Dionne sighed in disappointment, but forced a smile. “I’m ever optimistic that I will discover something that will make my task easier.”
Moving to the computer console, she thought it over for several moments and finally programmed the system to terminate after remedial instruction. She was afraid to give him too much at once, regardless of her impressions of him or the readouts. It was a gut reaction, she knew, and based more on emotion than science, but she couldn’t help it. The fear that she might injure him simply couldn’t be dismissed. He tensed when the programming kicked in and she caught his hand in the instinctive urge to reassure him. His fist tightened around her hand for several moments. Finally, his hold relaxed, however.
She found that she was reluctant to remove her hand regardless of the fact that she knew the crisis had passed. She liked the feel of her palm against his, the feel of his fingers. She studied them. The temptation was nearly irresistible to examine his long, tapering fingers with her own. Chastising herself, she moved away finally and returned to sit on the stool, watching him until the ICTD completed its cycle and shut down.
He’d passed from consciousness into something similar to a dream state. It was normal, something to be expected, and yet she found she couldn’t resist the temptation to place her fingertips on his neck. His heartbeat was strong but slow in his relaxed state.
Irritated with herself, she moved away from him finally. Since it occurred to her then that at least a part of her weakness could be accounted for by the fact that she hadn’t eaten since the night before, she left him sleeping and went into her quarters to scrounge for food.
It hardly deserved the title. The idea, she supposed, had been to discourage any inclination she might have to remain holed up in the bio-lab when it was of utmost importance that she leave it as soon as possible. Some concession had been made for comfort since the possibility existed that she might encounter a hostile environment that could jeopardize her mission. It was the bare basics, however. If she had discovered that conditions were still too unstable to make it possible to implement the plan, she was to have gone back into the bio-pod, making living quarters non-essential.
There had been clothing. That was piled in the bottom of the locker now, though, and little more than dust mixed with severely degraded scraps of material. The narrow bunk still folded out and retracted into the wall, but the mattress on it was in no better shape than the clothes. The base of the bed, as well as the chairs, tables and shelves, which had been constructed of plastics and metal, were still in usable condition, but hardly comfortable. Except for the separate facilities for bathing and sanitation--separated because of the dampness inherent in those facilities, not for the sake of privacy--the entire living quarters was contained in one, small room.
Moving to the wall that housed food storage and preparation equipment, Dionne removed a couple of the meals and examined them. Deciding it still looked edible, she added water and programmed the computer to heat the food to a temperature high enough to kill any bacteria.
The food actually smelled appetizing as it began to heat. Satisfied, Dionne left it to finish the cycle and returned to the examination room. Khan, she saw, was sitting on the edge of the table. She surged forward, reaching up for the ICTD device protectively, discovering almost at once that she couldn’t reach it.
Khan slipped off the table. As he did, his body slid along hers, bumping her. He caught her waist to steady her. Rattled, Dionne focused on retrieving her precious equipment and moved away from him the moment she had it, carefully placing it back in storage.
“I smell food.”
The comment drew her attention back to Khan.
She moved back to him, studying his eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Hungry.”
She smiled, but although she didn’t see anything that she felt was cause for alarm, she wasn’t completely reassured either. “You won’t be impressed, but I left two ration kits heating.”
He followed her back to the ‘residence’, studying the container of food skeptically for several moments before he nerved himself to try it. Dionne chuckled at the expression that crossed his features when he tasted it. “It’s designed more for nutrition and energy than taste.”
“I noticed,” he said wryly.
Pleased that he didn’t seem to be having any difficulty following her conversation, Dionne nevertheless decided not to question him and concentrated on her own food.
When they’d finished, she disposed of the containers in the recycler and left him exploring the living quarters while she returned to the main lab to take up her readings once more. He came out a little later. She sensed his gaze upon her, but she didn’t look up until she realized he was leaving the bio-lab. She frowned when she realized he’d disappeared up the escape tunnel, but repressed the impulse to ask him where he was going.
She would have preferred that he remain close by until she could be certain he hadn’t suffered any ill effects from the ICTD session. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been anything to cause much concern. The device had been in use for years. It wasn’t intrusive and problems arising from its use were extremely rare.
This wasn’t a typical situation, though, and she’d been distracted when she should have been totally focused on the test results. She could have missed something.
She was sorry when that thought occurred to her because that made it even more difficult to concentrate. Finally, she managed to push it to the back of her mind and focus on her task reasonably well.
She would have made far more progress if she could have managed the absolute concentration she’d had before Khan had suddenly shown up in the bio-lab, but she discovered she couldn’t block him out completely. Random thoughts flickered into her mind at the most inconvenient moments--the way he’d made her feel when he’d moved so intimately against her: the way he’d looked at her; the way his hand had felt in hers; the way she’d felt when he’d kissed her--causing her to have to redo far more tests than she should’ve had to.
After a time, her determination to persevere began to have the desired effect and she managed to concentrate so fully on what she was doing that a sudden thud behind her startled her so badly she nearly dropped her data tablet. Whirling to scan the lab for the source, she spotted a large, fury bundle at the foot of the access shaft. Curious, she set her tablet aside and crossed the room to investigate. By the time she’d reached the shaft, Khan was half way down it.
Uncertain of whether he’d seen her or not, she decided to pretend she hadn’t noticed he’d come back--she didn’t know why she wanted to. It was just an impulse that she followed without delving too deeply.
She was standing in front of the wall unit, staring at it blindly, her focus on the sounds behind her, when she at last heard the thud of Khan’s feet hitting the floor tiles. Casually, she glanced in that direction.
She might have saved herself the effort. Khan had already bent over to retrieve his bundle. The muscles in his upper arm bulged as he lifted it. Her gaze zeroed in on that indication that the pack was heavy, but somehow her mind didn’t really focus on anything except the rippling of the muscles along his back and arm as he hefted it.
Without once glancing in her direction, he turned and strode toward the door that led to the living quarters and disappeared.
Dionne tapped her fingers restlessly on her tablet for several moments, struggling with the urge to follow him and see what he was doing. Finally, she decided to wait to see if he would come out again.
She struggled through three more tests before she reached the point where her curiosity got the better of her. Setting her tablet aside, she strode purposefully to the door of the living quarters and went in. Khan was no where in sight and neither was the bundle. The skin that had been used to form the bundle had been smoothed into a pallet on the floor near the far wall. An assortment of pottery jars and bowls now resided on the table where they’d eaten earlier. The smell of cooking food drifted lazily, enticingly throu
gh the room from the cooking unit.
She went to stare through the glass at the food, but, as tempting as the smells were, she was far more interested in what Khan was doing inside the facilities--which was the only place he could possibly be.
After several moments of indecision, she moved to the door and stuck her ear to it to listen. She could hear water running. Instantly, visions of Khan showering collided in her mind with the display of muscles she’d seen earlier.
She stared at the door activator--hard, fighting the temptation just to take a peek.
It would be for the sake of science, of course. She’d checked him for obvious defect before, but she hadn’t thoroughly examined him.
After tapping the wall just beneath the pad indecisively for several moments, she moved her hand very deliberately behind her back and turned away from the door to pace--and think.
Nothing inventive came to mind as a reasonable excuse to go in.
Would he believe it, she wondered, if she pretended she hadn’t realized he was using the shower?
Maybe she could take a scientific approach? She just came to check to make certain he wasn’t suffering any ill effects from his session with the ICTD.
It was eating her alive to see what he looked like naked, damn it!
There was the chance that he might take her intrusion as an invitation to do more than just touch her, or kiss her.
The memory of his caresses and that wholly devastating kiss clenched the matter. She’d crossed the room, punched the access pad, and breezed into the facilities before she had the chance to think better of it.
It was just--almost--as she’d imagined it would be. Khan was standing beneath the spray, his hair as black as a starless night and plastered in clinging, water molded locks to his neck, and back, and shoulders. Rivulets of gleaming water ran down his magnificent body, setting off little explosions of heat inside her as he twisted and turned, rinsing the bubbles of soap from his hard, muscular frame. Her mouth watered as she allowed her gaze to follow the gleaming waterfall over his naked chest and down his rippled belly where her gaze snagged on the thick member protruding from his pubic bush.
His phallus had felt huge when he’d been rubbing it along her cleft, but it had been hard then--she thought--and she’d figured it had just felt huge when it reality that wasn’t the case at all.
It was nestled unthreateningly along his thigh now, and it was still long and thick.
It was at this point that the actuality deviated drastically from the scenario she’d imagined.
Instead of breezing into the room and stopping short, as if she was surprised to discover him in the shower, or taking the scientific ‘I’m not fazed’ approach, she went into a temporary state of Zen meditation, as if she’d hit a brick wall, her jaw sagging until her mouth dropped open. When her eyes began to sting from staring, she blinked, slowly. It was enough to bring her out of her entranced state sufficiently for her to realize that Khan was facing her when he hadn’t been before, and he was standing perfectly still, not bathing. Unnerved, she glanced upward and discovered that Khan was not only well aware that she’d come in on him, he was staring at her with an expression of cool amusement, waiting, she finally realized, for her to say something.
“Uh,” Dionne managed to get out. “I was wonder--you know, I think I should probably just wait until you’re through here,” she finished, whirling on her heel and beating a hasty retreat.
Chapter Seven
As disordered as her thoughts were, one thing taunted Dionne as she struggled to pretend she was busily at work once more in the lab, one ear cocked to see if Khan would follow her. She wasn’t working. Her mind was where it should never have gone to start with.
It was all right to get caught up in her work. It was even all right to be fascinated with the people and culture she’d found upon awakening. This was her job. She was supposed to care. She was supposed to focus every ounce of her being on bringing about renewal.
No one, least of all her, had expected her natural urges to get in the way.
She supposed all of them should have taken into account that she might be superhuman and bio-engineered for a specific purpose, but she was also of an age where her own mating instincts were strongest.
There’d been no avoiding that, of course. Her age was as critical to her mission as anything else. She was the fail-safe of the project. She had to be at her peak reproductive years in case it was found necessary that she produce the genius needed to rebuild.
“Hungry?”
Dionne jumped at the question and whirled to look at Khan. He didn’t wait to see if she meant to follow him, but turned as soon as he’d caught her attention and went back into the living quarters. She debated with herself for a few moments, tempted to simply ignore her stomach when attending it meant facing Khan so soon after that uncomfortable episode. Finally, deciding it wasn’t something she could avoid, she set the tablet aside again and followed him.
The food he’d prepared was obviously food he’d brought with him, and not the over processed food from storage. The fact that it was virtually identical to the meal he’d prepared the night before--some sort of stew--was further evidence if she’d needed it. Regardless, it tasted better than the meal she’d had earlier and she was starving.
They ate in silence. Khan seemed relaxed enough, Dionne thought resentfully. For her part the silence was an uncomfortable one. She managed to attain a semblance of calm after a few minutes, however, since it occurred to her that Khan had obviously decided to pretend the incident hadn’t occurred.
When they’d finished, she took the pottery bowls and bone utensils he’d brought and washed them since he’d provided the meal. She saw when she’d finished that he’d settled on the pallet of furs and was idly polishing his shield and sword with a piece of thin, cloth-like leather, his brow creased in a frown of concentration, or thought. She cleared her throat. “Headache?”
He glanced toward her at the question, but finally shrugged. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
Someone else’s pain was hard to gauge. A mild headache from a session with the ICTD wasn’t uncommon, though. After searching his face for signs of strain, she relaxed fractionally. Obviously, it wasn’t much pain--or he was handling it well. She decided, just to be on the safe side, to wait a few days before trying it again.
Upon consideration, she realized that would probably be best all around--for all of them, when the time came. There hadn’t been any specific protocol laid down for education, but she thought that even if their minds were capable of handling the volume of information she was to feed them, culturally and emotionally it could present a serious shock.
From what she’d observed despite her sexual preoccupation with the test subject, he appeared to have assimilated the information very well. He was already learning his way around the habitat--he hadn’t seemed to have any problem figuring out how to work the cooking unit or the bathing facilities and he was not familiar with either.
She was a little worried about the fact that he hadn’t commented on the changes he must have noticed, but then he had not struck her as the talkative sort and the ICTD was not going to change his personality--not unless something went drastically wrong.
Since he seemed disinclined to socialize and she was not tired enough to seek her rest yet, she decided to go out for a breath of fresh air. She debated with herself briefly when she reached the main lab, but finally decided to just climb out the escape hatch as she had before. The bots had been busy for hours and might well have cleared the main door by now, but they might not have.
She saw when she reached the exit hatch that the bots had actually made quite a bit of progress. A small hill of sand was slowly growing perhaps a quarter to a half mile from the habitat as the bots circled the building, pushing the sand away from it a few inches at the time. They had already uncovered almost half of the bio-lab. In another day, perhaps two, she would be able to use the main entrance of the lab, which would allow
her to move some of the heavier equipment out to begin environmental testing.
She was mentally fatigued from spending so many hours testing. Her feet and legs hurt from standing all day. A hot shower would relieve much of the strain, but she was loath to go near it while Khan was still awake. If he decided turn about was fair play she might end up doing something she would regret forever.
After a while, she sat down at the mouth of the exit tunnel, staring up at the stars while she mentally went over her list of things to do. It was important to be careful and methodical in the way she went about executing each phase, but impatience rose inside her as she considered how much time it would require.
She needed to locate the other bio-pods. There were twelve in all. Each contained a bio-engineered woman like her, the women the project had given the exalted title of Mothers of Mankind.
Everything had been very carefully evaluated and calculated to the nth degree. Each ‘mother’ carried four eggs that had been cloned, carefully implanted, and programmed for first release in pairs. They would be ‘immaculately’ conceived, would not need fertilization by a male donor. Once the ‘army of deliverance’ was produced, a male would be selected for them from among the survivors according to a strict selection procedure that would ensure superior stock as their own genetically enhanced eggs were released naturally.
If all of them still lived, her importance as keeper of the treasure of humanity would not be critical to the future of mankind. She was the project’s fail-safe, however. So long as she did not know, until she was certain that all twelve were still viable, she didn’t belong to herself. She couldn’t make her own choices.
Even if all twelve had survived as she had, she was not to take the liberty of simply choosing any male that took her fancy. As with the others, the selection would be made for her according to the male’s genetics.
It was ironic, actually, that no one had considered the ‘human’ element while they were so carefully formulating their plans and tabulating the results. The entire project had been conceived in a time when man’s civilization had become threatened by the destabilization of their world--a destabilization that they were at least partly, if not entirely--responsible for. They’d come to realize that the world was rapidly reaching a critical point where one major natural disaster could cause all their work to collapse like a house cards. The meteor had been the coupe de grace.
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