"Earl?"

She was insistent and he wondered why. Wondered too what she could have learned while he was being treated. While under slowtime nothing could have been gained but at the end, or if he had been returned to normal time for a few hours, he would have been vulnerable. Drugs, hypnotism, electronic probing. He remembered the dreams, the stimulated memories, the result of distorted senses. The result of applied instruction? And why the terminal wave of pain?

She shrugged when he asked. "A means to restore full awareness. It was created by direct cortical stimulation and caused no cellular damage. Now, Earl, please answer my question."

"I can't." He was bluntly honest. "How the hell can I? You're asking me to predict a certainty and only God can do that."

"Or the Cyclan?" She smiled as he made no answer. "We're bickering again, Earl, and without need. Like young lovers so tensed with emotion they explode at a word. It's my fault. I should have remembered you have just awakened from treatment. But think of it, Earl. You matched against a mannek. The odds against your winning would be astronomical. With skilled management you could make a fortune."

The glittering prospect had lured too many to their death and he wondered why she had mentioned it. And why mention the Cyclan? Coincidence, perhaps, but Dumarest distrusted coincidences and had long learned the error of taking things at their apparent value. The woman could be what she claimed or she could be that and more.

She looked up as he rose, the clean lines of her throat a column of perfection, the gems in her hair winking, moving, sparkling, drifting among the ebon tresses like a host of watching eyes. Tiny orbs held his own as she too rose, to step toward him, to fill his nostrils with her scent before stepping to where a mass of cut and shaped crystal stood in an elaborate form on a small table to one side of the salon.