Chapter Three


In which the one who will be Berg Katse is recruited by Galactor.


Helen found him at their favorite spot on the mountain. "Sean? What's wrong?"

Oh, no. She was the one person he never wanted to manipulate. Still, he didn't have to actually lie to her. "My mother's dead."

"When?" She put an arm around him.

"Middle of last term. Traffic accident."

Had either persona ever felt anything for Siobhan except a dull dislike? When Sían heard the news, she'd felt a lightening of her chest and heart.

Mother's death had destroyed Father. No more time spent on engines and mechanical devices. The man came home and drank himself to sleep. Their fragile rapport had died with Siobhan. That was what he mourned.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

Tire blow-out. According to the police, the car had lurched across the median into the path of a farm truck. No survivors.

"Thank you."


As they walked back to town, she said, "I was looking for you because there's a dumb rumor going around about you."

"What rumor?"

"That you're an Irish Traveler."

He'd never heard of them. "A what?"

"Dad says Travelers are con artists and criminals. Says it explains your folks moving every year."

"We're not criminals. We move because of Dad's job." He clenched his fists, forgetting he held her hand.

"Ow, Sean. Let go." When he did, she faced him. "I know that. It's wrong, but people say that. I thought you should know."

Damn, damn, damn!

The previous school year had started well. Sían had manipulated her way to a position to control the 'in' crowd of St. Louis Academy. They had expected her to show grief, and she had done so. She had discovered that she could use that to her advantage. The one bad thing about it was Father's shutdown.

He had hoped to have similar luck this year.


"The other kids are avoiding you," he said, two weeks into the term. It meant more time with her. He wanted her happy. "Did they do that last year?"

"No." She took his arm. "Don't worry about me. I'm okay."

He detected a hint of loneliness or sadness in her tone. Was she lying to him? She missed her friends, but it seemed too soon for that this year.

"Woo! Check out the lovebirds."

"Guess Treil isn't a faggot."

Who the hell - ? Three boys lounging against the swings, making faces at them.

"Don't mind them," Helen said. A bit louder: "They're just jealous that I'm with you."

Oh, so she could play the girl-games. This could be fun. In the same tone: "Damn right."

"Come on," she whispered, "before I sock one of them." She sprinted off.

Grinning, he followed her.

"Yeah! Go, Sean!" someone yelled. (Not that any of them had any real idea of what they were saying.)

They darted around the back of the school, and were brought up short by a pair of legs sticking out of a basement vent window. The pants were caught on the window latch.

"Do you need some help?" Helen asked, kneeling beside the legs. She grinned at Sean, crouching across from her.

I think he was breaking in, he mouthed.

From inside, a small voice said, "I'm stuck."

"Mailer?" Helen asked. "It's Helen."

An even smaller voice: "Oh."

"We won't tell," she said.

"Stop moving," Sean told him. "You're caught on the window." He recognized John Mailer as a quiet boy who had hung at the edges of Helen's group of friends.

She gave one leg a playful poke. "When we say, you back out of there."

"Okay."

"Wait a second," Sean said. "He's a little too far in. That's also why he can't get out, aside from the pants. If he moves, he'll tip even further into the basement." Louder: "John, we'll have your legs. You won't fall."

With one on each leg, and Mailer pushing from inside, they pulled him back until he could wriggle out himself. The boy rolled over and sat up, looking into Sean's face.

Mailer's recent predicament made it hard for Sean to read the expression, but he thought the other boy looked at him a little too long and intently. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Mailer brushed at his clothes.

"What were you doing in there?" Helen asked.

"I wanted to look around. The door's always locked. I always hear machines and stuff."

Machines? Without thinking, Sean slipped through the window.

"Oh, damn." Helen crouched at the window. "Don't mention machines in front of him. Sean, get out of there."

Pipes and conduits of varying sizes connected with tanks or pump motors. As he looked around, the apparent tangle came clear to him, and he traced the cold water into the boiler, the hot water out of the boiler and to the pumps here to send it through the rest of the school. Pump motor connected to a pump in one direction, connected to a disconnect that was in turn fed from somewhere outside the room.

"Sean."

"Coming." He could have stayed longer. He climbed out.

"You and machines." Helen punched his arm. "Let's go, before someone finds us and we get into trouble."


Thus began another phase of his life. Mailer would seek him out, accompany him and Helen on their rambles, and even wait for him at the beginning or end of the school day. It was at once gratifying and unsettling.

If it hadn't been for the literature classes at St. Louis, and his own extracurricular reading, he would not have had the words to describe Mailer. The other boy was remarkably biddable, as if he'd turned over his life to Sean.

Mailer was also a thief and a trespasser. Getting stuck at school that day had been an accident; normally, he could be in and out with no obvious sign. He demonstrated on a different window.

His presence changed things with Helen, also. She was nice enough to Mailer, but not as welcoming as Sean had first thought. Was she jealous?

And why not? Her friends froze her out when he was around. For whatever reason, she refused to drop him as a friend.

I know how they think. I can work them. Make things right with Helen. She should have more friends than a freak and a thief. If she had her friends back, it would take the pressure off him, now and in the future.

At St. Louis, a few words in the right ears had made Sían the shadow queen of the class. Who among the 'in' crowd wanted anyone to learn about rocky grades or relatives with wandering hands? There was dear little Sían, with the right advice and the zipped lips, to talk to about everything.

This was a larger, more volatile, effort. Helen had attracted fellow students with her personality. He didn't have that sort of pull (and wasn't sure he ever would). Lots of ears to whisper in, to get the ball rolling, yet he could not be seen to do so. Each child had to believe it was his or her idea to return to Helen.


Helen's parents no longer allowed him to visit, unless Mailer or another was with him. They had decided he was a bad influence. Wisely, they did not forbid her to see him, since that would awaken her rebellious streak, choosing instead to limit their time together. She could not see him on the weekends. They were playing it safe.

At the same time, her father's work required him to travel. Sean suspected that this had a lot to do with his not seeing her on weekends. Helen's mother was a bit over-protective.

Irish Travelers didn't travel the way his family traveled, he knew. Over the decades, they and the Romani had adapted to a changing world, but permanent addresses were still rare. Simply moving between the same two addresses in the same two cities was not how either people worked.


The rumors should not have influenced his teachers, but of course they did. He'd become adept at reading people, and had a good understanding (for his age) of human nature. Once something becomes common knowledge, it becomes a fact (regardless of truth or fiction) in many minds.

Enough people repeated the rumors to make them seem factual. His past behavior, seen in this new light, became evidence the rumors were true.

Only the gymnastics instructors and school doctor actively disputed the stories, he discovered. As always, he underplayed his skills, but the instructors saw that he never had to get back into practice. The doctor found him healthy, perfectly normal for a boy his age. This meant he was not on the road, taking lessons from stolen textbooks and money under false pretences.

He had no idea that one of the instructors, and the doctor, worked for Galactor.


His main worry was that Helen would figure out what he was doing. He had no idea what he would do if she did, or how she would react.

The ridiculous story about him being an Irish Traveler became another tool. Some kids could be shamed into returning to Helen ('You're a fine friend, leaving her all alone while people tell lies!'), while others responded to the seeming rebelliousness of acquaintance with a crook or of annoying their parents.


The wrench in the works wasn't Helen, but a boy named Gunnar Hellmann. Once he saw Helen's group of friends re-forming, he tried to disrupt it. The idea that the weird, probably faggot, Treil kid might be liked was too much for him. (Like many boys his age, he had no real comprehension of the meaning of the insult: he had heard people use the word, and so he used it himself.)

Life was simple: you were either beaten, or the one doing the beating. Twerps like Treil and Mailer were for beating. When they dared poke their heads up, you beat them back into place.

At first, he'd thought Treil was hiding from him. The second year the freak was at school, he realized that Treil wasn't hiding, but tricking him. If anyone else knew it, Hellmann's control over the schoolyard (such as it was) would disappear.

Mailer was easy prey. Stupid kid couldn't even fight. Now, though, he hung around Treil, who stood up for him and helped him escape. Maybe one day Mailer would stand on his own two feet. Can't have that.

Yet, Treil wouldn't fight. It was always words and tricks, making people look stupid.

Some bullies would have given up on Treil and his friends, using face-saving excuses. Hellmann wasn't that clever or sensible.


"What's a 'faggot'?" Mailer asked, one Saturday in the middle of the school year.

"In England, a piece of wood," Sean said. "In other countries, it's an insult." How much should he tell the other boy? "It means a guy isn't manly."

"I don't understand."

They were sprawled in game-chairs in Mailer's bedroom. Because Sean could kick ass in most computer games, they were online in a multi-player role-playing game. More variables than he could account for.

Without Helen on weekends, the two boys spent a lot of time in each other's company. The other boy had even less of a home life than Sean, which accounted for some of his personality quirks. It was a sad, if useful, state of affairs to be the role model and protector of a peer.

"To some people, the boys on the baseball and football teams are manly. Boys in gymnastics are not manly."

"You're not a faggot. I might be."

"What have I told you about the stupid things people say?"

With the assorted claims and counter-claims around him, Sean had gotten good at looking things up on the Internet, even things supposedly off-limits to children. He had a good idea what adults meant when they tossed around terms that children repeated.

For this reason, he wasn't too upset by second-hand accusations, but worried that teachers and others in authority would take them seriously. That could mean complications in his life.

So, at an age when most of his classmates joked about having girlfriends and dropped various sexual terms into insults without knowing what those words meant, he had at least an academic grasp of their meaning.

He couldn't figure out if they described Mailer, and he was sure that Mailer himself could not answer the question."

"I get mad when people insult you."

"You must learn to pick your battles. We can't fight everyone, and we don't have to. Why fight when you can turn your enemies every which way?"

"Is that what you've been doing?"

"Of course."

"Same with the other kids? Helen's friends?"

Mailer had caught on.

"That's my present to her. So don't say anything." He wasn't certain if Mailer could understand his reasoning.

"You have her to yourself, or you did. Why would you let anyone else get close?"

"I want her to be happy." It wasn't good for anyone to have only one other person in life. He also wanted to delay or prevent dealing with his unique problems and their effects on the relationship.

No matter how hard I try, I don't get it, Mailer thought. How could Helen want or need anyone else when she had Sean? Especially when he looked at her in that way, as if they were the only people on Earth. He'd been the recipient of that look a few times, usually whenever Sean wanted to drive home a point.

"What you're doing will make her happy?"

"I think so." Sean turned that blazing blue gaze on Mailer. "It won't work if she knows what I'm doing. So don't even hint at it."

"Not so much as a breath."


All attempts to intimidate the other children failed. Hellmann could not understand the failure of tried-and-true tactics. The idea that his targets would band together without seeming to was alien to his thinking.

You threaten to beat someone up for not doing what you want. The spineless little twit obeys. That's how it works.

But then, Hellmann hadn't met anyone like Sean Treil. Most children weren't so devious, even the clever ones. Sean changed the rules without telling anyone.

Time to put things right in his world.


"He's exceeded my expectations," the doctor typed. "Without anyone becoming aware of it, he has attained control over at least a quarter of his peers. Even his enemies obey him. The one exception is a thug named Hellmann."

"I will say that Treil's actions are motivated by his friendship with Helen Geary. Whatever his true reasons for his behavior, his feelings towards her have awakened his innate leadership capacities. I recommend allowing this relationship to continue, as it has borne such fruit." He looked it over, made a few changes, and hit 'send.'


No Mailer, this Saturday. The boy often waited for him, but not always. He wondered what Mailer did on those days. Break into buildings? Steal? Both?

Sean's father still mourned his mother. He'd read that some people never recovered from the death of a spouse or child, even when they had other family.

The apartment was too small to contain Howard's sorrow, which was why he spent so much time away after a fruitless first month of coaxing.

The library was one of his usual haunts. If he was lucky, Helen would be there. Otherwise, he would roam the stacks.

No Helen. He dropped his eclectic armload at one of the tables. The librarians were used to his reading choices, except for one who thought Walt Whitman wrote gay porn. The louder you yell, the more interested I am.

Right now, he was reading Paradise Lost. He figured out that Milton had made Satan a majestic figure to explain to readers the attraction of sin. Satan and the other fallen angels were not weak-minded, whiny, rationalizing losers, but a credible threat (or so they thought) to the divine order. Adam was willing to give up paradise for Eve (who was not worth the sacrifice).

An assistant saw him reading and tried to interest him in more age-appropriate books. He smiled politely, and tactfully explained that he found the one-dimensional characters boring.

After Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, he started on, of all writers, William Faulkner. That writer's prose style proved a bit much for him (really, it was more suited to being stuck in quarantine for an unspecified period), so he moved on to Steinbeck.

He didn't leave until the library closed in the early evening.


The next day, two detectives from the juvenile division came to the apartment. Dugan and Iverson. Just like the ones on television, they didn't tell him what was wrong, but asked him what he knew about Mailer.

"What happened?"

"Why do you think anything happened?" Iverson replied.

"You wouldn't be here unless he was hurt or something."

Dugan hiked an eyebrow. "You're right. We'd like to know where you were yesterday."

"At the library. All day." What had happened to Mailer?

"All day?"

"Yes. I got there maybe a half-hour after it opened, and left when it closed."

"Any witnesses?"

"The librarians and a library assistant." He made a show of remembering their names. "Her name was Zuckerman."

Iverson asked, "You and Mailer pretty close, Sean?"

"We're friends."

"What do you mean by that?"

Just what I said, you dirty-minded jerk. "You know. Help each other with homework, go to movies or the library, explore the woods." Break into interesting basements and rooms. "Run from Hellmann and his gang."

"There's a girl with you two, sometimes? Helen Geary."

"Yes." Where was this going? Leave her out of this! "She's been my friend for a while." Did something happen to her, too?

"You ever fight with Mailer?"

"No. He's not much of a fighter."

"Not even about Helen?"

Huh? What? Oh. "No. No. It's hard to explain, sort of. He likes her, but not that way. He doesn't make friends easily."

The detective pursed his lips, pretending to think over the propriety of his next question. "He ever do anything to make you nervous? Or Helen jealous?"

"No." Stop playing around. Putting the right amount of distress into his tone, he said, "Please, tell me what's happened. Are they okay?"

Dugan quieted his partner with a gesture. "Mailer was beaten badly yesterday."

"How bad? Is he in the hospital?"

"He should be home, now."

Then what are you doing here? Ask him who beat him. "There's a kid named Gunnar Hellmann. He gives us a hard time."

"We'll look into it. Thank you for your time."

After they left, his father said, "You'd better make sure people can vouch for you from now on. Won't take them long to find the real attacker. Next time, you might not be so lucky." A long swig. "Same for when you're - you know. Just in case."


On Monday, Sean and Helen met each other at lunch. "The police came over," she said. "Started right in with questions. 'Dumb cop/Smart cop' must be the way they work now."

"What did they tell you?"

"Mailer was beaten up. The stupid cop kept trying to trick me into accusing you."

"He tried to trick a confession out of me."

She glared across the cafeteria towards Hellmann. "If it wasn't them, who was it?"

"Helen." Ignoring everyone else, and their possible comments, he took her head in his hands. "Helen, don't get caught alone anywhere. I have a bad feeling." I cannot lose you. He stared into her eyes, feeling the universe contract around them. "Don't go anywhere alone."

"I won't."


After school, Helen went over to the Mailers'. "I'm here to see John." Rather odd to call him by his first name; he'd always seemed like just 'Mailer.'

"Sure. He could use a friend. A real friend," Mrs. Mailer said.

Now she gives a damn about her son.

Mailer was curled up on his bed, staring blankly at the television. When he saw her, he brightened, his gaze shifting to look over her shoulder.

"Sean couldn't come." He's outside because he knows your parents won't let him in. It hurt that Mailer wasn't happy to see her.

"Oh. Well, thanks for coming over."

"I was worried about you." His face had more bruises than pink skin.

"I'm fine."

"No, you aren't." She looked him right in the eye. "What happened? Who did this?"

He turned away and curled up.

"Tell me. The police made me think they suspect Sean."

"But that's not true!"

"Then why didn't you tell them?"

"I'd have to tell what happened." Such misery and humiliation in his tone that she wanted to pound Hellmann into the ground.

"Who hurt you? Just tell me that."

"Hellmann and his buddies."

What a non-surprise. The only idiots who hadn't accepted that Sean could outsmart them at every turn.


Wednesday, Hellmann and his little gang strutted onto school grounds. Several very large members of the rugby team surrounded them. Words passed between them, then fists.

Sean leaned against the schoolyard fence, watching without seeming to watch. People were so easy to manipulate. All he had to do was find the right combination of words and ears.

He had a plan for Hellmann, if the police couldn't handle it.


The investigation stalled. The Mailers' complaint against Sean didn't stand up to reality. Not liking their son's choice of friends was trumped by three librarians and an assistant (plus security camera images).

There were no decent forensics at the scene, or on Mailer, nothing to indict Hellmann or anyone else.


Mailer was back at school the next week, and this time as good as glued himself to Sean. No matter how many times the rugby, Amerisian-style football, and wrestling teams pounded on Hellmann, Mailer was still terrified of the gang. No amount of direct or indirect questioning would elicit what had happened.

Soapy, dirty water swirling down a drain. Skin scrubbed almost raw. Tears, shame, and anger.

"He won't tell you?" Helen asked. "It must be bad."

Brad Dixon had made her nervous, two years ago.

He knew now that Sían could have been hurt much worse than had happened. That Helen could have been hurt the same way. That it could still happen to them both if Hellmann remained alive.

I need a plan.

Another 'accident' was out of the question. Authorities were still serious about the abandoned buildings, and even if they weren't, two fatal accidents in almost as many years might seem suspicious.

Hellmann was the linchpin of his little gang. No Hellmann, no gang. The members would be even more vulnerable to the anger of their former victims.

Police would suspect him. His plan had to throw them off the trail.

It was a good thing that printed books still existed. He could find what he needed without leaving an electronic record.

Keeping his plan secret was harder, with Mailer a near-constant presence and Helen's refusal to hide from the threat Hellmann presented.

He had a target date: just before his change to Sían. Nobody would suspect a boy in the process of moving. If he chose his method properly, nobody would suspect a child, period.


Besides planning a murder, Sean tried to help Mailer out of his funk. But Mailer wasn't Helen, already strong and resilient, needing only coaxing to recover from a trauma. He had no reserves to draw on, nothing to work with except his devotion and obedience.

Mailer did try. He knew he was a drag on Sean, and that the next school-year would see Sean elsewhere. I'll have to stand by myself.

With Sean, everything was right and good. Without Sean, the same activities lacked color and life. Helen was no substitute.


The obvious parts of the plan:

A weekend. Helen would be with her parents.

A basement storage area in a building closed on the weekend.

Not so obvious:

Weapon and method.

If I knew what he did to Mailer, I'd know for certain what not to do. He could not do anything that might make the police suspect him.

Whatever method and weapon he chose, the supplies had to be portable. He would not have the time or safety to use found objects, as he had at the old plant, or to collect and conceal what he needed. The things could be found, or he could be seen.

He read true-crime accounts and the memoirs of behavior profilers. He even analyzed a few famous movies and stories for ideas (none of which seemed to apply).

And how to get Hellmann alone to chase him? He didn't need all six of the gang.

The answer came when he wasn't thinking about it: find Hellmann and challenge him. No friends on either side.

When was Hellmann unattended?

He used his classmates. A casual question here, and a comment there, and he soon learned everything he needed to know this year. The most important: Hellmann's friends would be at camp during summer break.

The weapon came while he was reading a 20th Century Ameris profiler's memoirs. A dumb teenage punk hadn't thought through his crime, and ended up grabbing a pencil to stab an old woman. Because of the odd choice of weapon, police initially thought an ex-convict was the culprit.

He knew about pointed objects. Scratch awls, wood screws and self-drilling screws, nails, decorative spikes on metal fences - all potentially dangerous.

A simple weapon. Prisoners made weapons of all sorts of objects. All he had to do was pick a material and/or object that nobody would link to a child who had never been in legal trouble.

That eliminated the most obvious items. No pencils, pens, PDA styli, meat or candy thermometers; no combs, brushes, or toothbrushes; no nails, spikes, or sharpened bits of metal. An icicle would have been a good choice for winter. Sharp, and easily destroyed.

Wait. I'm over-thinking this. Most kids my age don't know these things.

He needed something so common that most people would not consider it as a weapon. Something a boy might play around with, should he be found with it. No special work needed (or not so much).

The rest of the plan was easy.


Hellmann squinted through swollen eyelids at the blurred shape before him. What had happened? He'd chased that creepy Treil kid into the school basement, and then - nothing. Why was he lying down? Why couldn't he move his hands? What was cutting his mouth?

"Welcome back."

Treil. He tried to focus on the lithe figure.

"Idiot." A cold smirk crossed his captor's face. "All of you."

'All of you'? What did he mean by that? Hellmann tried to ask, but the gag cut the edges of his mouth, and whatever was shoved in his mouth choked him.

"Forget about calling for help." The boy gracefully crouched beside him. "And don't bother begging."

He talked of begging! Untie me, and I'll show you who'll beg.

"You jerks think that you're so great, yet you're so easily led. All I had to do was show my face, needle you a bit, and you followed me."

And now what? He started shouting threats around the gag.

Sean looked down at Hellmann. Is he brave, or so stupid as to think I'll untie him because he swears to beat me to a pulp?

"Shut up, jerk." He knelt on Hellmann's lower legs. "You think you're king of the world. Call me a freak and a sissy. That, I could let slide." He showed the homemade stiletto.

"You did something to my friend. He won't tell me what it was. And I think you have plans for Helen."

The flash of cruel cunning was all the evidence he needed. "I think your gang will disappear without you. Once you're gone, they'll tell what they know." He smiled, and Hellmann turned pale. "Good-bye."

Two stabs, to the femoral artery in each leg. He watched as Hellmann's pants legs were saturated from the inside.


As Hellmann bled out, Sean took a comfortable seat on a box. Funny, but this was not as repulsive as he had thought it would be.

So-called normal people were fools. They always underestimated him (or her, depending on the year). All of them could be manipulated, fooled, and led by anyone with the skill and nerve.

A brief jiggle by Hellmann got his attention. Nothing much. The boy was going limp. Even if a full paramedic crew arrived now, with all eight pints of blood, there was no chance to save him.

The bladder and bowels gave way. Yech. Time to leave.

He slipped out of the basement, and carefully locked the door behind him. He'd left nothing to reveal that a mere child had lured Hellmann there. No usable fingerprints on the door. Hell, the maintenance crew would put their own prints on it the next morning.

Around the corner, and he ran into Mailer. "Why?" the other boy asked, pale-faced and short of breath.

Oh, hell. "What?"

"I saw you through the window."

What was Mailer doing peering in the window? "Really?"

"I saw him chase you. Then I saw everything else."

You watched all that? "Why didn't you run away?"

"I couldn't believe it. I thought you were just going to scare him. I know he made our lives hell, but you didn't have to kill him."

Poor, dumb, loyal Mailer. "Let's not stand here. Someone might see us. Come on."

"We could have done something else to him. Scared him off." Mailer's head swiveled like a weather-vane. He might as well shout that there was something wrong.

"What could we have done to scare him that much? Even if we did, he'd just run to his parents and tell them a lie that would have police at our doors. Then where would we be?"

"You would have thought of something. You're good at that. You can be as mean as a girl."

I spend half my life as a girl. "Well, this time I couldn't think of anything. You won't say what he did to you. Whatever it was, I think he had his eye on Helen."

"You're saying it's my fault?"

"No! I'm saying that I killed him because he scared you into not talking. He wasn't ever going to stop."

"It's because you're about to move again, right? I won't see you again for a year. You wanted to get this over with."

No, you dummy: it's because no-one will suspect a kid in the middle of packing up and moving of doing anything this elaborate.

"Nothing else would have worked. All the other bullies stopped hassling us because they have more than two working brain cells. They knew they'd lose, in the end, so they picked easier targets." What am I going to do?

"I won't tell anyone."

He studied his companion. Big, honest brown eyes, a face as readable as a picture book. Right now, perhaps for a long time, Mailer would not say anything to anyone. But he would, eventually, quite possibly before the year was out. Mailer might be a thief, but he didn't have the stomach for the truly necessary acts. He couldn't kill, or even injure, in cold blood. That same weakness would send him to authorities.

"Dad's been talking about sending me to boarding school. I know that means we can't hang out together, but it means that you won't have to worry about me telling anyone."

Uh-uh. One reason he even had Mailer as a companion was the boy's willingness to follow his orders. At boarding school, Mailer could come under another's influence. "Mailer, listen to me."

"Look, really, I won't say anything. Okay?"

Damn it. He had to get rid of, or silence, Mailer, somehow. There was no time to plan. Tomorrow, he would be in the family car and on his way. People knew that he and Mailer were friends, and it would not take much for them to suspect that he was responsible for, or knew something about, Mailer's death. Even mere idle talk would be dangerous to him.

Something stung his neck.

Blackness.


Where am I? He'd been walking down the street. He remembered that much. Walking with Mailer, trying to think what to do about him. His head felt thick.

He slouched in a chair, held up by the back and arms. Lights glared against his eyelids, forcing him to drop his head before he opened his eyes. They refused to focus.

"Look at me." A commanding voice, devoid of kindness. "Look at me."

He obeyed, and almost leaped behind the chair. All disorientation left him.

A giant, eagle-like face peered from a flame-colored background. Against the red-orange-yellow shifting ground, the face looked bluish, hard, unyielding. An avatar, like a computer game, or was it real? No, it couldn't be real, not with that flat, hard, stare. "Who are you?" he asked, hoping his voice did not quaver.

"Your tongue could not pronounce my name. Call me Leader X."

For real?

The great bird-head shifted position. "Leave us."

Guards he hadn't noticed snapped to attention and filed out.

"There are things they should not hear," Leader X observed, fixing him with hard, unchanging, yellow eyes.

"Such as?" He wanted to curl up under that gaze.

"I know you." In that same harsh, inhuman voice, Leader X told his birth name: "Sían Treil."

Burning with too many emotions, he nodded.

"You will change sex within the week. Do not protest. I know your name, and your life. I know that, two years ago, you killed four boys who humiliated you when they discovered your female form. A clever trap, one worthy of an adult. Since then, you have taken action against others who might come too close to learning your secrets. Not once have you been suspected, even in jest. Your own parents never suspected you."

The words burst out before he could stop them: "Don't talk to me about my parents."

Anger whipcracked across the room. "Remember your place, child."

How he avoided collapsing and whimpering, he never knew. "Sorry."

Now amusement. "You are not sorry." Serious again. "I have plans for this planet. My people have watched, and watched for, humans with the qualities I need. You are one of those people. You have the potential to rise in our organization."

"What organization?"

"Galactor."

How cheesy could it get? "Is that another word just for us humans?"

"It is. We want your world. We shall have it. I think you agree that it needs new masters."

"If you're from another planet, why haven't you taken over already?"

"There are better ways to take over than with armies and weapons. We are here already, and we have made headway in our chosen method."

Other ways than armies? "What do you mean?"

"Your father works for us. When she lived, so did your mother."

Yeah, right.

"Galactor owns and controls many companies and corporations. Your father works for one of them."

Certain mysteries of his life became clear. Of course his parents worked for Galactor. How else could they move between the same two cities yearly and no-one say a word about it? His father said it was necessary for his job, but why should the company provide money for yearly moves for the whole family? In all the years of moving, he never heard complaints about the cost. That was the one thing for which his father could not resent him. "I see."

"It is fortunate that your father does so. It makes it much easier for us to help you."

"Help me, how?"

"To train you, to enhance your potential as a leader in our organization. We can help you with your transformations."

"Please, don't taunt me." Anything except insult.

"I do not taunt. You should not be allowed to waste away, hiding in shame from creatures who cannot rise above their petty animal natures. You are a superior being. You should take your place in the world."

Had he been older, he might have been suspicious, might have refused. "Whatever you want of me, you can have."

"Excellent." The approval sent a warm wave through him.

He thought of Mailer. "What about Mailer? The kid with me?"

"He is here. He was regrettably talkative."

"And?"

"There will be no trace of Hellmann in the basement. No-one will ever know what happened to him. What should we do with your friend?"

Yes. Mailer had been his friend, in a way. "He was a loyal companion. Whatever you do to him, make it quick, and painless." Would this ruin his chances in Galactor?

"Loyalty should be rewarded."

"Thank you, sir." What about Helen? "I have other friends."

"They do not know what you did. They are no threat to you."

Good.

"It is time for you to return home. In time, your father shall hear from us, through one of our many agents. Persuade him to approve."

He looked around the room. Leader X had a harsh voice, but was now preferable to his drunken father. "What will they ask of him?"

"Attendance in special classes. Do not worry about your transformations. Those shall be accommodated. No one shall ever know."

"Thank you, sir." Do I sound like a suck-up?

"One more thing."

"Yes, sir?"

"I will not shame you with the names you currently use. When you take your rightful place in Galactor, you shall be Berg Katse."

A new name, devoid of shameful associations. He would prove worthy of it. Disguising his new-found devotion, he said, "I thank you again."

"One of my agents will take you home."


Only about three hours had passed since Hellmann's murder. Clutching his new name and future tightly in his heart, he walked up the stairs to the apartment. His father had already packed. He was just drunk enough to not stir when Sean tip-toed carefully past him, but not enough to be asleep. "Tomorrow morning at eight," he said.

"Okay."

He felt the first stirrings of the change. In a few hours, he would be in agony. Anything to stop that pain.

The change as an advantage? What advantage?