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    It took the better part of an hour to locate the bug, lodged in the bedroom temperature control panel. Bold of Ostern to set it up so she would activate it herself with his cunning control box. She wrapped the tiny plastic cylinder in a strip of antistatic cloth and buried it in the depths of her duffel. A simple listening device, rather than a full sight-and-sound recorder. In that respect, Ostern had disappointed her. She would have expected more from someone with such cold eyes.
    Jani ferreted through her cabin a second time. Reasonably certain she had done all she could to ensure her privacy for the ship-night, she undressed. Her stomach ached in earnest now. Her skin felt clammy. She opted for a hot shower in an effort to warm up, and to wash the food odors from her hair. She stood under the water stream until the utilities monitor squealed an imminent cutoff. Then she toweled slowly, allthe while thinking about the garage guy. He’d had stomach problems, too. Nausea. Sweats.
    Last thing I need is personal experience with the latest colonial epidemic . They’d become more and more common in the last few years—planet-specific infections which, in all the cases Jani heard about, led to long hospital stays and vague medical mumblings about mutating viruses. Well, she’d had enough doctoring to last a lifetime. Anything she had, she’d fight off herself.
    She trudged into her bedroom and dug one of her Service tee shirts out of the warren of drawers. The white polycotton still looked new, even after twenty years. I remember when I got you . She pulled the use-softened shirt over her head. I’d just graduated OCS, surprising one and all . She smiled. Some memories, at least, were pleasant.
    One of Six for tongue of gold, Two for eyes and ears .
    â€œIt had nothing to do with brains or rank, Ridgeway—we were all on the ball back then,” Jani explained to her furniture. “And we needed our little games, to keep us sane.”
    Three and Four for hands of light, Five and Six for Earthly might . They each had their own special method for keeping the Laumrau Academy administrators off-balance. Senna and Tsai possessed their “hands of light,” their talents as musicians, which ranked them quite highly as far as the born-sect idomeni were concerned. Aryton’s and Nawar’s “Earthly might” derived from their Family connections.
    â€œBut Hansen was the Ambassador ,” Jani said, stressing the point for the benefit of her bedclothes. True red hair was extremely rare among the idomeni’s major sects. Red in all its variations being a holy color to them, they were inclined to believe any human gifted with such to be possessed of talents in many areas. When trouble brewed in Rauta Shèràa’s human enclave, Hansen was always called in to help lift the pot off the boil.
    â€œAnd I always went with him.” Kilian, with her knack for understanding idomeni languages and mannerisms, and her ability to fade into the background. I’ll talk , Hansen had always told her, you just watch .
    â€œYou get used to watching.” She crawled into bed, duffel and documents case in hand. She unlocked the case andpulled out black-jacketed, confidential Interior files, arranging them in a semicircle on the blanket.
    Then she activated her scanpack, her original, unadorned, idomeni-made unit, awarded to her personally upon her graduation by the being who now called himself Tsecha. Then, as now, he served as chief propitiator, the religious leader of his sect. Thus empowered, he had compelled his order-loving, xenophobic people to accept his dictum that humanish be allowed to school with them. Work with them. Even live with them, if isolation in an enclave two kilometers from the farthest outskirts of Rauta Shèràa could be called “living with.”
    Scores of humans had studied various subjects at the rigorous Academy. But the Six had been favored, and