"It was a mistake," Wakeman agreed. "When you're a little older, you'll realize how much of a mistake."

A flash of fear slithered over the girl's face. "I'll never leave Verrick. I have to stay with him!"

"Why?"

"I'll be safe. Hell take care of me; he always has."

"The Corps will protect you."

"I don't want to have anything to do with the Corps." Her red lips drew back against her even white teeth. "My _family_. My willing uncle Peter—up for sale, like his Hills." She indicated Benteley. "And he thinks he won't find it here."

"It's not a question of sale," Wakeman said. "It's a principle. The Corps is above man."

"The Corps is a fixture, like this desk." Eleanor scraped her long nails against the surface of the desk. "You buy all the furniture, the desk, the lights, the ipvics, the Corps." Disgust glowed in her eyes. "A Prestonite, is that it?"

"That's it."

"No wonder you're anxious to see him. In a morbid way I suppose I'm curious, too. Like I would be about some sort of bizarre animal from one of the colony planets."

At the desk, Benteley roused himself from his thoughts. "All right," he said aloud. "I'm ready."

"Fine." Eleanor slipped behind the desk, one hand raised, the other on the bust. "You know the oath? Do you need help?"

Benteley knew the fealty oath by heart, but gnawing doubt slowed him almost to a halt. Wakeman stood examining his nails and looking disapproving and bored, a small negative field of radiation. Eleanor Stevens watched avidly, her face intense with a complex series of emotions that altered each moment. With a growing conviction that things were not right, Benteley began reciting his fealty oath to the small plastic bust.

As he was halfway through, the doors of the office slid back and a group of men entered noisily. One towered over the rest; he was a huge man, lumbering and broad-shouldered, with a gray, weathered face and thick iron-streaked hair. Reese Verrick, surrounded by those of his staff in personal fealty to him, halted as he saw the procedure taking place at the desk.