the force of lightning. She was on the verge of getting herself married.
'Bye, Aunt Hannah. I'll call you later, I promise.' Amaryllis slammed down the phone. Her fingers were trembling.
She regarded her shaking hand with disgust. It was too much. She was turning into a nervous wreck, and all because of Lucas Trent. She had to get a grip. She needed to get her mind off her personal problems.
She gave herself another minute to calm down and then she lifted the receiver again. She dialed the number of her office.
Byron answered on the first ring. 'Psynergy, Inc. We make it happen. How can I help you?'
'Byron, it's me, Amaryllis. Put Clementine on the phone, will you?'
'You sound terrible.'
'Gosh, thanks. And a cheery good day to you, too. Get Clementine, please.'
'Didn't things go well with your hot date last night? What happened? Wasn't he straight?'
'Get Clementine,' Amaryllis said grimly.
'Okay, okay. Here you go. Great shot of you in the morning papers, by the way. You look like you're about to deliver a lecture to the photographer.'
'You got 'er.'
Clementine's deep, no-nonsense voice came on the line a few seconds later. 'Amaryllis? How did it go last night?'
'It went very smoothly. No problems. Case closed.'
'No mysterious off-the-chart hypno-talent at work, I take it?'
'Of course not. The motivation for the corporate theft was personal. A little old-fashioned revenge. It's over. I'll send Trent the bill as soon as I get to the office.'
'Get to the good stuff,' Clementine urged. 'What happened after the reception? Was Trent any good in bed?'
Amaryllis gritted her teeth. 'We kept the relationship on a strictly professional footing.'
'Boring.'
'Clementine, I want to ask you something.'
'Shoot.'
'Have you ever heard of a politician or anyone else, for that matter, using a prism to focus something like charisma?'
'Charisma?' Clementine sounded surprised. 'That's not a talent. It's like charm or a cheerful disposition or something. Some people have it, some don't. It's a personality trait, not a psychic power.'
'Last night when I focused for Lucas Trent, I... we... stumbled into another strong talent and prism team working in the same room.'
'So? There are a lot of strong talents and prisms running around. Chances are good that there were a few in that room last night.'
'But the talent felt very odd. I'd like to get another professional opinion on it.'
'What the hell is wrong with my opinion?'
'Nothing,' Amaryllis said hastily. 'But I'd like to talk with someone in the academic world. Call it professional curiosity. I think I'll go out to the university today.'
'Hang on. That art dealer from Cascade Galleries called for an appointment. You know the one, the class-six talent with the nifty ability to detect forgeries. She needs a prism to help her look at some paintings that have been offered for sale.'
'Have Zinnia Spring handle it.'
'You know Zinnia only works nights. Damn it, Amaryllis. I'm trying to run a business here. I'm not paying you to satisfy your professional curiosity. Besides, it's none of your business what that other team was focusing. Stay out of it.'
'Please. My intuition tells me this may be important. I want to check it out.'
Clementine sighed. 'All right, but get back here as soon as possible.'
'Thanks.'
Amaryllis hung up the phone and sat gazing glumly at it for a long while. Clementine was right. Whatever had happened with the other talent and prism team at the reception was none of her business. But she couldn't shake the urge to check into it. Things had felt wrong.
Maybe she was, indeed, turning into a sanctimonious little prig, a busybody who thought it was up to her to make sure everyone else stayed on the straight and narrow.
She wondered if Synergistic Connections would match her with a man who was just like her.
It was not a thrilling thought.
The carved relief that covered the entire south wall of the university library depicted the First Generation settlers in their finest hour. Amaryllis paused on the broad steps to gaze at the massive figures hewn from stone. As always, the sight elicited a quiver of admiration and pride in her.
The scene showed the stranded colonists fifteen years after the closing of the curtain. The last of their Earthbound machines had long since failed, forcing them back to a technological level that had been the rough equivalent of the seventeenth century on Earth. They had been forced to find ways to work with native materials.
The artist had created a memorial that had inspired students for nearly a hundred years. The stoic, determined faces of the men carved into the stone were turned resolutely toward the future as they drove primitive plows pulled by big, shaggy six-legged ox-mules through the mud. The women cradled infants to their breasts as they sowed grain from heavy sacks slung across their backs.
The young children were depicted sitting under trees, poring over heavy, handmade books while teachers supervised their instruction. The books were a very significant part of the scene. The cumbersome, handcrafted books had been the salvation of the First Generation.
When the settlers had realized how swiftly their sophisticated technology was failing, they had launched a prodigious effort to save as much of the contents of their computerized library database as possible.
It had been a harrowing race against time. The colonists had set up a scriptorium that had functioned around the clock for months. Information from the disintegrating computers had been painstakingly transcribed by hand onto thick paper made from native St. Helens plants.
There had not been time to salvage everything. The founders had soon realized that only a fraction of the database could be saved before the computers fell apart. Priorities had to be set.
The desperate colonists had concentrated primarily on the basic information they knew they would need to survive. The dazzling technology of Earth was of no use to them. They ignored it in favor of more pragmatic data related to farming, medicine, and survival skills. They had also copied information relating to the social structures that would support a stable community.
A hard, realistic lot, they had not allowed themselves to dwell on what had been lost. But their heritage was built into their language. It showed in many ways, including the whimsical tendency to name the exotic new flora and fauna of this world after the plants and animals that had been left behind. There were no real physical similarities between the life-forms of St. Helens and those of Old Earth, but that had not stopped the colonists from choosing names that held memories.
The library that housed all the precious home-world knowledge turned to dust along with the computers that had housed it. But the founders had salvaged enough to enable them to gain a toehold on St. Helens. The history texts they had copied so laboriously had taught them how to build plows, how to sow and reap and spin and weave. They had learned to make clocks and boats and sewage systems.
Their hand-copied library had saved the founders, and they had made certain that future generations never forgot the lesson.
Amaryllis dashed a small tear from the corner of her eye and continued on up the steps of the library. She walked past it, turned left, and went through the impressive arched doorway of the Department of Focus Studies.
Old memories came back in a rush as she walked along the corridor. Her office had been the second one on the right. She felt a small pang of wistfulness when she noticed the new name on the door. She reminded herself
