IV. Grave Alice

From her own personal laptop at home, she sent email to Helen Collingwood in London. "I'm your niece. Philip's daughter. You won't believe that, but please let me come see you sometime on Saturday." She gave thought to whether she should sign her given name, but decided against it. She was using an anonymous, virtually untraceable screen name; better to err on the side of caution.

The reply came back within half a day. "I jolly well don't, but you've got nerve and I'm curious. Half past seven on Saturday. I dare say you know where I'm to be found of an evening. Keep an eye on the dog. He bites." There was no signature.

And if I didn't know where you're to be found of an evening? But Nikita couldn't help smiling even as she frowned.

On Saturday afternoon, she took a commercial airliner to London, wearing a backpack, a sky-blue sweat suit purchased that morning, running shoes, and her light-weight, hoodless white jacket; the sooner she got used to the idea of a less-than-skin-tight wardrobe, the better. Knowing that she was probably under surveillance, she nevertheless felt barely a qualm about putting her aunt in danger. The days of Operations and Madeline were over, and she'd recently discovered that high-level operatives in other Sections were permitted closely-monitored Relationship Privileges with selected blood relatives on a case-by-case basis. A widow for a quarter of a century, Helen was eighty-six years old with no family of her own. According to Section's database, she had few close friends and no apparent interests outside of the profession she still practiced almost full time. Even if the Group resented Nikita's leaving the country to visit a relative who was neither parent nor sibling, she was certain they would not believe she would risk her aunt's life by telling her anything classified.

The Helen Collingwood Clinic was on the first floor of the owner's home--a tall, elderly, well-kept house on a quiet, residential street. The entry door was unlocked, the hallway just inside it mellow with dark wood and a tile floor buffed to a low shine. One light shown from an open door--the "surgery," Nikita guessed. It turned out to be the surgery's waiting room, also mellow and dark; the source of light was an office through a door on the right. Her hand on the tiny, one-dart dog tranquilizer gun in her jacket pocket, Nikita heard a low, rumbling growl as she approached the office door, followed by a few words from a barely-audible human voice. The dog stopped growling, and she entered the office, hoping that her father had been right that once Helen saw her, she would need no words to know that Nikita was who she claimed to be: the niece of Evelyn Jones Wallace.

The woman who sat behind the large oak desk, her back straight and her penetrating dark eyes fixed on Nikita as she entered, wore her snow-white hair in a long braid coiled at the back of her head. Even sitting down, she looked tall, elderly, and well-kept like her house. She wore a plain tailored blouse under a dark green cardigan and, Nikita guessed, probably a tweed skirt beneath the desk on which her hands were folded. A cane was hooked over the back of her chair.

Her expression was neutral as Nikita entered the room and approached the circle of light thrown by the desk lamp and the burning logs in the fireplace. But even after what her father had told her, she was unprepared for the widening of those dark eyes and the sudden pallor of the woman's sallow face as her own face and figure became visible to her aunt. The older woman drew in her breath sharply, and the black Lab at her feet barked once--a sound like a cannon in the small room. Helen silenced him with a touch on his head. But she seemed almost unaware of his presence as she whispered, "Dear God" with a mixture of disbelief and awe.

Silently, Nikita handed across the desk the paper on which her father had written the name and address of the clinic -- and then, below it, a single, brief line: "Helen, just look at her."

Nikita glanced at the chair next to her and then, questioningly, at her aunt, who nodded, eyes again fixed on her niece's face. Finally she said, "Her own daughters don't look half as much like her as you do." The voice was strong but hushed, as though the speaker were in church, or beside an open grave.

"Do you believe me now?" Nikita asked quietly.

"It's his handwriting." A frown, but the dark gaze did not return to the paper in hand. "Is he dead?"

"Yes. About a month ago." Her aunt's expression didn't change. ("They weren't especially fond of each other," Christopher had told her. "She and her husband were his guardians after Evelyn moved to the States, but I think there was no love lost. After the third sister was killed in the blitz, Evelyn was the only one left who everybody loved.") "I only knew him for about a month before that," Nikita went on. "He didn't know I existed until a few years ago. He and my mother weren't married. They never even lived together."

The snowy brows rose slightly. "Philip?" The first emotion to become evident in her tone was mild incredulity. "The hell you say." Feeling an impulse toward a nervous laugh, Nikita pressed her lips together and nodded. "Poor soul. One would've thought he didn't have it in him."

"I--I don't--"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you." But those eyes would not leave hers. "What's your name?"

"Nikita."

"Beg pardon?"

"It's Nikita. And I don't know why my mother named me that. She never told me much about anything important."

"Was she gone a great deal?"

"She was drunk a great deal."

They stared one another, Nikita with no idea why she had said such a thing to a stranger. For a moment she wanted to run away. But she had come here to avoid running away. "I need your help--as a private medical consultant for the next few months. I can pay you. That's not the problem."

"What is the problem then? Why come to me if you can afford a doctor?"

"I can't tell you that," Nikita answered, her voice firm but without defiance--similar, in fact, to the voice she used when talking to the Group. That thought disturbed her, but now was not the time to wonder why. "I can tell you why I'm here, but not where I live or what I do. Can you live with that?"

"Well, we'll have to see, won't we? Are you pregnant?"

"Yes."

"Married?"

"No."

"You want an abortion."

"No. That option would be available elsewhere. I told you, I need you as a professional consultant for a time--until I have to tell my employers about the pregnancy."

"Do you know who the father is?"

"Yes."

"Did you intend to have a child?"

"No. I--got a little bit careless."

"Quite. And now you're a little bit pregnant."

"Is this kind of personal interrogation part of the arrangement?"

"As of this moment, my girl, no arrangement exists. Are we clear on that? Now. I don't want some irate chap stomping about in here demanding to know what you're up to with regard to his potential progeny."

"That won't happen."

"The pregnancy happened."

"He was gone." Nikita tried to keep her annoyance in check. "I didn't expect to see him again. I was very busy--"

"Oh, come now. You and I both know that's no excuse for this kind of nonsense. Did he leave you or what?"

"No. I sent him away."

"And he just happened to turn up again while you were in mid-cycle, and you did nothing to protect yourself."

"We get an annual shot," Nikita said, trying not to shout. "We're supposed to have thirty days' grace after our record gets flagged in the computer. I'd only used up twelve days when he came back. We should have been safe."

As the pace of the dialogue increased with the tension level, the dog had raised his head to look at Nikita. Now he shouted another bark, and she jumped involuntarily.

"Shut up, Chauncey." But Helen's voice was mild when she spoke to the dog. She stroked his head again, and he lowered it once more to his paws. Frowning, she returned to the business at hand. "What annual shot? An anti-ovulant?"

"No. It's a slow-release spermicide."

"There is no such thing."

"There is where I come from. Can't you understand? I didn't expect to see him again. And then--so many things happened at once. I was promoted. My life was chaos, I wasn't getting any sleep, and I got careless. Then my father died. How the hell many details do you need, anyway?

A faint smile. "You sound like Evelyn too."

"That's great. I think." Flinging herself back in the chair, Nikita slid down on her spine, head bent, knees akimbo, and glowered. "Are we done with this yet?"

"Have you had the shot?"

"No. I thought it might somehow be dangerous for the bu--baby, so I hacked my record in the computer. Flag's gone."

"You've got some nerve, all right." Helen rose, took up her cane, and limped across the room. She was indeed tall, and her skirt was tweed. Her limp was virtually identical to her brother's, and like him, she apparently had a penchant for walking away from the person she was talking to. "Come along. Come along. I don't do consultations unless I've examined the patient first."

They sat facing one another in the surgery, Nikita back in her sweats and her aunt now wearing a white coat instead of the cardigan. Nikita perched on the edge of the examination table, her stockinged feet hanging, her elbows on her knees, chin on her clasped hands. Helen faced her in a straight chair, her cane hooked over the back of it, a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. The clipboard, Nikita had noticed, held a plain sheet of paper, not a pre-printed form. Taking careful notes, but off the record.

Proceed to second mark.

Helen's expression was thoughtful; the pen tapped lightly on the clipboard's metal clasp. She had turned off the lights in the room, and the fire in the office fireplace threw moving shadows into the room next door where the two women sat.

"Is the father in as fit condition as you are?"

"Yes."

"Do the two of you work together?" Silence. "Very well. Alcohol? Drugs?" Nikita shook her head. "Any genetic disorders in his family?"

"Not that I know of."

"How well do you know him?"

"Better than anybody else does."

"How long?"

"Seven years."

Helen had been writing on the clipboard; now she glanced up sharply but did not comment. The pen scratched. Shadows danced across the walls. "Other than her drinking, was your mother in good health?"

"That's how she used to justify the drinking. 'Healthy as a horse and happy as a clam.'"

"And your father?" Helen did not look up as she asked the question.

"He used a cane like you do. He never mentioned anything else. Is it--was it arthritis?"

"The family curse, one might say. His father was limping by age forty. You have no symptoms?"

"No."

"How did Philip die?" The pen had stopped scratching, and the dark eyes met hers directly once more.

"It was job-related. He died saving someone's life."

"Fancy that. Whose life?" Silence. "Quite."

"You didn't like him very much, did you?"

"He was an agreeable child." Helen's forehead furrowed, and it seemed as though a fine mesh of pain settled over her face. "Evvie got the looks, you see, and Connie got the charm. 'Til Philip, I thought I'd got the brains. Cleverest of the lot. Everybody said so. And after all, fair's fair." Her gaze had fallen to the clipboard, and her voice was low. "It didn't matter, though. I didn't matter. Evelyn was the only one he loved."

"He sent me to you, Helen."

"And why did he do that, Nikita?"

He said he wanted us to know each other. The easy lie was on its way to her mouth before she stopped it. "He said Evelyn would have wanted us to know each other."

"You couldn't know that," Helen whispered, "unless he'd told it to you."

Oh, but I could. I could have had her daughters grabbed and tortured until they spilled everything they knew about her and some things they didn't know they knew. "Well, he did."

Helen sat looking down at her clipboard, the tapping pen silent. Then, finally: "Family members can't be patients."

Elbows still on her knees, Nikita covered her face with her hands. When she thought she had her voice under control, she ran her hands back through her hair and said, "I wouldn't be your patient. I just need you to consult with me about once a month until I can go to my own doctor."

"I do not understand why you can't do that now."

"I know you don't. But I can't tell you."

"Now look here--"

In the waiting room, the dog burst into a frenzy of barking, filling both rooms with menacing noise. Nikita's pulse raced as she slid off table; her jacket was in the other room, and the dog trank was in her jacket. Oh, god-DAMN! But instead of going to investigate the source of his agitation, Chauncey scrambled to a stop in the doorway between the hall and the surgery and stood there shaking the rafters with his cannon-like bellowing, eyes entreating his mistress to give him permission to plunge on down the hallway to what Nikita was sure must be the back door--a back door that both Helen and Chauncey no doubt believed was completely secure.

"Please don't let him!" Nikita too entreated her. "I know who it is. We're not in danger. Please!"

"Chauncey!" Moving surprisingly fast, Helen went to the dog, who waited in the doorway; the surgery was obviously forbidden territory, and even now, Chauncey knew where limits were set and obeyed them. "Ease up, old boy. Ease up." Turning, she demanded, "Young woman, what the hell are you up to? This is my home--" And then she stopped.

Michael was standing in the doorway to the waiting room. Little more than his silhouette was visible--a silhouette with shining eyes even though the lamplight and the firelight were behind him. Nikita forgot her aunt. She even forgot the dog. She was barely aware of crossing the distance between them before they were holding each other, her face hidden against his shoulder and his face buried in her hair.

Chauncey gave a low growl, but stayed put.

"Shut up, Chauncey." Again the order was given in a subdued voice that belied its abruptness. There was a silence, and then Helen said mildly, "Hair o' the dog, is it?"

Answer her. She deserves to be answered. But all Nikita could manage was a muffled, "What?"

"It's an old wives' tale. The best remedy for the morning after is the hair o' the dog that bit you."

There was no answer to that one.

She heard Helen move across the surgery toward where they still stood in the doorway, the dog preceding her to snuffle suspiciously around their feet. Michael raised his head to look over her shoulder at her aunt. Face still hidden, Nikita tried to imagine what might be passing silently between the other two, and failed. Then Michael shifted her gently until she was leaning into his side, his left arm tight around her shoulders, and holding out his right hand, he did something she had never heard him do before.

"Dr. Collingwood--Michael Samuelle."

They shook hands, Helen peering at him in the dim light. Nikita had the impression she liked what she saw, but all she said was, "There's a guestroom at the top of the stairs. I dare say you won't need two?" As one, they silently shook their heads. "Quite. Good night, then." To Nikita: "We'll talk again in the morning. Chauncey, come help me lock up." And she left the room, closing the door behind her.

************

V. Reprieve

Naked and basking in each other, they made love on the floor before the fire as though it were the first time or the last. But it had almost always been that way for them--the first time after something or the last time before something else. Beginnings and endings were nearly all they'd ever had, even when they didn't know it. So little time in between. Oh, Michael.... Her legs around his waist, his weight along her body making it sing, she drew him in and in, knowing that the time before this had been their last affirmation, and this their first celebration.

Afterwards, the tile floor seemed much colder than it had been when he'd stripped them both, the firelight caressing his skin and dancing in his eyes. But there was a large, washed-to-softness comforter folded on the end of the waiting room couch. Spread on the polished tiles, it was large enough for them to lie close together on half of it and pull the other half over them. For a while they lay on their sides facing one another, mouths tasting mouths and hands caressing shoulders and backs and thighs. Then she lifted his chin with her finger and approached the question that had to be asked.

"I love you for being there for me."

"I'll always be there for you."

"Do you think abortion is wrong?"

"No. I think it was your decision. You'd made it. Fait accompli. Is that morality?"

"And if I'd gone the other way?"

"You didn't."

"Michael, if the decision was yours, what would it be?"

He drew her against him, his lips close to her ear as they had been when he told her for the first time that he loved her. "This could be the only chance we ever have," he whispered. She closed her eyes as she had then, and they held each other in silence.

After a time he said with a smile in his voice, "We should call her Grace."

"I'd only been flagged twelve days."

"Then we should call her Fate."

"Him."

"No."

"Yes. I couldn't care less. I just know."

"We'll see."

You sound like my father. But she was not about to say that out loud. "He should be Luc, after your father."

"My father's name was Nicholas."

"But you told me--" It took her a moment to see where this was leading. "Nice try, but no little Nickys in this family. He's Luc. It's in the profile." She shivered.

Before she could do more than squeak in protest, he was up and bundling her back into her sweats, then dressing himself, but only in his jeans and shirt. Their underwear and socks he gathered into one neat pile and left it there, causing her to grin in appreciation of his foresight. They sat on the floor together, leaning against the couch and each other, and then she moved to lie with her head in his lap. But he stopped her wordlessly and lay down with his head in hers, pressing a quick kiss to her belly. "Now," he said, "tell me about you."

"You have to get all the hearts and the Queen of Spades. If you can't, you lose everything."

"I think you may already have the Queen in hand."

"Good thought." She stroked his hair, wondering at the expression that had come into his eyes as she talked about her work and her plans for the Section, her interaction with the Group, and Christopher. Admiring? A little sad, maybe? Both? "I just hope I can stay like I've been this week. I feel so--so--"

"Focused," he said softly, and broke eye contact, his gaze wondering to the fire and then around the room. "Do you realize how much you've changed?"

"Changed? I haven't changed. It's just an adrenaline high."

"No." His gaze returned to meet hers. "You don't need me any more." Admiring, and a little sad.

"Oh, Michael!"

"Shh." He sat up, laying his fingers on her mouth, and then ran the tip of one of them over her lips. "You don't need me in Section any more. You're on your own there, and you love it."

"I hate it there! I always have!"

"You love being in charge of yourself." She tried to speak the denial she wanted to be there, but could not find it. "I was going to make you come back with me."

All other thoughts screamed to a halt. "You have no right." It had to be said, but it did not have to sound like a hurled accusation, and she was pleased to hear that it didn't.

"This is my child, too. So I would have had the right. But now I don't. Not with you like this."

"What did you expect? Another Terry?"

"I expected, 'I fear I've lost the courage for our dream.' If I'd found you here like that, I would have risked all our lives to bring you home."

Leaning her forehead against his, she whispered, "I fear that was me in a previous incarnation."

"So it would seem."

They were silent for a few moments, and then she raised her head to look at him again. "What does scare me is that it's all going too well. The Group, for instance."

"You should keep working Cornu."

"I'm not working him."

"What do you call it?"

"I don't call it anything. He's starting to respect my views, and he's starting to trust me. I'm just using--" Using? Hearing herself say the word, she stopped.

"What do you call that?"

"Not manipulation."

"What, then?" When she simply looked at him, aghast, he went on: "We filter in and censor out, Kita. It's how relationships survive."

"But...."

Censored out: "Don't call me 'Missy'!"

Filtered in: "He said Evelyn would have wanted us to know each other."

Censored out: "You sound like my father."

"So I should just go back and work Stare Bear like he's a hostile?"

"Whether he's a hostile or a colleague is within your control." His hand had been lying on her shoulder. Now he lifted her hair and smoothed it behind her ear. "It doesn't matter what you call it, just that you do it."

She raised her own hand, took his in it, pressed it to her lips, and laid it on his knee, still clasped in hers. "Don't Valentine me, Michael. Talk to me."

Again he broke eye contact, but she had expected that. "I thought I was."

"You were. Until just now." When he sat looking down at their hands, she shook his a little, and he slowly turned it to clasp hers. "That's better. Let's go check out the guest room. I get sleepy pretty early these days."

"Have we taken this as far as we should?"

"For now--yeah, I think we have. Don't you?"

He rose with his usual grace, pulled her up, folded the quilt and returned it to the couch, rolled the pile of underclothes into a neat clump and grasped it one-handed. "A la vie."

She was tempted to giggle as the two of them tiptoed up the stairs, shoes in hand, noting the location of the bathroom on their way past it. That temptation got the best of her when they fell onto the bed together, the springs creaking, the mattress sagging in the middle, and Michael grunting in mingled amusement and disgust.

"Merde."

"And you think I've changed?" The giggles were taking over now.

"Shh. You'll wake her up." He eased them both parallel to the cave-in and then rolled them into it, holding her close. The giggles died away, and she found herself torn between desire and her need for sleep. She would just close her eyes for a moment....

In a moment, it was the middle of the night.

Something about the muted quality of everything, she thought. The light from the window, the muffled clang-clang from the hot-air radiator beneath it. It all just seemed to say middle of the night...? She started awake, spooned against Michael, his arms enfolding her, both of them still in the clothes they'd lain down in. If he had been asleep, he'd waked as soon as she did.

"It's okay. Go back to sleep."

"It's not really fair, you know," she murmured.

"What's not fair?"

"You've been so much more patient with me than I ever was with you."

"Tell me what you mean."

"After two years, being undercover gets to be hell. It got so I didn't know what I was any more. No safe, warm place like this in the whole world. Couldn't find me any more. But you've never complained. You've been so good to me."

"You were always here." His arms tightened. "Why couldn't you share it all with me?"

"The danger, you mean? Wondering when Operations and Madeline were going to catch me at it and find some way to cancel me before Center could interfere? Like they almost did? No way was I going to share that with anybody, Michael, least of all with you."

"How did Center recruit you?"

She turned in his arms and moved a little away from him, lifting her head and resting her cheek on one palm. The room was not completely dark, and a wide shaft of light from the window fell across him at shoulder level, faintly illuminating his face.

How could such light eyes sometimes look so dark?

"After Jurgen, they said I could go anywhere in the world I wanted to. I went to a place in California where they have killer whales all penned up, close enough to the ocean to smell it, but they're never going to be let out of their pens. I think most of them are like Birkoff was. They've never even been in the ocean, and they have no idea what it's like to be free. But some of them are like us." He nodded--his gaze, intent and direct, never wandering from her face as she talked. "Whales are supposed to be so smart, maybe as smart as people. I wanted to watch them to see how they could stand it. See if I could learn by watching them. Couldn't, though. They all looked happy as clams."

"How long did you watch them?"

"Oh, about an hour, I guess. There was really nothing to see. Then I went shopping for a swimsuit and some books and a bottle of water and went to the beach. Great weather there. Not hot at all."

"What books?"

"Romance novels from a food market." At his questioning look, she grinned with satisfaction. "Don't tell me there's something I know more about than you do."

"Tell me."

"All the same story. She starts out kind of innocent, he's kind of mysterious, doesn't talk much, and they have all these misunderst-- No. Really. They have all these misunderstandings but they end up living happily ever after. Always the very same story. I only read about half of one of them, skimmed the rest, skimmed the other two. Between them and the penned-up whales, it didn't seem like much of a vacation, you know?" She lay down again, head on his shoulder, arm across his chest. "After I finished skimming, I fell asleep right there on the beach. When I woke up, this guy in a Hawaiian shirt was squatting on the sand next to me. He said, 'Smile. It should look like I'm hitting on you and you like it.' He wasn't pointing a gun at me, but he was carrying. It was like watching a replay of the worst movie I ever saw."

"What did they offer you?"

"Answers. About why I was brought in. Freedom eventually. All they were interested in was Operations and Madeline. How they treated the rest of us. How they treated hostiles. How they ran the Section. You were never mentioned. Nobody else either. The reason the Group is going along with me now is because of my intel on the two of them. I impressed the hell out of everybody, including my very own father it turns out, and now I'm paying the price for a job well done."

"Mick was your contact?"

She shook her head. "He was the watch Center put on me. Not that I ever knew that until he morphed into 'Mr. Jones' after they stopped Madeline from trying to electrocute me."

"Who was your contact?"

"Didn't have one. All dead drops. Had to be the fine hand of my father. He wasn't exactly into personal contacts."

"You agreed the first time you were approached?"

"Mostly because of us. It all just hurt too much."

"Nikita--"

"I was so in love with you, and I wanted you so much. I couldn't think about anything else, and I needed something new and important to focus or I was going to screw up and get myself killed. They only wanted to know about Operations and Madeline, and they said I'd be free. By the time Birkoff died I was starting to suspect it was all a lie, and I got--I got really down. Grenet's timing was perfect."

"I wish you could have told me how you felt."

"I tried."

"I mean when I first brought you back in."

"Told you? I told you over and over!"

"No, Kita. You never told me how you felt. You just told me how you thought I felt. Over and over."

She searched her memories for proof that he was wrong, and found none. "And I've been thinking that all you needed was patience."

"Each of us needed more than the other could give."

Something in his voice made her raise her head to look at him. In the half-light, his face was set, his eyes bleak. And it came to her that "There are things about me that must remain hidden" referred to more than Adam and Elena.

"Tell me."

"This isn't the time."

"Michael--"

"It happened when I was young, before L'Heure Sanguine. But this isn't the time." His eyes were like night. "Be patient with me."

"I will." This time, I will. Stripping herself from the waist down, she moved to sit astride him, pulled her sweatshirt over her head, then his shirt over his. "Now let me love you."

"Why not?" But she knew it was not to be. This was as far as she had ever gotten before, and so she was not surprised when her eager mouth got no farther down than his chest before he rolled her off and onto her side with her back to him. Once he was as naked as she, he pulled her against him, his hands gently kneading her breasts even as she laid hers over them, pressing herself into his palms. He began to enter her slowly, but when it became obvious that she was more than ready, he moved all the way into her, pressing forward steadily until a warm tide of pleasure surged upward through her body, making her cry out softly and press her head back against his shoulder. Now he was barely moving, pressing into her as one hand began to wander downward.

"Don't wait," she whispered. "I want you."

She got both, twisting in his arms even as they tightened convulsively around her and he groaned against her throat. When she could think again, she realized that their entire dance of love had taken only a few moments, asking nothing of her except that she love him back.

And that was a good thing; she was now almost dizzy with fatigue, even though her sated body still exulted in the touch of his.

"Sleep well." It was their ritual, and the lips that lightly touched her ear lobe were smiling.

"I'm not sure I can." The first time she'd said it, he had started to move away and had to be coaxed back.

"Try." He straightened his legs, rolling slightly onto his back so that she could rest more comfortably against him. She straightened too, sighed, closed her eyes, and was instantly asleep.

************

VI. New Habits

In the morning, she discovered how agile she could be at pulling on her sweats while she ran for the bathroom. Returning moments later, she closed the bedroom door and leaned against it, patted her tummy and sighed, "Michael, meet the bud. He and I differ on how I should start the day." She gestured toward Michael. "Bud, meet the man who made you what you are today." She crossed to the bed and collapsed on the edge of it next to her lover, who had pulled on his jeans in her absence. Now he tried to draw her head to his shoulder, but she pushed him gently away. "Ugh. Don't. Not 'til I brush my teeth."

"Are you all right?"

"What do you think? Come on. This isn't exactly virgin territory for you, is it?"

"I wasn't there for her very much." Hand on her knee. Lashes brushing his cheeks. Voice all but inaudible.

Excellent, Nikita. Just excellent. "I'm sorry."

"It couldn't be helped."

"That's not what I meant." Laying her hand on his bent head, she shook it gently. "Pit stop? You do not want to be in the way if I have to make another rapid egress."

While he was gone, she remained slumped on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, head hanging dejectedly. When he returned, she beheld with awe Michael Samuelle, master spy, barefoot and shirtless, looking like a lost boy.

"She doesn't have a shower."

This time she did not giggle. She laughed, and then tried to smother it with her hand, fearing that Chauncey might shout again if he were startled. But as soon as she succeeded, laughter turned to tears. Keeping her hand over her mouth, she continued to weep even after Michael sat next to her and pulled her into his arms.

Finally the storm passed. She raised her head, sure that her face must look ravaged, and saw in his eyes that she was beautiful.

"Biscuits."

They stood in the kitchen doorway, hand-in-hand, while Helen--wearing yet another tweed skirt and cardigan--puttered about a gas stove on legs, her back to them after wishing them a brisk good morning.

Did the whole family have a thing about turning their backs on you?

"You mean...crackers?"

"On the bedside table. You eat one slowly before you sit up, and another before you stand. Will you have mush now?"

Realizing what they'd been asked, Nikita felt her stomach lurch. "Uh, no thanks. Not for me." Michael shook his head. "Can we make ourselves some toast?"

"It's here in the oven. No butter, mind. Smitch of jam won't hurt, though, if you fancy it."

The toast felt like sandpaper on the outside but was inexplicably soft and crumbly within, hot enough but not too hot. The smitch of jam tasted like heaven, and Helen's tea smelled wonderful.

When Michael told her as much, she gave him a speculative look but did not answer. His "Thank you for your hospitality" elicited an approving "Mmmmmm." Then she departed for the pantry, where she proceeded to putter some more.

Chauncey lay with his head on his paws, favoring them with a mournful but alert stare.

When it became clear that Helen did not plan to return any time soon, Nikita said, "Now tell me more about you. Not just the yes and no part."

His expression became guarded. "There's not much to tell yet."

"Okay, about Adam, then. How is he?"

Michael sighed. "Confused. Conflicted. He doesn't understand why his mother can't come back from the dead too."

"Poor little kid." Since Michael did not appear to be any more talkative than usual, she went on--again expecting him to look away as soon as she spoke. "You don't have a Mediterranean tan yet. But I bet he does." He did not look away, but his expression became even more guarded. "The couple you helped--are they still there?"

"Stop now."

"Oh, Michael. If you really didn't want me to know where you are, you wouldn't have gone there." Looking down now, he took her hand and began to stroke the back of it with one finger. "What are you doing?"

"Valentining you." He looked up, his expression all but blank, but with a faint quirk at the corner of his mouth.

"Was that a concession speech or a cheap shot?"

"Cheap shot. What else?" Looking away again: "I have to go."

She'd known this was coming, but hoped not this soon. Keeping her voice light: "So soon?"

"I have contacts in M15 who owe me. That's how I entered the country undocumented and got past the watch Center has on you. But once I choose the time, it has to be on their schedule, not mine." She nodded, mute. "Nikita--keep a tight rein on Darwin and the others."

"You wouldn't believe how much they've grown up."

"Just do it."

"We'll see."

He rose, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her as though there were no tomorrow because there might not be. Then he kissed her forehead, her closed eyes, her open hands. And then he was gone.

Chauncey looked after him, yawned, and relaxed.

After a time Helen returned from the pantry, glanced toward the back door, poured herself a cup of tea and sat down at the table opposite her niece. "Doesn't hang about long, does he?"

Unable to answer, Nikita shook her head.

"I think you must do some sort of undercover work. Philip, too. That's why he disappeared without a trace, and why you won't tell me how he died. You're in it, but Michael's not. Is he on the run?"

"Please stop."

"Is he on the run from something?"

"No. Helen, stop."

"If this man and your child mean so much more to you than your job does, why can't you just resign and go to him?"

"I can't ever resign, and I can't protect you and Chauncey if you won't stop this!"

"Ch--? Why--who would want to hurt Chauncey?"

"If I answer that, you're as good as dead. Chauncey, too, if he tries to protect you. Will you please just leave it alone?"

Neither of them moved for a time. Then Helen asked, "What will you do with the child when it's born?"

If in doubt, censor out. "I don't know yet." She hoped that the next lie would be easier. Even more, she hoped there need be only one more lie. "Have you decided to let me come back in a month?"

"I thought perhaps I might, yes."

"If you don't promise to stawp questioning me, I cahn't come back!"

"Was your mother Australian? Or is that a forbidden subject too?"

Lowering her head, Nikita ran her hands through her hair. This day had only just started, and already she was exhausted. "I was living with a foster mother while I was learning to talk."

"Did she take good care of you?"

"The best."

"You loved her."

"Yeah, I did." It felt like a betrayal even now. Tit for tat, Mom. See? You didn't love me enough to keep me, but I got you for it, didn't I?

"And she loved you. Someone must have. You love so strongly."

"Because of Katie?" The thought had never occurred to her.

But before she could make it her own, Helen asked, "Why did your mother abandon you when you were what--less than a year old?

"She had a new boyfriend, and she wanted to live alone with him for a while."

"A while?"

"I told you. Several years."

"Same man all that time?"

"No."

"And when it suited her, she took you back. When you were what--three or four?"

"Almost five."

Helen made a small, disgusted noise. "What could Philip have been thinking of?"

"They were friends. She wasn't with anyone else at the time."

"How do you know that if she never told you anything important? Did Philip tell you?"

"Helen, I can't do this now. Some other time. Please?"

"How do you keep going under so much stress?"

"I'm not under this much stress most of the time." What the hell was she saying? "I guess you can get used to just about anything if you have to."

"You're good at what you do?"

"Very."

"That's what makes things bearable, you know." Without waiting for agreement or denial, Helen rose, took up her cane, and limped toward the door to the hallway. Over her shoulder: "Come along. We need to talk about vitamins."

************

VII. Sea Changes

It was three months before Michael could come to London again. Meanwhile, the sky fell several times in Section One, although mostly in small chunks.

Walter became Nikita's Chicken Little.

"You can't let everybody schedule their own down time, Sugar. You'll lose control."

"They don't. They run it past me, and I schedule it."

"That and everything Operations and Madeline used to do."

"Not! We don't do torture any more, remember? And I haven't killed anybody since I got the job."

"Just get yourself a second-in-command, will you please?"

"I'm working on it."

"You can't do it all. You gotta learn to delegate!"

"That has to be the tenth time you've said that."

"Okay. Okay. I'll say this, though. You sure do look great lately." He glanced right and left, leaned across the counter, and muttered sotto voce: "All things considered." Smirk. Almost a leer, but not really. Reputation to uphold or not, this man had wept, holding her tenderly, when she told him her secret.

"Walter, sink the dirty-old-man routine, okay?" She glanced around and then, unobserved, smooched his cheek. "Guess what. I'm taken."

"Sugar, you been taken since the day you hit this place."

A few days after that conversation, three of her best young operatives had come to the Perch to inform her that her down time policy was too demanding. She had promptly put all three of them on close quarter standby for a week. When one of them had suggested that her response was approaching dictatorial, she had shot back, "Since when is this a democracy?"

"But it's not fair!"

"Spence, real life isn't fair, and this is Section."

After that, her down time policy was no longer a topic of conversation.

Missions came and went. The Casualty-to-Mission ratio spiked, filling her with dread, and then tapered off to what it had been when Operations was in charge. Other ratios and statistics flowed past her in an unending stream, all hissing for attention. The Group asked her for an annual budget proposal. She got behind in her administrative work, pulled an all-nighter, got behind again. What was left of the Collective descended rapidly from the high they were on after assassinating her father in broad daylight, fell on each other with tooth and claw and then self-destructed--producing three virtually leaderless splinter groups composed of thugs well-trained by their predecessors in the mechanics of terrorism, but not in strategy or even tactics. The result was total chaos beyond that faced by her predecessor in his worst nightmares.

"Relax, sugar," said Walter. "You're doing fine."

"When in doubt, punt," said Christopher--who, as an armchair covert strategist, was one terrific journalist.

"Get on top of it," said the Group. And she did--seeking advice from the leaders of the other sections (albeit largely to no avail), and even brainstorming with her own troops. By May, total chaos was reduced to mostly chaos, and mission success ratios began a slow climb back toward normal.

"What's normal?" Kelly asked over their desktop lunch one day.

"I'm not sure I remember. But our intel and Jason's numbers seem to be more and more accurately predictive, and my people are getting used to having me in charge even if they don't like it. It's a start."

But administratively, she was in over her head. Operations' personal daily records consisted of brief, cryptic jottings on the computer equivalent of the backs of envelopes, all piled into one directory with filenames that looked to have been created on the fly; her only clue to what each might contain was its filing date. Madeline's psych profiles, on the other hand, were masterpieces of detail, the files named according to a consistent naming convention that Nikita was able to deduce without difficulty. With relief and gratitude, she gave access to Kelly, who had worked as a psychotherapist for years before starting medical school in her early thirties. But the administrative tangle continued to plague her.

"Walter," she asked one day, "how can I access Adrian's daily records?"

"Ahhhhhhh...." Fascinated by what he was working on, Walter went silent.

"You were saying?"

"The backfiles. Get Jase to assign you a password." As she started to leave, he looked up. "What do you want with records that old?"

"A map. A compass. Perspective. A system. I don't really know."

"Operations kept records, didn't he?"

"It's a jungle in there."

"He was never into desk work." Walter turned back to his latest toy, and she went to find Jason.

Adrian's files were little better than her successor's; apparently he'd learned everything he cared to know about Section administrative record-keeping from her.

Resting her forehead on her hand, Nikita went doggedly from file to file and then, about to give up, came upon a disproportionately large file that refused to open. Unadorned filename, no extension. Recognizing traces of Section's encryption scheme, Nikita returned to Jason.

It took him almost ten minutes to decrypt the filename. "Man oh man, she fixed this so anybody who opened it really hadda wanna."

And memory spoke: "It was important that you show me you had the ability and the desire to contact me." Eerie thought. Her father and Adrian probably didn't even know each other.

The translated filename was Journal. The file content was not encrypted--freely available to any successor who wanted to read it badly enough to make the effort to open it.

"Can you find out if the filename's ever been decrypted before?"

Jason typed a series of characters. "Nope. It's clean."

"Thanks, Jason. I'll need to access it from home."

Brief additional keyboard activity. "Any time, ba--" He wore a lazy smile until his gaze met hers. "Yes, ma'am." He returned to his work, minus the smile.

The journal was not what Nikita had been looking for, but she spent an entire evening skimming and reading it. On the surface, the entries revealed little of Adrian's personal life, being confined to comments on her interaction with coworkers during the hours she was in Section, at Oversight, or at Center. But knowing some of the people referred to in it, Nikita was able to deduce how Adrian felt about them from what she chose to record. Fond of George. Hated Madeline. Alternately attracted to and repelled by Paul. Nothing new there, but still fascinating reading. Then she drew in her breath as she came upon yet another name she recognized.

"After the meeting, I dropped in on Philip to see how his work is coming along. He's even got a name for the thing. Calls it Veytoss. I told him that sounds like a pet peacock, and he actually chuckled. I'd just made the mistake of trying to discuss the compassionate exercise of authority with the Group and been all but sacked for it. So it was on my mind, and when he asked how the meeting had gone, I told him. I also told him how Paul had laughed in my face and George had scowled and lectured me when the subject came up with each of them. I was fed up, and Philip isn't the sort to carry tales. His comment was, 'What did you expect, old girl?' The man is surprisingly perceptive, all things considered. When I said as much, he smiled and gave that little shrug of his, then went on to say that it was well that I'd verbalized the concept with 'compassionate' as the adjective and 'authority' as the noun or I should probably have been tossed into the street. We argued a bit. He has little more idea of what I mean than the others do, but he's at least willing to listen. If he weren't so walled up, I might even call him friend."

Sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, Nikita stared down at the laptop, fighting the irrational idea that Adrian had written the passage for her. The compassionate exercise of authority. She had the computer scan the entire journal for that phrase, and retrieved one other passage in a portion she had only skimmed before.

"No one seems able to comprehend what I'm getting at, and it's such a simple thing. The compassionate exercise of authority. Paul laughed and said, "Catch more flies with honey? You can't be serious." George lectured me on how important it is for AlphaGroup to believe that I think like a man. One wonders what might become of Section if either of them were in charge of it."

More. Please. But there was no more.

And yet: As though it was written for me....

She searched on "Philip." Nothing but what she had already read. On "authority." Nothing more. On "compassion...."

"Compassion is so seductive. One so easily comes to believe that there must be a magic bullet, an answer to everything. If not love, then compassion? But one has to keep reminding oneself that Section could not survive by compassion alone. Aquinas wrote of substance and accident, what one might call noun and adjective. Compassion is the leavening agent, the accident, not the substance. Authority is the substance. One must just keep kneading it until it's flexible enough to rise to all occasions."

Nikita hit Find Again, and found only the end of the file.

But it wasn't the end of the file. Following the last visible line, there were several more where only an ellipsis appeared at the left margin.

Hidden text? She turned on hidden text.

"I don't know who you are. Perhaps I never shall. If you're reading this, I am dead or banished. You are probably in charge of Section One. If so, I hope that something I've written here may be whatever it is you've overcome obstacles to read. If not, perhaps I never found it. Or perhaps it's waiting to be found within you."

"I need your advice," she told Kelly at their regular meeting the next morning. "It's about the CTTF. They're not meshing, and I don't know why. Their missions have gone well, but when I meet with them, all they do is bicker. They even try to pick fights with me."

"Giving Mommie a hard time when Daddy's not around?"

"Oh, come on. They know better than that."

"What is it they should know better than? You and Michael were their first mentor-trainers. Team teaching, right? I'm guessing here, but there's a good chance they imprinted on you as a couple."

"They didn't know we were together."

"Huh. Everybody knew you were together."

"Well...okay. Let's say you're right. It kind of fits in with what I wanted to ask you about. I've been wondering if I'm going too easy on them. Sometimes it's hard to know when to...to exercise authority and when to be compassionate. Jasmine is sick, and they're all such kids."

"Kids with guns." Animals with guns.... "Could you be giving them mixed signals? From what you tell me, your group debriefs sound more like group therapy sessions. You are not qualified to be doing that, Nikita, and it could blow up in your face. You're not their momma either. You're their boss. Act like it."

"But they need--"

"They need to know who's in charge."

"Keep a tight rein...."

"Okay. Let me think about it."

"Think fast." Kelly's gaze moved restlessly around her office. "Let's get this done, okay? Running a cross between an ER and a research facility makes for a helluva lot of administrivia. I'm swamped."

"Honeymoon over?

"I'm bored out of my skull." Bravado. Guilt. And somewhere below all that, defiance and a whiff of fear.

Oh, Kelly. "I'm thinking about making Rick head of Medlab. He's a good doctor. He thrives on adrenaline rushes and taking risks, and that makes him very good at emergency medicine. What makes him unique is that he also thrives on documenting his every move."

Kelly's face had gone still. Then, quietly: "You'll have to watch him." Her assistant was an addicted day-trader who had robbed and killed, unable to wait even long enough to embezzle what he needed to support his habit.

"No. You'll have to watch him. I want you to be my second."

Expression totally blank: "You mean...what Madeline was?"

"No way. That's the whole point."

She had not known what to expect, and still Kelly surprised her. She simply gazed back, frowning faintly but eyes alight. "This is gonna be a whole other something, right? You and me--we do it our way, right?"

"Right. So, do we have anything to negotiate?"

"The plants have to go. I don't know why, but they really creep me out."

"They're gone." Nikita shivered. "They were all dying, and I didn't have time to try and save them."

"Save plants? Girl, you got a one-track mind."

"So what else is new?"

They both grinned as they high-fived each other, and then Kelly's gaze drifted over Nikita's shoulder, her smile softening. "Hey."

"Hey."

Nikita did not have to turn and look to know who stood in the office doorway.

"I have to go." She rose, choking on envy, the longing for Michael's presence so strong that her throat ached with it. "Hi, Chris. Later, Kelly." Slipping past Christopher, she walked steadily toward the Perch, chin high. If any operatives noticed and remembered later, they would dismiss it as simple jealousy of a former boyfriend's new relationship. Cover story intact. More than intact: if her child's father were with someone else in Section, there would be no danger of the two of them going rogue together when their child was born.

When she reached her sanctum, she turned it dark and sat down with her back against the wall, arms around her drawn-up knees. Luc had taken up residence immediately beneath her rib cage, and her expanding waistline was as yet the only part of her figure that truly revealed her condition. Duplicating half her wardrobe one size larger and gradually phasing out the other half was buying her time, and also making her clothing fit more comfortably; she hadn't been able to sit like this in trousers for seven years. Comfortable was also comforting, and the darkened room, the light filtering through the window and glowing from the readout screens, and her own thoughts eased her down into calm.

Only two days until they were together again, and he'd promised this time. The other times he hadn't promised....

Five days before her April trip to London, he had sent:

"I'm needed more here. SV's gr saw end of O plus numerous others. Assumed end of A next. Suppressed for weeks. Now all hell is loose. Research post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I am there with you always."

And in May: "Next time. I promise."

Only a few more days until next time. If he wasn't coming, he would have said so by now.

She rose, turned on the lights, and got back to work.

"You always were a tight-ass bitch." As he spoke to Jasmine, Darwin's voice was light, languid, teasing, but with an undertone of something else far less pleasant. For a week after being informed of her illness, he had treated her like a fragile oriental princess, as had Trent and Claire. But within a month, the four of them were again sparring almost constantly when they were not on a mission together, and Jasmine's precipitous dive into the depths of self-pity had exacerbated the situation. Now Trent fired at holographic hostiles from a treadmill inside the geodesic globe where Jurgen had once retrained Nikita. Darwin, Jasmine, and Claire were taking a break, sprawled on the balcony floor behind Nikita as she watched Trent over the railing.

"And you always were a slimeball," Jasmine responded tightly, making no attempt to disguise her pervasive unhappiness. Darwin was her favorite target, but no one was exempt from a tongue-lashing these days.

Claire murmured impatiently, "Give it a rest, Jazz. It's not his fault, okay?"

"I'm just so sick and tired--."

"That's right, cupcake." Now Darwin's voice was cold. "Keep reminding us of how sick y--."

"Stop it."

Nikita had not raised her voice or turned around, but Darwin stopped in mid-sentence. At least there was some respect there to salvage. A word from her would still silence any of them--for a few minutes. And then it would just begin again. "Trent, take a break. There's something we all need to talk about together." She turned from the railing...and caught Claire staring at her waistline as though she had never seen one before. Damn. Claire looked up at her face, smiled faintly, and then looked away.

With all four of them sprawled at her feet, she hesitated, considered alternatives, and then squatted down, still on her feet but with her knees bent and her thighs at right angles to the floor. Trent's dark face shone with sweat and impatience; he was on a fitness kick and disliked being interrupted during any physical workout. Jasmine was close to tears, as she almost always was these days. Darwin lay flat on his back, hands clasped beneath his neck, one knee up with the other ankle balanced across it, to all appearances thoroughly bored. Claire's mouth was half full of the large candy disk attached to the stick she held in her hand, her eyes continually straying toward Nikita's middle.

On second thought...

Rising quickly to her feet, Nikita drew her personal weapon, a small silver pistol, from her jacket pocket and fired once at the floor in their midst. She had anticipated having to resort to this, and had alerted Section security to the possibility. The gun was equipped with a silencer, so all that was discernible to anything other than electronic monitoring equipment was a loud THUMP. But the other four each sprang to a crouch within the same second, hands going for absent weapons checked in after their last mission.

"HEL-lo! Have I got your attention now?" When they merely stared up at her, she put the gun away but remained standing this time.

Darwin began, "What the fuck--"

"This," said Nikita in her heaviest, most intimidating growl, "is a workplace, Darwin. In the workplace, you don't say 'What the fuck' and you don't call anybody a bitch. Am I getting through?" Darwin nodded, silent for once. Much more gently: "Jasmine, we already hurt for you. You don't have to keep reminding us to do it 24/7." Jasmine's eyes were huge, almost round. The leavening agent, Nikita reminded herself. Not the dough. Again she hardened her voice. "Trent, sink the program you're working on that's supposed to blow all the security locks on Section's perimeter. If you'd pulled that stunt six months ago, it would have gotten you canceled, and you know what? It still could." Trent opened his mouth, but at Nikita's "Yes?" he closed it again. "Claire, get rid of the candy. It's not your 'only vice.' It's an affectation of innocence. Mine was bubble gum. Yours is lollipops. Lose 'em."

Incredulous, Claire whispered, "Bubble gum?" "Just do it." Nikita went on, explaining in detail how things were going to be different from now on. Nobody moved. Nobody else spoke. At the end, there were no questions.

"We meet in Systems in ten minutes. Dismissed."

Ten minutes later, she found her four charges huddled around one Systems work station as though they had never been anything but bosom buddies. As she approached them, she realized that for the moment none of them was aware of her presence.

Claire was the center of attention, but as Nikita paused, trying to decide how to handle the premature announcement that Claire was obviously making, Darwin murmured, deadpan: "Please pass...the sugar."

The effect was instantaneous.

Jasmine: "Shut up, Darwin!" But she was laughing. Jasmine was laughing.

Claire, genuinely confused: "Say again?"

Trent: "Put a sock in it, man!" But he was laughing too.

Jasmine leaned over and whispered something to Claire, who nodded, grinning. "Ah, but of course!" And all four cracked up at once.

"What's this about sugar?" Nikita asked.

They all startled perceptibly. Darwin said, "Uh! Um. Ah," and seemed to run out of noises to make. No one else said anything.

"Claire, I wish you could have kept that to yourself. Now I'm going to have to trust all of you with something you shouldn't know yet." Pulling a rolling chair over so that she could sit near them, she gave her second prepared explanation of the day--this one an abstracted version of the one she had been working over in her head for months in preparation for its future presentation to AlphaGroup. Long before she finished, it was obvious that nobody was laughing anymore. Nobody was even smiling. Trent, Claire, and Jasmine were giving her their polite attention, but Darwin had refused to look at her from the moment she'd first mentioned Christopher. Too late, she realized what she had done to all of them.

Fool, she told herself, trying to stay focused. Kelly had warned her, and instead of listening, she had just told four not-quite-grownup kids that Mommy had cheated on Daddy right after his last visit home.

But it was done, and she did not know what her alternative had been.

"So I'm asking all of you to keep this dark until I tell the Group," she finished. "I have no choice but to trust you."

Jasmine said quietly, "Nikita, we didn't save your life so that Center could take it away." They all nodded solemnly--even Darwin, who still would not look at her.

She thanked them, and they went silently to their work stations.

For an hour she moved from one to the other, giving them guidance on how to create a mission sim from a previously prepared template, today walking them through the morphing of standard primitive shapes into heads, lampshades, clock towers, paths leading over hills into trees. Jasmine, Claire, and Trent continued to listen politely and asked polite questions. Darwin continued to type when she drew up a chair to beside him. "Thanks," he said. "I don't need any help."

"Mind if I sit here for a little while?"

"Yeah, I mind." Still typing. But the scenario he was creating made no sense. Turning her eyes from the screen, she saw tears standing in his.

"Compassion is the leavening...."

"If in doubt, punt."

"Darwin." He looked down at the keyboard. "Look at me, Darwin." He stopped typing and looked past her left shoulder. Slowly, deliberately, she raised her right hand into his line of vision and gave him a thumbs-up sign. "Don't believe everything you hear. Not even from me."

When he finally raised his eyes to hers, they were still moist. "Why do you trust me?"

"Because you care."

"I don't care! Why the f--why should I care?"

"I'm not sure."

He stared blindly at the screen for a while, and then, finally, whispered, "Michael's the only one in my entire life who never let me get away with one freakin' thing."

"Well, here's somebody who just got in line behind him."

"I noticed." He looked straight at her for the first time in well over an hour. "Take care, okay?" His eyes were clear now, but suddenly hers weren't. "If there's anything any of us can do, just give a holler."

"The others still think--the more people who know--"

"I'll care of the others, Teach. You just take care of you and--uh--"

"And Luc."

"No shi--uh." He was grinning now. "That's French, right?"

"How could you tell?"

"The way you said it." Still grinning: "Cool. That is so cool."