So Long Been Dreaming (2 page)

Then the pain hit.

White! Heat! There then gone – the lash of a whip.

Wayna stopped moving. Her suit held her up. She floated, waiting. Nothing else happened. Tentatively, she kicked and stroked her way to the steps rising from the pool’s shallows, nodding to those she passed. At the door to the showers, it hit her again: a shock of electricity slicing from right shoulder to left hip. She caught her breath and continued in.

The showers were empty. Wayna was the first one from her hour out of the pool, and it was too soon for the next hour to wake up. She turned on the water and stood in its welcome warmth. What was going on? She’d never felt anything like this, not that she could remember – and surely she wouldn’t have forgotten something so intense. She stripped off her wet suit and hung it to dry. Instead of dressing in her overall and reporting to the laundry, her next assignment, she retreated into her locker and linked with Dr Ops.

In the sphere of freespace, his office always hovered in the northwest quadrant, about halfway up from the horizon. Doe, Wayna’s honeywoman, disliked this placement. Why pretend he was anything other than central to the whole setup? she asked. Why not put himself smack dab in the middle where he belonged? Doe distrusted Dr Ops and everything about
Psyche Moth
. Wayna understood why. But there was nothing else. Not for eight light-years in any direction. According to Dr Ops.

She swam into his pink-walled waiting room and eased her icon into a chair, which automatically posted a request for the AI’s attention. A couple of other prisoners were there ahead of her; one disappeared soon after she sat. A few more minutes objective measure, and the other was gone as well. Then it was Wayna’s turn.

Dr Ops presented as a lean-faced Caucasian man with a shock of mixed brown and blond hair. He wore an anachronistic headlamp and stethoscope and a gentle, kindly persona. “I have your readouts, of course, but why don’t you tell me in your own words what’s going on?”

He looked like he was listening. When she finished, he sat silent for a few seconds – much more time than he needed to consider what she’d said. Making an ostentatious display of his concern.

“There’s no sign of nerve damage,” he told her. “Nothing wrong with your spine or any of your articulation or musculature.”

“So then how come –”

“It’s probably nothing,” the AI said, interrupting her. “But just in case, let’s give you the rest of the day off. Take it easy – outside your locker, of course. I’ll clear your bunkroom for the next twenty-five hours. Lie down. Put in some face time with your friends.”

“’Probably?’”

“I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow morning. Right now, relax. Doctor’s orders.” He smiled and logged her out. He could do that. It was his system.

Wayna tongued open her locker; no use staying in there without access to freespace. She put on her overall and walked up the corridor to her bunkroom. Fellow prisoners passed her heading the other way to the pool: no one she’d known back on Earth, no one she had gotten to know that well in freespace or since the download. Plenty of time for that onplanet. The woman with the curly red hair was called Robeson, she was pretty sure. They smiled at each other. Robeson walked hand in hand with a slender man whose mischievous smile reminded Wayna of Thad. It wasn’t him. Thad was scheduled for later download. Wayna was lucky to have Doe with her.

Another pain. Not so strong this time. Strong enough, though. Sweat dampened her skin. She kept going, almost there.

There. Through the doorless opening she saw the mirror she hated, ordered up by one of the two women she timeshared with. It was only partly obscured by the genetics charts the other woman taped everywhere. Immersion learning. Even Wayna was absorbing something from it.

But not now. She lay on the bunk without looking at anything, eyes open. What was wrong with her?

Probably nothing.

Relax.

She did her body awareness exercises, tensing and loosening different muscle groups. She’d gotten as far as her knees when Doe walked in. Stood over her till Wayna focused on her honeywoman’s new visage. “Sweetheart,” Doe said. Her pale fingers stroked Wayna’s face. “Dr Ops told a trustee you wanted me.”

“No – I mean yes, but I didn’t ask –”

Doe’s expression froze, flickered, froze again.

“Don’t be – it’s so hard, can’t you just –” Wayna reached for and found both Doe’s hands and held them. They felt cool and small and dry. She pressed them against her overall’s open V-neck and slid them beneath the fabric, forcing them to stroke her shoulders.

Making love to Doe in her download seemed like cheating. Wayna wondered what Thad’s clone would look like, and if they’d be able to travel to his group’s settlement to see him.

Anticipating agony, Wayna found herself hung up, nowhere near ecstasy. Doe pulled back and looked down at her, expecting an explanation. So Wayna had to tell her what little she knew.

“You! You weren’t going to say anything! Just let me hurt you –“ Doe had zero tolerance for accidentally inflicting pain, the legacy of her marriage to a closeted masochist.

“It wouldn’t be anything you
did!
And I don’t know if –”

Doe tore aside the paper they had taped across the doorway for privacy. From her bunk, Wayna heard her raging along the corridor, slapping the walls.

Face time was over.

Taken off of her normal schedule, Wayna had no idea how to spend the rest of her day. Not lying down alone. Not after that. She tried, but she couldn’t.

Relax.

Ordinarily when her laundry shift was over, she was supposed to show up in the cafeteria and eat. Never one of her favourite activities, even back on Earth. She went there early, though, surveying the occupied tables. The same glaring lights hung from the ceiling here as in the pool, glinting off plastic plates and water glasses. The same confused noise, the sound of overlapping conversations. No sign of Doe.

She stood in line. The trustee in charge started to give her a hard time about not waiting for her usual lunch hour. He shut up suddenly; Dr Ops must have tipped him a clue. Trustees were in constant contact with the ship’s mind – part of why Wayna hadn’t volunteered to be one.

Mashed potatoes. Honey mustard nuggets. Slaw. All freshly factured, filled with nutrients and the proper amount of fiber for this stage of her digestive tract’s maturation.

She sat at a table near the disposal dump. The redhead, Robeson, was there too, and a man – a different one than Wayna had seen her with before. Wayna introduced herself. She didn’t feel like talking, but listening was fine. The topic was the latest virch from the settlement site. She hadn’t done it yet.

This installment had been recorded by a botanist; lots of information on grass analogs and pollinating insects. “We know more about Jubilee than
Psyche Moth
,” Robeson said.

“Well, sure,” said the man. His name was Jawann. “Jubilee is where we’re going to live.”

“
Psyche Moth
is where we live now, where we’ve lived for the last eighty-seven years. We don’t know jack about this ship. Because Dr Ops doesn’t want us to.”

“We know enough to realize we’d look stupid trying to attack him,” Wayna said. Even Doe admitted that. Dr Ops’ hardware lay in
Psyche Moth’s
central section, along with the drive engine. A tether almost two kilometers long separated their living quarters from the AI’s physical components and any other mission-critical equipment they might damage. At the end of the tether, Wayna and the rest of the downloads swung faster and faster. They were like sand in a bucket, centrifugal force mimicking gravity and gradually building up to the level they’d experience on Amend’s surface, in Jubilee.

That was all they knew. All Dr Ops thought they needed to know.

“Who said anything about an attack?” Robeson frowned.

“No one.” Wayna was suddenly sorry she’d spoken. “All I mean is, his only motive in telling us anything was to prevent that from happening.” She spooned some nuggets onto her mashed potatoes and shoved them into her mouth so she wouldn’t say any more.

“You think he’s lying?” Jawann asked. Wayna shook her head no.

“He could if he wanted. How would we find out?”

The slaw was too sweet; not enough contrast with the nuggets. Not peppery, like what Aunt Nono used to make.

“Why would we want to find out? We’ll be on our own ground, in Jubilee, soon enough.” Four weeks. Twenty days by
Psyche Moth
’s rationalized calendar.

“With trustees to watch us all the time, everywhere we go, and this ship hanging in orbit right over our heads.” Robeson sounded as suspicious as Doe, Jawann as placatory as Wayna tried to be in their identical arguments. Thad usually came across as neutral, controlled, the way you could be out of your meat.

“So? They’re not going to hurt us after they brought us all this way. At least, they won’t want to hurt our bodies.”

Because their bodies came from, were copies of, the people against whom they’d rebelled. The rich. The politically powerful.

But Wayna’s body was
hers
. No one else owned it, no matter who her clone’s cells had started off with. Hers, no matter how different it looked from the one she had been born with. How white.

Hers to take care of. Early on in her training she’d decided that. How else could she be serious about her exercises? Why else would she bother?

This was her body. She’d earned it.

Jawann and Robeson were done; they’d started eating before her and now they were leaving. She swallowed quickly. “Wait – I wanted to ask – “ They stopped and she stood up to follow them, taking her half-full plate. “Either of you have any medical training?”

They knew someone, a man called Unique, a nurse when he’d lived on Earth. Here he worked in the factory, quality control. Wayna would have to go back to her bunkroom until he got off and could come see her. She left Doe a message on the board by the cafeteria’s entrance, an apology. Face up on her bed, Wayna concentrated fiercely on the muscle groups she’d skipped earlier. A trustee came by to check on her and seemed satisfied to find her lying down, everything in line with her remote readings. He acted as if she should be flattered by the extra attention. “Dr Ops will be in touch first thing tomorrow,” he promised as he left.

“Oooh, baby,” she said softly to herself, and went on with what she’d been doing.

A little later, for no reason she knew of, she looked up at her doorway. The man that had held Robeson’s hand that morning stood there as if this was where he’d always been. “Hi. Do I have the right place? You’re Wayna?”

“Unique?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on in.” She swung her feet to the floor and patted a place beside her on the bed. He sat closer than she’d expected, closer than she was used to. Maybe that meant he’d been born Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Or maybe not.

“Robeson said you had some sort of problem to ask me about. So – of course I don’t have any equipment, but if I can help in any way, I will.”

She told him what had happened, feeling foolish all of a sudden. There’d only been those three times, nothing more since seeing Dr Ops.

“Lie on your stomach,” he said. Through the fabric, firm fingers pressed 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.”