"Yes, my father." Radig glowered down at Jin. "And for what potential gain do we risk keeping this one alive?"

Obolo snorted. "You consider keeping a woman alive to be a risk?"

"She's not a normal woman, my father-she's an agent of the Cobra Worlds. That makes her dangerous."

Abruptly, Jin noticed that the red border was still around her vision... that it was, in fact, getting thicker... as the view itself seemed to be fading away...

No! she told herself furiously, trying to fight the sleep flowing over her mind.

Come on, Jin-hang on. But it was too hard to muster the necessary emotion. And it was so comfortable here on the floor...

Her last memory was that of rough hands digging under her armpits and legs, lifting her up and floating her away...

Chapter 36

"...The screen in front of each of you will display a brief summary of each of the steps I've just outlined," the instructor concluded his presentation, waving his hand over his podium toward the rows of equipment-laden tables in front of him. "If you have any questions tap the 'help' key; if that still doesn't do it, tap the 'signal' key and someone will come to your work station. Any questions?

All right, then. Get to it, and remember that the future of communication on

Qasama may depend on you."

Shifting his eyes to the screen attached to the work table, Daulo suppressed a grimace and picked up a circuit board and a handful of components. He hadn't really expected to be given a missile casing and told to load a warhead onto it... but assembling telephone circuitry was hardly what he'd hoped for, either.

"Not wasting any time getting us to work, are they?" he murmured.

He glanced to the side in time to see Akim's shrug. "They're paying all of us quite well," he pointed out.

Daulo gritted his teeth and plugged the first component into the circuit board.

He'd been trying to pique Akim's curiosity about Mangus itself ever since being ushered off the bus, and had yet to make any impression on the man. Akim was on the trail of a female offworlder, and he clearly had no intention in being distracted from that single-minded path. "At least it explains why they don't bother hunting down their previous workers," Daulo commented, trying another approach. "If everything they do here is this simple-minded it's just as easy to teach a new group from the beginning."

Akim glanced up and around, and for a moment Daulo hoped he might argue the point. But he merely nodded. "Inefficient, to some degree, but not overly so," he said, and returned his attention to his own circuit board. "Certainly helps spread a little extra wealth around to Azras's poor."

"Right," Daulo muttered under his breath. "Obolo Nardin is just as noble as all creation."

"If I were you," Akim said coldly, "I'd try and forget my village prejudices and concentrate on the task at hand. Do you see anyone here who could be the woman in disguise?"

With a sigh, Daulo gave the room a careful scan, the image of Jin getting into

Radig Nardin's car rising up to haunt him. "I don't think so."

"Keep an eye out," Akim told him. "They may occasionally rotate workers between groups."

Daulo nodded and turned back to his work.

It was perhaps an hour later when he suddenly noticed Akim had stopped working and was gazing straight ahead into space. "Something?" he asked.

Akim turned sharply to look at him. "Something's wrong," he whispered hoarsely.

"There's-" he licked his lips, eyes darting all around him. "Don't you feel it?"

Daulo leaned close, fighting against the sudden dread rising in his throat.

Akim's barely controlled panic was contagious. "I don't understand. What is it you're feeling?"

Akim drew a shuddering breath. "Treachery," he said, hands visibly trembling.

"There's... treachery here. Don't you feel it?"

Daulo threw a quick look around the room. So far no one else seemed to have noticed them, but that wouldn't last long. "Come on," he said, getting to his feet and gripping Akim's arm. "Let's get out of here."

Akim shrugged off his hand. "I can manage myself," he snarled, standing up unsteadily.

"Whatever you want," Daulo gritted. The door they'd come in by was all the way at the back of the room; much closer was another exit near the front podium.

Taking Akim's arm again as the other staggered slightly, he headed that way.

The instructor intercepted them as they got to the door. "Where are you going?" he demanded. "The exit is back that-"

"My friend is sick," Daulo cut him off. "Is there a lavette out there somewhere?"

The other seemed to draw back, and Daulo took advantage of his hesitation to push past. Outside was a corridor he hadn't seen on their way into the building, with a heavy-looking door at the far end. Halfway toward it was the lavette he'd hoped for; guiding Akim through the door, he all but pushed the other down onto a cushion in the lounge section.

For a long moment neither man spoke. Akim took several slow, deep breaths, checked his fingers for signs of trembling, and after a bit rose and studied his face in the mirror. Only then did he finally look Daulo in the eye. "You didn't feel it, did you?" he demanded. "You didn't feel anything in there?"

Daulo spread his hands, palm upwards. "You'll have to be more specific," he said.

"I wish I could." Akim leaned back toward the mirror, gazed deeply into his own eyes. "I felt-well, curse it all, I felt treason. There's no other way to put it; I felt treason. Whether it makes any sense of not."

It didn't; but it almost didn't matter. Whatever the reason, Akim had finally been jolted out of his indifference toward Mangus, and it was up to Daulo now to fan that flame. "I don't understand," he admitted, "but I trust your instincts."

Akim threw him a baleful glance. "Instincts be cursed," he ground out. "There's something wrong in this place, and I'm going to find out what it is."

He started toward the door. "You going back in there?" Daulo asked carefully. "I mean, considering what just happened-"

"I'm fully under control now," the other said stiffly. "As far as you're concerned, I just had a bad reaction to something I ate for breakfast.

Understand?"

The instructor was watching from just outside the assembly-room door when they emerged from the lavette. He accepted Akim's suitably embarrassed explanation and escorted them back to the room and their tables. Returning to his work,

Daulo stretched out his senses to the limit, trying as hard as he could to pick up the feeling Akim had described.

Nothing.

What was perhaps worse, Akim could apparently no longer sense it, either.

Grim-faced, he sat at his table and worked on his circuit boards, without even a mild recurrence of his earlier reaction.

Which meant either that whatever it was had passed... or that it had never been there in the first place.

It was, Daulo decided, probably the oddest sunset he'd ever seen. Ahead, the sun was invisible below the level of Mangus's outer wall, while overhead it still sent multicolored light patterns across the shimmering canopy. "I wonder if that thing keeps the rain out," he commented, twisting his head to gaze upward out their window at it.

"Why else would it be there?" Akim growled from his bed.

To keep Jin's people from seeing in. But he couldn't tell Akim that. "You still bothered by what happened in the assembly room this afternoon?" he asked instead, keeping his eyes on the canopy.

"Wouldn't you be?" the other snapped. "I behaved like a fool in public, and then couldn't even discover why I'd done so."

Daulo pursed his lips. "Could it have been some chemical they use in the manufacturing process?" he suggested. "Something that might still have been evaporating from the circuit boards?"