Free The flesh in the furnace by Dean Koontz Page A

opportunity to come to know Sebastian, and he no longer feared his master as he had at first. He stood on the casing of the Furnace, near the faceplate that gave view of the capsule-womb, waiting for a miracle. Sebastian shuffled the identity wafers, pausing to study the printing on the smooth side of each, as if some single word would pop up and stand above the incomprehensible pattern of the others: Belina. But when he had gone through all of them, he still had no idea which was hers. Two hundred and fifty puppets waited, and the chances were he would resurrect the evil stepmother, Wissa, before he called Belina to life. And he didn't want to do that, although he knew he could feed her into the Furnace again and be rid of her if she did show up before the heroine.
        "What are you looking for?" Noname asked after all the discs had been passed over.
        Sebastian watched the twisted face staring up at him, and he was charged with a mixture of pity and anger.
        "Is there one particular puppet?" Noname asked.
        "Bitty Belina," the idiot said at last.
        The puppet picked up one of the discs. It was only as large as the idiot's hand, but in the small creature's fingers, it seemed like a tire from Samuels' Rover. Noname skimmed the printed material on the back and found the name of the puppet represented by the plastic wafer and the carefully etched memory circuits on the roughened side. He tossed it down and reached for another.
        "You can… find?" Sebastian asked, feeling the old excitement rise in him after all this time.
        "Sure," Noname said. "Give me a couple of minutes."
        It took ten minutes. He handed a wafer to Sebastian which looked exactly like all the others. "Her?"
        "Her"
        His fingers trembled, and he could not think what to do. Holding the identity wafer, he was holding Bitty Belina. He could almost feel the warmth of her flesh, the tremble of her pulse, the brushing coolness of her long, yellow hair. And yet this was plastic, flat and round and stupid.
        Maybe it wasn't too late at all. Maybe the old life could be recalled and everything would be as before. If Bitty Belina was inside this wafer of plastic, then she couldn't have changed. She could still go back to living her old story, her old life, where her stepmother was killed by the prince and where she lived happily every after.
        Then he remembered the flesh in the Furnace and knew better. The identity wafer might not be subject to change, but the flesh could be twisted and corrupted.
        He felt terrible.
        "Are you going to make her?" Noname asked.
        Sebastian looked up, not comprehending, his eyes duller than usual, his lips slack.
        "Are you going to revive her?"
        After a time, he managed to say, "Yes."
        Holding her plastic personality, he thought of the blue light that was focused on her when she stood in center stage. He thought of her hair gleaming with vitality, the audience held spellbound by her beauty. He did not think, even once, of the way she had stood naked between Alvon Rudi's thighs or the way she had clawed at his eyes and had bitten his neck when he came to her aid.
        He slid the wafer into the Furnace and listened to the first sounds of creation stirring deep in the metal bowels. There was a prolonged grumbling noise, then the clatter of computers talking to themselves, the whine of memory tapes activated, called up from storage. The capsule-womb filled with synthetic flesh, formless now but soon to be occupied. There was a distant hissing noise, a click, then silence again. It was much like a pinball machine lighting up after accepting its dime, then waiting for the first silver bearing to be turned loose.
        "Is that all?" Noname asked. He walked to the edge of the thick viewplate, his toes on the glass, looked down at the unformed jelly. "Is that all it's going to do about Bitty Belina? That blob of