With the pleasure, came a deep outpouring of love—it was as though her soul was suddenly joined to his and it was a deeper, more intense feeling than she had ever had in her life.
“Malik,” she gasped, throwing her arms around his neck. “Oh God, I love you—love you so much!” Then she started to cry. “And I don’t want to lose you!”
“I love you too,” he murmured, but for some reason his voice seemed to be coming from inside her head instead of outside. “I’ll always love you, Nicole—no matter what becomes of me. If even a speck of dust that once made up my body is left, that speck will love you until eternity.”
“That’s beautiful.” She sniffed and looked up at him. “But how…why…how am I hearing you inside my head?”
“Because we’re bonded now,” he said aloud. “We’ve formed a soul-bond.” He sighed and shook his head. “And I’m deeply afraid you’re going to regret it once I’m gone.”
“No, I won’t!” Nikki exclaimed fiercely. “Look at me, Malik.” She cupped his face in her hands and looked intensely into his silver eyes. “I’ll say it again, I love you. And you don’t want to forget people you love. Even if you miss them forever, you don’t want to forget them.”
She was thinking of her mom, who had died too young of breast cancer when she was only thirty-nine. Nikki was almost the age her mom had been when she died right now, but there wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t think of her and miss her. It would be the same with Malik, she thought. She would miss him so desperately her heart would break but it was better than forgetting—a hundred times better.
“I hope you’re right, sweetheart.” He sighed and drew her closer, resting her cheek against his broad chest and winding his long arms around her. “Gods, I hope you are…”
Chapter Twenty-four
Malik woke up with a sense of deep regret—it warred inside him with the contentment and well-being he naturally felt as a newly bonded male. When he looked down at Nicole, lying curled against him on the bed, he felt a love so strong for her it seemed to fill him until he couldn’t breathe.
But it was a doomed love and he knew it—doomed to be snuffed out of existence the moment he used the device the Time Warden had given him to go back in time ten cycles before to save his people and restore his planet.
And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry they had done it. Bonding the curvy little female to him had been the sweetest experience of his life—a life that might end today after he did what had to be done.
It was a sweet memory to carry to his grave.
He would have liked to stay in bed forever, just holding her there, but Nicole stirred eventually and pressed back against him.
“Mmm, I love you too,” she murmured through their newly formed link. Clearly she had felt his strong emotions through their bond. “Love to wake up like this, in your arms.”
“I just wish it could happen more than once,” Malik sent.
She sighed and opened her eyes. “I guess we have to do what we came to do now, don’t we?” Her voice was sad but resigned and her big dark eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“I’m afraid so.” He stroked a long strand of hair out of her eyes and cupped her cheek. “Duty calls, sweetheart.”
“I wish it didn’t. I wish we could stay here forever like this, wrapped in each other’s arms,” Nicole said wistfully.
“I do too.” Malik drew her close to his heart, wrapping her in his arms and holding her tight. More than anything, he wanted to never let her go. “I do too.”
At that moment, a loud sound that sounded like a shout or a groan suddenly came from the other room.
They jumped apart and looked at each other.
“What in the world?” Nicole asked.
“I don’t know but I think we’d better find out,” Malik said grimly. “Come on—let’s see what our hosts are up to.”
* * * * *
Nikki pulled back on her green gown and panties and slipped into her ankle boots quickly. The sound repeated itself and it was louder this time. They gave each other a glance—what was going on?
“Stay behind me,” Malik sent as he opened the bedroom door. “Let’s find out what in the Seven Hells is happening out there.”
Nikki followed him closely, glad for the new link between them which meant they didn’t have to rely on the privacy bubble anymore. Plus, it was nice to feel so connected to the big Kindred. She had never felt such incredible closeness—such oneness—with anyone. It made her entire sixteen year marriage with Gary seem like a handshake in comparison. She and Malik were inside each other’s souls—for the first time in her life she felt compete—whole in every way.
And I’m going to lose it—lose that closeness, that oneness—before the day is over, she couldn’t help thinking. For the first time she understood what Malik had been talking about when he spoke of the pain of a broken bond. The thought of losing him—of having him ripped away from her—was completely unbearable. And yet it had to happen—they had to sacrifice their bliss for the good of his planet.
Nikki didn’t resent what they had to do—she had known that Malik was a man on a mission almost from the moment he had uncovered her true identity and revealed his own true purpose to her. But she couldn’t help wishing that the two of them could have met under different circumstances. That they could have had more time together before they lost each other forever.
She could feel Malik feeling the same way through their link, wishing in the back of his mind that he didn’t have to give her up, even as he was hyper-focused on protecting her in case the loud grunting and shouting noises coming from the living area were a threat in any way.
They went through the dining area and the kitchen and rounded the corner cautiously only to find…
“What in the world?” Nikki looked blankly at the scene in front of them. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand what was happening.
The male Replicant was sitting on the couch while the female Replicant straddled him. She was bouncing up and down on his lap and moaning while the male Replicant groaned loudly and gave the occasional shout of apparent pleasure.
“What are they doing?” Malik asked, frowning.
“Why, imitating you of course.”
Suddenly the Knower was there, standing right beside Nikki, close enough to touch—if you could touch a hologram, that was. She wasn’t inclined to try.
“Oh!” She put a hand to her quickly beating heart and edged away from the neutral-handsome, no-gender figure. “What…what do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Come see.” The Knower led them deeper into the living area and pointed at the large, flat screen that Nikki had taken for a TV the night before. But when she turned to face it, she saw that instead of playing the colorful static it had showed earlier it was showing…
“Hey—that’s us!” Malik growled, sounding outraged.
Indeed, it was, Nikki saw with disbelief. The large screen was showing a picture of her and Malik the night before in the bathtub. It was the earlier part of their lovemaking, before the bonding sex, because she was moaning and riding Malik eagerly while he thrust up into her.
Apparently the two Replicants on the couch were trying to imitate what they saw, but there was definitely a problem—the male’s shaft was still completely flaccid and was nowhere near the female Replicant’s vagina. Still, they seemed to be going to town—bouncing and moaning and groaning enthusiastically if completely ineptly.
Once again, Nikki was bizarrely reminded of the way she and her cousin had played with their Barbie dolls as kids. Of course, they hadn’t known the facts of life and Barbie and Ken weren’t anatomically correct so they had just mashed the two of them together and made kissy noises. That was pretty much what was happening here, except the “dolls” were life-size and able to move on their own. Also, they were making a lot more than kissy noises, she thought dryly as the female moaned loudly.
“This is unacceptable,” Malik gro
wled, looking at the Knower. “Did you record us last night in the privacy of our rooms?”
“They are not your rooms—they are my rooms—the entire planet is mine.” The Knower spoke not as though it was bragging, but simply, as though it was stating a fact.
Nikki felt the wave of fury coming from the big Kindred at the AI’s words—the Knower had murdered everyone on his planet—a planet it now claimed brazenly as its own. A low, rumbling growl came from deep in his chest. She put a hand on his arm, trying to steady him.
“It’s all right, baby—let me handle this,” she sent. “Try to calm down—we don’t want to blow our cover.”
“It’s still not acceptable for you to violate our privacy,” she said, using her best Mistress voice.
“There was no promise of privacy,” the Knower said coolly. “Since you closed the Replicants out and they were unable to learn from you in person, I made certain that they could learn by other means.” It gestured to the large screen where the action between herself and Malik was still going on.
“Turn that off, please,” Nikki said firmly. “I don’t appreciate the fact that you recorded me with my slave without my express permission. It makes me wonder if I even want to deal with you at all.”
“Have I violated some custom of yours?” the Knower sounded genuinely confused. “I was under the impression that Yonnites liked to display their sexual exploits.”
“Not when we don’t know we’re displaying them,” Nikki said, frowning.
“It’s just that the Replicants have the capacity to learn but no living beings to learn from,” the Knower said. “I have showed some of them humanoid pornography—which works well for the brothel I have established for them in the Cantha System.” It motioned to the screen and the view of Malik and herself was suddenly replaced with a hard-core orgy which made Nikki want to blush. At once, the male and female Replicant began copying some of the things they saw on the screen.
“I see,” she said, struggling a bit to retain her Mistress demeanor. “So why not just show them that, then?”
“Because the customers who come to the brothel—and the ones who buy the Replicants that I export—sometimes express the wish for more personal interactions,” the Knower said. “And so, I hoped by showing these two a loving and committed couple who had been together for a number of years—like you and your slave—that they might learn a more intimate and emotional way to interact with clients and customers.”
“So you’re selling these things too?” Malik sounded disbelieving.
“Indeed I am. I am certain you must have noticed all the construction that has been done here on Uriel Two.” The Knower sounded proud of itself.
“Um, yes. We sort of noticed you’d turned the entire planet into one big city,” Nikki said dryly. “Who’s going to live in it, anyway—it seems empty right now.”
“Replicants—a new kind of Replicants.” The Knower’s eyes almost seemed to glow. “I will tell you of them presently. But for now, I must confess that the extensive construction has taken up many of the raw materials available on the planet. By selling my excess Replicants, I am able to replenish the materials I need to make more of them.”
“How do you make them, anyway?” Nikki asked, seeing what she hoped was a way to get where they needed to go. “I’m very curious about your facility. Would it be possible to get a tour?”
“Certainly.” There was a note of pride in the Knower’s voice again. “If you’ll follow me, my SOR manufacturing facility is just next door to this domicile. It is completely automated,” it added, rather unnecessarily, Nikki thought. After all, with no living beings on the planet, what else could it be?
They followed the Knower out of the underground house, up many, many flights of stairs, and through a long metal and glass tube which connected the first building to another, much larger one. Taking an elevator down several levels, they stepped out onto what looked like a vast factory floor.
Nikki looked around at the conveyor belts running everywhere with various metal parts on them. Worker robots—which were not the least bit humanoid—rolled in every direction. To Nikki they looked a little like the Mars Rover with their low, wheeled bodies. They were plucking various parts up and putting them together with long, many-jointed arms, then placing the parts on different belts that went to other areas of the room.
To one side were many hundreds of vast, upright tanks lit with blue light. Something was floating inside them—something that looked kind of like blankets with long fringe on one end, Nikki thought. What in the world could they be?
“This is the assembly floor.” The pride was back in the Knower’s voice. “The production of various parts and circuits is located in different floors of this building, but this is where the final product is assembled. Would you like to see the various steps?”
“Oh, yes—certainly.” Nikki nodded. Anything to keep the Knower talking. She could see Malik looking in the direction of the middle of the huge factory floor. There, in the center of everything, was a vast pole of blue, pulsing light. It ran from the ceiling to the floor and was as big around as a small redwood tree—which was to say, huge.
That must be the Knower’s core processor, she thought, trying not to look too interested in it. That’s where we need to be.
And luckily, it seemed that the Knower was leading them in that direction.
“Here we have the various internal parts of the Simulated Organic Replicants,” it said, gesturing to some of the parts flowing by on conveyer belts. “The assembly bots are each responsible for attaching a single part before they send the Replicant further down the line to another assembly bot.”
“It seems like they have a completely metal skeleton,” Nikki murmured, watching as an assembly bot attached metal legs to a metal torso and then put the contraption on a different assembly line where another bot attached the arms.
“Yes, the skeletal framework is made of a strong but extremely light alloy which is scarcely heavier than a true Organic’s bones,” the Knower remarked. “Though it is very much stronger. Now here you can see a finished framework,” it added as they came to a completed metal skeleton, a little taller than Nikki. “But after that is when the real work begins—the delicate process of organ insertion.”
“Um, organ insertion?” Nikki tried not to make a face.
“Certainly—come this way and I will show you.”
They went further into the room and Nikki saw that it wasn’t all conveyor belts after all. Here there were hundreds and hundreds of upright tanks, each lit from within and filled with pale yellow liquid. Inside the various tanks, spongy shapes floated and there were labels like, “Small female liver” and “Large male intestines,” pasted on the fronts of them.
“I grow all my own organs in-house,” the Knower said, smiling proudly. “As you can see, inserting them is a very delicate process.”
It gestured and Nikki saw there were different kinds of assembly robots here—or at least their arms were different. Instead of ending in metal claws, these bots had long, tapered fingers interspersed with various tools—some that looked like scalpels and others like needles while some she couldn’t identify at all.
“Each bot is tasked with complete organ assembly,” the Knower explained. “It doesn’t do to move them around too much at this stage,” it added.
“I…see.” Nikki shuddered as she watched one of the bots with the long, tapered fingers insert a pair of eyeballs into the empty sockets of a metal skull.
“Of course, once they are fully assembled, we put on the skin.” The Knower pointed to the first set of upright tanks Nikki had seen—the ones with the blankets with hairy fringes at one end, she thought.
As she watched, one of the assembly bots rolled over to a tank and extracted the blanket-type thing. It was red on the inside and olive-tan on the outside, with a long black fringe, she saw. It took the blanket back to a finished Replicant, lying perfectly still on a metal table. The bot laid out the blanke
t, put the Replicant on top of it, and then began stitching the blanket—which was actually a skin, Nikki now understood, in place around the limbs and torso.
The face was last and she realized that the long hairy fringe on one end actually was the hair. The bot stitched it in place quickly and efficiently, as it had done with the rest of the skin and the Replicant was finished. It stood up and stared around the room with blank, incurious eyes.
“Wow,” she said faintly. “That’s…amazing.” And also fairly disgusting, but she didn’t say that.
“It truly is—the skin took a long time to perfect. But further down here, you can observe my greatest triumph.”
The Knower led them ever closer to the center of the room. In fact, now they were only a few yards away from the pole of pulsing blue light. It gave off a high, electrical humming sound, like the biggest bug-zapper in the world, Nikki thought.
“What is this great triumph you’re talking about?” she asked.
“The artificial brain which I created exclusively for my Replicants.” The Knower pointed proudly to various glass vats which were labeled simply, “Male” or “Female.” “They must be labeled as to gender,” it explained. “Otherwise there are difficulties—especially in the Replicants sent to work in the brothel.”
“Uh, I guess that would be necessary. This really is incredible.” Nikki tried to sound genuinely impressed as she looked at the slimy organs floating around in pale pink liquid. She supposed it really was amazing when you thought about it but she was distracted by Malik, who was inching unobtrusively towards the pulsing pole of blue light.
“This is the invention which allows my Replicants to think for themselves—to grow and change and learn. To develop personalities of their own,” the Knower explained, pointing at the brain vats. “Of course, soon that last ability will be irrelevant.”
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