She was beginning to fell uneasy now for the first time. Not only was this show very real—she would expect that—but it was passive, talky, not the kind of thriller, show anybody would make up. But the alternative, that it was real, was too horrible to consider.

“So you can replace people with perfect robots,” she managed. “So why a decorator?”

“One of our clerical agents spotted your entry in the routine contracts a few weeks ago. Consider, Juna Rhae, that your next job is to redo a child factory. A place where they’re reprogramming to raise little botanists instead of little engineers, I think. Now, suppose we could do a little extra reprogramming there while you were going around replanning the place?”

She shuddered. This was too horrible for a horror script.

“Now,” he continued, “we’re set up. The moment you entered the Warden Diamond you were infected. Given a massive overdose of the pure stuff. Saturated with the Cerberan brand of the Warden bug. It’ll take a while before you’ll notice anything, several days or more, but it’s already there, settling into every cell in your body.”

The door shimmered again and through it stepped a woman, a woman of the civilized worlds, a woman more than vaguely familiar to her although she appeared blank, stiff, almost zombielike.

Bogen turned and nodded to the newcomer, then turned back to her. “Recognize this woman?”

She stared, feeling fear for the first time aow. “It—it’s me,” she breathed.

Her other self reached out and pulled her to her feet with an iron grip. The strength in that one hand was beyond any human. The robot Juna Rhae took the human’s hands and held them in a viselike grip with one hand while the other arm held her firmly around her waist. This hurt too much to be a show. She would never have ordered something like this!