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Geeo didn't 'regain his senses' - I remained assigned to start a new office in Periten, with minimal support: only Aresh and whatever junk wasn't needed from the Getta or Tiko offices, and a loan offer of two hundred measures at eight percent per year. My days were largely spent frantically gathering all of the equipment I would need, and training Aresh.

Around me, I overheard chunks of what was going on - there was no invasion from Periten, but Weld and Fazo were rattling their sabers over interpretations of what had happened to Fazo's second regiment, and Getta was remaining neutral.

One nice thing that didn't really help in any practical way was that Geeo's city-wide distributor plan did not appeal to any of the other office heads, and a reasonably efficient manual routing system was established. I wished I could have been in the mix of people working out what it should be, but I was kept busy preparing to set up the new office. It was just as well - if I'd gotten involved, he'd probably have found some pretext to fire me.

Over that week, four specific fortuitous events and ideas occurred that made things not so terrible as they had first seemed.

The first didn't help much in itself. At lunchtime on the seventh, I dropped by the body exchange and told them the more-specific causes of send failure. After some checking, they got right to work modifying their temporary-transfer equipment and paraphernalia.

---

The second important detail was that evening. After I reported what had occurred at lunch, Renna said, "That's good. Speaking of which, my home test came up positive."

"Umm, what home test?"

"The refitter in Allegos told me a spell I could use to check whether I was healed enough to transfer again. I tried it, and... I can."

"Oh, great! Early, isn't it?"

"A bit. So, I was thinking I could try out that... fronded thing. As I noted before, she's sexy in the extreme. Need to give you some good memories of me before you go off alone with Aresh." She grinned.

"I'm still thinking of alternatives. I could go get a job somewhere else, like the foreign service, or intelligence."

"And be posted in a foreign country anyway, most likely. Not helping."

"I was thinking cryptography. Look. I can apply, right?"

As it turned out, we were able to arrange for Renna to get that fronded body - she went to the Getta body exchange, told them what she hoped to do. They indicated the body they'd like her to select at the Allegos refitter, and gave her a check to cover the difference. She went up to Allegos, turned in all of her credit and the check, and changed to it - a very athletic male 3:1 lion. She then turned it over to the Getta exchange for credit there, and took a test rental of the fronded body.

And returned to a daytime schedule, which was nice.

---

The third good thing was in the middle of all that - the intelligence interview. I met with Mr. Hakir, a mid-ranking officer and the code-master for Getta, a naga who remained in mixed form throughout the meeting. He wore a paper-thin robelet, not a uniform. His office was barren of decoration, and the papers he had on his desk were meticulously neat.

After the introductions were over, Mr. Hakir stared at me intently. "I happen to have worked on one of your codes a few weeks ago. It was pathetic. But a colleague asked me to give you a hearing in person, so here you go. Show me what you've got, kid."

"Just one moment - what code of mine have you seen?"

"A shift-by-six cipher."

"Ah." The message I wrote to myself on new year's morning, about Ezi and Prot! Night must have retrieved it and given it to them! "That... wasn't really intended to be strong. It was barely intended to be a code."

"I should hope not!"

I quelled my questions of what they had done about it, instead getting down to laying out the several code designs I'd put together in preparation - all simple to use in the field with no notes left behind or suspicious equipment, using only an abacus for the code state.

He nodded as I laid them out. When I was finished, he said, "It's hard to see just how secure these are. Do you have any effectiveness proofs?"

"Er. No."

"That's not good. Plus, we're much more interested in a method of sending very secure messages to and from embassies, with plenty of time to code or decode."

"Why not use large one-time pads?"

"We do, for important messages, but we run through them quickly. And it leaves you open to theft or copying, especially if you use it on a day-to-day basis."

So, I explained the table code I'd been reminded of a few weeks previously. He interrupted me, saying, "That was a decent code, used by Vallis for several years before we cracked it. But it has a much smaller set of possible tables and states than it seems at first glance."

We got into an argument. Largely due to having my argument with Geeo fresh in my mind, I succeeded in remaining calm. To my great relief I convinced him that both the number of tables and states were already much larger than the similar code used by Vallis, and could be made much larger still with a simple modification.

Satisfied, he said, "All right. So, here's the deal. We could use someone like you. But we can't so much use you here."

I inwardly winced. "Where, then?"

"Periten. Where you happen to be going anyway, I'm told."

Up to this point, I'd been holding out hope I could just stay at home and live with Renna and not be working for Geeo, and everything would be nice and simple.

"Yes, that's right."

The rest was just details. Details like arranging the clearance interview.

---

The fourth lucky break was a wonderful idea Aresh had. It was at dinner:

Renna was complaining, "This body is fine on its own. A bit weak, but I can work out a bit... but... the way people recoil around it is just... ugh. I can't deal with this for much longer. They treat me like I'm about to eat their babies."

Aresh said, "Then let's swap. I take the fronded thing away with us, to where people don't know about its history. You hold on to my body. That's ideal anyway, because then in the evenings when we're not at work we can switch."

Renna crossed her eyes. "Wait, we can do that? Hot-swap without going in to the exchange? Over great distances?"

"Sure. The new necklaces are great for that. They don't want everyone to find out, and they're beginning to put locking charms on. Officially it's for safety, but we can be careful."

I pursed my lips. "Well, their sends still degrade over time and distance. I doubt they can tolerate telegraphy-grade sends."

"Of course, but it's just an encoding issue. We just use more keystones to compensate for their lower quality."

"Not going to fit that in a necklace, and the power consumption would get hot quick... oh, you mean use the same relays we're using at the office?"

"Exactly. Necklace talks to nearby big box. Big box talks to faraway big box. Big box talks to nearby necklace."

Meanwhile, Renna was working out the logistics. "If I'm this fork... no, wait. I - my mind - am this olive. You're this chunk of pear."

She speared the olive with a fork. "This fork is the fronded body I'm in right now, and this knife is your ferret body." she speared the pear with the knife.

Then she swapped the olive and pear, putting the olive on the knife and the pear on the fork. "After we switch, this is our natural state." She handed me the forked pear. "Then you go to Periten. We use the necklace..."

We swapped the olive and pear fragment back. "And I'm with Famir, in my own long-term body, and you're back in Getta, with your own long-term body. So..."

I licked the forked olive, and she laughed. "Yes. This looks like it will work out! I was worried I'd only be with Famir in your body. It wouldn't be right to do... all the things we'd want to do."

Aresh shook her head. "I agree, which is why we definitely want to get your body over with Famir."

"So... which way do we use the necklace? Seems to me that I could go with him in the body I'm in now, and we use the necklace to switch back for work."

Aresh said, tentatively, "I think I should be with Famir when not using the necklace. If it breaks, we can have a new one made. While waiting for it to be delivered, we can do without seeing each other much better than we can do without jobs."

Whichever it was, we'd need the long-range necklace. So that evening we went back to the body exchange, described what we wanted, and hashed out a deal whereby we would make the sending part, and they would make the fittings. That way the price wouldn't get completely out of control. I think they went easy on us because I had told them what was going on a few days before it was published.

Now, that was the last of the usefully lucky things, but that evening had something else very lucky occur...