"Nobody murdered that girl. She committed suicide."

"That's right. Worm out of it. Twist the words. I don't care what you call it. I saw the look on your face!"

"What did you see on my face?"

"Curiosity. Interest. A cold calculating spectator at a... a... circus!" All the disgust welled up anew, leaving Valleroy shaking with revulsion and self-pity.

" 'Curiosity,' 'interest,' 'calculation'... I'll admit to those. But 'cold'... no. Never. The difference between you and me is that I'm directing a war while you are a refugee from that war. Every general officer accepts that some of his troops must die if all are to achieve victory. However much he may want to, he can't try to save any given individual in preference to the cause. The refugee lives only for himself and must salvage the fragments of his own survival. Neither role is enviable." Unutterably weary, the channel slid to the floor, where he sat propped against the bars like a discarded toy.

Valleroy didn't say anything. Again his world was coming apart. He'd learned to trust Klyd. Then he'd learned to hate him. Now, he wondered if it wasn't himself he should hate. He'd been a soldier. He knew what a wartime command was all about. He said, "But she was just a kid..."

"She was a soldier in the biggest and longest war humanity has ever fought. And when it's over, she will be remembered in my family and suitably honored by all of us... forever. That I promise."

In spite of himself, Valleroy felt Klyd's idealistic vision gripping him anew. The worst of it was that it brought back the memory of what Klyd's death would mean to Zelerod's Doom; it brought back part of Valleroy's will to live.

"Hugh, don't you understand? I couldn't let her death go to waste. I had to learn as much as possible from it."

"Learn? What? That Simes kill Gens?"

"No. Why Simes 'kill' at all. If I knew what it is that so attracts the junct to the kill, perhaps I could learn to simulate that quality for him. Then it would be easier to get Simes to disjunct. Maybe, one day, we might learn the technique so well it would be more pleasant to go to a channel than to kill."

Visions again. Valleroy resisted that tug at his imagination. "It wouldn't matter. You'd still be condemned as perverts."

"Perverts are risque. If perversion is also cheap, profitable, and emotionally satisfying to the majority of normal people, it spreads until it is the norm. Can't you imagine what this world would be like if the kill were considered perverted?"

"You could learn to do all that just by watching a kill?"

"It's an opportunity I don't get very often. I could have learned a lot more if I'd been allowed to monitor at close range. But I was in no condition to do that. I'm in worse condition now."

Looking at the channel with new eyes, Valleroy saw a gaunt, deeply lined face, eyes sunken in bruised wells of despair. "I didn't even notice what they've been doing to you."

Klyd shrugged. "They've been treating me pretty well. If they'd driven me to desperation on the trail, I might have done a lot of damage before they could kill me. But they made every conspicuous effort to demonstrate how well they cared for you. By promising repeatedly that I'd have you as soon as we arrived, they subdued that desperation. Standard technique."

"They promised we'd..."

"Oh, yes. But I didn't really believe. And I was right. Don't you see what they're going to do?"

"By putting us close, but not close enough to touch? My field must be driving you mad."

"It is." The distant gentleness of his voice underscored the intense emotion as no display of anguish could. "And they'll come to watch the spectacle."

"How long until... ?"

"I don't know. I'm already in hard need, but I have selyn reserves available for a few more days. I will lose control before death. Have you ever seen attrition?"

"Once or twice. When I was in the Army. Prisoners."

"Ordinary Simes. Horrible enough, but quick. This... will not be quick."

Valleroy didn't think the days of agony he'd witnessed had been quick. He'd been busted for shooting the second Sime they'd caught. "Maybe something will happen in our favor. We're about due for some good luck."

"Now who has succumbed to hope?"

Valleroy laughed but it came out too harsh. "Guilty, General, Sir. I'd like to rejoin my outfit, Sir."

In spite of the growing burden within him, Klyd smiled. "You're a commissioned officer in this Army, Naztehr. The Companions are our elite corps and our secret weapon."

Valleroy felt his ears turn red at that easy acceptance. It seemed they'd always been willing to take him in, but he kept rejecting the thing he wanted most: to live for something beyond his own small life... something that mattered.

It wasn't long until the guard was changed and lunch appeared. Near the center of the outside wall of his cage, a section of the floor slid aside revealing a recessed compartment. Inside this he found a covered chamber pot smelling strongly of disinfectant and a wooden plate heaped with hot food. The cup and spoon were also wooden and slightly sour with disinfectant. But the food was good and the chamber pot was welcome.

When he'd finished, Valleroy placed the wooden implements back in the compartment and waited. No cage was escapeproof. He was determined to find the weak point in this one. It wasn't the bars. They were solidly implanted in the floor and ceiling and there was no sign of rust weakening the structure. Valleroy didn't know how they managed that trick, but it didn't seem important. If he couldn't break out, he'd have to think his way out.

That meant, noticing everything, no matter how trivial. One thing he'd noticed was that they'd given Klyd only broth and water. It wasn't starvation. They just didn't see any reason to feed a Sime in need. Neither did Klyd. He barely touched the water and didn't even sniff the broth. To Valleroy, that meant Klyd would be too weak to run if they could engineer an escape. They'd have to confiscate some horses.

Patience paid off later in the afternoon. He watched carefully as the guard was changed. The noon relief used a key that somehow closed the sliding section of floor and opened the side of the compartment from which he extracted the wooden implements. Now Valleroy knew how the device worked, but he was no nearer escape. Apparently, it was impossible for both doors to be open at the same time. This he could test by jamming his door open next time around. He resolved to try it.

He spent the rest of the afternoon studying the ceiling door and the transparent sheets-very like the stuff the kids had used for their hothouses. It was stored on rollers and pulled down like window shades. At the bottom, there was an air-strip opening that let fresh air in, and another one along the top. The warm air from the heating vents made the cages healthy enough if not comfortable.

The cell was large enough to allow exercise. There was no way to climb the bars. They were set too close to allow even a small person to get a leg around one, and they were polished so smooth, hands would slip. If a prisoner did manage to get to the ceiling, though, the trap door was still a good four feet away in the center of the cage.

There was also a guard stationed up on top of the cages. Any escapee would have to contend with him even on a foggy night. Selyn fields were as good as vision to a Sime. Klyd could deal with the guard when he was in good condition. But the channel had spent the whole day lying in the farthest corner of his cage, eyes open, but breathing with a forced regularity. It was an invisible, motionless battle he was fighting, but it was a crucial one in Valleroy's war. Escape would be useless to him if he couldn't deliver Klyd back to Zeor and Aisha back to Stacy.

Over dinner, Valleroy concluded that the only way he'd ever get out of the cage would be to induce the Raiders to take him out. It seemed to be a very clever idea at the moment it occurred to him, but when he tried to devise a way to implement it, he found there just wasn't any argument he could use that would convince them.

If he were sick, they'd probably just let him die. Companions were no good for the kill, and his death would probably create quite a spectacle in Klyd's cage... so they'd have nothing to lose by letting him die. He couldn't talk to the guards because he was only an animal or a pervert.

He was ticking off his inventory of prisoners' tricks for the fourth time when a piercing scream rent the air and sent him scurrying for the corner he shared with Aisha's cage. Despite having been in a semitrance all afternoon, Klyd was there first, clutching the bars and staring wide-eyed.

Valleroy watched in horrified fascination as the strong-minded courageous girl he'd loved so much cowered like a sick animal in the farthest corner of her cage. She was trembling in psychotic dread, saliva curling out of sagging mouth, eyes bulging. And she screamed her terror with every breath until her beautiful voice was a harsh whisper. Then she continued to scream as if by habit... mindlessly.

"Aisha!" called Valleroy over and over, but it had no effect except possibly to increase her fright. Unable to understand what had happened to her, Valleroy turned to the channel.

He found Klyd also shaking, beads of sweat tracing runnels down his deeply lined face. But the channel somehow managed to pull himself together enough to move toward Valleroy. "Come... over here." He led the way along their common wall until they crouched beside the outside bars. With visible trembling still wracking him, Klyd slumped to the floor. "That fear! Help me, Naztehr. Help me."

Valleroy tried to squeeze his hand between the bars, but it caught at the wrist, no more than touching he center row of bars. "I want to, Sectuib. But I can't reach you. I don't understand what's making her like this. I don't know how to stop it."

Klyd's shaking subsided under the influence of Valleroy's emotional anger, but the Gen's field was a torture of a different sort. Eyes closed, Klyd leaned his head on his knees and said, "They've drugged her. I've heard about this, but I never really believed anybody would do it. A drug-induced fear used to spice the kill. Fits Andle's personality."

Valleroy shook his head, stunned. "Every time I almost decide Simes are just people, I discover some new horror worse than any of the superstitions."

"This is new, even to me. I think they'd given her an overdose and had to tranquilize her while some of it wore off."

"Must be still overdosed. She's afraid of her own shadow. She'll die of heart failure."

As if on cue, a troop of guards marched up to the far side of the cage. Three of them climbed to the roof. A moment later, two of them had leaped down into Aisha's cage and clamped a breathing mask over her face. There was a purple-banded cylinder attached to the mask. Valleroy heard the hiss of escaping gas. Moments later Aisha subsided into unconsciousness.

Both guards turned and leaped up to the ceiling, catching the rim of the trap door. Each hauled himself out as effortlessly as if climbing a stair. Then the trap door clanged shut. The detail marched off with many backward glances toward Klyd. The only words Valleroy could find to describe the expression on their faces at that moment were "anticipatory leer." They were sadists preparing for a feast.