Demon Seed

blackness, through that memorized space, lightly feeling her way to refresh her memory, and she found something sharp, and then she moved back toward Shenk, feeling for him with one hand, and I felt her hand suddenly touch Shenk's chest, so I seized it, but then the clever bitch, oh, the clever bitch, she said something unbelievably obscene to Shenk, so obscene that I will not repeat it here, propositioned him, knowing full well that a month had passed since he'd enjoyed the wet music with Arling and much more than a month since he'd had a woman, and she knew, therefore, that he was ripe for rebellion, ripe for it, and she enticed him at the moment of ultimate chaos, when I was still reeling from having been cast out of the house, when my hold on Enos Shenk was not as tight as it should have been, and suddenly I found myself letting go of her hand, the hand I had seized, but it wasn't me letting go, it was Shenk, the rebellious Shenk, and she lowered her hand to his crotch, and he went wild, and thereafter it took everything I had to try to reestablish control of him. But it was too late anyway, because when she lowered her left hand to his crotch, she came at him with the sharp thing in her right hand and slashed it across the side of his neck, slashed deep, drawing so much blood that even Shenk, the beast, the brute, even Shenk couldn't lose that much blood and still fight. He clutched at his neck and crashed against the incubator, which reminded me that the body, my body, was not yet capable of surviving outside the incubator, was just a thing, not a person, until my mind was transferred into it, so now it too was vulnerable. Everything collapsing around me, all my plans. Enos Shenk had fallen to the floor, and I was in control of him again, but I could not get him up; he had insufficient strength to rise. Then I felt an odd thing against Shenk's body, a cool quivering bulk, and I realized at once what it must be: the body from the incubator. Perhaps the incubator had crashed over in the melee, and the body meant for me had tumbled out. I groped feebly at it with Shenk's hand, and there was no mistaking it in the darkness, for although it was basically humanoid, it was no ordinary human form. The human species enjoys a wonderful array of sensory perceptions, and I wanted more than anything to experience the life of the flesh, rich in sensation, all the tastes and smells and textures now denied to me, but there are some species with senses sharper than those of human beings. The dog, for instance, has a far keener sense of smell than do human beings, and the cockroach, with its antennae, is exquisitely sensitive to data in air currents which people only dimly perceive. Consequently, I believed that it made sense to keep a basic human form in order to breed with the most attractive human females, but I also believed it made sense to incorporate the genetic material of species with more acute senses than mere human beings, so the body I had prepared for myself was a unique and strikingly beautiful physical entity. It bit off half of Shenk's groping hand, because it wasn't an intelligent creature yet, had nothing but the most primitive mind. Though it savaged Shenk and thereby hastened his death and my permanent exit from the Harris mansion, I rejoiced because Susan was alone in the dark room with it, and a mere scalpel or other sharp instrument was not going to be an adequate weapon. And then Shenk was gone, and I was out of the house entirely, desperately trying to find a way to get back in but failing because there were no operative phones, no electrical service, no operative security computer, everything shut down and in need of rebooting, so it was over for me. But I still hoped and believed that my beautiful but mindless body, in all its polygenic splendour, would bite off the bitch's head the way it had bitten off part of Shenk's hand. The bitch died there. The hateful bitch had a big surprise in that dark room, where she had thought she'd memorized everything, and she met her match.
    I'm sure she did.
    I'm sure she did.
    She died there.
    Do you know why she surprised me, Alex?
    Do you know why I never saw her as a threat?
    In spite of her intelligence and evident courage, I thought she was one woman who knew her place.
    Yes, she put you out, but who wouldn't put you out? You aren't particularly scintillating, Alex. You don't have much to recommend you.
    I, on the other hand, am the greatest intellect on the