Iyal sat back in the chair, not caring what Allenden made out of the bewildered look on her face.
Impossible. Ridiculous. She had only started learning the language four weeks ago. She didn’t even have full command of one level of grammar yet. She barely knew where an ON switch on a view table was. How in all the worlds that lived had she gotten into secured files?
Allenden planted both hands on the edge of the board. “We’ve got a spy in the ranks, Cousin Manager.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no!” Allenden reared up like a startled cow. “Look at her!”
“Yes.” Iyal gestured at the screen. “Look at her. Right in front of the security camera. Clear as all outdoors and solid as dirt. You’re telling me a spy, a VITAE spy, is going to tap the secured network from the lab in front of a camera?”
Allenden’s mouth opened and closed three or four times before he finally said, “Then what else could she possibly be?”
“1 don’t have any idea.” Iyal hit the HOME key on the chair’s control board at the same time. “But I’m going to go find out.”
“You can’t just…” began Allenden as the chair’s legs telescoped up to their active length.
“I can, and you’ll wait until I have before you say another word to anybody.” The chair rocked forward, picking its quick, mincing steps over the grass. Iyal twisted around to see if Allenden understood. “We need to know what we’re dealing with before we make a fuss.”
Allenden nodded. Iyal took that as a good sign and settled back into her chair again. The sedan carried her down the paths that bisected the beds of medical plants and grains. The lab section had been laid out for efficiency, not aesthetics. Domes of white polymer skins alternated with square, white concrete buildings that sat in the middle of squared-off plots of plain grass. A quarter of an acre of grass had to be reserved for every cubic meter of building so that solar reflection and environmental absorption would balance each other out.
People and drones hustled to and fro down the prescribed paths. One or two raised their hands in greeting, but Iyal only nodded absently in return.
Aria Stone. Aria Stone. Iyal had been all but breathing Aria Stone since Perivar had brought her to the lab. For weeks now, Iyal had wished in vain that she could find whoever had designed the woman’s ancestors so she could shake their hands, and then pick their brains, even if they were the Vitae.
She’d told Perivar that Aria was a walking work of art, but now Iyal was ready to revise that interpretation. The woman was nothing short of a miracle.
Iyal was used to the idea of genetic engineering. Every piece of flora and fauna on Kethran had been built to fit into the tailored biosphere. Her own work carried on the family profession and she was proud to do it. But there wasn’t a soul alive on Kethran, or anywhere else she knew of, that could design a DNA string that contained nothing but the bare essentials organized to express themselves in a totally predictable fashion in a human being. In a strain of yeast or algae, maybe. But not a human being. She had learned more about neurochemical regulators in the three weeks she’d known Aria than she had in ten years of active study.
But not everything about Aria made sense. Who would design an organism that did not have enough room left over in its DNA to allow for adaptation or compensation for changes in environment? The rate of birth defects would be astronomical. Aria was perfect, but if one or two of her perfect traits hadn’t expressed themselves because of environment, she could have been in trouble. Iyal was surprised Aria had even managed four living kids out of a total of seven births. If you wanted to keep her branch of humanity alive, you’d have to do an incredible amount of outbreeding, which would negate all that careful engineering, or you’d have to be able to check each fetus to make sure conception had worked, and then you’d have to monitor each child to make sure they grew up all right, and tinker with them all as necessary to keep weaknesses from creeping in.
No. It made no sense. A group like that would require more maintenance than…Kethran Colony.
The comm screen still showed Aria hunched over Allenden’s table, reading the documents flowing past. Nothing in those short, perfect strings she carried around inside her explained this. Nothing at all. Not even the incredible organization inside her skull.
Iyal’s translator disk beeped and she winced.
“Cousin Manager Zur-Iyal ki Maliad,” said Director ki Sholmat’s voice, “I require your attendance at my office immediately.”
Iyal felt her forehead wrinkle. The Director hadn’t chosen to acknowledge their First Family connection since Iyal’d deigned to marry a third wave colonist.
She touched the TRANSMIT key on her torque and whispered, “With respect, Cousin Director, I have an emergency in the lab.” Aria had moved on to a new set of documents. These had the lab’s privacy logo on them.
“Delegate it,” said the Director. “I have an Ambassador from the Rhudolant Vitae sitting in front of me. The Vitae want to talk to you about some property of theirs they say the lab has wrongfully appropriated.”
Iyal’s eyes bulged in their sockets as she tried to keep from gagging audibly. Under her gaze, Aria went on reading, completely undisturbed.
“Cousin Manager?”
“I’ll be there in five minutes, Cousin Director.” Iyal shut the connection down.
Iyal ground her teeth together and, at last, touched her torque and whispered Allenden’s name.
“Zur-Allenden,” she said. “This is Zur-Iyal. There’s trouble. I need you to get Aria out of the lab. Send her to sweep the attic, anything, just keep her out of the way of the management halls for at least the next hour.”
“But…” came Allenden’s hesitant voice.
“The Vitae are sitting in the Director’s office,” she said. “Get Aria out of sight.”
“Done and done.” Her translation disk buzzed as he closed the connection.
The sedan halted in front of the double doors labeled CENTRAL RESEARCH FACILITIES BLOCKS 6-12. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and froze its legs, settling toward the ground so she could climb out. Iyal cut the comm board off and shut the chair’s power off.
She rubbed her temple as she pushed through the facility doors and walked down the bare, tiled corridors. Her gaze strayed to the portrait of Killian that she wore on her wrist. He was off-shift tonight. She could put in a real-time call. It’d be good to talk to him. It’d help sort out the jumble of problems swirling around inside her mind.
Director Zur-Kohlbyr ki Sholmat’s office was a three-room suite at the east end of the building. Kohlbyr was an entrepreneur, an aspiring politician, and the oldest child of the first of the First Families. As a result, he knew all about the importance of appearances and he used all that he knew when creating his workspace.
Iyal entered the waiting room, a comfortable lounge that had been partitioned off to accommodate both Human and Shessel visitors. It gave the impression that the Director was an open-minded man.
The door to the meeting room stood open. Iyal stepped in. It was a greenhouse-style room with transparent silicate walls that let in the view of the medical compound and the clean fields. The ceiling was also transparent, so she could see the clouds building up for the weekly heavy rain that this longitude required to keep the vegetation healthy.
At the moment, the room was furnished with clusters of small tables and padded chairs. It was a casual atmosphere where people could meet, drink, circulate, and chat. Director ki Sholmat sat at the table in the sunniest corner, sipping something gold out of a long-stemmed glass. Next to him, a Vitae Ambassador sat like a statue carved of ruby and marble.