CHAPTER 8 - POLLY'S EYES

GEOFFREY EUSTACE PARLETTE's house was different inside. The rooms were big and comfortable, furnished in soft good taste. They were innumerable. Toward the back were a pool table, a small bowling alley, an auditorium and stage with pull-down movie screen. The kitchen was the size of Harry Kane's living-room. Matt and Laney and Lydia Hancock had moved through the entire house with stun guns at the ready. They had found no living thing, barring the rugs and the no-less-than-six housecleaner nests.

Lydia had threatened force to get Matt to return to the living room. He wanted to explore. He'd seen incredible bedrooms. Hobbyists' bedrooms ...

In a living room two stories tall, before a vast false fireplace whose stone logs showed red electrical heat where they touched, the five survivors dropped into couches. Harry Kane still moved carefully, but he seemed almost recovered from the stunner that had caught him in the Hospital. Hood had his voice back, but not his strength.

Matt slumped in the couch. He wriggled, adjusting his position, and finally put his feet up. It was good to feel safe.

"Tiny hearts and livers," said Hood.

"Yah," said Matt.

"That's impossible."

Harry Kane made a questioning noise.

"I saw them," said Matt. "The rest of it was pretty horrible, but that was the worst."

Harry Kane was sitting upright. "In the organ banks?"

"Yes, dammit, in the organ banks. Don't you believe me? They were in special tanks of their own, makeshift-looking, with the motors sitting in the water next to the organs. The glass was warm."

"Stasis tanks aren't warm," said Hood.

"And Implementation doesn't take children," said Harry Kane. "If they did, I'd know it."

Matt merely glared.

"Hearts and livers," said Harry. "Just those? Nothing else?"

"Nothing I noticed," said Matt. "No, wait. There were a couple of tanks just like them. One was empty. One looked ... polluted, I think."

"How long were you in there?"

"Just long enough to get sick to my stomach. Mist Demons, I wasn't investigating anything! I was looking for a map!"

"In the organ banks?"

"Lay off," said Laney. "Relax, Matt. It doesn't matter."

Mrs. Hancock had gone to find the kitchen. She returned now, with a pitcher and five glasses. "Found this. No reason we shouldn't mess up the place, is there?"

They assured her there wasn't, and she poured for them.

Hood said, "I'm more interested in your alleged psychic powers. I've never read of anything like you've got. It must be something new."

Matt grunted.

"I should tell you that anyone who believes in the so-called-psi powers at all usually thinks he's psychic himself." Hood's tone was dry, professional. "We may find nothing at all."

"Then how did we get here?"

"We may never know. Some new Implementation policy? Or maybe the Mist Demons love you, Matt."

"I thought of that, too."

Mrs. Hancock returned to the kitchen.

"When you tried to sneak up to the Hospital," Hood continued, "you were spotted right away. You must have run through the electric-eye net. You didn't attempt to run?"

"They had four spotlights on me. I just stood up,"

"Then they ignored you? They let you walk away?"

"That's right. I kept looking back, waiting for that loudspeaker to say something. It never did. Then I ran."

"And the man who took you into the Hospital. Did anything happen just before he went insane and ran back to the gatehouse?"

"Like what?"

"Anything involving light--"

"No."

Hood looked disappointed. Laney said, "People seem to forget about you."

"Yah. It's been like that all my life. In school the teacher wouldn't call on me unless I knew the answer. Bullies never bothered me."

"I should have been so lucky," said Hood.

Laney wore the abstracted look of one tracing an idea.

"The eyes," said Harry Kane, and paused for thought. He had been listening without comment, in the attitude of The Thinker, jaw on fist, elbow on knee. "You said there was something strange about the guards' eyes."

"Yah, I don't know what. I've seen that look before, I think, but I can't remember--"

"What about the one who finally shot you? Anything odd about his eyes?"

"No."

Laney came out of her abstraction with a startled look. "Matt. Do you think Polly would have gone home with you?"

"What the Mist Demons does that have to do with anything?"

"Don't get mad, Matt. I've got a reason for asking."

"I can't imagine--"

"That's why you called in the experts."

"All right, yes. I thought she was going home with me."

Then she suddenly turned and walked away."

"Yah. The bitch just--" Matt swallowed the rest of it. Not until now, when he could feel his pain and rage and humiliation in bearable retrospect, did he realize how badly she'd stung him. "She walked away like she'd remembered something. Something more important than me, but not particularly important for all that. Laney, could it have been her hearing aid?"

"The radio? ... No, not that early. Harry, did you tell Polly anything by radio that you didn't tell the rest of us?'p

"I told her I'd call for her speech at midnight, after everyone had gone home. They could hear it through the radios. 'Otherwise, nothing."

"So she had no reason to drop me," said Matt. "I still don't see why we have to dig into this."

"It's strange," said Hood. "It can't hurt to look at anything strange in your young life."

Laney said, "Did you resent it?"

"Damn right I did. I hate being left flat like that, toyed with and then dropped."

"You didn't offend her?"

"I don't see how I could have. I didn't get drunk tell afterward."

"You told me its happened before like that."

"Every time. Every damn time, until you. I was virgin until Friday night." Matt looked belligerently around him. Nobody said anything. "That's why I can't see how it helps to talk about it. Dammit, it isn't unusual in my young life."

Hood said, "Its unusual in Polly's young life. Polly's not a tease. Am I wrong, Laney?"

"No. She takes her sex seriously. She wouldn't make a play for someone she didn't want. I wonder...

"I don't think I was kidding myself, Laney."

"Neither do I. You keep saying something was strange about the guards' eyes. Was there anything strange about Polly's eyes?"

"What are you getting at?"

"You claim every time you're getting ready to lose your virginity to a girl, she drops you. Why? You aren't ugly. You probably don't have the habit of being grossly impolite. You weren't with me. You bathe often enough. Was there something about Polly's eyes?"

"Dammit, Laney ... Eyes." Something changed in Polly's face. She seemed to be listening to something only she could hear. She certainly wasn't looking at anything; her eyes went past him and through, him, and they looked blind ...

"She looked abstracted. What do you want me to say? She looked like she was thinking of something then she walked away."

"Was it sudden, this loss of interest? Did she--"

"Laney, what do you think? I drove her away deliberately?" Matt jumped to his feet. He couldn't take any more; he was wires stretched on a bone frame, every wire about to break. Nobody had ever so assaulted his privacy! He had never imagined that a woman could share his bed, listen in sympathy to all the agony of the secrets that had shaped his soul, and then spill everything she knew into a detailed, clinical roundtable discussion! He felt like one who has been disassembled for the organ banks, who, still aware, watches a host of doctors probing and prodding his separated innards with none-too-clean hands, hears them making ribald comments about his probable medical and social history.

And he was about to say so, in no mild terms, when he saw that nobody was looking at him.

Nobody was looking at him.

Laney was staring into the artificial fire; Hood was looking at Laney; Harry Kane was in his Thinker position. None of them were really seeing anything, at least not anything there in the room. Each wore an abstracted look.

"One problem," Harry Kane said dreamily. "How the blazes are we going to free the rest of us, when only four of us escaped?" He glanced around at his inattentive audience, then went back to contemplating his navel from the inside.

Matt felt the hair stir on his head. Harry Kane had looked right at him, but he certainly hadn't seen Matt Keller. And there was something very peculiar about his eyes.

Like a man in a wax museum, Matt bent to look into Harry Kane's eyes.

Harry jumped as if he'd been shot. "Where the blazes did you come from?" He stared as if Matt had dropped from the ceiling Then he said, "Umm ... oh! You did it."

There wasn't a doubt of it. Matt nodded. "You all suddenly lost interest in me."

"What about our eyes?" Hood seemed about to spring at him, he was so intense.

"Something. I don't know. I was bending down to see, when"--Matt shrugged--"it wore off."

Harry Kane used a word your publisher will cut.

Hood said, "Suddenly? I don't remember its being sudden."

"What do you remember?" Matt asked.

"Well, nothing, really. We were talking about eyes was it about Polly? Sure, Polly. Matt, did it bother you to talk about it?"

Matt growled in his throat.

"Then that's why you did whatever you did. You didn't want to be noticed."

Probably.

Hood rubbed his hands briskly together. "So. We know you've got something, anyway, and it's under your control. Your subconscious control. Well!" Hood became a professor looking around at his not-too-bright class. "What questions are still unanswered?

"For one, what do the eyes have to do with anything? For another, why was a guard eventually able to shoot you and store you away? For a third, why would you use your ability to drive girls away?"

"Mist Demons, Hood! There's no conceivable reason--'

"Keller."

The voice was a quiet command. Harry Kane was back in Thinker position on the couch, staring off into space. "You said Polly looked abstracted. Did we look abstracted a moment ago?"

"When you forgot about me? Yah."

"Do I look abstracted now?"

"Yah. Wait a minute." Matt stood up and walked around Harry, examining him from different sides. He should have looked like a man deep in thought. Thinker position: chin on fist, elbow on knee; face lowered, almost scowling; motionless; eyes hooded ... Hooded? But clearly visible.

"No, you don't. There's something wrong."

"Your eyes."

"Round and round we go," Harry said disgustedly. "Well, get down and look at my eyes, for the Mist Demons' sake!"

Matt knelt on the indoor grass and looked up into Harry's eyes. No inspiration came. A wrongness there, but where? ... He thought of Polly on Friday night, when they stood immersed in noise and elbows, and talked nose-to-nose. They'd touched from time to time, half accidentally, hands and shoulders brushing ... He'd felt the warm blood beating in his neck ... and suddenly--

"Too big," said Matt. "Your pupils are too big. When somebody really isn't interested in what's going on around him, the pupils are smaller."

"What about Polly's eyes?" Hood probed. "Dilated or contracted?"

"Contracted. Very small. And so were the guards' eyes, the ones who came for me this morning." He remembered how surprised they'd been when he yanked on the handcuffs, the handcuffs that still dangled from his wrists. They hadn't been interested in him; they'd merely unlocked the chains from their own wrists. And when they'd looked at him--"That's it. That's why their eyes looked so funny. The pupils were pinpoints."

Hood sighed in relief. "Then that's all of it," he said, and got up. "Well, I think I'll see how Lydia's doing with dinner."

"Come back here." Harry Kane's voice was low and murderous. Hood burst out laughing.

"Stop that cackling," said Harry Kane. "Whatever Keller's got, we need it. Talk!"

Whatever Keller's got, we need-it. Matt felt he ought to protest. He didn't intend to be used by the Sons of Earth. But he couldn't interrupt now.

"It's a very limited form of telepathy," said Jay Hood. "And because it is so very limited, it's probably more dependable than more general forms. Its target is so much less ambiguous." He smiled. "We really ought to have a new name for it. Telepathy doesn't apply, not quite."

Three people waited patiently but implacably.

"Matt's mind," said Hood, "is capable of controlling the nerves and muscles which dilate and contract the iris of another man's eye." And he smiled, waiting for their response.

"So what?" asked Harry Kane. "What good is that?"

"You don't understand? No, I suppose you don't. It's more in my field. Do you know anything about motivational research?"

Three heads waggled No.

"The science was banned on Earth long, long ago because its results were being used for immoral advertising purposes. But they found out some interesting things first. One of them involved dilation and contraction of the pupil of the eye.

"It turns out that if you show a man something and measure his pupil with a camera, you can tell whether it interests him. You can show him pictures of his country's political leaders, in places where there are two or more factions, and his eyes will dilate for the leader of his own. Take him aside for an hour and talk to him, persuade

to change his political views, and his pupils will dilate for the other guy. Show him pictures of pretty girls, and the girl he calls prettiest will have dilated pupils. He doesn't know it. He only knows she looks interested. In him.

"I wonder," said Hood, smiling dreamily at himself. Some people love to lecture. Hood was one. "Could that be the reason the most expensive restaurants are always dark? A couple comes in, they look at each other across a dinner table, and they both look interested. What do you think?"

Harry Kane said, "I think you'd better finish telling us about Keller."

"He has," said Laney. "Don't you see? Matt's afraid of being seen by someone. So he reaches out with his mind and contracts the man's pupils whenever he looks at Matt. Naturally the man can't get interested in Matt."

"Exactly." Hood beamed at Laney. "Matt takes a reflex and works it in reverse to make it a conditioned reflex. I knew light had something to do with it. You see, Matt? It can't work unless your victim sees you. If he hears you, or if he gets a blip when you cross an electric-eye beam--'

"Or if I'm not concentrating on being scared. That's why the guard shot me."

"I still don't see how it's possible," said Laney. "I helped you do your research on this, Jay. Telepathy is reading minds. It operates on the brain, doesn't it?"

"We don't know. But the optic nerve is brain tissue, not ordinary nerve tissue."

Harry Kane stood up and stretched. "That doesn't matter. It's better than anything the Sons of Earth have put together. It's like a cloak of invisibility. Now we have to figure out how to use it."

The missing car was still missing. It was nowhere in the Implementation garages; it had not been found by the search squad, neither in the air nor on the ground. If policeman had taken it out for legitimate purposes, would have been visible; if it had not been visible, it would have been in trouble of some kind, and the pilot would have phoned a Mayday. Apparently it really had be stolen.

To Jesus Pietro, it was disturbing. A stolen car was one thing; an impossible stolen car was another.

He had associated Keller with miracles: with the miracle that had left him unhurt when his car fell into the void mist, with the miracle that had affected Hobart's memory last night. On that assumption he had sounded the "Prisoners Loose." And, lo! there were prisoners running amok in the corridors.

He had associated missing prisoners with a missing car with the miracles of Keller. Thus he had assumed a stole car where no car could have been stolen. And, lo! a car had indeed been stolen.

Then Major Jansen had called from the vivarium. No body had noticed, until that moment, that the sleep helmets were still running. How, then, had ninety-eight prisoners walked away?

Miracles! What the blazes was he fighting? One man, many? Had Keller been passenger or driver of that car? Had there been other passengers? Had the Sons of Earth discovered something new, or was it Keller alone?

That was an evil thought. Matthew Keller, come back from the void in the person of his nephew to haunt his murderer ... Jesus Pietro snorted.

He'd doubled the guard at the Alpha-Beta Bridge. Knowing that the bridge was the only way off the cliff and across the Long Fall River at the bottom, he had nonetheless set guards along the cliff edge. No normal colonist could leave Alpha Plateau without a car. (But could something abnormal walk unseen past the guards?)

And no fugitive would leave in a police car. Jesus Pietro had ordered all police cars to fly in pairs for the duration. The fugitives would be flying alone. As part colonist, Jesus Pietro had not been allowed to hear Millard Parlette's speech, but he knew it was over. Crew cars were flying again. If the fugitives stole a crew car, they might have a chance. But the Hospital would be informed immediately if a crew car was stolen. (Really? A police car had been stolen, and he'd had to find out for himself.)

Nobody and nothing had been found in the abandoned coral houses. (But would anything important have been seen?)

Most of the escaped prisoners were safe in the vivarium. (From which they had escaped before, without bothering to turnoff their sleeper helmets.)

Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts.

It would require brand new techniques.

Grimly he set out to evolve them.

The arguments began during dinner.

Dinner took place at the unconventional hour of three o'clock. It was good, very good. Lydia Hancock still looked like a sour old harridan, but to Matt, anyone who could cook like her deserved the benefit of the doubt. They had finished the mutton chops when Harry Kane turned to business.

"There are five of us left," he said. "What can we do to get the rest of us loose?"

"We could blow the pumping station," Hood suggested. It developed that the pumping station, which supplied Alpha Plateau with water from the Long Fall was the crew's only source of water. It was located at the base of the Alpha-Beta cliff. The Sons of Earth had long ago planted mines to blow it apart. "It would give us a diversion."

"And cut off the power, too," said Matt, remembering that hydrogen for fusion can be taken from water.

"Oh, no. The power plants only use a few buckets of water in a year, Keller. A diversion for what, Jay? Any suggestions?"

"Matt. He got us out once. He can do it again, now that he knows--"

"Oh no you don't. I am not a revolutionary. I told you why I went to the Hospital, and I won't go there again."

Thus, the arguments.

On Matt's side there was little said. He wasn't going back to the Hospital. If he could, he would return to Gamma and live out his life there, trusting his psi power to protect him. If he had to live elsewhere--even if he had to spend the rest of his life in hiding on Alpha Plateau-so be it. His life might be disrupted now, but it was not worthless enough to throw away.

He got no sympathy from anyone, not even from Laney. On their part the arguments ranged from appeals to his patriotism or to his love of admiration, to attacks on his personality, to threats of bodily harm to himself and his family. Jay Hood was the most vituperative. You would have thought he had invented "the luck of Matt Keller," that Matt had stolen it. He seemed genuinely convinced that he held a patent on psi power on the Plateau.

In a way it was ludicrous. They begged him, they browbeat him, they threatened him--and with never a chance of succeeding. Once they actually succeeded in frightening him, and once their personal comments annoyed him beyond the limits of patience. Both times the arguments ended abruptly, and Matt was left alone in his irritation while the Sons of Earth discussed whatever came to mind, their pupils contracting to pinpoints whenever they looked at him.

After the second such episode Harry Kane realized what was happening and ordered the others to lay off. It was interfering with their ability to make plans, he said.

"Go somewhere else," he told Matt. "If you're not going to help us, at least don't listen to our plans. Feeble though they'll probably be, there's no reason we should risk your hearing them. You might use the information to buy your way back into Castro's good graces."

"You're an ungrateful son of a bitch," said Matt, "and I demand an apology."

"Okay, I apologize. Now go somewhere else."

Matt went out into the garden.

The mist was back, but it was an overhanging mist now, turning the sky steel gray, bleaching colors out of the garden, turning the void from a fuzzy flat plain into a dome around the universe. Matt found a stone bench and sat down and put his head in his hands.

He was shaking. A mass verbal attack can do that to a man, can smash his self-respect and set up doubts which remain for hours or days or forever. There are well-developed verbal techniques for many to use against one. You never let the victim speak without interruption; never let him finish a sentence. You interrupt each other so that he can't quite catch the drift of your arguments, and then he can't find the flaws. He forgets his rebuttal points because he's not allowed to put them into words. His only defense is to walk out. If, instead, you throw him out...

Gradually his confusion gave way to a kind of sick, curdled anger. The ungrateful...! He'd saved their worthless lives twice, and where was their thanks? Well, he didn't need them. He'd never needed them for a moment.

He knew what he was now. Hood had given him that much. He knew, and he could take advantage of it.

He could become the world's first invulnerable thief. If Implementation would not let him resume his mining career, he would do just that. Weaponless, he could rob storehouses in broad daylight. He could pass guarded bridges unnoticed, be at work on Gamma while they were searching him out in every corner of Eta. Eta, now... a nice place to rob if he couldn't return to his old life. The crew gambling-resort must see half the wealth of the Plateau at one time or another.

He'd have a long walk to the Alpha-Beta Bridge, and a longer walk afterward. A car would be useful. Serve the Sons of Earth right if he took their car--but he'd have to wait till midnight. Did he want to do that?

His daydreams had calmed him still further. His shaking had stopped, and he wasn't as angry now. He could begin to see what had moved the four inside to attack him so, though he saw no justice in it for there was none. Laney, Hood, Harry Kane, Lydia--they must be fanatics, or why would they sell their lives for a hopeless revolution? Being fanatics, they would have only one ethic: to do anything in their power to advance their cause, no matter whom it might hurt.

He still didn't know where he went from here. One thing he knew: It would not involve the Sons of Earth. Otherwise he had plenty of time for decisions.

A chill thin breeze blew from the north. Gradually the fog was thickening.

The electric fire inside would be welcome.

But the thick hostility would not. He stayed where he was, hunching his back to the wind.

...Why in blazes would Hood assume he drove away women? Did Hood think he was crazy? Or deficient? No; he'd have used that during the arguments. Why, then?

He hadn't driven away Laney.

That memory warmed him. She was lost for good now; their paths would diverge, and someday she'd end in the organ banks. But Friday night had happened; Friday night was permanent...

...Polly's eyes. Her pupils had contracted, sure enough. Like the gatekeeper's eyes, like Harry's and Hood's and Laney's eyes when Matt had tired of their verbal onslaughts. Why?

Matt nibbled gently at his lower lip.

And if he'd driven Polly away (never mind why; there was no answer), then it was not her fault that she had gone.

But Laney had stayed.

Matt jumped to his feet. They'd have to tell him. He had a lever on them; they couldn't know how sure he was that he'd have nothing to do with their cause. And he had to know.

He turned toward the house and saw the cars--three of them, way up there in the gray sky, disappearing and reappearing around the mist. Dropping.

He stood perfectly still. He wasn't really convinced that they were landing here, though they grew bigger and closer every second. Finally they were just overhead and settling. And still he stood. For by then there was no place to run to, and he knew that only "the luck of Matt Keller" could protect him. It should work. He was certainly scared enough.

One of the cars almost landed on him. He was invisible, all right.

A tall, spare man got out of the car, moved his hands briefly inside the dashboard, and stepped back to avoid the wind as the car rose again and settled on the roof. The other cars had landed, and they were Implementation. A man disembarked and moved toward the tall civilian. They spoke briefly. The tall man's voice was high, almost squeaky, and it had the crew lilt. He was thanking the policeman for his escort. The policeman got back into the car, and both Implementation cars rose into the fog.

The tall man sighed and let himself slump. Matt's fear ebbed. This crew was no danger; he was a tired old man, worn out with years and with some recent toil. But what a fool Harry Kane had been to think nobody would come!

The man moved toward the house. Tired he might have been, but he walked straight, like a policeman on parade. Matt cursed softly and moved in behind him.

When the oldster saw the living room, he'd know someone had been there. He'd call for help unless Matt stopped him.

The old man opened the big wooden door and walked in. Matt was right behind him.

He saw the old man go rigid.

The ancient didn't try to scream. If he had a handphone, he didn't reach for it. His head turned from side to side, studying the living room from where he stood, taking in the abandoned glasses and pitcher and the glowing false fire. When his profile turned to Matt, he looked thoughtful. Not frightened, not angry. Thoughtful.

And when the old man smiled, it was a slow, tense smile, the smile of a chess player who sees victory almost within his grasp--or defeat, for his opponent might have set an unsuspected trap. The old man smiled, but the muscles of his face stood out iron-hard under the loose, wrinkled skin, and his fists tightened at his sides. He cocked his head to one side, listening.

He turned abruptly toward the dining room, and was face to face with Matt.

Matt said, "What are you grinning at?"

The crew batted an eyelash; he was discomposed for just that long. Speaking low, he asked, "Are you one of the Sons of Earth?"

Matt shook his head.

Consternation! And why that reaction? Matt held up a hand. "Don't do anything rash," he said. He'd wrapped a handcuff chain around that hand to make it a better weapon. The old man settled back on his heels. Three of him would have been no physical match for Matt.

"I'm going to search you," said Matt. "Raise your hands." He moved behind the old man and ran his hands over various pockets. He found some bulky objects, but no handphone.

He stood back, considering. He had never searched anyone; there might be tricks a man could use to fool him.

"What do you want with the Sons of Earth?"

"I'll tell them when I see them." The baritone lilt was not hard to understand, though Matt could never have imitated it.

"That won't do."

"Something very important has happened." The old man seemed to make a difficult decision. "I want to tell them about the ramrobot package."

"All right. Go ahead of me. That way."

They moved toward the dining room with Matt trailing.

Matt was about to yell when the door suddenly opened. Lydia Hancock had her nose and a sonic showing around the edge. It took her a second to realize that the man in the lead was not Matt, and then she fired.

Matt caught the old man as he fell. "Stupid," he said. "He wanted to talk to you."

"He can talk to us when he wakes up," said Lydia.

Harry Kane emerged warily, holding the other stolen sonic ready in his hand. "Any others?"

"Just him. He had a police escort but they left. Better search him; there might be a radio on him somewhere."

"Mist Demons! It's Millard Parlette!"

"Oh!" Matt knew the name, but he hadn't recognized the man. "I think he really wanted to see you. When he realized someone was here, he acted sneaky. He didn't panic until I told him I wasn't one of you. He said he wanted to talk about the ramrobot."

Harry Kane grunted. "He won't wake up for hours. Lydia, you're on guard duty. I'm going for a shower; I'll relieve you when I come down."

He went upstairs. Lydia and Hood picked up Millard Parlette, moved him into the front entrance; and sat him up against a wall. The old man had gone loose, like, a puppet without strings.

"A shower sounds wonderful," said Laney.

Matt said, "May I talk to you first? Hood too."

They got Jay Hood and went into the living room. Hood and Laney flopped in front of the fire, but Matt was, too restless to sit. "Hood, I've got to know. What makes you think I've been using my psi power to drive away women?"

"You'll recall it was Laney's idea first. But the evidence seems good. Do you doubt that Polly left because you contracted her irises?"

Of course he doubted it. But he couldn't back it up. He looked at Laney, waiting.

"It's important, isn't it, Matt?"

"Yah."

"You remember, just before the raid, when you asked me if everyone was as nervous as you were?"

"Mmm ... Yah, I remember. You said, 'Not that nervous, but still nervous.'

"What are you two talking about?"

"Jay, do you remember your first-mmm. Do you remember when you stopped being a virgin?"

Hood threw back his head and laughed. "What a question, Laney! Nobody ever forgets the first time! It was--'

"Right. Were you nervous?"

Hood sobered. "At one point, I was. There was so much I didn't know. I was afraid I'd make a fool of myself."

Laney nodded. "I'll bet everyone's nervous the first time. Including you, Matt. You suddenly realize, This Is It, and you get all tensed up. Then your girl's eyes go funny."

Matt said a bad word. This was exactly what he hadn't wanted to hear. "But what about us? Laney, why didn't I defend myself against you?"

"I don't know."

Hood snapped, "What difference does it make? Whatever you've got, you're not going to use it."

"I have to know!"

Hood shrugged and went to stand before the fire.

"You were pretty sloshed," said Laney. "Could that have had anything to do with it?"

"Maybe.

She couldn't have known why it was important, but she was trying to help. "Maybe its because I'm older than you. Maybe you decided I knew what I was doing."

"I didn't decide anything. I was too drunk. And too bitter."

She turned restlessly, her wrinkled party dress swirling out around her. She stopped. "Matt! I remember! It was pitch dark in there!"

Matt closed his eyes. Why, so it was. He'd stumbled unseeing across the bed; he'd had to turn on a light to see Laney at all. "That's it. I didn't even realize what was going on until the door was closed. Oookay," he sighed, letting all his breath rush out with the word, leaving him an empty man.

Hood said, "That's great. Are you finished with us?"

"Yah."

Hood left without looking back. Laney, on the verge of leaving, hesitated. Matt looked half dead, as if every erg of energy had been drained out of him.

She touched his arm. "What's wrong, Matt?"

"I drove her away! It wasn't her fault!"

"Polly?" She grinned into his eyes. "Why let it bother you? You got me the same night!"

"Oh, Laney, Laney. She could be in the organ banks! She could be in the coffin cure, whatever the hell that is."

"It's not your fault. If you'd found her in the vivarium--,

"Is it my fault that I was glad? She dropped me like a sick housecleaner, and an hour later Implementation took her away! And when I found out, I was glad! I had revenge!" His hands were on her upper arms, squeezing, almost hard enough to hurt.

"It wasn't your fault," she repeated. "You'd have saved her if you could."

"Sure." But he wasn't hearing her. He let go of her arms. "I've got to go after her," he muttered, saying the words aloud, trying the taste of them. "Yah. I've got to go after her."

He turned and made for the entrance.