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you’ll obey orders. Ted or me’ll be calling the shots, and you will do exactly as we tell you. With a little luck, we’ll keep you alive, healthy, and sane. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”
    Cedric could only assume that the man was serious. He did not look as though he were joking. He might be crazy, of course. “But I—I’m nothing! You said yourself—fresh from a foster home, wet behind the ears. Green as grass.”
    “That’s right, sonny. But you’re grandson to the best hated woman in the world.”
    “Gran? Hated?”
    “Get dressed!”
    “But who—”
    “Get dressed!” Bagshaw repeated. “I’ll run you a list when we get back to HQ. It runs to ten or twelve pages: Earthfirsters and ecology freaks and pilgrim groups and half the cults on the globe; them that’s scared the Institute will poison the planet, them that says it’s doing too much, and them that says it ain’t doing enough. People who want to disband it, and people who want to take it over. People who believe it really has discovered habitable worlds and is keeping them secret…every type of nut there is.”
    Cedric’s head emerged through the top of his poncho. “But what has this to do with me?”
    Bagshaw rolled his eyes. “Ever heard of the Trojan horse? How do I know you haven’t already been rewired so’s you’ll strangle the old lady as soon as you meet her?”
    “That’s not possible!”
    “No?” Bagshaw somehow conveyed a shrug. “Well, not without a small amount of cooperation, it isn’t, I guess.”
    Cedric stood on one leg to pull on a sock. “So!”
    “So? So, you say? How about the media, sonny? The media have more short-term power than anybody. Homogenize Old Mother Hubbard’s grandson, and a thousand groups would try to claim credit. What you are is a bulletin standing by to interrupt normal programming.”
    Cedric found that his mouth was open again. He would have to watch that. “You are saying that…people…would kill me, just to spite Gran?”
    “Spite? Score off? Coerce? Turn? It wouldn’t matter much to you, would it? You’d be dead—or worse—in a week. I promise you. Why do you think she put you in Meadowdale in the first place?”
    Shoving feet into sneakers, Cedric thought of Glenda, who was Eccles Pandora’s cousin, and Gavin, whose father was president of ITT—and suddenly understood. “Neutral ground?”
    “Hey! Maybe you’re not quite as simple as you look. Of course, some of the real rabid groups wouldn’t respect any sort of sanctuary—the Sierra Club, or such—but you were fairly safe there. Now you’re in play, right? And the Institute has infinite money, so you’re a potential kidnap, too. Ransom victims rarely earn pensions.” Bagshaw was grinning grotesquely, enjoying Cedric’s horror. “Your dear gran’s got power, sonny, and anyone with power has enemies. She’s got more than most. BEST for example.”
    “BEST?”
    “Are you deaf? I thought you were just stupid. Hurry up and let’s get the hell out of here. Yes, BEST. She’s fought it off for years, and almost no one else has ever won a single round against BEST. This area happens to be BEST’s turf. You didn’t know that? There are hundreds of little power centers scattered around Nauc—some just local gang barons, others more important; even a few of the old legit governments still survive in places. There’s even a mob down Blue Ridge way calls itself the Congress of the United States. Has a good militia.”
    To save his life, Cedric could not have told how much truth there was in that tirade.
    And Bagshaw knew that. “But BEST’s HQ is less than ten miles from here, so of course it’s staked out its own territory all around. Now do you see? Sweet little Cedric with his feathers still wet flies out of the nest and perches right on the cats’ litter box. If BEST knew you were here, you’d be in surgery already. Apparently it doesn’t.”
    Cedric grunted and began stuffing things into his bag. His