The doctor looked down at the woman on the stretcher. "What happened?" she asked.

Crystal and the paramedic looked at each other. "We're not sure," said Crystal, cautiously. "She was unconscious when I arrived. The cut to the fingers might have been accidental--she was washing dishes by hand, including some sharp knives--but the injuries to the wrists look self-inflicted."

"You found her first?"

"Yes. She called me; her husband's in New York. I stitched her up and bandaged her as best I could with a first aid kit."

"You're a medic?"

"Geneticist, but I've had medical training."

The doctor nodded, and reached for Bianca's throat, taking her pulse, then pulled down her eyelids to look at her eyes. "This blue..."

"She has a GeneSafe," said Crystal.

"I thought so. Do you know what's triggered it?"

"It must have been the transfusion," replied Crystal. "She'd lost a lot of blood by the time I arrived; I had the paramedics give her a transfusion as soon as possible. Sometimes the GeneSafe reacts to the leucocytes, but the reaction is harmless." The doctor blinked. "I work for Sanderson MedTech. I wasn't on the team that designed this device, and I don't have one myself, but I know the principle."

The doctor nodded. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think you've saved this woman's life. Lucky you knew what to do."

"Yes," said Crystal softly. "Yes, it was."

Bianca lay in the bed with her eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness. The silence, the smells of flowers and antiseptics, and the ache of the drip into her arm, was enough to tell her she was in a soundproofed private hospital room; she didn't need to see it. "Interfering nigger dyke bitch," muttered her mother-in-law. "We ought to send her to Malaysia, that'd teach her how easy she's got it here."

"We can't," replied her husband, whispering the way most people do around a sleeper or a corpse. "Adams has convinced the Old Man that she's going to make him immortal."

"Good a reason as any; the sooner he's dead, the sooner we inherit. Christ, Bobby, you could at least stand up to him behind his back, if you can't do it to his face."

"The longer he lives, the more we inherit," Bobby Sanderson said. "He has a real gift for making money; I know, part of it's reputation, but not all of it. When he dies--if he dies, come to that--Sanderson MedTech's stock is going to take a dive. We'll lose millions, maybe billions. Besides, if Adams is right, what do you think immortality is worth?" His wife stared at him blankly. "We can charge whatever we like for it--the government can't stop us--but it's worth a lot more than money. This is the fucking power of life and death! And while we hold the patent, we decide who lives and dies! Imagine what that'll mean to those assholes in Washington--or overseas. What do you think al-Sauds and the Kuwaiti sheikhs would give us for it? Or any other emperor, king, or President-for-Life? Now what do you think of the nigger dyke bitch?"

Bianca could almost hear her mother-in-law smiling. "I think we can put up with her for a little longer, in that case," she muttered. "But what happens if she decides to leave the company, and take her secrets with her?"

"Why should she? Adams swears she works harder than anybody else in the lab, on the same salary she started on; your hairdresser makes more than she does. And she hardly even goes home, except to feed her cats; she has a bed set up in her lab instead."

"What if she wants to live forever, too? Are you going to give her that?"

"It's not my decision, but if she's still useful to us, the Old Man might... and why not?"

"What if another company offers her a better deal?"

"Why would they? How would they know what she's done; we're not telling anybody. Look, we'll find a way to keep her here--why are you so worried, anyway?"

"Simon spends too much time in that lab."

Sanderson laughed. "What's wrong with that? The more he knows about R&D, the better."

"What if he's sleeping with her?"

"Droit de seigneur," replied Sanderson, drily. "Or is it de rigeur? Anyway, it's as old as--well, I'm not a historian, but Jesus, all work and no play... or are you scared she's going to bring a pup along to one of your D.A.R. meetings? They both have more sense than that." He always tried to be out of town whenever his wife and her Daughters of the American Revolution cronies gathered; marrying an aristocrat hadn't been his idea. The Old Man had arranged the wedding to win favour with her father, then the state's junior senator and heir to a dwindling but still prestigious tobacco empire. Bobby Sanderson sometimes wondered why she'd co-operated; it was obvious that neither of them had married for love.

"What about you?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"How much have you been exercising your droit de seigneur?"

"Jesus, you've got a suspicious mind lately! None since we were married," he lied. "Before that, I didn't keep count." He glanced at his Rolex rather than meet her eyes. "Where the fuck is Simon? He should've been here half an hour ago. I'm going out for a smoke; call me when he comes in, or when she wakes up, whichever comes first."