of his footsteps and watching
the line of lights pointing out into the harbor channel in the distance,
and smelling the fresh early morning air. (Salt, dammit. There was salt
in that air!)
     His midsection felt full and warm. There was something about ship
food---though usually bland and tasteless, there was always enough of it
to go around, served in a style that mad it at least spectacular, even if
not very appetizing. He paused for a moment and leaned on the boardwalk
railing. The waves rolled in toward the shore, driven by the milky,
strangely smooth moon overhead, in lazy parody of the waves he'd seen on
Caprica. There was no sound to this ocean. Apollo listened, but he could
hear nothing more than a faint whisper that rose and fell with his
breathing.
     He thought about his brother. How much did he really know about Zac?
Did he know enough to justify his commitment to this "quest"? Not really.
Then why was he determined to join the Galactica? To find the reason for
his brother's death, or-----?
     A shape moved at him out of the darkness. Apollo had time to push
from the railing, take a step out to the boardwalk, and then the shape
was upon him.
     They fell to the boardwalk, Apollo landing on the bottom, feeling
the weight of a man on his chest, feeling arms tightening into a lock
around his neck, feeling knees digging into his hip and abdomen. He tried
to jerk free, but the man holding him began to apply pressure to his
grip. Blood pounded in Apollo's ears. With a grunt he twisted onto his
back and slammed his elbow and knee into his assailant's chest and groin.
     The man gasped and relaxed his leg grip. Apollo gained leverage,
shoved, pulled free and lunged away. Hands caught at him, tripped him. He
skidded along the planking, sensing the motion of the man behind him as
his attacker dived. The man hit him squarely in the small of the back and
carried him over the edge of the boardwalk under the railing, and onto
the sand below.
     Turning, Apollo snapped the heels of his hands hard against the jaw
of the man struggling to get on top of him. The man spun back and sprayed
to a stop in a gray sand dune. Apollo got to his feet, staggered and sat
down. His heart was racing. With an effort he forced his breathing into a
regular pattern. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and glanced at
the man lying next to him, stunned.
     It was Tyger.
     "Well?" Apollo asked.
     Tyger glared at him. Two flushed patches marked his jaw where the
Cork's palms had caught him, which promised nasty bruises by morning.
Edging himself up on one elbow, the Sagitarian worked a hand along the
back of his neck. "I'll this for you, Sire," he said. "You sure do know
how to exchange blows."
     "As you would expect. It's something a man picks up when he visits
one unfamiliar spacedrome too many," Apollo told him. He waited.
     "They told me you're a friend of Jakar?"
     "That's right. You're not, I gather?"
     "I was going to try to force you to take me to him," Tyger said. His
voice was husky, and he paused to clear his throat. "I have things I want
to talk to him about."
     "Talk to him? Like you talked to me?"
     "You wouldn't take me if I didn't force you. Not when you found out
what I want."
     "How do you know?" Apollo asked.
     "I just do." The Sagitaran got to his feet, but not without
difficulty. Apollo followed him to the stairs leading up to the
boardwalk.
     "Try me," he said. "I'm willing to listen. That's what I'm here for.
I've had enough practice."
     "Don't you think I know that? I can tell. I know what it's like. I
know what you're thinking and feeling. You think there's something wrong
with me, and you want to know what it is so you can warn your friend. I
can hear you. You think I can't but I can, Ap