his dinner.
“Selene’s a terrific place,” Torre was going on, oblivious to her inattention. “You’d love it there. I could get you a reservation in the best suite in the Hotel Luna.”
“That would be nice,” Deirdre said absently.
Once they finished dinner they had to walk past the table where Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn were still sitting over coffee and dessert. Andy followed Deirdre with his eyes. She could feel him staring at her back as she left, her arm firmly in Torre’s grip.
As they neared Deirdre’s door, Torre said, “They’ve got Jan and me quartered down in the third wheel.”
“Not up here, with everybody else?” Deidre asked, stopping in front of her door.
“No,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. “I’ve got to go all the way down there.” Then his face brightened impishly. “Unless you let me stay in your place!”
Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t think so, Franklin.”
“Frankie,” he said softly, reaching for her.
Deirdre fended off his grasping hands. “Frankie, I think you ought to go back to your own place now.”
He raised both hands in mock surrender. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Dee.”
Thinking that she knew exactly what she was rejecting, Deirdre said, “You’re rushing too fast, Frank.”
He took the rebuff easily enough. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow down in the lab we’ve rigged in the third wheel, then.”
“That’s fine, Frankie,” said Deirdre. “I’ve got to go down there anyway to work with the dolphins.”
Grinning at her, he said, “See you tomorrow, then.”
Deirdre felt grateful that he wasn’t more aggressive. He could use his nanotech work to pressure me, she thought. But he didn’t. Maybe he will later, but for now he’s being pretty reasonable. For now.
That night she dreamed of dolphins. And Andy Corvus watching her swimming with a sad, betrayed expression on his slightly misshapen face.
The day was long and difficult. After giving a blood sample to Janet Torre, Deirdre spent the morning in the dolphin tank, swimming with Baby and learning more of her vocabulary. Baby chattered and clicked away, usually faster than the translator built into Deirdre’s swim mask could follow. But one thing came through clearly: Baby’s parents had told the young dolphin the tales that they had heard about the open sea, the endless water that was too deep to reach the bottom, where tasty squid darted in numbers too big to count and the upper layers were warm with sunlight and wave-tossed.
“They’re not happy here, Andy,” she told Corvus once she had climbed out of the tank. “They want to be in the ocean, free.”
Corvus shook his head. “Baby’s never been in the open ocean, Dee. Her parents were scooped out of the sea when they were practically newborns, younger than Baby is now.”
“But they remember the ocean,” Deirdre said as she toweled off. “At least, they remember tales they’ve been told about it.”
She thought that this sign of intelligence would please Andy. But he merely shook his head and replied, “I suppose we ought to write a paper about it.”
“We certainly should,” said Deirdre.
Corvus chewed his lip for a moment, then said, “Looked like you and that new guy had a good time at dinner last night.”
“Frankie?” Deirdre blurted. “He’s one of the nanotechnicians from Selene.”
“I know.”
“They’re going to get rid of the viruses in my body.”
Corvus said forlornly, “That’s more than I can do for you.”
NANOTECH LABORATORY
For three days Deirdre spent her time mostly in the third wheel, giving blood samples to the Torres and then swimming with the dolphins while Corvus watched her, glum and sad-eyed. Each evening she had dinner with Franklin Torre, fearing that it would be terribly ungrateful of her to refuse him. After all, Deirdre told herself, he’s come all the way from Selene to help me. The least I can do is be sociable.
Torre always made halfhearted passes at her after dinner and always took her rebuffs with rueful good grace. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said each time. Deirdre simply smiled and said good night.
Once alone in her quarters, she began to study the files of the leviathans’ imagery. Sitting at her little desk, staring intently at the display screen on the wall, Deirdre tried her best to make some sense of the aliens’ images. But the images were incomprehensible to her. They didn’t seem to represent anything visually. They’re abstracts, she thought, nothing but splashes of color that flash on and off so fast I can barely make out their shapes. I haven’t a clue to what they could possibly mean.
When she entered the makeshift nanotech lab on the fourth morning Franklin Torre announced, “Our little bugs are starting to work.”
“They are?”
Pointing elatedly to a graph on the rollup display screen taped to the bulkhead, Torre said, “Look at the red curve. It’s definitely taken a downward trend.”
Janet, smiling just like her brother, said, “By the time you go down to the ocean your system will be rid of the virus completely.”
“That’s wonderful!” Deirdre said.
“I think we ought to celebrate,” said Franklin. “How about dinner tonight?”
“Again? We’ve had dinner together every night since you arrived here,” Deirdre said.
“Yeah, but tonight should be special,” Torre countered. “Tonight we can toast to victory over the rabies virus.”
Deirdre nodded, but in her mind’s eye she saw Andy’s disconsolate face. “Dinner,” she murmured, feeling that she was doing the wrong thing.
“Are you all right?” Janet asked.
“Yes,” said Deirdre. “Fine.”
“No puncturing today,” Franklin said happily. “We won’t need any more blood samples.”
“That’s good.”
Janet handed her a plastic cup of orange juice. “Your morning cocktail,” she said. “Chock-full of nanobugs.”
Deirdre accepted the cup from her and sipped at it.
Glancing at her brother, who was intently peering at a laptop display, Janet asked softly, “Are you really okay? You look a little … unsettled.”
“I’m worried about Andy … Dr. Corvus.”
“Oh?” Her hazel eyes widened.
“It’s … personal,” said Deirdre.
With a nod, Janet called to her brother, “Frankie, I’m going to walk Deirdre over to the dolphin tank. You don’t need me for anything important this morning, do you?”
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Franklin answered absently, “Everything’s under control here. Take the day off if you want to.”
Janet grinned at her brother’s back, then said to Deirdre, “Come on, let’s talk.”
Katherine Westfall was far from happy as she sat in her comfortable lounge watching the report from the
