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monstrosities had been conceived and born only in some chaotic spasm of
Nick's imagination. He had admitted to her wistfully that he lacked
the historical
resources to be sure his duplication was exact.
Effortlessly the lady willed herself to be no longer in her bed, but standing
beside it-and there she was. Wet London was visible from one of her high
windows when she rose on tiptoe to look out. It was gray morning, very gray,
rain shining on the antique roofs of slate or shingle. The darkened sky was
full of grating, grumbling thunder, and a realistic flare of lightning.
And the lady, in the bedroom privacy which Nicholas
Hawksmoor had sworn and guaranteed for her, stripping off her white nightgown
now, examined with fear and curiosity the white nakedness of the body image
Nick had given her.
It wasn't the first time since coming to the Abbey that she had made a similar
inspection. The first time she had seen her new self this way, she had been
willing to agree: Yes, this is me. This at least looks like the flesh
that I remember. But with each successive viewing her uncertainty had
only increased.
The private portions of her body, those which had not been visible
in any of the public videos on which the reconstruction had been based,
now seemed to her to be the most changed from the flesh that she remembered.
Or was she only imagining that this was so?
Willing her nightgown on again, the Lady Genevieve went out of her bedroom,
along a passageway, into what ought to have been a public section
of the Abbey. Then, finding her way through a small door and
climbing a hundred steps and more without effort or breathlessness,
she ascended a narrow stair within the north tower-the one without the
clock.
Having counted a certain number of stairs, she stopped to open a small window,
reached out and experimentally touched the rain upon the gray, slanting
roof outside. The chill wet smoothness beneath her fingers still wasn't
exactly right. Nothing was. Things changed here, now and then, but in their
essentials they did not improve.
Descending from the tower again, she had hardly reentered her bedroom before
there came a knock upon her door.
Before responding she put on an imaged robe over the imaged nightdress in
which she had climbed the tower. Taking her time, she shod her feet in
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slippers. Then she answered the door.
"Surprise, surprise," she said, hardly glancing at the figure that stood
outside. "It's you."
Nick looked at her as if his thoughts were really elsewhere.
"Who else were you expecting?" he inquired in honest momentary
puzzlement.
She only gazed at him.
"Oh," he said at last, vaguely realizing that she was only
registering a sarcastic complaint about her isolation. "Have you found
things-to do? To think about?"
"No. How can I find anything here unless you give it to me?"
"I have said I'm willing to teach you how to exert control over this
environment. You could experiment endlessly, make whatever changes you
wanted. I should think it would be- fun."
"And I have said that I am not willing to endure this existence a moment
longer than is absolutely necessary. What I want is to have my body
back-or to be restored to another body that's at least as good."
"And I can only assure you, my darling, that I'm doing all I
can." Nick was able to report some faintly encouraging news about
the process of selecting zygotes, and the availability of artificial
wombs.
By now they had strolled out into the church itself. "And I
have brought you pictures, my dear."
Jenny was about to ask what else besides pictures he could possibly
bring her as long as she was trapped here in unreality, but she forbore.
Nick went on eagerly to explain. A robot searching the cargo under
the direction of Freya had already
2
turned up a pair of zygotes whose genetic patterns closely matched
the somatotypes Nick had ordered. He had created images showing what
their new bodies would be like in early maturity, if grown from these
zygotes.
"Well, when can I see them?"
"Here they are now."
Jenny looked over her shoulder to beyond a handsome couple, entirely
unclothed as for some nudist wedding ceremony, approaching side by side
down the center of the nave. One of
Nick, as he would look in his new fleshly mode, and one of her.
His was very much like the virtual form that already stood beside her, looking
anxiously for her approval. And hers& she could see in it no more than a vague
resemblance to what she thought she ought to look like.
The images, athletic and glowing with apparent health, but vacant-eyed
and with no reaction to being observed, came within a few meters of the
watching couple, then pirouetted and posed like holostage clothing models
that someone had forgotten to provide with clothing.
"Well?"
"Close," said Jenny, not wanting to be too critical at this stage.
"But I should be just a shade taller, don't you think? My breasts a little
larger. And the chin, and the eyes-make her look back this way a moment-yes.
The whole face, I think, is really not that much like mine. Like the
way mine ought to be."
Nick nodded, unperturbed. "This is only a start, of course. The robot searched
only a few million tiles to come up with these. It shouldn't take very long
to turn up an even closer match-and what do you think of mine?"
"I think the resemblance is definitely closer there. It will
certainly suit me if it suits you."
"Good. I'll use it, unless something even closer should turn up.
Meanwhile we'll go forward with the search for yours.
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Meanwhile, what else can I do for you here, to make you as
comfortable as possible?"
"Nick, I tell you I no longer know what comfort means. My only genuine
feeling here, I can assure you, is one of helplessness."
That attitude, coming in place of the praise he felt that he had earned, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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