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Somba got up. "Have a try at the old fossil," he said, indicating to the machine. "Just a reminder, no one must know."
"I promise," she said in earnest.
Her round eyes got bigger with so much conviction in them. He put his arms around her. "Tonight, in pool, I'll want more than a promise," his words came out lisping.
"That too...." she could hardly articulate from her own lisp, and felt herself dilating. She resorted to silently nodding her consent and participation.
Somba then left for the day and Georgiana felt a wisp of emptiness. But it was only a momentary thing.
While Somba in the day's course consulted at several data archive centers spread throughout Cloverfarm and overspilling beyond into Marshgardens, Georgiana's job was to separate the 'soup' he collected each morning by centrifuging it. The newcells accumulated at the bottom of the container, while the chloroplasma remained on top. After separation, the flee-looking phytogenic cells were dumped onto petri dishes layered with chloroplasma and sifted soil of high nutrient derivation.
She would watch over the cultures and replenish the nutrients, till three weeks later the ochres showed. The yellowish-green cells went into stasis conglomerates deep within the freezing caves of Marshgardens where light could not get to them. Their transport there and later their fabrication and construction cultivation was not her responsibility. Hers was only to keep records of quantity and ochre, and to segregate the yellowish-greens from the reddish-greens.
As complacent as the y-gs were, their counterparts, the r-gs, effervesced with uneasiness and activity, at times to the point of mischief. At infant stage, the venturous r-gs would quiver with unrest, and some managed--to Georgiana's professional disconcert--to move by a centimeter or more on the mud-layered petris. A scientific improbability since they lacked muscle tissue. Their teensy, watch-spring tendrils served no other purpose than to absorb and catalyze nutriment. Yet, in the years she had been observing them not once had she caught glimpse of the slightest of spacial displacement at its transpiring.
The lit terminal flickered and flashed as though calling to her to take prompt notice of it.



It was noon by the time she finished her allotted work. She centrifuged all of the sap Somba had brought in. She placed the newcells in the dishes, used 124 in all, discarded the dead or damaged ones, and emptied the fresh pure chloroplasma in their sleeping pool. As she did her eyes remained glued on the swaying flux the falling sap stirred. The new batch worked itself around transforming the pool into clear green glass. Ready for the night, she thought, anticipating, and pulled her eyes away from its twinkling lure.
Returning to the laboratory she threw a professional glance over the petris arrayed on a shelf grown out of the homogeneous wall, and sat in front of the terminal's monitor. She had turned it off after Somba left. Now she prepared to reactivate it. Only one other time had she felt this way: when she had mistakenly touched the tips of an r-g's hind genitalia tendrils instead of the forward boring pair.