Treason Page 0,43

many days after that I was feverish and unconscious. But I was vaguely aware that I recovered strength enough to walk, always in a stupor, staggering through the forest. Only the ignorance of the Nkumai saved me-- I wasn't aware enough to be careful. Perhaps I walked at night. Perhaps they had given up the search. I don't know. But I moved from the river to cleaner brooks, and drank; the trees were an endless brown blur; the sun was merely a bright spot in the green from time to time; I knew nothing of what was transpiring.

And I dreamed that as I traveled I was not alone. I dreamed that someone traveled with me, someone to whom I spoke softly and explained all the wisdom of my fevered brain. I dreamed I held a child in my arms. I dreamed I was a father, and unlike my father, I would not, did not, disinherit my worthiest son because of some crime beyond his control. I dreamed, and then tried one day to set the child down so I could drink.

But the child would not leave my arms. And gradually, as I struggled to push the child away, I realized that birds were singing, the sun was shining, sweat was dripping from my chin, and I was not asleep.

The boy was whimpering.

The boy was real.

I remembered now how the child had cried out in hunger. I remembered now how I had deliriously crooned to him as, I walked along, how we had slept snuggled together. It was all so clear-- except where he had come from.

It took little investigation to discover. He was joined to me at the waist by a bridge of flesh. Gut to gut, and his food must have been whatever strength he could draw from my body. His legs dangled to within a foot of the ground when I stood erect; his head was only a little shorter than my own; and as I looked into his eyes, I realized they were mine.

Radical regenerative. I could heal anything. And when half my guts were torn away, connected to my body only by arteries and veins, my body just couldnt decide which was the real me, which part of me to heal. So it healed both halves, and I stood looking into the eyes of my perfect duplicate, who smiled timidly at me like a stupid but sweet-tempered child.

No, not a child. He had grown quickly, and a faint down of hair around the cheeks and lips hinted at oncoming adolescence. He was thin, starved; his naked ribs protruded. So did mine. My body, unsure which of us to save, had raided my body to give strength to his, and now struggled for a balance.

I did not want a balance.

I remember the monstrous rad I had seen lurching toward the troughs in the laboratories, and imagined myself there, ready to be harvested. But I had created, not a mere head, but an entire body. And when I was ripe for the plucking, and they cut the bodies apart, which would be me, and which would they send?

At this moment there was still no doubt which of us was the original Lanik Mueller. I had breasts; I had a tiny arm growing out of my shoulder, already with fingers that clasped and curled. It had not grown at all since I escaped from the Nkumai prison; I bitterly congratulated my body on having its priorities straight, healing my gut wound before bothering with a surplus arm. Good job.

Was the new me alive? Human? Intelligent? I didn't think to ask. I only knew that I would not live with two of me.

I was naked and had no knife. But the connection between us was still only the thin folds of tissue, rich with arteries, that had kept him alive during his gestation.

It. That had kept it alive. If I let the creature become him in my mind, then it was only a short shift to thinking of him as me. As it was I could hardly bear thinking of me as me.

Its hair grew as mine did, the same curls and twists, wild and tangled. I tore at the hair, tried to push it away. Of course it could not go. But it could not stay, either. It was myself, exactly myself, as I had been only a few months ago, before my body had changed to make room for a woman who did not belong there, a woman