And as Jas heard Radamand's thoughts, he realized that Radamand had heard what leaped into Jas's thoughts: that assistant professor Hartman Tork already suspected he was a Swipe, was laying traps for him.

"I'm afraid for you," Radamand said sweetly, through gritted teeth. "I'm afraid you might fall into a trap somewhere."

"I'm smarter than they are," Jas said.

But not smarter than me, Radamand thought loudly, fearfully, angrily.

Jas saw the laser in Radamand's mind before Radamand could find it in his pocket. Jas dropped to the floor, rolled. The laser seared the floor behind him. A moment while the weapon recharged, and in that moment Jas was out the door, running down the corridor.

An alarm sounded somewhere in the complex.

The door ahead of him slammed shut. A guard stood in front of it. Jas stopped and frantically searched the man's thoughts for another way out, another exit. Where were the doors? He found them just behind the guard's eyes, even as the guard noticed Jas's fugitive appearance. The gun raised — Jas was already gone.

Through this? No, this door. Out and down the stairs. And through this last door and into corridors branching off into the endless underground city of Capitol , which stretched in an unplanned and unplannable labyrinth from pole to pole to — Home? Not home, Jas thought, because the plan already forming in Radamand's mind was to arrest Jas on some charge or other — breaking and entering? Resisting inquiry? For someone at Radamand's level, and with his obvious influence and prestige, it shouldn't be hard to get Jas put away forever behind bars.

Or in a little plastic box in the cemetery.

Jas's mind kept wandering as he loped down corridors, losing himself in the turns and the rises, putting as much as possible of three dimensions between him and his cousin. He smiled to think of how Radamand had probably acquired his influence and prestige: for he could easily spot a superior's guilty secrets and then drop subtle hints — not enough for blackmail and the subsequent murder, just enough to let the superior know that Radamand shared his secret. And understood. Would never tell; could be trusted; was a friend who knew all and loved anyway.