Silver Eyes (5 page)

“Then when?” Michael Vallant demanded. “The noise is driving me crazy.” He didn't wait for me to answer. “Have you got the money yet?”

“What money?” I felt cold. He did know me. We had been partners. I was a criminal.

Michael didn't answer, staring. “Angel?”

A screech from the speakers made me flinch. “What money?” I asked.

“Angel, what's wrong?” Michael spoke without moving his lips, his expression urgent. “Is it Anaximander? Is he watching us? Tap your left foot if he is.”

“No,” I said aloud, lips moving, “I'm alone.”

He stared at me a moment longer, then apparently took me at my word. “Then what's with you? Why didn't you warn me before you hit me with Knockout? I have bruises from the way I fell.”

I started to back away. “I didn't warn you because I work for SilverDollar and you stole from them.”

He stared, violet eyes intense. “What?”

“I don't know you. I never saw you before this afternoon.”

He kept staring at me as if I was crazy. “What have they done to you?” he whispered.

I spoke faster, my skin crawling with the need to get out of the tiny chamber and its prickly shrieking. “I hit my head eleven days ago. I don't remember you. I don't
want
to remember you or anything criminal we might have done together. I don't care what the messages say. I don't know you.”

I slammed out of the room, the door locking automatically behind me, walking fast, fleeing— then had to stop, go back, and turn the video camera on. I pretended I didn't hear Michael call my name in despair, “Angel!”

T
HE NEXT DAY
passed so slowly I thought I would lose my mind. Not even a flying lesson could hold my attention. After the second time Anaximander had to take over to prevent us from crashing, he flew us back to camp. I tensed in expectation of a lecture, but Anaximander just studied me for a moment and then sent me to study indoors.

I started to go to the doctor twice and to Anaximander a dozen times, but something always stopped me. Michael Vallant had behaved as if we were partners. If he was telling the truth, then I was a possible security risk if my memory returned and I should turn myself in. If he was lying, as the message “Violet eyes lie” said, then I wasn't a security risk—but if I hadn't known Michael Vallant before, then how could the message refer to him? I went round and round in circles all day.

In the back of my mind burned the knowledge that Michael Vallant's Loyalty Induction would be continuing all day, getting more and more intense.

It was a relief finally to reach the privacy of my own room after supper. I locked the door and feverishly began searching everything, including myself, for more messages from my past self.

It struck me as significant that two of the messages I'd found had been in the one outfit I owned that hadn't been bought for me by SilverDollar, so I concentrated on my purple sweater and blue jeans.

My hunch paid off. I found a scrap of paper tucked inside the unraveling hem of my purple sweater which said, “Dr. Frankenstein,” and gave me another brief stab of recognition—
a fat man with glasses
—before stagnant green water closed over my head and the smell of the bog filled my nostrils once more.

The tiny flash of memory hardly seemed worth reliving the horror of drowning. I became angry at my past self. Why couldn't I have been more clear?

The next message was even less help. On the sole of my foot I found another mirror-writing scar, a date, or possibly a number, saying simply “1987.”

I badly wanted to do another computer database search but didn't dare.

I searched the rest of my room, but if there were other messages I couldn't find them. There just weren't that many places to look. I didn't have very many personal possessions—no computer games, no e-books, no teddy bears, not even a clock—and for the first time I wondered why.

I smoothed back my rising panic by telling myself that I must be storing my possessions somewhere else, that I'd just forgotten where they were because of my head injury. I tried to believe
it, but it seemed wrong that I wouldn't have brought something with me, a photo of my family, for instance.

My parents.
I was suddenly gasping. Oh, God. I'd forgotten I had parents. Where were they? What did they look like? I couldn't remember.

For the first time I stopped thinking in terms of what I'd forgotten and tried to think of what I did remember about my past before coming to SilverDollar. The answer was a big fat nothing. I didn't remember my parents, didn't know if I had brothers and sisters or where I'd grown up.

A terrible thought occurred to me. Michael had known me in the past. He might know who my parents were. He could answer my questions.

I held out until one in the morning, when the halls were likely to be deserted, before I gave in and went to see Michael Vallant again. I had to know.

He didn't look surprised to see me; he looked as if he was in pain. He was slumped against the same wall as before, his violet eyes two deep wells burning in his ashen face.

The Loyalty Induction is causing him a lot more than discomfort.

It hurt me to see him suffering. I wanted to run to his side. Desperately, I reminded myself that he had consented to the Loyalty Induction just as I had.

Lines of pain bracketed his mouth.

I've kissed that mouth,
I thought suddenly. The memory made me dizzy:
lying on my back beside a pool, dripping wet, my head tipped back at an awkward angle, warm lips covering mine . . .

And then I was drowning. Again. Damn it.

“What do you want?” Michael asked when my head cleared.

I had no subtlety left. “Did you know my parents?”

He swallowed painfully. “Not really well, but yeah, I knew them.”

“What are they like? Are they still alive?” I raised my voice above the screeching of the speakers; my fingernails dug into the soft flesh of my palms.

“Last time you saw them they were fine. There's no reason why they wouldn't be now,” Michael said. “As for what they were like, I only met them a couple of times. You seemed to like them well enough.”

Other questions boiled inside me: Where were my parents now? Why wasn't I in contact with them anymore? What did they look like? Were they blond like me? What did they do for a living? But it didn't sound as if Michael had the answers.

“So I'm not the only person you've forgotten, then?” Michael asked hoarsely.

“No.” I twisted my lips into a smile. “You can laugh, but I was starting to be afraid that I didn't have parents at all, that I was just some genetic experiment mixed together in a petri dish.” The fear that had been with me since viewing
Escape from History
drained away. “I have parents.”

“You have adoptive parents,” Michael corrected, plunging me back into uncertainty. “You and I are both genetically engineered.”

“Project Renaissance?” I asked. My heart thumped in my chest.

He licked cracked lips. “Let's make a deal. I'll
tell you about Project Renaissance, if you answer my questions.”

I couldn't make him tell me, and he was the best source of information I had. I nodded reluctant permission.

“The last time you visited me, you said I had stolen from SilverDollar. What is it I'm supposed to have stolen?”

“I don't know,” I had to admit. “Something worth millions.”

“I'm not a thief.” Michael's violet eyes met mine. “Not unless it's possible to steal yourself. You and I are worth millions, but we belong to ourselves, not to a corporation.”

He had to be lying, but I didn't argue the point. “Tell me about Project Renaissance.”

He didn't try to cheat. “Project Renaissance is the code name for an illegal genetic experiment cooked up by NorAm twenty years ago. They successfully created a new subspecies of human,
Homo sapiens renascentia.
Renaissance, meaning the rebirth of humankind. They gave all the Renaissance children violet eyes as a genetic marker.”

I felt sick. “So you and I belong to a different
subspecies?”
Homo sapiens renascentia,
he'd said. Current humankind was
Homo sapiens sapiens.
Neanderthal man had been
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

“Yes,” Michael said. “My turn. If you've forgotten your past, how did you know about Project Renaissance?”

I hesitated, then explained about the hidden messages that I didn't remember writing pricked into torn-up paper. “There's also a scar
on my arm that says ‘Michelangelo.' What does it mean?”

“What you think it means. Michael and Angel.”

“And?”

“It's a code name,” he said hoarsely. “Dr. Frankenstein gave it to us. When Project Renaissance was discovered there was a big scandal. The UN stopped the project, but they didn't know what to do with the violet-eyed children that had already been created. We were put in an orphanage, but some fanatics burned it down. The survivors were paired up and put into different Historical Immersion towns.”

“You mean that stupid movie was true?” I was appalled.

“Escape from History?”
Michael snorted. “No, it's not true, except for the general outline. We killed ourselves laughing watching the movie when it came out a couple of months ago. They got almost everything wrong.”

“What did they get right?” I asked.

“Other than the fact that we were raised as if we were living a hundred years in the past, not much. They got the cameras right. We lived under constant surveillance. Dr. Frankenstein studied us as if we were lab rats.”

“Why?” I asked. “So we're smart. Big deal.”

“It's not just intelligence,” Michael said. “It's the whole package. In addition to being smarter than
sapiens,
we're also world-class athletes and have faster reflexes. We're healthier, too, with better immune systems. We were bred to be spies and assassins. We're a very valuable commodity. Why do you think SilverDollar is so eager to have us work for them?”

“I was hired as a security investigator. SilverDollar is a mining company, not a government,” I said skeptically. “What do they need spies for?”

“I don't know exactly,” Michael admitted. “Probably industrial espionage. Infiltrating a rival company, stealing their secrets, maybe committing acts of sabotage . . . SilverDollar tried to buy us from Dr. Frankenstein, and when we escaped, they hunted us down as if we were foxes. Anaximander and his men have been pursuing us relentlessly since we escaped five months ago, in November. They must have some need for us.”

“That can't be true,” I said. “Companies can't just go around buying people or kidnapping them off the street. Why didn't we just go to the police?”

“And put ourselves back in the hands of the government that failed us twice before?” Michael asked. “No thank you. Besides, some would say you and I aren't ‘people.' We were genetic experiments, remember? Property. Don't you get it? We're different, Angel. The prejudice the Augmented face is nothing compared to the hostility leveled at the violet-eyed. Ordinary people look at us, and they see a threat. Unfair competition in the job market and the gene pool. They're afraid that, if we're left to ourselves, in a few generations Renaissance children will become the de facto rulers of the world and they'll be the serving class.”

“That's crazy,” I said.

“You and I know that,” Michael said wearily. “They don't. That's why SilverDollar could pursue us without worrying about the law. They knew we didn't dare risk our cover. We stayed one step
ahead of Anaximander, but it was costing us. We could never stay in one place long enough to save any money or make any friends.”

“What did we do?” I asked.

“We haunted the library, learning as much as we could about the new time we found ourselves in, and we earned money doing menial labor: shoveling snow, dishwashing, baby-sitting, that sort of thing. A better job would have required ID, which we don't have. In 2099 you need ID to do everything: get a library card, fly an aircar, get an education.