But when several days had passed without any other plan to take the place of this insane scheme, the insanity looked more pleasing, less ridiculous. She gradually lost her superstitious awe and embraced practicality in its stead. In that way, she was much like the Rogue Saint Eclesian, though she could not know about that.
She had begun to read to the idiot, for she found that put him to sleep faster and deeper than anything but wine-and the wine was all gone. Tonight she had finally dared to go to the Furnace and test her skills. She knew the use of the controls and she knew the procedure for creation. And now she was more than a puppet, though she was not certain what or how much more.
She stepped to the stool, clambered down it and crossed the floor to the snoring idiot. He looked immense, head
nearly as huge as all of her. And in a few moments, little Belina would kill him, no matter how big he was. The thought exhilarated her.
She found the scissors he had used to cut bandages for his hand, and she carried them across the cold metal floor to where he lay. They were terribly heavy, but though her arms ached with the burden she someow found the strength to carry them.
The points of both blades were very sharp. Other nights, while he slept, she had made them sharp with a piece of sandstone Pertos kept for honing his prop-making tools.
Sebastian smiled in his sleep.
He had slumped down against the wall, so that his neck was within easy reach.
She could see the vein pulsing there. Or was it an artery? Never mind. Either way, he was dead and finished, taken care of with the same cruel efficiency he had used to kill her when she had been trying to summon help from the lorry driver.
It did not occur to her that he had snapped her spine with great reluctance and with more than a little guilt and sorrow, while she was going to drive the blades through his neck in what approached pure glee.
Too, she did not consider that she could be re-created and that he could not be.
She was still concerned that she might not be able to do more than fatally wound him and that he might live long enough to work some revenge on her. She hesitated with the scissors upraised, then gently put them down and went to the rear door of the truck. She pushed it open just a crack to give her somewhere to run if the murder should be flawed, then went back to him and lifted the weapon again.
He snorted, startling her, but remained asleep.
For all the times Wissa died, she thought.
His neck pulsed.
For killing the prince that night you found me with Alvon Rudi, she said to herself.
The scissors felt so good in her hands, the anticipation so sweet, that she did not understand why she hesitated. Why not jam the thing down, tear flesh and watch the blood gush?
Caution, she thought. I’ve got to have more caution than he does. It was perfectly normal for a retarded man to live by his emotions rather than his intellect, to strangle the merchant when his body cried for blood. But she must not make the same mistake. Hasty action led to things done that had better been left undone.
For instance, what if she found that she could run the Furnace perfectly, but could not get the puppets from the forming tray to the nutrient bath pods? Without the stimulation of the dark nutrient solution, none of them would break the coma they were born in.
She took the scissors back and put them away, returned to the Furnace. This time, when she fed Wissa’s identity disc into the machine, she did not reject the process once the liquid had settled in the forming tray. Instead, she worked with the two controls, balancing them against each other, running the colors just as they were supposed to be run until, at last, Wissa lay whole beneath the viewplate.
She looked back at Sebastian. He was asleep.