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.She hoped that Darton wasn t starting to get the islanders on his side.Michelle and Darton had met on a field trip in Borneo, their obligatorygovernment service after graduation.The other field workers were older,paying their taxes or working on their second or third or fourth or fifthcareers, and Michelle knew on sight that Darton was no older than she, thathe, too, was a child among all these elders.They were pulled to each other asif drawn by some violent natural force, cataloguing snails and terrapins byday and spending their nights wrapped in each other in their own shell, theirturtleback tent.The ancients with whom they shared their days treated themwith amused condescension, but then, that was how they treated everything.Darton and Michelle didn t care.In their youth they stood against allcreation.When the trip came to an end, they decided to continue their work together,just a hop across the equator in Belau.Paying their taxes ahead of time.Theycelebrated by getting new bodies, an exciting experience for Michelle, who hadbeen built by strict parents who wouldn t allow her to have a new body untiladulthood, no matter how many of her friends had been transforming from anearly age into one newly fashionable shape or another.Michelle and Darton thought that anthropoid bodies would be suitable for thework, and so they went to the clinic in Delhi and settled themselves onnanobeds and let the little machines turn their bodies, their minds, theirmemories, their desires and their knowledge and their souls, into long stringsof numbers.All of which were fed into their new bodies when they were ready,and reserved as backups to be downloaded as necessary.Being a siamang was a glorious discovery.They soared through the treetops oftheir little island, swinging overhand from limb to limb in a frenzy of glory.Michelle took a particular delight in her body hair she didn t have as much asa real ape, but there was enough on her chest and back to be interesting.Theybuilt nests of foliage in trees and lay tangled together, analyzing data ormaking love or shaving their hair into interesting tribal patterns.Love wasfar from placid it was a flame, a fury.An obsession that, against all odds,had been fulfilled, only to build the flame higher.The fury still burned in Michelle.But now, after Darton s death, it had adifferent quality, a quality that had nothing to do with life or youth.Michelle, spooning up blueberries and cream, riffled through the names andfaces her spiders had spat out.There were, now she added them up, apreposterous number of pictures of green-eyed women with dark skin whosepictures were somewhere in the net.Nearly all of them had striking goodlooks.Many of them were unidentified in the old scans, or identified only bya first name.The highest probability the software offered was 43 percent.That 43 percent belonged to a Brazilian named Laura Flor, who research swiftlyshowed was home inAracaju during the critical period, among other things having a baby.A videoof the delivery was available, but Michelle didn t watch it.The way womendelivered babies back then was disgusting.The next most likely female was another Brazilian seen in some touristphotographs taken in Rio.Not even a name given.A further search based on this woman s physiognomyturned up nothing, not until Michelle broadened the search to a differentgender, and discovered that the Brazilian was a transvestite.That didn t seemto be Terzian s scene, so she left it alone.The third was identified only as Stephanie, and posted on a site created by awoman who had done relief work in Africa.Stephanie was shown with a group ofother relief workers, posing in front of a tin-roofed, cinderblock buildingidentified as a hospital.file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Wa.ams%20-%20The%20Green%20Leopard%20Plague.txt (28 of 40) [10/16/2004 5:38:28 PM]Page 30 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlfile:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Walter%20Jon%20Williams%20-%20The%20Green%20Leopard%20Plague.txtThe quality of the photograph wasn t very good, but Michelle mapped thephysiognomy anyway, and sent it forth along with the name "Stephanie" to seewhat might happen.There was a hit right away, a credit card charge to a Stephanie América Pais eSilva.She had stayed in a hotel in Paris for the three nights before Terziandisappeared.Michelle s blood surged as the data flashed on her screens.She sent out morespiders and the good news began rolling in.Stephanie Pais was a dual citizen of Portugal and Angola, and had beeneducated partly in theStates a quick check showed that her time at university didn t overlapTerzian s
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