She met his gaze in the reflector. Enjoy direct action? There was indeed a kind of elation in... violence.
'We have no Max now,' Schruille said.
'We'll waken another doppelganger,' she said. 'Security can function without him for now.'
'Who'll waken the doppelganger?' Schruille asked. 'Igan and Boumour are no longer with us. The pharmacist. Hand, is gone.'
'What's keeping Nourse?' she asked.
'Enzymic trouble,' Schruille said, a note of glee in his voice. 'He said something about a necessary realignment of his prescription. Bonellia hormone derivatives, I believe.'
'Nourse can awaken the doppelganger,' she said. She wondered momentarily then why they needed the doppelganger. Oh, yes. Max was gone.
'There's more to it than merely awakening Max's duplicate,' Schruille said. They're not as good as they once were, you know. The new Max must be educated for his role, fitted into it gently. It could be weeks... months.'
'Then one of us can run Security,' she said.
'You think we're ready for it?' Schruille asked.
There's a thrill in this sort of decision-making,' she said. 'I don't mind saying I've been deeply bored during the past several hundred years. But now - now, I feel alive, vital, alert, fascinated.' She looked up at the glowing banks of scanner eyes, a full band of them, showing their fellow Optimen watching activities in the Survey Room. 'And I'm not alone in this.'
Schruille glanced up at the glittering arctic circle of the globe's inner wall. 'Aliveness,' he murmured. 'But Max... he is dead.'
She remembered then, said, 'Any Max can be replaced.' She looked at Schruille, turning her head to stare past the prism. 'You're very blunt today, Schruille. You've spoken of death twice that I recall.''
'Blunt? I?' He shook his head. 'But I didn't erase Max.' She laughed aloud. 'My own reactions thrill me, Schruille!'
'And do you find changes in your enzymic demands?'
'A few. What is that? Times change. It's part of being. Adjustments must be made.'
'Indeed,' he said.
'Where'd they find a substitute for the Durant embryo?' she asked, her mind shooting off at a tangent.
'Perhaps the new Max can discover,' Schruille said.
'He must.'
'Or you will grow another Max?' Schruille said.
'Don't mock me, Schruille.'
'I wouldn't dare.'
Again, she looked directly at him.
'What if they produced their own embryo for the substitution?' Schruille asked.
She turned away. 'In the name of all that's proper, how?'
'Air can be filtered clean of contraceptive gas,' Schruille said.
'You're disgusting!'
'Am I? But haven't you wondered what Potter concealed?'
'Potter? We know what he concealed.'
'A person devoted to the preservation of life... such as that is,' Schruille said. 'What did he hide in his mind?'
'Potter is no more.'
'But what did he conceal?'
'You think he knew the source of the... outside interference?'
'Perhaps. And he would know where to find an embryo.'
Then the record will show the source, as you said yourself.'
'I've been reconsidering.'
She stared at him in the prism. 'It's not possible.'
That I could reconsider?'
'You know what I mean - what you're thinking.'
'But it is possible.'
'It isn't!'
'You're being stubborn, Cal. A female should be the last person to deny such a possibility.
'Now, you're being truly disgusting!'
'We know Potter found a self-viable,' Schruille pressed. They could have many self-viables - male and female. We know historically the capabilities of such raw union. It's part of our natural ancestry.'
'You're unspeakable,' she breathed.
'You can face the concept of death but not this,' Schruille said. 'Most interesting.'
'Disgusting!' she barked.
'But possible,' Schruille said.
The substitute embryo wasn't self-viable!' she pounced.
'All the more reason they've been willing to sacrifice it for one that was, eh?'
'Where would they find the vat facilities, the chemicals, the enzymes, the- ' 'Where they've always been.' 'What?'
They've put the Durant embryo back into its mother,' Schruille said. 'We can be certain of this. Would it not be equally logical to leave the embryo there to begin with - never remove it, never isolate the gametes in a vat at all?'
Calapine found herself speechless. She sensed a sour taste in her mouth, realized with a feeling of shock that she wanted to vomit. Something's wrong with my enzyme balance, she thought.
She spoke slowly, precisely, 'I am reporting to pharmacy at once, Schruille. I do not feel well.'
'By all means,' Schruille said. He glanced up and around at the watching scanners - a full circle of them.
Delicately, Calapine eased herself out of the throne, slid down the beam, to the lock segment. Before letting herself out, she cast a look up at the dais, faintly remembering. Which Max was... erased? she asked herself. We've had many of him... a successful model for our Security. She thought of the others. Max after Max after Max, each shunted aside when his appearance began to annoy his masters. They stretched into infinity, images in an endless system of mirrors.
What is erasure to such as Max? She wondered. I am an unbroken continuity of existence. But a doppelganger doesn't remember. A doppelganger breaks the continuity.
Unless the cells remember.
Memory... cells... embryos...
She thought of the embryo within Lizbeth Durant. Disgusting, but simple. So beautifully simple. Her gorge began to rise. Whirling, Calapine dropped down to the Hall of Counsel, ran for the nearest pharmacy outlet. As she ran, she clenched the hand that had slain Max and helped destroy a megalopolis. Seventeen
'SHE'S sick, I tell you!'
Harvey bent over Igan shaking him out of sleep. They were in a narrow earth-walled room, ceiling of plasmeld beams, a dim yellow glowglobe in one corner. Sleeping pads were spread against the walls, Boumour and Igan on two of them foot to foot, the bound form of Svengaard on another, two of the pads empty.
'Come quickly!' Harvey pleaded. 'She's sick.'
Igan groaned, sat up. He glanced at his watch - almost sunset on the surface. They'd crawled in here just before daylight and after a night of laboring on foot up seemingly endless woods trails behind a Forest Patrol guide. Igan still ached from the unaccustomed exercise.
Lizbeth sick?
She'd had three days since the embryo had been placed within her. The others had healed this rapidly, but they hadn't been subject to a night of stumbling along rough forest trails
'Please hurry,' Harvey pleaded.
'I'm coming,' Igan said. And he thought. Listen to his tone change now that he needs me.
Boumour sat up opposite him, asked, 'Shall I join you?'
'Wait here for Glisson,' Igan said.
'Did Glisson say where he was going?'
'To arrange for another guide. It'll be dark soon.'
'Doesn't he ever sleep?' Boumour asked.
'Please!' Harvey begged.
'Yes!' Igan snapped. 'What're her symptoms?'
'Vomiting... incoherent.'
'Let me get my bag.' Igan retrieved a thick black case from the floor near his head, glanced across at Svengaard. The man's breathing still showed the even rhythm of the narcotic they'd administered before collapsing into sleep themselves. Something had to be done about Svengaard. He slowed them down.
Harvey pulled at Igan's sleeve.
'I'm coming! I'm coming!' Igan said. He freed his arm, followed Harvey through a low hole at the end of the room and into a room similar to the one they'd just vacated. Lizbeth lay on a pad beneath a single glowglobe across from them. She groaned.
Harvey knelt beside her. 'I'm right here.'
'Harvey,' she whispered. 'Oh, Harvey.'
Igan joined them, lifted a pulmonometer-sphagnomometer from his bag. He pressed it against her neck, read the dial. 'Where do you hurt?' he asked.
'Ohhhh,' she moaned.
'Please,' Harvey said, looking at Igan. 'Please do something.'
'Stand out of the way,' Igan said.
Harvey stood up, backed off two steps. 'What is it?' he whispered.
Igan ignored him, taped an enzymic vampire gauge to Lizbeth's left wrist, read the dials.
'What's wrong with her?' Harvey demanded. Igan undipped his instruments, restored them to his bag. 'Nothing's wrong with her.'
'But she's-'
'She's perfectly normal. Most of the others reacted the same way. It's realignment of her enzymic demand system.'
'Isn't there some-'
'Calm down!' Igan stood up, faced Harvey. 'She barely needs any prescription material. Pretty soon, she can do without altogether. She's in better health than you are. And she could walk into a pharmacy right now. The prescription flag wouldn't even identify her.'
'Then why's she...?'
'It's the embryo. It compensates for her needs to protect itself. Does it automatically.'
'But she's sick!'
'A bit of glandular maladjustment, nothing else.' Igan picked up his bag. 'It's all part of the ancient process. The embryo says produce this, produce that. She produces. Puts a certain strain on her system.'
'Can't you do anything for her?'
'Of course I can. She'll be extremely hungry in a little while. We'll give her something to settle her stomach and then feed her. Provided they can produce some food in this hole.'
Lizbeth groaned, 'Harvey?'
He knelt beside her, clasped her hands. 'Yes, dear?'
'I feel terrible.'
They'll give you something in a few minutes.'