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Two, Three, etc., would be decanted, programmed, made to live and die just as Crane dictated.
    Or…
    Her daddy had been a wise man, in a backcountry roughhewn Western kind of way. A wiry man of few words but a quick smile, who had won her mother’s reserved Boston Brahmin heart. He’d imparted a few words of wisdom to his only child, phrased in language that her mother frowned upon. “It’s better to have someone inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.” Not original; she later found out that Lyndon Johnson had said it of J. Edgar Hoover. But the meaning was clear. She could offer constructive criticism, nudge the program in a certain direction, but only if she was inside. Go too far, and she was out, and there was nothing she could do for Maria.
    She had no idea how hard it was going to be.
    She showered and got rid of the business attire; Franklin’s advances wouldn’t have worked, no matter what, but she did want to relax. A shorter pleated skirt, heels, a lower-cut blouse and cardigan, over a pinstriped lingerie set, and hair blown back from her face, a little more makeup — not so businesslike any more. Maybe the strangeness of the town, her anonymity, the air of illicit possibilities had gotten her adrenalin going, since her tries at the temptress look were few and far between. Maybe after the meeting, she’d check out the night life…

    They met at seven. Franklin rose and greeted her then, took her hand. He wore faded jeans, a turtleneck and a Harris Tweed sport coat over his muscular frame. She saw him quickly give her the up-and-down at her above-the-knee skirt, the blouse undone just so, hair brushed out, and smiled inwardly.
    Not for you, doctor, she reminded herself. The waiter seated them.
    “I think all went well today,” Kelly said. In all they had spent two hours in the garden with Maria, getting her to identify things and relate them in a human way, going from kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus to “lovely” or “pretty.” It hadn’t been easy at first, but Maria eventually caught on.
    They ordered; Kelly ordered the szhuizhu ; Franklin ordered a stir-fry. “Vegetarian?” she asked him.
    “You expecting soul food?” he replied with a wry grin. And then a trace of Black Belt accent crept in, got broader. “I done had me enough chitlins and grits when I was a young ’un, back in Alabammy.” He lost the accent. “Killed my momma at fifty, one of my sisters at forty-five. I plan on staying around some.”
    Kelly was taken slightly aback, but didn’t detect any hostility in Franklin’s tone. She changed the subject. “So how did you hook up with Desmond Crane?”
    “We are the odd couple, aren’t we? We met at a biomedical conference ten years ago in Chicago. He was giving a paper on using nanotech to clone organs from tissue cultures. I was on the same panel, doing the hardware end of it, what you’d have to do to program the nanos, how you get them to shut down so they don’t multiply and take over the world or destroy it. We got to talking in a bar after the session, one thing led to another, and we collaborated on a few papers that got published. The front office here at American Cybernetics took notice, offered us everything we could want, told us to work on making an organic android a reality.”
    The wine arrived, and she took a sip. Franklin had ordered mineral water. He drank, and eyed her. “So you’re supposed to give our girl a personality.”
    “Not quite. I’m supposed to ease her along in developing one herself. You’ve seen her in the room. Conscious, in a physical sense. But maybe not in a metaphysical sense. She reacts to stimuli, can verbalize simple thoughts, responds to simple commands. But there’s no sense of individuality behind it. She’s largely a blank slate.”
    “I did what I could,” Franklin shrugged. “I took the RNA and wired all kinds of knowledge into that pretty little head of hers.”
    “And did a fine job,