Zach Hughes: The Stork Factor

of losing her again. If she were unable to change, he thought, as he rested, preparing to make the last repairs which would enable him to slip into the unused portion of her brain, then it would not matter. But, sadly, he knew it would. He entered. Floods of memory hit him as it shot up out of the isolated memory bank, rejoined. She screamed. She leaped to her feet crying out. He held her. «Caster. Caster. It's me. Luke. Listen to me. It's all right.» «No!» she was screaming as she relived the torture, remembered the final, shuddering, terminal agony of brain killing on the shakeshock rack. «Oh, God, help me…» He held her close and she subsided. She looked at him with her one eye. The empty socket was grotesque in her face. «Who are you?» He didn't answer. He held her close, no longer fearful of the contact with a female body. He held her because she was dear to him, because out there on the new worlds it would be, once again, man and woman. It would be child-rearing and work and—he let the word come—love. And, in silence, he went in and found a dark, solid ball, the telltale blackness of unused potential, and he felt a surge of elation as he sought an opening, probed, found a weakness, entered, and said, in her mind. «Hello, Caster.» And he tried to soothe the pain of opening, but she cringed, cried out, clung to him in agony until he could complete the opening, until, with a bright, red glow of excitement and elation, her mind answered him.