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chapter 1
 "Witch! Witch!" The cry was among the walkers, but he didn't bother to track it down. It was no longer a fighting word to Hammen. He wore it like a badge of honor. It tasted of brass, but it gleamed on him. A puzzled growl came from the Familiar at his heels. The dog could never understand how people could hate Hammen. Lad, the dog, often asked Hammen how anyone could possibly hate Hammen, and Hammen always told him to shut up; he couldn't understand—he was only a dog.
The walk ramp was crowded this afternoon with people fresh from the transmatter stations, eager to tell themselves they were walking on a strange planet. Hammen passed among the nudists, the cavaliers, the zip-suiters, the zoot-suiters, the Ivy-coated, the Moss-covered, walking not for novelty or exercise but because he preferred to go everywhere under his own power. Even to the stars.
Hale and Lora saluted him a few paces away from the entrance to the station. They were a beautiful blond couple, with brightly polished faces. Hammen didn't much like them, but he didn't feel sufficiently pressed to be rude enough to let them become aware of it.
"How goes it, kids?" he asked them.
"Couldn't be better," Hale said.
"Of course not," Lora added.
Hammen's slate eyes moved from the man to the woman. "Are you troubled?"
"This isn't the time to talk about it, not before you and Lad transmit yourself," the girl said quickly.
It wasn't, Hammen admitted to himself. Only now that they had let it slip, he would rest better knowing the whole truth of it.
"Come on," Hammen urged. "It's not as if I wasn't interested."
Hale looked at his wife. "Lora doesn't like Wagner any more."
"Perdition!" said Hammen. "I never liked Wagner. She's growing up."
Lora put a half-closed fist to her lips, and didn't look at either of the men, or at the dog who stood with freshly pointed ears.
"No," she said softly. "I lost something on the last one. Gee, I wonder if the Mindsnake likes Wagner now? Still, it's not as if I had stopped liking music altogether, or books. Not this time."
Hale grabbed her arm roughly. "You're sure doing a great job of getting Hammen ready for the jump."
Lora's eyes clouded. "I'm sorry, Ham." She looked up, smiled warmly, kissed her fingertips and placed them on Hammen's lips. "Companion's Code, huh?"
He took her hand and for the moment liked her. "Okay, honey. I guess even a Witch squeezes in under the wire for that."
The young team was abruptly embarrassed. "Oh, well, Witch," Hale said deprecatingly, "what does cargo know, anyway?"
Hammen laughed and scratched Lad's ears. "They know I'm a Witch. But it has its advantages. I don't have to worry about Lad losing his taste for Wagner. A dog does not have that much to lose. If it comes to that, he's just gone."
Lora shuddered delicately, the way of a watered flower. "How could you stand to lose a Companion with so little feeling?"
"I've lost three Companions, and got myself and my cargo into port. They were only dogs."
Hale looked at him sharply. "But you were Companioning with them. It must have been," he selected a word, "difficult for you."
"Don't absorb the cargo's superstitions about Witches and their Familiars. They have fogged, even dirty, ideas. They were just dogs to me. Like Lad."
"A dog, that's all he is," Gordus said in a manner designed to explain the thing patiently to Hammen.
"Lad is a dog."
"Why do you emphasize the point now?" Hammen demanded.
The Companion sat on a seat formed from a single S-shaped plastic surface. Hammen studied the bulk of Gordus, Coordinator of Transmatters, who sat hulked in his utility chair in the bubble office overhanging the City of the Sea, on the world of Lanole. Hammen was comfortable, cooled, relaxed, amused by a light play of sensory electron music, and aggressively unhappy.
Gordus sat in his great chair patting the hair on the back of his left hand with his right palm, as if the fist were a sleeping kitten. At Hammen's feet, Lad's neck muscles quivered uneasily.
"Your record, Hammen," Gordus said at last, "is a good one."
"How could it be better? I've never lost one member of a cargo."
"But you have lost three Companions."
"Familiars. Dogs."
"But it shows weakness."
Hammen's face heated. "I never show weakness."
"Not your weakness, my dear, dear boy," Gordus said in exaggeration. "The weakness of the Witch-Familiar relationship, the weakness of Witches as Companions at all. Don't take it personally."
Hammen leaped to his feet. Lad's muzzle gleamed white.
"Not take it personally?" Hammen cried. "How else can I take it? You are questioning the worthiness of my profession, of my way of life. You question the honor of many of my friends—my associates. Witchery is an ancient profession. My grandmother and uncle were Witches before me. Witches have an unparalleled record of service to Transmatters and to the human race. How dare you, sir!"
Gordus waved a fat hand in front of him, laughing up and down the scale. "No, no, no. Peace, please. You have no need to plead so strongly for the cause of Witches. You don't have to be a Witch, you know, Hammen. You're good enough to be a regular, full-fledged Companion. The reason you get so many of your cargo through is that you in the most literal sense Companion them all. It would be possible for you to use a fellow Companion on your jumps instead of a Familiar."
Hammen sat down, no longer angry, or energetic. "No. No, it wouldn't be possible for me to do that. I can take people on an occasional jump, for high pay. But I couldn't stand the same kind of contact, day in, day out, with another human being. Pay doesn't come that high."
Gordus gave another laugh, and killed it sharply. "And there you were a few moments ago bragging about all the service Witches had been to the human race, and when we get down to it, it turns out you hate the human race."
Hammen tasted the inside of his dry mouth and longed for a way out. "I don't hate it; I just can't stand it. There's a difference."
"If you say so. But tell me, do you like your fellow Companions, or even your fellow Witches, any better than you do your cargo?"
"No," Hammen admitted.
"Good. Then we can stop this foolish talk about the Witches' service to mankind, since you don't give a damn about either Witches or mankind. You care only about one Witch; your interests are entirely self-interests. Correct?"
"Yes."
"Good. Better. Now I suppose you are not entirely satisfied with the benefits you now receive as a Witch? You would like more money, pleasure, power, prestige? You have ambition, greed, hunger, desire?"
"Yes."
"Fine. I didn't think you had altogether ceased to be human. Then I can tell you that the Transmitter Service has to perform its most important mission, and you are thought to be the best man for it."
"Most important mission?" said Hammen. "Best man?"
Gordus became happy. "Those are questions? But I can't tell you the answers. Not yet. First, you must promise us the added protection of taking a human Companion for this assignment."
"Why should I want to do that, Gordus?"
"Because I have promised that you would, and I never fail."
Hammen stood for the second time. "Sorry. Not a good enough reason for me."
Gordus' face splintered into confusion. "But as your superior, as your coordinator, I order you to take a human Companion for this assignment."
"Gordus," Hammen said, "you were once a Companion yourself."
"When I was younger, while my wife was alive."
"Then rescind your order or I'll kill you—under the Code, in a duel."
Gordus sneered. "I have never been beaten."
"Obviously," Hammen said. He didn't point out anything about his own status.
"No."
It was a final thing.
"Are you armed at this instant?"
The coordinator shook his heavy head.
"Then I plead grievance and choose weapons. Appeal?"
The other shrugged. "Choose."
Hammen was breathing deeply and regularly, in preparation. "Before this is closed, I want to remind you that the Law and the Code both state that no one can interfere in the relationship between a Team."
"Doesn't apply," Gordus said. "The act of '97 recognized the Companionship of Witches, but it did not extend the privilege to Familiars. Naturally not. You are a Companion and I could not separate you from a human Companion, but I can order you to break from Lad."
"That isn't just."
"I know. But we're talking about law, not justice."
"Do you wish aid from your fellow Companion?" Hammen asked.
"In later years, I have often wished for it, but my formal reply: No."
"Then," Hammen said, "I name our weapon as the body. The time, this instant. I can kill you easily with my bare hands, and Lad will help with his teeth."
An eyebrow-hedged ridge of fat above Gordus' left eye angled. "Use the dog and you'll get in trouble."
"Not before a Companions' Court. But if you so state your preference, I'll only use my own body."
"Hammen, about this matter," the coordinator said. "I'll think about it."
"An hour," Hammen said, and turned on his heel.
"Hammen," Gordus called out.
Hammen looked back to face a leveled destruction gun.
 
"You know the Code," Gordus explained. "The Challenge wasn't withdrawn. You struck the field. A coward may be killed by any weapon."
"You are too modest," Hammen told him.
Gordus smiled and fed the gun to a compartment of his utility chair. "I only wanted to prove a point. I can kill you anytime, anywhere. No one can beat me. Can they? Can they, Hammen?"
The sweat stung Hammen's palms so hard he could almost taste the salt in it with his fingers.
"I'll do it."
"Gratitude is a part of honor. Yes. The Code. You do believe in that. But you haven't asked me yet who your human Companion on the jump will be."
"Who?" Hammen asked.
"As you yourself pointed, I still come under the Code myself."
"I agreed to take a human Companion, but I did not agree to take Gordus himself," Hammen explained to his wristphone in the alcove outside the coordinator's office.
"I think it's a terrible thing," Lora said. "But why won't you jump with him—Gordus, I mean?"
"I hate him," Hammen explained.
"Oh, sure. I guess I do too. I'd never thought of being a Companion with him. Ugh! Oh, Hale's swimming in now." Aside: "Over here, darling. Ham's calling."
From afar: "Who?"
Aside: "Hammen. The Witch."
"Why didn't you say so?" Into the phone: "Hi, fellow. What can we do to you?"
"You can do a lot for me."
"For you, huh? That comes high, you know. What'll it be?"
Hammen retold his story, and finished with, "That's why I called you two. I need a human Companion, anybody other than Gordus."
A slithering of voice, then faint, but distinct, from Lora: "I couldn't do it and I can't let you do it. Afterward, whichever of us, it would be as if I were no better than a dog."
Hammen stared ahead of him at the alcove wall.
"Ham," Hale said, "why did you come to us with this?"
"You were friends of mine," Hammen said.
"No."
"No?"
"We aren't friends of yours, Ham," Hale said patiently. "We're just acquaintances of yours. We'd like to help you out, but not enough to split our team for you. Surely you've got some real friends, people you look better to than us.... Hell, man, don't you know what a friend is?"
Hammen thought of it. "I suppose not."
"But there must be someone," Hale said in embarrassment, "a woman."
"I know a woman Witch on another world. We make love together sometimes. But I know her only well enough to know better than to ask favors of her."
"There are lots of Witches," Hale said in nervous exasperation. "One of them is bound to Companion with you on a thing like this."
Ham touched his fingers to his wrist. "I think not. No other Witch is going to help me set a precedent to put them out of the trade."
"But the Code!" Hale said furiously. "Surely you can count on your fellow Witches under the Code."
"Why? I couldn't count on my fellow Companions under the Code," said Hammen, and pressed his wristphone into silence.
Hammen stepped from the alcove back into Gordus' office to find a lovely golden woman groveling at the coordinator's feet. The coordinator was smiling at the pleasure of the thing.
"What's this?" Hammen demanded.
"Cargo," Gordus said.
"Is she ill?"
"Mad."
"Then she can't be transmitted. No one could hold together a disintegrating personality in transmission," Hammen said.
"It will be difficult. Unprecedentedly difficult. That is why it will take the two of us acting as Companions to bring her safely to Earth."
"Why is it so important that she get to Earth?"
"Ask her," Gordus suggested.
Hammen glanced down and saw Lad nosing pointedly at the woman. Often he forgot that the dog was constantly at his side. His eyes lifted up to the woman.
She had fine features, impressive blonde hair, and she was wrapped in a frazzled blanket, indigo rubbed away to white threads here and there.
"What's your name, woman?" Hammen asked.
"I know what it is."
"Of course you do," he said sharply, "but I don't."
"I know you don't."
"There isn't much that you don't know, is there?"
"I know everything," she confessed humbly, honey eyes down.
Hammen whirled to Gordus. "What do they want with her on Earth?"
The coordinator gestured eloquently. "She knows everything. Do you think they know everything on Earth? Don't believe propaganda. There are things she can tell them."
Hammen looked again to the creature huddled on the floor. "What could she tell anyone?"
"There are words buried in any conglomeration of letters. Confusion is the basis of all codes. There is always a cipher for any code."
Hammen exhaled. "Never mind. What do I care what they want with her? All right, I'll try to take her through. You don't want me to use the dog?"
"No. It won't do."
"Then let me take her alone. I could do it this once."
"Negative. Besides, need I remind you that you have already graciously agreed to take a human Companion?"
"And," Hammen said ponderously, "I can't get any Companion other than you to go with me."
"You can't? Sad. But why wouldn't I be acceptable?"
"I hate your soul."
"No doubt," Gordus sighed. "But I believe you said you hated all people."
"I can't stand people, only some people especially do I hate."
"I see. But surely it is only a small difference in degree, not kind, between the contempt and aversion you hold for humanity at large and that which you hold for me. Surely that difference is too small to cause you to break your word, given under the Code."
"I suppose it is." The words tasted bad in his mouth. "Very well. I'll transmit with you."
"Of course you will," the coordinator said smoothly.
"Are you ready to transmit now?"
"Of course we are."
Hammen stood within the platform diagram with Gordus and the woman. Beyond the boundaries stood the technicians, one at the control mosaic, the other holding to the neck of Lad, who suffered it under orders.
 
"Wiggle away from the Mindsnake, citizens," a technician called.
A native, Hammen thought. He had never been in transmission himself. No one who had ever joked about the Mindsnake, or rarely even spoke of him.
Hammen looked around him, slate eyes chalking the outline of the diagram in which they stood. It was only a rectangle, but shouldn't it be rather a pentagram?
From the time of Aristotle, t............
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