It was silent and unmoving for a minute. Jack's eyes were drooping; his body sagged; he felt that his immediate surroundings were sliding in and out, in and out. They seemed to be drawers filled with tableaux which someone invisible was pulling out and then shutting.
Suddenly, Candy was shaking his shoulder. Jack said, "Wha... ? Wha'ss going on?"
"You were sleeping," Candy said. "We didn't want to wake you up, but you should know that the work is complete. Tappy has her seven years of pseudomemories."
That brought him up off the pillows and to a standing position. His legs felt numb, his back ached, and his brain seemed to be filled with antifreeze.
"How, how long have I been asleep?"
"Fifteen minutes and thirty-two seconds," Candy said.
"That quick?"
"The scenario was prepared while you wrote it out, and the changes were made immediately," the AI said.
"I thought you had to take Tappy to the equipment!"
"You assumed that. All the pseudodata was transmitted to her mind while she slept in the bedroom."
Jack asked for a large mug of black coffee. It arrived about ten seconds later, carried by a male AI. After Jack had downed the hot liquid as swiftly as he could stand it, he walked to the bedroom and looked in it. By then, the sun had come up, but the pole lights were still on. Tappy was sleeping on her side. She was in a new nightgown. Near her, on hangers on a line, were her new clothes.
Her old clothes had been stripped off and thrown away. When she woke up, she would have to have different garments, of course. In fact, one of the false memories was of throwing the original nightgown away.
Held in one arm was a big fuzzy teddy bear. That had been given her, supposedly several years ago, as a birthday gift. She had, supposedly, asked for it, and, since then, had used it as her No. 2 security blanket. Her No. 1 was Jack himself.
The suspended bed had been replaced by a conventional one. It was large enough for Tappy and Jack to romp around on in sexual play. Jack was supposed to have been sleeping with her for the last five years.
The formerly bare room was now filled with many things: furniture, machines that played the music of many planets, though not of Earth, dolls, an ice-cream dispensing machine, a table loaded with cosmetics, which she supposedly used for makeup, and a mirror she could not use as yet, games for blind people, and dozens of other items, some useful, some recreational.
One of the AI had followed Jack to the bedroom entrance. Jack turned to it.
"The Imago?" he said very softly. "Shouldn't it be manifesting itself?"
His heart battered his chest hard. He felt a great fear and awe. It was as if he would soon be in the presence of the living God.
He did not know if he could endure such an experience. His flesh would become wax and would melt in the terrible light and heat. He looked at Tappy and drought he saw, for a second, something stirring in her, something no human eyes could look upon without being seared.
"Why doesn't it wake her up?" he said softly. His voice trembled.
Part of his fear was the knowledge that she would no longer be the Tappy he had known. She would be a fleshly tool of the Imago.
"What do you mean?" me AI said.
"It... the Imago... should awaken her when it awakens."
"I don't know why," the AI said. It added, "There's no guarantee that the woman will have matured. Even though she may think she's seven years older, her body might not. Or her subconscious may not be fooled. Or the Imago may perceive the truth."
"Can you give her a shot of something to make her wake up?"
"It's better to allow her to awake naturally."
At that moment, Tappy turned onto her back.
Jack said, "For God's sake!"
Her nightgown revealed the top half of her breasts. Between them was a bulge the size of a large egg. The tight and dark red skin over it looked as if it were about to burst. Around it at its base was a purplish swelling. A yellowish liquid shone on its surface, and that oozed out even as Jack stared at it.
He strode to her bedside and reluctantly touched the skin on top of the bulge. It was fever-hot. Her forehead felt hot, too, though it was cooler than the bulge.
"The egg the honker inserted!" he said. "It's infected!"
"No. It's just grown," the AI said. It put a finger on the bulge and then on Tappy's forehead. "Notice how much weight she seems to have lost in the last few hours. The egg's grown so fast it's sucked energy from her. The whole process probably involves an enormous expenditure of energy. She should be all right as soon as the process is completed."
"What does this mean for Tappy?"
Despite the AI's reassurance, Jack was certain that she was sick and that she could die from the disease.
"I do not know. It must be part of the Imago's maturing process. Or hers. Or both. Or it could have nothing to do with the Imago. We'll have to wait and observe."
Tappy, though still sleeping— or unconscious from the fever— jerked. That was followed by a twitching of her hands, which then became motionless. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open. Then a line redder than the rest of the skin appeared on the very top of the bulge. One end was pointed toward her chin; the other, toward her navel.
Then the break gaped like two thin lips. A few seconds later, it extended itself for a half inch on each side of the bulge, revealing something dark greenish below it. Then the line very quickly ran down both sides and disappeared into the purplish fester.
"We have to do something!" Jack cried.
"We can only wait and observe."
The line bisecting the skin gap on the top widened slightly.
The greenish round thing pushed upward a trifle.
The AI, standing by Jack, touched his shoulder.
He looked up and then behind him as the AI gestured to him.
A haze just beyond the entrance was clearing. It cleared, revealing a female AI. It walked in swiftly and stopped a few feet from Jack before speaking with the usual emotionless tones of the androids.
If it had been human, it would have screamed out the news.
"The Gaol have found us!"
Chapter 9
A flurry of questions surged through Jack's mind. Could they flee again? Obviously not, or the AI would have done so. Could they fight the Gaol? Same answer. Could they talk the Gaol out of it? Unlikely.
Jack realized that their ploy to age Tappy in her fancy, so as to evoke the Imago immediately, no longer mattered. The Imago might be awake, or it might still be asleep; either way, the Gaol had won, because they had closed in too soon. There just hadn't been time!
He sighed. This was the part he hated. "Then do what you have to do," he told the AI.
"And what is that?"
"Destroy us both. So the Imago will be freed to seek another host. It's the only way we can foil the Gaol now."
"We are unable to do that."
Jack was perversely annoyed. "What do you mean, unable? You told me that you would do it, to prevent the Imago from falling into Gaol power. There's very little time left. So do it now, while you can."
The scene was fading or changing. The exotic vegetation he had first seen from the station's window appeared around them. The AI assumed better definition, and became the voluptuous creature he had named Candy. "No."
"No? Why?"
"Because we no longer serve the Imago. We have been taken over by the Gaol and are now agents of the empire."
Jack saw the awful logic of it. Naturally the Gaol knew how to handle the AI. They had nullified those androids at the outset, before physically taking over the station. Maybe they had managed to deceive the AI about their approach, so that the AI thought they had more time than they did.
Jack came to a sudden, terrible decision. "Then I'll do it!" He turned toward Tappy, hoping that he could bring himself to kill her bare-handed. One smash of her head against the floor could do it. Then they could do what they liked to him; he didn't matter. He saw that she now lay unceremoniously on the floor, between the plants, her book beside her. He took a step.