Partnership (41 page)

"Knew about the buildings already," Micaya pointed out "We were there too, if you recall, /didn't see any need to stand up in court and contradict Sev's rather touching evidence. Neither did your brawn PARTNERSHIP

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here." She threw her head back and drained her glass of imported wine in one gulp. Forister winced.

"Then—" Nancia was confused.

Forisfcer patted her titanium column. "It was... in die nature of a test, you might say," he told her. "Mic, here, thought you'd been with Caleb too long, absorbed too much of his black-and-white attitude to be as flexible as a good investigative team needs to be. We may be feeing some delicate assignments. Need to make some judgment calls—can'trely on CS regulations to answer every question. Now / thought you had the maturity to make your own moral judgments—including knowing when to keep silent After all, you didn't lie about any of Fassa's wrongdoing; all that evidence is dear in your deposition.

\bu just—balanced—what you couldn't say about her tragic childhood, against what you didn't have to say about her work on Shemali."

"You don't despise me for it?"

"I did the same thing," Forister pointed out, "and without benefit of your inside information on Fassa's childhood."

"Then — it wasn't wrong?"

"You're an adult now, Nancia. You use your own judgment What do you think?" Forister asked.

Nancia was still thinking when they reached the first Singularity point on the run to Theta Szentmari. With Forister and Micaya strapped down in their cabins, she arced through the collapsing spaces in an effortless flashing dive. Space and time twisted and reformed about her as she chose their path through continually changing matrices of transformations. For the few seconds of perfect, gliding, dangerous transition she danced and swam in her own element, making her own decisions.

As she continued to do for the rest of her career.

— THE END —