Kane felt the repulsion and snarling animal-fear rise within him. The hybrids were alien, more alien than human. Arrogance lay in their peaceful faces and relaxed bodies, which were bent almost in attitudes of prayer. They represented the future of the earth.
He whirled and walked away, feeling as though he were swimming through a tidal wave of fear. After a moment, Grant and Brigid fell into step behind him. A few paces past the nursery, they reached the cryptor at least that was the first word that popped into Kane’s mind upon seeing it.
Behind frost-streaked glass, naked men and women of all races were entombed, frozen in time. There were dozens of them. They stood in orderly rows, each one upright inside a transparent cryonic tube, arms crossed sedately over their chests. Their bodies had the appearance of pale blue ice, not only in color but composition. Their eyes were closed and they seemed to be slumbering.
“Cold storage,” said Brigid with a shiver of repulsion. “Probably where the best of the best are kept.”
“What do you mean?” Grant asked.
“What Lakesh saidpurity control. The purest bloodlines, the highest sperm counts, the most perfect ovum. Everything to be cloned and spliced.”
“Are they dead or just preserved?”
Brigid shook her head. “It doesn’t matter to them anymore.”
Kane scanned the bodies dispassionately, started to turn away, then focused his vision on the body of one man. He had seen that face before, though it was now carved in ice and relaxed in a forever sleep. He was looking at his father.
The realization entered Kane’s soul, it clawed at his heart, it sent tentacles of torment into his brain. His spirit was shriveling, all conscious thought blotted out. Shock held him rigid. He opened his mouth, but at first nothing came out.
“Dad?” he asked, very quietly.
“You say something?” Grant inquired. He and Brigid looked at Kane questioningly.
Kane shook his head and walked blindly past his companions. His numb shock slowly gave way to a deep, visceral ache. He tried to collect his thoughts as he walked. He sought frantically for an anchor. A vision of his father, his mother and himself as a child hovered in his dimming mind. He began to run, his breath scraping in his throat, eyes burning with tears. He had wondered just last night if a Magistrate could weep. Now he knew.
The baron had said, “Kane, as your father before, you are now offered the opportunity to serve a greater cause.” And later added, “You possess an admirable facility for seeking out answers. A facility shared by your father.”
Salvo had said, “You know already. You just don’t know that you know.”
A glass-fronted, metal-framed double door loomed ahead of him. It was the only way out of the area, and it was locked. He kicked it open and lurched through it, panting. Sweat crawled between his armor and his skin.
He found himself in a maze of cool white corridors. Static-dust-collector screens and ventilator ducts were everywhere. Small-bore pipelines ran along the right wall, and he followed them, knowing they had to lead to a pumping station and a way back to the surface.
He kept running, not able to differentiate between the sound of his own rapid footfalls or those of Brigid and Grant racing behind him. In his ear, he heard Grant’s breathless call.
He said, or thought he said, “Go back. Don’t follow me.”
“Kane! Use your head. We’re short on time and you’re short on brains! Stop and think. You don’t know what’s down there!”
Kane slowed down, but only because he was winded. There was nothing ahead of him he could possibly dread more than what lay behind.
He stopped in an alcove where cold, vinegary-smelling air dried the sweat on his face. The corridor terminated a few feet away at a door made of heavy-gauge wire mesh. A vague brightness lay beyond it.
Kane crouched there, gasping for air, ready to kill or to die or both. He heard voices on the other side of the door, and shadows flitted past the mesh. One voice he immediately recognized. He tensed, relaxed, then walked to the door. The voices had receded.