She remembered her ongoing experiment with Fergus and checked the latch on the cage entry's inner door before releasing the outer. That midget dinosaur was fast. And alert, and cunning -- it watched every move, and Fiona could almost see it memorizing the way she released the outer door. Time to put a padlock on the latch, she thought. Key lock or combination?
Certainly something that requires fine manipulation, she decided. Something that requires thumbs.
Meat in the entry chamber, outer door closed and latched, double check, release the inner door. The lizard pounced, sank its deadly needle-teeth into the meat, and dragged it back into a corner of the cage where it would be safe. Then the little beast glared at her before it started chewing.
"You don't like me, love. You don't like me even a little bit. First chance you get, you'll bite the hand that feeds you, just like in that human adage. We'll just make sure you never get that chance. Mammals are smarter than dinosaurs."
Or were they crocodilians? No, the hip and shoulder joints looked wrong for that group of reptiles. She'd have to run some DNA comparisons to sort out the cladistics and taxonomy, but the skeletal articulation seemed much closer to a dinosaur's. Had dinosaurs been true reptiles in the first place? The jury was still out on that one. Little Shen was due for dissection and mounting, anyway, once Fiona had finished the live experiments.
Dissection with full biohazard precautions, she reminded herself. She glanced up at the microscope's image projected on one wall. Death and digestion had oozed across the entire view, and again she panned the 'scope to the advancing edge of her culture.
One cell, one single cell of the bacteria that slimed the little beast's mottled yellow teeth. That was all Fiona had injected into the tissue. Let one cell past the guarding walls of your epidermis and your best bet was immediate surgery. Amputation or tissue excision, well away from the wound, followed by a massive course of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
It was such a lovely little microbe. Once she had grown a sample large enough, she'd start to teach it about penicillin -- culture the survivors and go on from there. She flipped a switch and the single projected image split into four. Three of the tissue samples showed no active growth -- reptile, fish, and insect. So the bacteria seemed to need warm-blooded flesh to prosper. She'd have to find out why.
Of course, she'd need a vector, too -- and then she laughed, mocking herself. This was a game, no more, a way to kill time before her powers reached their peak. The most she'd get from this research would be a new poison for the thorns that barbed her hedge.
And the antidote.
But her whim with Cáitlin and Fergus was bearing fruit, her ghosts spooking Maureen back to the bottle. Drink would weaken the red witch and further drive the wedge between her and the others.
The baby kicked her bladder with uncanny aim, and she winced. Enough! Time to evict this squatter and find a wet-nurse among the slaves. But first she had to draw on its powers to crush Maureen and Brian beneath her heel.
Chapter Sixteen
"Take it, stud. Prove that having a set of balls makes you tougher than me."
Dierdre held the long black cylinder out to him, grip first. Brian shook tears out of his eyes and tried to focus. Cattle prod. Shock stick. Phallic symbol for a dominatrix.
She poked his hand with it, forcing it into his grip. His fingers twitched and shook as commands tried to force their way past the drained synapses and connect to muscles.
She let go and the stick stayed in his hand, warm and damp from her own grip, intimate. Interrogation is an intimate affair, his memories played back in her voice, humming through the strange detachment of pain and delirium. You'll get as close to your subject as to any lover. You'll develop many of the same feelings. You'll know him as deeply and as passionately. Don't try to fight this feeling. You'll succeed by becoming one with your subject, knowing his needs and fears as deeply as he does, finding out what matters to him and what does not. When he tells you what you want to know, he'll be talking to himself.
Dierdre fogged in and out on him, a figure tall and rawhide thin and dressed in form-fitting black now rather than the purple uniform, showing off the muscles that always came as a surprise. She'd sucker-punched him to take him out, but a straight match in a ring would have been a tossup. He'd have weight and muscle and the ability to soak up damage and keep on coming, she'd have speed and decades more experience. Tossup. Luck. Now she faced him alone with his hands free, behind locked doors, and sneered at him.
The cattle prod hung from his hand. She invited him to fight back. The tip wavered as his arm shook. Alone and free and already beat to shit. Familiar with the old Chinese expression, "fat chance?" She also liked switching loaded dice into a game of craps. She didn't step back out of range, or even watch his hand. She stared straight into his eyes and dared him.
"Come on, hombre. Do it!"
And she'd stand there and take the shock and laugh in his face. Extremely high pain-tolerance. She'd done that in class. A class she'd taught.
As she'd taught hand-to-hand. Toughest bitch on the planet, Dierdre. Symptom of a problem. People here knew every trick he did. Fighting, intrigue, using the Power, he'd learned all of it from Them. Never taught him as much as They knew, never
