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  “Well, he never actually told me his name but he said he was a colleague of yours. Oh, and he had the most horrible metal teeth.” She shivered.

  Six frowned. He had been certain for a moment that she’d had an encounter with Two. But Two didn’t have metal teeth. Could it have been another Enhanced One close to the Collective? Those in the upper echelons of the Enhanced society were often at the barges and though metal dental enhancements were rare, they weren’t unheard of.

  “Anyway, he said I would have to get an emotion damper but then I told him I was getting a dispensation,” Mei-Li continued. “And he told me not to let it run out, whatever that means.”

  “An emotional dispensation is only good for a limited amount of time,” Six explained as they began walking toward the lift again. “If you stay past the allotted time, you would automatically be considered guilty of Feel-crime.”

  “Feel-crime, huh?” She frowned. “Guess I’d better be careful not to overstay my welcome.”

  “I suppose not.” Again Six pictured himself taking her home, back to Earth and again he felt the familiar heaviness in his midsection. But perhaps it was for the best. Despite Yipper’s reassurance, the strange physical symptoms he’d had when he touched her had been…troubling.

  Truly, the sooner their Claiming Period was over the better.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Are you ready, are you ready?” Yipper looked at her anxiously and Mei-Li nodded.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said grimly. “I guess if I have to get an enhancement, this is the best and least obvious one.”

  “The best, the very best!” the hairy little Tolleg assured her. He had already explained the procedure to her in detail thought Mei-Li sort of wished he hadn’t.

  Apparently he was going to stick his tongue in her eyes—not something she was looking forward to.

  But Yipper and Six both had assured her that this was how surgery was done here and the Tollegs were excellent surgeons who never lost a patient. Their saliva was a natural anesthetic and antiseptic and their tongues had the ability to morph into any instrument they needed to do the job. Mei-Li supposed if they could take off somebody’s leg and replace it with a robot one, fitting a pair of permanent contact lenses ought to be a snap. She hoped, anyway.

  “And you’re sure these will work for me?” she asked for what was probably the fiftieth time. “Because I can’t wear contacts back home on Earth—they dry my eyes out too much. And what if my prescription changes? What if my eyes get worse?”

  “The magnaflux lenses will automatically correct for any changes your eyes go through, yes they will, yes they will,” Yipper said patiently. “All will be well.”

  “I hope so.” Mei-Li was lying on a pure white table while the little Tolleg, who was perched on a stool, leaned over her. As he got closer, her toes curled inside the new boots Six had given her and the weird, bland garn she’d eaten for breakfast felt like a lump of lead in her stomach. She was glad at least that the white shirt he’d given her to wear had long sleeves because she was suddenly freezing. It felt like the temperature had dropped about fifteen degrees. Was that standard procedure for an operation here or was it just her nerves?

  Mei-Li didn’t know and she honestly didn’t really care. Mostly she just didn’t want to get poked in the eye. God, I wish it was over already! I wish I didn’t have to watch! She got this same, squirmy feeling when she went to the dentist but at least with the dentist she could close her eyes and wait for it to be over with. With this procedure she had to look on as Yipper’s long, prehensile tongue dipped down into a small glass dish containing two shiny iridescent lenses. It was blurry since her glasses were off but she could still make it out well enough to see—

  “Stop.” Six suddenly came up to the table on her other side.

  Yipper pulled his tongue back. “What is wrong, what is wrong?”

  “She is in distress, just as she was last night.” Six was frowning at her in a way Mei-Li might almost have thought was worried if she didn’t know he was incapable of feeling worried. “Her heart rate and blood pressure are severely elevated. This level of stress cannot be good for her physiologically.”

  “Mei-Li is simply nervous, yes she is, yes she is,” Yipper said. “If you will hold her hand during the procedure it will eliminate a good deal of her stress.”

  “Hold her hand?” Six looked as though this was a foreign concept—which it almost certainly was, to him Mei-Li reminded herself. “What purpose would that serve?”

  “It will calm her nerves, as it did last night when you picked her up,” Yipper said patiently. “Many Feelers find touch comforting during times of stress. Yes they do, yes they do.”

  “Oh, of course.” Six nodded as though he was finally getting it and reached for Mei-Li with his non-metal hand. He didn’t seem to know quite how to manage, though. The night before he had gathered her into his arms instinctively and a little while ago he had cupped her breast with no problem but now he seemed uncertain of how to touch her. Or maybe he was just feeling awkward because of all the touching and kissing they had done earlier—Mei-Li knew she was still a little uncomfortable, even though she was trying to put it out of her mind.

  “Like this,” she said and entwined their fingers. She had a moment to notice that he had beautiful, well-shaped hands for a man—long, artistic fingers with short, clean nails—and then Yipper was leaning over her again.

  “Now just hold still, hold still,” he told her, reaching for the glass dish with the lenses again. “This will only take a moment…”

  “Okay,” Mei-Li squeezed Six’s hand tight and felt an answering pressure in return as Yipper maneuvered one of the tiny iridescent disks onto the end of his tongue. “Only I don’t know how I’m going to keep from blinking. I can never—”

  There was a flicker in the air above her face, too fast to follow and suddenly everything she was seeing with her left eye came into focus.

  “Wow!” Me-Li gasped. “That was so fast! I didn’t even—” There was another flicker and suddenly she could see clearly from her right eye too. Mei-Li blinked and looked around the room in amazement. Everything had sharp, defined edges from the rack of prosthetic parts at the end of Yipper’s Enhancement Area to Six’s face with its stern angles as he bent over her.

  He was looking right at her, his steel gray eye filled with what she would have sworn looked like concern though she knew it couldn’t be since concern would be an emotion. Still, Mei-Li looked back, hear heart pounding as she focused on his gaze.

  Suddenly it was as though he had come closer—or his eye had, anyway. Mei-Li started seeing much more detail—noticing each separate eyelash and seeing the tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of deep blue in his gray iris.

  “What in the world?” she whispered, tearing her gaze away. How had she been able to see such detail from where she was? It was almost as though she had seen his eye under a microscope. She lifted her hand—the one that wasn’t still clutching Six’s—and stared at it as well. When she concentrated she could see every tiny wrinkle, fold, and crease in the lifeline that bisected her palm. Then the individual whorls of her fingertips came into view, fascinating in their complexity…

  Suddenly she realized she was lying there staring at her own hand like some kind of stoner on a really good trip.

  “What the hell?” she whispered, tearing her eyes away and looking at Yipper. “What did you do to me? How can I see so much?”

  “The magnoflux lenses enable microscopic and telescopic sight. Yes they do, yes they do,” Yipper said happily. “Do you like the effect? You will be able, just by concentrating, to see things that are normally too small or too far away for your feeble original eyes to manage.”

  “Seriously?” Mei-Li looked at him, not sure if she liked this. Her vision had never been sharper or clearer so she guessed she shouldn’t complain. But still… “Uh, how do I turn it off?” she asked. “If I want to, I mean,”

  “It wi