She is crying, and has been crying for some time now.
“Once we’re inside, and safe,” says Kaybecker, “I’ll order that Jaguar to save itself. ‘We’re all underground,’ I’ll tell it. ‘We can weather the storm from here.’ ”
She opens her eyes, too late. It’s just the two of them beneath the ancient firs, the cliff before them, the meadow behind them empty. Her captain has already vanished, which isn’t possible. Isn’t. He’s just waiting for Kaybecker to call off the hyperplane, and then he’ll come back to save her… which is the only way she can keep walking… telling herself that the mission depends on her seeing that Kaybecker does what he promised to do….
“And we will weather this storm,” promises the monster. “The food reserves can keep us fat for a thousand years, and there’s plenty of bottled power…
She tries to speak, but she has no voice.
“It might be months before anyone bothers digging down to us. If they ever try. The casualties, the damage, the future changes in climate… this world’s going to be too fucking busy to concern itself with a bunch of empty, ruined labs…”
She takes a silent vow: If her captain can’t save her, whatever the reason, she will murder Kaybecker herself, then throw herself down an empty shaft.
“Look what else I got from him,” says the monster. “The extras he kept close, in case his originals malfunctioned.”
A pair of oblong machines lie in his hand. For an instant, Callene thinks they’re artificial eyes. Then, realizing her mistake, she turns, trying to run.
Kaybecker anticipates her, grabbing her, pocketing his plastic testicles as he drags her to the camouflaged entranceway. Armor doors lift for the them, then drop again. With a word, he causes them to weld themselves in place, with a sizzling roar. Then he punches out a coded signal on the first comppad, and, with a quiet happy voice, he says, “See? Your people get what they want, and I get what I want. What I deserve.”
She doesn’t have the strength to fight anymore.
“He never loved you,” Kaybecker maintains. “But I do. I do. And once the autodocs get these little boys implanted inside me—”
“I won’t,” she promises, in a low, desperate whisper.
That makes him laugh.
“You know how it feels. What I can give you.” He’s pulling her along the softly lit passageway, approaching the next set of doors. “Just think what it’s going to be like. Two people, any people, who can feel that way toward one another….
“How long can you fight that sort of temptation, sweetheart…?
“A week? A day?
“A nanosecond, is my guess…!”
Callene shrieks, and with her free hand begins to pull out gouts of her black hair, then bloody patches of her scalp, trying desperately to claw her way inside her own skull, wanting nothing but to blind the lidless eye within—