Killing Time Read online

  “I don’t guess it occurred to anyone that making a kid a ward of the nation, depriving it of a real family, always pointing fingers and looking for abnormalities, could cause personality disorders and a tendency toward violence, huh? Look at you. You were raised in a family with people who love you. The biggest problem is their childhood environment, not anything intrinsic in being a Copy.”

  “The prejudice against cloning is so ingrained, and with good reason, that most people react first with their emotions when they learn I’m a Copy. I’ve always told people I was becoming close to, so they could make the choice whether or not to remain my friend. Most chose not to.”

  “Their loss,” he said briefly. “I’d hazard a guess and say that’s the real reason why you aren’t married, not just because of the pressures of your job.”

  “There’s the birth control issue, too,” she said, and despite her best efforts she could hear the echo of pain in her voice. She took a deep breath and regained control of herself. “Copies aren’t allowed to have children. By law, I have to be on a birth control regimen. If I don’t report in to have my birth control renewed, I will be captured and sterilized.”

  Held as closely to him as she was, she could feel the tension that invaded his muscles, feel the heat of anger wash over his skin. “Excuse the hell out of me for saying so, but sounds to me as if civilization has reversed instead of going forward. Never mind your technology, your society sucks.”

  “And yet, if you had lived in a time that saw the horrible birth defects caused by cloning, you would probably be more understanding.”

  “Probably not. I’m a Kentuckian; I’d more likely be in some underground militia, trying to overthrow the tyrants. To hill people, the Civil War was yesterday, and the Revolution the day before. The word ‘taxes’ still gets us riled.”

  “Then you wouldn’t want to live in my time,” she admitted.

  “Probably not, but I sure would like to visit. What’s it like?” He turned on his side to face her, and as she had with his anger, she could now feel the force of his curiosity. “What’s the world’s population? Is our form of government still the same? How many states are there? And what about cars?”

  She laughed softly and looped one arm around his neck. “Stop worrying about the cars. They’re called personal vehicles now, and they’re powered by a variety of means: magnetic propulsion, hydrogen, electricity. There are free lanes and regulated lanes. If you choose the regulated lanes, the speed and traffic flow is controlled, so you never go very fast, but you don’t get in traffic snarls, either. You program your route into the PV’s computer, then sit and read or otherwise amuse yourself while the vehicle takes you to your destination.”

  “Have sex?” he suggested, laughing.

  She had to laugh, too. “Yes, people being people, sometimes sex is had. If you see a PV with the privacy screens in place, you can be fairly certain what’s going on inside. Occasionally a couple will be arrested for not having the privacy screen in place.”

  “What about those free lanes?”

  “They’re just as they sound: traffic isn’t regulated. You have control of your vehicle. You choose the speed. There are horrific accidents on the free lanes, but every time someone brings up legislation to convert all traffic lanes to regulated, there’s a huge outcry and that politician gets voted out of office in the next election.”

  “I imagine so. Is government still the same? Two-party, Democrats and Republicans?”

  “There are three parties now, but no Democrats or Republicans. Those two parties died out in the early twenty-second century. No, ‘died out’ is the wrong terminology. Their identity changed, and they became something else. Murphy?”

  “Murphy?” Knox echoed. “Who the hell is Murphy? Or do you mean morphed?”

  “Yes, that’s the word. They morphed into their present political identity.”

  “How about the rest of the world?”

  “Some nations change, some don’t. There are eight billion people on earth now. There would be more, but the great viruses of the late twenty-first century killed millions upon millions. The death toll from the viruses contributed to the changing political climate that did away with the Democrats and Republicans.”

  “And wars?”

  “There are always wars.”

  “Yeah, figured. Human nature doesn’t change much. Tell me about space travel. You have a colony on the moon?”

  “And on Mars. The Martian colony was established underground, in the cave system; that was the only way to get enough protection. The moon colony is by far the most popular, because of earthrise. I think around four hundred thousand people live on Mars, but the moon has a population of over two million. There’s a ban in place now to prevent any new settlers on the moon.”

  “I’d love to go to the moon and watch the earth rising,” he murmured. “Have you been?”

  “No, it’s a hideously expensive vacation. Public servants don’t make that kind of money.”

  “Something else that hasn’t changed,” he commented.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “No other colonies in outer space, though? No contact with other species? No faster-than-light travel?”

  “No, no, and no. If we had the last one, we might manage the first one. But no one has ever made any form of contact with another intelligent species.”

  “I’m disappointed. In two hundred years, you expect to get a little farther out than your neighbor’s house—metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  “Of course. But we did get the pope on the moon, so you have to give us credit for that.”

  “Now, that I’d have paid to see. The press coverage must have been wall-to-wall.”

  Wall-to-wall pertained to carpet, she was certain. She puzzled over the sentence, trying to work out the meaning from the context. Wall-to-wall, carpet . . . They were carpeted by the press reports? Yes, that made sense.

  “The coverage was nonstop,” she agreed, then gave an eye-watering, jaw-popping yawn that made him laugh.

  “We don’t have much time left to sleep, but we might squeeze in an hour,” he said against her temple. “I’ll hold the rest of my questions for later.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea.” She yawned again. “Knox—thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For not being disgusted by what I am.”

  “You’re a woman,” he said quietly into the dark. “And I’m a man. We’re together, and that’s all that matters.”

  26

  Nikita lay in bed sleepily looking around while Knox took another shower before going to work. It was just after dawn, but the drawn curtains kept the room dim. She was slightly sore, utterly relaxed, and completely infatuated. On the physical front she had been overwhelmed by Knox’s male pheromones during all of that bare skin contact, then emotionally ambushed by his easy acceptance of her circumstances. She suspected the combination had been too much for her defenses.

  She couldn’t make her feelings for him go away; it was too late for that. There was nothing she could do now except enjoy him for the length of time she had left, however much that was. She still had a mission to complete, a mission that was rife with complications. Even if she successfully apprehended Hugh Byron, her links were missing, stolen by someone who had no idea what they had, and the danger that person ran by having links and not knowing how to work them made her hair stand on end.

  There was nothing like a little dose of reality to dim a postcoital glow, she thought. Duty gnawed at her. She would have liked nothing better than to snuggle down and sleep for several more hours, but she forced herself to throw back the covers and get out of bed. Yawning, she padded into the other bedroom and put on her sanssaum; she liked being naked with Knox, but that was entirely different from being naked in front of him while he was dressed and doing other things. She wasn’t yet that comfortable with him.

  He had put on a pot of coffee, and she followed the smell to the kitchen. As she