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cheerfulness, really wasn’t as insensitive to others as he often appeared. If he’d felt it necessary to break into Jarvis’s officially ordered vacation, it was either because the hibernation experiment was sinking itself into a hole deep enough to strike magma or else because he was getting pressure from either Ramsden or someone higher up. Either way they could very easily be asking him to come back in for a few days long before his vacation was over.
    What would he say if that happened? He couldn’t very well take Colin back with him; chances were the Ridge Harbor police had papered every police station on the continent with the boy’s picture by now. But neither could he leave the child alone in the cabin. He was too young to handle things like meals for himself, and there was always the possibility that he would hurt himself, perhaps badly. The posthypnotic sleep code word was there, of course, but Jarvis knew hypnotic commands tended to break down when the subject got hungry or thirsty. He still had a supply of the sleep drug he’d used in the kidnapping, but Colin had already had two doses of the experimental drug and Jarvis had no intention of mixing chemicals like that. Aside from clouding test results, it could be downright dangerous.
    The pod twitched, and Jarvis’s adrenal flow jumped with it. Jerking his attention back to Colin’s face, he was just in time to see the slitted eyelids snap closed. “I saw that,” he said sternly, letting his sudden thrill of excitement drain away. “Try it again, and this time don’t cheat.”
    â€œDo I have to?” the boy asked plaintively, looking up at Jarvis and shifting restlessly on the grass.
    â€œYes—but only once more,” Jarvis told him. “Then you can go play again.”
    Colin sighed theatrically, “Okay,” he said and closed his eyes again.
    It was a good thing the Brimmers had instilled such a healthy measure of obedience in the boy, Jarvis reflected as Colin again frowned blindly in the direction of the pod. The boy’s teekay strength would be growing rapidly over the next few weeks, which would correspondingly decrease Jarvis’s power to physically enforce commands. He could only hope that the boy didn’t realize that before he could be returned to civilization. For the first time in his life, Jarvis began to truly understand how the parents of the Lost Generation must have felt.
    â€œI can’t do it,” Colin said at last, sounding frustrated.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Jarvis told him. “Don’t worry about it. Here—why don’t you see if you can teek the pod all the way over the chimney, okay? Then you can play for a couple of hours before it’ll be time for dinner.”
    â€œOkay.” Obviously relieved to be back on familiar ground, Colin teeked the pod from Jarvis’s hand and sent it skittering between the conetree’s lower branches. Craning his neck as he stood up, Jarvis saw the pod sail high over the cabin.
    Smiling, he headed back toward the cabin door. Dinner would be trehhost pasta—one of Colin’s favorite dishes, he knew from his Vaduz Park conversations. He’d better get started on it; the slow-cooking a trehhost required would take a while.
    And later that evening there would be games, conversation, and some unobtrusive testing … and, perhaps, another shot.

Chapter 7
    I T HAD BEGUN TO cloud up while Lisa was eating dinner, and as she flew over Barona’s lengthening shadows, she decided it would probably start raining by morning. That could be a new headache for the foreman at her construction site; after losing the use of Lisa’s group last Friday, he wouldn’t be happy if a heavy rain deprived him of their services tomorrow as well. But rain in the eyes could cause kids to lose their grip at crucial times, and no builder was foolish enough to risk that. Gavra wouldn’t permit it,