The flesh in the furnace

someow found the strength to carry them.
        The points of both blades were very sharp. Other nights, while he slept, she had made them sharp with a piece of sandstone Pertos kept for honing his prop-making tools.
        Sebastian smiled in his sleep.
        He had slumped down against the wall, so that his neck was within easy reach.
        She could see the vein pulsing there. Or was it an artery? Never mind. Either way, he was dead and finished, taken care of with the same cruel efficiency he had used to kill her when she had been trying to summon help from the lorry driver.
        It did not occur to her that he had snapped her spine with great reluctance and with more than a little guilt and sorrow, while she was going to drive the blades through his neck in what approached pure glee.
        Too, she did not consider that she could be re-created and that he could not be.
        She was still concerned that she might not be able to do more than fatally wound him and that he might live long enough to work some revenge on her. She hesitated with the scissors upraised, then gently put them down and went to the rear door of the truck. She pushed it open just a crack to give her somewhere to run if the murder should be flawed, then went back to him and lifted the weapon again.
        He snorted, startling her, but remained asleep.
        For all the times Wissa died, she thought.
        His neck pulsed.
        For killing the prince that night you found me with Alvon Rudi, she said to herself.
        The scissors felt so good in her hands, the anticipation so sweet, that she did not understand why she hesitated. Why not jam the thing down, tear flesh and watch the blood gush?
        Caution, she thought. I've got to have more caution than he does. It was perfectly normal for a retarded man to live by his emotions rather than his intellect, to strangle the merchant when his body cried for blood. But she must not make the same mistake. Hasty action led to things done that had better been left undone.
        For instance, what if she found that she could run the Furnace perfectly, but could not get the puppets from the forming tray to the nutrient bath pods? Without the stimulation of the dark nutrient solution, none of them would break the coma they were born in.
        She took the scissors back and put them away, returned to the Furnace. This time, when she fed Wissa's identity disc into the machine, she did not reject the process once the liquid had settled in the forming tray. Instead, she worked with the two controls, balancing them against each other, running the colors just as they were supposed to be run until, at last, Wissa lay whole beneath the viewplate.
        She looked back at Sebastian. He was asleep.
        If I can get Wissa awake, just manage to get her into the nutrients, you're dead, she thought. Together, we'll manage with the others-and before that we'll put the scissors to you.
        She lifted the viewplate, which swung up and back, then looked down at the lovely, dark-complexioned seductress that played her stepmother on stage. "I'll get you out of there," she whispered, though she knew that Wissa could not hear.
        It was impossible to stand outside the womb and lift Wissa free, for then she was struggling with both their weights, attempting to raise Wissa and keep herself from tumbling inside. At last, perspiring and determined, Belina swung over the lip of the capsule-womb and dropped inside, landed on the forming tray beside her unconscious stepmother.
        She felt ill at ease being here. It was like a human child waking and finding itself returned to its mother's womb even though it was grown and could understand where it was. This was a region restricted to spirits, and she was surely looking upon sanctified ground where no eyes were ever meant to spy. To either side, there were thousands of wires and tubes, pumps that swished rhythmically, tubes that carried unknown lubricants from place to place, icy with their burden. She could see the guts of the Furnace to either side, back under the housing that shielded things from an externally prying eye.
        This was no place to remain for long.
        She lifted Wissa without a great deal of trouble and attempted to shove her over the sill of the womb's exit by shoving first on the other puppet's buttocks, then grasping her thighs, then her knees… Once she fell and she required several