“You seem bothered by that, Nicole. Why?”

She considered that, noting again that it was not images of Eric that she saw, but of his mother and sisters. “I think surprised is a better word,” she said, looking up to meet his gaze. “When you said you were going to give him another chance, I assumed you meant with the same status.”

“Stage One or Stage Two?” Travis broke in, winning a grateful look from Nicole.

“Stage Two.” The Major glanced at his watch. “In fact, it should be done by now. That’s why we’ve got to turn him in a hurry. If we wait very long, he’ll be so conditioned to it that he’ll lose his value to us. So get Clayne on it now. He’ll be out of sedation within the hour.”

Travis straightened, aware that the interview was over. “Yes, sir. Consider Eric Lloyd under control from this point on.”

CHAPTER 12

Nicole watched wide-eyed as Clayne Robertson polished off his third piece of pie and washed it down with the last of a quart of milk. She turned to his wife and shook her head. “Adrienne, you must spend your whole life cooking.”

Adrienne Robertson smiled, the well-formed, white teeth a startling contrast to her ebony-brown skin. She looked at her husband with obvious pride and fondness. She was lighter skinned than he, and as slender as he was muscular, with delicately shaped features and jet-black hair that was fluffed into a short but full Afro cut.

Clayne smiled back at his wife. They were in the comfortable, modern dining room of the Robertson apartment, lingering over the remains of dinner. He turned to Nicole. “If you don’t put fuel in the boilers, you won’t get any power in the turbines.”

Nicole laughed. “Turbines are a good analogy. I’ll bet you burn more fuel than an ocean-going liner.”

He gave a deep chuckle and patted his stomach in easy contentment. An ocean-going liner wasn’t too far off, Nicole decided. A former middle linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Clayne was built like a fifty-gallon oil drum. Central Supply had his uniforms specially tailored to cover the massive shoulders and thick legs. He had no neck, just a square block of a head precariously stuck on his shoulders. Football was not played anymore in the Alliance of Four Cities, because a player had been killed some years before. He had smacked helmets with another player with particular force, and the implantation had misfired into his brain. But Nicole had seen movies of football games, and it caused her to shudder slightly when she thought about running headlong into this bull of a man.

“Tell you what,” he rumbled good-naturedly, “if you’re so worried about Adrienne, tell the Major to pull me off this babysitting job and let me come back home before she gets out of practice.”