James Axler – Parallax Red Parallax Red

“Baptiste,” she said in a low voice.

“Rouch. How’s the water?”

“A little cold.”

Brigid noted wryly that Rouch didn’t need to tell her that. The woman was completely naked, and the nipples of her pear-shaped breasts jutted out like wooden pegs.

Brigid unzipped her bodysuit and slid out of it. Though she wasn’t particularly modest, she didn’t take off her underclothes. Nor did she test the water’s temperature with a toe before plunging into the pool in a flat dive.

Just like Rouch said, the water was cold, but not frigid. Still, she surfaced goosefleshed and gasping, raking her heavy hair out of her eyes.

“Told you,” said Rouch, crossing a pair of exquisitely molded legs.

“I’m an empiricist,” Brigid replied, backstroking to the far end.

Rouch cocked her head at a quizzical angle. “What’s that?”

For a moment, Brigid wondered if she were joking, but the young woman’s puzzlement seemed genuine. She swam back to her, propping an arm on the edge of the pool.

“You’re from Sharpeville?”

Rouch nodded, leaning backward to pull a towel from a shelf.

“What level did you work on?”

Bending forward, Rouch wrapped the towel around her wet hair like a turban. “D.”

Brigid knew her eyebrows drew down to the bridge of her nose in a frown, but she couldn’t help herself. All the villes were built along the same specs, conforming to the Program of Unification’s standards fifty-foot-high walls with Vulcan-Phalanx gun towers mounted at each corner.

Inside the walls, the elite lived in the Enclaves, four multileveled towers joined together by pedestrian walkways. Each tower was connected by a major promenade to the Administrative Monolith, a massive cylin-der of white stone projecting three hundred feet into the air, the tallest building in the villes.

Every level of the Administrative Monolith fulfilled a specific ville function. Alpha Level held the administrative offices, Beta Level housed the Historical Division and the Magistrate Division was on Level C, which deviated from the Greek Alphabet upon which the names were based, but maybe it was a tribute to the Magistrates in some waythat they were different from the rest. D, or Delta, Level was devoted to the growth, preservation and distribution of food stuffs. Epsilon Level was a manufacturing and construction facility.

“Were you a nutritionist?” asked Brigid.

Rouch blinked at her in mild surprise. “No, I was in the packaging department.”

It was Brigid’s turn to blink in surprise. An expert in food packaging seemed about as essential to the work of Cerberus as an expert in flower arranging.

Hoping she didn’t sound rude, Brigid said gently, “Certainly that’s not your only field of expertise, or you wouldn’t be here.”

Rouch’s lips stretched in a confident smile, slightly touched with superiority. “Oh, now I see what you’re asking. I’m here because of myhow did Lakesh put it?exceptionally strong female drives. I’m also very fertile.”

Brigid narrowed her eyes. “I don’t get you.”

“I guess I’m what you’d call a breeder. And that’s something I want to talk to you about. Are you and Kane together?”

Mind reeling with surprise and extrapolations, Brigid murmured again, ‘_3 don’t get you.”

Rouch inched closer to her, her confident smile be-coming conspiratorial. “I mean are you fucking him? Not that it makes any difference to me, but the sooner I get started with him, the sooner we can find out how strong his seed is. Lakesh said it was potent, but”

Brigid raised a preemptory hand, sloshing water on the woman’s ankles. “Hold on,” she said firmly, doing her best to keep anger out of her voice. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re saying Lakesh brought you here solely to be impregnatedby Kane?”

Rouch laughed, a musical tinkling sound. “Not just by him, but he’s the one I want to strap on first. Lakesh told me the other women here have fertility problems or genetic abnormalities, like that little albino.”

Rouch continued speaking, but her words were muted by the pounding of furious blood in Brigid’s ears.

She knew the Overproject Excalibur division of the Totality Concept dealt primarily with bioengineering. One of its subdivisions, Scenario Joshua, had its roots in the twentieth century’s Genome Project, and shared the goal of the mapping of human genomes to specific chromosomal functions and locations. The end result had been in vitro genetic samples of the best of the best. In the vernacular of the time, it was referred to as purity control.