Early the second day, Hae-Joo had spun the orison, opened the encrypted Union web link, and carefully selected the reading materials and docuvidis that would begin Sonmi's study of her world.

He started with background information on the vidi they had watched together, and transitioned gradually to a sampling of philosophy, history, literature and science. He placed almost no limit on the information she would be able to access. All sensitive Union digis were locked under his officer code, but he left available general information on the Movement, open to any member or sympathizer with access to the encrypted link. It wasn't nearly time yet to explain his involvement in the rebellion, nor its ultimate plan. But if she proved able to research by herself, it would be good if she were able to come across the idea that there was a rebellion against Unanimity, on her own.

The only topics he locked were related to the truth behind what she knew as xultation. The horror just beyond what was to her a joyful annual ritual, an eagerly anticipated journey to freedom, would be far too traumatic for her to learn by digi. He didn't yet know exactly how he would tell her the truth; they could only go one step at a time, and that one was still a long way ahead.

She sat quietly in a corner as he worked, her eyes scrupulously avoiding the Consumer digis, just as she had been conditioned. She had nothing to do, absolutely nothing to occupy her mind while she waited for whatever would happen next... but that was about to change.

He summoned her politely. "Could you come over here?"

She came quickly, eyes still averted from the digis. She had chosen a soft white dress and a loose grey robe today, and she looked dainty and homey at the same time. As she stood there, waiting, she seemed cautious… but also a tiny bit eager.

That was a very good sign, yet he had to remind himself to remain cautious as well. Yesterday, he had removed her from the only life she knew and launched one bewildering surprise at her after another; but so far, despite her fear, all had turned out to be interesting and pleasant. This could be different.

He'd introduce it as delicately as possible. "There are things you should know," he said quietly, gesturing at the digis.

Confusion filled her eyes; followed by shock. Then she began to pant rapidly, her eyes huge with terror—and he had to turn away for a moment.

For something to do, he reached into the digis and pulled the docuvidi on Solzhenitsyn to the top. The banned writer, who'd already been censored during his lifetime in a much smaller, earlier totalitarian state, had but a tenuous connection to the Tim Cavendish narrative. But he thought she ought to hear certain of his words first; they summed up well why she needed to be exposed to all of this, even if she couldn't grasp them initially. She could come back to them later once she began to understand.

First, however, he had to help her get past her fear. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit to see how much even the suggestion that she begin to learn frightened her.

But then, he realized that even fear was a start. An obedient fabricant would have merely looked away, tried to ignore the anti-catechism; shut off her mind even if he commanded her or physically forced her to look. And that he would never do.

No, Sonmi could do this. She just had to decide to do it… how could he best help her? He hesitated.

"But…" he heard her stammer, and turned back to her. "Seer Chang…" And he was surprised by the anger that flared in him when she addressed him so.

To her, it must only seem logical to call him that. He was, after all, a pure-blood engaging her in non-commercial conversation, and he'd been telling her what he wanted her to do, if in an indirect, courteous way. Only Seers had contact with fabricants outside working hours, and she had seen him in her new dwelling up till the moment she had closed her eyes the night before, and immediately upon waking the next morning.

He had taken a strong stimulant to ensure he would be able to watch her constantly the first night, during her sleep, and into the next day. He had needed to see if she could rest without soap, and to react immediately if she experienced any trauma.

After they finished the vidi, he had given her a carton of liquid protein to try, replacing the soap feeding that was routine for her before sleep with the closest substitute possible. She had seemed to like it well enough. It had been weirdly mesmerizing to watch her drink: she sat absolutely still, her eyes staring into space, slowly and evenly sipping the liquid down through the straw until it was gone.

Then, it had seemed as good a time as any to ask if she felt ready to sleep. She nodded, so he showed her which of her clothes were for sleeping. She went into the bathroom to change into a grey nightgown without any further prompting from him. While he waited for her, he dimmed the lights, but kept a rosy glow on the pink trees of the habitat screen. It ought to be soothing enough for sleep, yet would be sufficient to observe her carefully.

He watched her stare down at the first bed of her life, a simple mattress with a small pillow and a light blanket. She seemed puzzled by the last two things, having had none in her sleep box; he had to help her as she lay down, positioning her head on the pillow and drawing the blanket over her. Somehow it felt familiar, and warmed him inexplicably, to sit next to her bed afterward and watch her.

She clearly didn't like the pillow, and he let her move it aside. He told her that the blanket was for warmth, and she might feel cooler in the open flat than in the sleep box she was used to. She kept the blanket on for another minute or so, but then pulled it off too. He didn't push the matter.

When she had lain wide-eyed for several minutes, he realized she was reflexively waiting for the sedative effect of soap to kick in, now absent.

"Just close your eyes, and let yourself fall asleep if you feel like it," he said quietly.

She closed her eyes obediently. In a short time, she did seem to fall asleep; he couldn't be absolutely sure, but her breaths came at very even intervals. She breathed faster than he did, like all fabricants, yet the rapid, steady rhythm was reassuring to him.

Probably the shock of the previous day and the interruption of her last sleep cycle had been enough to compensate for the missing sedatives. Good. He hadn't liked the thought of giving her any more drugs; it was too much like soap. She had already successfully ingested the… different liquid protein mixture without any psychotropic additives, and he'd prefer to keep it that way.

She lay perfectly straight and still. He supposed fabricants must, in those narrow sleep boxes—they were more like storage bins than anything else. The genomic manufacturers had not been able to entirely eliminate the need for fabricants to sleep, but they had gotten it down to a trim four hours. Papa Song diners simply closed to Consumer business while the servers slept; other types of establishments might have fabricants sleep in staggered shifts in order to continue work around the clock. The sedatives in soap were to ensure that all fabricants fell asleep at the same time after a work shift, and that none awoke in their locked boxes until they automatically opened, and all the workers were revived simultaneously by airborne stimulant before the next shift. It was all incredibly, brutally efficient.

She might not be able to sleep uninterrupted through this first cycle without the sedatives, and she could be disoriented, even seriously traumatized, when she awoke. So he had good reason to stay awake and watch her. It wasn't a difficult task; the stimulant was an excellent one, and he felt neither drowsy nor jittery. It even felt good now to be able to just sit quietly and watch her lying there peacefully.

During the escape he had been concerned first with stealthily breaking into the diner, then with convincing her to come with him; then with getting her out, uncollared, through the city and to the safe house in secret and in one piece. Then, even after they were securely enclosed in the flat, he hadn't been able to relax, but had been constantly alert observing her every move, showing her strange new things… surprising her to her core, and, admittedly, being surprised by her in turn.

Though he was relatively relaxed now, he still watched her intently for any signs of a delayed traumatic response, and he had a swift-acting tranquilizer on him if he needed it. Unanimic experiments had reported horribly violent reactions in fabricants forced to act against their conditioning; however, all that she had experienced to this point had been the direct result of her own decision to leave the diner, and that seemed to make the difference. All seemed to be unfolding just as Mitchell had theorized it would, and Hae-Joo could only hope that Union's daring, desperate undertaking would continue to progress as smoothly as it had thus far.

Her grey nightgown was longer and softer than the sleep shift she had worn before. Still, she looked bare and vulnerable lying there… she could grow cold and wake up.

Taking a calculated risk, Hae-Joo took the discarded blanket and, with utmost delicacy, drew it over her again. She didn't stir. She was fast asleep.

It was an oddly beautiful vigil. His body was wide awake, his eyes ever focused on her. But as she slept on, he allowed himself to meditate, as he regularly did when duty involved long hours of watchful waiting. He took in the visions that often came to him in meditation without question or surprise, accepting the mysterious, unknowable world beyond this life.

He saw the old sailing ship. The dark-skinned friend who cared for him in his illness. The pale doctor who forced foul potions down his throat, fingering the blue gems of the waistcoat buttons on his trembling, sweat-soaked chest.

He saw the savage, flesh-eating tribesmen slaughtering his young boy, then him in the forest, while he cried out to the doctor for help; but no, it was someone else he cried out for, a friend, a family member, who somehow reminded him of the doctor, and who never appeared to aid him.

He saw Boardman Mephi in the guise of a bulky, brutal woman, and he felt himself filled with rage so drunk and pure, it was delicious. He heard the bittersweet, melancholy musical theme that often accompanied his jumbled visions, a theme he knew very well: now sought on the keys of an old piano by a feverish young man, oblivious in his inspiration; now sung by an angelic chorus of fabricants filing onto a processing ship, blissful and unknowing.

Finally, the slender, red-haired beauty embraced him passionately again, as she always did, she for whom he had longed so much… except now, she had Sonmi's face.

He flew back to current reality as the eyes of the Sonmi before him opened.

She jerked upright and tore off the blanket, looking around with quick, panicked movements, without comprehension.

His muscles tensed, but he didn't move to restrain her—yet. He was ready to act in less than a second if he must. But as her eyes flashed across his, he saw recognition, and he could almost hear her rapid heartbeats slowing to their normal swift pace. The redhead's lovely smile flickered across his mind one last time before vanishing.

She looked around again, and he could see her recall the previous night and where she was. It seemed that she was able to integrate her recent, conditioning-shattering experiences with the present… and about four hours had passed, her typical sleep cycle. Success all around.

She turned back to him, looking shaken, yet somehow expectant.

"Good morning," he said, brightening the screens to sunrise light.

His words were foreign to her, as Papa Song servers knew just one greeting and farewell to say to Consumers at any time of the day, and they never received reciprocal courtesy, just orders. But she clearly sensed the friendliness behind the phrase. She spoke no response, yet something like a real smile played across her lips… another first.

He had gone to the orison to set up her digis with almost a skip in his step.

But now, having seen the anxiety that the mere idea of learning caused her, and then heard her address him as a Seer, his light mood had soured. Damn Unanimity.

Well, calling him a Seer was a relatively minor thing, easily corrected. He controlled his frustration, and said with polite insistence, "Please, you must call me Hae-Joo." Let him never hear that word combined with his name from her again.

She was startled, but complied. "Hae-Joo…" He couldn't help an involuntary shiver as she looked at him and spoke his name for the first time... and did he imagine, or did she notice this?

But then she quickly looked away from him and the digis once more, reverting to her familiar, if broken conditioning. "Fabricants can be xcised for this."

He nodded in acknowledgement of the fact. But they were both well aware that she had crossed that line already, days ago. She had moved irreversibly into this strange new world, and he knew that despite her anxiety, her mind was ripe for this, the next step in her journey.

"Well, survival often demands our courage," he said in a low voice. For an instant, a dark-skinned face flashed across his memory, with earnest, desperate eyes...

He looked back at Sonmi with compassion. The courage that she needed to begin her study was the same courage she had shown yesterday when she followed him out of the diner, leaving slavery behind. She had done so because she wanted to live; she had chosen to trust him when he told her what she must do if she wanted to live. She had known that there would be no turning back.

Now, in order for her to begin to understand her life, and thus to live freely, she must continue to trust him. In doing so, she would have to let go of all she knew. He knew it was immensely frightening for her, but he was also certain that she could do it. She must believe him... for he believed in her, even before she could herself.

All of this passed between them without a word. She looked back at him, and he saw that she understood. Then, she came to view the digis.

He briefly demonstrated how to manipulate them and how to pull up additional references for anything she wanted. Then he started the Solzhenitsyn vidi and left her to it.

"Art is not defiled by our efforts, neither does it thereby depart from its true nature, but on each occasion and in each application it gives to us a part of its secret inner light…" As Hae-Joo moved away, he could already see her anxiety giving way to intense concentration. He watched her closely for a few minutes and saw no signs of further trauma.

That relieved him immensely. He had hated seeing her suffer.

He blocked the vidi's sound from his aural nerve and, in the silence, contemplated the duty ahead. It had been decided by Union in advance that the ascending fabricant would never be left alone, and that it would be best for her to have a single figure as guardian and mentor for the first few highly confusing and risky days. One person to watch for and deal with any trauma, to answer the questions she would doubtless have during her studies, and to flee with her and protect her if the Enforcers burst in… as they could at any moment.

Hae-Joo, who had been in on the plan from the beginning, had strongly pushed this concept. The fewer people involved, the more quick and focused the fabricant's learning would be, the less dangerously overwhelming the beginning of her new life. He had an escape plan he could implement within seconds; while he hoped they would never have to use it, he believed that his usual allies of speed, strength, precision and surprise would enable him to get them out safely if they did. Frankly, he had felt that he was the only agent in Nea So Copros with the unique skill set required for this duty.

There was one other he would have trusted, his old friend Mitchell, without whom they never would have developed this plan in the first place. But Mitchell was a Union spy, working high up in the Unanimic hierarchy of United AmerCorpia for many years now. He had been the one to access the secret fabricant research of a coalition of AmerCorporations, and he had been the first to conceive the idea of recruiting a fabricant to the Union cause. The idea had been embraced by all the rebel collectives, and agents had been searching for fabricants with the potential for free will all over the world ever since. However, in over a year of searching, only two such fabricants had been discovered, and both had been here in Neo Seoul. Hae-Joo knew Mitchell would long to meet her, the flesh-and-blood, free-willed fabricant of his dreams; perhaps one day, he would have the opportunity…

But for the beginning of her journey, General Apis had agreed that Hae-Joo was the best choice to guard and guide her during her ascendance. For the next few days, until he believed her ready to be brought out of isolation, Sonmi-451 would be his sole responsibility.

Direct communication between the flat and Union during this period was to be by brief coded signals, except in dire emergency. Hae-Joo waited until she had been studying steadily for fifteen minutes. Then he sent, All proceeding very well.

Afterward, he spun his spare orison and ate a couple protein packs while reading through the most recent officer communiqués. As usual, the rebellion was struggling on all fronts just to survive, and not be exterminated like vermin. He finished perusing the weapons digis he had pulled up the previous night. Then he put in a couple hours of exercise, followed by a quick shower. He listened to a lot of music as the hours went by—shinawi, late 20th century American rock, centuries-old symphonies, all fed by his sony straight to his aural nerve so as not to disturb her, and on lowest priority in case anything else required his attention.

But almost the entire time Hae-Joo occupied himself, he also watched her. And as morning flowed into afternoon, he was amazed by her concentration.

She read and watched all of his selections, opened countless references and read all of those; constantly started new docuvidis, paused and resumed and skipped among them, opened references for references and read those too… on and on and on, with no sign of tiring. Such starting and stopping and dancing among topics would have driven him crazy, but she seemed to thrive on it. And she paid him not the slightest bit of attention, whether to ask him a question or even to notice what he was doing.

Over the first hour or so, her expression shifted from somber focus to passionate engagement. The speed of her reading also increased, exponentially—no one had been able to guess how well fabricants of her stemtype, or any for that matter would be able to read Consumer material, as it was something they never did. However, she appeared to be capable of reading just as fast as Hae-Joo could, which was saying something, as he was both naturally quick and better educated than the average Consumer. Sometimes she gave an excited vocalization, and she appeared utterly delighted by frequent flashes of new understanding.

She was showing far more curiosity and intelligence than Union had ever hoped to see in a fabricant, even Yoona-939. It was like watching a flower blossom. It should have been a rather boring day for Hae-Joo, yet he couldn't recall a more engaging one in recent memory… and it was all through observation of her.

He guessed focus and single-mindedness were traits for which fabricants were genomed and conditioned. They were intended to work long hours without pause or distraction, to give efforts as fresh at the end of a nineteen hour shift as at the beginning, and to make no mistakes. Yet to see such untiring concentration, intended for slave labor but now employed in learning was… beautiful. And what made it most gorgeous of all was how clearly Sonmi was enjoying herself.

At late afternoon, Hae-Joo felt the stimulant beginning to wear off. He considered whether to take another dose right then or to let himself sleep for an hour first. He had been prepared to stay awake for the entire first forty-eight hours she was in his charge, or even longer; however, it seemed that wouldn't be necessary. He did want to be able to watch her sleep again that night, and possibly subsequent nights, as waking up had been the only time she had shown panic thus far.

He had to admit to himself that he didn't mind watching her at any time. But he couldn't take stimulants indefinitely; fatigue would catch up eventually, with a vengeance. However, he could prolong the time before the inevitable crash through some judicious naps. It made sense to rest now, while she remained happily occupied, and save the next dose for the night, when she seemed more vulnerable.

"Sonmi..." he said softly, hating to interrupt her.

She swiftly turned to face him for the first time since she had begun to view the digis; she appeared pleased that he had spoken to her. What a silly thought. Yet she did seem pleased, as she gazed at him... and he realized he had trailed off before adding her numerical suffix.

The only other time he had used her name in her presence had been in the diner, a moment after he first glimpsed her, complete with suffix, but it had felt awkward to him then. He had been opposed to the principle of model and make designations for fabricants for a long time already, and it felt even more wrong in practice to give a timid, "fabricated," yet no less human creature a numerical designation when he addressed her. But it was part of her name; the make number differentiated her from hundreds of other fabricants that shared the same features as her.

The Union audio chip had picked up Yoona-939 addressing her sister by her model name and, instead of the number, a subspeak suffix signifying kinship. This mode of address seemed to have been a particularity of Yoona-939, and in fact, fabricants rarely had occasion to address one another at all.

But individual Papa Song venues never contained more than one fabricant of a particular model, except for those few minutes a year when a replacement arrived for an older model being led off to… retirement. So other than a few short minutes at the beginning of her servitude, she had been the only Sonmi in the diner for her entire life. And she had at least once been called by her name, without a number, by her first, now deceased friend. And so, Hae-Joo decided to call her just Sonmi from now on.

It was fitting for him to mentally rename her at that moment, because her face had visibly changed since the morning. The stimulation and pleasure of learning had made it glow, and brought new liveliness to her eyes. He couldn't help smiling at her; then, he stifled a yawn.

"I'm going to sleep for an hour. You can call me if you need anything, I'll wake up."

She gazed at him silently, her expression suddenly concerned. "Uh... is that okay with you?" he asked gently. He could certainly stay awake, if she preferred.

She seemed to consider it carefully for a moment, but then she nodded.

It amused him that she had considered the question so thoroughly. How kind of her, after due reflection, to permit me a bit of rest. He needed neither darkness nor a bed to sleep, but since a mat and extra bedding had come with the habitat furnishings, he might as well get comfortable. He got the mat and pillow out of the closet, placed them at a respectful distance from her, and lay down fully dressed—best to be ready for anything, phaser and tranquilizer in his pocket. He programmed a wake-up in an hour on his sony, and fell asleep swiftly.