Deah knew whose test it was even without looking at the name; Arat's writing had become as familiar to her as her own.
        Therefore, when the test received a passing grade she thought surely there must be some mistake. In the silence of Doem's office, in increasing disbelief, she went through the test a second time, and a third. Arat had definitely followed his usual pattern of screwing up on the first, supposedly easy questions and doing very well on the essay questions. But on this test, the extra credit was worth more than usual, and with perfect scores on the last three questions, and a perfect score on the extra credit, Arat had succeeded in passing the test.
        Arat had moved out of the the Domed Home.

        Deah sat back, feeling faint. She had little confidence that her own test had fared as well. She'd gotten some of the earlier ones right, of course, because the answers had been repeated so many times she'd memorized them without really understanding them. But she hadn't answered the essay questions, and hadn't even understood the extra credit.
        She put Arat's test aside and began grading the next, and the next, scarcely noticing what she did. Her mind swam with conflicting emotions: relief, envy, dread, anxiety, hope. Would she pass? What would happen to her if Arat went on and she remained behind? Would her friends abandon her? Would she become a beaten thing to be tormented as Jeniard once was?
        Eventually the suspense was too much and she went through the pile, finding her own test and bringing it to the top.

        Could wanting to pass badly enough actually make it happen? At first it seemed that might be so, for in the beginning, every question was correct. Every one, in order, in an inexorable march of single points. Deah felt a shiver of rising hope, of belief. Of course the tests were designed to have some unanswerable questions. Of course the test was passable answering only part of it, with some questions intended for people like Deah, and others for people like Arat, and still others for other kinds of students. This was, after all, the Tecton. The Tecton was brilliant and infallible. And the Tecton would never let down a person who had been entrusted into its protection.
        She found one wrong. A small stupid question, worth only one point. Reading it she realized she'd actually known the correct answer - had, in fact, gotten it correct on previous takings of the test - and had simply forgotten it this time. No matter. She was on a roll! She kept track in her head, as the numbers added up, until she was higher than she'd ever gone before, until she only required one more point to pass. One more point to pass the test! A giddy euphoria trembled in her breast, ready to burst out in one more moment....

        And then, abruptly, there was nothing but blank page.
        She'd reached the end of the answers, with one point left to go. She had failed the test.
        Deah clenched the booklet in her hands in shock.
        Was this, then, her fate? She was dizzied by the enormity of the failure. The words of Doem and Teb came to her, the words of Pico Waik. Doem would tell her to work harder, to be more realistic, to stop trying to be Risa Tigue. Teb would tell her that she must learn the new strengths of the new Deah. And Pico Waik would only smile, because he had told her she would understand one day.
        She had resisted it, had denied it, had hoped vainly that the old ways would work if she were only persistent enough. Now she was forced to face it dead-on: The adult Deah cannot learn fast enough to keep up.
        Deah knew that to learn everything well enough to pass this test for real, for sure, with no lucky guesses and no remembering the answers from last time, could easily take her another month. To get to where Betta was now might take two more months after that! At this rate she would never get through school . They would never allow a person to remain in First Year School beyond the end of a person's actual physical First Year, and even if they did, at that point she'd be learning at a tenth the rate everybody else was, not just half. It was hopeless.

        Deah put her test on the pile, and went on to grade the others in a state of suspended numbness.

        There was, of course, one thing that she could do, one thing that she had never conceived of before, one thing that went completely against the grain of everything the child-Deah had believed.

        She could cheat.

        Oh, revolting thought. If she did it, she might never survive the humiliation. Yet, would that be any worse than the humiliation of walking down the hallway as the only person from her starter group still in Doem's class? Any worse than dropping out of training entirely?
        She had known the answer to that one crucial question. She should had gotten that one right, anyway. Shen, she'd gotten it right in the past. If she changed her answer now, nobody would doubt that she had answered it correctly to begin with. It was almost not even cheating, she reasoned, or at least on the general scale of dishonesty it certainly wasn't the worst one could do.
        Surely Doem had wanted them both to pass. Why else would he have made that final question worth so many points, and made it a question Arat would be able to answer correctly? Why else would he leave Deah in charge of correcting tests, even though she had been doing so badly?
        Yes, she realized, with a sick feeling. Doem had left the opportunity open to her, because he felt she had to advance, to graduate somehow, to go out in the field to save lives and help people. That was what was important to Doem, not grades or tests or details.
        A tear came to her eye and she wiped it away angrily.
        They couldn't make her cheat! She wouldn't do it.

        Ah yes, she would. It was inevitable.
        Doem and the others weren't forcing her. They weren't trying to harm her. They would let her go on the way she had been if she were insisted upon doing it. But then she would fall farther and farther behind, until finally she disappeared from the school, a failure. No channel at all, but a joke, a nothing. Forced to take on some unimaginable and obscure role, like Pico Waik who would have been a writer.
        A tear fell on the tests. Another. She reached out and pulled hers from the pile, opened it to the damning page. Using great care she erased her previous answer and re-wrote it correctly. Then she did the same to the grade on the front of the test.
        "Never again," she whispered.
        But she knew that was a lie. She would cheat again, probably dozens of times, in the weeks ahead. Unable to figure out what other people were zlinning, unable to remember knowledge that was presented to her faster than the mind could grasp, what other choice would she have?