Hastings looked back at him, his eyes pained, then nodded. "If that's what it takes."
"Well, Shih Thorn, what do you think?"
Thorn turned from contemplating the wall hanging and met DeVore's eyes. He realized they were alone. "The others?"
"They've gone to eat. I thought we ought to talk."
"I see." Thorn licked his lips. "I've been impressed by what I've seen."
"Impressed?" DeVore echoed the word flatly, his smile fixed momentarily. "You seemed . . . well, unsurprised."
"I've heard . . ." he began, then realized what he had been about to say.
"You've heard what?"
"Nothing. It's just ..."
DeVore moved his head back slowly, as if to see him better; or like a snake, about to strike.
"You know me, don't you?"
Thorn weighed the alternatives a moment, then nodded. "First time I saw you. It's just that I wasn't sure. I'd heard you were dead. But the rumors . . . Some said you were on Mars. Others, well, others said you'd changed your form."
"And you? What did you think?"
He gambled on a lie. "I thought you'd be here. It's why I came."
DeVore's eyes held him a moment, then slipped aside. His face made a tiny shrugging motion. There was a mild amusement in his eyes now and in the corners of his mouth. "You were talking to Hastings just now. What did he say?"
Again those brown eyes met his then slid away.
"He seemed . . . concerned. He was trying to convince me of the rightness of all this."
"And you? What do you think?"
Deeper and deeper.
"I am a revolutionary. It's my trade. Up Above one cannot move for spies and secret service agents. But down here"—he let his eyes glow with a revolutionary fervor—"down here a man can be free to determine his own destiny."
"Ah . . ." DeVore's eyes were half-lidded, almost saurian in their sleepy watchfulness. His smile was the smile of an alligator crouched in his pool, waiting for his prey to come to him.
Thorn saw that look and laughed disarmingly. "I bet you hear a lot of such claptrap! The truth is, I can see the advantage of change. Unlike Hastings, I consider myself a realist ... an opportunist."
DeVore considered that, then nodded, as if some test had been passed, some barrier cleared.
"Hastings is a good man," he said, placing his arm about Thorn's shoulders. "Unfortunately he has a conscience. And that's an uncomfortable thing to have, don't you think, a conscience?"
His eyes were very close to DeVore's this time. He could feel the force of personality behind them. But was this the real DeVore or yet another fake?
"I like you, Thorn," he said after a moment. "You're a player. And a good one too. But tell me . . . how did you recognize me? I'd have thought you were too young. Hastings and the others . . . they've no idea who I am. Do you like that?" He roared with laughter, as if greatly amused, then grew serious again. "But you, Thorn. You recognized me?"
It was time to be inventive. He conjured a name from memory and used it.
"My father was a friend of yours. He died twelve years ago. I was only seventeen when it happened. His cruiser came down in the mountains, so they say, but they never found any trace of it and it was rumored that Security blew it up. His name was John Douglas and he revered you, Howard DeVore. He left me a hologrammic portrait of you in his will."
"John Douglas, eh?" DeVore nodded solemnly. "He was a great man, your father. It was a tragedy when he died."
He squeezed Thorn's shoulder, then took his arm away.
"As I said, I like you . . ."
"John."
DeVore nodded. "I like you, John. You're . . . different."
He walked to the center of the room and stood there pondering one of the doors a moment, then he turned, looking back at Thorn. "Come, John. I've something to show you."
THE ROOM WAS DARK except for a small cone of illumination in one corner. There, beneath a small wall-mounted spot, two men in white scholars' gowns—shaven-headed giants twice Thorn's height— faced one another cross-legged across a wei chi board.
"What is it?" Thorn asked quietly. "A hologram?"
"Come," DeVore said, touching his arm.
As they came close, one of the giants looked up.
"It's all right, Todlich," DeVore said, reassuringly. "I've cleared him."
The giant's eyes—the pupils large as serpent's eggs, dark as ebony— looked down at Thorn, surveying him with a cool, clear intelligence, then, dismissing him, returned to the game.
"Three boards?" Thorn asked, realizing with a start that what he'd thought was a ch'i-thick block of wood was in fact three separate stacked boards.
DeVore smiled. "It adds a whole new element of complexity, don't you think?"
Thorn nodded, but he was unable to keep himself from staring at the giant's arms. They were like corded silk, the muscles huge, the skin tone magnificent. GenSyn? he wondered. Or had these men been bred?
"Neumann," DeVore said, as if he read Thorn's thoughts. "I call them Neumann. New men."
"Their mother . . . ?" he began, but DeVore shook his head.
"Can't you guess?"
"You made these?"
DeVore's smile broadened. Stepping around the board he stood between the two, dwarfed by them, yet still, it seemed, their Master. They looked to him, patient, obedient.
"Thirty years I've worked to perfect them. Can you imagine that? Thirty years. Time and again I've seen my plans disrupted, but I've never given up. I knew, you see. I'd seen them, like this—exactly like this—picked out in the spotlight, playing the game. And having seen it I knew I had only to keep faith with that vision, even when things looked their darkest, because I knew."
"What are they?" Thorn asked, fascinated.
"They're morphs. Enhanced genetic stock. Tank bred."
"Like GenSyn?"
"GenSyn?" DeVore snorted dismissively. "Why, GenSyn's old news! Their methods . . . well, let's be kind and call them primitive. My techniques, on the other hand, are radical, revolutionary! These . . . these creations of mine are at the cutting edge of evolution. They're the coming thing. The breaking wave. The Inheritors.1"
"I see." Thorn crouched, studying the boards. The game, it seemed, was finished, the boards filled. He studied them awhile, then looked to DeVore.
"White," he said. "By two . . . maybe three stones?"
DeVore raised his eyebrows, impressed. "Very good. You understand it, then?"
"I've played since I was three," Thorn said, looking back at the patterns of the stones. "My father taught me. It's very pure, neh? What a man is reveals itself in the stones."
"And what do you see, John Douglas?"
Thorn shrugged. "I see minds beyond mine."
DeVore stared at him a moment, then began to laugh, and Thorn, looking back at him, made himself laugh along with the man. Yet deeper down he felt a profound disquiet; that and a fear great enough to eat away the beating heart of his world.
HE TRIED TO FALL BACK, to lag behind somehow, hoping they would overlook him and go on ahead, giving him the chance to slip away, but it was no good, Tak stayed with him no matter what.
"Are you okay?" Tak asked finally, concerned for him.
"I'm fine," he said, deciding to give up on the attempt. Even if he did make a break, they'd surely come after him, and they were armed, he wasn't.
Even so, the compulsion to escape—to fulfil his prime directive and report back with what he'd seen—remained strong in him. Each step back toward the Myghtern's capital seemed not merely a step in the wrong direction, but a betrayal of basic duty.
"He seemed to like you," Tak said.