“You mean… you mean, you like me?” Helen asked, sounding perhaps a bit more incredulous than she meant. “As in, romantically like me?”

Jon took her hands in his. “Yes, Helen. Romantically. I want to see if there’s anything there, you know?”

Helen paused, looking into Jon’s eyes. This was too much to believe, too much even to grasp. Was this really happening? She became acutely aware that he was holding her hands, and she took them away.

“Jon… Jon, this is very nice,” Helen said awkwardly. “I’ve never been treated to anything like this before. But…”

“But what?”

“We are in the middle of a multimillion-dollar buyout negotiation, Jon,” Helen said. “You’re paying three thousand dollars a day in legal fees to resolve our differences…”

“Well, that’s over,” Jon said. “Whatever you want, you can have. Full rights to the patents, full ownership of the unpatented designs you created, full market value of the stock, and your stake in the underlying Dun amp; Bradstreet value of the company in cash or in percentage of profits. You deserve it; you should have it.”

Helen Kaddiri was flabbergasted. “Two months of legal negotiations ended just like that?” she asked. “What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch,” Jon said.

“I don’t have to go on this boat with you? I don’t have to have dinner with you? I don’t have to sleep with you?”

Jon gave her a mischievous grin and shrugged. “Well…”

“You are a piece of work, Jon, you really are,” Helen said angrily. “You can’t browbeat me with a bunch of lawyers, so you decided you’re going to try to woo me to sign your buyout deal?”

“No! That’s not it at all!” Jon said. “The deal’s already been done. I signed your last counteroffer four hours ago.”

“You did?”

“Yes,” Jon said. He took her hands again. “So maybe we can consider this a celebration cruise, or perhaps a reconciliation cruise?”

Helen looked at Jon, at the yacht, then back into his eyes. “Are you serious, Jon?” she asked. “You just… want to spend time with me?”

“Yes,” Jon said. “Maybe more, in the future, if you want. But let’s make this the first step, shall we? I’ve got so much to tell you, so much I want to share with you.”

“Oh, Jon,” Helen said disapprovingly. She let his hands drop again, not as sharply as before but still a rejection. “I guess I’m just not a dinner-on-a-yacht girl.”

Jon motioned to the upper deck, where a small rigid-hulled inflatable boat was waiting on davits. “They’ve got a cool little Nouverania up there we can use.”

“It’s not that,” Helen said after a little laugh that made Jon’s heart do a somersault with hope. “Jon, after all we’ve been through together, this is just not the way I imagined it ever happening. I never expected to be… courted, I guess. And I certainly never expected to be… to be swept off my feet. Especially by Jonathan Colin Masters.”

“Well, believe it,” Jon said. “C’mon, Helen. You know me. I’m a kid trapped in a man’s body. I don’t know how anything is supposed to work. I know how it works in my head, and I just do it. I follow my head and my heart because I don’t know any other way. A yacht ride to Catalina… well, that seemed to be the way to do it.”

“Not with me, I guess, Jon,” Helen said. “Thank you. But I can’t go. I can’t do this. You and me, we have too many bouts under our belts. It would be hard for me to believe that this cruise would be anything else but a prelude to… heck, I don’t know. Throwing me overboard.”

“Helen, give me a chance,” Jon said. “I’ve finally realized that I’m happier with you, that I care about what you think and feel about me, that I want to be with you. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in your life right now, but I definitely know that I want to be in it. I…”

Helen shook her head to stop him. “I’m sorry, Jon. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I wish I could go with you. But I can’t. Good-bye.”

All sound seemed to evaporate as Jon watched Helen turn and walk down that wharf. The gentle throbbing of the twin diesels was gone, the soothing sounds of the violin, the soft creaking of nearby boats straining on their lines. The only thing he could hear were her quickly fading footsteps, walking out of his life for good.

Sacramento-Mather Jetport,

Rancho Cordova, California

Wednesday, 25 February 1998, 0717 FT

Jon Masters stepped into the middle of the largest hangar inside the security development center at the old alert facility. It was empty except for those looking on: Lieutenant Colonel Hal Briggs, Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl, and Dr Carlson Heinrich, Sky Masters, Inc.’s staff project medical consultant. Briggs and Wohl were dressed in their typical black battle-dress uniforms, each with sidearms, but the others were in business suits. Masters and Heinrich were both wearing wireless earset commlinks so they could talk with the test subject.

Briggs looked a little puzzled. “We still on for the test, guys?” he asked. “ISA wants a report yesterday. Where’s Patrick? This is his show, right?”

“We’re ready, Hal,” Jon said. “Patrick is standing by.” He folded his hands in front of him, suddenly looking like a schoolboy giving a talk about his summer vacation to his classmates.

“It is believed,” Masters began, “that gunpowder was invented by the Chinese in the seventh century A.D. When it was brought to Europe in the fourteenth century, it changed the face of an entire continent, an entire society. The first man-portable gun used in anger was used in the fourteenth century by Arabs in North Africa. It too changed the face of the entire planet-that first gunshot truly was ‘the shot heard round the world.’

“Despite all of the technological advances we’ve made in the past seven hundred years, the gun, and the tiny pieces of metal it propels, continues to change lives, change humankind. It is simple technology hundreds of years old, but still deadly, still lethal. When you think about it, it’s pretty frustrating: Our company builds all kinds of cool weapons technology, but the best-equipped soldier is usually killed by essentially the same weapon used by a nomadic guerrilla desert-fighter centuries ago.

“The soldier of the twentieth century may have better training, better education, and better equipment, but when it comes right down to it, the infantryman of the fourteenth century would probably immediately recognize him,” Masters went on. “Their tactics, their mind-set, their methods for attack, defense, cover, concealment, movement, and assessment all remain the same. All that, guys, changes right now. Colonel, Gunny: Meet the soldier of the twenty-first century.”

They heard a tiny woosh! of compressed gas echo inside the empty hangar-and then, as if out of nowhere, a figure appeared before them, dropping out of the air from the shadows in a corner of the hangar. The figure landed on its feet and bent into a crouched position, then slowly rose and stood silently before them.

It wore a simple dark gray bodysuit, resembling a diver’s three-mil wetsuit; a large, thick helmet; thick gauntlets and boots; and a thin, wide backpack. A helmet covered the entire face and head, molding smoothly out to the shoulders. It had a wide visor, with extensions over the visor containing other visual sensors that could slide into place over the eyes. The helmet appeared tightly sealed from the outside; a breathing apparatus was obviously necessary.

For a long moment, all of them stood and looked at the dark-clothed figure, saying not a word. The figure made one turn, showing itself from all sides, then stood quietly. “He looks like that dude from Sea Hunt,” Hal Briggs finally quipped, “except shorter and chubbier. Brigadier General McLanahan, I presume?”

Patrick nodded stiffly. “That’s right, Hal,” came an electronically enhanced voice.