The flesh in the furnace

identity wafers.
        Sebastian thought for a long while. He could remember only a few of the puppets' names. One other that stuck in his mind quite as strongly as Bitty Belina was a grotesque little monster named Wolf, the villain of a horror story that was quite popular everywhere it was performed. He would not mind experimenting with Wolf, for if Wolf turned out deformed it was only just punishment for him.
        "Wolf," he told Noname.
        "Wolf what?"
        "Just Wolf."
        Noname found it shortly. He handed it to Sebastian who took it with some reluctance. If he had felt the sensuousness, the warmth and delicacy of Bitty Belina when he had held her wafer, what would he feel while handling this one? Death and blood and ruthlessness? He took it at last but was surprised to discover he felt nothing at all. Just cool plastic, smooth on one side and rough on the other.
        Wolf was born with holes in his leathery wings, with no teeth where fangs should have been; he was consigned to liquification and the idiot made another try, knowing full well that evil must have undamaged wings and teeth with which to bite.
        Wolf was born without a face, and he was liquified and the idiot made another try, realizing that evil must have eyes in order to find its victims and persuade them.
        Wolf was born with more teeth than he should have had, the fangs as long as his fingers. His claws were sharp and like the blades of knives, and his face spoke of rot and decay, so hideous was its composition. And the idiot fed him back into the Furnace after much consideration, aware that evil must never be so utterly vile that there seems no way against it.
        

        Wolf was born.
        And he died.
        He had no sins.
        
        In time, Sebastian found how the controls were meant to be operated: the right knob to control the intensity of the color beyond the glass, the left to move that color through the spectrum. This was, at least, the outward manifestation of them, though they surely performed more complicated tasks within the bowels of the Furnace. The idiot cared only for appearances, however, and he was happy. Four times, without fail, he formed Wolf complete, just as he was meant to be to play his role. Sebastian had conquered the details of creation, and the catalogue of puppet identities was open to him. Sebastian's good humor reached a peak with his fourth full success at creating the villainous Wolf, and it was a giddiness that arose from this good humor that led to his worst mistake since Springsun. He placed the unconscious Wolf in one of the shallow nutrient trays to help bring him around. The black wings glistened wetly, fluttered now and then as Wolf's body came slowly to full life. Sebastian wanted to see if the small beast could walk and talk and was otherwise in possession of its own faculties as it had been after the previous three creations. Impatient for the puppet to come awake, he went to pour wine for himself and for Noname, a small celebration, the first he had allowed himself since Springsun. He left Wolf unwatched.
        Whenever a puppet is created in a Vonopoen Furnace, the identity disc is retained within the machine until such a time as the same puppet is returned to its component synthetic flesh liquid. When the puppet is fed into storage, all of its new experiences are first transferred to the wafer. In this manner, a puppet is able to have a continuing life, though that life may be broken into one- and two-day lengths over a period of a great many years. This was thought to be a wise consideration by the Vonopoen artisans, for a puppet who is permitted to have some existence of its own will be more easily controlled than one who feels that he is being used to perform and cast aside like a prop afterwards. Too, to earn the reward of a private night or two, after their performances, the puppets will work harder on stage, perform to their best abilities.
        The puppets are actually tiny humans, the Vonopoens warn all those who come to learn about puppeteering. And those who refuse to see them as such are inviting financial failure-and perhaps personal harm.
        Wolf s identity wafer had recorded the long string of bad creations that he had undergone. Scored into his mind were the recollections of the painful distortions he had been born into while Sebastian was learning the use of the machine, the details so vivid as to make his