Shaking his head, Cade said, "Sorry. Poor choice of words. But you know what I mean. No unconverted women, right?"

Not terribly mollified, Mandi answered, "Right."

After a moment, Cade asked, "How many converted women are there at present?"

"Two."

"And where are they?"

"Las Vegas. One's a cop. The other runs her own business."

"And there's another woman like you on Earth?"

"Yes. In California."

Some moments pa.s.sed before Cade said, "Nope. I don't buy it," and continued down the stairs to the lobby.

In a sharp tone, Mandi called after him, "Just what exactly don't you buy, Cade?"

Stopping again, Cade said, "In all this time on Earth, you've only converted two women? She's converted no women? That's what I don't buy, Mandi. It may be true, but I don't believe it at this very moment. Later."

With that, he opened the lobby door and left the stairwell. Cade wanted to eat and haul his a.s.s back up to Beth's room for what might be his last s.e.xual romp for a long time, the way things seemed to be going.

In fact, he did believe what she'd said about soon being too dangerous for unconverted women. But he didn't for a moment believe that a woman who admitted converting two other women would have any hesitations about converting more if they qualified and were needed.

Mandi had tapped the President for money and a place to train people and she'd felt it necessary and justified to convert him without asking how he felt about it, so there was a definite need for convertees. It was as simple as that.

She'd need them in both genders, too, if she were training enough of them to justify requesting a place to train them. The sense of total alienation would be too much for many of the convertees, otherwise.

Nope. Either there already were more or there would be more convertees reasonably soon, and about half of them would be female unless Mandi planned to spend a great deal of her time servicing all her male convertees herself.

Choosing a booth, Cade told the waiter to bring him one of the lunch specials. As the waiter left, Mandi came to stand by the booth.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Have a seat. Want me to call the waiter back?"

Shaking her head as she sat down, Mandi said, "No. I'll order a coffee or something when he comes back."

For long moments, the two of them simply matched gazes across the table, then Mandi said, "There are only two in Vegas. There are a few others elsewhere around the country."

When Cade said nothing, Mandi asked, "Since you didn't ask about male convertees, I'll..."

"I don't give a rat's a.s.s about the men," he interrupted, "I want to know about the women. Got any in Florida?"

"No. Georgia. They work with the Center for Disease Control and other agencies. In fact, they've been working with another NIA branch this weekend. As backups, you could say, in case more happened than I could handle at once. One of them was even in the look-alike contest."

Sipping his water, Cade said, "Fascinating. Did you convert any of them without asking first?"

With a sigh, Mandi said, "NO, and you said 'done is done', as I recall. I'm sorry and that's all I can say. I thought someone your age would be..."

That rankled Cade a bit. "'Someone my age?' Would be what? That someone any other age wouldn't be, that is."

Gazing hard at him across the table, Mandi said, "I'd very much appreciate it if you wouldn't interrupt me when I'm speaking, Ed. I thought you'd be considerably happier about being chosen for conversion."

"That's your word for it. 'Near-total alienation' is what I'm calling it for the moment."

The waiter buzzed up to the table and asked Mandi what she'd like. She ordered a coffee and the waiter told Cade that his lunch would arrive shortly, then he buzzed away again.

Mandi sat back and said, "You crushed that steel rail in the stairwell. If that's an indication of your progress, you'll be able to stop a tank round with your bare hands in a week. You'll be bulletproof and no Earthly disease will be able to touch you. You'll be stronger and faster than you can possibly imagine and you may develop some of my other powers to a degree."

Pausing, Mandi sipped the water the waiter had brought her and added, "And there's one more little thing. Our cells replicate, but they don't degenerate with every copy. Do you understand what that means?"

"Sure. It means I may have time enough to write another few thousand books."

"You don't seem very impressed with virtual immortality."

"Of course I am. I'm just not letting it overshadow the fact that you're forming teams, which means that something more than you can handle alone is headed this way, and if it's bigger than you, it'll be able to squash a convertee in a heartbeat."

Chapter Twenty-two

Tossing her hands up, Mandi softly exclaimed, "Okay. I give up. What the h.e.l.l can I possibly do to make this terrible thing I've done up to you, Ed?"

"Nothing, really," said Cade. "If something that big is coming, being as much like you as possible will probably increase my chances of survival. I just wanted you to know how I felt before you pulled the same 'oh, he won't mind'

trick on someone else."

The waiter arrived with food as Mandi sat staring at Cade. When the waiter finished placing food on the table, Cade told him to bring another lunch special. The waiter thought he meant for Mandi and smilingly nodded at her. Cade then told him to also pack one to go.

"To go, sir?"

"Yup. It's going upstairs with me."

"Yes, sir. One more to the table and one to go."

"You got it. Thanks."

When the waiter had left, Mandi smilingly asked, "Why didn't Beth come down to lunch with you?"

Digging into his food, Cade said, "She needed a nap. Why were you watching us last night?"

Startling imperceptibly, Mandi thought, 'He DID know!' then she said, "When you didn't come back to the room, I thought maybe you'd gotten into more trouble."

Around some steak, Cade said, "Uh, huh. Glad I'm wearing boots, ma'am." He cut another piece and said, "Got a question. Am I just processing ma.s.s into energy?"

"Partly. You're being restructured, which requires quite a bit of both ma.s.s and energy."

"So I could probably just drink a lot of water or eat a phone book and it wouldn't matter a d.a.m.n to the process?"

Mandi snickered and asked, "A phone book?"

"Bulk. Ma.s.s. Something to convert. It doesn't necessarily have to be food, right? Just a steady supply of ma.s.s."

"I suppose so. Will you want gravy on your phone book?"

"Probably wouldn't be a bad idea. You seemed surprised that I squashed that rail in the stairwell. Why? Am I ahead of schedule or something?"

Nodding, she said, "It would seem so. A little, anyway."

"Why would that be?"

Mandi shrugged. "Your system is accepting conversion easily and you're having s.e.x with Beth."

"What does s.e.x have to do with it?"

Filching his tomato slice, she said, "All human bodily functions are closely tied to the reproductive system. Stir things up and the process can speed up considerably."

"Speed up only, or also enhance the process? Could I wind up being a bit more... 'super'... at the other end?"

"Yes, you could. Others have, for the same reason."

With a nod, Cade met her gaze and asked, "Do you want optimum conversion, or would plain old average do?"

"Optimum would be nice, of course."

Cade sliced off a chunk of meat and ate it, then said, "I think so, too, also of course. There's nothing quite like knowing your support people are as good as they can possibly be. Beth is good for another few hours, then she'll leave for D.C. or I'll become too much for her. Doesn't matter which; that'll be the end of it. If we're going to try to optimize me, I'll need someone to take her place."

"Her name is Andrea. I've already talked to her."

"Why not you?"

Mandi sighed and said, "Sorry. You're still several days away from being able to make love to me, Ed."

Another chunk of steak later, Cade asked, "So this Andrea -- who's never even met me -- is willing to take over for Beth in my bed, huh?"

"If she likes you. She's very fond of s.e.x. If she doesn't like you enough, she'll simply supervise your normal conversion."

"I'll need supervised? It won't just happen on its own?"

Sighing again, Mandi said, "Yes, of course it would, but there are ways -- that don't involve s.e.x -- to heighten the effect a bit."

"What ways?"

"Hard exercise and energy infusion can help."

"Energy infusion?"

"Direct transfer from one of us to you. That couldn't happen for another day or two, though. It would kill you."

Filching his other slice of tomato, she said, "Andrea is taking a week off to help you through this. John says you have a three-bedroom house."

"It would be if I threw out two rooms'-full of ceramic molds and computer gear."

After a pause, Mandi said, "Oh."

Cade chuckled. "Yeah. Oh. The place is a factory, too. But don't worry about it. If we don't get along well enough to sleep together, I'll take the couch for a week. Think she'd like to go to Disneyworld and some of the other tourist traps?"

Smiling, Mandi canted her head and said, "I really don't know. I do know she shoots pool fairly well."

Returning her smile, Cade said, "Well, that's a plus."

He'd just put the last bit of steak in his mouth when Mandi said, "Slide your plates over here. John's coming."

Shoving everything to her side of the table, Cade asked, "Why doesn't he know about this, Mandi?"

Giving him a firm look, Mandi said, "He's not in the loop."

"I've known him for ages. He'd be cool with it."

"Okay, he probably would be, but you weren't supposed to happen for a while yet. Quiet. Here he comes."

As John walked up to the table, Cade thought, 'Not supposed to happen for a while yet? What the h.e.l.l?'

"Hi, all," said John, taking a seat beside Mandi. "Good news. They found Kahlil this morning. The company is saying this op is finally over."

More strangeness. John had referred to 'the company', which the NIA most definitely wasn't. Only the CIA was referred to as 'the company' by anyone who knew the difference, and John definitely knew the difference.

Cade said nothing and gave John a slightly puzzled look as Mandi agreed that it was good news, indeed. John gave Cade the old-days hand sign that meant 'later' and talked to Mandi as the waiter brought the other steak dinners Cade had ordered and asked John if he'd like anything. John ordered coffee.

'Great,' thought Cade. 'Settle one problem and up pops a new one. Get through one puzzle and another one will fall into your lap pretty much instantly.'

He started in on the second dinner as Mandi and John chatted and talked about wrapping things up in the ops room. Cade kind of hurried through his steak and John asked him why he was in a rush. Pointing at the 'go' bag, Cade told him that was for someone upstairs and that he didn't want it to get cold.

"Would it maybe be for Beth?" asked John.

"Can't let her starve. She's NIA property."

"Thought so. Carter says you've been spending a lot of time in her room."

"Someone was using my room." Meeting John's gaze, Cade cautioned, "Beth doesn't know -- or maybe she just doesn't want to know -- that anyone else knows, you know? I don't really know why it matters to her, but it does."

Mandi grinningly crossed her heart and zipped her lips like a schoolgirl taking a pledge of silence. John chuckled and nodded as he spoke.

"No sweat. Like it or not, she knows we've been monitoring the hallways, so this has to be a personal preference. I'll mention to Carter to keep it quiet, okay?"