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the wall screen, where a twinkling, blue-green globe was displayed, its surface deeply etched with complex folds and channels.
    “What is that?” Kanaha asked, nodding at the screen.
    “That’s, uh, the heart of our project,” Virgil said. “It’s a colony of L ov s. That’s the form they take when they cluster together in an aquatic environment.”
    “ L ov s?”
    “They’re an artificial life-form.”
    “Here?”
    “God no. On the Hammer. There’s a two-year moratorium, you know.”
    “I know. What’s their purpose?”
    “We use them to study neural function. They . . . have a capacity for spontaneous learning, for self-teaching.”
    “Like a neural net computer?”
    “Not exactly. No. Their problem-solving procedures . . . they have more in common with our minds than they do with silicon-based neural nets. Especially in a colony. They can interact much like human neural cells in a brain.” Except the L ov s communicated through light, as well as through the chemical and electrical impulses propagated through their linked asterids. “Gabrielle thought they might have some . . . some capacity for one or more degrees of . . . of consciousness.”
    He swallowed hard. Then, as if guided by a will that was not his own, his gaze shifted to Gabrielle.
    She lay in a recliner on one side of the oval table, facing the display, her face ghastly pale, waxlike, the blood all stolen away from her surface cells. Her lips had faded to pale, withered ridges. Her eyes were mercifully closed. She looked as if she had been wrestling with evil spirits for hours on end. Her hair was sodden, her clothes soaked with a rancid sweat, and worse things, released as her body gave up its struggles. Her fingers were pale, waxy-smooth, and lovely as a sculpture, their tips tinged a faint blue. Across her graceful forehead, her L ov s glittered blue-green in the shifting light.
    Softly, Virgil said: “Hark, cancel the display.”
    The screen winked off. The overhead lights came up, illuminating every detail of Gabrielle’s face.
    “You’ve got auditory pickups in here?” Kanaha asked. “I was told this suite was exempt from routine observation.”
    Panwar nodded. “The project R osa monitors. It doesn’t record.”
    “Why not?”
    “It would be a security risk,” Nash said. “A disgruntled employee could sell out to our competitors. Besides, our cutting-edge projects show superior progress when we give our people privacy and a free rein. Being under constant observation cramps creativity. Studies have proved it.”
    Kanaha responded to this with a noncommittal grunt. “So it looks as if Dr. Gabrielle Villanti might have been working with, with . . .” He waved his hand at the blank screen.
    “One of the L ov colonies,” Virgil said. “Epsilon-3, if you want to know. It’s one of twenty. Gabrielle was devoted to the project.”
    “She wanted to be the first,” Panwar added, “to meet a nonhuman mind. That’s what we do here, Detective Kanaha. We try to convince ourselves that the L ov colonies are real entities, with alien minds.”
    “Randall, please,” Nash said. Then he turned to Kanaha. “Are you done here? Can she be moved now, to a more dignified setting?”
    Virgil had to wonder what kind of dignity there was in an autopsy. Tenderly, he touched her forehead. Her skin was cool and damp, almost rubbery. Not her skin at all.
    “They were lovers,” Panwar said. “Would it be all right if Virgil had a minute alone with her . . . ?”
    Virgil froze, remembering the forceps in his pocket. Say no , he prayed. Say no .
    “Sure,” Kanaha rumbled. “The gurney’s still on its way up anyway.”
    Virgil listened to them walk away. He heard the door close behind him. Now! he thought. Do it now .
    He retrieved the forceps from his pocket.
    What happened when the machine stopped? Where did the person go? People had worried over that question since the beginning of thought, but Virgil could not parse the popular