I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                   - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 4 -

                    First Movement: Page of Swords

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                              Anne Cross

                (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                                CARIDA
                             NIVEN SECTOR
                       TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2409

        Like so many stories on the fringes of the Corporate Sector,
it started with a girl running.  A girl, in this case, named Anne.  A
girl in her early-middle teens, so dirty and dressed in such
shapeless, ragged clothing it was difficult to tell either of those
facts from looking at her.  Her face was smudged with the black filth
of a poorly-filtered industrial city, her clothes a mottled collection
of grime greys and browns, and the natural color of her wild tangle of
hair impossible to determine.
        This was in stark contrast to the man who was chasing her; he
was tall and well-made, and dressed impeccably, all in black, with a
high-collared jacket, gloves, and dataglasses that hid his eyes.  On
his chest gleamed a golden badge imprinted with a Greek letter.
        She ran down an alley in Carida City, knocking trash barrels
over in her wake, but where the barrels might have hindered her
pursuer had he been another of her, to a grown man they weren't much
of an obstacle.  She slammed through a gate, tripped, tore her arm on
a jagged piece of fence wire.  Crying out, she scrambled to her feet
and kept running as hot blood ran down inside her sleeve.  She tried
not to think of all the disgusting things that might have entered her
bloodstream from that wire.
        The alley was a dead end.
        Anne screamed in frustration, looked around, and saw a
hatchway set into the dirty aluminum wall to her right.  It would be a
tight fit for her, but in that case, it would be impossible for her
pursuer.
        She hauled it open and dove in, plunging into a slippery,
stinking darkness and sliding down, down, down.  She fought to keep
from vomiting, holding her breath as best she could, and belatedly
hoped that the shaft didn't lead to an incinerator.
        It didn't.  A few seconds later she tumbled through another
hatchway and into the smelly embrace of a half-full Dumpster.
Coughing and gagging, she fought her way out of the mess, tumbled over
the side of the Dumpster, and put her back to it.  She was in another
alley, this one on the other side of the building and one elevation
level down, leading toward what looked like a fairly busy street.  She
lit out for it at a dead run.
        Behind her, Anne heard the sound of a door banging open.  Damn!
The bastard had a confounder, he'd rascaled his way into the building
and followed the garbage chute to the other side.
        "Miss Cross, this is your last warning!  Stop in the name of
the Psionics Protection Act!" the man's voice bellowed from behind
her.  She didn't stop.
        Two figures stepped into the mouth of the alley, blocking her
way to the street.  She pulled up with a gasp, and as she did, the
shriek of a sonic stunner yelled out behind her.  Just ahead of her, a
window exploded, showering the alley in jagged pebbles of glass - it
was a good thing she'd stopped after all.
        Panting, her heart pounding, she gave the two newcomers a
momentary look.  One of them was a tall, gangly man with a craggy,
weatherbeaten face, dressed in an old-fashioned trenchcoat and fedora
hat over a blue suit.  The other, a younger man, froze Anne's blood
in her veins, for he was dressed all in black with a high collar, and
for the moment, that was all she could see.
        More of them.
        The elder man was running angrily into the alley, his seamed
face set in a scowl of anger, and reaching into his coat for
something.  The girl ducked into a defensive crouch, then jumped,
ducking past him and dashing for the mouth of the alley.
        "Sod it - Saionji!" shouted the old man.  "Don't let her get
to the street, we'll never bloody find her again!"
        The younger man nodded silently and moved to intercept her.
Frantic, expecting to feel the lash of his mind against hers, Anne
tore a long, vicious-looking knife (stolen from the kitchen of a
restaurant) from under her ragged poncho-style cloak and lunged.  She
wasn't sure quite what happened next - there was a sharp but almost
instantly-over pain in her right wrist, her hand was suddenly empty,
and a strong arm encircled her, slinging her up onto a shoulder.
        "What the hell do you think you're doing?" the man with the
sonic stunner shouted, jumping over the railing from the building's
loading dock and leveling his sonic stunner at the younger man and his
panicked, struggling burden.
        "Saionji, get her out of here!" barked the man in the
trenchcoat as he lunged to grab the Psi Cop's wrist and push his hand
upward.  Without hesitating, Saionji did as he was told, whirling and
running back toward the mouth of the alley.  Slung as she was over his
shoulder, Anne could look back and watch the mysterious old man
grappling with the Psi Cop.  The stunner howled again, sending its
pulse uselessly into the sky.
        "Bastard - " snarled the Cop, and he narrowed his eyes.  Anne
winced as she felt the bleed-over ripple of a telepathic attack, and
she expected to see the other man collapse, his consciousness snuffed
like a candle.
        Instead, his gangly body quivered; then he rose up to his full
height, still gripping the smaller Psi Cop's wrist, and hoisted the
man clean off the ground by his arm.  The trenchcoated man hauled back
one big, knuckly fist, moving with a ponderous grace that reminded
Anne of a machine, then unwound his arm like a released spring and
slammed the fist against the Psi Cop's face.  The man then spun his
suddenly-inert opponent, threw him face-first against the wall, and
began buckling his wrists into a set of handcuffs fished from an
inside pocket.
        All this, Anne only half-comprehended at the time, so wound up
was her mind with panic and fear.  She fought against the grip of the
man who carried her, beating at his back and kicking his chest,
struggling with all her might, but she might have been a sack of oats
for all the difference her efforts made.  His arm around her waist,
pinning her to his shoulder, might as well have been an iron hoop.
        As he reached the end of the alley, Saionji's path was
suddenly blocked by another figure in black, this one decked with the
gleaming badge of the Psi Corps.  Anne, now craning forward, looking
under his arm, saw this enemy approaching upside-down, and screamed as
she saw him draw a weapon - and not just a sonic stunner, either.  The
whirring hiss of a charging phased plasma gun filled her ears.
        "Stop or I shoot!" the Psi Cop barked.  Saionji didn't slacken
his pace.  The Cop leveled the weapon and fired, but Saionji and his
burden weren't there when the pulse flitted through empty space and
blew a chunk out of the building to the right.  There was a strange
snapping hiss, a loud hum, a faint sizzle, and the Psi Cop fell away,
clutching at the stump of his wrist and screaming.
        The strange noise reversed itself, almost sounding like
something being sucked away, and the hum ceased.  The nearby lash of
another ego whip scratched across Anne's mind, directed not at her but
the man who carried her.  He evinced even less reaction than had the
man in the trenchcoat, not even missing a stride as he jumped lightly
over the metal railing lining the sidewalk, into the street.
        At that range, with her as close as she was to the target, it
didn't matter that the attack wasn't meant for her; Anne caught enough
of it to send her mind reeling.  Her last thought before her
consciousness winked out was,
        He didn't even react.  If he's not a Psi Cop, how - ?

        Consciousness returned slowly, but painlessly.  Anne was lying
on something firm, but not hard, in a room with light, but not too
much of it.  The air was sweet with a scent she couldn't recognize - a
far cry from the plasticene odor of Orron IV or the stink of the
spaceport cities she'd become accustomed to since leaving.  It was
almost sweet and soft enough for her to go back to sleep, and rest
this time, except that her survival instincts were honed too sharp.
She sat up with a gasp, then another as the violent motion brought the
pain that had failed to appear when she'd first awakened.  Her head
swam, and for a moment she felt she would throw up, but it passed off
as suddenly as it had struck, and she looked around her.
        She was in a bedroom, small but comfortable, Spartan in
appointment.  There was the rather narrow bed she was lying on, which
was, now that she looked at it, actually part of the wall.  Along the
wall at the bed's foot was a small desk with a dataterminal and a pair
of framed photographs in a hinged case.  One was of two women, one of
them dressed in a white military uniform of some kind and wearing a
sword at her side, the other in the loveliest white and gold gown Anne
had ever seen.  The way it was posed, it almost looked like a wedding
photo, though that was clearly absurd.  The other was a head-and-
shoulders portrait of a pretty girl in her late teens with auburn hair
framing her face, eyes that (remarkably) matched it, and a rather
cocky grin.
        On the wall opposite the bed was a painting of some fantasy
setting, which struck Anne as odd given the utilitarian plainness of
the rest of the room.  It was some kind of platform in the sky, a
circular stone affair with a great spiral staircase rising to an
arched gateway that led onto a round space paved like the face of a
gigantic rose.  Anne got up and looked at it more closely.  Three tiny
figures were visible on the platform.  Two of them looked like they
were having a swordfight; the third stood off to the side, watching.
        "Weird," she murmured, and as though it were voice-activated,
the narrow door a few feet to the right of the door slid open and the
man in black came in.
        Anne jumped back until she bumped the edge of the desk; behind
her, there was a clatter as the impact knocked over the picture
frame.  The man didn't react much; he just stopped inside the door and
stood looking calmly at her.
        This was the first time she'd ever gotten a good look at his
face.  It was long and lean, like the rest of him, framed by his long,
wavy dark-green hair.  He was handsome in a sardonic kind of way, with
a hard, rather cruel mouth and intense violet eyes.  Anne looked him
the rest of the way over and realized that he wasn't really dressed
that much like a Psi Cop after all.  The color was the same, and his
collar had a similar sort of Mandarin cut, but he wasn't wearing a
formal suit like the Psi Cops wore.  It was just a black coverall, the
kind with a lot of pockets.  He wasn't wearing gloves, either.  No Psi
Cop ever ventured out of his private quarters without gloves.
        No Psi Cop Anne ever heard of wore a lightsaber on his belt,
either.  She'd read of the ancient, all-but-extinct Jedi Knights
during her stolen recreational reading time in the school library,
when she was supposed to be studying the painfully boring subjects
considered useful on Orron IV.  They had captured her fancy as a young
girl.  She had long dreamed of meeting one, though her father, the one
time she'd brought it up to him, had gruffly dismissed them as an old
Outer Rim fantasy.
        Was this man, then, a Jedi?
        For the first time, he spoke, and his voice was an intriguing
one, smooth and deep, like the surface of a pond in moonlight.
        "You should take off those filthy rags," he said.  With the
tiniest hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, he tossed a
bundle of something onto the bed.  She didn't look at it, staring
intently at his face instead.
        "Are you going to rape me?" she asked bluntly, and saw his
body visibly stiffen.  His violet eyes shrank a little, something
ancient and unpleasant flickering behind them as they went cold.  The
smile vanished from his mouth as it pressed into a thin white line.
        "No," he said, his voice hard and flat.
        She blinked into the bleakness of his eyes as he spoke that
one syllable and decided never to ask him a question like that again.
Whatever he was, he was no Jedi.  A question like that wouldn't make a
Jedi Knight even blink.
        Reaching to his left, he pressed a key on the wall above the
head of the bed, and a door behind him slid open.
        "Wash," he said, and, turning on his heel, went out through
the door he'd entered from.  Once it was closed behind him, Anne left
the desk and investigated the parcel he'd dropped on the bed.  It was
a towel, and wrapped up in it was a bar of soap, a small bottle of
combination shampoo and conditioner, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, a
miniature tube of toothpaste, and a coverall not unlike the one he
himself had been wearing, the last rolled tightly into a tube.
        Uneasy but aware of how nice it would feel to be clean for the
first time in six months, she did as he'd instructed her.  While she
stood under the spray, not yet ready to invest the energy scrubbing
off would take, she wondered why her question had upset him so much.
Surely it had been the obvious question to ask, under the
circumstances.  If he wasn't a Psi Cop, what else could he want her
for?  What the hell else did she have that was worth going against the
Corps for?  (She couldn't quite believe that -that- was worth going
against the Corps for, but maybe this guy and his pal were just
crazy.)  And yet she had the feeling that she'd actually -offended-
him by asking.
        Unless it was all just an act to get her guard down.  She'd
have thought, though, that if that were the plan, he'd have laughed
off her question, plied her with sweet talk and kindness, rather than
getting angry and stomping out.
        Maybe he didn't want to play until she was clean.
        She sighed.  This train of thought was leading nowhere.  She
wouldn't know what he planned until he did it, and even if his
kindness were a sham, she might as well at least take as much of its
benefit as she could before things got ugly.  She'd been in this
position before, and so far escaped unscathed.  If she had to, she
could manage it again.  She hoped.
        An hour later, scrubbed, shampooed, brushed and fresh, she put
on the coverall.  It took her almost ten minutes to figure out the
cunning system of straps and folds that made it adjustable all the way
from bigger than her curious benefactor's size to smaller than her
own.  Technology serving mankind, she thought as she zipped it up.
        When she went and looked in the mirror on the back of the
bathroom door, her appearance came as a shock to her.  She hadn't
actually seen herself cleaned up and decently dressed since she'd
started on her odyssey, and in the two years between 12 and 14, a lot
of things can change.  She wasn't very big for her age - poor
nutrition during that critical time - but she was certainly in good
shape; all that running, ducking, jumping and climbing had seen to
that.  What really surprised her, though, was the length of her hair,
now that, except for a couple of snarls she simply hadn't the patience
to deal with, it was clean and unmatted.  Why, it hung nearly to her
beltline, dark brown and glossy thanks to the high-tech rescue shampoo
she'd been provided with.
        She shook her head at what she saw.  "I did not need this,"
she muttered wearily.  "I did not need being -pretty- along with all
the other reasons they want me..."
        For no reason she could really determine, she went to the desk
and stood up the pictures she'd knocked over.  As she did, she
examined them more closely, wondering who the people in them were.
The girl with the auburn hair, maybe she was his girlfriend?  She
seemed old enough.  She looked like the adventurous type; maybe she
was into moody, intense older guys.
        The other two - the creamy-skinned, pink-haired girl in the
white cavalry uniform and her coffee-colored, violet-haired
counterpart in the snowy gown - were harder to figure.  Maybe the
white girl was the Mystery Man's sister?  It really was an odd
picture.  Such a beautiful girl, dressed like a man?  Didn't make any
sense.  It really -did- look like a wedding portrait, but... well,
she'd heard that there -were- parts of the galaxy where that sort of
thing happened, but on staid, image-obsessed Orron IV, she'd never
really been able to believe it.
        Anne put the pictures back in their place and went to the door
the Mystery Man - she'd heard the old guy say his name, but now she
couldn't remember it - had come and gone through.  Of course it would
be locked, but maybe she could - 
         It sighed open at a touch of the activator plate, opening
onto a narrow corridor.  Surprised, she stepped back from it for an
instant, then ducked through.  The corridor ran for about ten feet in
either direction, ending in doors at both ends, and there was another
door opposite the one she'd come from.  Picking a direction at random,
she headed for the one to her left.
        "That leads to the control room," said the Mystery Man's calm
voice, and she jumped, whirling.  Where had -he- come from?!  That
hallway was empty a second ago.
        "So which way's the exit?" she asked with a bravado she didn't
really feel.
        He indicated the door behind him.  "C deck, second door on the
left.  You probably don't want to use it, though," he added, with a
return of that dry touch of humor he'd had once before, "given that
we're in hyperspace."
        "Hyperspace?!" Anne blurted.  "You're -kidnapping- me?"
        "That's a debatable point," he said, approaching her, "since
you're a homeless runaway... Miss Anne Cross of Orron IV."
        "All right, enough," she said, squaring herself defensively,
back to the wall.  "Who -are- you, anyway?  What the hell do you
want?"
        "The latter is a complex question," he said dryly.  "As for
the former, my apologies.  It -was- rude of me not to introduce
myself."  He squared his heels together and bowed at the waist.  "My
name is Kyouichi Saionji.  Welcome aboard the International Police
Criminal Investigations Division starship Virago."
        "International - and the old man, too?"
        Saionji smiled a little more.  "Chief Inspector Bailey would
hardly be flattered to hear you call him 'the old man'," he said.
"He's only fifty-two."
        "He looks about twice that," Anne replied bluntly.
        Saionji chuckled.  "It's not the years," he said, in a tone
that led Anne to believe he was quoting a maxim he'd often heard from
someone else, "it's the mileage."
        "All right, well, my question stands.  What do you want?"
        "My answer stands - that's a very complex question.  Right now
I want to go to the control room."
        She stood aside and let him pass, then followed him through
the door at the end of the hall.  Sure enough, it led to a small
starship control room, halfway between a bridge and a cockpit, with
three stations at a slightly curved desk and a single chair on a pivot
behind that, and three large forward-looking windows that, right now,
looked out on the bluewhite chaos of hyperspace.
        The older man was sitting at the center station of the desk,
talking to the holographic face of a Federation Psi Cop that was
hanging in midair in front of him.
        " - can't bloody have her," he was saying.  His voice was a
bit reedy but strong, and touched with the accent of one of the
British colony worlds, or possibly Britain itself.  "Your lot have no
jurisdiction 'round these parts.  Niven Sector is Experts ground.  No
forcible conscriptions allowed.  Check your copy of the '07 charter."
        "The girl is a menace to human civilization," the Psi Cop's
head replied hotly.  "She's a dangerous blip."
        "Dangerous?  According to your own records she's a P3," Bailey
chortled scornfully.  "She couldn't give human civilization a dull
pain.  Do us a favor?"
        "Two months ago, while resisting -lawful- conscription on
Jutekh, she murdered a Psi Cop!" barked the officer.
        "Did she, now."  Bailey glanced back over his shoulder at
Saionji and Anne, and, with a rather cruel grin, turned back to the
display.  "Good for her," he declared.  "You want her back?  File with
Headquarters for extradition."  A dry chuckle showed what Bailey
thought of the Corps' chances, and before the sputtering officer could
object further, the inspector cut off the connection.
        "Where are you taking me?" Anne asked without preamble.
        The elder Intercop cocked an eyebrow, smiled craggily, and
replied with equal bluntness, "Headquarters, New Avalon.  From
there... "  He shrugged.  "Depends on where you want to go, and how
safe it is to go there."
        New Avalon!  The City in the Sphere!  Of course she'd heard of
it, everyone in the known galaxy had heard of it.  It was supposed to
be a shining place, an embodiment of the best of urban living.  She'd
seen it described as a city designed by a man who loved cities, but
missed the countryside.  She'd always wanted to see it.  Still, it
wouldn't do to seem too eager.
        "How do I know you guys are really International Police?"
        Bailey's smile became wryer still.  "Who else is crazy enough
to beat up a Psi Cop?"
        "I killed one," Anne replied with harsh, painful bravado.
        "So you did," Bailey replied equably.  "Maybe one day you'll
be one of us," he added, his smile gentler.  His face wasn't pretty,
but there was a certain humorous warmth in it that was obvious now
that he wasn't scowling angrily at a hostile telepath.  Through the
ill-tuned blur of her minor talent, she could sense nothing but
satisfaction and goodwill from him.  It made her nervous.  Nobody gave
off that kind of read without a reason.
        "Anyway," Bailey went on breezily, "you're stuck here with us
for three days before we get there, so do try to stay calm.  We're not
going to do anything to you.  I'm too old and Kyouichi here is too
damned honorable."
        Saionji bowed to his elder partner with a sardonic grin.
        "Where am I supposed to sleep?"
        "In the room where you woke up," Bailey told her.
        "Isn't that... "  She glanced at Saionji.
        "He's young," Bailey said negligently.  "His back will survive
three nights on the couch."

        The rest of the day passed without event.  Anne's injured arm
was tended by Saionji, who remarked approvingly at the thorough way
she'd cleaned it while bathing despite the fact that it must've stung
like hell.  Then, bandaged and left to her own devices, she ate in the
Virago's small galley, savoring the meal despite the fact that it was
only a Hungry Humanoid chicken dinner.  Cheap vac-sealed fodder, it
was nevertheless several cuts above garbage and vending-machine
provender.  There was at least a chance that the chicken was actually
chicken, or at least bird.
        After that, Anne went to Saionji's cabin, looked at his
pictures again, and then lay down on his bunk to consider her lot.
        It was a fortunate quirk of international law that had given
her this exit.  When the Earth Alliance's Psi Corps was expanded into
a branch of the Federation Bureau of Investigation in 2407, the
ratification vote in the Federation Senate had split, and split
violently.
        There were those who had thought a civil war was inevitable,
with the Earth Alliance, the Corellian worlds, and some others on one
side and the bloc led by Salusia and Zeta Cygni on the other.  The
EA's bloc was in favor of the expansion, of course, while the other
opposed it entirely, with the strength of the International Police
Accords and their human-rights provisions behind them.  The EA had
pulled out of the Accords the year before, but other members of its
bloc had not.
        While the Senate debated the point and the ratification
process hung fire, the Federation waited in an almost unbearable
tension.  The International Police Space Force spent most of the
summer of 2407 on operational alert; so did the Federation Starfleet,
which nervously awaited a second Earthforce/IPSF clash in one of the
disputed areas.  Fortunately, nothing came of these fears.  The debate
raged for weeks before the galaxy's most skilled diplomats hammered
out a compromise, but no war began.
        The result of the compromise was a patchworked chart of the
Federation on which the newly federalized Psi Corps had jurisdiction
in the sectors controlled by the Earth Alliance bloc, while the
International Police Organization's Psionics Branch held the sectors
controlled by the Salusia/Zeta Cygni contingent.  The uneasy
power-sharing arrangement had lasted for two years now, and though
there was very little love lost between the organizations involved, so
far the political power of the Salusia/Zeta Cygni bloc of the Senate
and the moderating influences of some of the Earth Alliance's allies
had kept it intact.
        No one in the know - and Anne had certainly done enough
research during her fugitive days to qualify - expected it to last
forever.  Soon enough, someone - probably the Senator from the Earth
Alliance - would gather up enough power to ram an extension to the
FPC's power through the Senate and impose the Corps' jurisdiction on
the whole of the Federation.  When that happened, nowhere in the Inner
Galaxy would be safe for humanoid psionics, and, in all likelihood,
the war everyone spent the summer of 2407 waiting for would start.
        For now, though, it held, and it had just saved Anne Cross's
bacon.  The thought gave her enough comfort that she was able to have
another nap.
        She woke not knowing what time it was, disoriented and
confused, and for once not particularly inclined to be alone.
        Bailey was probably still in the control room; after dressing
her wound and showing her where the rest of the ship's facilities
were, Saionji had disappeared altogether.  After brushing her teeth
again, Anne decided to go looking for him.  She wasn't sure why, but
something about him intrigued her.  Not his chilly handsomeness - Anne
had worked out at an early age that she didn't much go for that sort
of thing - but something about his eyes, perhaps.
        She found him in the ship's largest room, which looked like it
had once been a cargo hold until it had been fitted with the wooden
wall paneling and woven straw flooring that had turned it into a
martial arts dojo.  (Later, she was to learn that all IPO ships
intended for journeys longer than a single day were so equipped.)  As
she entered, she found him sitting folded at the opposite side of the
room, hands on his knees, eyes closed.  He'd changed from his black
jumpsuit to a kendo costume, a black jacket and pale blue skirtlike
pants, and pulled his long green hair back into a ponytail.  His
lightsaber stood on a small table behind him, below a large framed
portrait of another young woman, this one brown-haired and
bespectacled, pretty in a mousy sort of way.
        He didn't seem to notice that she'd come in.  After a few
seconds, she was about to speak, when suddenly his eyes snapped open
and he surged to his feet in a single fluid motion, his hands whipping
the gleaming length of a polished wooden sword from his belt.  With a
sharp, guttural exclamation, he took one stomping step forward and
brought the blade crashing down on the head of an imaginary adversary,
then whirled to his right and gutted another.
        As he did, the loose sleeves of his jacket rode back and
something on his left wrist caught the light and glittered greenly at
Anne.  She gasped as something quiet and respectful touched her mind,
not to plunder or wound, but only to convey a piece of information.
She'd heard of those lights and their telepathic power, but never seen
one before, and in a flash she understood how this man had been able
to shrug off that Psi Cop's mental lash without any reaction at all:
he'd never felt it.
        Kyouichi Saionji might not be a Jedi Knight, but he -was- a
Lensman.
        Any doubt that the two men really were International Police
was washed away.
        The one-man mock battle went on for some time, carrying him up
the dojo and back down again, until at last he reached the same place
he'd started from, at which point he finished his last nonexistent foe
with a thrust to the body.  That done, he half-stepped back, wiped the
blade between his fingers and returned it to his belt with an
impossibly smooth gesture, then dropped back into his original seated
position as though he'd never left it.
        There was a long moment of silence.
        Then his eyes opened again, more slowly this time, and focused
on her with an expectant look.
        "Um... " said Anne, whose train of thought had been completely
derailed by that display.
        "Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu," Saionji replied to her unasked
question.  "A form of Japanese kenjutsu whose roots go back to
tenth-century Earth."
        "Oh.  Why do you carry a lightsaber, then?  I thought only
Jedi Knights carried those."
        "One of the founders of Katsujinkenryuu was an Earthborn
samurai of an older kenjutsu style.  The other was a Jedi Knight.  The
form they forged bears elements of both."
        "Wow.  Where'd you learn that?"
        "High school," he replied with a faint smile that hinted at a
much longer story behind the offhanded fact.
        "Oh."  She looked him over, momentarily at a loss, and then
noticed that his jacket, loosened by his exertions, was hanging open,
baring much of his lean, chiseled torso.  There was a cluster of angry
purple bruises dotting his abdomen.  The way he was sitting had to be
making them hurt, but he gave no sign.
        "What happened to you?" she asked, pointing.
        He glanced down at himself and replied wryly, "I had a girl
over my shoulder this morning.  She took me for a Psi Cop and kicked
the hell out of me."
        Anne stared at him for a second, then reddened.  "... Oh," she
said.  "Well, you might have said who you were," she added defensively.
        He smiled.  "You're a prickly creature, aren't you?  Like a
little juniper bush."
        "A what?"
        "It's a kind of plant," he explained.  "The leaves are sharp
enough to cut your fingers, but they have a pleasant scent and deter
insects."
        "Oh."  Thus not-really-illuminated, she passed on the possible
implications of "deter insects" and asked, "Does it hurt?"
        "It's nothing.  I've had much worse," he told her, his tone
much less boastful-sounding than the words implied.
        "What you were doing... looks pretty dangerous."
        "It can be," he admitted.
        "Have you ever fought a duel?"
        "For honor or for life?"
        "Either.  Both."
        "For honor, many.  For life, only one."
        She cocked a crooked grin at him.  "I guess I don't have to
ask if you won that one."
        "No," he replied with that same hidden-story smile.  "I
didn't, not quite."
        She blinked at him.
        "What about you?" he asked her.  "Do you fight for honor or
for life?"
        She came nearer, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and
considered.  "I'm not sure what honor is any more," she told him.
        "It can be a thorny issue," agreed Saionji.  "If you're going
to sit down in the dojo, you should sit as I am," he added.  "It's
more composed and respectful.  A dojo is a place for concentration and
harmony, not that disordered tangle of limbs."  His words were a bit
harsh, but his tone was quiet, not confrontational, and it was more
because of the way he'd said it than of what he'd said that she did
her best to obey.
        "Like this?"
        He nodded.  "It's called seiza."
        "It's not very comfortable."
        "You'll get used to it."
        "Yeah, well, I don't think I'll be spending that much time
hanging around dojos," she told him.
        "It might do you good," he replied, "if you considered it.
Would you like to know something personal?"
        "Uh... sure," Anne said, feeling a bit uncomfortable.  -Now-
he was going to start getting weird on her?
        "I was like you once, Juniper," said Saionji flatly.
"Disordered, disillusioned, searching within and without myself for
something beautiful, something eternal, and finding only ephemeral
clutter and decay.  Katsujinkenryuu and the kindness of strangers
saved my soul."  He fixed her with those intense violet eyes and
added, "Who knows?  They might save yours as well."
        There was something in his words that felt right, but he'd
come too close too fast.  She snorted, folding her arms over her chest
in unconscious defense.  "'Come and be my student, learn to defend
yourself.'  Yeah, I've heard that one before."
        Saionji shook his head.  "Not mine," he replied.  "I'm still
only a student myself.  I could, if you wished, show you the mechanics.
Ways of sitting, moving, breathing, possibly even meditating.  But the
truth of the sword is beyond my power to convey just now.  For that
you would need a true master."
        Something about the word 'master' rubbed the wrong way up
Anne's spine, but she let it pass.  She was too interested in that
fourth thing he'd mentioned.
        "Meditating?"
        He nodded.
        "Show me that."
        A tiny smile flickered on his lean face.
        "Very well."

        By the time they reached New Avalon, sitting in seiza didn't
hurt Anne's ankles any more, and if she had been able to admit it, she
might have said that Kyouichi Saionji and Donald Bailey were the only
two living men in the galaxy she really trusted.  Since, four days
ago, that number had been zero, this was quite an improvement, but it
left her feeling edgy, especially since, four days ago, she'd nearly
been caught by the Psi Corps.  Again.
        These days, for Anne Cross, good luck was just another reason
to be paranoid.
        Thus, it was with equal parts suspicion, trepidation, and
superstitiously-squashed hope that she accompanied her two rescuers
into the pleasantly old-fashioned corridors of the International
Police Organization's headquarters.  The look of avid delight with
which she'd spend the airship ride from Mathews Memorial Spaceport,
looking out the gondola windows of the XG-class cruiser zeppelin at
the breathtaking panorama of the most beautiful city in the galaxy,
was replaced with a subdued frown as they rode an antique-style
steel-cage elevator up to the thirty-ninth floor.
        They walked down a hallway, the hardwood floor squeaking
homily under their feet, past doors with frosted glass windows that
had names painted on them, until at the end of the hall they reached
one that said simply:

                                39-401
                                CHIEF

        Bailey pushed the door open, and the three of them entered an
office anteroom.  This featured a large, friendly-looking brown
leather sofa, a big wooden desk with a glass top, a hatrack on which
Bailey put his trenchcoat and fedora, and a girl sitting at a desk.
She was a pleasant-looking creature with short brown hair and a neatly
tailored IP Space Force uniform, and when they arrived she seemed to
be working on some document or another on the dataterm built into her
desk.
        As they entered, she looked up at them with the most
remarkable eyes - one of them amber, almost gold, and the other a
vivid shade of violet, much brighter than Saionji's.  Anne was
slightly taken aback, but tried not to show it as the girl smiled in
welcome.
        "Hullo, Lu!" said Bailey cheerfully.  "Chief in?"
        "He is for you," Lu replied cheerfully.  She pressed a
key on her desk.  "Chief?"
        "Yeah," replied a male voice.
        "DCI Bailey, Constable Saionji, and guest," Lu informed its
owner.
        "Great.  Send 'em right in," the Chief's voice replied.  Lu
let the channel close and pressed another key.  This caused the door
behind her, its window marked "PRIVATE", to click and swing slightly
ajar.
        "Go right in," said Lu with a gesture to the open door.
Bailey grinned, pulled a peculiar tri-lobal fruit from the pocket of
his coat, and plunked it down on Lu's desk as the three of them
passed, drawing a cry of delight from the receptionist.
        The inner office wasn't much bigger than the outer one, and
taken up largely by a big, old-fashioned metal desk painted in a shade
of institutional green which was very familiar to anyone from Orron
IV.  This was strewn with papers and books, leaving barely enough room
for the datastation in the center and the lamp on one corner.  The
telephone had to be content with sitting in the top of an opened
drawer.  Behind the desk was a window featuring such a remarkable view
of the Aztechnology Pyramid that Anne had to force herself to look
away from it.
        The man sitting in the chair behind this desk got to his feet
as his visitors entered.  He wasn't all that tall, shorter than both
Bailey and Saionji, with broadish shoulders and a stocky build
overall.  His face was round and bearded, and he had long, straight
brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.  Round eyeglasses caught the
light from his green-shaded desk lamp and momentarily hid his blue
eyes as he stood up, smiling, and extended his hand across the desk to
Bailey.
        "Good work, Don," he said heartily.  "Have much trouble?"
        "Nothing too major," Bailey replied.  "I had to thrash a
little respect into one of the Corps' Finest, and Kyouichi here made
the Carida City Memorial Hospital a bit of money, but no permanent
harm to anybody."
        Gryphon shook his head.  "You're a crazy old man, Don Bailey,"
he said.  "Only one of my field agents who's not only willing to take
on a Psi Cop without a Lens, but enjoys the challenge."
        Bailey smiled.  "You can't teach an old cop new tricks," he
said.  "I get along all right without it."
        Anne stared at him.  He'd shrugged off that Psi Cop's attack
-without- a Lens?  After seeing Saionji's, she had assumed Bailey was
a Lensman too, but...
        Wow.
        The Chief turned to Saionji and started to extend his hand,
but Saionji stood stiffly, bowed at the waist, and said formally, "It
is good to see you again, Gryphon-sensei.  I trust you are well."
        Gryphon looked like he might protest the formality, then
seemed to resign himself to it.  Withdrawing his hand, he instead
returned the bow and replied in the same fashion, "Very well, thank
you, Saionji-san."
        Anne wondered what that was all about.  Using Japanese
honorifics in Standard conversation was an affectation she'd
encountered before - in the Corporate Sector it was very popular,
especially with the young - but it wasn't the kind of thing people
like this, grown-ups with jobs like the Experts of Justice, generally
did.  Then she noticed the pair of swords hanging from a leather
harness on the coat tree in the corner of Gryphon's office, and
decided it must have something to do with martial arts.
        Wait.  A man called Gryphon in an office at Experts HQ that
said 'Chief' on the door?  Was this -the- Gryphon?  One of the
founders of the Wedge Defense Force?  If so, Anne was a bit
disappointed.  She'd always expected that, if she'd ever actually met
one of the WDF's famed immortals, they wouldn't seem so... ordinary.
This guy wasn't even dressed up, he was standing there in faded blue
jeans and a ratty old black-and-white-checked flannel shirt like a man
who was planning to do some work in the garden today.
        He turned smiling eyes on her as if reading her thoughts,
though she knew from reading about him that he was no telepath, and
said, "Well, if he's Bailey and he's Saionji, then I guess that makes
you Guest."
        She squared herself up, trying to be polite, and said, "I'm,
um... Anne Cross.  From Orron IV."
        "I'm sorry," Gryphon replied.
        "Huh?" she replied, wondering if she should take offense.
        "Orron IV," said Gryphon as he returned to his seat and
gestured for them to take seats as well.  Bailey sat down in one of
the visitor chairs, but Anne remained where she was, standing in front
of Gryphon's desk like a wayward pupil called to account for herself
before the principal.  Seeing this, Saionji stayed on his feet too,
off to the side.
        "I've been there," Gryphon went on.  "Beastly place."  He gave
her a sharp, perceptive look and a gentle smile as he added, "You look
much too wild for a plastic box like Orron IV to contain you."
        She felt the blush crawling up her cheeks and did not reply.
        "So," said Gryphon briskly, turning to his datastation.
"Telepath P3, screened two years ago, gave your Corps conscription
officer the slip and have been eluding them ever since.  Two years!
Not many have been so lucky or so good."
        "More the former," Anne mumbled, embarrassed.
        "Luck has to be earned," said Gryphon offhandedly; then he
returned to perusing the file, blinked at something, and turned his
eyes back to her.  "Is it true that you killed a Psi Cop on Jutekh, or
is that the Corps fishing for better cooperation from other enforcement 
agencies?"
        "It's true," Anne replied.  Her hands and voice trembled a
little bit as she recalled it.
        "I hate to dredge it up again," said Gryphon apologetically,
"but I need to know the details.  It makes a difference in how I'll
handle the case."
        "He cornered me in a grain elevator.  'Go ahead and scream, no
one will hear you.'  You figure it out," Anne snapped angrily.
        Gryphon closed his eyes.  "Sou ka," he replied, then surprised
her by looking her in the eye and adding with all apparent sincerity,
"Well done."
        He finished reading, cleared the screen, and sat thinking for
a moment, eyes closed, mouth pursing and unpursing.
        "Well," he said after a few seconds, opening his eyes again to
look at her.  "We can't give you back; that wouldn't be sporting.
They've already filed for extradition, but Lu's a terrible secretary, 
forever losing things.  I'd fire her, but she has too much dirt on me.
So the question is, what do we do with you?"
        Anne looked at him for a moment, then realized he'd actually
asked her the question, he hadn't just said it rhetorically.  She had
no idea what to tell him.  No one had ever asked her what she wanted
out of her future before, and she'd been focused so sharply on the
immediate for the last two years that she'd lost all sense of the long
term.
        "Um... send me to boarding school, maybe?" she said lamely.
        "If you don't mind, Gryphon-sensei," said Saionji suddenly, "I
have a suggestion."
        "Shoot," said Gryphon.
        "On the way here from Carida, I've shown her some of the
rudiments of Katsujinkenryuu," Saionji explained.  "She's taken to it
very well.  I think a proper course of training would be far from
wasted on her."
        Gryphon considered, then gave the younger man a speculative
look.  "Kaitlyn?"
        Saionji nodded.  "What she has done for me, she can do for
another.  And Anne would be safe there."  He folded his arms and
smiled grimly.  "I'd like to see the Corps try to take her from under
the noses of Kaitlyn-sensei and the Rose Knight."
        What the hell is a Rose Knight? Anne wondered.
        "I don't know," Gryphon mused.  "Kate's pretty busy.  Your
training isn't quite complete yet, and she's got school."
        "Do you think she would refuse?" Saionji asked quietly.
        Gryphon grinned at him.  "Of course not," he replied.  "Kate,
turn down someone in need?"
        Saionji smiled serenely and nodded.  "Then we are of the same
mind, Sensei."
        Gryphon considered a moment further, then glanced at the time
display of what seemed to be a wrist computer.  He was a Lensman too,
Anne saw, as his scarlet Lens winked its message at her from the
vambrace - but she knew that, the history tapes called him the First
Lensman.  After checking the time, he nodded.
        "She won't be able to tell unless she meets Anne face to
face," he said, and looked back at the girl in question.
        "Anne," he said, "my eldest daughter, Kaitlyn, is the one who
taught Saionji here our family sword style.  He seems to think you'd
make a good student, and I trust his judgment.  I also think Kate
would be willing to teach you as she's taught him, but I can't commit
her - she'll have to meet you for herself to decide.  The question is,
is that something you'd like to do?"
        "Me?  Learn something like that?  But I'm... I'm just a rogue
telepath.  Not a martial artist."
        "Nobody's a martial artist until they learn," Gryphon
replied.
        "But I'm too old to start something like that."
        Gryphon waved a hand.  "I was over three hundred when I met
-my- sensei," he said.  "If you don't want to, that's fine.  There are
a lot of opportunities for someone with drive and intelligence, and
you obviously have both or you wouldn't have survived for two years on
the Rim.  You can stay here until you find something you'd rather do."
he chuckled wryly.  "Well, not here in my office.  Here in New Avalon."
        She stood before his desk, chewing her lip, in an agony of
indecision.  On the one hand, she felt a tremendous reluctance to push
herself into the lives of strangers this way, especially after
spending so long pathologically avoiding them.  On the other, she had
enjoyed her mini-lessons with Saionji.  Just the little bits of
breathing technique and meditation he'd shown her, protesting all the
while that his teaching ability was meager, had made her feel better
about herself than she had at any point in her odyssey.  She could
barely dare imagine how she would feel if she had the body of
knowledge that had given him such quiet serenity.  And here it was
being offered to her, if she were only bold enough to take it!
        "All right," she blurted, nodding, before she had a chance to
talk herself out of it.  "When - when can I meet her?"
        Gryphon smiled.  "I'll let her know you're coming.  She's on
Tomodachi.  If you're serious, you can leave tomorrow."
        "What's she doing there?" Anne asked before she could stop
herself.
        "College," Gryphon replied.  "She's finishing up her sophomore
year at the Nekomi Institute of Technology.  Which reminds me,
Kyouichi, I owe your professors a letter of apology.  Your assignment
ran over - you've missed two weeks of class."
        "I've kept up by remote," said Saionji with a little smile.
"Kaitlyn-sensei is in most of my classes, and Miki is in the rest.
Between them, they won't let me fail, even if I'm a billion miles
away."
        "Good for you," said Gryphon, smiling.  "I'll write that
letter anyway, though - it'll be ready before you leave tomorrow.
Take the fastest ship the pool has to offer, you have my express
authorization."
        Gryphon rose, Saionji bowed, and the interview was apparently
concluded.  Bailey got up and opened the door for his companions, and
Anne was so preoccupied that she was about to leave without thanking
Gryphon when he called to them, "Oh, wait.  One more thing."
        They all paused, turning to look at him.  He stood behind his
desk with an expression of surprising seriousness given his light tone
throughout most of the interview.
        "Lensman Saionji," he said, "you have a new assignment."
        Saionji came to attention.  "Yes, Gryphon-sensei."
        "Watch out for this girl," said Gryphon, nodding to Anne.
"If the Corps have chased her this long, there's something special
about her - special enough that they won't let the fact that we've got
her stop them.  They'll keep trying.  Don't let them take her, don't
let them hurt her, don't let them kill her.  If they try, you're
licensed to kill.  I know I can count on your best efforts."
        "I understand, Gryphon-sensei," said Saionji gravely, bowing
again.
        "Oh... and, good work, you two," said Gryphon with a smile.
"Welcome to civilization, Miss Cross."
        "Thank you," she said.  "Um... for everything."
        "Don't thank us yet," said Gryphon as he sat down with a
sudden, weary sigh.  "The hard part's still to come."

        "The fastest ship the pool had to offer" turned out to be a
two-year-old Marquand fold courier called the Blink Dog, which got
them to Tomodachi in about five minutes.  Spacefold travel, Anne
reflected after her first experience with it, was rather
anticlimactic.
        They landed at Nekomikoka Spaceport, a few miles outside
Tomodachi's capital city of Nekomikoka.  Saionji, his Lens passing
them through customs without a raised eyebrow at his lightsaber, led
her to a sidecar motorcycle that had been left in the long-term
parking lot.
        "Wow," said Anne.  "Is this a real Twin Titan?"
        "You've heard of them?" Saionji said with pleasant surprise as
he opened up the trunk on the sidecar and handed her a spare helmet.
        "Sure," Anne replied, climbing up into the sidecar and
settling herself, then fiddling with the strap of the helmet.  "One
time I worked in this bike shop on Onegai IV for a couple months,
lugging parts and washing the bikes and stuff.  The old guy that ran
the place was a total Corley freak.  He had catalogs going back to
before First Contact - like sometime in the 1930s."
        Saionji smiled, fastened his own helmet (the classic skullcap
style, like the one he'd given Anne), and swung into the saddle.  With
practiced ease he opened the fuel cock, switched on the key, adjusted
the choke and throttle, then raised himself up and kicked down.  The
V-twin engine snarled, then rumbled contentedly to idling life.
        "It's real," said Anne even as Saionji was telling her the
same thing; then they grinned at each other a little, Saionji settled
himself into the saddle and flicked his old-fashioned motoring goggles
down over his eyes, and they were off, roaring out of the spaceport
complex and then bombing along a pleasantly wooded highway into the
city.
        Nekomikoka was not as beautiful as New Avalon, but as cities
went, it was still a far cry from the soul-crushing monsters of Anne's
childhood.  Even in the city itself, among the tall buildings of clean
white concrete and shining glass, there were trees and patches of
grass.  There was no grass on Orron IV.  The only trees were in the
NaCon Corporation's corporate arboretum, to which Anne had been only
once, at the age of eight, on a school field trip.  The rest of the
planet was paved, dull steel, ferrocrete and asphalt from sea to
stinking sea.
        They drove through the pretty streets in silence (well, except
for the deep-throated throb of the Titan's V-twin engine),
eventually turning down a quiet side street just far enough from a
main highway to seem more rural than it really was.  Saionji was
smiling to himself by this time, tapping his index finger lightly on
the brake lever.  His Lens filtered out his thoughts and feelings from
Anne's undirected talent - a remarkably restful sensation - but she
could still tell, just from his body language, that he was happy to be
coming home.
        The bike pulled to a stop at the end of a dead-end street
identified by a little sign as Wildwood Road, in front of a large,
white house.  The house was set close to the street with a small,
well-manicured front lawn.  A large mailbox stood by the curb on a
wrought-iron stand with a rose motif.  Neatly printed on the side of
the box was:

                                 1140
                               HUTCHINS
                                TENJOU

        So Saionji didn't live here; but Gryphon's family name, now
that she thought about it, was Hutchins, so this was probably his
daughter's home.
        Saionji climbed out of the saddle while she was thinking that
over, put away his helmet and hers, and then, to her surprise, held
the little sidecar door for her, not that she needed it to get out.
His bearing was somewhat more formal than usual as he straightened his
clothes and his back and mounted the four steps to the house's bright
red front door and rang the bell.
        "Coming!" came a voice from inside, after the chime of the
Westminster bell had echoed through the open front windows.  The door
opened, and a lovely dark-skinned young woman, her violet hair done up
in a bun and kerchief and her jeans and grey sweatshirt covered by an
apron, smiled in pleased surprise to see them.  Anne blinked,
recognizing her as the girl in the white dress from Saionji's desk.
        "Oh!  Kyouichi, you're early!" she said.  "I thought that
might be your bike I heard."
        "Lady Anthy," said Saionji, bowing.  "I apologize.  I was able
to draw a jumpship this time, so our transit time was unexpectedly
short."
        "Oh, it's no trouble," Anthy replied, beaming.  "Come in, come
in.  I was just finishing up the guest room.  All those books of
Kaitlyn's - the dust - well, it needed a good scrubbing.  It's ready
now, though."  She frowned playfully at him.  "Are you coming in or
not?"
        He crossed the threshold, but Anne hesitate until he indicated
her and said, "Lady Anthy, this is Anne Cross - the one I hope
Kaitlyn-sensei will be able to help.  Anne, meet Anthy Tenjou."
        "Um... hi," said Anne awkwardly.
        "Welcome," said Anthy with a warm smile.  "I'm pleased to meet
you.  The others should be home shortly - please, come in and make
yourself at home."
        The house was as pleasant inside as out, its many windows and
light-colored walls giving it a bright and airy feeling.  The wooden
floors and furniture gleamed with polish, the rugs were bright and
clean, and the whole place smelled of spring air and sweetness.  So much
wood, wicker, and leather - Anne had never seen so much use of natural
construction materials in her life.
        They entered through a glass porch - essentially a front
parlor whose back wall still wore the house's original exterior.
Another door led to a hallway.  Off to the right was a large,
comfortable living room, complete with a big, merrily bubbling
aquarium which seemed to contain an octopus.  To the left was a hall
stand, a coat closet, a mat with shoes and slippers, and then a
stairway up, past an octagonal stained-glass window.  Ahead, the
hallway continued past another door on the right before ending in a
big, bright kitchen.
        Somebody was playing a record back there, somewhere; Anne
could hear piano music, a quiet and pleasant song she didn't
recognize.  She and Saionji stopped by the inner door and took off
their shoes, then followed Anthy as she padded back into the kitchen.
Here there was a powerful, mouth-watering smell of something cooking.
Anne's stomach murmured hopefully at her.  She patted at it absently,
too amazed by the house, and the apparent lady of the house, to pay it
much mind.
        To Anne, who had never seen anything like it before in her
life, this simple, mundane, ordinary house was a surreal experience,
like a funhouse mirror held up to the regimented, metallic living
spaces of Orron IV.  And the woman who'd greeted them - nobody was
ever that nice unless they wanted something, but Anne could feel
nothing from her but that she was pleased to have a guest, and
concerned for that guest's well-being.
        Anthy went through the kitchen into the other right-hand
doorway.  Anne and Saionji followed her into a dining room.  In
addition to a big oval table and a dozen chairs, this expansive room
had a number of plants, a couple of bookshelves, a hutch with china,
and an upright piano.  And a man sitting at the piano, playing it -
there was no record playing after all.
        "Miki," said Anthy, and the pianist stopped playing and turned
on the piano bench, smiling.  He was a handsome young man in his late
teens, with a pleasant, open face and bright blue hair drawn back into
a ponytail that reached to just below his shoulders.  He was the only
person Anne had ever seen to sport bright blue hair, let alone a
bright blue mustache and goatee.  The effect was a little startling.
        "This is Anne Cross," said Anthy, indicating the girl.
"She'll be staying with us for a while.  Anne, this is my friend Miki
Kaoru."
        "It's a pleasure to meet you," said Miki, rising from the
bench to give her a bow.  He seemed entirely undaunted that she hadn't
extended a hand.  Anne wondered if he knew she was a telepath.
        "Um, you too," she replied.
        She might have gone on, but just then something happened that
erased all thoughts of social courtesy in a paroxysm of renewed
fright.  From the living room came a sudden, unexpected, and
terrifying -roar-, as of an angry, hungry wild creature poised to
strike.  It sounded as if it were right behind her, ready to attack,
rend her flesh and devour her.
        With a shriek that could have cut glass, Anne all but
levitated straight up in the air before instinctively seizing the
nearest thing that to her represented safety.  This happened to be
Saionji, who looked a bit bemused by the whole situation as the
frightened teenage girl all but wrapped herself around him.
        Anthy gave an irritated tsk and said scoldingly, "Sergei!
That was uncalled-for.  You -know- you're not supposed to frighten
guests.  Oh, you poor thing," she went on in a softer tone, putting a
gentle hand on Anne's shoulder.  "There, it's OK.  It was just Sergei
being a little too enthusiastic about saying hello."
        Anne, still trembling a little, loosened her deathgrip on
Saionji slightly, unclenching her fingers from the back of his
coverall and putting her feet back on the floor.  With Anthy gently
coaxing her and Saionji nodding encouragingly, she slowly turned to
see what it was that had roared - and then blinked in complete
astonishment.
        She knew what it was, but only because she'd seen a circus on
television once: a tiger, the largest of Earth's hunting cats, now all
but extinct on Earth itself.  It was beautiful, all bright orange and
black with white 'sideburns' flanking its face and deep, intelligent
amber eyes.  It should have looked out of place, standing there in the
archway to the living room with a black leather collar around its neck
from which a single silver tag dangled, but somehow it fit right in.
Just another surreal thing about this increasingly surreal household.
Or maybe Anne was just hitting surreality overload.
        Slowly, she crouched down to be at eye level with the big,
powerful animal.  She couldn't really read it - it was an animal,
after all, and her weak, untrained talent had enough trouble reading
people - but the eyes grabbed and held her attention.  They were
smart, almost like a person's, and they seemed to communicate a
message as she looked into them.
        "Anne," said Anthy, "this is Sergei.  We usually call him
Serge.  Serge, this is Anne Cross, our new guest.  She's had a very
difficult time, and you didn't help by frightening her out of her wits
like that.  Don't you think you should apologize?"
        To Anne's amazement, the tiger actually did look abashed; he
slowly came closer, sat down, then lowered his head with a contrite
grumbling noise and butted at her hand with it.  Very carefully, she
raised that hand and brushed it gently over the top of his head.  His
fur was very soft, inviting firmer contact, so she petted him a bit
more firmly, then got her fingers in there and started scratching.
        "Hmmmmm," said Serge contentedly; he closed his eyes and
leaned rather heavily against her, almost pushing her over.  She
braced herself a bit better, switching from a crouch to a kneeling
position, and even smiled just a little bit.
        "Well, Serge," said Miki with a smile, "it seems you're
forgiven."
        "That's enough of that," said Anthy mock-crossly, patting the
tiger on his shoulder.  "You can fish for attention later.  Right now
Anne needs to see the rest of the house."
        The tiger reluctantly disengaged himself, startled Anne
slightly again by giving her cheek a raspy lick, and then ambled off
into the living room for a nap.
        "Now, Miki, you keep Kyouichi company for a while," said
Anthy, "while I show Anne to her room."
        Anne was somewhat reluctant to leave Saionji, but he nodded to
her as she looked back from the doorway, and thus reassured, she
allowed herself to be led upstairs.  Here there was another hall, this
one with four doors - two on the right, one on the left and one at the
end.  Anthy led the way to the one on the left, swung it open, and
gestured for Anne to precede her through.
        It wasn't a very big bedroom, as things went.  It was a little
bigger than Saionji's cabin on the Virago in all dimensions, with a
partially sloped ceiling and two big dormered windows, an attractive
oriental rug, a big soft bed, and furniture - desk, chair, chest of
drawers - made of dark, sturdy-looking wood.  It had obviously been
freshly scrubbed, for the scent of wood polish was still lingering in
the air despite the breeze blowing in through the open windows and
ruffling the curtains, and the floor all but glittered.
        "This will be your room while you're here with us," said
Anthy.  She reached into her pocket, took out a key, and handed it to
Anne.  "This is the only key to the door; if you need to shut out the
world, you have only to use it.  None of us will bother you.  The door
at the end of the hall is the bathroom.  Is there anything you need
right now?"
        Anne looked from Anthy's kind, smiling face to the key across
her own palm and back again, blinking back sudden, unexpected tears.
She swallowed hard, tried to smile, and said, in a slightly squeaky
tone of voice, "Never to wake up again?"
        After all, she said to herself, maybe this is all just a
dream.  Maybe the Corps caught me in that alley, and now they're
playing a pleasant little fantasy to occupy my conscious mind while
they root around behind it.  The thought gave her a stab of panic,
deep at the root of her spine, and she struggled not to let out the
hysterical laugh that tried to burst out along with it.
        "Why don't you rest for a while?" Anthy said gently.  "You've
had a busy last few days, according to Kyouichi's call last night."
        "Thank you," said Anne shakily.  "I... I think I will."
        Quietly, gracefully, Anthy retreated, and it wasn't until
she'd undressed, climbed into bed and closed her eyes that Anne
remembered she'd wanted to ask why Saionji called her "Lady Anthy".
        Well, if the simulation were still running when she awoke (she
thought with another brief spasm of hysteria), she could ask.

        They -did- have her.  They loomed over her, hideously
distorted by whatever they'd put in her eyes, laughing.  Two... no,
three of them, black-clad, gleaming golden badges, dead flat cold
eyes.  One leaned down and whispered, "You didn't really think you
could escape, did you?"
        There was a sharp pain as another drove a needle into her arm.
        She surged awake with a gasp, fighting her way up from under
the covers like a drowning girl searching for air, and sat panting in
a tangle of sheets.
        Still here.
        Did that mean it was real, or just that they'd lost control of
her senses for a minute?
        She looked down at her arm, but of course it was unmarked.
Combing her hair back with her fingers, she struggled to get control
of her breathing, remembering the things Saionji had shown her, and
looked around the room for some sign that she'd really been asleep.
        All she got was the fact that the bar of sunlight from the
nearest window now fell across the floor by the desk rather than her
feet.  Aside from that, the room was just the same.
        The key was still in her hand, its shape imprinted redly
across her palm where she'd clutched it throughout her nap.  She went
to the door, looked at the lock - a sturdy-enough-looking affair - and
then went out into the hall and closed the door.  Plying the key, she
then tried the knob.  Sure enough, the door wouldn't open.  She
unlocked it again and pocketed the key.
        There was no guarantee it really was the only key, of course,
but at least it was one that actually worked.
        Braiding her hair again, she went downstairs, following the
soft sounds of conversation from the kitchen, and noticed by the clock
on the wall at the stairway's end that it was nearly six-thirty PM,
local time.  Four voices were talking in the dining room, and she
stepped hesitantly through the door to look.
        Saionji, Anthy, and the young man named Miki were still there,
and now they had been joined by a fourth: a young woman of medium
height and trim build, neatly dressed in a grey button shirt and
jeans, with a very-slightly-curly mane of medium brown hair and big
brown eyes behind wire-framed eyeglasses.  Anne recognized her
immediately - she was the woman whose picture had been hanging on the
wall in the Virago's dojo.
        The conversation stopped as Anne entered the room, and all
eyes turned to her.  With reddening face, she said, "Um... I'm
sorry... "
        "That's all right, Anne," said Anthy.  "I would have come
and knocked in a little while anyway - dinner's almost ready."
        "Anne," Saionji said calmly, "you've been putting up with a
lot of introductions these last few days, but this one is important.
This," he said with a respectful gesture, "is Kaitlyn-sensei, who
taught me.  Kaitlyn-sensei, this is the one I told you about, Anne
Cross."
        Kaitlyn smiled a pleasant smile that went well with her calm
and unruffled face, pretty but not beautiful like her housemate.
        "H-h-hello," she said.  "I-it's g-g-good t-to m-m-meet y-you."
        Anne gave a nervous chuckle.  "Eh... it seems to me -I- should
be the one to be nervous," she said.
        Kate sighed, her face taking on a kind of wry "well, I asked
for that" expression, and opened her mouth to explain, but Miki beat
her to it.
        "Kate has a speech impediment that gets very bad when she's
talking to strangers," he said.  "When she's had a chance to get used
to you, it'll smooth out."
        "S-s-s-somew-what," said Kate with an apologetic smile.
        "Oh."  Anne tried out a nervous grin, but abandoned it.
Inwardly, she cursed.  This was the person who was supposed to show
her a way to save her soul?  She could barely talk.  Oh, she seemed
nice enough, and these folks all seemed to like her a lot, but how
could a person like this be the strong, wise teacher about whom
Saionji spoke with such reverence and respect?  She glanced at him,
puzzled, to see him frowning that dark little frown she'd already
grown to hate.  He'd read her thoughts, in her face rather than by
invading her mind, but it was all the same - he knew she was
disappointed, and he was disappointed in turn.
        Feeling her cheeks grow hot again, Anne stammered, "I... I'm
sorry... you're all being, being really nice, but I... I'm not... "
Her voice shrank, trailing off into a whisper as she finished,
"... Not sure how much of this is -real-... "
        They all looked sympathetic - well, except for Saionji, but
Anne had already learned that it took him a few minutes to recover
whenever he got into one of his little snits - and Anthy looked like
she might be considering reaching out to comfort her.  Anne wasn't
sure she'd be able to take that.  She might have to flee the room.
Their sympathy crowded in on her almost as much as hostility would
have, made all the worse by the fact that they obviously didn't know.
        Then came the sound of a key in the front door, and the moment
was broken.
        "Hey!  I'm home!" a voice called, and there was the sound of
keys being put down on the hall stand, the door being closed, and
shoes being removed.  "Anybody here?" the voice continued, growing
nearer in the hall, and then its owner appeared in the doorway, and
Anne caught her breath.
        It was the other woman from the photo on Saionji's desk, the
one with pink hair and forthright blue eyes.  She was dressed
differently, and rather oddly, in a man-tailored black suitjacket,
white dress shirt, and black necktie over close-fitting red shorts,
and socks to match.  The outfit should have looked pretty corny, but
somehow, on this woman, it didn't.  The tailoring of the jacket made
it abundantly clear that this was no man, even if an observer had
somehow managed to miss those legs or the lovely face above the knot
of the tie.
        "Oh, you're here early," she said to Saionji.  "What're you
looking so cranked off about?  Did Anthy take all your money at cards
again?"
        "No.  Well, yes," Saionji reconsidered, "but that's not
what's bothering me.  Skip it."
        Anthy (who, Anne noticed, had removed the kerchief from her
head and changed into a sort of tuxedo-frilled blouse and peasant
skirt), went to the doorway and embraced the girl in the suitjacket,
then kissed her in a way that left no doubt in any observer's mind as
to the nature of their relationship.  Anne blinked.
        "Welcome home, Utena," said Anthy, releasing her.  "Kyouichi
has brought us a guest."  She indicated Anne.  "This is Anne Cross.
She'll be staying in the spare room for a while.  The Psi Corps is
hunting her."
        Utena smiled, extending a hand.  "Welcome," she said.  "I'm
Utena Tenjou."
        Tenjou!  So - it really -was- a wedding photo?  It had to be.
They couldn't be sisters, not with their looks, not with that kiss.
Wow.  To someone brought up amid the image-paranoid, nineteenth-
century-style circumspection of Orron IV, that was remarkable -
enviable.  Anne stared at her, too dumbstruck in equal parts by her
looks, her demeanor - she hadn't batted an eye at the news that their
new houseguest was wanted by the Psi Corps! - and her apparently
incredible good fortune, to reply.  Utena looked back at her for a
moment, puzzled.
        "What?  Do I have something on my face?"
        "N-no," Anne stammered.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to stare.
It's just... I've never seen anyone like you before.  Is that your
real hair?"
        Utena grinned, tossing her thick sheaf of pink to the side
with a hand and letting it fall behind her again.  "Yep," she
replied.  "100% natural.  Hey, is dinner ready?  I'm starving.  I was
too busy with chem lab to get any lunch."

        The six of them sat around the big table and ate.  The others
made gentle, undemanding conversation, but Anne was for the moment too
occupied to worry about them, their concern, or even their possible
unreality.  She was too busy eating the single best meal she had ever
had in her entire life.  It was nothing too terribly fancy - chunks of
beef and carrots in a fragrant and flavorful brown sauce served over
egg noodles, a bowl of assorted greens, homemade rolls still hot from
the oven so that butter melted the instant it touched - but everything
in it was real honest-to-Goddess food, prepared fresh by skillful,
caring hands, not machine-processed nutriment one appeal level above
garbage.  And she had thought that Hungry Humanoid tray was ambrosial?
        While Anne ate, oblivious to everything around her but the
food, Utena turned to Kaitlyn and asked, "You're alone tonight?"
        "J-Juri and I f-figured f-f-four introd-ductions w-would b-be
enough f-for one n-night," Kate replied.  "B-but I th-thought m-maybe
t-tomorrow y-you and she c-could take Anne sh-shopping."
        Utena nodded.  "Sure, I don't have anything I can't skip
tomorrow."
        "Be on your guard," said Saionji.  "The Corps wants her very
badly.  Badly enough that Gryphon-sensei has authorized me to kill to
protect her.  I'll be nearby."
        "What do they want her for?" Utena wondered, glancing at their
extremely-absorbed guest.  Anne's table manners, she noted, were
pretty good for someone who had reportedly been living rough on the
Rim for almost two years.  A bit lacking in finesse, but nothing that
could actually be called a serious fault.
        "We don't know... yet," Saionji replied.  "Inspector Bailey is
looking for more information as we speak.  Officially she's only a P3,
hardly worth their trouble.  She did kill a Psi Cop, but that was
after they had already been chasing her for twenty-one months.  They
wouldn't have persisted that long unless she were something very
important."
        Anthy shook her head sadly.  "This world... so advanced in so
many ways, and yet they have such an institution.  It's nothing more
than slavery."
        "It does seem nowadays as if there's no escaping injustice,"
Miki agreed morosely.
        "M-maybe not," Kate interjected, "b-but there's s-still
f-f-fighting it."
        Miki nodded.  "We should put the Federation on alert.  This
could easily escalate into another situation like Devlin."
        Kate nodded.  "I'll c-call Moose after d-dinner."
        Anne caught only the last little bit of that, coming out of
her gastronomic trance as she finished up the last of her noodles, and
wondered what they were talking about.  Surely these people didn't
have the power to put the United Federation of Planets on alert,
especially given their intent to defy one of the most powerful
agencies of that Federation.
        She looked from one face to the other, and as she did they
noticed that she was done and started paying attention to her again.
Their goodwill scratched at her nerves.
        "All finished?" asked Anthy brightly.  "Would you like any
more?  Some dessert, maybe?  I think we have ice cream."
        "I can go get some if we don't," Utena put in.
        "Um... n-no... "  Anne cursed inwardly.  The stuttering girl
was going to think she was making fun of her if she kept that up.
"No, thank you," she said, struggling to remain polite though her
panic was keying up again.  "I, I think I should get to bed."
        Anthy nodded gracefully.  "As you like," she said, rising.
"If you need anything, our room is the one straight across the hall
from yours."  She smiled gently and added, "Just don't forget to
knock."
        With the irritated feeling that she must seem like a rabbit
scrambling to get out of a trap, Anne said her goodnights and
nice-to-meet-yous and then fled upstairs.  From below, they could hear
the clunk as she locked herself in.
        Kaitlyn sighed, stirring sugar into her after-dinner cup of
Earl Grey.  "I'm n-not sure th-this is g-g-going to w-work out,
K-Kyouichi-kun," she said glumly.
        Saionji smiled.  "Her nerves are in tatters," he said.  "Too
many new experiences, too many new people.  In the last forty-eight
hours she's been translated from Hell to Heaven.  It would shock any
system, and hers has had more than its share of shocks over the last
few years.  She'll be all right, Kaitlyn-sensei, you'll see."
        "I h-hope you're r-right," said Kate.  "Until sh-she settles
d-down some, th-there's n-no point in m-my t-t-trying to t-teach her
anything.  Miki, w-where's D-Devlin?"
        "Jyurai," replied the Secretary of the Tomodachi Duelists'
Federation immediately.  "Where else?"
        "C-can you f-find out if we c-can b-borrow him f-for a while?"
Kate wondered.  "I th-think he can h-help Anne m-m-more than I c-can,
at the m-moment."
        Miki nodded.  "I'll see to it."
        Utena got up, stretched, and covered a huge yawn with the back
of her hand.  "Well, I'm with the kid," she said.  "Time for bed."
        "I don't think she'd respond very well to that right now,"
said Anthy with mock disapproval.  Utena gave her a look, then waved
goodnight to the assembled company and retired.  The others helped
Anthy clear the table and get the dishwasher loaded, then adjourned to
the living room for an hour or so before Miki and Saionji left for
home and Kate and Anthy went to bed themselves.

        The next morning was bright and sunny, and when Anne awoke,
she had no idea for a moment where she was.  Her sleep had been
remarkably good, dreamless and deep, and the bed was so soft and the
covers so warm and cozy that she came around slowly and smoothly,
instead of with the adrenaline-spiked jolt she usually had to look
forward to.  She turned on her back, sat up, and looked around the
room.
        A crooked grin stole onto her face, and she giggled, "Still
running."  It wasn't a particularly healthy-sounding giggle, so she
suppressed the urge to repeat it.
        There was a knock at the door.  Anne glanced at it, then got
out of bed, dragging the top sheet along with her as a sort of
impromptu robe, unlocked the door, and opened it.
        Utena stood in the hall, dressed in a red-trimmed black
bathrobe over pink pajamas and fuzzy red slippers, her hair wrapped up
in a towel turban.
        "Morning," she said.  "I thought I heard you say something."
        "Um, no," Anne said quickly.  "I, uh, I just woke up."
        "Oh.  Well, sorry to bother you, then.  Bathroom's free," she
added.  "Ready to do some shopping?  We've got to get you more than
just that one Experts of Justice jumpsuit to wear."
        "Um... I don't have any money... "
        Utena made a dismissive gesture.  "Bah," she said.  "We're all
just sponging off Kate around here anyway.  Her dad's got money."
        "Oh... well, OK, if you're... sure it's all right."
        "Don't worry about it.  C'mon downstairs when you're ready."
        This Anne did, after enjoying the palatial bathroom's
amenities (such a large, elaborate bathroom for the size of the house;
there was something vaguely decadent about it).  She worried at the
one remaining tangle in her hair, the one she'd lost patience with
aboard the Virago, then gave up on it again and got her hair back into
a braid.  She felt better somehow with her hair braided anyway.  More
in control, or something.
        Shrugging, she put on her jumpsuit again, went downstairs, and
stopped short in the doorway to the living room.
        "Dear Goddess," she murmured.  "Now I -know- I'm dreaming."
        That feeling of aching surreality welled up and overwhelmed
her again.  This was impossible.  All these people were so nice, so
smart, and so... well, -beautiful- that they simply couldn't be real.
She'd been strongly suspicious of that since the night before, but now
she was absolutely convinced of it, for sitting in the brown leather
armchair in the living room was a woman even lovelier to Anne's eyes
than Utena Tenjou.
        She was slim, and tall - even sitting down, that was obvious
from the length of her slender limbs - and absolutely gorgeous, with
clear white skin and the most fantastic mane of flame-gold hair Anne
had ever seen, gathered into vertical curls that framed her smooth,
sharply defined, beautifully regular features.  She was dressed in a
shimmery white silk shirt and peach-colored trousers, her legs crossed
at the knee.  Anne, who had intended to voice some kind of greeting to
whoever was in the living room, failed in her intent.  She just stood
in the doorway and stared at this woman.
        The woman in question was talking to Utena, who was standing,
dressed as she had been the night before, leaning against the aquarium
with her hands in her shorts pockets.  She kept talking for several
seconds before realizing she was being watched and turning her deep
green eyes toward her observer.  Anne swallowed, feeling her face grow
hot.
        "Hello," said the redhead in a slightly husky voice that
suited her perfectly.  She uncoiled from the chair with an easy,
elegant grace, rising to her full height.  "You must be Anne."
        "I - I must," Anne replied, inwardly kicking herself for the
lameness of the response, but the woman only smiled.
        "My name is Juri," she said.  "Juri Arisugawa."
        "Juri," Anne murmured, then shook herself out of it, looked
away from the redhead's dark emerald gaze, and said, "Um, I'm very
pleased to meet you."
        Utena shook her head in mock exasperation.  "How do you do
it?" she asked.  "Me, she stares at like I've got two heads.  You,
she's very pleased to meet."  She bent down to examine herself in the
aquarium's mirrored side.  "Maybe I -do- have something on my face,
huh, Hachi?" she asked, but the octopus declined to comment.
        "Some girls got it," Juri replied wryly, "and some girls
don't.  Shall we?"

        Safely strapped into the rear seat of Utena's dazzling red
antique Cobra convertible, Anne could observe both of her escorts
without having them looking back at her.  They were a remarkable
contrast, one she mulled over most of the way to wherever they were
going.  Both were very beautiful women, but they got there by such
different routes it was a little hard to imagine.
        Utena was open-faced, blunt, rough-and-tumble, with her hair
simply grown out and brushed, feathering naturally around her face.
For all her simplicity of demeanor, though, she was a bit of a riddle.
She was not particularly feminine - witness her dress sense, the
aggressive style of her driving, the fact that she was obviously the
less domestic partner in the Tenjou household (although she did seem
to do most of the cooking) - but she was clearly, happily and
unabashedly female.  She didn't dress like a man to hide her true
self; her clothes were tailored to showcase her athletic curves.
Anne, who had experimented with trying to pass for a boy on the Outer
Rim early in her career as a fugitive, knew the difference.
        Juri, on the other hand, was cool, restrained, elegant, with
that complex array of vertical curls taming her red-gold hair and her
rather severe mode of dress; but she was all woman, all the same, and
the aura of restraint that surrounded her wasn't repression, but
simply a natural reserve.  Even when she smiled and laughed, as she
did several times during her conversation with Utena along the drive,
her face held back secrets.  Anne could have watched it all day trying
to fathom them.
        After ten minutes of driving on the ring highway circling
Nekomikoka, they came to a shopping mall.  It was nothing particularly
special as malls go, a three-story affair with an open court in the
middle, lots of glass, brass railings, transparent elevators.  The
usual.  The three went from shop to shop, playing by ear, looking for
nothing in particular.  Anne got more opportunities to observe the
differences between her two escorts in this process.
        Utena's suggestions tended toward the utilitarian and
comfortable (why she therefore wore a suitcoat and tie, Anne couldn't
figure - just another one of her many contradictions), Juri's toward
the stylish and somewhat severe.  To her chagrin, Anne found herself
rejecting more of Juri's suggestions; the redhead's sense of fashion,
though sharp, was a bit too regimented for the liking of a refugee
from the Corporate Sector.
        "Well," said Juri wistfully, "if you're sure you don't like
it," as she put a powder-blue suit back on the rack.
        "I do like it," Anne protested, "I just don't think... "  She
groped for words.  "It would look great on -you-," she finally settled,
"but it would just make me look... dowdy."
        Juri considered this, then nodded.  "Mm.  I suppose you're
right.  With your coloration, stronger shades may be in order.  You've
got the right skin tones for black and dark grey."
        "You might as well just get a bunch of jeans and sweatshirts,"
Utena observed.  "Kate's going to have you doing yardwork and stuff,
not going to Board of Directors' meetings."
        "Yardwork?" Juri wondered.
        "Apprentice samurai always do a lot of yardwork in the movies," 
Utena replied.
        "Ah," said Juri, enlightened.
        "Um... would you excuse me for a second?" Anne said.  "This
store is... I think I need to get a little air."
        Utena and Juri looked worriedly at each other as Anne left the
shop at something just the polite side of a run.

        Goddess, what's the -matter- with me? Anne demanded of herself
as she leaned against the chrome rail surrounding the first-floor pool
that received the artificial waterfall tumbling down from the roof.
Cool spray flecked her face as she breathed deeply of the sweet air
rising from the churning water.
        They're only trying to help me! Anne continued internally.
But their depth of feeling was torture for her, their powerful concern
crushed inward on her, bending the thin walls of her untrained
defenses.  Added to the creeping, recurring panicked thoughts that all
this was a trap, that sensation was driving her toward the edge.
        If only I had some way of knowing this was real, she thought,
I could - 
        A hand clapped down firmly on her shoulder.
        "Anne Cross of Orron IV," a voice purred in her ear, "you are
under arrest."
        She shrieked in sudden, abject fright, recoiling from the
touch of the hand, stumble-sliding along the rail and sprawling on her
back.  A familiar stabbing pain spiked in the middle of her head, as
though there were something inside there with sharp teeth that wanted
out.
        The hand's owner, a black-clad, dour-faced man with gloves on,
scowled at her and said, "It's over, blip."
        Panic lifted her from the floor as if by levitation and
propelled her screaming away from him.  He lit out after her, the hard
soles of his shoes clattering against the paving stones of the mall
floor, and shouted for her to stop in the name of the yadda yadda
yadda.  Anne's mind reeled.  They'd found her already?  (goddess, not
this pain) And so openly, too, in a world that wasn't part of their
purview.  (not again not here) The Psi Cop might not be wearing his
badge, but in that outfit he might as well be carrying a sandwich
board.
        Anne pelted toward the opposite end of the mall's main court,
with the somewhat ill-defined goal of the matching waterfall pool at
the other end, and the exit somewhere beyond.  She was a fast and
well-practiced runner, but her opponent, for all his rather squat
physique, was fast too, and he was catching her up.  As he drew even
with her, he reached into his coat and pulled out a metal cylinder
about the size of a roll of quarter-credit coins.  With a snap and
sizzle, this produced a yard-long wand of stiff memory metal, which
then glowed with a sparkling blue-white phosphorescence.  A stun
baton!  So this was one who liked to get up close and personal with
his work.
        The one on Jutekh had been like that.  The pain in Anne's head
throbbed higher, demanding release, bringing tears to her eyes as she
fought it back.  Blinded by tears, she tripped on an uneven place in
the floor's paving, tumbled headlong, and rolled against one of the
concrete pillars holding up the second-story concourse above her.  The
Psi Cop pounded to a halt, panting and triumphant, and raised the stun
rod.  Anne screamed, as much from the unbearable pain in her head as
from fear of him.
        A blur of motion fell from the concourse above and landed in
between Anne and the Psi Cop, and the blow of the stun rod fell on
something that met it with a sharp spitting crackle rather than the
painful POP it would have made had it met human flesh.
        The pain receded somewhat, and Anne looked up to see Utena
Tenjou standing over her.  Despite her pain, fear and disorientation,
Anne was taken aback.  Where did the epaulets and chain on her
suitjacket come from?  To say nothing of the straight black -sword-
she'd parried the Psi Cop's stun rod with?  Anne was fond of medieval
weapons and had read some books on the subject, but she'd never seen
one like this before, with its rose-vine iron basket and gleaming
scarlet runes marching down the flat of the blade.
        "Who the fuck are you?" the Psi Cop snarled.
        "That's my line," Utena replied, then rocked back on her heel
and kicked him squarely in the gut.  The breath gushed out of him as
he stumbled backward.
        "You don't have - any idea - what you're - messing with," the
Psi Cop panted as he regrouped.  "Stay out - of this - or you'll - get
hurt."
        "I've been hurt by experts," Utena replied venomously.  "Do
your worst."
        The Psi Cop obliged, narrowing his eyes, and Anne flinched as
his powerful, highly trained consciousness lashed at her defender's
mind; but Utena only shifted her stance a little bit, her own eyes
narrowing in response.  A trickle of blood ran down from her left
nostril.  She ignored it.  The Psi Cop's eyes - and Anne's - widened.
Utena was no Lensman, nor a telepath; she had resisted that strike
with nothing more than raw, naked willpower, just like Don Bailey.
Anne caught her breath.  Was there any limit to these people?
        Snarling, Utena lunged, jabbed the tip of her sword toward his
chest, forcing him to jump back to avoid being run through.  He had
some fencing training; regrouping himself, he struck at her with the
stun rod.  Slowly, Anne pulled herself to her feet, shaking her head.
The pain was almost gone, and she was starting to feel something
curiously like hope as she watched her new-made friend dueling with
her attacker.  Utena handled that black blade with an easy
professional assurance, but no particular form or style.  Sometimes it
looked like Western fencing, sometimes kendo, sometimes nothing in
particular, but it always got the job done.
        "Get back to Juri," Utena called back over her shoulder.
"She'll get you to the car.  I'll take care of this jerk."
        "Not if you don't pay more attention to him," the jerk in
question said, stepped inside her guard, and gave her a punch to the
solar plexus that paid her off for the kick she'd given him.
Coughing, she rolled with it, came up parrying his stun rod strike.
Anne decided that, fascinating as the fight was, she'd be better off
following instructions and getting the hell out of Dodge.
        She turned, took two steps, and ran into a tall, thin man with
a sardonic smile who asked, "Going so soon, blip?"
        The pain exploded in the center of Anne's skull, and she
recoiled, screaming, "No NO -NO!-  GET -AWAY- FROM ME!"
        There was a brilliant agonizing tearing sensation in the
middle of her brain.  Her eyes flashed scarlet.  The tall, thin hunter
burst into flames and staggered back, screaming.
        Utena and the Cop she was dueling both stopped what they were
doing and turned to stare in astonishment at the pyre that the man's
partner had become.  Utena recovered first, grabbed a handful of her
opponent's jacket, drove a knee into his middle, then brought her
fist, reinforced by the thorn-spiked basket of her sword, crashing
down on the back of his neck.  He crumpled without a sound.
        Then she sheathed the sword at her side and ran, grabbing Anne
by the wrist and hauling the incoherently sobbing girl bodily toward
the nearest exit.  Behind them, the flaming man threw himself over the
railing into the waterfall pool, sending up a cloud of foul-smelling
steam.
        They reached the parking garage in less than a minute, to find
Juri Arisugawa standing unconcerned over the unconscious shape of a
third man in black, nonchalantly returning Utena's jack handle to the
trunk of the Cobra.
        Without any unnecessary explanation, Utena bundled Anne into
the back of the car, piled into the front, and roared off while Juri
was still jumping into the passenger seat.  The redhead didn't object
as Utena wound the powerful car up to its best acceleration and drove
it hell-bent for leather toward the Nekomikoka Perimeter Highway.
        In the back seat, Anne sat shivering and sobbing, her mind
racing.  They found her, they found her -already-, less than
twenty-four hours after she got here.  They -found- her.
        Wait.
        The Corps had found her.
        Why would they have put violent conflicts with themselves into
a simulation?
        Then it must be real.
        Oh, Goddess, no.  If it was real, then these wonderful people
were real... and she was really putting them in danger.  She'd known
Utena Tenjou less than a day and already caused her to face a P12 ego
lash.  She was a curse, a plague, wherever she went, pain followed.
She couldn't stay.  She had to get out, go back to running.  The dream
was over.
        Over.
        It took them only four minutes to get home, the way Utena was
driving.  When they got back, Utena and Juri both tried to talk to
Anne, but she pushed her way past them, ran upstairs, and locked
herself into her room.
        Utena threw herself into her favorite chair, the blue velvet
wingback.  Slouched down, legs outstretched, she flung her elbows over
the arms, let her spread heels hit the rug with a double thud, and
sighed.
        "God, how I hate the fucking Psi Corps," she said with passion.
        Juri nodded.  "Your nose is bleeding," she noted.
        "Let it," Utena replied sourly.  "Well, now we know why the
bastards want her so bad.  Pyrokinesis is a rare talent."
        "Even rarer than the anodyne factor," Juri agreed.  "And she's
quite powerful, too.  She practically immolated the one who frightened
her."
        Utena sighed again.  "Are we -ever- going to be rid of those
black-clad ghouls?"
        From outside, there came the roar of an engine and the squeal
of braking tires, both abruptly cut off.  Running feet sounded on the
front steps, and then the outer and inner doors banged almost as one,
and Kyouichi Saionji catapulted into the archway to the hall, his face
wild with urgency.
        "Where is she?" he demanded roughly.
        Utena felt a stab of deja vu, remarked to herself that at
least he wasn't holding her up by the neck this time, and replied, "In
her room."
        "She's all right?"
        "Physically," Juri allowed.
        Saionji gathered himself, took a deep breath, and went to
close the doors he'd left standing open, and take off his shoes.  Then
he sat down on the end of the couch and regarded the two women
gravely.
        "The man she attacked is dead," he reported.  "The two you
fought are in custody.  I killed a fourth before she could shoot at
your car while you were leaving the garage.  They weren't all Psi Cops
this time; only the ones inside the mall.  The ones covering the
garage were lessers - hunters, weapons experts."  He looked more
closely at Utena's face.  "Tenjou, your nose is bleeding."
        "-Let- it," Utena growled.  "So now she's taken out two of
'em.  Well, nobody can say she hasn't done anything for the universe."
        The front door opened again, closed, inner door open, closed,
and Anthy came into the doorway, looking worried.
        "News travels fast in this town," Utena observed wryly.
        "Kyouichi called me," Anthy told her.  "Is it true?  They've
found her already?"  Utena nodded.  Anthy blinked at her.  "Your nose
is bleeding, love."
        Utena opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, got up, and
went to the kitchen for a paper towel.
        Anne refused to come out of her room, and after knocking once
and being told to go away, Anthy refused to bother her further.  She
had promised that, if Anne wanted space, space she would get, and that
promise had to be honored.  A guest is a jewel resting on the cushion
of hospitality, after all.
        Utena knew Anthy had read that bit somewhere, but couldn't
remember where.

        They met that evening in a council of war, thirteen around the
big oval dining table.  Ten were armed (eleven if you counted the one
with natural weapons more effective than a human's meager teeth and
nails) and two needed no weapons but their own reach.
        Everyone at the table had already been briefed by Miki Kaoru
on the initial situation when the Tomodachi Duelists' Federation was
first put on alert.  Now they absorbed the update from Utena, Juri and
Saionji with grim faces and sat in silent thought for a few moments.
        The first one to speak was dark-haired, quiet Mia Ausa, who
said to no single person, "This could lead to a full-blown
confrontation with the Corps, the like of which our group hasn't seen
since Titan."  She stood up, adjusted the belt of her Minbari fighting
robes, and said in a slightly louder voice, "I should go to Babylon 6
and inform Anla'shok Na of the situation personally."
        "Do you think she'll support your involvement?" asked Utena
curiously.
        "I don't think she'll have a choice," Mia replied flatly.
        "The other Duelist chapters should also be notified,"
R. Dorothy Wayneright noted.  "Their help may be needed; better that
they have some advance warning."
        "I can stop on Jeraddo and brief B'Elanna and her officers
while I'm at Babylon 6," Mia agreed, nodding.
        "I'll go to Cephiro when we're done here and tell Mitsuru and
Kanae about it," Wakaba Shinohara added.  "And Saionji or I can let
Corwin know by Lens."
        "G-good," said Kaitlyn.  "This is t-too sensit-tive to trust
to the p-public c-c-comm nets."  She looked at Azalynn dv'Ir
Natashkan.  "C-can you g-get a message to L-Liza sec-c-curely?"
        The little Dantrovian smiled.  "I have a special relay channel
and encryption pad Edward gave me.  She guarantees them against
anybody but Ein."
        "G-good enough."  The Duelist leader looked around the table,
then smiled a little wanly.  "L-looks like th-this is an-nother f-fine
mess I've g-gotten you all into."
        "We knew the risks when we took the ring," Juri Arisugawa
observed dryly.
        They dispersed then, wary, watchful, but not alarmed.  They
were, in their way, professionals.  They knew their enemy and they
knew the game.  As evening turned to night those not dispatched on
special assignments went to their beds secure in the knowledge that
they were well-prepared and getting more so, and when morning came
they went about their lives as though nothing unusual were afoot.  Let
the inevitable Corps watchers see that the Order of the Rose wasn't
any more intimidated by them than it had been three years before on
Titan, four years before on Earth.
        Anne still didn't come down.

        The following afternoon, as the shadows lengthened on the
floor, Anne sat on her bed, knees drawn up, rocking slowly.  A new fit
of crying had overtaken her.  They seemed to come about once every
hour or two, as she re-lived the shattering pain in her head and saw
the Psi Cop burn.
        Why did she have to be born with such a curse?  What had she
done in which previous life to offend which god?  All these wonderful
people... 
        She got up and went downstairs to find Saionji and Anthy
playing cards at the dining table while Miki Kaoru and Kate twiddled
with the piano and Utena lounged in her wingback reading a book.
        "I'm going," Anne said flatly.
        They looked at her, puzzled.
        "G-g-g-going w-w-where?" Kaitlyn asked.
        "Who knows?  Who cares?" Anne replied.  "Back to what I've
been doing."
        "Oh, no," said Anthy sadly.
        "But - " said Miki.
        Saionji frowned silently.
        "Don't be an idiot," Utena said, slapping her book shut and
standing up.  "You wouldn't make it to the spaceport, let alone
offplanet.  They're watching the transit systems and all the customs
bureaus.  You were on the run for two years, didn't you figure any of
that out?  It's standard operating procedure for a hard target hunt."
        Anne tried to get angry at her tone, but she was right, and
faced with that, the girl's bravado crumbled.  She went to a dining chair,
fell into it, and buried her face in her hands.
        "I hate this," she sobbed bitterly.  "I -hate- it!  I hate
being so fucking -scared- all the time.  I hate having to depend on
you guys to rescue me all the time.  There are so many other people
who need your help more than I do."  She took a shuddering sigh and
went on in a small voice, "I'd rather be doing the rescuing anyway."
        Utena caught Anthy's eye, and the two shared a fond smile as
Utena crossed the dining room and put her hand on Anne's shoulder.
        "My God, kid," she said, her voice charged with emotion,
"you have no -idea- how much you remind me of me."
        Startled, Anne looked up at her, red-rimmed eyes tracking her
face.  "What?" she said in a hoarse whisper.
        "I said you remind me of me," Utena repeated.  "It's almost
frightening.  Give yourself time.  Nobody becomes a prince overnight -
isn't that right, Anthy?"
        Anthy smiled nostalgically.  "Maybe you should give her one of
your old school uniforms."
        "Oh, hush.  Don't mock her - she has a good heart."
        "I wasn't mocking -her-, love."
        Utena grinned.  "Oh.  Well, I've got a good heart too, you
know," she protested playfully.
        Blushing crimson, Anne faltered, "But... you're nothing like
me."
        "Not now I'm not," Utena allowed, "but I've got some hard years
on you."
        "Iron ore doesn't look much like a sword, either, Juniper,"
Saionji murmured with his little smile.
        Anne looked from Saionji to Utena with the slightly skeptical
look of a person who isn't sure, but suspects she might be being
teased.
        "H-he's r-r-right," Kaitlyn observed.
        Miki nodded.  "Potential has to be cultivated before it can be
realized," he said.  "That takes time and effort.  It's unavoidable."
        "But I don't -have- time!" Anne protested.  "How long do you
think it's going to be before the Corps figures out where in
Nekomikoka I am?  How long before they just come here and take me
away?"
        "Raid the home of the IPO chief's daughter?"  said Utena.
"Even the Corps isn't -that- stupid.  They already know you're here.
They'll have run my license plates, or just followed us outright.
Face it, kid - this might be the only place outside of New Avalon or
Babylon 6 where you're safe."
        "I can't hide in this house forever," Anne replied.
        "You won't have to," said Saionji.  "When it becomes apparent
to them that you're under Kaitlyn-sensei's protection, they'll give
up.  They can't afford to challenge the Experts of Justice so openly
as -that-."
        It seemed logical, but the hard kernel of despair within Anne
wouldn't give way, even with Utena's warm, friendly hand on her
shoulder, even with Saionji's calm assurance that all would be well.
Excusing herself clumsily, she got up and returned to her hiding
place.
        Utena sat down where she had been and let out a huge sigh.
        "I think we might be up against it this time, gang," she said
to nobody in particular.
        Kaitlyn did not reply; she was gazing pensively out one of the
side windows at the hedgerow that separated 1140 from 1138.

        Anne lay on her bed, wrung out, tired, but afraid to sleep.
Suppose she had another nightmare, and this time blew up the house?
The pain had never really receded since the mall, and when she felt
the pain, that meant that sooner or later, if she wasn't very careful,
something was going to burn.  The first time she'd felt it, she'd
thought it was a migraine; when it got worse she'd started to wonder
if she had a brain tumor or something, but she'd read that the brain
didn't feel pain in itself.  Then that awful tearing sensation, and
the explosion.  It had been written off as an accident, but Anne knew
the truth.
        She got up.  They were kind, they wished her well, but this
wasn't their fight.  She would leave.  Carefully, she opened the
window nearest the bed, climbed out, and let herself down.  The
one-story drop to the driveway was nothing to some of the jumps she
had dared during her time as a fugitive; she hit the ground in a
crouch, straightened, and turned to look for the best way of stealing
away.
        "Hi there."
        Anne nearly jumped out of her skin, but somehow didn't make a
noise as she whirled to face the voice.  It belonged to a
dusky-skinned, small and slender girl who looked to be in her late
teens, dressed in a dark blue cloak with its hood thrown back from her
head.  She was a rather fey-looking creature, with wide gold eyes and
a bushy head of wiry grey hair down to her narrow shoulders.  Her
coppery skin glowed in the slanting orange light of pre-twilight, and
her eyes glittered against that light in a way that human eyes do not.
        "Who are you?" Anne whispered.
        "My name's Azalynn," the girl replied.  "You're Anne, right?
Katie told me you were staying here.  Sneaking out?"
        "It's not safe for me to be around here," Anne said.  "I'm
dangerous.  I'm getting out of here before I get somebody seriously
hurt."
        Azalynn nodded thoughtfully.  "Oh.  That's too bad.  You're
interesting-looking.  I like the shape of your face."
        Anne blinked.  "Um."
        "Anyway, you can't run away tonight, it's a holiday," Azalynn
went on.  "I need somebody to help me observe it.  What do you say?
You can always take off in the morning."
        "What kind of holiday?" Anne wondered.
        "Back home on Dantrov, today is the Day of the Struggle
Within," said Azalynn.  "It commemorates the essential conflict
between moral courage and fearful collapse."
        Anne cocked an eyebrow.  "That sounds... interesting... " she
observed, not really sure that "interesting" was the word she wanted.
"Not really very festive, though."
        "Not all holidays are for celebration," Azalynn agreed.  "The
Struggle Within is a time for gathering oneself together to face the
coming struggle without."
        "Face the coming struggle without... " Anne mused, her voice
trailing off.  Then she looked at Azalynn again.  "OK," she said.
        Azalynn's face brightened.  "Great!  C'mon, let's get
started."
        Anne followed the strange girl into the house's unexpectedly
huge back yard - it was on the last street in the neighborhood, so
despite the fact that, from the street, it looked like a typical
outer-urban dwelling, the property behind it went on for miles.  They
passed the garage, a glass greenhouse, a freestanding dojo, a rock
garden, an enormous cherry tree (Anne made a mental note to come back
and check that out later, if there was a "later"), and a vegetable
garden before reaching the end of the cleared land and entering the
woods.
        As darkness gathered and Otoutochan, Tomodachi's brilliant
blue-grey moon, rose full in the sky, Anne began to feel a bit of
trepidation about this little field trip, but she knew she would never
be able to find her way back now, and Azalynn seemed to know precisely
where she was going, despite the lack of any visible trails.
Eventually they topped a low rise and came to a clearing, perhaps a
hundred feet across, surrounded by the looming sweetness of fir and
maple trees.  In the middle of the clearing was a decent quantity of
wood, piled with careful deliberation into a pyramidal heap about
three feet on a side.  The moonlight flooded down into the clearing,
throwing everything into an eerie greyish-blue glow.
        Azalynn, smiling, turned to Anne, and Anne gasped.  The girl's
hair, which looked plain grey in daylight, was shimmering in the
moonlight like mercury, and her eyes like polished gold.
        "OK, now I know you've never done anything like this before,
so don't worry about the words and stuff," said Azalynn.  "Just follow
my lead.  You'll know when it's right to do something, or not do
anything.  If it's never right, well... then I'm sorry for wasting
your time.  Don't be nervous."
        "Sure," said Anne nervously.
        Azalynn grinned, went to stand on one side of the pile of
wood, and gestured her to the other; then she composed herself and
stood for a moment as if in silent prayer.  After a moment, her lips
began to move silently; a minute or so later, sounds started to
emerge, then words.  They were words in an alien tongue Anne didn't
know, but they were definitely words.  They had a kind of Latinic
cadence to them, like the antique religious chants from Earth she'd
heard in school, and the language had a lot of diphthongs in it.
        For several minutes, Azalynn chanted in a monotone, gradually
growing in pace and volume, and Anne began to lose herself in the
rhythm of the alien words.  The tension began to drain away, and she
allowed herself a small smile, closing her eyes and tipping her head
back.  She could almost -feel- Outotochan's light on her face.
        Then, without a break in her cadence, Azalynn left the
monotone and started to sing rather than chant.  Her variations
started out small, but then escalated, and soon her voice was doing
the most remarkable things - soaring to incredible heights, plunging
to almost basso depths, ululating in the high registers like the songs
of birds on long multi-vowel stretches.  Anne's pulse quickened, the
lassitude of the early stage gradually replaced by a sense of
impending... something.  She wasn't sure what, but she listened and
she felt and something seemed to be happening to her, her skin felt
hot, her muscles warm and loose as if stretched.
        Without realizing it, she began to sing as well.  She knew
none of Azalynn's words, so her own voice was wordless, but Anne
matched the other girl's theme, anticipating her and striking
harmonies with her with a facility that would have astonished an
informed observer, had there been one.
        And then, in the middle of this wonderful moment, came the
pain, and she stopped, her voice cut off as though by a stranglehold,
and moaned.  Instantly, as if teleported, Azalynn was at her side,
drawing her close, murmuring into her ear.  Anne realized with a
blurry sort of shock that the Dantrovian wore nothing under her cloak.
        "Don't fight it," Azalynn urged her.  "That's why it hurts
you.  Let it go!  Don't you see?  Burn it away cleanly, don't let it
sit there and char the inside of your soul."
        "But - " Anne whimpered, her head pounding.  Azalynn's fingers
raked through her hair, soothed her temples, caressed the sides of her
face.  The nearness of this remarkable creature made Anne's hurting
head feel light.  She reached with trembling hands to touch in return,
tears coursing from her eyes.
        "Go on - go on - let it burn!"
        "I - "
        "There's nothing here you need to fear hurting," Azalynn
murmured, and then pressed her mouth to Anne's.
        Carried on the current of Azalynn's touch, Anne did as she was
bade, bracing herself inside for the shrieking, tearing anguish that
always heralded the flame.
        Instead, she felt a sort of breaking sensation, odd, but not
painful, and then a clean, sweet rush of pleasure that made her knees
buckle and drop her to the ground.  She fell back into a sloppy seiza,
arms outflung at her sides, then sprawled on her back with Azalynn
atop her as the pile of wood before them erupted in flames, transformed
into a bonfire in the space of an instant.
        They remained where they had fallen for some time, singing,
exploring, experimenting, with a sort of fierce joy that almost erased
their very individuality.  At length they rose, unsteady but fervent,
and began to dance around the fire, while the blue-white moon gazed
benevolently down as though it saw this sort of thing every day.

        Anne lay on her stomach, collapsed in front of the fire where
she had fallen after the mad dance had left her.  She had danced until
her feet bled on the twigs and stones she had trod upon, but it had
not hurt the way she'd have guessed it would.  She wondered exactly
when she had lost her shoes, and where they were.
        She ached now, but it was a real pain, a new sort of pain, and
the sort that she could tell would heal and fade away, leaving perhaps
only an interesting scar or two that she could show and say, "This has
healed and left me whole again."
        Her heart felt empty.  It was not the aching, pained fullness
that had paralyzed her in the time she had spent with Saionji and the
friends he had brought her to.  That had been a torment, to hold it
in, not strike out and wound them with her own pain.  It wasn't the
bleeding void of a lost love, either; it was just a clean and useful
emptiness - like a flower pot standing empty in early spring, waiting
to be put to its rightful use.
        Azalynn was gone now, though not far.  The pleasant murmur of
her sleeping mind was somewhere on the far side of the dying bonfire.
Anne was, for the first time she could -ever- remember, achingly free
from the touch of other human thoughts.  Her mind was as empty as her
heart.
        She rolled over and stared at the low embers of the fire,
wondering in a half-aware sort of fashion, where she was going to go
from here.  She would go back to the house when the sun came up, and
ask them to teach her enough so that she wouldn't have to run any
longer.  She had a debt to pay, in some fashion, to the universe that
had conspired to save her, and to the Gods that had answered her plea
when she had nothing else to try.
        But she was empty of everything now, and she didn't know where
to begin.
        The wind rustled through the trees, shaking the leaves with a
sound that was at once sweetly familiar and calming and then alien and
powerful and exciting.  The fire, whipped by the wind, burst into
flame again, and a few embers floated up on the wind, caught
themselves, and then began to drift back down.
        Almost without thinking about it, Anne opened her hand, and a
spark drifted down into her palm.  She hissed slightly as the heat
touched her skin.  She stared down at the little glowing light.
        And something in her heart answered.  A tiny glowing seed of
something magical, something wonderful, sprouted among the ashes, and
began to grow.
        She curled up and went to sleep, considering the new day
before her.

        In the bright, clean light of that day, she woke, sat up, and
spent a few minutes finding her clothes and shoes and putting them to
their approved uses again.  She ached all over, had managed to strain
muscles she hadn't known she had, and she winced as she put her
bruised and bloodied feet back into her shoes, but underlying it all
was a tremendous sense of warmth and well-being.
        She chuckled a little at herself.  Two years on the Outer Rim,
fighting tooth and claw for her virtue, and she'd surrendered it in
less than two hours to a lifeform she'd never seen before... 
        As though summoned by the thought, Azalynn emerged from the
woods on the other side of the clearing, beyond the completely dead
remains of the fire, wrapped up in her cloak again.  Now she -was-
wearing something underneath it, if only shorts and a t-shirt.  She
was still barefoot, but her feet seemed accustomed to that sort of
treatment, for they were unmarked.  She smiled brightly as she saw her
fellow celebrant awake.
        "Good morning!" said Azalynn.  "How are you?"
        Anne decided to try a little joke.  "I don't know.  How am I?"
        Azalynn considered the question in all seriousness before
replying, "Your voice has real potential.  Not all humans can manage
it, but if you want to learn Dantrovese I can teach you.  And your
spiritual energy is incredible.  This is the best I've ever come out
of the Struggle Within feeling.  I might just pass that theodynamics
prelim after all!"
        Anne blinked, realized the answer was completely sincere where
the question had not been, and nodded gratefully.
        Azalynn looked up at the sun.  "Looks like it's about noon.
Well, I guess we'd better get back.  If they tried to get you up for
breakfast and found out you're not there they're probably calling the
Wedge Defense Force by now."
        Anne laughed and followed her back out of the woods.  There
was no awkwardness over what had passed between them during the
Struggle; its significance required no words.  It had, after all, been
a religious experience.
        They parted company at the house.  Azalynn shook her hand
rather formally and finally told her the rest of her name (dv'Ir
Natashkan), thanked her for making it the best Struggle ever, and then
scrambled up over the hedgerow border and disappeared.
        Anne stood looking after her for a moment, then smiled,
turned, rounded the house, and walked straight in the front doors.
She tracked a bit of blood on the hall floor after removing her shoes
in the appropriate place, and went into the dining room, where she
found Kaitlyn and Juri seated at the table, getting started on
breakfast.
        Kaitlyn, who was just buttering her first English muffin,
blinked in surprise at the apparition that entered the dining room
with a slight limp from the hallway.  Anne was rumpled, smudged with
what appeared to be soot, and her long brown hair was out of its
braid, flowing down her back.  The tangles she'd braided over were
gone, though there were a few leaves caught up in there.  Juri cocked
an eyebrow at Kate, who gave her a knowing look, and both smiled.
        As Anne rounded the end of the table and approached Kaitlyn's
seat, Utena appeared from the kitchen and Anthy in the archway to the
living room, their faces also wearing expressions of rather pleased
shock.  Anne ignored them, homing in on Kate, and lowered herself
stiffly into seiza next to her chair.
        Remembering what Saionji had told her about respect and
deference, she bowed as low as her protesting back would allow her
from the seated position and delivered the little speech she'd been
mulling over since the forest.
        "Kaitlyn-sensei, I apologize.  I have been ungrateful and
difficult.  I was brought here to be your student, not a sullen and
solitary guest.  Please forgive me."
        Kate looked down at her with amazement, then collected herself
with a little smile and said, "L-lesson o-one, then: D-d-don't sit on
the f-f-floor in th-the d-d-dining r-room."
        Anne glanced up at her sharply, saw her smile, and grinned
herself as she (painfully) rose to her feet.
        "B-better," said Kate.  "N-now h-h-have some b-breakf-f-fast."
        "An excellent idea," said Anthy, who set a place for her at
the table while Utena went to put some more pancakes on the griddle.
"From the looks of you," Anthy went on with a rather indulgent smile,
"you had a busy night last night, and you haven't eaten since the day
before yesterday."
        Anne realized with a bit of a shock that this was, in fact,
true.  Somehow, she'd completely missed Friday.
        But Saturday was making up for it.
        And Utena Tenjou made what had to be the best blueberry
pancakes in the entire universe.

        The next day, Anne sat in seiza at the end of the dojo which
stood in the back yard of the house at the end of the last street in
Nekomikoka, watching with somewhat skeptical interest as two women
prepared to do mock battle.
        One, Utena Tenjou, Anne knew could fight.  She'd seen her
fence with a stunrod-armed Psi Cop in a shopping mall, after all.  The
other, Kaitlyn Hutchins, Anne had only been -told- could handle
herself, and from what Anne had seen of Kate so far, she wasn't
convinced of the truth of that.  Kate was a quiet woman, pretty but
not beautiful (and so often overshadowed by the remarkably lovely
company she tended to keep), gentle and pleasant.  It was strange to
see her in kendo garb instead of her usual grey jeans and college
sweatshirts, holding that black wood walking stick she always carried
as if it were a bokuto.
        Utena, at the other end of the floor, actually -held- a
bokuto, and had dressed in an unusual costume that looked like half of
some kind of odd military uniform - a high-collared black jacket with
red piping and big brass buttons - over red cycling shorts, red socks,
and her usual black and white saddle shoes.  She was smiling to
herself as she worked the bokuto in her hands, stretching her wrists
and shoulders.  Both women, Anne realized as she watched them prepare,
were left-handed.
        The dojo door slid back, and Anthy Tenjou entered, carrying in
her hands a pair of roses she'd just taken from the greenhouse garden
she tended.  One was white, the other yellow.  Smiling, Anthy went to
Kaitlyn and affixed the yellow rose to the breast of her monsuke; then
she went to Utena and put the white one in her top pocket.
        "This," Anthy explained to Anne as she moved to the center of
the opposite wall, between the two combatants, and composed herself
into a watchful attitude, "is a Rose Duel.  It was the common style of
dueling at the school Utena and I attended before we met Kaitlyn.  The
rules are simple: The combatant who loses the rose from her chest,
loses the duel."
        Anne mulled that over for a second, then nodded.  "Seems
simple enough."
        Anthy's smile had a dimension to it Anne couldn't quite fathom
as she responded, "Doesn't it, though?"
        Utena extended her bokuto in one hand like a Western fencing
weapon and said, "You ready?"
        Kate squared herself into a kendo stance, her walking stick
held low, and replied calmly, "B-bring it."
        Utena grinned, rocked back on her heel, and charged.
        Well, this'll be short, thought Anne.
        Kate faded back a half-step, pivoted, and slipped the strike,
delivering a painful-sounding whack across Utena's shoulder blades as
the pink-haired duelist stumbled past her.  Utena nearly fell, caught
herself, and whirled on her heel, smiling.
        "Not bad," she said.  "I'm -so- out of practice."
        "W-whose f-f-fault is th-that?" Kate wondered, and struck.
Utena parried, counterstruck, and they fenced up and down for a few
minutes, slowly and deliberately picking up the pace of their
clashes.  Anne watched with growing interest.  Kate was good, better
than she'd expected.  Her movements flowed gracefully, with a more
controlled energy than Utena's explosive style, and she always seemed
to get her body, her weapon, or both into the correct position -just-
at the instant it was needed.
        Still, she wasn't exhibiting anywhere near Utena's level of
aggression or power.  Her defense was passive, her offense
opportunistic, and she was letting the taller girl back her all around
the dojo.  Anne wondered if she were waiting for something, or just
that much weaker.
        Then, so suddenly Anne almost missed it, Kate paused, shifted
her stance, and struck, and with a splintering CRACK, Utena's bokuto
fractured, three-quarters of its blade clattering into the corner.
        Utena recoiled, covering nearly ten feet in one great backward
bound to land next to Anthy, and looked with some consternation at the
remains of her weapon; then she smiled and tossed it aside.
        "Balance is all wrong on those things anyway," she said.  "You
want to fix me up, hon?"
        Kaitlyn stood in a ready stance where she'd broken her
opponent's weapon, smiling herself, waiting.  Anne cocked an eyebrow
but remained silent.
        Anthy gave her lover a speculative look, then smiled, stepped
in front of her, and closed her eyes in concentration, holding her
open hands before Utena's chest.
        >Rose of the Noble Castle,< she murmured, though Anne couldn't
understand the language the words were in, and a bubble of white light
suddenly appeared in the space between her hands and Utena's jacket.
Anne blinked as, with a flicker of yellow, flamelike light, Utena's
coat changed slightly, acquiring braided epaulets, a collar chain,
broad white cuffs, and a sort of frilly white petticoat between the
tails and her shorts.  She fell backward, her back arching in a rather
painful-looking fashion, and Anthy caught her under the shoulders with
her right arm, leaving her left hand open to maintain that bubble of
white light.
        "What the - ?!" Anne murmured.
        >Heart of the Rose that sleeps within this soul,< Anthy went
on, >heed your master and come forth!<
        There was a bright, sparkly sound, and the bubble of light
burst, to reveal...
        "WHAT the... "
        ... the golden hilt of a -sword-, jutting out of Utena's chest
just below the swell of her bosom.
        Anthy grasped the sword, drew it smoothly up, straight out
of Utena's chest, and held it aloft.  Anne gasped, coming halfway to
her feet before realizing it and settling uneasily back into seiza.
What sort of a trick had -that- been?  That wasn't the same sword
Utena had fought the Psi Cop with at the mall... 
        Utena opened her eyes and straightened up, smiling at Anthy as
she took the sword from her.  Anthy returned to her place along the
wall as Utena took up her en-garde stance again and leveled her new
blade at Kaitlyn.
        "Round two?" she said with a cocky grin.
        Kaitlyn smiled and moved her hand; two-thirds of her walking
stick clattered away into the corner, revealing the gleaming steel of
a blade, katana-length but straight.
        "B-bring it," Kate repeated.
        So they rejoined their duel, this time with live steel, and
Anne sat slack-jawed and watched.  The two women missed each other by
centimeters, then millimeters, then microns, as they whirled around
the room, holding nothing back this time.  Kate's blade whicked off a
lock of Utena's hair from above her right ear.  Utena's carved a strip
the size of a small towel off the left sleeve of Kate's monsuke.  One
miscue by either of them would end this afternoon's lark in bloody
death, and yet they were smiling, Utena broadly, Kate with an air of
more private amusement, as they danced.  That's what it was, Anne
realized as she watched them go - a dance.  Like a strange kind of
courtship ritual or an affirmation of a bond, not combat at all.
        A dance with razor-sharp swords whose targets were pinned over
the dancers' hearts.
        These people are fucking crazy!
        After nearly ten minutes of this, Utena and Kate wound up in
the middle of the floor, their blades locked together, regarding each
other through the crossed metal with grins of pure enjoyment and
panting only slightly with the effort of their combat.  Utena darted
her eyes at Anne, who sat with her face completely blank.
        Deliberately misinterpreting her rapt attention, Utena said to
Kate, "I think we're losing our audience."
        Kate took her own glance, then grinned a little bit wider.
"W-well, th-then m-maybe w-we should k-k-kick it up a n-notch."
        "I'm game if you are," said Utena.
        "Oh dear," Anthy observed.  "In that case you'll have to go
outside, love.  The last time you had me do this for one of your
practice duels, you nearly destroyed the dojo."
        "No problem," said Utena.  Without changing her grin, she
coiled herself and shoved Kate away, their blades coming apart with a
long, shimmering scrape, then backleapt toward the far wall.  Kate
stumbled back, regrouped, and followed after her.  Anne, blinking,
scrambled to her feet and followed as Utena reached the far wall, slid
the panel open with her heel, and jumped lightly out into the rock
garden, then Kate jumped out after her.
        Anthy, shaking her head with an indulgent smile, like a mother
whose unruly but lovable children have just tracked mud into the
kitchen, went out the main door and walked unhurriedly around to the
side.  Anne followed her at a trot, her eyes wide with interest.
        Kate and Utena were facing off at either end of the arched
little wooden footbridge that spanned the stream running through the
middle of the rock garden.  Anthy, unconcerned, crossed by way of the
stepping stones a bit further downstream, then went to Utena's side.
        Utena held out her sword, and now that it was relatively
still, Anne, who was still trotting after Anthy, got her first good
look at it.  It was beautiful and unusual, the metal of its straight,
double-edged blade glittering silver, but filigreed with veins of
darkest black, almost like cracks in safety glass.  Its golden hilt
gleamed in the sunlight, which reflected interestingly through the
large, aqua-blue, oval gem which formed the center of its curved gold
handguard, and its pommel was a gleaming scarlet gemstone cut like the
bloom of a rose.  Anne, perceptive soul that she was, was starting to
detect a pattern in certain elements of the decor around here.
        >Priestess of the Rose,< said Utena in what sounded like the
same language Anthy had used before the trick with the sword, >cast
off your body and protect this sword!<
        Utena was holding the blade level with Anthy's head, aiming
the point right at her, but that didn't seem to concern Anthy.  She
merely walked up to it, stood regarding it for a second, then smiled,
took it carefully in her hands, and very delicately kissed the point.
        Scarlet light flowed up the jet-black veins of the blade,
wrapped Utena's hand in bloody radiance, and gleamed with a bright
sound from the rose gem in the pommel.  Grinning, Utena withdrew the
sword, then raised it vertical in front of her face and kissed the
crossbeam in a crusader's salute.  The blade shimmered, the energy
that enveloped it almost crackling.
        Anne took a moment to stare at Anthy in astonishment as the
dark-skinned woman retired to a safe perch on a boulder about ten feet
from the end of the bridge.  Anthy saw her staring, smiled, and patted
a spot on the boulder next to her.  Without a word, Anne scrambled up
and sat down to watch the finish of this remarkable duel.
        "Round three," said Utena.
        "B-bring it," said Kate.
        Utena leaped straight up into the air, roaring.  Kate stood
and watched her rise, block out the sun, then begin to fall, the
Heart of the Rose trailing a comet's tail of crimson light.  There was
a tremendous crash, and the bridge exploded into a tangle of broken
timbers and shattered planking, collapsing with a series of splashes
into the stream.  Anne jumped to her feet with a fearful, shocked
cry; both women had disappeared in the sudden cloud of dust and
splinters.
        Actually, they'd disappeared from -behind- the sudden cloud of
dust and splinters, for the sounds of clashing metal and Utena's
aggressive cries soon drew Anne's attention to a spot on the
streambank a few dozen feet to the left of the former bridge.  The two
were still battling, apparently unharmed, though Kate's face was
bloody.  Kate's blade, though it seemed to be mere steel, was
deflecting Utena's blazing sword, and the brown-haired girl's eyes
were narrowed in a look of intense concentration as she carefully gave
ground.
        She reached the bend in the stream, and as she parried Utena's
next strike, her heel slipped over the edge of the bank.
        "Ah-HA!" Utena cried, and lunged for the finishing strike.
        Suddenly, Kaitlyn wasn't there.
        "Wha - ?!" said Utena as her lunge carried her through the
empty space where, a moment before, her roommate had been a helpless
victim waiting for the picking.
        With an enormous splash, she fell into the stream.  It wasn't
very deep - only about a foot - and she turned on her back, levering
herself up on her elbows.  Coughing and spluttering, her hair
plastered across her face, she shook her head, trying to clear her
eyes.
        In a flicker like candlelight, Kaitlyn appeared standing over
her, one foot in the stream, and with the point of her sword she
casually flicked the rather soggy white rose from Utena's chest to
float merrily down the stream.
        "I w-win," she announced cheerfully, and held out her hand to
help Utena up.
        "You cheated!" Utena protested, but not very vigorously, as
she clasped Kate's hand and let herself be levered to her feet.
Dripping, she squelched out of the stream, shaking water from her
no-longer-glowing sword.  After a moment, it glowed, then dissolved
into a little cloud of yellow sparks which dispersed and faded away
into nothing.  "Using that Power to Cloud the Minds of Men you learned
from your dad... "
        Kate gave her a look.  "Oh, a-and your l-little 'k-kiss the
l-lights-saber' t-trick is f-f-fair."
        Anthy and Anne crossed the stream by the stepping stones and
followed it down to the two duelists, Anthy smiling, Anne incredulous.
Anthy paused at the wreckage of the bridge and shook her head sadly.
        "Oh dear," she said.  "I knew something like this would
happen."
        "Ah, relax, Anthy," said Utena cheerfully as she raked her
wet hair back behind her ears.  "I built that bridge, I can build it
again."
        Anne finally found her voice.
        "What... WAS... that?" she demanded.
        "That," Anthy replied, "was Kate and Utena getting carried
away, as usual."  She tsked regretfully at Utena.  "I hope you enjoyed
showing off, love.  Now go and get out of those wet clothes before you
catch a cold."
        "Yes, ma'am," said Utena with mock-grudging dutifulness; then
she clapped Kate on the shoulder, grinned at Anne, turned, and
squished off toward the house.
        "You're hurt," Anthy observed, taking Kate's chin in her
fingertips and turning her face to look at the bloody mark on her
cheek.
        "I c-caught a s-s-splinter when Utena w-wrecked the b-bridge,"
she replied.  "It's n-nothing."
        "You're lucky it didn't hit you in the eye," Anthy admonished
her.  She rubbed the pad of her thumb across Kate's cheek to clear
away the blood, then gently kissed the minor wound.  When she
withdrew, it was gone.
        "Th-thanks," said Kate, smiling.  "W-who's for ice c-c-cream?"

        The three of them were sitting at the dining room table,
working on dishes of chocolate ice cream, when Utena came downstairs
in fresh clothes (black shorts, white dress shirt, socks sticking out
of her shorts pocket), her hair in a towel turban.  She paused by the
mirror in the hall to finish knotting her tie, then came into the
dining room, unwinding the towel and scrubbing at her hair with it.
        "Phew!" she said, plunking down in the chair at the head of
the table and pulling the carton of ice cream, the one unused bowl and
spoon, and the scoop toward her.  "I haven't had a workout like that
in way too long.  We should make that a regular thing again."
        "If you do that, you'd better build the next bridge out of
iron," Anthy said.
        "It w-was g-good for m-me, t-too," said Kate with a sly grin.
Anne felt the bridge of her nose get hot.  Utena snickered and flashed
a grin at Anthy, who somehow managed to convey with her facial
expression alone the impression that she disapproved slightly of their
juvenile innuendo, but put up with it because she loved them.
        "I c-can s-sure use the p-prize r-right around n-n-now,
t-too," Kate went on.
        Anne looked puzzled.  "What do you win?"
        Kate nodded her head toward Tenjou the Darker.  "A-Anthy h-has
to d-do m-my homew-work for a w-w-week."
        Anne cocked an eyebrow.  "Weird system."
        "Don't knock it, kid," said Utena with a grin.  "It sure beats
the old one."
        "I quite agree," said Anthy primly.  "More ice cream, Anne?"
        "Um... sure.  So... " Anne attempted after a few moments.
"Would somebody like to explain to me what I just saw?  That trick
with the sword, and... that -other- trick with the sword... and
Kaitlyn disappearing... "
        "Well, that'll take a little while," said Utena.  "How 'bout
we finish the ice cream first, then we'll go in the living room and
tell you the whole story?"

        The whole story took two hours, and wasn't really the whole
story at all, since it didn't include anecdotes or side trips down
memory lane, just the basic structure of the events which had brought
Utena and Anthy together, torn them apart, then reunited them, with a
short digression into how Kate had learned the technique of the
Clouded Mind, which wasn't actually part of Katsujinkenryuu.
        When it was finished, Anne felt, perhaps, even a little more
foolish for having dismissed Kate as the weak link in this house - it
seemed likely that there -was- no weak link! - and she was further
impressed by the group as a whole.  All of them had had a part to play
in the story, and all of them were exceptional in some way.  It made
Anne feel a little small... and at the same time, hopeful, because
they had all started out small themselves.
        "You've got that right - ask Saionji sometime about how bad my
technique was the first time I fought him," Utena said with a chuckle
when Anne raised this subject.  "He'll get this sort of faraway grin
and say," (and here, Utena lapsed into a rather comical imitation of
Saionji's deep, serious voice) "'Yes, she was terrible, completely
untutored, and she had brought a worthless wooden practice sword, to
boot.  It was no way to approach a Rose Duel.'"
        "So how'd you beat him?" Anne asked.
        "Well, -he- would have it that I was right, he was wrong, and
the Universe is just.  Me, I think I got plain lucky."
        "Sometimes it's better to be lucky," said Anthy with a fondly
reminiscent smile.  "It was -my- dumb luck that you happened to see
him being short-tempered with me that day.  If you hadn't... "  She
gave a shrug that encompassed all the myriad possibilities, most of
them extremely bad.
        Anne looked from one Tenjou to the other and gave her crooked
smile, shaking her head in wonder.
        "You guys are incredible," she said, and then, with a sly
grin, "When do I get to meet your boyfriend?"
        "Boyfriend?" Anthy replied, puzzled.
        "Her brother," said Anne, nodding toward Kate.
        Anthy blinked, the soul of innocence, and looked at Utena.
"Utena, is Sir Corwin our boyfriend?"
        "What the hell, why not," Utena replied with an offhanded
shrug.  "It'll make his week just to get the nomination.  We'll have
to keep it to ourselves, though - Kozue might object."
        Anthy nodded agreeably.  "All right."
        Utena glanced at her watch.  "Well, I guess I've been sitting
around long enough.  I better go start designing a replacement for our
bridge."
        "And we'll take that tour of the grounds I was about to give
when you two interrupted us for your childish display," said Anthy
with smiling mock disapproval.
        "W-when you're d-d-done with th-that," Kate said, "i-it's
t-time for Anne's f-first lesson, a-anyway."  She got up and smiled.
"R-ready?"
        Anne got to her feet, bowed, and said with a grin, "Hai,
Kaitlyn-sensei!"
        Kate looked at her for a few seconds, then shook her head.
"Y-you've a-a-already b-been hanging a-around w-with Kyouichi-k-kun
t-too long.  I s-suppose I'll h-have to s-start c-calling you
'Juni-chan'."

        Anne walked quietly behind Anthy, still processing all she'd
just seen, as the darker Tenjou led the way around the garage and into
the back yard again.
        "Well, you've seen the dojo and the garden bridge - what's
left of it," said Anthy.  She led the way to the round, high-peaked
glass building that stood near the edge of the yard, opposite the
dojo, and opened the door.
        "This is my rose garden," she said, gesturing for Anne to
enter.
        "This is a greenhouse?" said Anne in a puzzled tone as she
entered, looking up at the peaked ceiling.  It was, she reflected,
kind of a dumb question, but she'd never seen a greenhouse like this
before; all the ones she'd seen to date had been the industrial
hydroponic garden type, extremely boring and regimented.  This was
completely different - a pleasant round space filled with light and
the sweetness of hundreds of roses, with bushes growing round in a
great ring, creeping vines twining around columns and pillars, and the
garden stream flowing right through the middle of the big round room.
        Anthy, the spirit of kindness, didn't point out that it was a
dumb question, anyway.  She merely nodded with a pleasant smile and
said, "Yes."
        "It looks like a giant birdcage," Anne observed, looking up at
the shape of the ceiling again.
        Anthy, who was inspecting one of the bushes near the door,
replied unruffledly, "It was supposed to be a metaphor.  My brother's
idea of a joke."
        "Oh."  Having just heard the story, at least the short
version, Anne understood the significance of that statement perfectly
well, and marveled at the woman's ability to speak so calmly and
pleasantly about it.  "So... why did you keep it?"
        At this, Anthy paused in her work, turned, and looked up at
the ceiling for a moment herself, her face thoughtful.
        "I'm not sure," she finally said.  "Perverse sentiment,
perhaps.  Whatever its intent, it -is- a beautiful thing my brother
made for me."  She shrugged, smiling.  "And now that the cage door is
open, what does it matter?  It's a place to keep my flowers safe from
the wind and rain."  She blinked then, noticing something about one of
the nearby bushes, and went to it with a pleased exclamation.
        "Ah!  These are coming in sooner than I expected," she said,
and, collecting a pair of golden shears from the work table that
straddled the stream in the middle of the greenhouse, she snipped off
a bloom from the bush she'd noticed.  Turning, she presented it to
Anne.
        "This is for you," she said with a smile.  Anne, puzzled, took
the flower (mindful of the thorns) and examined it.  It was a curious
color, one she hadn't known roses grew in - a sort of storm-cloud grey
with a hint of soft sky blue.
        "Thank you," she said, slightly at a loss.  Still carrying the
flower in her hands, she followed Anthy in her course around the
garden, inspecting each of the bushes (all of which appeared, at least
to Anne's untrained eye, to be thriving) in turn.  The blooms were in
a remarkable array of colors - yellow and white, a gentle pink, the
traditional deep red, a curiously familiar shade of orange-gold, a
bright sky blue, dark forest green (this flower only a little lighter
than its own stem), a lovely royal purple, a soft cream color, a much
paler blue, a vivid, almost undignified fuschia, a most remarkable
specimen which was pale grey barred vividly with black...
        "... Whoa," said Anne, pausing by one of the climbing
columns.  "Is this one real?"
        "Hm?" said Anthy, pausing.  She turned and came back to look.
The climbing rose Anne was standing next to was studded with blooms of
a most improbable color - as though the flowers were made of smooth
silver foil, not reflective, but softly gleaming.
        Anthy looked pleased, leaned and sniffed one of the blooms
delicately.  "Yes, it's real," she said.  "This is Corwin's flower.
You should meet him soon."
        "He made it do that?"
        "Not exactly.  The plants here are special; the color of their
blossoms is affected by the people who live near them, or in the heart
of the person caring for them."  Anthy smiled.  "Utena claims that
they're ordinary plants, and what's special is me, but she's biased."
        Anne nodded, wondering how in the galaxy that worked, and
followed her guide further around, noting more colors and wondering
who they were for.  Some were more than one color.  There were peace
roses, yellow blooms with blushing pink tips, and some which were a
beautiful blend of yellow turning to that curiously familiar
orange-gold.  Near those was a very pretty bush of purple blossoms
with white tips.  But... Anne paused, looking thoughtfully at the
plant next to that one, which on first glance seemed to be identical.
Gently, she reached out a hand and moved one of the flowers, examining
it carefully.
        "Is something wrong, Anne?" Anthy asked, coming up behind
her.  "I hope you haven't found any bugs."
        "No... I was just looking at this flower," Anne said
thoughtfully.  "I thought it was like the one next to it, but it's
not.  See?  The edges on this one are silver."
        Anthy bent to look more closely at the flower, turning it this
way and that in her hand, then smelling it.
        "Hmm," she mused.  "Interesting."
        She left it at that and moved along; Anne, with another glance
at the yellow-orange ones, followed.
        Anthy had a small, inscrutable grin on her face for the rest
of the tour.  She showed Anne the garden, a large expanse of various
vegetables which boasted, far in the back corner, a tenant.  This was
a large, grizzled badger named Bruno, who broke all of Anne's
book-learned preconceptions about badgers by taking a small piece of
food from Anthy's hand and suffering himself to be petted.
        "I wouldn't recommend you try that," Anthy remarked as she led
the way toward a large barn-like outbuilding behind the garden.
"Bruno is slow to warm up to new people."
        "Ah... I'll keep that in mind," promised Anne, wondering what
the barn-like building was.  She'd noticed it on her way out of the
back yard with Azalynn, but hadn't been in much of a mood to speculate
about it at the time.  On her way back in, she'd been too focused on
reaching Kate and delivering her apology.  Now, she had leisure to
examine it and notice that there was a reasonably larged fenced area
of empty-looking yard behind it.
        When Anthy opened the door and showed Anne inside, the younger
girl was startled to learn that the building -was- a barn.  There were
a couple of enclosed rooms off to the right, but on the left of the
long hall running down the center of the building was a half-wall
pierced by four doors.  One of the compartments behind those doors was
empty, but each of the other three contained a large animal.  The one
in the nearest stall, a very large white specimen with a broad,
pleasant face, made a murmuring noise and leaned his great head out
over the half-wall to nudge Anthy's shoulder with his nose.
        Anne Cross stopped dead in the hallway, transfixed by her
first sight in person of a creature she had, from early childhood,
always thought of as a sort of mythical creature, like a dragon or a
chimaera.  She'd heard that they did exist on worlds outside the
Corporate Sector, but never really believed it.
        "Is that... a -horse-?" she inquired in a small voice.
        Anthy smiled.  "It is indeed.  This is Utena's horse,
Thunderbolt.  Come and say hello - he's very friendly."
        Anne stepped carefully closer, looking up at the beast.  "He's
-huge-," she observed.
        Anthy chuckled.  "Well, he's a Percheron," she said.  "They
were bred to carry knights in full armor."  She patted Thunderbolt's
neck and beckoned Anne closer again.  When the girl did so, Anthy put
a slice of apple in one of her hands.  "Hold your hand up flat and let
him take it," she instructed.
        Anne followed instructions.  Thunderbolt dipped his head, and
with just a brush of his snout across her palm, the apple was gone.
Anne looked at his dark eye and felt a twinge of surprise.  She'd read
that horses were really rather stupid animals - but Thunderbolt gave
her much the same impression that Sergei the tiger had.  He didn't
have an intelligence like a person's, but he had one, all the same.
        Enchanted, Anne rubbed his nose and was rewarded with a gentle
sort of grumbling sound and a nudge from the great head.  Anthy
smilingly detached her after a few moments and led her down the line.
The next box contained a smaller horse, both shorter and lighter of
build (if a bit more barrel-shaped).  He was brown, with a short mane
that stood up straight and a white "blanket" on his rump with his
overall brown showing through in Dalmatian-like spots.  He didn't give
Anne the same impression of intellect that Thunderbolt had, but he was
certainly affable - like a very big, very mellow dog.
        "My horse, Scout," Anthy explained, repeating the
apple-assisted introduction.  "He's not as grand as Thunderbolt, but
then, my needs are a bit more modest.  He wouldn't do well in a
cavalry charge, for instance, but he's a very steady trail horse."  She
patted Scout's neck and tugged at his forelock in a way that he seemed
to like; he rolled his eyes and nearly knocked her over with his
head.  "And," Anthy added in an unsteady laugh as she regained her
footing, "he thinks he's a dog."
        Anne laughed at the thought, so parallel to her own, and Anthy
went on, "If you decide you'd like to learn to ride at some point,
Scout and I would be happy to show you."
        The younger girl blinked in surprise at this unexpected offer
and stammered her way through thanks; Anthy let it pass gracefully and
led the way to the last of the occupied stalls.
        The horse in that stall was different from the other two in
more ways than one.  For one thing, she was a mare, not a stallion
like Thunderbolt or a gelding like Scout.  For another, she was
somewhere midway between them in size, but so well-proportioned that
she seemed lighter than Scout despite overtopping him by several
inches.  And for a third, she didn't come out to the door to greet the
visitors.
        Instead, she stood off toward the back and regarded Anthy and
Anne with a disquietingly judicious sort of look.  She was black, as
black as Thunderbolt was white - a raven black that almost looked blue
at its highlights.  After giving both of her visitors a long, hard
going-over with dark eyes, she did finally deign to approach the door,
moving with a contained grace that somehow gave the impression that
she could knock down the whole place and leave if she didn't -choose-
to remain in her stall.
        There was something imperious in the way the black mare took
the slice of apple Anne offered, as though she were doing the girl a
favor by taking the fruit off her hands.  Then she fixed Anne with a
closer-range version of the appraising look - Anne had the remarkable
experience of feeling vaguely intimidated by an animal, not in the
physical department, but by force of personality.  She made herself
stand firm, telling herself the whole thing was ridiculous, and then
the black mare turned with a dismissive whicker and went back to her
hay rack.
        "... Whose is -that-?" Anne asked Anthy in a quiet voice.
        "Corwin's," Anthy replied.  "He keeps her here because, for
all its virtues, New Avalon is really no place for a horse.  Her name
is Svartlyn."
        "She's... kind of scary, isn't she?" Anne inquired, seeking
reassurance that she wasn't being a ninny as much as anything else.
        She was relieved when Anthy nodded.  "She's a Valkyrie's
horse," she explained.  "Daughter of Sleipnir, out of Gloemska, the
mount of the Lord of the Dead.  Corwin is the only one who can really
handle her, though she tolerates Utena and me."
        Most of what Anthy had just said went over Anne's head, though
some corner of her well-read subconscious registered a complaint at
the notion that the horse before her could be both Corwin's and a
Valkyrie's; she was too busy regarding the animal with a combination
of awe and something just to the left of fear.
        They left the barn, completing their tour of the grounds by
passing back through the formal garden.  Not far from the wreckage of
the bridge, Anne paused to place a hand against the trunk of a large,
old cherry tree which stood in the center of a grassy patch next to a
sizeable rock.  The tree had obviously been there well before the
house and grounds; now that Anne took a closer look at it, she could
see the way the garden had been arranged around it.  Like most things
here - everything except the black horse, really - it gave Anne a
curiously warm and welcoming feeling.  She made a mental note to come
back and visit it again soon, noting Anthy's quiet, knowing little
smile as she did so.
        I think, she said to herself without the note of cringing
uncertainty that had been her way of life for the last two years, this
is going to be all right.

        Four days later, Anne Cross collapsed on her bed, stared up at
the ceiling, and wondered if, perhaps, fleeing from the Psi Corps had
been easier than this.
        Ow, I hurt, she thought.  I hurt a lot.  I can't -see- that
bruise on my back, but I know it's there, ow, I hurt.  Feels like I'm
lying on an iron bar, it's probably black by now.  How am I supposed
to dodge when I can't -move-?  Ow.  Maybe I should just take a nap.
No, I'll wake up stiff if I don't go have a shower.  Getting out of
bed is going to -hurt- though...  Ow.
        There was a knock at the door.
        "Open it yourself," Anne called.  "I'm paralyzed.  Kate broke
my back."
        The door opened, and Anthy looked in.  "Oh, that's too bad,"
she said.  "I've just finished drawing you a bath, but if you can't
get to it, I suppose I'll have to let it go again - "
        Anne groaned, and with a creak of bedsprings, levered herself
slowly and painfully up out of her bed.
        "I'm up," she said.  "Barely, but I'm up."
        She took off her clothes, put on her bathrobe, and shuffled
into the hall, wincing.  Anthy smiled benevolently at her as she
nodded the only thanks she could muster right now and went down the
hall into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
        The master bathroom in this place was -huge-, almost the size
of the kitchen below it, and it was dominated by an enormous sunken
marble tub that took up a full quarter of the room, to the left of the
door. Ahead was the matching sink, and to the right the toilet and a
standing shower stall with a sliding door.  The tub was almost full of
water, steaming gently, and the room was full of warmth and the sweet
smell of rose-scented bath salts.  On the surface of the water floated
a number of blue-grey items which it took Anne a few moments to
realize were the petals of a flower, one of the flowers Anthy said the
plants had produced just for her.
        With a grateful sigh and a warm regard for Anthy Tenjou's
exceptional thoughtfulness, Anne lowered herself into the bath,
arranged her shoulders against the padded edge of the tub, and tipped
her head back.  She didn't know why anybody would ever install a tub
this size, but she was glad they had all the same.
        Soothing warmth spread throughout her abused body, and yet she
didn't feel in danger of falling asleep; she merely hovered in a
contented lassitude, her mind running back over the activities of the
last five days.  Her hands and feet were blistered from hours spent
learning how to hold a bokuto properly and striding barefoot up and
down the dojo floor.  Her shoulders ached from maintaining ready
positions for hours.  Her back and abdomen were bruised from Kate's
corrective whacks with her sheathed zatoichi.
        Kaitlyn was a gruff instructor, the tone of voice she used
in the dojo much harsher than her normal speaking voice.  She gave
instructions quickly, sharply, and only once.  Inattention was
painful.  Which is not to say that she was cruel, precisely, though an
outside observer would probably have found her so as she coldly and
mercilessly pushed her student to the very brink of her endurance...
        ... but never quite past it, and that was the key to
everything.  Under such punishment from most people, Anne, a
natural-born rebel, would have fought back, blown up, quit in a huff;
but there was something about Kate that stopped her from doing it.
Now that she had seen her new sensei fight, now that she was actually
under her tutelage, Anne understood why Saionji revered her.
        Underneath Kaitlyn's sweetness and hesitancy, the kindness and
the stutter, was a core of steel, like the steel hidden under the
innocuous dark wood of her zatoichi.  She was tough, but could flex.
She knew when enough was enough and always stopped just before
crossing that line.  Underneath her harshest admonishment, the most
stinging blow from her stick, was a powerful sense of caring.  She was
harsh and critical because she knew how important it was for these
things to be right.  Any failure on her part to be sufficiently
strict, any allowance of sloppiness or weakness, might get her
students killed some day, and that, she could not allow.
        Somehow, possibly because of her psionic talents, possibly
just because Kate in some way managed to convey this without saying
it, Anne understood all that within the first few hours.  And so, from
her, Anne submitted to treatment she would never have believed she
could accept from anyone; and it wasn't really as bad as all that.
She was never berated in depth, only spoken harshly to when she erred,
and once the flaw had been indicated and an effort made to correct it,
that was all.  Her efforts, even when unsuccessful, were recognized.
Though she was bruised, she did not feel victimized.  After all, even
as a much more advanced student, Saionji - big, strong, capable
Saionji, who looked as if, should he take it into his head to do so,
he could break his teacher like a twig - got his share of whacks from
the corrective stick too.
        Another thing that made it all worthwhile was this: When the
sessions were done, the dojo swept, the bokuto put away, and the three
of them were crossing the rock garden and heading back toward the
house, Kaitlyn changed again, reverting to her true self.  Under those
conditions she could allow herself to give freely of the praise and
encouragement her rigid sensei persona didn't allow her to express in
any but the minutest well-timed quantities.  Once freed to reveal
those sentiments, she never stinted of them.  Her pride in both her
students was obvious, and as Anne became more adept at reading her
moods -in- the dojo, she began to realize that it was always present
-there-, too.
        So, all in all, it was exhausting, painful work, but so
rewarding that, after surviving the misery of the first three hours,
Anne never gave another thought to quitting.
        And that was just the Katsujinkenryuu training.  In the last
five days, she'd also:

 - Helped Utena replace the wrecked bridge with a new one, this of
wrought iron.
 - Cut herself badly on the new bridge's ornamental rose motif.
 - Sworn inventively, impressing Utena and earning a conspiratorial
admonishment not to talk like that in front of Anthy.
 - Carried tools and held light sources for Anthy as she performed an
oil change and tune-up on Utena's Cobra, which had been rendered
slightly out of sorts by their hell-bent dash back from the mall.
 - Weeded approximately 1,450 acres of vegetable garden.  Well, no,
not really, but it felt like it.
 - Encountered a fairly large number of animals, some of them rather
odd, which seemed to live on or around the premises.  Anthy was on a
named basis with all of them.
 - Helped Kaitlyn to tune the dining room piano.
 - Swept out the dojo every night, to Saionji's exacting standards.
("You have missed the far corner.  Do it again."  "... hai, sempai.")
 - Spent three hours a night, three nights out of five, allowing Miki
Kaoru to work at stuffing into her brain all the education she'd
missed out on over the last couple of years.
 - Met a truly immense man called "Moose", who had said something so
funny at dinner Wednesday night that Anne laughed until her
already-abused abdomen gave out and she slid onto the floor.  (No
point in retelling it; you would have had to be there.)
 - Envied Kaitlyn approximately every 11 seconds since figuring out
that Juri Arisugawa was, in fact, her lover.
 - Consumed large quantities of quite rich, delicious foods, without
having gained or lost weight.  (That was another thing about these
people; with few exceptions, they ate like horses.)
 - Slept eight hours a night, soundly and without dreams of the Corps.
 
        All in all, a good week; tiring, and sore-making, but good all
the same.
        She stayed there for perhaps an hour, wondering why the water
didn't get cold, before there was a knock at the door.
        "S'open," she said, and Utena came in, shirtsleeves rolled up, a
bit smudged and dirty.
        "Still soaking?  You're going to be a raisin," Utena observed
cheerfully as she started the sink running to heat up the water.
        Anne raised a hand out of the tub and looked at it.  "Huh,"
she said, surprised.  "Actually no.  How 'bout that?"
        Utena glanced over, grinned, and started washing her face and
hands.  "Anthy must have done something to the water.  Dinner's about
ready, anyway, and Juri's here.  We were going to call you if you
hadn't come down in another five or ten minutes."
        "What have you been up to this afternoon?" Anne wondered.
        "Building bookshelves."
        "How'd you get grease on your face building bookshelves?"
        "Had to replace the blade in my table saw again.  I gotta
remember to get some carbide blades.  Salusian greel is too tough for
the regular ones."
        "Oh."
        Utena toweled off her face and hands, gave her hair a cursory
brushing, then grabbed one of the big towels from the rack by the door
and tossed it to Anne on her way out.
        When she emerged from the bath, Anne was surprised by how
good, and how alert, she felt.  While drying off she surveyed herself
and discovered that, though she was still bruised, her blisters had
gone, and the stiffness she'd dreaded seemed to have been totally
avoided.  Maybe Utena was right, and Anthy -had- done something to the
water.  Anne had already seen twice that the darker Tenjou had a
remarkable power for that sort of thing - once when she'd kissed away
Kate's splinter cut after the duel with Utena, and once when, with a
touch and a few spoken words, she'd closed the bloody gash in Anne's
left hand and sent her back to finish work on the bridge.
        She shook her head, shrugged back into her bathrobe, and went
to her room to dress for dinner.
        Purgatory to Paradise (albeit a rather strenuous Paradise) in
less than a week.  Now, if she could just learn some better telepathic
blocking...

        The five of them were just sitting down to dinner when the
doorbell rang.  Kate, darting a suspicious glance toward the front of
the house, picked up her zatoichi and went to answer it.  Anthy
glanced a question at Anne, who shrugged.  She wasn't feeling anything
particularly foreboding from that direction, but that didn't mean
much.  Whoever was out there could be screening.  After all, she was
only an untrained P3.
        Undrawn weapon in hand, Kate looked through the window in the
front door, then smiled and went to open up, her bearing one of
welcome.  There came the sounds of a happy greeting, and then she
returned with two people Anne hadn't seen before, both about Kaitlyn's
age.
        One was a thin, wiry man of medium height, dressed in rather
battered but sturdy-looking traveling clothes, who removed an outback
hat to release a tall shock of gold-blond hair.  He had intense,
bright blue eyes, a few shades lighter than Utena's, and his tanned
face was just starting to grow a reddish-blond beard.  The other was a
Gamilon woman, redheaded and aqua-eyed, a little shorter than the man
and powerfully built without sacrificing femininity.  Her grey and
black spacer's coverall gave the impression that it had to work a bit
to contain her, between her overall air of bursting energy and her
slight top-heaviness.  Anne wondered idly if all that gave her lower
back problems.
        "What, ho, comrades!" said the blond fellow cheerfully.  "Came
as quick as we could!  Bit of a space pirate problem at Canopus.
Damned nuisance, what?"
        "L-late or n-n-not, I'm g-glad to s-see you, D-Devlin," said
Kate.
        "Hmph," said the blue-skinned woman, grinning.  "But nothing
for me, I suppose."
        Kate smiled.  "W-when Azalynn sees Am-manda," she said,
"sh-she'll g-give her w-welcome enough f-f-for b-both of you.
J-Juni-chan," she said, causing Anne to rise, "I w-w-want you t-to
meet o-one of m-my oldest f-f-friends."
        "Devlin Carter," said the blond man, shoving out one lean,
long-fingered hand.  Without thinking, Anne took it and shook it, then
blinked in surprise as she felt nothing bleed across from his mind in
the process.  "Or Carter Devlin," he went on breezily, "take your
pick, it don't matter.  You must be Anne the rogue telepath, yes?
I've been asked to show you a thing or two.  Problem with stray
thoughts and inadvertent reads, eh?  People's dreams and feelings
horning in on your quiet time?  Well, we'll soon put that right."
        Anne blinked at him.  "You're a telepath?"
        He grinned.  "Don't look it, do I?  I'm not very imposing, but
I'm tough."  He flipped the lapel of his drover coat around to show
her the gleaming badge pinned to the back of it.  "International Police
AEGIS operative, shield number 713, code name Swordbreaker.  Pretty
nifty, eh, what?"
        An AEGIS!  Anne had heard of them, on the Rim, but never saw
one, and never really quite believed they existed.  They were an elite
unit within the Experts of Justice, on par with the legendary Grey
Lensmen, but supposedly even more feared by the Psi Corps - because
they were, effectively, anti-Psi Cops, P12-level telepaths specially
trained in psionic combat.  Lensmen, with their invulnerability from
telepathy, were dangerous opponents for the black-clad telepaths, but
they couldn't initiate a telepathic conflict, or do anything with a
Psi Cop's attempts other than ignore them and let their Lenses
counterattack.
        But an AEGIS was different.  He was everything a Psi Cop was,
just as powerful, just as highly trained, just as deadly - and working
for the other side.  AEGIS operatives swore on their lives to protect
the public from the excesses of the Corps.  They were supposedly
implacable enemies of the Corps and all it stood for, fearless, grim
and unbending.
        And -this- guy was an AEGIS?
        The galaxy really was turning out to be a strange place.
        The blue-skinned woman grinned.  "Commander Kitarina Telaia
Dragonaar," she said, "Gamilon Imperial Guards.  Call me Rina."
        A Gamilon Guards officer?  Sure, she fit right in with all the
others.  Anne would say this for hanging around the Hutchins/Tenjou
household: it either did wonders for a person's adaptability, or would
drive one quite mad.  She smiled and nodded.
        After dinner, while Utena and Rina adjourned to the living
room to talk about galactic wars, Kate and Juri sat at the dining room
with their after-dinner tea and discussed their classwork, and Anne
and Anthy loaded the dishwasher, Devlin prowled restlessly around the
ground floor, making a pain of himself until he was finally ordered by
Rina to take himself outside if he couldn't be still.  This he did,
and when, after finishing with the dishes, Anne was told that she
ought to go and talk to him, she found him sitting on the rock by the
demolished footbridge, looking up at the pink-streaked sunset sky.
        "Oh, hullo, Anne," he said, in a much more subdued tone of
voice than the boisterous, cheery one he'd used all night.  "Looking
for me?"
        "Anthy wondered if there was anything wrong," said Anne.
        "No, not really," Devlin replied.  "I'm just wound a bit
tight, is all.  The Corps is watching the house.  I can feel them out
there.  It makes me edgy knowing that the bastards are hovering so
close to people I love."
        Anne hung her head.  "It's my fault.  But I have to stay here;
if I don't learn what Kaitlyn-sensei has to teach me, I may never be
free of them."
        "Lord, I don't blame you, love," said Devlin expansively.  He
patted the rock next to him, and, a bit hesitantly, Anne climbed up
beside him.  "It's not your fault," he went on, "that you were born
with a gift that the slime who control the Psi Corps want to exploit.
No, you're quite right to stay with Kate.  You're safe here.  I'm only
nervous out of reflex."
        "Were... were you like me, once?" Anne asked, wondering if he
would be irritated by such a personal question; but he only nodded.
        "Very much," he replied.  "But I handled it differently.
Instead of taking refuge among the stars, I hid in plain sight.  I
built up a persona, playing my Old Earth British aristocratic
background to the hilt - the affable-but-stupid semi-royal git who
couldn't possibly be anything but what he appeared."  He chuckled.
"Still use it today, but now it's only a schtick, eh, what?  Back then
I needed to believe in it so badly that I almost convinced myself.
Let myself in for quite a rough patch when I suddenly had to
acknowledge my real self again.
        "Anyway," he went on, suddenly becoming brisker, "I still talk
too bloody much.  Let's talk about you.  Miki's letter said you need
help controlling your gifts.  Have you ever had any formal training?"
        "No," Anne replied.  "I... "  She smiled a private little
smile, invisible to Devlin in the dying daylight, and went on, "I found
my own way of controlling the pyrokinetic flare-ups, but my telepathy
is pretty much uncontrolled.  I'm only a P3, so I don't have to worry
much about accidentally taking people's thoughts, but their
feelings... "
        "Crowd you sometimes?  First couple of days here must have
been hell, what with everyone frettin' and worryin' about you - what?
Especially poor Anthy.  She has such depth of feeling, her concern
must have been like a razor on your nerves."
        Anne blinked at him.  "Yes.  And it made me feel even worse
being irritated by, by their -kindness-... "
        Devlin nodded.  "Kindness and concern can be harder to
withstand than anger and antipathy," he said.  "Because they're often
felt more deeply.  Right.  The first thing you'll need to learn, then,
is basic environmental screening."  He chuckled again.  "Kaitlyn and
the others must have been working you like a dog this week."
        "How'd you know that?"
        "Keep you too tired to focus on your extra sense," Devlin
said.  "Common therapy practice for overloaded telepaths.  I may have
mentioned it in my return letter, when I told Kate we were leaving
Jyurai at once."
        "Oh.  Well... thank you.  My body doesn't thank you, but my
mind does."
        "Don't worry.  After we're finished tonight, you'll be able to
hold your own against basic surface emotions.  It's not hard, but
there's a trick to it that makes it almost impossible to work out for
yourself.  Still!"  He got to his feet, put a hand on her shoulder,
and said, "Lookin' into each other's eyes on a rock by a stream in the
twilight's terribly romantic and whatnot, but I'm too old for you
-and- claimed by two very dangerous ladies, so perhaps we'd best get
into the dojo or someplace for this next bit, what?"
        Anne wondered as she followed him to the dojo if these people
would ever stop making her blush.  -Two?-

        To an outside observer, it would have seemed that Anne and
Devlin did, in fact, spend the next three hours doing nothing but
looking into each other's eyes, from a range of about three feet, both
seated in seiza in the center of the dojo floor.  They said nothing,
barely even moved, and never broke eye contact, except to blink.  As
it happened, a tremendous amount of information and communication was
actually passing between them, but there was no outward sign of this.
        Anne had never had an experience like this before in her life.
Her contacts with other telepaths had been universally painful,
fearful and traumatic, the psionic equivalent of fighting off rape.
Never before, except by the Lens, had her mind been touched by
anything seeking simply to communicate, to exchange ideas, notions and
concepts in a free and open flow, not taking anything not offered, not
giving anything not requested.  It was as different from her previous
telepathic contacts as lighting the bonfire had been from all her
previous experiences with her pyro talent, and as much better.
        The session was largely the mental equivalent of a
Katsujinkenryuu basics session - Devlin demonstrating the mental
equivalent of stances and basic maneuvers, saying, "Watch what I do,
then try it yourself," then correcting here and there, offering
suggestions and encouragement.  He was a much less gruff teacher than
Kaitlyn, but then in ways, once she had "seen" it done, what he was
teaching was less complicated.  He was right - it wasn't difficult,
but it had to be demonstrated.
        At the end of the session at nearly eleven PM, they re-entered
the house through the back door.  Devlin, with a few final words of
encouragement, packed his student (now as weary mentally as
physically, but with exactly the same warm glow of accomplishment) off
to bed.  Then, smiling and humming to himself, he strolled into the
living room, where the Tenjous were talking quietly with Rina.
        "Kate and Juri off to bed already?" asked Devlin, keeping his
voice down.
        "No," said Anthy.  "They went bowling."
        Devlin looked at his universal chronometer.  "In the middle of
the night?"
        "Tech Lanes, open 24 hours," Utena replied.  "We would've gone
with, but then you'd have come back to an empty house, and that
wouldn't have been very nice of us."  Becoming a little more serious,
she went on, "How'd she do?"
        Devlin grinned, waved a hand dismissively.  "She'll be fine.
Put it out of your mind.  She may only be a P3, but she's got a lot of
willpower - she can block at least three grades higher than her
rating, and that's just on the first day.  With some more training and
a bit of practice, she'll be just fine."  He chuckled.  "Some ways,
she reminds me of you."
        Utena and Anthy shared a smiling glance.  "She reminds -me- of
me, too," Utena said.  "You should have seen her last week.  She so
wants to be a rescuer instead of a person in need - it -burns- at her,
the same way it did me.  Still does."  She smiled.  "Anthy suggested I
give her one of my old uniforms.  She meant it as a joke, but I think
I might.  She's got a lot of potential."
        Devlin nodded.  "That might not be a bad idea at that.  Give
her something to focus her aspirations on.  If you're sure you're
ready to be a role model to young women, what?"
        Utena rolled her eyes, grinning.  "Speaking of role models,"
she said, "how's Amanda doing?"
        "You'll be able to ask her yourself in a couple days," said
Rina with a smile.  "The boys headed over to B6 to pick her up after
they dropped us here.  They'll be bringing Mia back with them, too."
        "What about Amanda's job?" wondered Anthy, but Rina just
grinned and waved a hand.
        "Imperial prerogative," she said, laughing.  "This situation's
more important to her than the whole galactic scene - you know how
Amanda gets.  Anyway, she's been grooming her replacement for six
months, she figures this is as good a time as any for him to either
sink or swim."

        Anne stood, dressed for bed, with her elbows on the sill of
one of her dormered bedroom windows, looking up at Outotochan and
savoring the new quiet in her head.  She felt fulfilled and tired, and
knew that sleep would be delicious once she got into bed, but she
didn't quite want to go yet, all the same.  The night was too pretty,
the quiet too fresh, to give up the consciousness of either just yet.
        Down below, she heard a rustling sound.  A moment later a
small figure came over the hedgerow into the side yard, dropping
quietly to the grass, cloak fluttering around her.  Anne chuckled;
hearing, Azalynn looked up at her window, eyes glittering in the
moonlight.
        "Hello!" said Azalynn with quiet cheer.
        "Good evening," Anne replied, giggling a little as the
blocking reminded her of an old Earth play she'd read in school.
        "How are you feeling tonight?" Azalynn asked, her teeth
flashing in a smile.
        Anne considered this for a moment, then grinned and replied,
"Safe.  I feel safe."
        Azalynn's smile widened.  "Good.  Sleep well, elo'thanai."
        Then she disappeared into the night.
        Anne smiled down at where she'd been for a moment, then turned
and headed for her bed.  As she climbed in and snuggled down - the
sensation every bit as luscious as she'd expected - she made a
half-conscious mental note to find out what "elo'thanai" meant.

/*  Joe Satriani  "Flying in a Blue Dream"  _Flying in a Blue Dream_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                              presented
                        UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
                           FUTURE IMPERFECT
                   - Symphony of the Sword No. 4 -
                    First Movement: Page of Swords

                               The Cast
                       (in order of appearance)
                              Anne Cross
                          Farnsworth Noveno
                            Donald Bailey
                           Kyouichi Saionji
                             Emil Radenko
                             Kevin Telfer
                             Luornu Durgo
                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                             Anthy Tenjou
                              Miki Kaoru
                                Sergei
                           Kaitlyn Hutchins
                             Utena Tenjou
                            Juri Arisugawa
                            Peter Cardoza
                            Gerald Smythe
                               Mia Ausa
                        R. Dorothy Wayneright
                           Wakaba Shinohara
                       Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan
                             Thunderbolt
                           Chiricahua Scout
                               Svartlyn
                          Devlin E.D. Carter
                      Kitarina Telaia Dragonaar

                           Artist-in-Exile
                         Benjamin D. Hutchins

                          Avatar-in-Waiting
                              Anne Cross

                           Partner-in-Crime
                            John Trussell

                      Unindicted Co-Conspirators
                          The Usual Suspects

                     Accommodations by Airstream

             Come and visit the beautiful state of Maine

 (We need your money since the treehuggers killed all our industries)

                       The Symphony will return

                         E P U (colour) 2002