"I know, I know—and I promised Claire—I don't know how we're going to work this . . ."

Minchenko was waiting, his expression intense—not a man used to begging. Only his eyes pleaded. Leo was moved. "We'll try. We'll try. That's all I can promise."

Minchenko nodded, dignified.

"How's Madame Minchenko going to feel about all this, anyway?"

"She's loathed Rodeo for twenty-five years," Minchenko promised—somewhat airily, Leo thought. "She'll be delighted to get away." Minchenko didn't add I hope aloud, but Leo heard it anyway.

"All right. Well, we've still got to round up these stragglers and get rid of them. . . ." Leo wondered wistfully if it was possible to drop dead painlessly from an anxiety attack. He led his little troop from the locker room.

*      *      *

Claire flew from hand grip to hand grip along the branching corridors, done with patience at last. Her heart sang with anticipation. The airseal doors to the raucous gym were crowded with quaddies, and she had to restrain herself from forcibly elbowing them out of her way. One of her old dormitory mates, in the pink T-shirt and shorts of crèche duty, recognized her with a grin and reached out with a lower hand to pull her through the mob.

"The littlest ones are by Door C," said her dorm mate. "I've been expecting you." After a quick visual check to be sure her flight plan didn't violently intersect anyone else's taking a similar shortcut, her dorm mate helped her launch herself in that direction by the most direct route, across the diameter of the big chamber.

The buxom figure in pink coveralls Claire sought was practically buried in a swarm of excited, frightened, chattering, crying five-year-olds. Claire felt a twinge of real guilt, that it had been judged too dangerous to their secrecy to warn the younger quaddies in advance of the great changes about to sweep over them. The little ones didn't get a vote, either, she thought.

Andy was tethered to Mama Nilla, weeping miserably. Mama Nilla was desperately trying to pacify him with a squeeze bottle of formula with one hand while holding a reddening gauze pad to the forehead of a crying five-year-old with the other. Two or three more clung for comfort to her legs as she tried to verbally direct the efforts of a sixth to help a seventh who had torn open a package of protein chips too wide and accidentally allowed the contents to spill into the air. Through it all her calm familiar drawl was only slightly more compressed than usual, until she saw Claire approaching. "Oh, dear," she said in a weak voice.

"Andy!" Claire cried.