Celia Uithoudt knocked lightly on the cabin door, waited, then knocked again.

“Ilse?”

Her waiting reflected uncertainty. By now the whole crew knew what the young Earth woman had reported to the surface. After a moment Celia turned the knob and looked in. Ilse sat on a small folded rug, her straight back to the door. Celia’s eyes rested on her briefly. Softly she closed the door again and went down the corridor to the dispensary.

As a safety margin the Phaeacia carried two physicians. So far they’d had little to do. She leaned back in the dispensary reading chair, punched in the novel she’d begun, and relaxed. For a while she read quietly with only the small movements normal to sitting, but before long became restless. Finally she put the tape on hold and turned to scan the room. She was alone.

She got up, stepped hesitantly to the door of the small laboratory-pharmacy and peered in, then looked into surgery. No one. Shaking her head she went back to the chair and began reading again.

The possibility had occurred to Ilse and she’d tried it. It turned out not to be difficult for her. She’d done something a bit like it before, in healing, when she would focus her attention on the sick or injured part and concentrate on its wholeness and normal functioning. In this case she’d focused on Celia, concentrating on being beside her. Suddenly she’d been there, surrounded by white enamel and stainless steel, next to the woman who’d become her friend.

She’d been surprised when Celia sensed her presence. Although the woman had shown no sign of being even a latent telepath, she had sensed the psychic presence.

Then Ilse was back in her own cabin, in her still erectly seated body. It had remained upright, the heartbeat slow and regular. But it seemed to her that, without her attendance, the body might not long survive.

And Celia had felt her, although she had not known what it was she felt. So presumably would almost anyone except the totally psi-deaf. Apparently the psyche was sensed more strongly when away from the body.

Again she put herself in the dispensary with her friend. Celia’s mind was composed, absorbing the lines of print. Gradually Ilse impinged more strongly, until the mind beside her showed hints of disturbance. The eyes did not scan as rhythmically. A grain of unease irritated the mind, which tried to shut out the irritation.

Ilse withdrew again to her body and examined results. She could enter the space of a non-psi and be noticed or not noticed at will, according to impingement, intention. But could she enter the presence of telepaths and be unnoticed? Or be noticed selectively, by one and not another? Nils would probably be guarded by a telepath.

Ram was the only telepath on board besides herself, a fitful and very limited one who could provide only a limited test. Subconsciously he still tended strongly to reject what his talent picked up.

Carefully, lightly, she focused on him. He sat in his command chair, glancing back and forth from computer screen to keyboard as his index finger moved deliberately, punching out questions from a checklist. His mind was restless, only a trivial part of it occupied by the routine task. It reflected a sense of futility, and the tinge of paranoia she had noticed.

His unconscious awareness of her was so vague that she recognized it only because she was looking for it. It was not an awareness of another being in his space, but simply of something not quite right, warily ignored.

She withdrew to her body again, for a few moments monitoring its functioning, then focused her attention away again, this time on a place. The tent was gone, and she was on its site, in a circle of yellowed grass around a bull’s eye of wood ashes. Tiny huts hunkered around her, low and drab in the long rays of evening sunlight. There were no voices or any trace of human minds.

She hadn’t tried to move about disembodied before in any way analogous to walking. She found now that she could, and looked into a nearby hut. It was stripped, as she knew it would be.

She conjoined again, instantaneously but softly, raised her body from the rug and drank at the washbowl. So she could project to a distance, to either familiar people or familiar places, and “move around” while there, but she did not feel safe to stay away from the body too long.

She needed experience, she decided, and to test herself against competent psis. Perhaps Hannes was still alive; she hadn’t heard of her brother since the battle at Doppeltanne, a thousand miles and eight months ago. He was an excellent telepath, as sensitive as almost anyone, and no harm would be done if he discovered her.

XXII

It was dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as the alternatives. And if it worked-if it worked he’d have a double victory, over Ahmed and over the Northmen.

The greatest danger was now. Draco ground his teeth unconsciously. Where was the gloomy fool? The consul’s irritable jumpiness did not lessen the intentness with which he monitored. To be caught here on Ahmed’s territory… A centurion’s helmet and breastplate made a thin disguise for a well-known man, even at dusk. And he couldn’t be sure the note had gone through unintercepted. Carried in the mouth it was safer than a spoken message, if the bearer didn’t know what was written on it and remembered to swallow if stopped. But if the swallowing was seen and interpreted, a slit gullet would quickly give it up.

More sets of orc boots approached the alley mouth, but this time it was Kamal who strode past, accompanied by his psi-aid and one other. A quick thought flicked, and when Kamal was a dozen meters farther on, Draco and his companion fell in behind them. Two hundred meters farther and Kamal turned, strode up a low flight of entry stairs, and entered a building. Draco followed.

Kamal was waiting just inside. Otherwise the hallway was deserted, but Draco sensed frightened awareness behind thin wooden doors, a listening to the sound of iron heel plates. Slaves were slaves, whether like these they had status and an apartment or were common drudges crouching in a slave barracks. He spit. They lived powerless and in fear-bloodless, breath-in-throat, honorless fear.

Kamal paused at a door, shoved it open and strode in. Those inside had interpreted the sounds and pauses, and stood waiting. The man was middle-aged, the woman young. They exuded propitiation and submission toward their user-protector. The man hesitated, then bobbed his head and disappeared through an inner door while the woman remained.

Draco grinned. Old Kamal! She was a beauty, and certainly never showed herself in the streets. A dancer, by her looks, who probably performed for her neighbors. One of them had no doubt reported her beauty and grace to Kamal in hope of some reward.

She was undoubtedly an exceptional lay, with something of a hold on the hard-bitten legionary, if he let her live here with her husband instead of taking her into his harem. Or perhaps he found pleasure in humiliating the man by using her here in his presence.

Yes, she was a good one. It showed less in her aura than in Kamal’s irritation now in having business to transact instead of pleasure. But it was a good place for it.

“Get out,” Kamal said drily to her. “We want to talk.”

She stood confused.

“Take her out of here,” he snapped at his orderly. “And I don’t want them listening at the door.”

The man nodded, gripped her arm and led her to the door through which her husband had passed.

“And Dmitri! Do not molest her! Remember who she belongs to.”

The soldier turned, saluted, and closed the door behind him.

Kamal looked at Draco and spoke in an undertone. “This had better be important. Meeting you secretly like this could mean my bones.”