“Try me. At least give me a chance. If there’s anything I can do to help, you know I will.”
“I don’t think anyone can help me.” she replied, sniffling.
He kissed her “If I possibly can, I will. I love you, Jenny.”
“Oh, God,” she said, her voice barely audible. “How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true, I love you.”
She pulled away from him. “Scott… there are things about me… things you don’t know. And if you knew, you’d hate me.”
“I could never hate you, Jenny. I know what kind of life you’ve led. It makes no difference to me.”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” she said, not looking at him.”There are things, she bit her lower lip. “Oh. Scott, if you really knew the truth about me, you’d want to kill me.”
He stared at her, astonished. “How can you say that? That’s crazy! What could you possibly have done-”
“It isn’t anything I’ve done,” she said. “Well, yes, it is, but it’s also what I am. If you knew…” She got down on her knees before him and took his hands, holding them tightly. looking up at him with fear and confusion. “If I tell you the truth, I know I’ll lose you. You’ll hate me and you’ll want to kill me. but even if you do. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t want anything to happen to you. You have to leave. Scott. You have to leave Tombstone as quickly as you can and go back where you came from, before it’s too late!”
“Jenny, what are you talking about?”
“Scott… before I tell you… kiss me. Please, kiss me one last time.”
“Jenny…
“Just do it. Scott. Please.”
He kissed her. She clung to him with desperation and he could taste the saltiness of her tears.
“Oh, God, I love you, Scott,” she said. “I don’t care if it’s not possible. I know I love you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”
“I love you too, Jen,” he replied, bewildered
She shook her head and placed her forefinger up against his lips. “Maybe you think you do.” she said. “But you can’t You mustn’t.”
“Why?”
She stared at him with fear in her eyes. “Because…” she swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Because I’m not human. Scott.”
“What?”
I’m not a real woman. I only look like one. And. God help me, somehow I feel like one, too, but I’m not a human being. I wasn’t born. I was created. The Master made me in a laboratory.”
Scott simply stared at her, speechless with astonishment.
“I know he’s your enemy, she continued, “I know who you really are. I know you’re from the future. I know why you’re here. And no matter what you do to me. you will go back. Please, you must go back before it’s too late!”
Suddenly, comprehension dawned. “My God.” said Scott. He felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “You’re one of Drakov’s hominoids.”
She nodded, staring at him, her face streaked with tears, her eyes wide with fear.
“He said love is only for humans,” she whispered, “and that what I feel toward you isn’t really love, and that you couldn’t possible love me if you knew what I really was. An imitation of a human being. He said you’d kill me, but I don’t care! I don’t want to live like this! It hurts! It hurts too much. If I can’t be human, then I just don’t want to be!”
“Jesus Christ.” said Scott. He reached out for her and she cringed. “That bastard. That lousy bastard. What’s he done to you?”
He put his arms around her and she became very still, as if afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
“You poor girl.” he said, stroking her long blonde hair. His own eyes were misty. “Jesus, it must have been awful for you.”
“I… I don’t understand…” she said in a small frightened voice.
Scott held her away from him, so he could look into her eyes. “He had you believing you weren’t human?”
She stared at him with incomprehension.
“Oh. Jenny, you don’t even realize what you are,” he said. “How much do you really know about Nikolai Drakov?”
She shook her head, dazed, still unable to believe he wasn’t furious with her, that he wasn’t striking out at her.
“He’s insane. Jenny. He’s brilliant, a genius, but he’s a madman and a criminal. God knows, maybe he even believes that the hominoids aren’t human. It would certainly fit with his insane megalomania. The thought that he’s created an entirely new species, that he’s some sort of God…”
“What are you saying?” she whispered.
“Jenny, the first hominoids that Nikolai Drakov created were androids. They weren’t really human, but crude imitations. They weren’t really capable of independent thought, or of human feelings and emotions. But later, Drakov resorted to genetic engineering to create clones in a laboratory…” He trailed off as he watched her. “God, you don’t understand the first thing about what I’m saying, do you?”
She shook her head.
He stared up at the ceiling. “How on earth can I explain it to you? You don’t know the first thing about science…”
“I understand a little about science.” she said, in a small voice, still confused by his lack of a violent reaction, which was what she had expected.
“Well, genetic engineering is a science,” Scott told her. “What Drakov did was to… to give birth to humans in a laboratory without the benefit of parents. What I mean is, there were parents, human parents from whom Drakov obtained the raw material, but the hominoids-he still called them that, even though they were different from the first ones-were born without the necessity of a man and a woman having sex. The eggs were fertilized in a laboratory and the fetuses came to term in artificial wombs…”
He saw that he was losing her again and he felt exasperated. There had to be some way that he could make her understand.
“What I’m trying to say. Jenny, is this, Even though you were never born in the normal way, even though you never had a father or a mother, you are still a human being. Drakov lied to you. He wasn’t really your creator, he… he was more like a midwife. It’s much too complicated for me to explain to you, but you have to believe one thing. You are as human as I am.”
She shook her head, slowly. “Is it possible?” she whispered.
He grabbed her by the arm. “That’s human flesh. Jenny.” He put his hand on her breast. “That’s a human heart beating in there.” He kissed her. “Those are human lips.” he said, softly. “I couldn’t love you if you were not human. And I do love you.”
She gave a small cry and clutched at him, burying her head against his chest as her small body was wracked with sobs. He held her tightly, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. Meanwhile, his mind was racing. Drakov, here! Then it wasn’t the Network or the S.O.G. Or perhaps the Network was here, as well. Or maybe the S.O.G. He was no longer sure of anything except two things. One was that with Drakov here in this time sector, the threat was even greater than he had imagined. And the other was that he was deeply in love with this poor, tortured girl.
He couldn’t begin to imagine what her existence must have been like. Cloned in a laboratory, she had been raised to believe she wasn’t human, but some sort of clever simulacrum. It was simply monstrous. Unlike other hominoids that Neilson had encountered, she had not been artificially mutated into some sort of frightening creature, her mind had not been destroyed, her personality-severely damaged though it was-had been left more or less intact. Only she had grown up believing that she was some sort of an inferior creature and that Nikolai Drakov was her “master.” her god, to whom she owed unquestioning obedience. Except that he had triggered feelings in her that had been powerful enough to upset a lifetime of conditioning.
Apparently, she had been told that if he found out “what she really was,” he’d kill her. And yet, she had disobeyed her master. Convinced that he would kill her if she told him the truth, she had told him anyway. Because
