Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [10]
Agnarsson looked up again. This time, he smiled a little beneath his wild mustache. “I do. I just wish Doctor Gorvoy would let me out of here. I’m going a little stir crazy.”
“Hang in there,” the medic told him.
She wished she could tell him he would be released soon. However, it didn’t look like that was going to take place—not until Gorvoy and his staff understood what had happened to him.
An hour earlier, the doctor had injected a drug into Agnarsson’s bloodstream which would make his neural pathways easier to scan. Coquillette’s was the second of three scheduled examinations. By the time they were completed, Gorvoy hoped to be able to come up with a hypothesis.
And if he couldn’t do that? If the neural scan didn’t shed any light on the mystery? The medical team would simply have to come up with another approach to the problem.
Coquillette played her bioscanner over Agnarsson from his feet to the crown of his head. She was almost finished when she noticed something. Agnarsson’s hair…it had flecks of white in it.
She was sure they weren’t there the last time she saw him…and that was just the day before. Besides, the engineer was a young man—thirty at the outside. How could his hair be losing its pigment already?
Unless whatever had altered him…was still altering him. It was a chilling thought—because if Agnarsson was changing on the outside, he might be changing on the inside as well. He might be getting stronger.
Fighting to remain calm, Coquillette checked her readout to make certain the requisite data had been recorded. Satisfied, she replaced the device on her belt.
“See you later,” she told Agnarsson, hoping her anxiety didn’t show, and started for the exit.
“You know,” the engineer called after her unexpectedly, “you don’t have to go. Not right away, I mean.”
His voice sounded funny…louder, more expansive somehow. As if it were filling the entire intensive care unit…or maybe filling her head, Coquillette couldn’t tell which.
He looked at her with those bizarre, silver orbs, not quite eyes anymore, and she felt panic. After all, if he could manipulate the Valiant’s helm controls, what might he not be able to do to a human being?
“Actually,” she blurted, “I do.”
And she left him there.
Jack Gorvoy was studying his monitor screen when Coquillette showed up at his door.
The woman looked pale, frightened. It got his attention immediately. After all, Coquillette was the steadiest officer he had.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s him,” Coquillette whispered, sneaking a glance back over her shoulder.
“Agnarsson.”
Gorvoy looked past the medic. From what he could see of his patient, the man was reading the book the doctor had given him—nothing more. Still, he didn’t want to dismiss his officer’s feelings out of hand.
“Close the door and sit down,” Gorvoy said.
Coquillette did as she was told. Then she described the change she had seen in Agnarsson’s hair color.
The doctor frowned. He had examined the engineer less than an hour ago, and he hadn’t noticed any graying.
“I’m not imagining it,” his officer insisted.
“I didn’t say you were,” he told her. “Can I see your bioscanner?”
Removing it from her belt, she handed it over to him. Gorvoy called up the scan Coquillette had just done on the device’s readout. Then he called up the earlier scan on his computer screen.
“Well?” she asked.
I’ll be damned, he thought. “You’re right. Agnarsson’s changed. And I’m not talking about his hair color.”
Coquillette got up and circumnavigated his desk to get a look. “What else?” she demanded.
Gorvoy pointed to the screen. “The neural pathways in his cerebellum have reshaped themselves. They’re getting bigger.”
She looked at him, her face as drawn and grim as he had ever seen it. “And his powers?”
“May be increasing,” he said, completing her thought. He sat back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Congratulations. Your discovery puts mine to shame.”
“Your discovery…?” Coquillette wondered out loud.
Gorvoy nodded. “I figured out why