CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lisa saw it slither towards the smaller one and engulf it in its jaws. She felt a pinching tearing pain within her, then saw the huge mouth close tight over the second embryo and swallow it. The larger embryo had absorbed the smaller one, had obliterated it from life.
    ‘Lisa!’
    A grey mist swam across the image. The pinching turned to shaking - her shoulders were shaking in horror at what she’d seen. She held her hands over her abdomen, protecting it.
    ‘No!’ she called out. ‘No! Don’t do that!’
    ‘Darling,’ she heard. She recognised Alec’s voice, urgent and low. ‘Wake up! You’re having a nightmare! Lisa!’
    The grey mist completely shrouded her, then turned to a cold measured festering sensation inside her. Cold; she felt so cold. And that sinking feeling, as though she were being sucked into a chasm, a cataclysmic series of events she could not control.
    Her hands were interlocked, hard below the still-flat belly she clasped to herself. She could hear Alec talking to her, his voice caressing, could feel his hands against hers, stroking, trying to relax them. Her eyelids began to tremble. The gloomy grey turned into the soft orange glow of the bedroom lamps.
    ‘Are you all right, pet?’
    ‘I suppose so.’ Lisa struggled to open her eyes properly. Alec was sitting on her side of the bed, his hands now on her shoulders, sliding across her back, holding her to him, embracing her.
    ‘I couldn’t seem to wake you up. What was it?’
    ‘I dreamed you’d turned into someone else.’ She looked at him carefully, then round the room and down at herself. Only a crumpled nightdress to remind her of the scene in her dream. ‘It was so real  – ’
    ‘All that rich clotted cream at Meg’s, I expect,’ he soothed her, stroking her blonde damp hair with his right hand, his left arm holding her to him. ‘And that idiotic business of sucking clover.’ He kissed her hair. ‘I’m just the way I always was.’
    ‘And Seb - Seb turned into several little Sebs.’
    ‘You’re dreaming of a baby brother for him.’
    ‘And the new baby split in two.’ She shuddered as she remembered the vividness of it. ‘Split right down the middle. Divided in half like an amoeba.’
    ‘It was a nightmare, sweet. All over now, nothing to worry about.’
    ‘Like a fertilised ovum dividing into identical twins,’ she continued stubbornly.
    She felt his arms tighten around her, hard. ‘Determined to copy Meg, aren’t you?’
    ‘Completely, exactly the same as each other,’ she felt impelled to carry on. ‘Split into two equal foetuses; well, embryos maybe.’ She shuddered again, seeing the giant maw opening up, then devouring, the second embryo. ‘And then one of them swallowed the other one.’
    She could not shake the image off; it was so real, so tangible.
    ‘That’s what you get for wishing for two for the price of one!’ Alec rumbled good-naturedly. She felt his chest against her own, the pyjama buttons pressing into her. ‘It’s all right now, it was just a dream. There’s no need to worry. You know what the obstetrician said.’
    ‘I know. He went on and on about the fertility drugs not affecting this pregnancy. But my dream was about identical twins, nothing to do with that.’
    ‘Twins are twins.’
    Lisa bolted upright, pushing her husband away from her, eyes blazing. The placid disposition nurtured by their serene country lifestyle seemed suddenly transformed into her previous, rather more stormy, temperament.
    ‘No, they’re not. Fertility drug twins are formed by two ova released and fertilised at the same time: fraternal two-egg twins. Identical twins are formed in a quite different way. They’re produced by the splitting of a single fertilised ovum into two - usually within the first two weeks of pregnancy.’
    ‘Whatever, Lisa,’ Alec cut her off impatiently. ‘We really don’t have to worry about more than one baby for this pregnancy. It’s quite different from the