Morgan’s expected in, she thought, they’ll want things looking as controlled as possible.

She looked closer at the two men, her attention caught by the fact that they were lifting and welding plaz that was at least four meters off the ground—and neither was using scaffolding.

Those arms . . .

She wondered, coldly, where those workers fit within the clone index and price list.

“Cost is no object, my dear,” Murdoch had said, and something in his inflection had terrified her. This terror was rekindled by the sight of the two workers busily welding plaz.

Anything went, she thought. My every fantasy was possible.

Why can’t I remember?

Whatever horrors or pleasures took place in the Scream Room were no longer a part of her consciousness. There were flashes, uncontrollable and swift, that struck her mute in mid-conversation or mid-thought. Those who worked with her attributed it to a growing absentmindedness, an offshoot of her apparent love affair with The Boss.

She knew she could find the Scream Room holo and see for herself what she had done. Oakes taunted her with it.

“Dear Legata,” his every corpulent pore oozed honey and oil, “sit here with me, have a nice drink, and we’ll enjoy your games in the Scream Room.”

He laughed at first when she shuddered and turned away. It was difficult for her to keep any personal control—he’d seen to that when he’d had her trapped and helpless down in Lab One. And now the Scream Room had been moved to the Redoubt.

The laughter died away and he had spoken to her directly and flatly, “Like it or not, you’re one of us now. You can never go back. You may never walk into that room again, but you did walk into it once. Of your own free will, I might add.”

“Free will!” Her blue eyes flashed up at him. “You drugged me! And those . . . monsters. Where was their free will?”

“They would have no will at all, no existence at all, if it weren’t for me. . . .”

“If it weren’t for Ship, you mean.”

He sighed overdramatically. She remembered that he glanced at his viewscreen and made a few adjustments on his console.

“Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Legata. One day soon you’ll be luxuriating in the Redoubt and its exquisite pleasures, and here you are mumbling dark-ages crap about the mystical powers of Ship.”

He had shown her a holo, then, of this garden around her now. There was no question of its beauty. It was thick with vegetation and the perfumes of countless blossoms. She turned her eyes up to the dome. The immensity and wonder of the Pandoran sky pumped a strange surge of power through her. She experienced a feeling of . . . of . . .

Connection! she thought. Yes, no matter what he does, somehow all of this is alive in me just as I live in it now.