My imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man.

- Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Shiprecords

"I LIKE to call this the Flower Room," Murdoch said, leading Rachel Demarest across the open area to the lock. It was bright there, and she did not like the way the younger clones pulled back from Murdoch. A clone herself, she had heard the stories about this place and wanted to hold back, to delay what was happening. But it was her only chance at the Oakes/Lewis political circle. Murdoch kept a strong grip on her arm just above the elbow and she knew the pain he could cause if she hesitated.

Murdoch stopped at the lock and glanced at his charge.

This one won't carry any more petitions, he thought.

The slightly blue cast to her skin, her nervous, gangly limbs made her appear cold.

"Perhaps you and I could work something out," she said, and pressed her hip against him.

Murdoch was tempte.... but that blue skin!

"I'm sorry, but this is standard for everyone who works here. There are things we need to know - and things that you need to know, too."

He really was sorry, remembering dimly some of the things which had happened to him during his own Scream Room initiation. There were things which he did not remember, to...disturbing fact in itself. But orders were orders.

"Is this the place you call the Scream Room?" Her voice was barely a whisper as she stared at the hatch into the lock.

"It's the Flower Room," he said. "All of these beautiful young clone...." He waved vaguely at the room behind her. "All of them come from here."

She wanted to glance back. There had been some strangely shaped people hugging the rear of the throngs in the room, some with colors even stranger than her own. Something in Murdoch's manner prevented her from turning.

He took her hand then and placed her palm on the sensor-scribe beside the hatch - "To record your entry time." She felt an odd stinging sensation as her palm touched the scribe.

Murdoch smiled, but there was no mirth in it. His free hand went out to the lock-cycling switch. The hatch hissed open and he thrust her into it.

"In you go."

She heard the hatch seal behind her, but her attention was on the inner hatch as it opened. When it had swung wide, she realized that what she had thought was a grotesque statue standing there was actually a naked living creature framed by the open end of the lock. An.... and there were tears streaming down the creature's cheeks.

"Come in, my dear." His voice was full of hoarse gruntings.

She moved toward him hesitantly, aware that Murdoch was watching through the sensors overhead. The room she entered was lighted by corner tubes which filled the entire space with a deep red illumination.

The gargoyle took her arm as the hatch sealed behind her and he swung her into the room.

His arms are too long.

"I am Jessup," he said. "Come to me when you are through."

Rachel looked around at a circle of grinning figures - some of them male, some female. There were among them creatures even more grotesque than Jessup. She saw that a male with short arms and bulbous head directly in front of her had an enormous erection. He bent over to grasp it and point it at her.

These people are real! she thought. This is not a nightmare.

The rumors she had heard did not even begin to describe this place.

"Clones," Jessup whispered beside her, as though he had been reading her mind. "All clones and they owe their lives to Jesus Lewis."

Clones? These aren't clones; they're recombinant mutants.

"But clones are people," she whispered.

Bulbous-head lurched one step toward her, still holding that enormous erection pointed at her.

"Clones are property," Jessup said, his voice firm but still with those odd gruntings in it. "Lewis says it and it must be true. You may develop a.... appreciation for certain of them."

Jessup started to move away, but she clutched his arm. How cold his flesh was! "N.... wait."

"Yes?" Grunting.

"Wha.... what happens here?"

Jessup looked at the waiting circle. "They are children, just children. Only weeks old."

"But they'r...."

"Lewis can grow a full clone in a matter of days."

"Days?" She was clutching at any delay. "How...I mean, the energ...."

"We eat a lot of burst in here. Lewis says this is the reason his people invented burst."

She nodded. The food shortage - it would be amplified enormously by the requirements of making burst.

Jessup leaned close to her ear, whispered: "And Lewis learned some beautiful tricks from the kelp."

She looked at him full at him - that too-wide face with its toothless mouth and high cheeks, the pinpoint eyes, the receding forehead and protruding chin. Her gaze traveled down his body - enormous chest, but sunken with incurvin.... and narrow hip.... pipestem leg.... He wa.... he was not just he, she saw, but both sexes. And now she understood the grunting. He was fucking himsel.... herself! Little muscles at the crotch moved th....

Rachel whirled away, her mind searching wildly for something, anything to say.

"Why are you crying?" Her voice was too high.

"Ohhh, I always cry. It doesn't mean anything."

Bulbous-head lurched another step toward her and the circle moved with him.

"Entertainment time," Jessup said and pushed her roughly toward Bulbous-head.

She felt hands clutching her, turning her, and, presently, her memory left he.... but for a long time she felt that she heard screams and she wondered if they might be her screams.