Read Halo: First Strike for Free Online Page B

often
    improbable names:  Dortmunds with red, papery petals, large Garden
    Parties flamboyant in white and yellow, Montezumas, Martin
    Frobishers, and Mighty Mouses.  He stopped and inhaled the strong
    perfume of purple Intrigue.  In the recombinant section, Halos,
    blossoms in careful rainbow stripes, had grown immense.  Giant
    psychedelic grids, only vaguely rose-shaped, they pushed
    everything else aside.  Gonzales put his nose above a pink blossom
    on a nameless bush; the rose smelled like peppermint candy.
     
    He recognized the woman at the bottom of the path from
    dossier pictures Traynor had shown him.  Diana Heywood wore a
    culotte dress of white cotton that exposed her shoulders, wrapped
    tightly about her waist, split to cover her thighs.  Small and
    slender, she had close-cut dark hair, streaked with grey.  No age
    in her skin; fine, sculpted features.  She wore glasses as opaque
    as Gonzales's own.
     
    She held out the thorny stem of a dark-red rose.  "Would you
    like a flower?" she asked.  Sun across her face erased her
    features.
     
    "Thanks," he said as he took the flower gingerly, aware of
    its thorns.
     
    She said, "Who are you, and what do you want?"
     
    "My name is Mikhail Gonzales, and I want to talk to you. 
    I'll be working with you at Halo."
     
    She said, "Will you?"  Her back to him, she knelt and snipped
    away a greenish tangle of vine and thorn.  The clippers choked on
    a clump of grass.  She freed them, then threw them to the ground,
    where they stuck point-first, buzzed for a moment, then stopped. 
    She looked over her shoulder at him and said, "I've been waiting
    for someone like you to show upthe company's lad, the one who
    keeps watch on me and poor old Jerry, to make sure we don't do
    anything unauthorized."
     
    She stood and strode away from him, up the hill, her angry
    steps kicking dirt off the stones.  She stopped and turned to face
    him.  "Come on, Mister Gonzales," she said.
     
    Cautiously holding the thorny stem, he followed her up the
    path.
     #
     
    Diana Heywood and Gonzales sat drinking tea.  He said, "I'm
    the outside observer, yesthe spy, if you wantbut I don't think
    we're at odds.  They're asking you to do one job, me to do
    another, but I don't see where our jobs conflict."  She turned to
    look at him; one eye was blue, the other green.
     
    She said, "When Sentrax called me last week, that was the
    first time I'd heard from them since they got rid of me years ago. 
    Not that they treated me badly, not by their standards.  When they
    fired me, years ago, they didn't just turn me loose, they paid me
    well  they're so prudentit was like oiling and wrapping a tool
    before you put it away, because you might need it again.  Now
    they've found a use for me and unwrapped me and put me to work,
    but I know they don't trust me.  And of course I don't trust
    them."  She stood up.  She said, "Come on, I'll show you what this
    all means to me."
     
    She led Gonzales into the next room, where their entry
    triggered the lighting systems.  Silk walls the color of pale
    champagne were broken with floor-to-ceiling rosewood bookcases;
    teak-framed sling chairs and matching tables stood together under
    a multi-armed chrome lamp stand.
     
    She stopped in front of a 1:6 scale hologram of a thin-
    featured man, apparently ill at ease at being holoed; hands in
    pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes not centered on the lens.
     
    "That's Jerry," she said, pointing to the hologram.  "He's
    what this is all about, so far as I'm concerned.  He's been
    terribly injured, and Aleph thinks something can be done for him,
    and as unlikely as that seems, given the extent of his injuries, I
    will help as best I can."  She looked at him, her face giving
    nothing away, and said, "Are we leaving tomorrow morning?"
     
    "Yes."
     
    "Well, then, I'd better get ready, hadn't I?  Where are you
    staying?"
     
    "I thought I'd get a hotel room."
     
    "No need.  You can sleep here.