So Long Been Dreaming Read Free Page A

on either side of her spine, from mid-back to her skull, then down again to her tailbone. “Turn over, please. Bend your knees. All right if I take off your shoes?” He stroked the soles of her feet, had her push them against his hands in different directions. His touch, his resistance to her pressure, reassured her. What she was going through was real. It mattered.
    He asked her how she slept, what she massed, if she was always thirsty, other things. He finished his questions and walked back and forth in her room, glancing often in her direction. She sat again, hugging herself. If Doe came in now, she’d know Wayna wanted him.
    Unique quit his pacing and faced her, his eyes steady. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he said. “You’re not the only one, though. There are 150 others that I’ve seen or heard of experiencing major problems – circulatory, muscular, digestive. Some even have the same symptoms you do.”
    “What is it?” Wayna asked stupidly.
    “Honestly, I don’t know,” he repeated. “If I had a lab – I’ll set one up in Jubilee – call it neuropathy, but I don’t know for sure what’s causing it.”
    “Neuropathy?”
    “Means nerve problems.”
    “But Dr Ops told me my nerves were fine. . . .” No response to that.
    “If we were on Earth, what would you think?”
    He compressed his already thin lips. “Most likely possibility, some kind of thyroid problem. Or – but what it would be elsewhere, that’s irrelevant. You’re here, and it’s the numbers involved that concern me, though superficially the cases seem unrelated.
    “One hundred and fifty of you out of the Jubilee group with what might be germ plasm disorders; 150 out of 20,000. At least 150; take underreporting into account and there’s probably more. Too many. They would have screened foetuses for irregularities before shipping them out.”
    “Well, what should I do then?”
    “Get Dr Ops to give you a new clone.”
    “But –”
    “This one’s damaged. If you train intensely, you’ll make up the lost time and go down to Jubilee with the rest of us.”
    Or she might be able to delay and wind up part of Thad’s settlement instead.
    As if he’d heard her thought, Unique added, “I wouldn’t wait, if I were you. I’d ask for – no, demand another body – now. Soon as you can.”
    “Because?”
    “Because your chances of a decent one will just get worse, if this is a radiation-induced mutation. Which I have absolutely no proof of. But if it is.”

    “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and there we wept. . . .” The pool reflected music, voices vaulting upward off the water, outward to the walls of white-painted steel. Unlike yesterday, the words were clear, because everyone was saying the same thing. Singing the same thing. “For the wicked carried us away. . . .” Wayna wondered why the trustee in charge had chosen this song. Of course he was a prisoner, too.
    The impromptu choir sounded more soulful than it looked. If the personalities of these clones’ originals had been in charge, what would they be singing now? The “Doxology?” “Bringing in the Sheaves?” Did Episcopalians even have hymns?
    Focusing on the physical, Wayna scanned her body for symptoms. So far this morning, she’d felt nothing unusual. Carefully, slowly, she swept the satiny surface with her arms, raising a tapering wave. She worked her legs, shooting backwards like a squid, away from the shallows and most of the other swimmers. Would sex underwater be as good as it was in freespace? No, you’d be constantly coming up for breath. Instead of constantly coming. . . . Last night, Doe had forgiven her, and they’d gone to Thad together. And everything had been fine until they started fighting again. It hadn’t been her fault. Or Doe’s, either.
    They told Thad about Wayna’s pains, and how Unique thought she should ask for another clone. “Why do you want to download at all?” he asked. “Stay in here