Lan said cautiously, "You're really surprised about Eddore?"

"A bit. Honestly... yes, a bit."

Lan looked straight at her. "You are the second strangest person I've ever met. Have I told you that?"

"Just now."

"You're the second strangest person I've ever met. After Trent."

Denice said carefully, "I knew you'd met Trent the Uncatchable; it was in your bio."

Lan blinked. "Ring shared my bio with you?"

"No, no, of course not. Your PKF bio."

Lan Sierran blinked, then grinned with absolute delight. "The PKF has a bio on me? They're keeping track of me? I didn't think I was important enough for that."

"It's a small one."

The smile vanished. "Still." Lan paused, said, "I helped Trent boost the LINK, back in '69." The words were spoken with such complete lack of emphasis that Denice could tell he was immensely proud of it.

"Well, my sister and I did. And-um, I shouldn't tell you his name. A man lent to us by the Syndic, or maybe it was the Old Ones-I forget. It doesn't matter anyway; the man was a professional thief, like Trent. We helped Trent kidnap a group of Peaceforcers, and then held them while Trent boosted the LINK, the Lunar Information Network Key. The three of us kept watch over them until Trent was safely away." Lan sighed. "I was going to kill them, but Callia wouldn't let me on account of she promised Trent we wouldn't. We let them go after Trent got away."

Denice nodded. "Callia impresses me. I think honor matters to her."

Lan laughed. "I like the way you say that. You don't think it matters to me too?"

Denice spoke carefully. "I'm not sure, Lan. You've planted bombs that have killed a lot of people."

The humor drained from him instantly. "Yeah. Yeah, I've done that."

"Some of them were PKF, and some of them were civilians."

"Yes."

"How do you justify that?"

Lan said slowly, "Trent the Uncatchable told me once that I hadn't thought through who I was. That's not exactly how he said it, but it's what it came down to. And he was right, I hadn't." Lan sat silently for a long moment, then said abruptly, "What things would you kill for, Denice?"

Denice shook her head. "I don't know, Lan. I've never killed anyone."

Lan nodded. "You know, it's strange. People who can tell you in a minute what they would kill for can't tell you what they would die for; and people who know what they would die for can't tell you what they're living for. And it's weird because they're all the same thing. When you know what you'll kill for then unless you're a sociopath youhave to know what you'll die for; a life equals a life. And we're all going to die someday, so whatever you spend your life doing, thatis what you died for." He shook his head quickly. "I think most people don't think about things like this. If they did they'd have to live different lives than they do. I can't imagine dying at a hundred and at my funeral they say, 'Lan gave his life to increasing FrancoDEC's market share.' I don't mind dyingor living, but by Harry I intend to have some say inhow."

"You didn't answer my question."

Lan studied her through the gloom. "How do I justify it? I think I did. Sometimes I have nightmares about it, about the people who died in those explosions. But they weren't random bombings, not any of them. They served a purpose." Lan said abruptly, "You think honor matters to Callia, and you're right.

But there'snothing I've done she wouldn't have."

"Oh."

"Does that change how you feel about her?"

"Perhaps-no, I don't think so. I like her well enough." Denice shrugged. "She's very attractive."

Lan grinned abruptly. "That's a conceited thing to say."

"How so?"

"She looks just like you. An eye job and five minutes with the makeup key, you could be twins."

Denice laughed. "Okay, yes, I think I'm attractive. If that's conceit, it's based on the way men and women react to me."

Lan looked at her curiously. "Do you sleep with girls?"

"I have."

Lan nodded. "Me too."

"I prefer men."

Lan grinned. "Me too." He paused. "You have really nice hair."

Denice laughed. "Nicehair ?"

"Yeah. I love long hair. You have really great hair."

"You don't want me to put a hat on?"

"What?"

"Never mind."

Lan did not ask; he reached out one hand, ran his fingers across the surface of the glossy black hair. He put down his cup, stood, and came close to her; touched her gently on the forehead, ran his hand back through her hair, dragged her hair free, left it hanging down the side of her face, obscuring her features slightly. He moved slowly, almost sleepily, pulling her hair back from her face, and ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, thumbs brushing against her cheeks. Denice closed her eyes, sat in the darkness with the touch of his hands, feeling the fine silk of her hair being combed through by the gentle fingers.

After a bit Lan spoke, in a quiet murmur. "Would you like me to brush your hair for you?"

"That would be"-Denice's tongue felt thick; she had difficulty speaking-"very nice."

Lan Sierran was an artist.

In her life Denice could not recall having been to bed with anyone with such a remarkable talent for bringing her pleasure. Perhaps it was partially by comparison with Ripper, the only person Denice had slept with in over a year; Ripper tended to be oriented toward his own pleasure rather than hers.

Once in the course of their time in bed together Lan whispered to her that he wished he had a third arm, so that he could touch her in more places at once.

Denice barely heard him; she was having an o.r.g.a.s.m.

Perhaps it was his preference for men; he approached the entire matter differently, more slowly and with more attention to detail, than Denice had ever experienced with anyone except another woman. In many ways it was like being in bed with a woman. Lan was alternately gentle and then rough; he used his tongue and his fingers and his c.o.c.k all at the same time. He licked her toes and fingers and kissed the lobes of her ears and the back of her neck, stroked and teased the lips of her v.a.g.i.n.a with one hand while a finger of the other hand rubbed around the edge of her a.n.u.s and his tongue stabbed at her nipples. He inserted himself into her and pulled her over on top of him, kissed her softly while stroking the backs of her thighs and b.u.t.tocks with the soles of his feet, rubbed her c.l.i.t with one hand until she came while bouncing up and down on top of him and then rolled her over and pulled out and went down on her, touching and probing and sucking and licking until she found herself coming over and over again. He pushed her knees back toward her chest and brushed his lips against the incredibly sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs, fingers stroking her first in one spot and then another while he alternately licked and sucked her c.l.i.t, pushed two fingers deep inside her while another penetrated her bottom, and she found to her distant amazement that she was coming again for the third time in not quite an hour and a half.

He lay next to her, still hard, after she had relaxed slightly, and whispered in her ear. "I don't want to wear you out."

"I'm infine shape," Denice informed him around a huge yawn. "We can do this for," she paused to yawn again, "hours andhours." She closed her eyes for just a moment, murmured, "You are insanely wonderfully good."

He kissed her earlobe, ran the tip of his tongue into her ear. "We can try again after we've slept for a while, but right now," he said, removing his tongue so that she could hear him more clearly, "I think I would like for you to go down on me."

Denice rolled over on her side, lifted herself up on one elbow and looked at his drowsy brown eyes through her own drowsy green eyes. "I could do that. Are you sure you wouldn't rather come inside me?"

He shook his head, looked for the barest instant slightly embarra.s.sed. "I can't."

"Oh. What are you going to do, pretend I'm a boy?"

Lan looked straight into her eyes. "Yes."

"Oh." Denice considered it, and then smiled. "That's okay. For you I'll be a boy." She closed her eyes, slid down toward his erect p.e.n.i.s, kissing his stomach as she went. After a moment she felt Lan's hand touching the back of her head, and a bit later heard him groaning.

Not five minutes later they were both asleep.

He never did brush her hair.

Lan was gone when Denice awoke, about nine. She showered and changed into the pseudomilitary fatigues, and went down to the cafeteria for breakfast. She felt pleasantly drowsy and relaxed, and wondered briefly, with distant amus.e.m.e.nt, if her stress and tension for most of the last half year were due in some measure to the fact that Dougla.s.s Ripper, Unification Councilor for New York Metro, was such a lousy lover.

Over a hundred people filled the cafeteria, most of them in the same pseudouniform Denice wore, already seated and eating. Denice waited patiently in line, placed her order at the window, picked up a cup of coffee from the table where the drinks had been set up, and looked around for a place to sit. She saw Callia seated at a table near the entrance and joined her, sitting across from her. "Good morning."

Callia worked on her grapefruit and corn flakes, auditing text on her handheld. She glanced at Denice and said politely, "Good morning. Sleep well?"

Denice smiled. "Very."

Callia nodded without expression and returned to the text in her handheld's display.

Denice looked at Callia curiously, with a mild twinge of concern. "Are you upset?"

"Not at you. Only a little at Lan."

Denice shook her head. "Why?" The waitbot approached and laid down her breakfast, fresh fruit with dry rye toast, and left.

Callia shrugged. "It gets tedious. My brother's a nymphomaniac. He sleeps witheveryone, and it's gotten worse, not better, as he's gotten older. It's reached the point where I'm reluctant to take someone to bed myself; Lan seems to regard my lovers as common property."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It has nothing to do with you." Callia turned off her handheld, pushed her breakfast back, and rose. "Physicals this afternoon. Don't forget."

Denice ate her breakfast alone, only mildly disturbed by Callia's comments.

Maybe Lanwas a nymphomaniac.

She shivered slightly, remembering, and thought to herself,The world should have more nymphomaniacs in it.

Denice sat nude in the examination room and, while Bennett Crandell took blood and tissue samples, listened to the man talk.

She knew his voice.

She had met him once before that she knew of; he was the Reb who had listened while Callia interrogated her. That was not where she knew his voice from; the way he spoke, the sound of his words, awoke a memory in her of something long gone from her life.

Crandell was a mature man of indeterminate age, with dark hair and blue eyes. His features were slightly African, and Denice thought his skin was probably naturally black, not the work of a makeup key and implant.

"Essentially," said Bennett, "what you'll be getting, once we've mapped your genetic structure, is an otherwise normal immune booster on which we've considerably pumped up the volume. The nanovirus's on-board processors have about fifty times the computing power of a normal immune booster; even a self-altering virus can't mutate fast enough to fool this bad girl. Mitsubishi developed this in-house; whatever the PKF uses on us, and they will use some remarkably smart viruses, this immune booster, tailored to your genetic map, should handle it." He finished with a skin sc.r.a.ping, taken from her shoulder, placed it inside a small ceramic dish and added a squirt of some liquid. The dish closed itself around the sc.r.a.p of Denice's skin.

Denice did not worry about the gene mapping; any competent geneticist would be able to tell that she was a genie, but no one outside of the Bureau of Biotechnology could possibly have recognized the map for that of a Castanaveras. And despite the fact that they were illegal, there were alot of genies in the System today. "What's Mitsubishi's-what's j.a.pan's interest, for that matter-in aiding the Rebs and the Claw?"

Bennett shrugged. "I don't know. I don't need to. There aren't any j.a.panese in my organization, though I understand there are some in yours. Stand up, please, we're going to slowscan now." Denice did so; Bennett had her stand in front of a lead-lined section of wall and wheeled a body-length device in front of her. "Close your eyes." A rolling bar of brilliant light descended from the top of the device; Denice felt a vague warmth as it covered the length of her body. "Presumably," said Bennett, "the j.a.panese don't like the Unification any better than the rest of us."

Denice spoke with her eyes closed. "What do you mean bymy organization?"

"Aren't you with the Claw?"

"No."

"You're a Reb?" Bennett looked surprised. "I-well, never mind. A lot of new people through here, lately. I don't know all of our own people anymore; I used to. You can open your eyes."

Denice did not correct his a.s.sumption that she was a Reb. She blinked a couple of times, sat down again on the examination table. "How long haveyou been with the Rebs?"

"Twenty years, supporting. Core, about three. I was one of 'Sieur Obodi's first recruits." The device to Bennett's left-it looked like an oven-beeped once, and Bennett opened it and withdrew a small vial.

"Here's your vaccination; we'll do it in a second." He turned away from Denice, watched as a multi-colored image of her body slowly a.s.sembled itself in midair. "Nice," he murmured after a moment.

"Gorgeous bone structure, no vermiform appendix, no wisdom teeth, overlarge heart, abnormally large lungs, preponderance of quick twitch muscles-somebody did a nice job with you." Denice did not comment; Bennett did not seem to expect a reply; he was looking at something in her pelvic region.

"You'll have children easily," he said after a moment, and turned back to her. He gestured. "Turn around.

This injection goes in the b.u.t.tock. You'll be sore for about two hours, that's normal." Denice turned, waited for the injection. A slight stinging sensation; it faded rapidly.

"Are we done?"

"Yes. You can get dressed." Crandell went into the next room while Denice dressed, came back in as she sealed her shirt. "You're a Reb, you say?"

"I didn't say that, no."

"But you're not Claw?"

"No."

He shook his head. "Odd."

Denice studied him. "You think you know me?"

"Hmm? No, not really. I think you remind me of someone I used to know, that's all."

Denice said simply, "I know you. It's your voice, as much as anything. Your voice is familiar to me."