"I don't understand what that has to do with--"
"These nanos were programmed to repair tissue," Lis-sianna interrupted. "They were meant to be medical aids, to help heal people who were seriously wounded or ill."
Greg arched an eyebrow. "And they worked?"
"Oh yes. They worked better than anyone had expected. Once in the body, they not only repaired damaged tissue, they destroyed any sort of infection and even regenerated dead or dying tissue."
"Ah," Greg said, suddenly understanding why she was telling him about Atlantis. "And these nanos are how you live so long and stay so young."
"Yes. It was an unexpected side effect. They were programmed to self-destruct once the damage in the body had been repaired, but--"
"The body is constantly under attack from sunlight, pollution, and simple aging," Greg finished for her.
"Yes." She smiled with pleasure at his understanding. "So long as there is damage to repair, the nanos will live and create others of their kind, using blood from the bloodstream. And there is always damage to repair."
Greg closed his eyes, his mind whirling with the knowledge she'd just given him. It raised as many questions as it answered. "What about the blood? Your... er... feeding, I mean? Is that because the nanos use the blood?"
"Yes. They use it both to fuel themselves and to make the repairs. The more damage, the more blood is needed. But even with just the damage from day-to-day living, the body can't supply enough blood to satisfy them."
"So you have to drink blood to feed the nanos," he reasoned.
"Yes. Drink it or take transfusions."
"Transfusions?" he echoed, pleased to hear such a common word in this conversation. "So it's really rather like hemophilia? Sort of a blood disorder..." Then he paused, and added wryly, "Except for the fact that you're all from an ancient, but scientifically advanced, race of people." He paused as a thought confused him. "But you were born just a little more than two hundred years ago. You aren't from Atlantis yourself. Is it passed from mother to child?"
"It was passed to me through my mother," Lissianna admitted. "But my mother wasn't born with it."
"Your father?" he queried, and realized he hadn't asked how old Jean Claude Argeneau had been when he died just a couple years ago. "How old was your father?"
"He, his twin brother, and their parents were amongst those who fled Atlantis when it fell. Aunt Martine was born a couple hundred years later."
Her father and his family had fled Atlantis when it fell, he considered silently. When had that been? He wasn't sure. Certainly before Roman times, before the birth of Christ... Dear God, it didn't bear thinking about.
"My father introduced the nanos to my mother when they were married," Lissianna added when his silence continued.
Greg gave a start at this news. "So anyone could..."
"You don't have to be born one," she admitted softly when he paused. "They were introduced to the blood intravenously to start with and still can be."
"And the blood doesn't necessarily have to be consumed," he said, his mind going back to that point. He didn't know why. Maybe because it made them seem less alien when he thought of it as a blood disorder like hemophilia.
"Yes, but it's somewhat time-consuming in comparison to proper feeding," she explained. "Think of the dif-ference between downing a pint of water rather than waiting for a pint of saline to drip into a body using an IV."
"I suppose that was inconvenient for you when the others could just down a pint and go," he said, struggling to understand.
"It wasn't that it was all that inconvenient," she said quietly. "Mother used to wait until I was in bed for the day before bringing in the blood and IV. I fed while I slept. It wasn't really inconvenient at all, but..." She hesitated, then admitted, "It made me feel like a dependent child, as vulnerable as baby birds who need their mothers to digest the worm and feed it to them. I was dependent."
"And now you aren't?" he asked.
"Now I feed myself," she said with quiet pride, then admitted a tad wryly, "Not always well, but I feed."
"If you're hemaphobic, how do you feed?"
She sighed. "Greg, I don't think--"
"How?" he insisted, though he thought he already knew the answer. If she fainted at the sight of blood, then the only option open to her--without someone's setting her up with an IV--was for her to bite as she had done with him.
"The old-fashioned way," she finally admitted.