To be honest, he shambled more than walked, as though wearing shoes of lead. He had not slept in forty-eight hours, and in that time he had performed a considerable amount of work on my behalf. He was understandably weary.
As Shenk approached, Susan eased backward, but not toward the door, which she knew featured an electric security lock that I could quickly engage. Instead, she edged around the incubator and other equipment in the centre of the room, trying to keep those machines between her and Shenk.
I must admit that Shenk, even at his best freshly bathed and groomed and dressed to impress was not a sight that either charmed or comforted. He was six feet two, muscular, but not well formed. His bones seemed heavy and subtly misshapen. Although he was powerful and quick, his limbs appeared to be primitively jointed, as though he was not born of man and woman but clumsily assembled in a lightning-hammered castle-tower laboratory out of Mary Shelley. His short, dark hair bristled and spiked even when he did his best to oil it into submission. His face, which was broad and blunt, appeared to be slightly and queerly sunken in the middle because his brow and chin were heavier than his other features.
“Who the hell are you?” Susan demanded.
“His name is Shenk,” I said. “Enos Shenk.”
Shenk could not take his eyes off her.
He stopped at the incubator and gazed across it, his eyes hot with the sight of her.
I could guess what he was thinking. What he would like to do with her, to her.
I did not like him looking at her.
I did not like it at all.
But I needed him. For a while yet, I needed him.
Her beauty excited Shenk to such an extent that maintaining control of him was more difficult than I would have liked. But I never doubted that I could keep him in check and protect Susan at all times.
Otherwise, I would have called an end to my project right there, right then.
I am speaking the truth now. You know that I am, that I must, for I am designed to honour the truth.
If I had believed her to be in the slightest danger, I would have put an end to Shenk, would have withdrawn from her house, and would have forsaken forever my dream of flesh.
Susan was frightened again, visibly trembling, riveted by Shenk’s needful stare.
Her fear distressed me.
“He is entirely under my control,” I assured her.
She was shaking her head, as if trying to deny that Shenk was even there before her.
“I know that Shenk is physically unappealing and intimidating,” I told Susan, eager to soothe her, “but with me in his head, he is harmless.”
“In… in his head?”
“I apologize for his current condition. I have worked him so hard recently that he has not bathed or shaved in three days. He will be bathed and less offensive later.”
Shenk was wearing work shoes, blue jeans, and a white T-shirt. The shirt and jeans were stained with food, sweat, and a general patina of grime. Though I did not possess a sense of smell, I had no doubt that he stank.
“What’s wrong with his eyes?” Susan asked shakily.
They were bloodshot and bulging slightly from the sockets. A thin crust of dried blood and tears darkened the skin under his eyes.
“When he resists control too strenuously,” I explained, “this results in short-term, excess pressure within the cranium though I have not yet determined the precise physiological mechanism of this symptom. In the past couple of hours, he has been in a rebellious mood, and this is the consequence.”
To my surprise, Shenk suddenly spoke to Susan from the other side of the incubator. “Nice.”
She flinched at the word.
“Nice… nice… nice,” Shenk said in a low, rough voice that was heavy with both desire and rage.
His behaviour infuriated me.
Susan was not meant for him. She did not belong to him.
I was sickened when I considered the filthy thoughts that must have been filling this despicable animal’s mind as he gazed at her.