The Sword of Aldones (d-2) by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1962-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Unsteadily, Callina knelt beside the crumpled form. I followed slowly, and bent over beside her.

“She isn’t dead?”

“Of course not.” Callina looked up. “But that was terrible, even for us. What do you think it was like for her? She’s in shock.”

The girl was lying on her side, one arm across her face.

Soft brown hair, falling forward, hid her features. I brushed it lightly back — then stopped, my hand still touching her cheek, in dazed bewilderment.

“It’s Linnell,” Callina choked. “Linnell!”

Lying on the cold floor was the girl on the spaceport; the girl I had seen in my first confused moments in Thendara.

For a moment, even knowing as I did what had happened, I thought my mind would give way. The transition had taken its toll of me, too. Every nerve in my body ached.

“What have we done?” Callina moaned. “What have we done?”

I held her tight. Of course, I thought; of course. Linnell was near; she was close to both of us; we had both been talking, and thinking of Linnell tonight. And yet…

“You know Cherillys’ two point law?” I tried to put it into simple words. “Everything, everywhere, except a matrix, exists in one exact duplicate. This chair, my cloak, the screwdriver on your table, the public fountain in Port Chicago — everything in the universe exists in one exact molecular duplicate. Nothing is unique except a matrix; but there are no three things alike in the universe.”

“Then this is — Linnell’s twin?”

“More than that. Only once in a million years or so would duplicates also be twins. This is her real twin. Same fingerprints. Same retinal eye patterns. Same betagraphs and blood type. She won’t be much like Linnell in personality, probably, because the duplicates of Linnell’s environment are scattered all over the galaxy. But in flesh and blood, they’re identical. Even her chromosomes are identical with Linnell’s.

I took up the girl’s wrist and turned it over. The curious matrix mark of the Comyn was duplicated there. “Birthmark,” I said, “but the effect is identical in her flesh. See?”

I stood up. Callina stared and stared. “Can she live in this environment, then?”

“Why not? If she’s Linnell’s duplicate, she breathes oxygen in the same ratio we do, and her internal organs are adjusted to about the same gravity.”

“Can you carry her? She’ll get another bad shock if she wakes up in this place!” Callina indicated the matrix equipment.

I grinned humorlessly.- “She’ll get one anyway.” But I managed to scoop her up, one-armed. She was frail and light, like Linnell. Callina held curtains aside for me, showed me where to lay her. I covered the girl, for it was cold, and Callina murmured, “I wonder where she comes from?”

“She was born on a world with gravity about the same as Darkover, which narrows it considerably. Vialles, Wolf, even Terra. Or, of course, some planet we never heard of.” Her speech had impressed me as Terran; but I hadn’t told Callina about that episode on the spaceport, and didn’t intend to.

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