by James Axler
She shook her head. "That's debatable. What isn't is your decision to rely on a man who lived only to hate you. I understand that during your years as a Magistrate, you set great store by your instincts."
"They saved my lifeand others'more than once."
"Now they're failing you. You're not prescient, not invulnerable. You're burning yourself out and putting the redoubt at risk." She inhaled a deep breath. "That's my diagnosis."
"And your prognosis?"
"Stand down for a while. If you don't, the odds are high you'll get yourself or someone else chilled."
"What if I don't agree?" His voice took on a low, menacing note.
"I'll enforce it if I have to, Kane. Believe it."
Kane tried to lock gazes with the woman, to prove his implacable will, to show her he wasn't intimidated. He couldn't. Too easily he recalled his self-anger when Salvo turned the opportunity Kane had offered to redeem himself into a continuation of their blood feud.
He couldn't deny he had brought Salvo on the op in hopes of salvaging a soul. Instead, the confidence in his instincts had been severely damaged. DeFore had put into words Kane's desperate fear that the next time his instincts faltered, someone close to him would die.
He picked up his shirt, draped it around his neck and strode out of the dispensary, his pace suggesting both anger and preoccupied thought. He passed Grant and Domi without speaking to them. Grant glanced after him, then turned toward DeFore, an eyebrow raised questioningly.
She nodded. "I told him. I don't know if I made a dent. Maybe you should talk to him."
Grant snorted. "Since when did I have any say over Kane?"
He steered Domi over to the examination table. "She mentioned her shoulder was bothering her. Maybe the brace needs adjustment."
"I'm not surprised," replied DeFore irritably. "Ever since I released her, she's done nothing but pace around."
"Get bored," Domi declared, allowing Grant to help her up on the table. She wasn't overly fond of DeFore, suspecting that the medic had her sights set on Grant. As far as Grant knew, it was a completely unfounded suspicion.
As DeFore busied herself unbuckling the canvas body brace, she said broodily, "I told Kane that he's on the verge of burnout. I told you and Baptiste the same thing so one or the other of you could talk to him about it."
Grant shrugged. "He wouldn't have reacted any differently to us than to you. Forcing him to stay behind while there's a mission to perform wouldn't help him."
DeFore peeled the brace off, noting how Domi momentarily sank her teeth into her lower lip. "Does that hurt?"
"Think I tell you?" Domi snapped.
DeFore made a wordless utterance of annoyance. "Did everybody get together and decide that would be the standard Cerberus response to my questions?"
Neither Domi nor Grant responded. As DeFore care-fully unzipped the girl's bodysuit, she said, "From what I heard, Kane royally screwed the New York op."
"That's not what I heard," Grant replied defensively. "He did what he always doesturning disadvantage to advantage."
"AH he did was solve the Salvo problem." DeFore frowned, examining the heavy padded bandage swathing Domi's right shoulder. She lifted up an edge to peer beneath. "Big deal. That wasn't the objective."
Harshly Grant said, "Stick to medical matters, DeFore. Leave the armchair generaling to Lakesh."
DeFore turned angry eyes toward him. Domi repressed a grin, enjoying the heated exchange between them. "I intend to lodge a formal protest to Lakesh," DeFore stated. "I'll recommend Kane be confined to quarters until I can do a full psych workup. If necessary, I'll arrange for him to be placed in a holding cell, under armed guard if it comes to that."
Grant folded his arms over his broad chest. He didn't speak for a long, tense moment. When he did, his tone of voice far exceeded hers in frosty resolve. "Recommend away, DeFore. But ask yourself one question before you do."
"What?"
"Which asshole will volunteer to die trying to lock him up?"
The small pool on the second level had only recently been made functional again, and Brigid was eager to try it out. She hadn't been swimming in a very long time, and she didn't count her near drowning in the Irish Sea a few weeks ago as an enjoyable pastime.
She passed through an open area filled with weights, stationary exercise cycles and workout mats. The pool and exercise rooms had been built to provide the original inhabitants of Cerberus with a means of sweating off the stress of being confined for twenty-four hours a day in the installation. After the nukecaust, just staying alive was probably just as much exercise as they needed.
She pushed through the double doors into the pool room. Round and curve walled like an upside-down bowl, it was dimly illuminated by overhead track lighting. Brigid's pace faltered when she heard the splashing of water. A little dismayed, she saw someone swimming toward her, pale legs kicking languidly beneath the clear surface. She stopped at the edge as Rouch heaved herself out of the water and onto the tiled lip of the pool.
A fairly new arrival in Cerberus, from Sharpeville, Rouch had exchanged only a few words with her. Bri-gid didn't know what position the woman had held in her barony or what crime she may have committed against it, but Rouch had to be a specialist in some area or Lakesh wouldn't have offered her sanctuary.
Rouch looked to be a few years younger than Brigid's twenty-seven years. Her eyes were oval, almond, true Asian and appeared in the dim lighting to be jet-black. Her mouth was wide and sensuous, her ears and nose tiny and delicate. Glistening black hair fell nearly to her waist.
"Baptiste," she said in a low voice.
"Rouch. How's the water?"
"A little cold."
Brigid noted wryly that Rouch didn't need to tell her that. The woman was completely naked, and the nipples of her pear-shaped breasts jutted out like wooden pegs.
Brigid unzipped her bodysuit and slid out of it. Though she wasn't particularly modest, she didn't take off her underclothes. Nor did she test the water's temperature with a toe before plunging into the pool in a flat dive.
Just like Rouch said, the water was cold, but not frigid. Still, she surfaced goosefleshed and gasping, raking her heavy hair out of her eyes.
"Told you," said Rouch, crossing a pair of exquisitely molded legs.
"I'm an empiricist," Brigid replied, backstroking to the far end.
Rouch cocked her head at a quizzical angle. "What's that?"
For a moment, Brigid wondered if she were joking, but the young woman's puzzlement seemed genuine. She swam back to her, propping an arm on the edge of the pool.
"You're from Sharpeville?"
Rouch nodded, leaning backward to pull a towel from a shelf.
"What level did you work on?"
Bending forward, Rouch wrapped the towel around her wet hair like a turban. "D."
Brigid knew her eyebrows drew down to the bridge of her nose in a frown, but she couldn't help herself. All the villes were built along the same specs, conforming to the Program of Unification's standards fifty-foot-high walls with Vulcan-Phalanx gun towers mounted at each corner.
Inside the walls, the elite lived in the Enclaves, four multileveled towers joined together by pedestrian walkways. Each tower was connected by a major promenade to the Administrative Monolith, a massive cylin-der of white stone projecting three hundred feet into the air, the tallest building in the villes.
Every level of the Administrative Monolith fulfilled a specific ville function. Alpha Level held the administrative offices, Beta Level housed the Historical Division and the Magistrate Division was on Level C, which deviated from the Greek Alphabet upon which the names were based, but maybe it was a tribute to the Magistrates in some waythat they were different from the rest. D, or Delta, Level was devoted to the growth, preservation and distribution of food stuffs. Epsilon Level was a manufacturing and construction facility.
"Were you a nutritionist?" asked Brigid.
Rouch blinked at her in mild su
rprise. "No, I was in the packaging department."
It was Brigid's turn to blink in surprise. An expert in food packaging seemed about as essential to the work of Cerberus as an expert in flower arranging.
Hoping she didn't sound rude, Brigid said gently, "Certainly that's not your only field of expertise, or you wouldn't be here."
Rouch's lips stretched in a confident smile, slightly touched with superiority. "Oh, now I see what you're asking. I'm here because of myhow did Lakesh put it?exceptionally strong female drives. I'm also very fertile."
Brigid narrowed her eyes. "I don't get you."
"I guess I'm what you'd call a breeder. And that's something I want to talk to you about. Are you and Kane together?"
Mind reeling with surprise and extrapolations, Brigid murmured again, '_3 don't get you."
Rouch inched closer to her, her confident smile be-coming conspiratorial. "I mean are you fucking him? Not that it makes any difference to me, but the sooner I get started with him, the sooner we can find out how strong his seed is. Lakesh said it was potent, but"
Brigid raised a preemptory hand, sloshing water on the woman's ankles. "Hold on," she said firmly, doing her best to keep anger out of her voice. "I'm not sure I understand. You're saying Lakesh brought you here solely to be impregnatedby Kane?"
Rouch laughed, a musical tinkling sound. "Not just by him, but he's the one I want to strap on first. Lakesh told me the other women here have fertility problems or genetic abnormalities, like that little albino."
Rouch continued speaking, but her words were muted by the pounding of furious blood in Brigid's ears.
She knew the Overproject Excalibur division of the Totality Concept dealt primarily with bioengineering. One of its subdivisions, Scenario Joshua, had its roots in the twentieth century's Genome Project, and shared the goal of the mapping of human genomes to specific chromosomal functions and locations. The end result had been in vitro genetic samples of the best of the best. In the vernacular of the time, it was referred to as purity control.
Everyone who enjoyed full ville citizenship was a descendant of the Genome Project. Sometimes a particular gene carrying a desirable trait was grafted to an unrelated egg, or an undesirable gene removed. Despite many failures, when there was a success, it was replicated repeatedly, occasionally with variations. Lakesh had admitted that Kane was one such success, one that he himself had covertly been involved with.
Some forty years ago, when Lakesh determined to build a resistance movement against the baronies, he rifled Scenario Joshua's genetic records to find the qualifications he deemed the most desirable. He used the Archon Directorate's own fixation with purity control against them. By his own confession, he was a physicist cast in the role of an archivist, pretending to be a geneticist, manipulating a political system that was still in a state of flux.
Brigid had assumed from his confession and his genuine expression of regret that Lakesh had learned his lesson. Rouch's blithe words proved he had not. Moreover, the implications that he found herand presumably Domi and DeForelacking in the ability to produce the desired type of children did more than anger her. It stunned her, grieved her beyond the power to put it into words.
From a strictly clinical point of view, what Rouch claimed made sense. To ensure that Kane's superior qualities were passed on, mating with him was the most logical course of action. Without access to the techniques of fetal development outside the womb, the conventional means of procreation was the only option.
But acknowledging its logic did not make her feel better. Intellect and emotions rioted within her. She had always feared to closely examine her feelings for Kane, frightened they were far too intense for her to deal with.
Their relationship was guarded, sometimes tense. Brigid assumed it was due to the fact she took pride in cool analytical thinking while Kane exhibited emotionalism, citing his instincts more than rational analysis. But she knew there were far deeper factors at work, as well.
Twice over the past few months Brigid had faced, then turned away from, the possibility that her soul and Kane's had been intertwined for a very long time, reincarnated over and over, destined to always find each other. Neither one of them had cared to seriously entertain such a concept. They were not and never had been romantically involved.
He had risked his life on a number of occasions for her, but only once had he ever called her by her first name. Only a few days before, he had kissed her, but it had been an impulsive act, something to celebrate the fact that they had survived their trip back into time. Afterward he seemed a little embarrassed.
Rouch leaned forward, commanding her attention again. Her eyes shone, and Brigid knew she was thinking of Kane, too, but only of his virility and of the novelty of bedding a former Magistrate.
"Tell me," she urged. "What's he like? What does he like? Is he rough? I'll bet he is"
Brigid clenched her fists, struggling with the almost overwhelming desire to punch the young woman in the face.
The double doors slammed open. Kane stood there, bare-chested, shirt around his neck, his mobile features set and drawn into a grim mask.
Chapter 6
Rouch gazed at Kane boldly. Her eyes rested for a long time on his groin, and Brigid saw her lips move in what could only have been anticipation.
The sight of the naked woman didn't appear to move him at all. Kane gave Rouch an incurious, dispassionate glance, then said, "Baptiste, we need to talk. Alone."
For a long, tense moment, no one moved or spoke. Then, languorously, Rouch rose to her feet, made a deliberately slow show of unwrapping the towel from her hair and dropping it to the tiles. Hips swinging, she sauntered over to the shelves and pulled down a robe. She took a provocatively long time putting it on and closing it up. The words gaudy slut leaped unbidden into Brigid's mind, but she managed to keep them from her tonguejust barely.
As Rouch padded barefoot past Kane, one of her long fingernails traced a line on his arm. "Let's do dinner," she said, her voice a husky, seductive croon. "Or breakfast."
For the first time, Kane took notice of the woman, with a swift, slightly irritated flash of the eyes. They were eyes that appraised Rouch, yet were already focused on something else.
As the doors swung shut behind her, Kane declared,
"I understand DeFore expected you to talk to me about being fused out."
Brigid stared up at him, feeling his anger, but too busy wrestling with her own to address it. "Do you know why Rouch is here?"
His eyes narrowed in sudden surprise. "No, and I don't really care. Why didn't you?"
"She's here to mate with you," Brigid interrupted. "To improve the breed of Cerberus exiles."
Kane's surprise became astonishment. He turned to look at the doors Rouch had just walked through. "Really? Nobody told me."
"Oh, she would've gotten around to it eventually," snapped Brigid bitterly.
"She told you that?"
"And a lot more. First, she wanted to know if you and I were" she paused, groping for a delicate term "involved. Not that it would make any difference to her, mind you. It's all business, though she isn't above mixing a little pleasure in with it."
Kane shook his head fiercely. "I don't want to talk about that."
"Will you?" she demanded hotly.
"Will I what?"
"I hate it when you're obtuse. Answer my question."
"Answer mine," he countered.
"You didn't ask me one."
"That's because you didn't give me the chance. DeFore told you that I was fused out."
"That's not a question."
Kane snarled, knotting his fists, turning a complete circle in angry frustration. "Goddammit, let's stay on the subject!"
Brigid heaved herself out of the pool in a splashing rush of water. She snatched up the towel Rouch had dropped and furiously began drying her hair. "Fine. I suppose it makes perfect sense, Lakesh continuing to practice his own version of purity control. It would have been polite to
have briefed us on what he had in mind, but then we're just an ex-archivist and an ex-Mag. Exiles all."
Kane gazed at her, finally reacting to the unmistakable edge of barely repressed fury and hurt in her voice. He said the first thing that occurred to him. "You're jealous. For God's sake, Baptiste, you're jealous. You're acting like a"
He caught himself before he uttered the final word, but Brigid guessed it and spoke it herself. "A woman. That's what you were going to sayI'm acting like a woman."
He shifted his feet uncomfortably. Lamely he replied, "Well, you are."
She stood up quickly. The speed and grace of the motion gave a slight hint of the athlete's coordination within her slender frame. Kane couldn't help but gaze at her admiringly. He had seen her nude before, but the brief brassiere and panties she wore struck him as strangely arousing.
His thoughts whipped back to that night months before in Cobaltville when he had first met her. He had recognized her as a truly beautiful woman then, and with a slight sensation of shock, he recognized a truly beautiful woman now.
Brigid's mane of thick, unruly hair, darker now because it was wet, tumbled artlessly over her shoulders. Her slim body was rounded and curved, long in the leg. Her full, taut breasts strained at the fabric of her brassiere, and through the wet cloth of her panties was plastered to the soft, honey-blond triangle at the juncture of her thighs.
She radiated a beauty far deeper than the physical, a force intangible yet one he had felt since the first time he laid eyes on her, an energy that triggered a melancholy longing in his soul. That strange, sad longing only deepened after a bout of jump sickness both of them suffered during the mat-trans jump to Russia. The main symptoms of jump sickness were vivid, almost-real hallucinations.
He and Brigid had shared the same hallucination, but both knew on a visceral, primal level it hadn't been gateway triggered delirium, but a revelation that they were joined by chains of fate, their destinies linked.
They never spoke of it, though Kane often wondered if that spiritual bond was the primary reason he had sacrificed everything he had attained as a Magistrate to save her from execution. The possibility confused him, made him feel even more sad.
