The City Who Fought by Anne McCaffrey, S. M. Stirling Page A

thought.
    "Yeah," Simeon said eagerly. "I've got a real Brown Bess flintlock, and an M22. And one of the first backpack lasers ever issued!"

    "No shit!" Joat said, seeming to forget Channa's presence for a moment. His voice sounded louder, as if he was drifting back from whatever refuge he had bolted towards. "All sorts of old weapons, eh?"
    "You name it. A Roman gladius, even."
    "A what?"
    "Good question," Channa said.
    "Shortsword. Over three thousand years old," Simeon broke in. A pause. "Of course, it could be a reproduction. If so, it's still in awfully good shape for an artifact of that age. I can trace it back at least five hundred years' provenance. The records say it was first owned by the legendary collector Pawgitti, then dug up out of the ruins of his villa."
    My throat is getting hoarse, Channa realized an hour later. Amazing what he knows. Joat had probably neatly escaped formal education, but had acquired a jackdaw's treasure chest of information about his keener interests. Anger awoke in her. It was criminal that a mind like Joat's had been ignored, like a weed in a corner lot. Or the barbaric way in which pre-shell handicapped were ignored as nonproductive persons. Joat wasn't just interested in showing that he knew things that she didn't, either.
    There was a naked hunger to learn in his voice. Closer and closer . . . She could see a little huddled shadow and an occasional glint of his eyes as he turned his head.
    "And weapons are merely a part of what I've been collecting over the years," Simeon was saying. "I've got great strategy games—whole boards . . ."
    Channa was shocked. Simeon would adopt the kid as a games partner? Then she realized he was only sweetening the pot.
    "I don't know of a shellperson who has adopted, but I think it would be to your advantage, Joat.
    Certainly it would mean security and a place to call your own instead of ducking from one hidey-hole to the next when inspection teams go through. You'd have regular meals, and you could go to engineering school."
    Channa heard a soft "yeah" from out of the cold darkness.
    "Think it over tonight, why don't you?" Simeon said. "Tomorrow you can come up and scan the room I can assign you. Maybe have dinner with Channa and talk about it some more."
    "Yeah," came more clearly from out of the darkness.
    "Okay," Simeon's voice was pleased. "If you have any questions tonight, just speak 'em out, and I'll answer."

CHAPTER FOUR
    It's an honor to win the trust of a child, Simeon thought, especially one who's been through what this kid has. I don't think I've ever been quite this happy. He intuited that the feeling approximated what the word
    "tickled" meant, and he also thought that this was what it felt like to smile. Since Joat had moved in, he'd been trying to empathize more with the softperson worldview.
    Of course, there have been some surprises. . . .
    Seen for the first time by the full light of day-cycle floros, Joat was not prepossessing. Short for his age, scrawny to the point of emaciation, with huge blue eyes in a face that might have been any color short of black under the gray, ground-in coating of grime and machine oil. The mouse-brown hair had been hacked off and was standing up in tufts. The clothing was an adult-sized coverall with the arms and legs cut off to fit. An air of sullen suspicion accompanied a pungent odor.
    "I've never run across the name, 'Joat' before," Channa began casually. "It doesn't give a clue about where you're from the way that some names do. I use 'Hap' as a surname because I was born on Hawking Alpha Proxima Station, for example."
    "Joat's my name." Joat answered, sticking his chin out aggressively. "I gave it to myself. It means
    'jack-of-all-trades,' 'cause that's what I do, some of everything."
    "So it's a nickname," Channa said. "Shall we put you down on the form as Jack, then?"
    Joat looked at her with cool contempt. "Why? That's a boy's name."
    "You're a . . . girl?" Simeon asked, bringing the "g"