It was only minutes later when Toby walked happily in the front door and looked around. He ran over and jumped feet first into the soft overstuffed chair next to the fireplace hearth in the living room, then walked his feet up over its back until his knees draped over the top and he was lying upside down in the chair. He looked at Mary with a big boyish grin. This was the first time she had seen him smile. She shivered.
Mary was still seated in the straight-backed chair next to the supper table, still bound hand and foot. The drug was finally wearing off. She surreptitiously tested the straps but still couldn’t free herself. She sighed in frustration.
“Toby, please let me out of here,” she ordered sternly, hoping now that he was not as much a part of this mystery as he seemed to be. The boy giggled, then broke into a laugh. He rolled off the chair and came sauntering over to look at her. He was about five feet four and lanky. Like many skinny twelve-year-olds, he looked like he had hardly enough muscle to carry himself around. His hair was straight and brown and too long in the front—his bangs got in his eyes and he brushed them aside as he approached.
But up close his eyes didn’t look like those of a twelve-year-old. He didn’t smell like a twelve-year-old either. Somehow there was great age in the faint musky odor he brought with him. He stood face to face with Mary staring—looking with great curiosity at each detail of her face, her hair, her neck. She gave another shudder and drew back as best she could. She was fully dressed in a checked flannel shirt and jeans but under that gaze she didn’t feel like it. At twenty, bound or not, she felt she could handle any pre-teen boy; but this being was not that.
“Free me … please,” she said again quietly, not sure if she really meant it this time. Once more she tried to free her wrists. Then she twisted around to show the boy her plight. Her bound ankles restricted the movement to a clumsy lurch and she nearly fell off the chair.
With a start the boy seemed to notice her situation. He smiled and moved around behind her. With a sigh of relief Mary relaxed her strained twist. Rescue at last! But her euphoria was brief. The boy took another leather thong from the table, wrapped it twice around her already bound wrists and yanked them high up to her middle back.
“Hey!” Mary cried, “What’re you doing!”
She was leaning forward now as far as she could to relieve the stress.
“Quiet, mortal,” said the boy. He grabbed her hair and pulled her roughly back upright. He looped the thong attached to her wrists around her neck and then let it drape in front of her to form a makeshift leash.
He moved like he had done this many times before, as smoothly and competently as little Freeta had when she’d bound her to the chair. Mary froze.
As Toby leaned down to unfasten her ankles, Mary stated quietly, almost not believing her own voice, “Freeta is one of you. She set me up for you, didn’t she? What are you going to do with me now?”
When he looked up she launched a vicious kick at his neck. At least it should have been vicious, but the drug and long sitting in an awkward posture had sapped the strength from her legs. The kick connected but the boy dodged most of the impact. As Mary tried to stand, he grabbed the thong draping from her neck and yanked hard.
Mary came crashing to her knees. The boy was on her as she hit, rolled her onto her back, and pinned her there. She continued to struggle, trying to break away or kick him off.
“Mortal,” the boy said quietly as he held her and her struggles diminished, “you don’t seem to understand. You survive on my whim. Yes, Freeta is one ‘us’. We are not like you, although we come from the same chemistry.
“We’re androids. We’re constructed of flesh and blood just as you are, but we’re not born of mother and father. We were designed and grown by technology. We have a creator, yes, but we know who he was and we know his fate.
“He’s dead now but we live on. And we’ll continue to live on. We were the first of his two great dreams. During what you call the Ice Ages he landed on this world. He was an exile from his own world, a visionary; he hoped to create perfect life here.
“He studied your ancestors.” The boy paused, still lying on Mary’s stomach and holding her down, but now fondling her. Mary was momentarily shocked to stillness by the psychological transformation she had witnessed. He still had the body and voice of the snot-nosed little boy who was always hanging around Ned, but in spite of her revulsion and fears her body was beginning to respond.
She redoubled her weak struggles.
“He decided that with minor modifications, the bodies of your ancestors were well-suited for living here on Earth.
“So he created us. It took him many years and great effort. The conditions here were primitive—they offered him only great privacy as compensation.”
The house was quiet, the living room empty and silent except for the ticking of a grandfather clock. Mary still hoped for rescue, but it was too soon to hope for Tarna just yet. Her best strategy seemed to be pretending that she found Toby’s attentions desirable.
So she relaxed under his continued touch and let her breathing slow and deepen to normal. Perceiving this, Toby got up and helped Mary stand. He took the remaining straps from the table and stuffed them in the duffel. He rearranged the chairs and smoothed the wrinkles out of the carpet. All evidence of this strange interlude was gone.
He walked over to Mary and gently reached up to brush the hair out of her face. He tenderly lifted her chin and saw the tears of frustration streaming down her cheeks.
“There, there,” he said in his most manly and reassuring, but still high-pitched boyish voice, “everything’ll be all right.”
He hefted the duffel, brushed the tears from her cheeks, then took hold of the leather leash that still circled her neck.
“I want to show you a very special and secret place. Freeta will be there,” he whispered.
Freeta! With an effort, Mary kept her head submissively bowed. Freeta, her betrayer. She wanted to face her again and demand an explanation.
The boy led her by the leash through the kitchen and down steep dimly lit stairs into the basement, going slowly so Mary could keep her balance. When she finished the last step, he once more lifted her face and gazed deeply into her eyes.
“Now the secret,” he whispered.
He took her through a secret door in the dark shadow beneath the staircase and down more dimly lit stairs to a short passage toward a brightly lit room. As Toby led her by the leash down the passage, Mary launched another ferocious kick.
This time it connected. The boy dropped her leash and went sprawling down the corridor. It was her turn to stand and laugh. She felt the giddy warm feeling that comes with minor revenge.
The boy got up slowly, reached up, and patted her cheek firmly a couple of times. “Very sharp. I think we are going to have fun together,” he said, then pulled her roughly along. There was a thin curtain across the doorway to the brightly lit room, which he pulled aside. He motioned Mary in ahead of him.
When she could see in the dazzling light she observed a dome-shaped room 20 feet across and 20 feet high. About three feet in from the curtain-covered walls was a circle of low couches. The center of the room looked like a cross between a gym and a playground. It was filled with various pieces of exercise equipment, soft mats on the floor, and toys scattered around.
At the very center of the room Freeta kneeled, bound to a four-foot stake, one cheek against it. She looked up at them, her face filled with dismay.
“Zark, you go too far this time,” she said in a quiet, drained voice as if that was all the effort she could muster. She seemed drugged, her breathing labored.
Freeta now looked to be eleven or twelve, only on the verge of puberty—much as Zark, alias Toby, did. Her very dark, reddish hair was no longer in pony tails; it cascaded in waves over her shoulders and half-way down her back. She was slim, but not as slim as Zark, and her eyes were a deep brown.
“Patience, my dear,” said Zark. “The best is yet to come.”
He led Mary to the center area. There he unlooped the thong about her neck, forced her prone, and hogtied her ankles to her wrists. Except for twisting her head from side to side, Mary could not move.
Having assured himself that Freeta’s bonds were still secure, he announced, “The party is almost complete. If you two ladies will excuse me, I will go find our last guest and bring her back.”
He headed back down the corridor that led upstairs.