Blood Pact - By Tanya Huff Page 0,49

only logical that she follow that programming. We should've anticipated it happening and taken precautions." Her voice dropped into a fair approximation of Dr. Burke's lecturing cadence. "The more impulses are sent along a given memory trace, the easier it becomes for later impulses to follow the same circuit. And considering the pains we've taken to teach number nine to follow us, I should think you'd be pleased that he followed her. After all, you're the one who said he wasn't learning anything."

"Yeah, well, I'm also the one who says he doesn't like this." He bit down hard on the candy in his mouth and it crunched between his teeth. "I mean, suppose we're not just re-creating physical responses."

Catherine laid the second kidney beside the first. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about souls, Cathy!" His tone grew a little shrill. "What if, because of what we've done, Marjory Nelson has come back to her body?"

"Don't be ridiculous. We're not bringing back an old life, we're creating new ones, like putting new wine in old skins."

"You're not supposed to do that," Donald pointed out acerbically. "The old wine taints the new." He swiveled around on his stool and bent over the microscope. He could see there was no point in discussing this; souls had no place in Cathy's world. And maybe she was right. She was the certified genius, after all, and it was her experiment. He was just in it for curiosity's sake, and for the final payoff, of course.

Still, he mused, the edge of his lower lip caught between his teeth, uncomfortably conscious of the questions that lay in the isolation boxes behind him, I'd be happier if I knew we were remaking Frankenstein instead of Night of the Living Dead. A moment's reflection reminded him that Frankenstein had not exactly had a happy ending. Or a happy middle, for that matter.

He could hear voices. Her voice and his voice. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he could hear the tone.

They were arguing.

He remember arguing. How it ended in hitting. And pain.

He often argued with her.

Number nine didn't...

... didn't...

... didn't like that.

"Good morning, Dr. Burke. The coffee's ready."

"Good." Dr. Burke dropped her briefcase at the door to the inner office and circled back to the coffeepot. "You are a lifesaver, Mrs. Shaw."

"It's probably not as good as when Marjory made it," Mrs. Shaw sighed. "She always had such a way with coffee."

Her back to the room, Dr. Burke rolled her eyes and wondered how long the melodrama of office grieving would continue. Two days of every report, every memo, every little thing delivered with a eulogy was about as much as she could take. She lifted her mug off its hook and dropped three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into the bottom of it. If the university would just come through with the promised temporary, or better still, a permanent replacement for Marjory Nelson's position, she'd tell Mrs. Shaw to take a few days off. Unfortunately, Dr. Burke topped up her mug and glared down into the dark liquid, the wheels of academia grind geologically slow.

Behind her, Mrs. Shaw turned on the radio. The Village People were just finishing up the last bars of "YMCA."

Dr. Burke turned and transferred her glare to the radio. "If they're doing another '70s retrospective, we're changing stations. I lived through disco once, I shouldn't have to do it again."

"This is CKVS FM, it's nine o'clock, and now the news. Police still have no leads in the vicious murder last night of a QECVI student on the Queen's University campus. The only witness to the crime is under observation at Kingston General Hospital and has not yet been able to give police an accurate description of the murderer. While the young woman was not physically hurt in the incident, doctors say she is suffering from shock. Both police and medical personnel report that until she was sedated she continued to scream, 'He looked dead. The guy looked dead.' Anyone with information concerning this tragic incident is asked to contact Detective Fergusson at Police Headquarters.

"Elsewhere in the city... "

"Isn't it awful." Mrs. Shaw dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. "That poor young man, cut down in his prime."

The guy looked dead. Dr. Burke's fingers tightened around the handle of her mug. The girl obviously has an overactive imagination. This has nothing to do with...

"The other stations had a much more complete report. She said that he lurched