“Well, yes. But Contact has far more applicants than it can use."

“But I thought one of the things that they considered was how much you wanted to get in, and I know nobody could have wanted

to get in as

much as I do. Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted…" The boy’s voice trailed off as they came to the seats.

Fal sat down; so did the boy. Fal

was looking at him now but not listening. She was thinking.

“Perhaps they don’t think you’re mature enough yet."

“I

am

mature!"

“Hmm. They very rarely take people so young, you know. For all I know they’re looking for a special sort of immaturity when

they do take

people your age."

“Well, that’s silly. I mean, how do you know what to do if they don’t tell you what they want. How can you prepare. I think

it’s all really unfair."

“In a way I think it’s meant to be," Jase replied. “They get so many people applying, they can’t take them all or even just

take the best

because there are so many of

them,

so they choose at random from them. You can always reapply."

“I don’t know," the boy said, sitting forward and putting his elbows on his knees and his head into his hands, staring at

the polished wood of

the deck. “Sometimes I think they just tell you that so you won’t feel bad when they reject you. I think

they do maybe take the very best. But I think

they’ve made a

mistake.

But because they won’t tell you why you’ve failed, what can you

do

about it."

… She was thinking about failure too.

Jase had congratulated her on her idea about finding the Changer. Only that morning, when they were on the ancient steam funicular

down

from the lodge, they had heard about the events at Vavatch, when the Changer called Bora Horza Gobuchul had appeared

and escaped on the

pirate ship, taking their agent Perosteck Balveda with him. Her hunch had been right, and Jase was effusive

in its praise, making the point that

it wasn’t her fault the man had got away. But she was depressed. Sometimes being right,

thinking the correct thing, predicting accurately,

depressed her.

It had all seemed so obvious to her. It hadn’t been a supernatural omen or anything silly like that when Perosteck Balveda

suddenly turned

up (on the battle-damaged but victorious GCU

Nervous Energy,

which was towing most of a captured Idiran cruiser), but it had seemed so…

so

natural

that Balveda ought to be the one to go in search of the missing Changer. By that time they’d had more information about what

had

been going on in that volume of space when that particular duel had been going on; and the reported, possible and probable

movements of

various ships had pointed (again, she thought, fairly obviously) to the privateer craft called the

Clear Air Turbulence.

There were other

possibilities, and they were followed up, too, as far as the already stretched resources of Contact’s Special

Circumstances section would

allow, but she was always certain that if any of the branching possibilities was going to bear

fruit it would be the Vavatch connection. The

captain of the

Clear Air Turbulence

was called Kraiklyn; he played Damage. Vavatch was the most obvious site for a full Damage game in

years. Therefore the most

likely place to intercept the vessel—apart from Schar’s World if the Changer already had control—was Vavatch. She

had stuck

her neck out by insisting that Vavatch was the most likely place, and that the woman agent Balveda should be one of those

to go

there, and now it had all come true and she realized it wasn’t really her neck she had stuck out at all. It was Balveda’s.

But what else could be done. The war was accelerating throughout an immense volume; there were many other urgent missions

for the few

Special Circumstances agents, and anyway Balveda was the only really good one within range. There was one young

man they’d sent in with

her, but he was only promising, not experienced. Fal had known all along that if it came to it, Balveda

would risk her own life, not the man’s, if

infiltrating the mercenaries was the only chance of getting to the Changer and

through him to the Mind. It was brave but, Fal suspected, it was

mistaken. The Changer knew Balveda; he might well recognize

her, no matter how much she’d altered her own appearance (and there hadn’t

been time for Balveda to undergo radical physical

change). If the Changer realized who she was (and Fal suspected he had), Balveda had far

less chance of completing her mission

than even the most callow and nervous but unsuspected rookie agent.

Forgive me, lady,

Fal thought to

herself.

I’ d have done better by you if I could.

…

She had tried to hate the Changer all that day, tried to imagine him and hate him because he had probably killed Balveda,

but apart from

the fact that she found it hard to imagine somebody when she had no idea what he might look like (the ship’s

captain, Kraiklyn.), for some

reason the hatred would not materialize. The Changer did not seem real.

She liked the sound of Balveda; she was brave and daring, and Fal hoped against hope that Balveda would live, that somehow

she would

survive it all and that one day, maybe, they would meet, perhaps after the war….

But that didn’t seem real, either.

She couldn’t believe in it; she couldn’t imagine it the way she had imagined, say, Balveda finding the Changer. She had seen

that in her

mind, and had willed it to happen…. In her version, of course, it was Balveda who won, not the Changer. But she

couldn’t imagine meeting

Balveda, and somehow that was frightening, as though she had started to believe in her own prescience

so much that the inability to imagine

something clearly enough meant that it would never happen. Either way, it was depressing.

What chance had the agent of living through the war. Not a good one at the moment, Fal knew that, but even supposing Balveda

did

somehow save herself this time, what were the chances she’d wind up dead anyway, later on. The longer the war went on,

the more likely it

was. Fal felt, and the general consensus of opinion among the more clued-up Minds was, that the war would

last decades rather than years.

Plus or minus a few months, of course. Fal frowned and bit her lip. She couldn’t see them getting the Mind; the Changer was

winning, and

she had all but run out of ideas. All she had thought of recently was a way—perhaps, just maybe—of putting Gobuchul

off: probably not a way of

stopping him completely, but possibly a way of making his job harder. But she wasn’t optimistic,

even if Contact’s War Command agreed to

such a dangerous, equivocal and potentially expensive plan….

“Fal." Jase said. She realized she was looking at the island without seeing it. The glass was growing warm in her hand, and

Jase and the

boy were both looking at her.

“What." she said, and drank.

“I was asking what you thought about the war," the boy said. He was frowning, looking at her with narrowed eyes, the sunlight

sharp on his

face. She looked at his broad, open face and wondered how old he was. Older than her. Younger. Did he feel like

she did—wanting to be

older, yearning to be treated as responsible.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean. Think about it in what way."

“Well," the boy said, “who’s going to win." He looked annoyed. She suspected it had been very obvious that she hadn’t been

listening. She

looked at Jase, but the old machine didn’t say anything, and with no aura field there was no way of telling

what it was thinking or how it was

feeling. Was it amused. Worried. She drank, gulping down the last of the cool drink.

“

We

are, of course," she said quickly, glancing from the boy to Jase. The boy shook his head.

“I’m not so sure," he said, rubbing his chin. “I’m not sure we have the will."

“The

will.

" Fal said.

“Yes. The desire to fight. I think the Idirans are natural fighters. We aren’t. I mean, look at us…." He smiled, as though

he was much older

and thought himself much wiser than she, and he turned his head and waved his hand lazily toward the island,

where the boats lay tilted against

the sand.

Fifty or sixty meters away Fal saw what looked like a man and woman coupling, in the shallows under a small cliff; they were

bobbing up