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another
part of the reason I stopped waiting tables and set the bots to do
it. I was drawing too much attention to myself.”
    Chip recalled one or two early recordings
where there was a lot of crashing and cursing in the background at
particular points that suddenly made sense. Could Lila’s so-called gift actually be real? And accurate to that degree?
    Chip set his implant on the problem, using a
fraction of its large computational power to correlate the
incidents in that recording with the words being spoken by
Bjornson. It took only a split second to come back with a very high
probability that Lila was reading Bjornson correctly, based on
Chip’s years of experience dealing with liars, cheats, villains and
saboteurs.
    Their pod had pulled out into the main ring’s
transport tube and was on its way across rings to jump to the level
where Lila’s rooms were. The pod swayed gently as it coasted along
in zero G and all indicators were green.
    Then suddenly, they weren’t.
    “Damn.” Chip used his implant to check the
traffic in the cross tube they were in. Nobody else was nearby, so
he used the emergency brake to stop the pod in a highly illegal
maneuver that would get him in serious trouble with station
authorities if they ever discovered it. As it was, his implant
would cover his tracks in the station computers while he reversed
their direction and got them out of harm’s way.
    “What is it?” Lila seemed to know enough not
to interfere with him while he tinkered under the panel that
threatened immediate incarceration for tampering with the pod’s
mechanism.
    “Problem up ahead. See the red indicator in
the tube?” He didn’t bother pointing. Once her gaze was set in the
right direction, he knew she’d see it.
    “Wouldn’t a red signal just stop our pod? It
might not be anything bad.”
    “If your senses are as good as you claim,
tell me what you feel when you think about what’s waiting for us at
that station.” He challenged her, all the while pretending to
manually override the pod’s direction. In reality, all he had to do
was flick a thought from his implant to the receiver in the pod’s
computer to get it moving backward at a fast pace. He’d already
done so, in fact, and they were heading back out into the main
stream. No longer cornered.
    She shuddered. He could feel it, as close as
they were sitting.
    “Nothing good,” she whispered. “Nothing good
is waiting for us beyond the red signal.”
    Chip breathed a sigh of relief the moment
they were out of that cross tube. Nobody would mess with them in
the main flow of traffic. Not without drawing way too much
attention.
    He turned to Lila, only to find her white as
a ghost and trembling. Chip didn’t think twice. He put his arms
around her and tucked her head under his chin in a protective pose.
He stroked her hair, hoping to convey safety.
    “You’re okay, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe.
Don’t worry. Now tell me…” He put a little room between them so he
could see her face. “What did you sense?”
    “Beezus. He was waiting there for me.
Thinking very dark thoughts. Very dark. And very strong.”
    Damn.
    “He planned to attack me, and when he got me
alone.” She shuddered in his arms and Chip bit back a curse. “And
with the red signal on the tube, I’d have no way out.” She bit back
a sob.
    “Ssh. Don’t think about it.” Chip stroked her
hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Lila. Believe me when I
say that.”
    To her credit, her shaking reaction didn’t
last long. Straightening in his arms, she met his gaze with a
surprisingly steady core of steel visible in her expression. She
was tough and resilient. A woman after his own heart.
    “I believe you, Charlemagne.”
    She’d called him that once before—when she’d
told him about the king on the deck of cards that had supposedly
foretold his coming.
    “I’m not some ancient king. I’m just plain
old Chip.” Somehow, he got the unnerving feeling that she