Borders of Infinity

away from them. Now I can't wait to see them again.'

'What are you plans now?' Miles asked.

'I'll stop at Escobar, first,' she replied. 'It's a good nexus crossing, from there I should be able to work my way back to Earth. From Earth I can get to Orient IV, and from there I'm sure I can get home.'

'Is home your goal now?'

'There's a lot more galaxy to be seen out this way,' Thorne pointed out. 'I'm not sure if Dendarii rosters can be stretched to include a ship's musician, but—'

She was shaking her head. 'Home,' she said firmly. 'I'm tired of fighting one-gee all the time. I'm tired of being alone. I'm starting to have nightmares about growing legs.'

Thorne sighed faintly.

'We do have a little colony of downsiders living among us now,' she added suggestively to Thorne. 'They've fitted out their own asteroid with artificial gravity—quite like the real thing downside, only not as drafty.'

Miles was faintly alarmed—to lose a ship commander of proven loyalty—

'Ah,' said Thorne in a pensive tone to match Nicol's. 'A long way from my home, your asteroid belt.'

'Will you return to Beta Colony, then, someday?' she asked. 'Or are the Dendarii Mercenaries your home and family?'

'Not quite that passionate, for me,' said Thorne. 'I mainly stick around due to an overwhelming curiosity to see what happens next.' Thorne favored Miles with a peculiar smile.

Thorne helped load Nicol back into her blue cup. After a brief systems check she was hovering upright again, as mobile—more mobile—than her legged companions. She rocked and regarded Thorne brightly.

'It's only three more days to Escobar orbit,' said Thorne to Nicol rather regretfully. 'Still—seventy-two hours. 4,320 minutes. How much can you do in 4,320 minutes?'

Or how often, thought Miles dryly. Especially if you don't sleep. Sleep, per se, was not what Bel had in mind, if Miles recognized the signs. Good luck—to both of them.

'Meanwhile,' Thorne maneuvered Nicol into the corridor, 'let me show you around the ship. Illyrican-built —that's out your way a bit, I understand. It's quite a story, how the Ariel first fell into Dendarii hands—we were the Oseran Mercenaries, back then—'

Nicol made encouraging noises. Miles suppressed an envious grin, and turned the other way up the corridor, to search out Dr. Canaba and arrange the discharge of his last unpleasant duty.

Bemusedly, Miles set aside the hypospray he'd been turning over in his hands as the door to sickbay sighed open. He swivelled in the medtech's station chair and glanced up as Taura and Sergeant Anderson entered. 'My word,' he murmured.

Anderson sketched a salute. 'Reporting as ordered, sir.' Taura's hand twitched, uncertain whether to attempt to mimic this military greeting or not. Miles gazed up at Taura and his lips parted with involuntary delight. Taura's transformation was all he'd dreamed of and more.

He didn't know how Anderson had persuaded the stores computer to so exceed its normal parameters, but somehow she'd made it disgorge a complete Dendarii undress kit in Taura's size: crisp grey-and-white pocketed jacket, grey trousers, polished ankle-topping boots. Taura's face and hair were clean enough to outshine her boots. Her dark hair was now drawn back in a thick, neat, and rather mysterious braid coiling up the back of her head— Miles could not make out where the ends went—and glinting with unexpected mahogany highlights.

She looked, if not exactly well-fed, at least less rawly starving, her eyes bright and interested, not the haunted yellow flickers in bony caverns he'd first seen. Even from this distance he could tell that re-hydration and the chance to brush her teeth and fangs had cured the ketone-laced breath that several days in Ryoval's sub- basement on a diet of raw rats and nothing had produced. The dirt-encrusted scale was smoothed away from her huge hands, and—inspired touch—her clawed nails had been, not blunted, but neatened and sharpened, and then enamelled with an iridescent pearl-white polish that complemented her grey-and-whites like a flash of jewelry. The polish had to have been shared out of some personal stock of the sergeant's.

'Outstanding, Anderson,' said Miles in admiration.

Anderson smirked proudly. 'That about what you had in mind, sir?'

'Yes, it was.' Taura's face reflected his delight straight back at him. 'What did you think of your first wormhole jump?' he asked her.

Her long lips rippled, what happened when she tried to purse them, Miles guessed. 'I was afraid I was getting sick, I was so dizzy all of a sudden, till Sergeant Anderson explained what it was.'

'No little hallucinations, or odd time-stretching effects?'

'No, but it wasn't—well, it was quick, anyway.'

'Hm. It doesn't sound like you're one of the fortunates—or unfortunates—to be screened for Jump pilot aptitudes. From the talents you demonstrated on Ryoval's landing pad yesterday morning, Tactics should be loathe to lose you to Nav and Com.' Miles paused. 'Thank you, Laureen. What did my page interrupt?'

'Routine systems checks on the drop shuttles, putting them to bed. I was having Taura look over my shoulder while I worked.'

'Right, carry on. I'll send Taura back to you when she's done here.'

Anderson exited reluctantly, clearly curious. Miles waited till the doors swished closed to speak again. 'Sit down, Taura. So your first twenty-four hours with the Dendarii have been satisfactory?'

She grinned, settling herself carefully in a station chair, which creaked. 'Just fine.'

'Ah.' He hesitated. 'You understand, when we reach Escobar, you do have the option to go your own way. You're not compelled to join us. I could see you got some kind of start, downside there.'

'What?' Her eyes widened in dismay. 'No! I mean … do I eat too much?'

'Not at all! You fight like four men, we can bloody well afford to feed you like three. But … I need to set a few things straight, before you make your trainee's oath.' He cleared his throat. 'I didn't come to Ryoval's to recruit you. A few weeks before Bharaputra sold you, do you remember Dr. Canaba injecting something into your leg? With a needle, not a hypospray.'

'Oh, yes.' She rubbed her calf half-consciously. 'It made a knot.'

'What, ah, did he tell you it was?'

'An immunization.'

She'd been right, Miles reflected, when they'd first met. Humans did lie a lot. 'Well, it wasn't an immunization. Canaba was using you as a live repository for some engineered biological material. Molecularly bound, dormant material,' he added hastily as she twisted around and looked at her leg in disquiet. 'It can't activate spontaneously, he assures me. My original mission was only to pick up Dr. Canaba. But he wouldn't leave without his gene complexes.'

'He planned to take me with him?' she said in thrilled surprise. 'So I should thank him for sending you to me!'

Miles wished he could see the look on Canaba's face if she did. 'Yes and no. Specifically, no.' He rushed roughly on before his nerve failed him. 'You have nothing to thank him for, nor me either. He meant to take only your tissue sample, and sent me to get it.'

'Would you rather have left me at—is that why Escobar—' she was still bewildered.

'It was your good luck,' Miles plunged on, 'that I'd lost my men and was disarmed when we finally met. Canaba lied to me, too. In his defense, he seems to have had some dim idea of saving you from a brutal life as Ryoval's slave. He sent me to kill you, Taura. He sent me to slay a monster, when he should have been begging me to rescue a princess in disguise. I'm not too pleased with Dr. Canaba. Nor with myself. I lied through my teeth to you down in Ryoval's basement, because I thought I had to, to survive and win.'

Her face was confused, congealing, the light in her eyes fading. 'Then you didn't . . . really think I was human—'

'On the contrary. Your choice of test was an excellent one. It's much harder to lie with your body than with your mouth. When I, er, demonstrated my belief, it had to be real.' Looking at her, he still felt a twinge of lurching, lunatic joy, somatic residual from that adventure-of-the-body. He supposed he always would feel something– male conditioning, no doubt. 'Would you like me to demonstrate it again?' he asked half-hopefully, then bit his tongue.