Emerald Eyes | Page 5

do not live."
"Not--" Not yet, she had started to say; Suzanne Montignet clamped
down upon her anger. It was almost as though Malko were there in the
room with her, whispering in her ear. Amnier delighted in argument;
directness was the way to handle him. "Did you," she asked slowly,
"come here to shut us down?"
"I have come," said the small man, "to decide."
They were still staring at each other when the alarms went off.
It was strange, looking down upon the bundle of amino acids that was
my ancestor.
They had assembled him with lasers and viruses, in a process that the
histories said would be obsolete within a decade. It was a primitive
process, far likelier to fail than otherwise; the histories were unclear as
to how many times the technique had ever functioned properly in the

decade it was employed.
There are moments when Destiny reaches out to trace a finger down
my cheek, with the touch of a lover. I do not know if it is the same for
Camber Tremodian; he is an immensely practical man in some ways.
The tiny bit of matter before me was the great-grandfather of the first of
my line; and it was right that it was with the Gift of the House of
November that I reached out, and took the broken long chains of dead
matter, and brought them together in the pattern that would let Carl
Castanaveras live.
Robin Macintyre finished reading off status reports in a dull monotone.
"We hustled the decon unit downstairs, and--"
"Radiation?"
"All over the place. Low levels most places, but--Jorge's badge was
black." For the first time Suzanne understood Robin's grief stricken
expression; Robin's closest friend on the staff was a dead man. "They're
taking Jorge to the hospital; I'm going to log out and go with him."
"No." It was Amnier, standing on the other side of the Information
Network terminal. He could not see either Robin or the status reports
that filled the other half of the screen. "You can't take him out of here."
Suzanne was not sure Robin had heard Amnier; she'd slapped down on
the silence point as soon as he'd begun speaking. "Why the hell not?"
"If his badge is black," said Amnier patiently, "he's dead regardless. I
saw enough of that during the war; so did Malko. Check with him if
you must; medical technology hasn't advanced as much as all that in the
last decade. Taking him to the hospital will be of use to nobody except
this Robin person, and it will, by releasing knowledge of this radiation
contamination into the general populace, place a potent weapon into the
hands of those who do wish to close you down."
Robin was gesturing on the terminal's screen. Suzanne lifted her thumb
from the pressure point. "One moment, Robin." She pressed down

again. "How so?"
"It will mean that you are either incompetent enough to have allowed
radioactives to escape from confinement--"
"We don't even use radioactives."
"Irrelevant. Or it will mean that you have been targeted by ideologs."
Amnier shook his head. "The Unification Council would find that an
excellent excuse to shut you down. We haven't the resources to guard
an installation of questionable worth against a group of determined
ideologs."
An override suddenly flashed on Suzanne's terminal. "Malko here. I'll
meet you at the showers. Bring Amnier." The override ended, and
Robin's form appeared again in the terminal.
"This is," said Suzanne, the instant the thought struck her, "a
fascinating coincidence, that this should happen while you are visiting."
Darryl Amnier smiled at her, the first true smile she had seen from him.
He spoke with chilling precision. "I have thought that myself."
Terence Kniessen, a tall fat man with a shock of red hair, met them at
the showers. He was wearing his head bubble--barely visible refraction
ran five centimeters around the perimeter of his skull--but his gloves
had been removed. Malko was already there, undressing to enter the
chemical showers; Amnier flinched visibly at the sight of the long laser
scars that crisscrossed Kalharri's body. Almost hidden among the marks
of the lasers were the small round puckered bullet scars. Kalharri did
not look at Amnier; he entered the first shower in the row as they began
undressing.
Sweat dripped off Kniessen. He took Amnier's coat, babbling
instructions at the man. "--and then gargle with the mouthwash, you'll
have to swallow the second mouthful. I'll meet you on the other side
and show you how to--"

Suzanne interrupted him. "Terence."
He stopped speaking instantly and glanced at her sideways--he was
more of a prude than most. "Yes ma'am?"
"You took your gloves off."
Terence let out a low moan. "Oh, damn," he swore and began stripping
off his clothes.