I worry most about Aidan, not because he cannot succeed, but that he might not. Sometimes, when I dream of the dying Ramon Mattlov, the face of the corpse changes and becomes his near twin, Aidan. Interpreters would say that I fear something, something related to this stubborn cadet. I have seen many trainees who are too clever by half, and he leads them all in this respect. All I can do now is wish the best for him.

13

Aidan woke up suddenly. Near his bunk a dark blur moved slowly, or else he was not really awake and this was a nightmare.

"Who is it?" he whispered.

The blur hesitated, as if it wanted neither to sleep nor to haunt.

"It is Peri, is it not?" he said.

Her shoulders sagged. She had not wanted to be recognized.

"I am leaving," she said. "Please do not speak louder. I do not want to display my humiliation to the others."

"It is not humiliation, it is—"

"I know. It is part of the whole damn noble goal we all seek. Only now I am out of it. Think of how it feels. All this time spent in training, only to be flushed out and told you now belong to another caste. Well, I do not belongto any other caste. Wherever I am, people will look at me and the thought will cross their minds that once I was in warrior training. It is like a brand mark on my forehead. I am a warrior and will remain so all my life. All my life."

Aidan sat up in his bunk and tried to make out her face in the dim light.

"Where are they sending you?"

"I am not told. Just that it will be in the scientist caste. I will be an apprentice, A Tech in training to be a scientist."

"That sounds good, Peri. Important."

"It is. As consolations go, it is acceptable. That is the way of the Clan, as they so often tell us. We accept what comes. Death or honor, success or failure. But I wanted to be a warrior, needed to be one. You knew that better than anybody. For some reason, I have never fathomed, you seem to perceive things the rest of us do not."

"I used to think we all knew everything about each other, that such understanding was no special talent."

"But we were each different. I always thought that was the interesting thing about our sibko—about most sibkos, I suspect."

"What do you mean?"

"We come from the same gene pool. With the same genetic materials, we might have been identical in most ways. But, just as there is a great deal of physical variation among us, there are also differences of talent and ability. It says a lot for our genetic forebears, tends to confirm the superiority of successful Bloodnamed warriors and their achievements, that there are more than sufficient good traits in the two geneparents to be doled out among their sibspring. Validates the worthiness of the Kerensky program, in a way. Still, I wonder why so much variation in our sibko? Seems to me we should allhave become warriors—or, conversely, all of us should have flushed out. But the differences in our performances have been phenomenal."

She glanced around the room, where the others made various sleeping sounds. She seemed to be searching for answers to the questions she had posed.

"You know, now I think of it, I would like to study that. Certainly, if they choose to lock me up with a bunch of scientists, I stand a good chance of attempting such study."

They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Aidan wondered if one should say something positive, thoughtful, comforting at a time like this. As Clansmen, it was so hard for any of them to come up with a pleasantry, a piece of well-considered counsel or even a polite farewell. If sibparent Glynn had not told them all those stories about heroes in other cultures, they might not even have been aware that there werealternate customs, alternate behaviors. Peri apparently had the same problems with saying goodbye, for she said, "Go back to sleep, Aidan. We do not know how to part from each other, even though we have grown up together and have rarely been apart until now. It was the same with all the others when they left. Maybe that is why most of us try to steal away instead of saying long goodbyes."

Aidan nodded and lay back against his pillow. The dark blur disappeared, then returned.

"Aidan?"

"Yes?"

"You could have killed me that day. I was in your sights and nearly disabled. I could sense the moment when it should have happened. Why did you hesitate?"

"I am not certain. It did not seem right to kill you, so I did not."

"You were wrong. You should not have hesitated."

Then she disappeared again and did not return.

In the morning, with Peri's bunk in readiness for orderlies to transport it away, none of the other remaining members of the sibko mentioned her absence. Marthe did stare at the bunk for a brief time, but what she felt or thought was not evident on her face.

That same day Falconer Joanna flung open the barracks door, stood outlined in bright light, then announced with something distantly resembling cheerfulness that it was time to scrub down the entire building. Inside and out. At one time the sibkin might have exchanged wondering glances, the kind that clearly showed there was something strange about the order. Joanna had always left maintenance of the barracks to the sibko and had seemed satisfied with its performance. It seemed significant that she wanted a thoroughgoing cleaning now. Without the least non-verbal communication between them, the sibkin merely awaited their specific orders.

Holding the bucket and mop in front of her as if it were disease-ridden, Joanna handed them to Aidan and told him he was assigned the bathroom area, the "Cave" as it was called in Clan lore. And for good reason, Aidan thought as he entered it: it was like a cave, dark and damp. Turning on a lamp, Aidan worked hard at making the room not only clean but shiny. Every piece of offending matter, no matter what might have been its origin, was rubbed or scraped away until the room looked as it had the first day they had arrived at the barracks. Then it struck him. The first day. Which meant that some previous training unit had painstakingly scrubbed and cleaned it before his sibko had arrived. Which suggested that they were now leaving the barracks for the last time, preparing it for its next occupants. Which got Aidan so excited he could feel his heart beat fast and hard.

It was all he could do to remove the debris he had gathered up, so anxious was he to see if the others sensed what he had. Outside the Cave, he glanced at Marthe, who was shining the metal rim of a window.

"We are leaving here, quiaff?"he said.

She did not look up from her task. "Aff. Or, at least, that seems possible."

He tried not to notice the detachment in her voice, the indifference to what should have been an exciting moment. She just went on with her polishing. The surface already looked shiny enough.

"Where are we going, do you think?" Aidan asked her.

"There seems little doubt. The other side of Ironhold, where the heavy 'Mechs are."

"It is the final test, then?"

"The preliminary to it, I suspect. If you recall Falconer Joanna's instructions from last week, before we reach the Trial, we must complete our training using fully operational neurohelmets mated with actual 'Mechs, not just the usual simulators. Also, we will become familiar with the 'Mechs we will use in the Trial of Position."

"I can hardly believe the time has come."

She turned to him, frowning. "Why is it so hard to believe? It must come sooner or later, quiaff?"