Bawdy Double

Chapter 1

The uterpod convulsed wildly, and somewhere, a muted alarm began to ping.

Even from a distance, Fred F4RB8C3 knew the mutaclone was in distress. Not another! he thought. That'll be the fifth this rev! Maneuvering his extensile to the uterpod, Fred shoved the catch basket beneath it, and then examined the figure inside the transparent membrane.

Arms and legs akimbo, a fem mutaclone stared back at him, eyes wide with terror. The tough uterpod membrane gave at every jab of her limb, the derma designed to contain but not restrict.

Where'd she come from? Fred wondered, only factory drudges being grown in this sector. Mutaclone drudges, like himself. He pulled up her gestation history on his corn. Recently moved from the escoriant sector, where escort variants were grown to order, this perfect-looking specimen had been flagged as defective.

Doesn't look defective to me, he thought, in spite of her contortions. Even limbs akimbo, she looked perfectly proportioned, her anatomy visible in all its detail.

Fred considered a sedative as her flailing continued. The mutaclones all around her were being jostled by her struggles. He had to do something. And the uterpod derma was too tough, too resilient, and too elastic to escape from the inside.

Fred F4RB8C3 looked both ways.

Above and below, uterpods extended for hundreds of feet, two walls of the glistening pods facing each other with just enough room between them for his extensile lift. To the right and left, more pods, nearly two hundred yards long. When he had time to think, he would try to estimate the number of mutaclones gestating on this asteroid alone, five thousand sectors, each holding between five hundred and fifteen hundred mutaclone.

Glad no one was near, Fred pulled out his injectile. The needle looked deadly, its fat, menacing barrel narrowing to a sharp, shiny point.

Her eyes went wide, and she kicked at him violently.

He pulled the injectile back and took the kick on the shoulder. Without backing or force, she couldn't hurt him. He grabbed a handful of derma and stretched it toward him, then put the injectile point to it and tore.

The uterpod retracted as if in pain and peeled away from the mutaclone, dumping her into the catch basket. A spray of amniofluid fell toward the waste sluice a hundred feet below.

She lay there a moment, gasping and glistening. "Thank you," she said breathily, venturing to glance his way.

"You're welcome," Fred said. He'd worked the escoriant sector, and the specimen in front of him looked just as delectable and healthy as any. Escort variants sold for thousands of galacti on the open market, sometimes tens of thousands. And this one was fully formed, Fred having seen all her anatomical features through the transparent derma as she'd struggled to escape the uterpod. He knew what some of his male coworkers did in the escoriant sector when they thought no one was looking. Product-testing, they sometimes joked.

He maneuvered the extensile back toward his workstation, trying his best to keep his eyes off her. "Let's get you an allsuit. Got a spare over here."

"Nice of you."

He nodded, throwing her a grin but trying not to glance. And failing.

"Awful young to be doing this kind of work, aren't you?"

"Born here on the asteroid," he said. "I'm Fred Eff Four Are Bee Eight Cee Three." He spelled out his clone designation. She sounds far too alert to have just aborted from a uterpod, Fred thought, bewildered. He docked the extensile and stepped to the locker beside his workstation, silencing the alarm. He handed her the allsuit, averting his gaze.