Later, as Remembrance was helping him into bed and getting him tuned up for the night, he told her that tomorrow he would begin getting to know the other four members of the Seven a little better, and that he would politely decline Ariane’s assistance in doing so. Ariane would have gloried in the opportunity to furnish Doc with dossiers full of statistics, and hours of personal gossip, about Beled, Kath Two, Tyuratam, and Langobard. But Hu Noah had always felt uncomfortable with such disclosures because they raised the obvious question of what was being disclosed, by the same person, to other curious minds, about Doc.
At five o’clock the next morning, Doc was in the recreation center, walking very slowly on a treadmill, when Beled Tomov came in for his daily workout. Beled’s double take was so amusing that even Doc, who had made an art form of appearing not to know what was going on, was hard-pressed not to laugh at the poor fellow’s expense. Even Remembrance, sitting nearby and reading, felt it best to interpose her book between her face and Beled’s startled gaze for a few moments.
“Lieutenant Tomov,” Doc said, “I thought you’d never drag yourself out of bed.”
Beled remembered his manners and saluted.
“I hope you won’t think me rude if I don’t reciprocate,” Doc said, and nodded down at the treadmill’s handlebars. “I have a death grip on these.”
Beled was looking around for Ariane. Doc decided not to make any comment. “Is it your practice to warm up first?” he asked.
“It is not considered necessary,” Beled answered.
“Ah, too bad, I was thinking we might go for a stroll together,” Doc said, nodding at the empty treadmill next to him.
“That can be done,” Beled allowed, “if I may stroll at a different pace.”
“Suit yourself!” Doc said. “There is a reason I did not attempt this in the wild.”
Within a few minutes the Teklan, now stripped to nothing but a pair of briefs, was running flat-out on the treadmill next to Doc’s, his hands blades, his arms scissoring, the soles of his bare feet skimming across the textured belt of the treadmill rather than pounding it. Engineered and bred to be a match for Neoanders, Teklans were at a genetic disadvantage because they were built like modern humans and did not partake of Neanderthal DNA. Bard could sleep in, eat and drink whatever he wanted, and still be as strong as the much larger Teklan. This was all perfectly academic, since no one seriously expected Beled and Bard to get into a fight, but it was a cultural habit of long standing that Teklans measured themselves against Neoanders, and used the comparison to spur themselves to even greater diligence than would have been their habit anyway.
In a calm and level tone of voice, as though he were sitting on a couch sipping tea, Beled said, “I never thanked you for sending me on the mission just completed. I assume it was your doing. But I had no way to reach you. I thank you now.”
Doc’s eyes strayed to a regularly spaced line of scars wrapping around the small of Beled’s back, some forming deep craters in the twin pilasters of muscle bracketing his spine. Bisecting that formation was a long vertical scar running right over the lumbar vertebrae, where surgeons had gone in and done something—Doc didn’t know the details—to repair damage to the spinal column and, he supposed, add some hardware or bone grafts.
“It was the least I could do,” Doc said. “And given what happened in Tibet, I thought you might be better qualified than most to address certain . . . plausible complications that might arise.”
“So we will be operating near the border,” Beled replied. His tone said that he had long ago surmised this and only wanted final confirmation.
“We will go where the investigation takes us,” Doc said.
This surprised Beled slightly, producing a hiccup in his gait, which he spent a few moments resolving.
“These wanderers,” Doc went on, “do not seem to be great respecters of borders, or of anything to do with Treaty, and so I thought it best to construct the Seven of persons of like mind.”
“Is it to be Beringia, then? Or Antimer?”
“Probably both. Antimer, of course, is closer—a short hop from Hawaii, which is today’s destination. But as the trail is warmer in Beringia, I think we shall go there first.”