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And this, this running away because of Acquila’s death won’t help anyone.”
    “I can do this job. I understand the risks. And Mother’s death has nothing to do with it.”
    “Doesn’t it?” Suddenly he leaned forward, close to the screen pickups. He looked concerned. Marghe was reminded of the time when she was four and had fallen down the crumbling steps of the remains of the Portuguese cathedral in Macau, and her father had appeared as if from nowhere and scooped her into his arms. Daddy will take care of everything . But he hadn’t. Two years later he had gone to the Hammami region of Mauritania, to study the changing social structures, he said. And her mother had gone up to the moon, to teach social anthropology at the new university. All the young Marghe had had of her parents for the next two years were three battered books that lit up with their names on the fronts and their holos on the back when she thumbed them on, and a telescope through which she had watched the moon on every clear night.
    She shook her head impatiently. “Mother’s dead, and I’m sick of teaching at Aberysrwyth. I’m good, too good to be stuck here.”
    “You should never have accepted that post in the first place.”
    It was an old argument. The fact was, she had not had much choice. SEC was the main career path for linguists and anthropologists these days; after her promising start on Gallipoli, she had gone to Beaver, the Durallium Company’s mining planet, where her worldview and her face had been forcibly rearranged, and that path had no longer been open to her. Or so she had thought.
    She changed tack. “Look, if you could go anywhere in the universe to study people, where would you choose? Jeep. This is a chance of a lifetime, anybody’s lifetime.”
    “The last SEC rep died.”
    “Courtivron and the others didn’t have the vaccine. I do.”
    “And maybe the vaccine will kill you.”
    “Maybe it will. But, John, don’t you see? I don’t care. The chance they’re offering me far outweighs the risk. Acquila went to the moon, you went to Hammami during those awful wars… I’m going to Jeep.”
    “But they’re using you!”
    “Of course they are. And I’ll be using them. A fair exchange. ”
    “You’ll be risking your life; they risk nothing. You’ll be alone, powerless. Your SEC position as independent observer will be as much protection as an ice suit in hell. SEC’s been in bed with Company for years.”
    “Don’t lecture me on corruption and power politics. I know better than most what it means.” She took a deep breath and started again, more calmly. “Anyway, I won’t be alone. Two of Courtivron’s team are still alive. And I’ll only be there six months. Besides, what if I am Company’s guinea pig? So what if SEC doesn’t give a damn about my report? The important thing to me is that I get six months on a closed world to research a unique culture.”
    Her father had sighed. “I’d probably have made the same choice at your age.”
    And Marghe had noticed for the first time how old and frail he seemed.

    Marghe contemplated the smooth white ceiling of D Section… And maybe the vaccine will kill you , her father had said.
    She got off the bed, suddenly restless. Exercise, that was what she needed. She pushed two of the beds back against the wall and the edge of a workstation and stood quietly, hands by her sides in the space she had created, centering herself. She raised her hands slowly to waist level, then across, in the first move of a tai chi form.
    She knew several different styles, fighting and meditative, but Yang style, with its even and measured movements, its grace, was her favorite for moods like this.
    When she finished, her restlessness was gone.
    “Lights, low.” They dimmed and the place looked more friendly. She crossed to her screen.
    D Section’s information storage was held separately from Estrade ’s main files, and was a disorganized patchwork of technical,