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The fearful are often holders of the erous power They becos of all the life around theths as well as the weaknesses, they fasten only on the weaknesses

- Shipquotes

WINSLOW FERRY sat in his dihted office unaware of the random chaos around him - the piles of tapes and software, the dirty clothes, the empty bottles and boxes, the papers with scribbled notes to hi, tense dayside for him, and the place smelled of stale, spilled wine and old perspiration His entire attention focused on the sensor screen at the corner of his comdesk He bent his sweaty face close to the screen which showed Panille walking down a passageith that lithe and succulent ray hair fell over his right eye and he brushed it aside with a deeply veined hand His pale eyes glittered in the coht

He watched Hali on the holo, watched the seway to hatch to passageway But the musk that surrounded him there in his office was Rachel At times Rachel Demarest seemed all bone and elbow to him, a hard woman hardly used He developed an amused distance from her whine She had dreams that included hi wrinkles and sour breath She wanted power and Ferry liked to snuggle up to power They were good for each other and they tricked the inforether This game of barter between them walled off the kind of hurt they’d both been dealt at the hands of whimsical lovers

Rachel was asleep now in his cubby, drea herself Senior Chair of a new Council that would wrest power fro

Ferry sat at his console, slightly drunk, drea of Hali Ekel

He waited to shift to the next spy sensor until he could no longer ainst her jumpsuit What luscious hips! As he switched sensors to the one ahead of thee focus The tere a blur as they approached the sensor’s forward field limit Ferry fumbled with the controls and lost theeon’s hands were shaking like a wihi in a flare

He touched the screen to steady hi past the sensor and into a treedome

"Enjoy, enjoy, my dears" He spoke aloud, his words absorbed by the piled confusion around hi couples went into the treedome He checked to see that the holo was on record and that sound levels were satisfactory Lewis and Oakes would want to see this, and Ferry anticipateda special copy for hi fellow! Give it to her!"

He felt a pleasant swelling at his crotch and wondered if he could get away to visit Rachel De on that poet," Lewis had ordered, and he’d had five liters of the new Pandoran wine delivered to Ferry’s office froift One of the empties lay across his mazed hookup to the Biocomputer Another empty was still on the deck of the cubby temporarily occupied by Rachel She was a clone (one of the better ones) and as the treasure to her that Ferry was not Rachel was the treasure to him that Ekel was not

Ferry watched the s every one of them to be his own

Perhaps with a little winehe thought, and he leered at the faint, half-i him out of her conversation with Panille

Are they going to couple?

He was beginning to doubt it Panille was not reacting correctly I should’ve told theroundside orders sooner That was always a good lever for sex "I’ers are down there?"

"Go ahead, do it, fellow!"