The way he said that made Legata's skin crawl. Murdoch carried his powerful body like a dancer. He lifted his chin and she saw a scar beneath his jaw that she had not noticed before. It mingled with creases as he lowered his chin. There was no telling his age. Given the possibility that he might be a clone, there was no telling his chronological age either.
Have to look into him, she noted to herself.
The things Lewis was having done her....
She glanced around the room once more. Something was not right. She saw the usual holo, com-console, sensors, but the place offended her directly, she was one who appreciated beauty. Not decoration, but beauty. The two huge flowers flanking the hatchwa.... she'd noticed them before. They were pink as tongues and their petals convoluted into one another like a line of mirrors.
Strange, she thought, they smell like sweat.
"Let's get on with it," she said.
"First, a formality requested by Doctor Oakes."
Murdoch swung a sensorscribe from a panel beside the lock. It appeared to be the standard identification reader of her shipside experience. She placed her hand on the flat plate to allow it to read her.
Stupid formality, everyone knew who she was.
A sudden tingling sensation shot up her arm from her palm and she realized that Murdoch had said something to her. What did he say?
"I'm sorr.... what?"
She felt weak and disoriented. Something....
She saw that the hatch was open and she had no memory of him opening it. What had he done to her?
Murdoch's hand was on her shoulder propelling her into the lock. As she passed through the hatchway she imagined that she heard a tiny voice pleading from the heart of one of the flowers: Feed me, feed me.
She heard the hatch seal behind her and realized that she was alone and the inner door was swinging ope.... slowl.... ponderous. What was all the red light? And those dim shapes movin.... ?
She walked toward the opening hatch.
So strange that Murdoch had not accompanied her. She peered at the shapes awash in the red glow beyond the inner hatch. Oh, yes - the new E-clones. Some of them she recognized from the lab reports. They were designed to match the synapse-quick demons of Pandora. There was a problem with breeding for speed, something she'd intended to investigate.
What was it she wanted to watch for?
A voice whispered in her ear: "I am Jessup. Come to me when you are through."
How did I get inside here?
Something was wrong with her time sense. She swallowed hard and felt the thickness of her dry tongue rasp against the roof of her mouth.
"Good and evil hang their uniforms at the door."
Did somebody say that or did I think it?
Oakes had said, "Anything goes on Pandora. Our every fancy is possible there."
That's why I asked Murdoc.... where is Murdoch? The gargoyle clones were all around her now and she tried to focus on them. Her eyes were not tracking. Someone grabbed her left arm. Painful.
"Let go of me, yo...."
She rippled her arm and heard the grunts of surprise. Peculiar things were happening to her sense of time and the awareness of her own flesh. Blood welled up on her arms and she had no memory of how it got there. And her body - it was naked. Her muscles corded reflexively and she crouched in defense.
What is happening to me?
More hands - rough hands. She responded in a slow-motion flex of power. And she distinctly heard someone screaming. How odd that no one responded to those screams!
Humans spend their lives in mazes. If they escape and cannot find another maze, they create one. What is this passion for testing?
RAJA THOMAS awoke in darkness and it was like that most recent time, awakening in hyb. He found himself disoriented in darkness, waiting for dangers he could not locate. Slowly, it came to him that he was in his groundside cubb.... night. He glanced at the luminous time display beside his pallet: two hours into the midnight watch.
What awakened me?
His cubby was eight levels under the Pandoran surface, a choice location cushioned from surface noises and perils by numerous color-coded passages, locks, hatches, slide-tubes and seemingly endless branchings. The Ship-trained found no difficulty recording mental maps of such layouts, the more remote the address the better. Thomas resented being buried in these depths. Too much travel time to places which demanded his attention.
Lab One.
He had gone to sleep while wondering about that restricted place. The source of so many odd rumors.
"They're breeding people who're faster than the demons."
That was the popular story.
"Oakes and Lewis want nothing but servile zombies!"
Thomas had heard that story from one of the new militants, a fiery young woman associate of Rachel Demarest.
Slowly, he sat up and tried to probe the darkness around him.
Odd I should awaken at this hour.
He touched the light plate on the wall beside his head and a dim glow replaced the dark. The cubby appeared boringly normal: his singlesuit draped over a slidesea.... sandals. Everything as it should be.
"I feel like a damned Spinneret down here."
He spoke it aloud while rubbing his face. Presently, he summoned a servo, then slipped into his clothing while waiting for it. The servo buzzed his hatch and he stepped out into an empty passage lighted by the widely spaced ceiling bulbs of nightside. Seating himself in the servo, he ordered it to take him topside. He felt oppressed by the travel time, the weight of construction overhead.
I never needed open spaces shipside. Maybe I'm going native.
The servo emitted an irritating hum full of subsonics.
At the surface autosentry checkpoint, he keyed his code into the system. With the green go signal came the blinking yellow light for Condition 2. He swore under his breath, then turned to the lockers beside the topside hatch and took out a lasgun. He knew the hatch would not open unless he did this. The weapon felt clumsy in his hands and, when he holstered it, he was intensely conscious of the weight at his waist.
"Doesn't take much sense to know you shouldn't live in a place if you have to carry a gun." He muttered it, but his voice was loud enough that the blue acknowledge light winked at him from the sentry plate.
Still the hatch remained sealed to him. His hand was moving toward the override switch when he saw the little blinker at the bottom of the plate demanding: "Purpose of movement?"