Cute? Chicken? What does this kid use for brains?

"He keeps looking at me all the time."

Great. I'm supposed to be keeping this virgin intacto, and one of my team has the hots for her. "Let me know if he bothers you. I'll keep him in line."

"He doesn't bother me." The sunny smile was back. "I sort of like him. He reminds me of someone I once knew."

And if he puts one finger on you I'll turn him into a soprano.

Lila giggled. "Not a person, actually. It was a puppy I once had. He was a cute little fella, but sort of crazy. Always peeing on the carpet or barking in the middle of the night. Crazy, but cute."

"And Chicken reminds you of…?"

"He has the same sort of look on his face sometimes."

"Some puppy," Martha said, laughing. "Look, I don't want to sound pompous, but we tend to discourage personal relationships on these trips. You know?"

Lila nodded solemnly, but Martha knew that the message had not gotten through. It was a disquieting thought, for a romance was the last thing that she needed right now. Getting Lila out of Rockhill had been the obvious opening move in a defense against Sextant, but Martha knew that the girl's vulnerability had only been lessened, not eliminated. She knew that she was up against an accomplished professional, and that any defense she might mount against Sextant would be no more effective than the tools she had to work with: four teenage kids without field experience. She damned the Agency for giving them a job with such unattractive odds, but she comforted herself with the manner in which most of the kids were conducting themselves. Pam and Linda had quickly formed a female bond with Lila, and George had assumed the role of the considerate, if disinterested, older brother.

The weak link was Chicken, who was so out of tune with the others. On the basis of his record at the Center, he had no business being on the job. His grades were poor, his attitude indifferent, and, most important, he was losing his ability to work head-to-head. Along with the other members of his class, he had arrived at the Center at the age of eleven with all the latent abilities of a sensitive, but during the past year, when those abilities should have been peaking, they had started to ebb. Often he could not hear what the others were saying when they went head-to-head, often he couldn't get through when he tried to speak to them that way, and always the effort was accompanied by a severe pain at the base of his skull. Chicken was on his way to becoming a deuce, a failed ace.

The physicians at the Center had language to explain the erosion of Chicken's skills. They spoke about the neurological imbalance that lay at the core of a sensitive's ability, and how, in some few cases, the neurological network slowly returned to a balanced, or normal, state. The condition was rare, but not unknown, and once the balance was complete the skills were gone. It happened perhaps once in every five hundred cases that an ace turned into a deuce, and there were always one or two of them around the Center. There was no way in which they could be sent back into the normal world, for they knew too much, and so they stayed bound to a life that had abandoned them. They became the hewers of wood and the fetchers of water, auxiliaries to those who once had been their peers. To be a deuce among aces was a sensitive's nightmare, and Chicken was facing just such a life.

Poor bastard, Martha thought. Poor, pathetic bastard.

She pushed the thought aside; it was time to check the troops. To the lift in back of her, she flashed, Pam? Linda?

Pam here.

Linda here. Any instructions?

Just keep your heads open. Report anything that looks even slightly suspicious. George? Chicken?

George here.

Chicken? No answer. Chicken, do you copy? Still no answer. Damn it, Chicken… Martha caught herself. George, tell him to keep his eyes open and stay alert.

You try telling him. He's off in another world. I think he's in love.

Just what we needed. You mean Lila?

Who else?

That isn't love, it's teenage lust.

I know that, and you know that, but Chicken doesn't. Maybe if you fixed him up with her…

That's enough of that. Nobody's getting fixed up on this trip.

Hey, who made that rule? asked Pam from behind, and Linda chimed in, You mean we're supposed to live like nuns?

I said enough, Martha told them. George, tell Chicken what I said, and the rest of you keep alert.

George poked Chicken, and said, "Martha says to keep your eyes open."

Chicken nodded absently. Open for what? Villains? Guys in black hats? His mind was on Lila, but not on the job. The girl attracted him, he wanted her to notice him, but he didn't know how to get her attention. He had little experience with "normal" girls, even the females at the Center seemed always to defeat him, and he was painfully aware of his limitations. His appearance was against him. He was overgrown and clumsy for his age, with a moon face, squinty eyes, and features that were not yet fully formed. He had no social graces, words did not come easily to him, and when he talked with girls he tended to mutter the first idiocy that came into his mind. So he did crazy things. He stole trucks at the Center, raced them and crashed them. He stunted, he bragged, he lied outrageously. He did everything he could to get the world to pay attention, but all that the world ever did was to frown.

So far, Lila hadn't frowned, but she hadn't paid much attention to him, either. Still, he had the feeling that she liked him, and there had to be a way to make her notice him, a way to light up her eyes. But, as always, he couldn't think of what to do, or to say. Angry at his helplessness, he gripped the safety bar in front of him, and squeezed. He squeezed as hard as he could, as if squeezing could give him an answer. He looked down at his hands. Fastened to the safety bar was a metal plaque that bore a warning. DO NOT BOUNCE ON THE CHAIRS.

Yeah, he thought. Yeah.

He shifted his weight in the seat, and gave a little bounce. The chair shivered, and the tremor passed up through the supporting bar to the cable. The chair rocked back and forth. He did it again, just a little bounce, and the same thing happened. One solid bounce, he figured, would send the chairs rocking all along the cable. He was about to try it when he felt George's hand close over his wrist in a tight grip. George twisted and squeezed, and pain shot up Chicken's arm.

"Hey, cut it out," he said.

"Don't do it again."

"Do what?"

"Bounce."

"I wasn't."

"You were, and you were about to do it again. That's kid stuff, Chicken, and it's dangerous. Get her attention some other way."

"You're hurting my wrist."

"If you try it again," George said sweetly, "I will break your fucking hand."

"Look, I really wasn't…"

"You were. You were about to pull one of your stupid stunts."

"How did you…?" Chicken knew the answer before he finished the question. George had been in his head, and he hadn't been aware of it. He had felt nothing. The knowledge hurt more than the pain in his wrist, and he muttered, "You can let go now. I won't do anything."

George took his hand away. He stared straight ahead as if nothing had happened. They rode together silently, until Chicken, rubbing his wrist, said, "We used to be friends."

They had been more than friends. George and Chicken, Pam and Linda, Terry Krazewski back at the Center in the infirmary-as members of the same class they had been taught to think of themselves as brothers and sisters. George sighed. "Look, I'm still your friend, still your brother, but shit, Chicken, this last year… there sure are times when you burn my ass. And it isn't just me."