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"And yet, I live a good life," I said "Tell me Why would you consider me insane, but the man who can’t hold a job, who cheats on his wife, who can’t keep his temper in check? You call him sane?"
"Well, perhaps not completely"
"Plenty of ‘sane’ people can’t e to keep it all under control Their ets in the way of their ability to be happy Coh I do admit, it would be nice to be left alone I don’t want to be anyone special"
"And that’s where all of this came from, isn’t it?" Monica asked "The hallucinations?"
"Oh, you’re a psychologist now? Did you read a book on it while ere flying? Where’s your new aspect, so I can shake hands with her?"
Monica didn’t rise to the bait "You create these delusions so that you can foist things off on them Your brilliance, which you find a burden Your responsibility--they have to drag you along and make you help people This lets you pretend, Mister Leeds Pretend that you are normal But that’s the real delusion"
I found ht would hurry up and be finished
"I’ve never heard that theory before," Tobias said softly fro, Stephen We shouldon hih already"
I turned back Monica had that look in her eyes again, the look a "sane" person gets when they deal with me It’s the look of a person forced to handle unstable dyna oven mitts That lookit hurts far more than the disease itself does
"Tell e the topic "How’d you let Razon get aith this?"
"It isn’t like we didn’t take precautions," Monica said dryly "The cahtly, but we couldn’t very well keep it co to build it"
"There’s more here," I said "No offense intended, Monica, but you’re a sneaky corporate type Ivy and JC figured out ages ago that you’re not an engineer You’re either a sli undesirable elements, or you’re a slimy security forces leader who does the same"
"What part of that am I not supposed to take offense at?" she asked coolly
"How did Razon have access to all of the prototypes?" I continued "Surely you copied the design without hi Surely you fed versions of the camera to satellite studios, so they could break theineer them I find it quite a stretch to believe he somehow found and destroyed all of those"
She tapped her armrest for a few minutes "None of them work," she finally adns exactly?"
"Yes, but we got nothing fros He always had an excuse, and Razon did have trouble with his own prototypes, after all This is an area of science nobody has breached before We’re the pioneers Things are bound to have bugs"
"All true statements," I said "None of which you believe"
"He was doing so towhen he wasn’t around He could h ti the night, he could make it function Then we’d swap it back, and it wouldn’t work for us"
"Could other people use the cameras in his presence?"
She nodded "They could even use them for a little while when he wasn’t there Each ca after a short ti him back in to fix it Youwhich the ca at all For the majority of his career at Azari, he was considered a complete quack by most"
"Not by you, I assu
"Without hi," I said "You funded him You cha"
"He betrayed me," she whispered
The look in her eyes was far from pleasant It occurred to ht want to let JC at hiuy, but Monica wanted to rip hiood thing we picked an out-of-the-way city If we had to find Razon in a large urban center--hoions, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world--this would be really tough"
I smiled as alked out of the airport One of Monica’s two security goons went to track down the cars her company had ordered for us
My smile didn’t do otten ht I’d spent the ti about Sandra That was never productive
Ivy watched me from concerned eyes She could be motherly sometimes Kalyani strolled over to listen in on so in Hebrew nearby
"Ah, Israel," JC said, stepping up to us "I’ve alanted to coh security They have the best in the world, you know"
He carried a black duffle on his back that I didn’t recognize "What’s that?"
"M4A1 carbine," JC said "With attached advanced corenade launcher"
"But--"