Everyone who enjoyed full ville citizenship was a descendant of the Genome Project. Sometimes a particular gene carrying a desirable trait was grafted to an unrelated egg, or an undesirable gene removed. Despite many failures, when there was a success, it was replicated repeatedly, occasionally with variations. Lakesh had admitted that Kane was one such success, one that he himself had covertly been involved with.
Some forty years ago, when Lakesh determined to build a resistance movement against the baronies, he rifled Scenario Joshua’s genetic records to find the qualifications he deemed the most desirable. He used the Archon Directorate’s own fixation with purity control against them. By his own confession, he was a physicist cast in the role of an archivist, pretending to be a geneticist, manipulating a political system that was still in a state of flux.
Brigid had assumed from his confession and his genuine expression of regret that Lakesh had learned his lesson. Rouch’s blithe words proved he had not. Moreover, the implications that he found herand presumably Domi and DeForelacking in the ability to produce the desired type of children did more than anger her. It stunned her, grieved her beyond the power to put it into words.
From a strictly clinical point of view, what Rouch claimed made sense. To ensure that Kane’s superior qualities were passed on, mating with him was the most logical course of action. Without access to the techniques of fetal development outside the womb, the conventional means of procreation was the only option.
But acknowledging its logic did not make her feel better. Intellect and emotions rioted within her. She had always feared to closely examine her feelings for Kane, frightened they were far too intense for her to deal with.
Their relationship was guarded, sometimes tense. Brigid assumed it was due to the fact she took pride in cool analytical thinking while Kane exhibited emotionalism, citing his instincts more than rational analysis. But she knew there were far deeper factors at work, as well.
Twice over the past few months Brigid had faced, then turned away from, the possibility that her soul and Kane’s had been intertwined for a very long time, reincarnated over and over, destined to always find each other. Neither one of them had cared to seriously entertain such a concept. They were not and never had been romantically involved.
He had risked his life on a number of occasions for her, but only once had he ever called her by her first name. Only a few days before, he had kissed her, but it had been an impulsive act, something to celebrate the fact that they had survived their trip back into time. Afterward he seemed a little embarrassed.
Rouch leaned forward, commanding her attention again. Her eyes shone, and Brigid knew she was thinking of Kane, too, but only of his virility and of the novelty of bedding a former Magistrate.
“Tell me,” she urged. “What’s he like? What does he like? Is he rough? I’ll bet he is”
Brigid clenched her fists, struggling with the almost overwhelming desire to punch the young woman in the face.
The double doors slammed open. Kane stood there, bare-chested, shirt around his neck, his mobile features set and drawn into a grim mask.
Chapter 6
Rouch gazed at Kane boldly. Her eyes rested for a long time on his groin, and Brigid saw her lips move in what could only have been anticipation.
The sight of the naked woman didn’t appear to move him at all. Kane gave Rouch an incurious, dispassionate glance, then said, “Baptiste, we need to talk. Alone.”
For a long, tense moment, no one moved or spoke. Then, languorously, Rouch rose to her feet, made a deliberately slow show of unwrapping the towel from her hair and dropping it to the tiles. Hips swinging, she sauntered over to the shelves and pulled down a robe. She took a provocatively long time putting it on and closing it up. The words gaudy slut leaped unbidden into Brigid’s mind, but she managed to keep them from her tonguejust barely.
As Rouch padded barefoot past Kane, one of her long fingernails traced a line on his arm. “Let’s do dinner,” she said, her voice a husky, seductive croon. “Or breakfast.”