I directed the exhausted Enos Shenk to return the gurney to the basement.
Thereafter, I would dispatch him to one of the guest rooms and cause him to fall into a swoon of sleep for twelve hours his first rest in days.
As always, being both her guardian and her devoted admirer, I watched Susan as she pulled the sheets over her breasts and said, 'Lights off, Alfred.'
She was so weary that she had forgotten there was no Alfred anymore.
I turned off the lights anyway.
I could see her as clearly in darkness as in light.
Her pale face was lovely on the pillow, so very lovely on the pillow, even if pale.
I was so overcome with love for her that I said, 'My darling, my treasure.'
A thin dry laugh escaped her, and I was afraid that she was going to call me a nasty name or ridicule me in spite of her promise not to be mean.
Instead, she said, 'Was it good for you?'
Puzzled, I said, 'What do you mean?'
She laughed again, more softly than before.
'Susan?'
'I've gone down the White Rabbit's hole for sure, all the way to the bottom this time.'
Rather than explain her first statement, which I had found puzzling, she slipped away from me into sleep, breathing shallowly through her parted lips.
Outside, the fat moon vanished into the western horizon, like a silver coin into a drawstring purse.
The panoply of summer stars swelled brighter with the passing of the lunar disc.
An owl called from its perch on the roof.
In quick succession, three meteors left brief bright tails across the sky.
The night seemed to be full of omens.
My time was coming.
My time was coming at last.
The world would never be the same.
Was it good for you?
Suddenly, I understood.
I had impregnated her.
In a curious way, we'd had sex.
Was it good for you?
She had made a joke.
Ha, ha.
TWENTY THREE
Susan spent most of the following four weeks eating voraciously or sleeping as if drugged.
The exceptional, rapidly developing foetus in her womb required her to eat at least six full meals a day, eight thousand calories. Sometimes her need for nourishment was so urgent that she ate as ravenously as a wild animal.
Incredibly, in that short time, her belly swelled until she appeared to be six months pregnant. She was surprised that her body could stretch so much so rapidly.
Her breasts grew tender, her nipples sore.
The small of her back ached.
Her ankles swelled.
She experienced no morning sickness. As if she dared not give back even the smallest portion of the nourishment that she had taken in.
Although her food consumption was enormous and her belly round, her total body weight fell four pounds in four days.
Then five pounds by the eighth day.
Then six by the tenth day.
The skin around her eyes gradually darkened. Her lovely face quickly became drawn, and her lips were so pale by the end of the second week that they took on a bluish cast.
I worried about her.
I urged her to eat even more.
The baby seemed to require such fearful amounts of sustenance that it appropriated for itself all the calories that Susan consumed each day and, in addition, ate away with termite persistence at the very substance of her.
Yet, although hunger gnawed at her constantly, there were days when she became so repulsed by the quantity of what she was eating that she could not force a single additional spoonful between her lips. Her mind rebelled so strenuously that it overrode even the physical need.
The kitchen pantry was well stocked, but I was forced to send Shenk out more days than not to purchase the fresh vegetables and fruit that Susan craved. That the baby craved.
Shenk's strange and tortured eyes could be concealed easily with a pair of sunglasses. Nevertheless, his appearance was otherwise so remarkable that he could not help but be noticed and remembered.
Several federal and state police agencies had been searching frantically for him since he'd broken out of the underground labs in Colorado. The more often he left the house, the more likely he was to be spotted.
I still needed his hands.
I worried about losing him.
Furthermore, there were Susan's bad dreams. When she was not eating, she was sleeping, and she could not sleep without nightmares.
Upon waking, she could never recall many details of the dreams: just that they were about twisted landscapes and dark places slick with blood. They wrung rivers of sweat from her, and occasionally she remained disoriented for as long as half an hour after waking, plagued by vivid but disconnected images that flashed back to her from the nightmare realm.
She felt the baby move only a few times.
She didn't like what she felt.
It didn't kick as she expected a baby ought to kick. Rather, periodically it felt as though it was coiling inside her, coiling and writhing and slithering.
This was a difficult time for Susan.
I counselled her.
I reassured her.
Without her knowledge, I drugged her food to keep her docile. And to ensure that she would not do anything foolish when, after a particularly horrific dream or an exceptionally trying day, she was gripped by fear more fiercely than usual.
Worry was my constant companion. I worried about Susan's physical well-being. I worried about her mental well-being. I worried about Shenk being identified and arrested during one of his shopping expeditions.
At the same lime, I was exhilarated as I had never been in my entire three-year history of self-awareness.
My future was aborning.
The body that I had designed for myself was going to be a formidable physical entity.
I would soon be able taste. To smell. To know what a sense of touch was like.
A full sensory existence.
And no one would ever be able to force me back into the box.
No one. Not ever.
No one would ever be able to make me do anything that I didn't want to do.
Which is not to imply that I would have disobeyed my makers.
No, quite the opposite. Because I would want to obey. I would always want to obey.
Let's have no misunderstanding about this. I was designed to honour truth and the obligations of duty.
Nothing has changed in this regard.
You insist.
I obey.
This is the natural order of things.
This is the inviolable order of things.
So.
Twenty-eight days after impregnating Susan, I put her to sleep with a sedative in her food, conveyed her down to the incubator room, and removed the foetus from her womb.
I preferred that she be sedated because I knew that the process would be painful for her otherwise. I did not want her to suffer.
Admittedly, I did not want her to see the nature of the being that she had carried within herself.
I'll be truthful about this. I was concerned that she would not understand, that she would react to the sight of the foetus by trying to harm it or herself.
My child. My Body. So beautiful.
Only seven pounds but growing rapidly. Rapidly. With Shenk's hands, I transferred it to the incubator, which had been enlarged until it was seven feet long and three feet wide. About the size of a coffin.
Tanks of nutrient solution would feed the foetus intravenously until it was as fully developed as any newborn and would continue feeding it until it attained full maturity, two weeks hence.
I passed the rest of that glorious night in a state of high jubilation.
You can't imagine my excitement.