Awakened by the Giant Read online

  Unbidden, her fingers crept up to her own neck. But no…surely not. She pulled her hand away quickly, resisting the impulse. It couldn’t be—Calden would have told her. He loved her—he wouldn’t hide something so awful from her.

  Would he?

  Yet the half-formed fear wouldn’t leave her mind—the shape looming in the gloom of her subconscious was trying to come forward. But Maddy didn’t want it to. Didn’t want to see…to know…

  Her fingers found their way to her neck again. Sliding under the nape, just where her skull met the back of her neck, she found it—a tiny lump, no bigger than a grain of rice.

  It was tiny but it was definitely there.

  “No!” Maddy said out loud. “No, it’s not possible! It’s probably just some kind of tracking device that goes into every creature that goes into the nutrient bath. Calden put me in there to heal me so I got one too—that’s all. That must be all!”

  Are you sure, Maddy? whispered an insidious little voice in her head. Are you absolutely positive about that?

  “Yes—yes, I’m sure!” she said aloud but her voice came out sounding weak and uncertain, even to her own ears. She looked around frantically, wanting to take her mind off the awful possibility looming in her brain. What did she want to do? There was something she needed to do—what was it?

  The sour, rotten taste in her mouth answered her question. God, of course—she had to rinse her mouth out! She’d just bitten the tip of an alien’s dick off—she’d never needed oral hygiene more in her life!

  Running to the more technical part of the lab where Calden kept his equipment, she used the hose he’d first washed her off with when she got out of the slime to rinse her mouth very thoroughly. But still the foul taste lingered. She wished she had a toothbrush and toothpaste and mouthwash and everything else, but all of her tooth-cleaning stuff was back in Calden’s quarters and she didn’t dare go outside right now—not when Grack-lor might be out there mad as hell and looking for revenge.

  She looked around the room, wondering if there was anything else in here she could use to scrub her tongue. The alien equivalent of a Brillo pad would have suited her just fine. Anything to finally scrub the taste of the Mentat’s tokk out of her mouth.

  Her eyes fell on the cold storage unit—the big silver rectangle that looked a little like a huge filing system because of its pull-out drawers. She knew that Calden kept his DNA samples in there, as well as various other supplies that had to be kept cold. In fact, he had showed her what was in all of them…all but one. That one, he had explained, contained very delicate specimens which should never be exposed to any kind of temperature change. He had asked her to never open it. Maddy had, of course, agreed not to.

  But now, almost involuntarily, her eyes drifted up to the top, left-hand drawer in the massive unit. At the same time, her fingers slid under her hair and caressed that rice-grain-sized bump again.

  Before she knew what she was doing, Maddy was dragging the step-stool Calden had gotten for her, so she could reach things in the lab, and straining to pull open that unknown drawer. Her fingers were too weak but the handles were big so she hooked a forearm through the drawer’s silver metal handle and yanked with all her might.

  At first the drawer stuck. Then, as though in slow motion, it slid slowly but smoothly out.

  Maddy looked down…and saw her own face staring back at her—a face with wide, glassy green eyes that still had freckles.

  The face of her real self.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, her stomach squeezing and her heart pounding. “I’m a clone.”

  Fourteen

  “Twenty-five solar hours? You’ve shortened Madeline’s life to twenty-five solar hours?”Calden realized he was shouting but he couldn’t help himself. A death sentence—that was what FATHER had given to the woman he loved—a death sentence. And not a very long one either.

  “Calden, please be calm,” FATHER said in its most soothing voice. “Twenty-five solar hours should be more than enough time to wrap up your study of this specimen and make your farewells.”

  “Take it back.”

  Calden’s hands were clenched into fists at his sides, his lungs heaving for breath. He had to fight the red haze of Rage that tried to drop over his eyes, occluding his vision and impairing his judgment. Now, more than ever, he needed to keep his wits about him.

  “Take it back,” he said again. “Just deactivate Madeline’s self-termination unit and we’ll leave the station together. I don’t know where we’ll go but it doesn’t matter—we’ll leave and never come back. You and the Mentats will never have to see us again. Just take it back, FATHER. Take it back!”

  “I cannot.” The AI still spoke in that maddeningly calm tone. “I am sorry, Calden, but your specimen’s self-termination unit has been permanently locked. I can neither restore the time which was subtracted from her life-span, nor deactivate it so that the unit can be removed. She will terminate in twenty-five hours. Actually, twenty-four hours and forty minutes. Rather than spend her remaining time arguing with me, it might be better for you to try and wrap up your study.”

  “Wrap up my study?” Calden wanted to pull his hair out by the roots. “It’s not about the study, you stupid AI son of a bitch!” he cried. “I love her! I love her and you’ve killed her!”

  He wanted to roar with rage—wanted to rant and rave and punch the AI’s central processor until FATHER was no more than a twisted pile of junk.

  But he didn’t have time for any of that. He had to get Madeline out of here now. Where he would take her and how he would save her, he had no idea. There was supposedly no way to remove a still-active self-termination unit. The device would act like a miniature bomb and blow off her head if he tried to take it out without deactivation. He would probably be taking her out into space to die in his arms, the way the littlest brantha—the one Madeline had dubbed “Snuffy” had died in his arms the last time.

  But I can’t just sit here and do nothing! Just wait for the end, he thought wildly. I have to try, damn it! I’ll get clear of the station and put out another call to the Mother Ship—maybe they’ll hear me this time. Kindred technology might be able to deactivate the device—it’s my only hope!

  A small chance—probably less than one in a trillion considering the vast reaches of space that separated him from his Kindred brothers. But he had to take it—he had to try.

  He jumped up suddenly, knocking over the too small stool.

  “Calden,” FATHER said calmly. “Where are you going? This interview is not yet at an end.”

  “I’m leaving here,” Calden growled, wishing he had the blaster he kept locked in a drawer of his desk so he could shoot the maddening AI’s interface unit. “I’m leaving and I’m taking Madeline with me. There must be something I can do—some way I can save her!”

  “You cannot—” FATHER began but Calden was already gone, rushing out of the scanning booth and down the curving metal corridor, looking for Madeline.

  “I’m a clone,” Maddy said again and this time the words stuck. They were true—they were real. As real as the real Madeline who was lying in the top drawer of Calden’s handy-dandy portable lab morgue.The real Madeline staring up at her with lifeless green eyes that looked like cloudy glass marbles some careless child had rolled in the dust.

  But what had happened to her? How had she died?

  The drawer slid smoothly now, rolling on its tracks when she tugged on it, revealing more of her lifeless body to Maddy’s disbelieving eyes.

  She was wearing—correction, her original, real body was wearing—the light blue jumpsuit with the US flag sewn over the pocket and her last name, Harris, stitched in gold thread. But below the waist, the suit was strangely flattened—as though a giant foot had stomped down on her, neatly smashing her flat from her hips all the way down to her feet. The light blue jumpsuit was maroonish-purple there—the dark, ominous color of a fresh bruise.

  A blinding pain suddenly knifed through Maddy’s gut