ulti-curves of the Upper Cornice on the Riviera, or a Nadine Haer
delicately trimming the controls of a sports model Hovercar.

She shot a quick glance at Joe Mauser, formerly of Category Military,
formerly Rank Major, now an unemployed Mid-Middle who slouched in the
bucketseat next to her. He noticed neither speed nor direction.

Nadine called, above the wind, "Zen, Joe! Where did you ever acquire
such a car? It must have been built entirely by hand, and by Swiss
watchmakers."

Joe stirred and shrugged. Newly from the hospital, he was still deep
in the gloom of his recent loss of the dream, the defeat of his
life-long ambitions. He said, "A buff gave it to me."

She slowed down, the better to frown at him in amazement. "_Gave_ it
to you? Why the thing is priceless."

Joe sighed and told her the salient details. "Quite a few mercenaries
manage to acquire a private fracas-buff." He defined the term for her.
"He makes a hobby of your career. Winds up knowing more about it than
you, yourself can possibly remember. He follows every fracas you get
into. Knows every time you cop one, how serious it was, how long you
were in hospital. He glories each time you get a promotion, is in
gloom each time your side loses a fracas. He's got pictures of you in
various poses taken from the fracas-buff magazines, and files away all
articles in which your name appears."

"Zen!" Nadine laughed in deprecation.

"That's just the beginning. After a while he starts writing you fan
letters, wanting autographed portraits, wanting a souvenir--sometimes
nothing more exciting than a button off your uniform. More often they
want a gun, sword or combat knife, particularly one they saw you using
in some fracas or other. They usually offer to pay for such, sometimes
quite fabulous amounts. Other times they want a bit of bloody uniform,
your own true blood from a time when you were in the dill and managed
to cop one."

Nadine was astonished. Antagonistic as she was, herself, to the
fracases, she wasn't particularly knowledgeable about all their
ramifications. She said, repelled, "But doesn't such morbidity disgust
you? This fawning, this slobbering--"

Joe grunted. "All part of the game. A mercenary without buffs to boost
him, to form fracas-buff clubs and such, hasn't much chance of
promotion. So far as disgust is concerned, you'd have to see one of
the really far-out ones. The gleam in an ordinarily fishlike eye when
he recounts the time you