The Alembic Plot

all involved different people, maybe it was because none had reacted as positively to him on first meeting . . . he didn't try to analyze it. He was in Special Operations; analysis was for Intelligence. He simply accepted facts as he found them.

Odeon let Egan choose pastries while he drew coffee and paid the cashier. Once they found an empty table and settled themselves, he said, "Okay, Doctor. Tell me."

"To begin with, most of her injuries are what I understand you Enforcement people call minor. Fractured skull, three broken ribs, assorted cuts, burns, and bruises." Egan frowned. "However, her spinal injury is serious even by your standards, and . . . Captain, did she plan to have children?"

'Did,' not 'does,' Odeon thought grimly. "Yes, Doctor." Until he'd met Joanie, Odeon hadn't minded that the red crossed daggers of the SO patch on his sleeve meant he was sterile; his parents had both had plague-derivatives that made it inevitable, and it was a fate he shared with almost a third of