“By the blood, Pol, sometimes I wonder where you’ve been all your life!”

Pol studied the passing buildings.

Gyde cleared his throat: “Where did you serve?”

“Sachiasus, Ephiphron, Mona Res,” Pol regurgitated names from Pol 137’s file, keeping his voice even.

“I had friends in Ephiphron. I heard it was cold there.”

Pol gave him a glare, a glare that might be read as either “of course it was cold” or “cold—are you crazy?” and certainly meant “get off my scarping back.”

The car felt stifling. Pol tried to think. Was Gyde suspicious? If he was, could Pol take him out? Even if he succeeded in killing Gyde and getting away with it, what then? There was still that upcoming physical. He would have to run. Run where?

But Gyde didn’t continue to question him. Instead, he began talking about a battle he’d been in, the Great Battle, the Battle of Cross-Plain.

“It was cold there, I can tell you. In the morning there were icicles hanging from the guns. It was the worst battle I ever saw, in twenty-five years of combat.”

“I’ve heard about it. What was it like?” Pol didn’t give a scarp about the Battle of Cross-Plain, but he was happy to let Gyde talk about himself, fill up the silence.

“I was an assistant to the commander. He made me stick close to him; that’s the only reason I survived. Entire units were decimated.” Gyde paused. “When we set up trophy we didn’t have enough men left to bury the dead. There were corpses stretched out for miles. We had to call a truce to deal with it. For two days we worked side by side with the enemy making bonfires of the bodies. You’d think fighting would have broken out, but there wasn’t a single incident. There were too many dead all around us already. We didn’t have the stomach for battle.”

“It sounds like a great glory.”

“It was. I earned a hundred merits for that battle.”

Pol stared at him in astonishment. “A hundred?”

“There were so few survivors,” Gyde said with a roguish wink and a smile.

They drove on quietly for a while. Pol pictured the battle in his mind, or tried to. He hadn’t been at that battle, he was sure, though he might have been. It had been fifteen years ago, and he had been old enough to fight if he’d really been a Silver. He didn’t think he’d been there, not even on the enemy side. But he did remember being in combat, vaguely. He got a brief impression of a desert and tanks. Desert?

“My best classmate from childhood was wounded,” Gyde said casually. “The femur in his right leg was shattered. I visited him in the infirmary. I could see, looking at it, that it would never be right. He wouldn’t be able to keep the leg. He knew it, too.”

There was something strange in Gyde’s voice. Pol turned to look at him.

“I said good-bye to him one day, and the next day when I went back, his bed was empty.” Gyde looked in the rearview mirror, then glanced over into his passenger’s eyes. “A warrior exists to serve the state, and when he can no longer serve…”

Pol understood; at last he understood Gyde’s insinuations about Silver retirement. He looked at Gyde’s clenched jaw and, with a chill of horror, he knew.

It must be true. If anyone would know such a thing, it would be Gyde.

“The state rewards service,” Pol said.

“Long live the state,” replied Gyde.

“There are no construction Irons with reading and writing on their profile, at least not working in this city.” Gyde ripped the printout from the telex. The results from Research had arrived while they were gone.

“We already agreed; he’s not an Iron.” Pol leaned against his desk, hands tucked in his pockets in case they started shaking. “He’s a Bronze construction worker, most likely a foreman or a guard.”

“Who hails from Madamar.”

“We’ll see. How long will it take to get the results on the Madamar search?”

Gyde was just sealing up the request. He went into the hall and motioned for an Iron runner to take it down to Research.

“I marked it ‘urgent,’ so the night staff will work on it. It ought to come in over the telex sometime tonight. By tomorrow morning, my friend…” Gyde winked. “Come in early.”

“I’ll take the first bus.”

Gyde strolled closer to Pol, getting very close. Gyde was occasionally given to displays of chummy, even paternal affection—a common-enough sight among Silvers. But this felt… different. Pol tensed up.

“What about tonight? What are you doing?” Gyde’s voice was a murmur.

“The usual. Have dinner, go to bed early. Do you need something done?”

“I was thinking we could go to the gymnasium together. Release some stress. Tomorrow will be a big day.”

Pol was momentarily speechless. Gyde’s words were seductive, but his smile was contradicted by glittering eyes—it was the smiling welcome of a dagger.

“Come on! I may be an old man, but I can still wrestle a middle-aged buck like you.”

“I trained this morning. I’m… tired.”

“You did not. I never see you at the gymnasium.” Gyde wrapped his hand around Pol’s bicep. “You have to stay fit, you know. Nothing more deformed than a flabby Silver.”

His hand was a shock. It gripped Pol’s arm, kneading it. There was something calculated in it, probing, testing. Pol felt a surge of repulsion and terror. He violently yanked his arm away.

He stood to his feet breathing hard, looking into Gyde’s half-lidded eyes. All he could see in those eyes was a cool and dangerous mercenary.

“Maybe next week,” Pol said stiffly.

“Sure. Sure.” Gyde’s face relaxed. The moment was over.

It was wrong, all wrong, but there was no way to salvage it. Pol mumbled his good-byes and left.

18.3. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott

The fertility clinic was a five-story monster stretching an entire city block. There was nothing remarkable about it other than its size. It was square and nondescript, with the occasional small blank window. It looked no less deserted than every other building in the City.

“Didn’t work very well, did it?” Nate commented as they stood on the street looking at it.

“What’s that?”

“Fertility.”

Jill agreed absently. She hadn’t wanted to come here this morning. She’d wanted to go to the antenna field, the one she still hadn’t gotten to see. But Nate had his heart set on the spaceport, and this had been the only alternative they could agree upon. Now that she was here, though, she was getting a wee bit curious.

“If fertility is their problem,” she said, “then it must have been a problem for a very long time. Species don’t die out overnight.”

“They would if they had your libido.”

“What!”

He grinned. “I said, ‘Let’s go inside; it would be neat-o!’ ”

She glared at him but couldn’t stop a laugh. “One of these days, Nate.”

“Don’t I wish.”

Inside, the power was on. Light panels lit a large, plain room with branching hallways. It was possibly a waiting room, though there were only two of the narrow molded chairs—both empty.

“Not expecting a crowd,” Nate remarked.

Jill looked around the room, but there was nothing much to see—plain white walls, no signs or directions or anything else. The hallways all looked the same. She tapped her collarbone, pondering which direction would be their best bet.

If fertility was the cause of this species’ demise, it would be an interesting point for her report. There had to be data somewhere, and with the help of the translator in her ear she might actually be able to read it. What she needed was a computer. She picked a hall and motioned for Nate to follow.

His tennis shoes made little squeaks on the future relative of a linoleum floor. Down each side of the hallway were regularly spaced doors, and at the end was another branching corridor. Jill tried a door on her right and found a small observation room, approximately four feet wide, consisting of a counter and computer facing a thick-paned window. Cautiously she stepped up into it.