Silver Eyes (12 page)

“I like being . . . challenged,” I said at last.

Dr. Hatcher nodded as if he had expected my answer. “Here's my card. When you decide on a career, give me a call. I guarantee my employer would be interested in sponsoring your education.”

“Thanks.” I pocketed his card.

“You're a very special person, Angel. Never sell yourself short,” Dr. Hatcher said intensely.

I stared for a moment. What was going on here? I had the distinct and uneasy impression his words had a hidden meaning.

Dr. Hatcher was waiting for a reply.

“I won't,” I mumbled.

A hint of disappointment showed on his face. He soldiered on. “If anyone treats you badly, please feel that you can come to me for help.”

Fat chance, I thought. “Of course.” A small pause. “I should go catch up with my friends now.”

“Of course,” Dr. Hatcher said, but he looked sad.

What the hell had that been about? Kind eyes or not, there was something not quite right about Dr. Hatcher.

Mike was waiting for me outside, but everyone else had already returned to the Castellan house.
“So what did he want?” Mike asked. It was super windy outside so we took a motorized walkway.

“To offer me a job, apparently.” I related our conversation. “But there was something else, some undercurrent.” I frowned, trying to put my finger on what had raised my hackles and failing. “Well, I guess it doesn't really matter since I already have a career.”

“You're happy working for SilverDollar then?” Mike asked.

His question made me uneasy. “Of course.” I was, wasn't I?

“The old Angel was opposed to becoming what she was genetically engineered to be,” Mike said.

Curiosity reared its ugly head. “What did I want to do?”

Mike hesitated.
He didn't know.
“You said once that you could always be a dancer.”

A dancer. I considered it. I enjoyed dancing, and choreography sounded like fun. But. “Wouldn't that be a waste of my talents?”

My answer made Mike angry. “The Angel I knew would rather be a waitress than be forced to do something she didn't want to do.”

The old Angel sounded as if she would cut off her nose to spite her face. “I don't think I'd care to wait tables my whole life,” I said lightly.

Mike didn't smile. What I saw in his eyes was very close to despair.

G
RACIANA HADN'T FOUND
my angel pendant. She promised to check the robots' dust bins, but I wasn't hopeful.

To distract myself during supper, I asked Zinnia what she planned to take at university.

Zinnia looked surprised that I'd even asked. “Microbiology, of course.” Following in Iris Cartwright's footsteps again.

“That's nice,” I lied. It still seemed creepy to me: being forced into a career by a dead woman—
and wasn't that what Mike had meant when he'd said that old Angel hadn't wanted to be a superspy because she'd been genetically designed to be one?

“What do you mean?” Dahlia asked suspiciously. “Nice?”

I had to scramble to remember what I'd last said. “Oh, just that I'm glad you'll both have a job. I was afraid that only the winner would be allowed to join the family firm.”

Silence at the table.

“There's no job provided for the loser in Iris Cartwright's will,” Zinnia said finally.

I was beginning to seriously dislike Iris Cartwright, hero or not. “But whoever wins will have the power to hire whomever she wants, right?” I asked.

“Hire
and
fire!” Dahlia said with relish.

Zinnia paled. “You're only up by four tenths of a percentage point. Don't assume you'll be the boss.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes at her clone sister. “Maybe I'll let you sweep out the labs. I wouldn't want you to starve.”

“I don't need your charity. I can name ten corporations that would love to hire me!”

“Great, then you're both set,” Mike said heartily. “Dahlia, could you please pass the rice? I'm still hungry.”

I almost asked Rianne what career she was planning, before I remembered: when Rianne grew up she would be dead. My throat choked up.

Just then Rianne and Timothy got into an argument over how many moons Jupiter had. In my opinion, Rianne didn't even care. She just wanted to argue. Specifically, she wanted to argue with Timothy.

By the end of the meal only Mike and I were still speaking to everyone.

The tense atmosphere should have made for a lousy evening, but instead I had a blast because of Mike. He poured forth energy like a supernova, and the rest of us caught fire in turn. “This is our last evening here. Let's make it a fun one, okay?”

Timothy wanted to play VR Alien Invasion. Rianne countered with VR Sword and Sorcery.
Zinnia diffidently suggested VR Molecule World, but when Mike proposed World-Building we all fell into line. Rianne didn't even fuss about being carried into the basement by Mike and Timothy.

We all donned VR goggles and strapped on VR bodysuits. Our virtual bodies appeared in the game environment, the images playing on our goggles translating into a fair approximation of reality. The images had a slightly flat, cartoonish quality to them, and the sense of touch was limited to pressure, but it was still amazing.

Each of us designed a world and then showed it off to the others. The evening became a string of wonderful moments:

—walking up a staircase that turned sideways and twisted like an Escher painting, disorienting us, so that we suddenly realized we were walking on the underside of the stairway we had climbed before.

—drifting through a zero-G swimming pool designed by Rianne with bubbles of water that floated free and could be pushed together to form larger bubbles, miniature worlds equipped with tropical fish. Kissing Mike and having a large bubble suddenly envelop us. Kissing in VR wasn't anything like the real thing, of course, but it was still fun.

—falling over laughing after plunging through a trapdoor into an exercise class run by the Spanish Inquisition. “You, there, on the rack! Give me ten push-ups!”

Mike flirted with me the whole game, and I used the excuse of being undercover to flirt back.

The surprise was Rianne's behavior. Her VR
body wasn't confined to a wheelchair, and she ran wild, laughing more than I'd ever seen her and pelting Timothy with green goo. He chased her and finally managed to tackle her and rub goo in her hair. Rianne retaliated by tickling him.

I watched them curiously: did Rianne like him after all? Timothy looked as though he was trying to decide if he should kiss her. I thought he would chicken out, but he didn't, putting his lips on hers.

Rianne froze. I hoped the VR kiss wasn't her first kiss.

Timothy drew back, looking unsure.

A moment later Rianne ended the game, saying she was tired. By the time Mike and I carried her and her wheelchair back upstairs, Dahlia, Zinnia, and Timothy had also called it a night. I found myself alone with Mike.

“Well,” I said, with equal parts nervousness and reluctance, “I suppose we ought to say good night, too.”

“Play one more game with me.” Mike's violet gaze caught and held mine. “For our cover story.”

“Okay,” I said. “More World-Building?”

“Nah. Something faster.” Mike's eyes glinted.

I was immediately suspicious. “Like what?”

“Badminton.”

I poked at the idea from all sides but couldn't spot a trap, and I wasn't about to back down from the challenge in Mike's tone. “You're on.” We donned the headsets and gloves again.

I had expected to play against Mike, but to my surprise he set up the game as a mixed doubles match against the computer. He selected Expert level, and a man and woman appeared on the virtual
badminton court. They introduced themselves as Josie Farber and Paul Shinn. A discreet line of text identified them as last year's Olympic champions.

I fully expected to get creamed—I was athletic, but I couldn't remember ever playing badminton before—but as soon as Mike and I walked onto the court magic happened. Without consulting each other, we took up positions, me on the left, Mike on the right. Mike served first, a hard drive skimming over the net, and as soon as I heard the twang of his racket striking the birdie, I was moving up to the left corner of the net. When Josie slashed forward to return Mike's serve, I was there to spike it back over the net for our first point.

When it was my turn to serve, the same thing happened. Mike knew exactly where the return shot would go. The volley lasted longer this time, and on the third whizzing return sent to me by Paul, I wound up my arm as if to spike the birdie. Then I ducked, and Mike did a powerful backhand clear that left Josie scrambling and won us another point.

Instead of serving again, I held the birdie over my racket and looked at Mike, obscurely troubled.

He looked pleased. “Your reflexes trust
me,” he said softly. “Listen to them.”

I stopped dead. “What's going on?”

“You and I used to play badminton. Coach Hrudey was training us for the Olympics.”

His words had the impact of a club hitting my head.
An icy shock to my flesh as I fell into cold water. Sinking down, down, through murky green depths. Holding my breath and flailing my limbs,
until finally the pressure in my chest grew too great and I involuntarily gasped in water. Choked—

“Angel?”

I heard Mike's concerned voice, and then he ripped off my headset, and I found myself back in the basement, dry as unbuttered toast. I shuddered, remembering the heavy sensation of liquid filling my lungs.

“Angel, what is it? What happened?” Mike slipped an arm around my shoulders.

I hadn't the strength to push him away. I turned to him in sudden eagerness. He might know. “Can I swim?” I asked.

“Like a mermaid,” Mike said.

“Do you remember me drowning?”

Mike rocked back on his heels, surprised. “Of course I remember.”

“Tell me.” I gripped his hands.

Mike looked down at my hands holding his, then back up. “Why? What happened just now?”

He wasn't going to say anything until I explained so I did so, tersely, “Whenever I start to remember something about my past I flash onto a memory of drowning.”
Murky water . . .
“But I don't know when or how it happened.”

“Actually,” Mike said, “you drowned twice that I know of.”

I fastened my gaze on him, demanding with my eyes.

“The first time doesn't really count. You were mad at me for throwing you in the pool so you pretended you were drowning to make me feel bad.” Mike grinned. “I resuscitated you.”

“You kissed me,” I accused, the strange flash of
memory I'd had in the Induction chamber now explained. But that memory had nothing to do with the drowning memory of falling through dark green water. “What about the second time?” I asked.

Mike's smile vanished. “That was more serious. Dr. Frankenstein shot you, and you fell off the diving tower. You played dead to fool him, but the loss of blood made you so weak you almost drowned for real.”

I frowned. I remembered falling, but through water, not from a tower. I couldn't remember being wounded. And the water I remembered had been cold, not warm, and stagnant, not chlorinated.

On the other hand, how many times could one person almost drown?

Mike changed the subject. “There's something you should know. I checked up on what Eddy told Timothy. Eddy's troubles with the law weren't just teenage pranks. He was accused of manslaughter. He had a fight with his girlfriend and abandoned her in a deserted place. It was dark and she was drunk; she walked off a cliff and died.”

I felt chilled, but I wasn't surprised. “Was that all?”

Mike looked disappointed by my lack of response. “Do you really want to work for someone like that?”

I didn't see that I had much choice. I shrugged.

“I also did a computer search on Anaximander, but guess what? The only reference I turned up was to some dead Greek philosopher. According to the vital statistics database, the only Anaximander living today is a ten-month-old baby.”

I was disturbed but hid it. “So? Anaximander must be an alias, that's all. I'm going upstairs. Good night.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and instinctively threw up one arm. The medi-patch in Mike's hand that he'd been about to slap onto my neck went flying.

Mike didn't hesitate. With his first plan shot, he immediately proceeded to plan B and tackled me to the floor. My breath whooshed out of me, and I felt the cold metal of a handcuff fasten around one wrist.