pale hair and bundled it up into a knot. Dreams-of-War jerked away, snatching the coil from the doctor’s probing fingers.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Stop complaining.”
Dreams-of-War stood, fuming, as the doctor made the final preparations.
“Why couldn’t this be done in the Memnos Tower? They have a more extensive matrix there.”
“It’s off-limits for now,” the doctor said. “They have a client coming in who wants something special.”
“Special?”
“Someone all the way from Io-Beneath, apparently. You know that the matrices can be hired.”
Dreams-of-War gave a snort. “For the right price.”
“Of course. Now lie down. No, not there. With your feet facing the wall.”
Dreams-of-War did as she was instructed. The black light matrix sparkled over her, causing an itchy crackle to cross her skin and raise the hair on the back of her neck.
“Are you all right?” the doctor asked, clearly caring little as to the answer. “Not scared?”
“Of course I am not scared! I do not like the sensation, that is all.”
“No one living is supposed to like it. It brings you close to the Eldritch Realm, to the spirit dimensions.”
“I’ve faced death many times,” Dreams-of-War said, affronted.
“That is not what I meant. It is a neurophysiological reaction. In the case of we the living, consciousness is welded to body and brain, until the point of physical death when the particulates that compose the spirit detach from the shore-surface of the brain and leave the interface between the dimensions. You’re not about to die; you are, in fact, a long way away from it as a healthy young person. But now your spirit is trying to tug free, drawn by the matrix, and that is why you’re uncomfortable.”
Dreams-of-War squinted up at the doctor. “And if it did tug free, what then? Would I die?”
“Yes. Body and soul would part company, and then your essence would drift into the blatklight matrix and be snapped through into the Eldritch Realm. This is what befalls you when you enter the Chain, except that in there, people are held together by the internal structures. Usually. But nothing like that is going to happen to you now. I’m going to put you under—”
“Oh no, you are not!” But before Dreams-of-War could utter another word of protest, the doctor touched a sleep-pen to her neck. Dreams-of-War fell, snarling, between the warp and weft of life and death, and knew no more.
When she awoke, it was dark outside. She was lying on an ordinary metal bed, her head supported by an iron pillow. The armor reposed in a glistening lump on a table by the bedside. The doctor was nowhere to be seen.
Shakily, Dreams-of-War sat up. She could not see her underharness, but no matter.
“Armor!”
Instantly, Embar Khair’s armor uncurled itself from its resting form and flowed across her outstretched hand. Soon she was covered in familiar gleaming green. Dreams-of-War stood up, supported by the armor. She felt no different—at first. But when she looked into herself, she was conscious of a new, sore spot inside her head. Dreams-of-War probed it, imagining fingers gingerly touching, and the result was a flooding anxiety, an adrenaline rush that made her gasp. She closed her eyes, and had a sudden disquieting image of the interior of her mind. Normally as dark, hard, and resolute as metal, her inner self now contained a small hole, pink and tender from recent bleeding. The sensation was as compelling as a stolen tooth.
The door opened. The doctor’s face was disapproving beneath the high scarlet hat.
“You should not be on your feet! And who told you that you could get dressed?”
Dreams-of-War took a single stride across the room and seized the doctor by the throat.
“What have you done to me? What have you put in my head?”
“Rather,” the doctor said faintly, scrabbling at the hand around her neck, “you should be asking what it is that we have removed. Now let me go.”
“Removed?”
The doctor was gasping. The scalpel blade shot out from beneath her fingernail. Desiring answers, Dreams-of-War let go and experienced a curious and unfamiliar sense of relief.
“This is what I have done,” the doctor said, massaging her neck. “There is a psychological callus that is grown on the mind of a warrior, that increases day by day after your release from the growing-skin. It is that callus that enables you to act fearlessly, to make your goals your only focus, that permits you to go forth and slaughter your enemies with as little compunction as I feel when I swat a weed bug down from the wall at night. That emotional callus makes you everything that you are, and now it is gone. You will feel as a normal made-human feels. You will feel love, affection, need, and anxiety for a child.”
“I have no intention of having a child!” Sitting by a growing-skin for months while someone congealed within, followed by years of restriction and worry? No thanks.
“No, but you will be looking after one. An indifferent guardian is no guardian at all. You have to care. And Memnos is determined to make you care. I do not understand you warrior clans. What is wrong with having emotions?”
Dreams-of-War stared at her. “Nothing at all. Emotions are a fine and necessary thing—pride, aggression, loyalty . . . As for caring,” she added, bristling, “my duty as a warrior should be enough.”
“It seems Memnos does not think so.”
“How much have they told you about this child whom I am to guard?” Dreams-of-War asked.
“They have told me very little. In all probability,” the doctor added, “as little as they have told you.”
“And what about me?” Dreams-of-War asked uneasily. “If this—this cork in my psyche permitted me to function as a warrior, to kill without qualm, what will happen now that it is gone?”
“Since you have just recently embarked upon my throttling,” the doctor said, rubbing a bruised throat, “I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
CHAPTER 4
EARTH
Tersus Rhee waddled slowly through the chamber, checking with thick fingers the drip-feeds that led to the growing-skins, monitoring the minor changes and alterations that might token an incipient systems failure. They had already lost the previous children. If this one, too, failed, the Grandmothers had told her, then the project might have to be terminated. And that would be a great shame. The Grandmothers had gone to an immense amount of trouble on behalf of the child in the growing-skin. The services of Tersus Rhee herself had been procured. A Martian warrior was now on her way, at no small difficulty and expense, to guard the child.
Tersus Rhee, for various reasons of her own, did not want the project to
