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She was certain it was another kind of test, some kind of mind-over-matter garbage. Scowling, Nellie dug another oolaga candy
from the package on her stomach. She was supposed to be in Reconnaissance class, but she’d been working ahead of the other cadets and Col. Jolsen had told her she could take the afternoon off and spend it any way she liked. Except there was no one to spend it with. Her best friends, Lierin and Phillip, were stuck in Reconnaissance, reading 3-D maps, and everyone else was in some class or other. After wandering the halls for a bit, Nellie had punched her personal code into the candy machine in the girls’ dorm, selected a package of oolaga candy and retreated to the room she shared with Tana, one of Advanced’s oldest and highest-ranking cadets.

And Tana never let Nellie forget it. Born into the Scales of Judgement caste, Tana had had everything going for her — blood-line, money, an assured career in law or finance. But, unfortunately for her, every caste had to contribute a yearly quota of offspring to the temples and Interior security. When she was six, Tana’s
ID
number had been drawn at the annual harvest lottery, and that had been the last she’d seen of her family and the privileges of the Scales caste. Still, she retained the attitude that went with it, stamped onto her mind as clearly as the caste tattoo on her wrist. And, over the two years they’d shared this room, Nellie had had to grudgingly admit that Tana had earned her reputation as one of Detta’s stellar cadets. Nothing snuck past her scrutiny, and she was always working on another exercise to hone her physical and mental abilities.

Perhaps that was why they’d been placed together — Advanced’s program instructors had been hoping Tana’s logical step-by-step thinking would rub off on Nellie’s madcap leaps of intuition. Instead the two girls mutated into bickering harpies whenever they entered each other’s presence. Within a week of Nellie’s moving into the room, the beds had been shoved to opposite walls and a barricade of dressers and free-standing closets erected down the middle. In the odd fit of fury, Nellie was known to have stood on her bed and flung books, shoes, whatever she could get her hands on, at the
girl on the other side of the barricade. The rest of the girls called them “Hate Mascots.”

The program instructors’ plan appeared to have failed miserably. Or perhaps, Nellie thought suddenly, this had been their secret agenda all along, another hidden training program for two of their best cadets — constant war. She grimaced at the thought and aimed another oolaga candy at the security alarm. Bouncing off the fan, it ricocheted onto Tana’s side of the room. A corner grin tugged at Nellie’s mouth and she aimed again. This one hit the edge of a blade and rebounded toward her, hitting her knee.

“Getting sloppy.” The words came from a floor-to-ceiling screen on the wall at the far end of the room. Without glancing up, Nellie shrugged. She recognized that nasal uptight voice — it belonged to Ms. Duikstra, Supreme Bitch of the Known Universe. Also known as the girls’ dorm mother, Ms. Duikstra was probably flicking through the bedroom surveillance system doing a virtual reality room check, too lazy to make the rounds by foot.

“Sit up when I’m talking to you,” snapped the huge face suspended on the monitoring screen. “Show some respect for your commanding officer, or I’ll put a pejorative on your file.”

Nellie straightened. Ms. Duikstra was no commanding officer but a pejorative was a pejorative, and she already had four. Five meant she would miss the next Street Games, and ten dictated a session with the Black Box. Rumors about the Black Box were legendary. Pejoratives could be removed from a cadet’s file for good behavior, but even so, she had no intention of letting them pile up.

“Eyes on the screen,” continued Ms. Duikstra’s exasperated voice. “Hooligan manners must be left in the maze, Nellie Joanne Kinnan. Really, I just might have to donate a pejorative to your file.”

With a low hiss, Nellie slitted her eyes at the screen. The pinched face hovering at the end of the room sucked in its lips and slitted its eyes back at her. “There is a summons for you,” the dorm mother
snapped haughtily, her pale blue eyes boring into Nellie’s. “You’re required at Station Seven immediately.”

Falling back onto her bed, Nellie groaned loudly, then said, “Col. Jolsen told me I had the afternoon off. It’s supposed to be a reward for working ahead of the rest of the class.”

“Station Seven immediately,” said Ms. Duikstra with obvious satisfaction. “Or a double pejorative on your file.”

With a low hum the screen went blank, and Nellie lay for several seconds, fighting the urge to snap upright and head for the door. She wasn’t really upset about the interruption. It had probably been scheduled all along, some kind of special assignment she was about to be given, and Col. Jolsen had let her out early so the rest of the class wouldn’t know about it. But if they wanted her so badly they were prepared to haul her out of class, they could wait a few minutes. Yawning, she got to her knees and turned to face the star chart that hung above the headboard of her bed. Designed as a large circle, the chart displayed the sky sign for each of the nine months, as well as the caste it represented. Almost all of the signs were constellations, except for those of the Master and Healer castes: the Red Planet for the Master caste, the Temple for the priesthood, the Scales of Judgement for the legal caste, the Weeping Tree for the scholars, the Twin Moons for the healers, the Warrior for the business caste, the Hammer for the masons, the Cat for those who lived by their wits, and the Skeleton for those whose wits had long been stretched beyond bearing and deserted them.

To the right of the chart were recorded the stars of good and bad omen for each caste. Quickly Nellie ran her finger down the list for the month of Lulunar. Omens could change, depending upon the day of the year. It was presently the twenty-ninth day of Lulunar, halfway through the month. The sky sign was still the Twin Moons, and stars of good omen were the three tears of the Weeping Tree constellation. Stars of warning included the tip of the Warrior’s bow and the Blue Star in the Susurra constellation. With a sigh,
Nellie lifted her left wrist and traced the small blue cat tattooed onto the inside. Her identity tattoo as well as the sky sign of her caste, it wouldn’t be showing up in the star charts for another two months. Life was a drag when you were a Cat and the legal, scholar and healer castes dominated the sky. But just wait until the month of Jarnus when the three lowest castes — the Hammer, Cat and Skeleton — ruled. Then Miss Scales-of-Justice Snotface Roommate would be talking out of the other side of her mouth.

Climbing off the bed, Nellie approached her dresser mirror. As usual, her reflection was dominated by the black bodysuit that was an Advanced cadet’s daily uniform. Above it hovered a pair of stark gray eyes, their odd slant emphasized by the tight ponytail skewered at the back of her head. Most cadets had a similar slant to their eyes, though not as pronounced as her own. For years she’d thought it had something to do with her roots in the Cat caste, the “criminal caste” as it was commonly known, but none of the other Cat cadets had eyes like hers.
Slink Eyes
, the Black Core cadets had called her when she’d first arrived.
Snake Eyes.
Well, she’d lived those labels well and truly down, and now she lived with more respectful nicknames.

“Bang,” Nellie whispered, cocking one hand and shooting her reflection. “Bang bang, you’re dead.”

With a grim smile, she turned from her mirror and headed toward an alcove that was located to the left of the bedroom doorway. There she knelt before a small blue-robed statue. Kissing its naked feet, she murmured, “Blessed be the Goddess, Mother of the Stars, Mother of us all.” Above her head the statue stood with both hands raised in their customary pleading gesture, its eyes gazing upward. Nellie stared longingly at the ceramic face. Oh, for the privilege of one moment directly in the Goddess’s blessed presence — the Goddess Ivana, who in Her first incarnation was said to have sometimes taken the form of a God. The priests had been eagerly predicting Her Second Coming for the past few years,
declaring now as the time for the fulfilment of the old prophesies. Four years ago, when Nellie’s name had been pulled at the Cat caste draw, she’d been excited, thinking she’d been selected to train as a priestess in one of the temples. Girls who served in the temples were allowed contact with their families until the eve of their thirteenth birthday. A twitch crossed Nellie’s face as she watched the Goddess’s motionless face. Cadets selected for the Black Core Program immediately lost contact with their families, and over the years Nellie’s memories of her mother had fizzled to nothing. She couldn’t even remember the woman’s face.

Not that she cared. As she’d learned in her classes, birth mothers were inclined to be emotional and inconsistent, placing their children before the Empire. Who would want to grow up in that kind of environment? Besides, as a cadet she was one of the Goddess’s primary children.
The Goddess Ivana, Mother of All
, Nellie reminded herself fiercely. Hadn’t Ivana lost both Her twin sons, one in the Battle of the Northern Stars and the other in the Ambush of the Morning Light? And hadn’t She in response drawn all of humanity to Her bosom in loving compassion, interceding for them with the Gods above? If the Goddess could do that, then Nellie Joanne Kinnan could certainly do without a mother she couldn’t even remember!

Lifting a hand, Nellie touched a finger to the set of lights that glowed above the statue’s left shoulder. Molded into the shape of the Cat constellation, the glowing galaxy arched its back, hissing at all comers. Grinning, Nellie hissed back. If she’d been given the choice of a birth sign, a hissing cat was definitely the one she would have picked, even if it was the criminal caste.

Over the statue’s other shoulder glimmered the Scales of Judgement constellation. Nellie slitted her eyes at it. Every so often Tana made a point of observing that the Scales constellation was above the Goddess’s right shoulder. “The
clean
side,” she would say pointedly.

Hastily Nellie leaned forward and rubbed a smudge of oolaga candy from the statue’s toes. Then she got to her feet and headed through the doorway, en route to Station Seven.

STATION SEVEN
was in D Block, a series of offices and laboratories that interfaced the Black Core training program with the larger Detta facility. Completely underground, the entire complex was connected by a well-lit system of tunnels, all painted off-white and dotted with checkpoint scanners. As she strode past the sign that marked the outskirts of the Black Core facility, Nellie picked up her pace. Detta housed the adult cadets, and appointments at Station Seven meant the possibility of a quick chat with an agent on downtime from assignment. Not that there was much chance at hardcore information, but she’d grown adept at slipping apparently offhand questions into these conversations. Most adults, even hardened agents who’d spent time in the Outbacks, let down their guard around a worshipful twelve-year-old, and Nellie had honed her worshipful act to a fine edge.

Trotting quickly through the halls, she paused at the various security scanners en route and held out her wrist. She’d done this so often she knew the exact progression of whirs and clicks the scanner would emit as it processed the information in the
ID
chip buried under the caste tattoo on her skin. Some nights before falling asleep, Nellie would lie in the dark stroking the small bump on her wrist and wonder what kind of data the
ID
chip contained, exactly what it told the central computer each time she held it out for the scanner and waited for the door standing beyond it to be opened. It was like having a spy inside her body, a spy that knew things about her that she didn’t, but so far it seemed to be on her side; to date the doors had always slid open upon request.

Today, as usual, the doors slid open. After the third scanner she began playing with the equipment, turning as she passed through the doorway and pretending to dash back toward the checkpoint, before turning again and continuing down the hall. She wasn’t
supposed to do this; it confused the security beam and sent the computers scrambling. Once she’d even jammed a door by continually passing back and forth through the security beam, and the alarm had gone off. It had meant a shitload of pejoratives, but Nellie couldn’t resist the odd prank against the system. The sliding doors, the miles upon miles of gleaming off-white corridors, the endless sound-proofed walls — it was all so smooth, so implacable, so
smug
.

Behind her the sliding doors hissed, opening and shutting several times. Nellie observed their mechanical confusion with satisfaction, then took off down the hall toward an overhead sign that read “Station Seven.” Veering around a corner, she grinned as the station’s reception desk came into view and a resigned expression crossed the secretary’s face.

“Nellie Kinnan,” the woman said, without consulting her appointment book. “Room Fourteen, as usual. And WALK PLEASE.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Nellie, taking off again at full speed. She knew Room Fourteen, it was one of the psych labs where they made her answer all kinds of weird questions about dreams and stuff. She thought it was a gas and always gave the wildest answer that came into her head. The dreams she made up were way more interesting than her actual ones, and besides, she would never give that kind of information to a psychiatrist. Real dreams were private. No one in their right mind should expect you to answer questions like that.

Grabbing hold of the doorhandle as she ran past, Nellie yanked herself to a stop and fell heavily against the door. Then she pounded twice. She always did this at Room Fourteen, it was her special hello knock.

“Nellie,” smiled the lab-coated woman who opened the door. She was an assistant, still working on her degree, but insisted Nellie call her
Doctor
Juba. “I guessed it was you halfway down the hall,” she said, still smiling. It gave Nellie the creeps. “What d’you think was my first clue?”