She recognized one of three cushioned examination tables and the pair of metal rods at one end, which had held her ankles in clamps.
Sindri pulled a pair of stools close to one of the tables. Hopping up on one, he pointed Brigid imperiously toward the other. Face completely expressionless, she complied with his silent command.
Sindri inspected her features with an intense gaze before saying, “Please do me the courtesy of explaining your unseemly display of mirth.”
“Why should I?”
“I thoughtI hoped you and I had reached common ground based on mutual respect.”
Tersely she said, “I experienced the kind of respect you hold me in.”
He propped his chin up on his hand. “Necessity drove me to desperate measures. You’ve done the same for the cause of self-preservation. I didn’t want you to remember it.”
“You harvested ovum from me.” She made a declaration, not an inquiry.
“Yes, in order to create recombinant gametes. Are you familiar with the terminology?”
“Gametes with new gene combinations of chromosomes,” Brigid answered curtly, “formed as a result of crossing over. Do you know what polar bodies are?”
Sindri’s eyebrows raised a trifle. “Nonfunctional cells resulting from unequal division during the maturation of egg cells. Why do you ask?”
“Because that’s what you probably took from me. Your plan to splice Grant’s, Kane’s and my genes with those of the transadapts and implant them in a female won’t work. Like the females here, I’m barren.”
Sindri’s body and face twitched, as if he had received an electric shock. He groped for something to say, then finally hissed, “You’re making that up. You’re lying to me.”
She shook her head. “I’m telling you the truth. I found out about it right before we left for Parallax Red . Not even Kane and Grant know about it. You’re the one who is lyingyou’ve been lying to us since the moment we met.”
Sindri didn’t respond to her last comment. “Is your condition treatable, reversible?”
“I don’t know. I was exposed to radiation of an unknown type a couple of months ago.”
“There are therapies, treatments, you know. Perhaps”
Brigid cut him off with a sharp, slashing gesture of her right hand. “What’s your real agenda, Sindri? The truth behind all of your martyrdom and devotion to easing the suffering of your people?”
He bristled at her sarcasm, glaring at her. Brigid met his glare, matching it in intensity. Suddenly the little man threw back his head and laughed.
“Yes, I suppose the masquerade was wearing rather thin, wasn’t it? I should’ve have realized that I couldn’t gull you indefinitely. The company of transadapts has ruined me for a true test of my intellectual steel.”
“What is it you want?”
Sindri shrugged. “What does any man want? Love, security, realized ambitions.”
“Which are?”
“To be the master of my own fate, beholden to no one. Certainly you can relate to that, raised in the kind of life you were.”
“Of course,” Brigid replied. “But we differ on the means of achieving it.”
“Perhaps.” He reached out to touch her hand, but she pulled it away. She noted the quick flash of anger glinting in his eyes.
“You don’t like to have your will, even your whims, thwarted,” she observed.
“Who does?” he retorted.
“No one, but it’s a simple fact of existence. Only spoiled children and sociopaths can’t come to terms with it.”
He groaned. “Now you sound like Pop.”
“Is he really your father?”
A corner of Sindri’s mouth quirked in a sour smile.
“Biologically, yes. In every other aspect of fatherhood, he failed miserably. Although I understand he truly loved my mother, which was in itself not a crime, but the physical expression of it certainly was. After my birth and her death, he accepted his exile gratefully.”
“Once in the pyramid, he tampered with the transmitter’s frequencies and set up disharmonious resonances in the humans here?”
“He did indeed.” Sindri sighed. “He implies now he did it intentionally to punish the compound, so the transadapts could eventually outlive the humans and take over Cydonia.”
“You don’t believe him?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. “For a long time, I did not. Now, especially after today, I’m not so sure. Regardless, the song must be stopped.”