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  Not that she cared. As she’d learned in her classes, birth mothers were inclined to be emotional and inconsistent, placing their children before the Empire. Who would want to grow up in that kind of environment? Besides, as a cadet she was one of the Goddess’s primary children. The Goddess Ivana, Mother of All, Nellie reminded herself fiercely. Hadn’t Ivana lost both Her twin sons, one in the Battle of the Northern Stars and the other in the Ambush of the Morning Light? And hadn’t She in response drawn all of humanity to Her bosom in loving compassion, interceding for them with the Gods above? If the Goddess could do that, then Nellie Joanne Kinnan could certainly do without a mother she couldn’t even remember!

  Lifting a hand, Nellie touched a finger to the set of lights that glowed above the statue’s left shoulder. Molded into the shape of the Cat constellation, the glowing galaxy arched its back, hissing at all comers. Grinning, Nellie hissed back. If she’d been given the choice of a birth sign, a hissing cat was definitely the one she would have picked, even if it was the criminal caste.

  Over the statue’s other shoulder glimmered the Scales of Judgement constellation. Nellie slitted her eyes at it. Every so often Tana made a point of observing that the Scales constellation was above the Goddess’s right shoulder. “The clean side,” she would say pointedly.

  Hastily Nellie leaned forward and rubbed a smudge of oolaga candy from the statue’s toes. Then she got to her feet and headed through the doorway, en route to Station Seven.

  STATION SEVEN was in D Block, a series of offices and laboratories that interfaced the Black Core training program with the larger Detta facility. Completely underground, the entire complex was connected by a well-lit system of tunnels, all painted off-white and dotted with checkpoint scanners. As she strode past the sign that marked the outskirts of the Black Core facility, Nellie picked up her pace. Detta housed the adult cadets, and appointments at Station Seven meant the possibility of a quick chat with an agent on downtime from assignment. Not that there was much chance at hardcore information, but she’d grown adept at slipping apparently offhand questions into these conversations. Most adults, even hardened agents who’d spent time in the Outbacks, let down their guard around a worshipful twelve-year-old, and Nellie had honed her worshipful act to a fine edge.

  Trotting quickly through the halls, she paused at the various security scanners en route and held out her wrist. She’d done this so often she knew the exact progression of whirs and clicks the scanner would emit as it processed the information in the ID chip buried under the caste tattoo on her skin. Some nights before falling asleep, Nellie would lie in the dark stroking the small bump on her wrist and wonder what kind of data the ID chip contained, exactly what it told the central computer each time she held it out for the scanner and waited for the door standing beyond it to be opened. It was like having a spy inside her body, a spy that knew things about her that she didn’t, but so far it seemed to be on her side; to date the doors had always slid open upon request.

  Today, as usual, the doors slid open. After the third scanner she began playing with the equipment, turning as she passed through the doorway and pretending to dash back toward the checkpoint, before turning again and continuing down the hall. She wasn’t supposed to do this; it confused the security beam and sent the computers scrambling. Once she’d even jammed a door by continually passing back and forth through the security beam, and the alarm had gone off. It had meant a shitload of pejoratives, but Nellie couldn’t resist the odd prank against the system. The sliding doors, the miles upon miles of gleaming off-white corridors, the endless sound-proofed walls — it was all so smooth, so implacable, so smug.

  Behind her the sliding doors hissed, opening and shutting several times. Nellie observed their mechanical confusion with satisfaction, then took off down the hall toward an overhead sign that read “Station Seven.” Veering around a corner, she grinned as the station’s reception desk came into view and a resigned expression crossed the secretary’s face.

  “Nellie Kinnan,” the woman said, without consulting her appointment book. “Room Fourteen, as usual. And WALK PLEASE.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Nellie, taking off again at full speed. She knew Room Fourteen, it was one of the psych labs where they made her answer all kinds of weird questions about dreams and stuff. She thought it was a gas and always gave the wildest answer that came into her head. The dreams she made up were way more interesting than her actual ones, and besides, she would never give that kind of information to a psychiatrist. Real dreams were private. No one in their right mind should expect you to answer questions like that.

  Grabbing hold of the doorhandle as she ran past, Nellie yanked herself to a stop and fell heavily against the door. Then she pounded twice. She always did this at Room Fourteen, it was her special hello knock.

  “Nellie,” smiled the lab-coated woman who opened the door. She was an assistant, still working on her degree, but insisted Nellie call her Doctor Juba. “I guessed it was you halfway down the hall,” she said, still smiling. It gave Nellie the creeps. “What d’you think was my first clue?”

  Giving her a polite nod, Nellie slipped past without answering. Whenever possible she avoided responding to assistants, just so they would remember that she was one of Advanced’s top cadets and didn’t have to answer to just anyone. “Hey, Dr. Westcott,” she grinned, crossing the room and dropping into an armchair in front of a large desk. “What kind of crazy questions d’you want to bug me with today?”

  The man seated behind the desk gave her an answering grin. Comfortably plump, his hair going gray at the temples, he looked like a man who owned a pack of dogs and a house with a large yard. “Oh, y’know, the same old stuff,” he said, giving her a wink. “Just so I can pull my paycheck for another week.”

  “Yeah. Lucky you’ve got me to bug or you’d go bankrupt.” Leaning forward, Nellie dug into a bowl of candies sitting on the desk. As she unwrapped one, Westcott’s grin grew.

  “Help yourself,” he said. “Retroactively, I mean.”

  “Whatever.” Nellie shrugged and popped a candy into her mouth. Dengleberry flavored — her favorite. She made a mental note to look up ‘retroactively’ on the rec room computer when she got back to dorm.

  “Nellie, how about you come over here and we’ll set you up in the Relaxer,” said Juba from across the room. “Then we can start today’s session.”

  Heaving a sigh, Nellie rolled her eyes at Westcott and got to her feet. Juba was always in a hurry to get things going. Westcott gave her another sympathetic wink, and Nellie fished several more candies out of the bowl. The sugar rush helped her concentrate and dengleberries were a rare treat. Apparently they grew only in the Outbacks.

  Despite the snub she’d received at the door, Juba gave Nellie another smile and waited as she slouched into the Relaxer, a thickly padded chair that tilted into a lie-back position. When Nellie had settled, the assistant slipped a small helmet onto her head, complete with blinders and tiny speakers that fit into each ear. Then she adjusted a small microphone attached to the chin strap so that it sat directly in front of Nellie’s mouth. Retreating to a control panel to Nellie’s right, she flicked a switch.

  Immediately the helmet released a slow pulse into Nellie’s brain, and the speaker in her left ear began emitting the sound of gentle waves. Almost as quickly, Nellie felt her body lose its tense eager lines, and a floating sensation took over the inside of her head. Gripping the right arm of the Relaxer, she pressed her index finger against the tip of a screw that had come slightly loose. Room Fourteen might look sunny and jovial, with its shelves of books, kids’ toys and relaxation chair, but there was something about it that made her uneasy. Maybe it was the slow pulse going through her brain, maybe it was the sound of those annoyingly calm and peaceful waves. The whole thing just felt wrong. No matter how you tried to disguise it, everything in Detta was one big maze and a cadet was always running. It was best, Nellie figured, never to forget this. Index finger pressed against th
e head of the screw, she waited.

  “There, there, Nellie,” said Westcott, his voice emerging from the speaker in her right ear. “Are you ready?”

  “Maybe,” she replied, enunciating clearly into the microphone. Each Relaxer session was recorded for study at a later date. A few months ago, she’d pestered Westcott into letting her listen to several minutes of one of her sessions. She hadn’t liked the way she’d sounded — mumbly, kind of spacey. Thinking about it later, she’d decided she had to concentrate more, and soon after that she’d discovered the loose screw on the arm of the Relaxer.

  “And maybe not,” she added, to keep Westcott and Juba on their toes. “I haven’t decided.”

  “Well, you let me know when you’re ready,” said the psychiatrist. “And while you’re thinking about it, I want you to take all the thoughts and worries you brought with you from Advanced, and put them into a small sailboat. Can you see the sailboat in your head?”

  They went through this routine every session. Nellie’s response had become automatic — as soon as the prerecorded waves started up, a bright yellow sailboat appeared in her mind, tied to a dock. She couldn’t seem to stop this from happening, so as soon as the sailboat came into her head she busied herself scurrying along a shoreline she’d created to go along with the dock, collecting large rocks and heaving them at the boat. Today she’d already managed to tear several holes in the hull. The sailboat was tipping dangerously.

  “Yes, I can see it,” Nellie replied.

  “Good,” Westcott said smoothly. “Now I want you to place all your Advanced thoughts into the sailboat, and send the sailboat out into the ocean. It’s a sunny day, and I’ve got a remote control on the boat. When we’re finished the session I’ll bring it back, and then you can take out your Advanced thoughts again. Okay?”

  Inside her head, Nellie heaved another large rock and the sailboat sank with a quiet blubbing sound. “Okay,” she said.

  “I’m going to count to ten,” said Westcott, “and then the sailboat will sail over the horizon and out of sight with all your Advanced thoughts.” Calmly, the psychiatrist counted slowly to ten. “Now, Nellie, where is the sailboat?”

  “Gone,” said Nellie, putting a dreamy note into her voice. Westcott’s voice got positively purry when she did the dreamy bit. Carefully she pressed her finger harder against the screw. “Gone into the clouds over the horizon.”

  “Into the clouds?” purred Westcott. “How lovely. Can you still see it?”

  “No,” said Nellie. “The clouds are too big and bright and fluffy. Like fairytale castles.”

  “Good,” purred Westcott. “Wonderful. Superb. Marvelous. Now Nellie, I want you to answer some simple questions. Nothing important, just to fill up some time so I can keep my paycheck coming in. When I ask each question, let your mind float free and tell me whatever comes into your head, okay?”

  “Okay,” Nellie said agreeably.

  “What did you have for breakfast today?”

  “Think Quick cereal and two pieces of toast,” Nellie said immediately. She never lied about stuff like breakfast because it was too obvious. If Westcott realized she was deliberately making things up, the game would be over.

  “Good,” said Westcott. “What did you do after that?”

  “Brushed my teeth and had a water fountain fight with Lierin. Until Duikstra caught us.” Nellie let a scowl cross her face, then listened for the smile that crept into Westcott’s next phrase.

  “You make Ms. Duikstra work for her paycheck too, I see,” he chuckled. “Tell me, Nellie, what have you been dreaming about lately?”

  “What have I been dreaming?” Nellie repeated dreamily. This was the good stuff, where Westcott really started to drool.

  “Yes,” purred Westcott. “Dream, dream, dream.”

  “The other day I dreamt a very large snake crawled out of my underpants.” Speaking in a sing-song voice, Nellie struggled to keep her face completely blank. She’d been planning to lay this one on Westcott for several weeks, but for some reason he hadn’t asked about dreams in the last several sessions.

  “A very large snake?” repeated Westcott after a slight pause.

  “VERY large,” affirmed Nellie. “It came crawling out of my underpants and slid out the door and down the hallway in our dorm, and when it reached the end of the hall its tail was just going out of the door of my room.”

  Westcott seemed to be stuck in an extended silence. “And ... how did you feel about that?” he finally asked in an extremely casual tone.

  “It was just a dream,” said Nellie. “I didn’t think about it much.” Westcott liked it when she let him do all the thinking. “And then I had another dream where all the walls in the dorm turned into chocolate. I got pretty fat in that dream.”

  “Hmm,” said Westcott. He didn’t seem as interested in this dream. Nellie sucked at the grin surfacing onto her lips. Just wait until she told Lierin about this one.

  “Nellie,” Westcott said casually. “Have you ever dreamed that you cut off your hair?”

  Deep within Nellie something snapped into high alert. “Cut off my hair?” she asked, forcing herself to speak slowly.

  “Yes,” said Westcott. “Shaved it all off, so you were bald.”

  “Nooooooo,” said Nellie, drawing the word out like a question. “Why would I dream something like that?”

  “Oh, it’s something kids your age often dream about — rebellion, identity seeking, that kind of thing. So you’ve never ... imagined cutting off all your hair?”

  “It fell in my soup the other day,” said Nellie. “I thought about it then.”

  As far as she could tell she was keeping her face neutral, but her mind was spinning like a child’s toy. How did Westcott know about her dreams of the bald girl? Well, she wasn’t really bald, it looked more as if someone had run a lawnmower over her head. So far Nellie had had several dreams about her, all in the past week, but she hadn’t told anyone about them, even Lierin. The weirdest thing was that except for the almost-bald hairstyle, she and the girl in her dreams looked exactly alike. So much so that she could have been dreaming about herself with all her hair cut off. But how could Westcott know about that?

  “How about when you’re asleep?” persisted the psychiatrist. “Or daydreaming in class? Have you ever dreamed about cutting off your hair then?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Nellie emphatically, then repeated the phrase in dreamy tones. “Mostly I dream about the opposite,” she added, “with my hair growing and growing until it pours all over me like a beautiful dress and I can walk down the hall with it trailing twenty feet behind me.”

  What a load of crap, she thought grimly. Was it possible psychiatrists actually fell for this stuff?

  Once again, Westcott didn’t seem interested. “Do you ever have dreams of yourself?” he asked. An odd note had crept into his voice, almost as if he was nervous. “Of seeing yourself from outside, as if you were someone else?”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Nellie said flatly. Why was Westcott so interested in this? Usually he reeled off a long list of silly disconnected questions, nothing she could fit into any kind of theme. “You can’t see yourself like someone else,” she added, hoping he would get the point and drop the subject.

  “Pretend you can,” said Westcott.

  “What do you mean?” faltered Nellie. “Pretend right now?”

  “Okay,” said Westcott. “Pretend now.”

  Instantly the image of the shorn-headed girl appeared in Nellie’s head. It was just as she’d dreamed — the girl standing beside a boy with thick brown hair and green eyes, the kind most people had, without a hint of a slant. Oddly enough, he was missing a finger on one hand, the wound recently healed. Slightly taller than the girl, he stood close by, listening as she spoke. There was something protective in the boy’s stance, as if he’d appointed himself the girl’s guardian. But there was something protective about the girl too, as if she was secretly watching over the boy. Though Nelli
e strained, she couldn’t hear what the two were saying. They seemed to be underground, in some kind of tunnel.

  A tiny gasp sounded through the speaker in her right ear. “So, how about it Nellie?” said Westcott, clearing his throat. “Can you see yourself now with all your hair cut off?”

  Fear dug a path deep through Nellie’s brain. “This is stupid,” she said harshly. “You can’t see yourself unless you’re looking in a mirror. Ask me a different question, not such a dumb stupid one.”

  “That’s okay,” Westcott said quickly. “I think we’ll leave it there for today. This will be a short session. Dr. Juba, perhaps you could help Nellie out of the Relaxer?”

  As the chin strap was released and the helmet lifted from her head, Nellie fought off a wave of panic. What was going on? Westcott always counted backward and had her bring in the sailboat with her Advanced thoughts before letting her out of the Relaxer. He always finished with that idiotic sailboat routine. For one thick stunned moment, Nellie sat in the Relaxer and stared at the psychiatrist. Giving her an uneasy smile, he fidgeted with a mole on his chin.

  “Well, how about it Nellie?” he said. “I think you’re due back for your Bio-weapons class in ten minutes.”

  Stiffly Nellie got out of the Relaxer. None of her joints seemed to be working properly — they thudded and thumped as she crossed the room and jammed her hand into the candy bowl on the psychiatrist’s desk. “These could be bio-weapons y’know,” she said, unwrapping one noisily. “Think about it, Dr. Westcott. You could be putting anything into these candies and feeding them to your victims.”

  Westcott’s eyebrows lifted. “Perhaps I am,” he said, smiling. “Help yourself.”

  His smile did nothing to take the edge off his words. Nellie’s throat tightened and she swallowed. Slowly she placed the unwrapped candy on the psychiatrist’s desk.

  “Sure thing,” she said huskily. “Actually, I was unwrapping this one for you.”