MEMORIES and socks.

Barac sud Sarc, Third Level Adept and former First Scout of the Clan, shook his head as he added the holocube image of his murdered brother Kurr to the clothes already in the travel case. Memories, indeed.

I wondered when you would go, the words formed in his mind, the touch soft and familiar.

"First Chosen," Barac acknowledged out loud, continuing to pack. "Come in --" He triggered the locking mechanism on the door with a thought.

His mother entered, her movements gracious despite the pain he could sense rippling the unseen M'hir between them. The M'hir. Barac swallowed, suddenly unsure how long it would be before he could touch another of his kind this way. Clan philosophers debated if the M'hir had existed before Clan thought, some believing it to have been an emptiness waiting to be filled with Clan power, others arguing it was a construct of Clan minds and not truly a place at all. Like most, Barac merely accepted that every Clan mind existed in part there, in that nothingness through which Clan thoughts and form could pass at will. It was the medium making them one, regardless of strength or ability. Or dispute.

Barac studied his mother's face, feeling as though he had to memorize every detail: the delicately pale skin and fine bone structure he saw in every mirror, the dark eyes and generous mouth edged by laughter lines.

Not at this moment, however. "Where will you go?" she asked calmly enough, aloud. It was her right to question his intentions -- not as his mother, Clan family structure was almost nonexistent -- but as Enora, First Chosen of the House of sud Sarc.

Barac tossed an old coat on the lopsided pile of discards covering his bed and some of the floor. "Must be time to move on," he commented instead of answering directly. "Look at all this junk!"

"You could stay."

He hesitated in the midst of closing the final bag, then made his decision. He turned to face her. "If you knew what I do, First Chosen, you'd send me yourself."

Enora frowned, taking a step closer to her son. Her elegant hand waved in a complex gesture, as if drawing threads from the air. "What are you talking about, Barac? Why would I --?"

Barac shook his head. It's time you saw the Clan Council as I do, he sent. He opened his thoughts to hers, using his greater strength to forge the gentlest of links with her ordered mind, then drew her into his memories, letting Enora relive with him events of which she'd only been told. And, as the Clan knew well, words were the easiest way to lie.

It didn't take long. Barac withdrew, soberly watching his mother as she groped one-handed for a chair's back, oriented herself, then sank down into it slowly. "Sira --" she whispered, shying from the intimacy of mind touch as she sought to control her emotional response. "A lawbreaker. She did all this, herself?"

Barac waited, knowing what his mother struggled to reconcile. Enora had been a Chooser herself, once, as all Clan females were.

Choosers possessed the Power-of-Choice, an uncontrollable force within themselves that instinctively tested the strength of unChosen males within the M'hir. Win or draw, and the Joining formed, a permanent connection between a pair through that other space, regardless of distance, severed only by death. The Chosen female Commenced, her body altering to its reproductive state.

Losing males were rejected. A Chooser could be patient, since their bodies, untouched by physiological aging, would wait as long as necessary for the moment of Choice.

But with each generation, the Power-of-Choice had become stronger, more dangerous. The Clan Council, hungry to increase the abilities of the Clan, hastened the process by preselecting the strongest male candidates for Choice. After all, to the Clan, power was everything: status, currency, and life.

It took only two generations for Choosers to be born who were powerful enough to kill weaker males during the Test. Fewer and fewer Joinings were successful. The inevitable result? The birth of Sira di Sarc, a Chooser so powerful, so potent, that no male could survive her testing.

Barac's memory of Sira carried the taste of longing, the overwhelming desire any unChosen felt for such power, and a self-preserving dose of fear. Yet he knew the person as well as the legend: outwardly fragile and ordinary, an easily-overlooked shadow with wide-set gray eyes and solemn expression; inwardly, self-willed and brilliant, brimming with power awaiting release.

Sira had willingly gone into seclusion to protect the unChosen. She had used the years of her isolation to study the population dynamics of her species. She was given access to the old records, from the time when the M'hiray -- the 730 individuals possessing the mutation allowing them to use the M'hir -- had been forced to leave the Clan Homeworld during the Stratification of their species. It didn't take her long to discover that not only were the M'hiray in trouble, her own existence, a female who could not find a mate of her kind, meant that extinction was close at hand. She proposed alternatives, the most promising being to test the Power-of-Choice against the mind of another telepathic species, such as a Human. The subject might die, but perhaps the Chooser would Commence and become reproductive without risking more Clan lives.

The Clan Council accepted her conclusions about the danger to the M'hiray. The Council didn't accept Sira's proposal, utterly rejecting any possibility of a Choice involving a Human. Such a violation of Clan ways was unthinkable. Instead, they decided on a different solution. They would erase the mind of the most powerful and desirable Chooser, Sira herself, in an attempt to destroy the Power-of-Choice and bring her precious genetic makeup back into the Clan pool.

Sira was warned. She selected a Human for her experiment, a telepath named Jason Morgan. To protect any unChosen she might encounter, she underwent stasis, the procedure that temporarily blocked a Chooser's powers. To make it possible to undergo Choice with a Human and a stranger, her memories were ruthlessly suppressed, ridding her of all identity, substituting compulsions that would send her directly to the Human and the moment of Choice.

"She broke the Law," Barac agreed. "But so did the Council."

Enora shook her head. "I know. What they tried to do was wrong. But Sira -- I saw for myself how she cared for this Human, even after her memories were restored. She learned to control the Power-of-Choice in order to save him. How could she --"

"Justify herself to Morgan?" the Clansman smiled. "All I can say is, Morgan is a remarkable being. He risked his life to save her, and risked losing her to bring back her past."

"Such caring is rare among the Joined," Enora said almost wistfully. "I can see she would value it." Her voice firmed. "Nothing you've shown me explains why you are so intent on leaving."

"Efforts were made to keep Sira from Morgan. One of them resulted in Kurr's murder."

"Yihtor di Caraat killed your brother," Enora said, her face growing pale but still composed. "Yihtor's mind was erased for his infamy and his House name removed from the M'hiray. It is over, Barac."

"Yihtor was merely the weapon, First Chosen. Kurr was someone's messenger -- an expendable messenger."

His mother's eyes narrowed. Barac felt the troubling in the M'hir between them as she fought to keep her thoughts private. He knew better than to reach for them. "Whose messenger? Who is responsible for Kurr's death?"

Barac shook his head sharply. "I don't know. But Sira does. She wouldn't tell me, not in front of the Council."

"So you would seek her out now." Enora paused. "I agree you should go. But even if you can find her, Barac, she may not want to see you."

Barac closed his eyes briefly. Then he picked up both travel bags and said without facing Enora: "She'll see me. We have something in common now."

He began to concentrate, preparing the mental image that would guide his passage through the M'hir, sidestepping space and leaving his troubles behind on this planet that was no longer his home.

We have both been driven into exile, he sent into her thoughts, surrounding the bare words with the taste of his despair and a glimmer of what might have been hope. Good-bye.

Barac pushed ...

And disappeared. The air in the room shifted slightly to fill the space where he had been.

Enora, First Chosen, walked slowly over to the pile of unwanted clothes. She picked up a shirt, faded gold threads taking fire from the light as she folded it in her hands. "Imagine saving this," the Clanswoman murmured.

She brought the shirt up to her cheek. The fabric trapped a tear. "One son murdered," she whispered to the tiny damp spot. "And now, the other son gone. Who is doing this to us?"

"So. Here to see the Witch?" a silky voice breathed into Barac's ear. Maintaining an expression he hoped wasn't too forbidding, Barac turned to look at the being standing next to him along the bar's edge, only to frown in distasteful recognition. A Drapsk.

Worse still, there now seemed to be a full ship's complement of the creatures arranging themselves in seats vacated as if prearranged. The Spacer's Haven -- at least this end of the long, dim room making up the public area of the popular gambling den -- became almost totally Drapsk within minutes.

Barac sighed. This was the right world. No credit to his Talent: Morgan's ship, the Silver Fox, stood age-dark yet sturdy among the ranks of other traders in Pocular's shipcity, name and rating for cargo posted with the rest. The Haven might even be the right place, although it had been almost a standard year since he'd heard Sira declare a desire to learn how to gamble. Who was to say how long that had lasted? At least it was a place to ask discreet questions. He did know a chorus of Drapsk was hardly the right company if he wanted to find his cousin without arousing attention.

On the other hand, the Haven was warm and dry, his cautious searching thus far had lasted three long and unsuccessful days among backward, unhelpful beings, and Barac found himself simply too tired and comfortable to care.

Resigned to the moment and his new companion, the Clansman took another sip of inferior brandy, shuddered, and asked the obvious question. "What witch, Captain?" Polite to avoid under-ranking a Drapsk; all individual Drapsk appeared identical, with no recognizable features or expressions on their flat, eyeless faces. Polite and also wise. The huge Drapsk trading ships were crewed by tribes, every member closely related in some fashion they'd never shared with aliens. Drapsk thus had a regrettable tendency to respond as a unit to any real or imagined insult against their own; a trait which granted them respectful treatment even in a cesspool like the Haven.

"Oh, a true Ram'ad Witch, Hom," the Drapsk persisted, taking a seat on the stool next to Barac without so much as an acknowledgment toward its former occupant (a Human who had quickly decided to blend into the surrounding crowd). Six fleshy tentacles -- bright red and distractingly mobile -- surrounded its tiny bud of a mouth. A pair of truly spectacular antennae plumed in purples and pinks rose from the alien's brow. They dipped toward Barac, then fluttered as if confused. "Since you seemed a watcher rather than a games' player or backer, I assumed you were another fan. Am I in error?"

Barac ordered a drink for his new and uncomfortably observant source of information, finding it easier to talk over the Drapsk's shoulder rather than look directly into its tentacled globe of a face. "A fan of magic, Hom Captain? Not particularly. But I enjoy new experiences." The Drapsk's weakness for the occult was well-known. Barac remembered several jokes -- all concerned with the gullibility of a Drapsk and the size of its purse. Then he glanced at the silent group of Drapsk around him -- quiet, well-armed, and intent -- and decided this joke was not necessarily complete. Perhaps he would wait and see this "witch" for himself.

Two hours later, Barac tossed yet another handful of currency gems on the bar and decided enough was enough. The Drapsk had proved able to consume seemingly endless amounts of its chosen beverage; more to the point, there was still no sign of its "witch." High time he tried his luck elsewhere. "Well, Maka," he announced, eyes flicking to the container firmly affixed to the creature's mouth by the cluster of tentacles. "I can't stay all night waiting on your witch, pleasant as your company has been." Frustrating company as well, for anyone else Barac might have questioned about Sira or Morgan had given the Drapsk -- and their chosen companion -- wide berth indeed.

Antennae fluttered in acknowledgment; the container didn't budge. Barac stood and bowed his farewell, praying that the creatures didn't take it on themselves to follow him out of this bar and into the next in line along the street. But he had only started to raise his hood, the water streaming from the clothing of latecomers a warning of conditions outside, when the lights flickered and dimmed. The myriad sounds of the place -- voices high, low, and mechanical, music competing in volume, the click of playing pieces -- stopped, except for the rolling of one die as it hit the confining wall of a table and bounced back into the center.

"Behold, my impatient friend," said the Drapsk with too-loud satisfaction in that hush. "The Ram'ad Witch. The owner -- nay, the Queen -- of this place."

Barac stood as spellbound as the rest as a form ever so slowly materialized out of the haze-filled air to become solid, living, seated on the black throne. But in the silence, his quick gasp turned nearby heads his way with unwelcome attention. Barac subsided, though his eyes remained fixed on the graceful figure dressed in flowing white.

A delicate hand gestured, and the lights returned, the noise becoming deafening once more as the various patrons accepted with the ease of familiarity the dramatic appearance of their mistress. Barac was unable to look safely away before wide-set, knowing, gray eyes pierced the yellow smoke and confusion to meet and hold his.

The Drapsk, mistaking the direction of the witch's gaze perhaps, chittered excitedly among themselves. Barac ignored them, breaking free of the thrall that had held him, but answering the summons of those eyes nonetheless -- moving slowly, inexorably toward the platform.

A path cleared for him as others became aware of what was occurring. There were comments whispered in his ear as he passed -- suggestions that would have made him turn on the speaker had this place not given such words unspeakable conviction. So when at last Barac stood at the steps leading up to the occupant of the black throne, he refused to look into her face any longer, lowering his gaze to the heavy barbaric jewelry barely covering the whiteness of her breasts, to the gleam of gem-encrusted bands around each wrist and ankle.

Of all the possible fates he had imagined for his dear cousin, of all the places he would have sought for her -- that gentle, tormented Sira might descend into the darkness of a fringe-system hellhole where all things were for sale, if they weren't stolen first -- that possibility had never even entered his mind.