CHAPTER 22Reunion
We were both expecting soldiers to come pouring from the transmitter. But no one came through the open panel. Instead, a voice spoke. A woman’s voice, cool, clear, level.
“Ira?” it said. “Mr. Cortland? Colonel Murray, are you there?”
Dr. Essen! I thought. Letta Essen! An instant later Topaz came alone across the threshold.
It was Topaz and yet—it was Letta Essen too, more clearly than I had ever seen her before in the girl’s amazingly adaptable features.
“I expected this,” Belem said with perfect calm. “I didn’t even send for her, I was so sure she would have to come. It’s the pattern, Cortland. It’s working itself out faster and faster now, beyond our control, I think. Is she Letta Essen?”
I nodded in bewilderment. The voice was not Dr. Essen’s, of course, for it c
