Partnership by Anne McCaffrey, Margaret Ball

game." And he too left, twiddling his black minihedron between two fingers and humming quietly to himself.

    Fassa

    The gleaming black surfaces of the minihedron flashed in the central cabin lights as Fassa turned her arm this way and diat, admiring the effect of the stark blackness against the jumble of silver and prismawood trinkets. The hedron was as black as Fassa's own sleek hair and tip-tilted eyes, an admirable contrast to the whiteness of her creamed and pampered skin. In its hard glossy perfection she saw a miniature of herself. . . beautiful, impenetrable . . .

    A shell full of dangerous secrets,

    Fassa stared at the mirror-smooth surfaces of the minihedron and saw her face reflected and distorted in half a dozen directions at once, a shattered self looking out, trapped in the black mirrors that distorted her lovely features to a mask of pain and a silent scream.

    No! That's not me — that can't be me. She dropped her arm; the jingling silver bells on the bracelet tinkled a single discordant peal. Pushing off from the strange titanium column that wasted so much cabin space, Fassa floated into a corner between display screens and a 64

    Anne McCaffrey &? Margaret BaU

    storage locker. "Blank screens," she ordered the ship.

    The dazzling display of SPACED OUT graphics faded away, to be replaced by a black emptiness like the surfaces of the minihedron. Fassa stared into the flat screen, lips parted, until the reflection of her own beauty reassured her. Yes, she was still as lovely as she'd always believed. The distorted reflections from the minihedron had been an illusion like the dreams that troubled her sleep, dreams in which her lovely face and perfect body peeled away to reveal the shrunken, miserable creature underneath.

    Reassured, she stroked the charm bracelet with two fingers until she touched the sharp faceted surface of the minihedron. I keep my secrets, avid you keep yours, little sister. As long as she had the shield of her perfect beauty between herself and the world, Fassa felt safe.
    Nobody could see beyond that to the worthless thing inside. Very few tried; they were all too mesmerized by the outer facade. Men were rutting fools, and they deserved no better than to have their own folly turned back on them. If she could use their desire for her to enrich herself, so much the better. Gods knew her beauty had cost her too much in the pastl Mama, mama, make him stop, wailed a child's voice from the recesses of her mind. Fassa laughed sourly at the memory of that folly. How old had she been then?
    Eight, nine? Young enough to think her mother could stand up to a man like Faul del Parma y Polo, could make him give up anything he really wanted — like his daughter. Mama had closed her eyes and turned her head away. She didn't want to know what Faul was doing to their lovely little girl.

    Ugly little girl. Dirty little girl, whispered another of the voices.

    All the same, it had been Mama who stopped it, in a way. Too late, but still — her spectacular and public suicide had ended Paul's private games with his PARTNERSHIP

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    daughter. Jumping from the forty-second story balcony, Mama had shattered herself on the terraces of the Regis Galactic Hotel in the middle of Faul del Parma's annual company extravaganza, the oneatt the gossipbyters attended. And the news and gossip and rumor and innuendo that surrounded the suicide of del Parma's wife had been splashed all over the newsbeams for weeks thereafter. Why should she kill herself? Faul del Parma could give a woman every--thing. There was no history of mental instability. And everyone knew Faul del Parma never so much as looked at another woman, he only cared for his wife—
    well, one didn't hear so much about the wife, did one?
    A homebody type. But he went everywhere with that lovely little daughter at his side, only thirteen but a heartbreaker in the making....

    It occurred to a dozen gossipbyters at once that the daughter should be