"No. Not many where I come from."

"Very useful laboratory animals, they parallel many human characteristics. Take a puppy, abuse him, kick him, mistreat him -- he'll revert to feral carnivore. Take his litter brother, pet him, talk to him, let him sleep with you, but train him -- he's a happy, well-behaved house pet. Take another from that same litter, pet him on even days and kick him on odd days. You'll have him so confused that he'll be ruined for either role; he can't survive as a wild animal and he doesn't understand what is expected of a pet. Pretty soon he won't eat, he won't sleep, he can't control his functions; he just cowers and shivers."

"Hmm... do you psychologists do such things often?"

"I never have. But it's in the literature... and this lad's case parallels it. He's undergone a series of traumatic experiences in his formative years, the latest of which was yesterday. He's confused and depressed. Like that dog, he may snarl and bite at any time. He ought not to be exposed to new pressures; he should be cared for where he can be given psychotherapy."

"Phooey!"

The psychological officer shrugged. Colonel Brisby added, "I apologize, Doctor. But I know something about this case, with all respect to your training. This lad has been in good environment the past couple of years." Brisby recalled the farewell he had unwillingly witnessed. "And before that, he was in the hands of Colonel Richard Baslim. Heard of him?"

"I know his reputation."

"If there is any fact I would stake my ship on, it is that Colonel Baslim would never ruin a boy. Okay, so the kid has had a rough time. But be has also been succored by one of the toughest, sanest, most humane men ever to wear our uniform. You bet on your dogs; I'll back Colonel Richard Baslim. Now... are you advising me not to enlist him?"

The psychologist hesitated. Brisby said, "Well?"

Major Stein interrupted. "Take it easy, Kris; I'm overriding you."

Brisby said, "I want a straight answer, then I'll decide."

Dr. Krishnamurti said slowly, "Suppose I record my opinions but state that there are no certain grounds for refusing enlistment?"

"Why?"

"Obviously you want to enlist this boy. But if he gets into trouble -- well, my endorsement could get him a medical discharge instead of a sentence. He's had enough bad breaks."

Colonel Brisby clapped him on the shoulder. "Good boy, Kris! That's all, gentlemen."

Thorby spent an unhappy night. The master-at-arms billeted him in senior P.O.s quarters and he was well treated, but embarrassingly aware of the polite way in which those around him did not stare at his gaudy Sisu dress uniform. Up till then he had been proud of the way Sisu's dress stood out; now he was learning painfully that clothing has its proper background. That night be was conscious of snores around him... strangers... fraki -- and he yearned to be back among People, where he was known, understood, recognized.

He tossed on a harder bed than he was used to and wondered who would get his own?

He found himself wondering whether anyone had ever claimed the hole he still thought of as "home." Would they repair the door? Would they keep it clean and decent the way Pop liked? What would they do with Pop's leg?

Asleep, he dreamt of Pop and of Sisu, all mixed up. At last, with Grandmother shortened and a raider bearing down. Pop whispered, "No more bad dreams, Thorby. Never again, son. Just happy dreams"

He slept peacefully then -- and awoke in this forbidding place with gabbling fraki all around him. Breakfast was substantial but not up to Aunt Athena's high standards; however he was not hungry.

After breakfast he was quietly tasting his misery when he was required to undress and submit to indignities. It was his first experience with medical men's offhand behavior with human flesh -- he loathed the poking and prodding.

When the Commanding Officer sent for him Thorby was not even cheered by seeing the man who knew Pop. This room was where he had had to say a last "good-business" to Father; the thoughts lingering there were not good.

He listened listlessly while Brisby explained. He woke up a little when he understood that he was being offered status -- not much, he gathered. But status. The fraki had status among themselves. It had never occurred to him that fraki status could matter even to fraki.

"You don't have to," Colonel Brisby concluded, "but it will make simpler the thing Colonel Baslim wanted me to do -- find your family, I mean. You would like that, wouldn't you?"

Thorby almost said that he knew where his Family was. But he knew what the Colonel meant: his own sib, whose existence he had never quite been able to imagine. Did he really have blood relatives somewhere?

"I suppose so," he answered slowly. "I don't know."

"Mmm..." Brisby wondered what it was like to have no frame to your picture. "Colonel Baslim was anxious to have me locate your family. I can handle it easier if you are officially one of us. Well? It's Guardsman third class... thirty credits a month, all you can eat and not enough sleep. And glory. A meager amount."

Thorby looked up. "This is the same Fam -- service my Pop -- Colonel Baslim, you call him -- was in? He really was?"

"Yes. Senior to what you will be. But the same service. I think you started to say 'family.' We like to think of the Service as one enormous family. Colonel Baslim was one of the more distinguished members of it."

"Then I want to be adopted."

"Enlisted."

"Whatever the word is."

Chapter 16

Fraki weren't bad when you got to know them.

They had their secret language, even though they thought they talked Interlingua. Thorby added a few dozen verbs and a few hundred nouns as he heard them; after that he tripped over an occasional idiom. He learned that his light-years as a trader were respected, even though the People were considered odd. He didn't argue; fraki couldn't know better.

H.G.C. Hydra lifted from Hekate, bound for the Rim worlds. Just before jump a money order arrived accompanied by a supercargo's form which showed the draft to be one eighty-third of Sisu's appreciation from Jubbulpore to Hekate -- as if, thought Thorby, he were a girl being swapped. It was an uncomfortably large sum and Thorby could find no entry charging him interest against a capital share of the ship -- which he felt should be there for proper accounting; it wasn't as if he had been born in the ship. Life among the People had made the beggar boy conscious of money in a sense that alms never could -- books must balance and debts must be paid.

He wondered what Pop would think of all that money. He felt easier when he learned that he could deposit it with the Paymaster.

With the draft was a warm note, wishing him good business wherever he went and signed: "Love, Mother." It made Thorby feel better and much worse.

A package of belongings arrived with a note from Fritz: "Dear Brother, Nobody briefed me about recent mysterious happenings, but things were crisp around the old ship for a few days. If such were not unthinkable, I would say there had been a difference of opinion at highest level. Me, I have no opinions, except that I miss your idle chatter and blank expressions. Have fun and be sure to count your change.

Fritz"

"P.S. The play was an artistic success -- and Loeen is cuddly."

Thorby stored his Sisu belongings; he was trying to be a Guardsman and they made him uncomfortable. He discovered that the Guard was not the closed corporation the People were; it required no magic to make a Guardsman if a man had what it took, because nobody cared where a man came from or what he had been. The Hydra drew its company from many planets; there were machines in BuPersonnel to ensure this. Thorby's shipmates were tail and short, bird-boned and rugged, smooth and hairy, mutated and superficially unmutated. Thorby hit close to norm and his Free Trader background was merely an acceptable eccentricity; it made him a spaceman of sorts even though a recruit.