Free Dream Dancer by Janet Morris Page A

from me!” demanded the child peeking out through a woman’s mask. Parma shifted slightly, aware once again of the blossoming beauty in what had so recently been an awkwardly adolescent collection of knees, elbows and oversized eyes. The eyes had gotten no smaller, but all else had taken on roundness where before had been painfully sharp angles. The girl would be beautiful, which had been no part of Parma’s plan. Already she was winsome beyond what might have been prudent. And intelligent, it seemed, beyond genetics’ ability to contradict.
    “I have your aptitude tests,” he said easily, tapping on the screen with a stylus. “I have cleared an hour for you. If nothing more, we could discuss them.”
    “Then you will not call that woman off?”
    “Incredulity does not become you. You have been studying law, among other things. How would you suggest I limit the freedom of my wife and yet remain within lawful framework? Unless, of course, you have some proof to offer that Ashera has orchestrated the accidents with which you seem unfortunately plagued?”
    “A faulty mil-suit, less than four months old when it gave way? A gravity-sled whose throttle jams at fast forward?” Shebat ticked these off on upraised fingers. “A short circuit which turned every piece of metal in my suite to a possible instrument of execution? A—”
    “Now, Shebat, those are hazards one must endure. The mil-suit, I must remind you, was that Marada bought you; an inferior product of Orrefors technology, and none of ours. Sleds jam often; you were advised beforehand of the risk and went thrill-seeking, regardless. As for the rest, mechanical devices tend to malfunction.”
    “In Lorelie? ”
    “Everywhere, which is why fail-safes and redundancy are built into all our systems. These things could be—though I am not for an instant suggesting that they truly are—simple mishaps occasioned as much by your un-familiarity with our somewhat more complex mode of living as by anyone’s overt attempts to place you in the path of those little difficulties life often presents.”
    Shebat, in answer to Parma’s upraised black brows, snorted disbelievingly, while wondering whether or not the white-haired man blackened those expressive wrigglers over his eyes purposely to increase their effect. She took deep, measured breaths the way Chaeron had taught her, but could not banish her nervousness under Parma’s assessively patient scrutiny.
    “No retort? Shall we leave this subject? And on to what suggestions Lorelie central has made for your continuing education?”
    “No,” inaudibly.
    “Speak up!”
    “I said, ‘No.’ I am not finished. Let me off this beautiful but inimical playworld of yours before it becomes my burial ground. Let me study elsewhere. What can I learn here but hate and fear? Chaeron says you are going back to Draconis, now that your vacation is through. Take me with you, or take from me these mortally dangerous honors, lest they be my eulogy!”
    “ Chaeron says? You are not as astute, then, as the computer predicted or as I myself had come to believe.”
    “Had it not been for Chaeron’s sage warnings, his mother would have got me by now.”
    Parma tried to appear as if he considered that information. Then he said: “So it may be. But tell me, is it Chaeron’s idea that you leave the isolation of Lorelie for a more cosmopolitan setting? Or is it for more neutral territory?”
    “I think I have exhausted my opportunities here. But I am sure he would agree with me.”
    “That, in itself, is enough reason to budge not one foot from Lorelie. However, I have learned by raising many children that advice unsolicited falls on deaf ears. But tell me, what is it you can do in Draconis that you cannot do here?”
    “Be of some use. Learn commerce and the true work of the first-born. Take a pilot’s license and—”
    “Wait,” Parma interrupted. “What was that last again?”
    “You heard me, foster parent.”
    “I heard