Ethan of Athos

Ethan's eyes narrowed. He rummaged the little wall-desk nearby for a note panel, and began to tap out a list.

"What now?" asked Qui

"A prescription, by God the Father," said Ethan, tapping on in growing excitement. "Tyramine occurs naturally in some foods, you know. If you choose a menu with a high concentration of it—Millisor can't possibly have every food outlet on the Station bugged—nothing illegal about going grocery shopping, is there? You'll probably have to hit the import shops for a lot of this, I don't think much of it is room service console standard fare."

Qui

"As much as you can get."

"You're the doctor," she shrugged, getting to her feet. Her smile grew lopsided. "I think Mr. Cee is going to need one."

Two hours of strained silence later, Qui

"Party time, gentlemen," she called, dumping the bags on the table. "What a feast."

Cee quailed visibly at the mass 'of edibles.

"It—seems rather a lot," remarked Ethan.

"You didn't say how much," Qui

The hot fried chicken liver cubes alone were native produce from the Kline Station culture vats. Ethan thought of Okita and gulped. He picked up a few items and blanched at the price tags.

Qui

She kicked off her boots and lay down on Cee's bed with her hands locked behind her neck and an expression of great interest on her face. Ethan pulled the plastic seal off a liter squeeze bottle of claret, and helpfully offered up the cups and utensils the room service console produced.

Cee swallowed doubtfully, and sat down at the table. "Are you sure this will work, Dr. Urquhart?"

"No," said Ethan frankly. "But it seems like a pretty safe experiment."

An audible snicker drifted from the bed. "Isn't science wonderful?" said Qui

CHAPTER TEN

For courtesy's sake Ethan shared the wine, although he gave the chicken livers, pickles, and chocolate a pass. The claret was rotgut despite its price, although the burgundy was not bad and the champagne—for dessert—was quite tasty. A slightly gluey disembodiment warned Ethan that courtesy had gone for enough. He wondered how Cee, still dutifully nibbling and sipping across the table, was holding up.

"Can you feel anything yet?" Ethan inquired of him anxiously. "Can I get you anything? More cheese? Another cup?"

"A spacesick sack?" asked Qui

"Nothing yet," he said. His hand unconsciously rubbed his neck. Ethan diagnosed incipient headache. "Dr. Urquhart, are you quite sure that no part of the shipment of ovarian cultures Athos received could have been what Bharaputra sent?"

Ethan felt he'd answered that question a thousand times. "I unpacked it myself, and saw the other boxes later. They weren't even cultures, just raw dead ovaries."

"Janine—"

"If her, um, donation was cultured for egg cell production—"

"It was. They all were."

"Then it wasn't there. None were."

"I saw them packed myself," said Cee. "I watched them loaded at the shuttleport docks on Jackson's Whole."

"That narrows down the time and place they could have been switched, a little," observed Qui

Cee swirled burgundy in a plastic cup, and drank again. "Beyond your means, or simply of no interest to you?"

"Well—all right, both. I mean, if I really wanted to trace it, I'd let Millisor do the legwork, and just follow him. But the shipment is only of interest because of that one gene complex in one culture which, if I understand things correctly, you also contain. A pound of your flesh would serve my purposes just as well—better. Or a gram, or a tube of blood cells…" she trailed off, inviting Cee to pick up on the hint.

Cee sidestepped. "I can't wait for Millisor to trace it. As soon as his team catches up on their backlog, they'll find me here on Kline Station."

"You have a little margin yet," she pointed out. "I'll wager they're going to waste quite a few man-hours following poor i

Cee glanced at Ethan. "Doesn't Athos want the shipment back?"

"We'd written it off. Although retrieving it would save purchasing another, I'm afraid it would be a false economy if Millisor followed it to Athos with an army at his back and genocide on his mind. He's so obsessed with this idea that Athos must have it—I'd actually like to see him find the damned thing, just to be sure Athos was rid of him." Ethan gave Cee an apologetic shrug. "Sorry."

Cee smiled sadly. "Never apologize for honesty, Dr. Urquhart." He went on more urgently. "But don't you see, the gene complex ca

"Can they really make men without free will?" said Ethan, chilled. The old catch-phrase, 'Abomination in the eyes of God the Father' seemed illuminated with real and disquieting meaning. "I must say I don't like that idea, followed to its logical conclusion. Machines made of flesh… "

Qui

"And what makes you think your Admiral Naismith's employer would be any improvement over the Cetagandans?" asked Cee bitterly.

She cleared her throat. The telepath had been reading her mind ever since he'd started asking questions, Ethan realized, and she already knew it. "So, send a duplicate tissue sample of yourself to every government in the galaxy if you like." She gri

"To make a hundred races of slaves?" asked Cee. "A hundred mutant minorities, all feared and hated and controlled by whatever ruthless force seems necessary to their uneasy captors? And hunted to their deaths when that control fails?"

Ethan had never found himself clinging to a cusp of human history before. The trouble with the position, he found, was that in whatever direction you looked there fell away a glassy, uncontrollable slide down to a strange future you would then have to live in. He had never wanted to pray more, nor been less sure that it would do any good.