Winterlong

Winterlong Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Winterlong Read Online Free PDF
Author: Elizabeth Hand
nibbled one, staring idly at the faux vellum cover of the profile with its engraved motto:
    HUMAN ENGINEERING LABORATORY
    OF THE
    NORTHEASTERN FEDERATED REPUBLIC OF AMERICA
    PAULO MAIORA CANAMUS!
    “‘Let us raise a somewhat loftier strain,’” Gligor had translated it for me once. “Virgil. But it should be deus ex machina,” he added slyly.
    God from the machine.
    I licked melting chocolate from my fingers and began to read, skimming through the charts and anamnesis that followed. On the last sheet I read: “Client requests therapy in order to determine nature and cause of these obsessive nightmares.”
    Beneath this was Dr. Harrow’s scrawled signature and the blotchy yellow star and triangle that was the Republic’s emblem. I ate the last wafer, then mimed to the server that I was finished.
    We dined alone in the Peacock Room. After setting two places at the vast mahogany table the servers disappeared, dismissed by Dr. Harrow’s brusque gesture. We ate in silence for several minutes beneath the hissing gaslights.
    “Did you read the profile I gave you?’ she asked at last, with studied casualness.
    “Mmmm-mmm,” I grunted.
    “And … ?”
    “She will not make it.”
    Dr. Harrow dipped her chin ever so slightly before asking, “Why, Wendy?”
    “I don’t know.” I sucked my fork.
    “Can’t you give me any idea of what makes you feel that?”
    “Nothing. I never feel anything.”
    “Well then, what makes you think she wouldn’t be a good analysand?”
    “I don’t know. I just—” I clicked the tines of my fork against my teeth. “It’s like when I start head-banging—the way everything starts to shiver and I get sick. But I don’t throw up.”
    Dr. Harrow tilted her head. “Like a seizure. Well.” She smiled, staring at me.
    I dropped my fork and glanced around in impatience. “When will I meet her?”
    “You already have.”
    I kicked my chair. “When?”
    “Fourteen years ago, when you first came to HEL .”
    “Why don’t I remember her?”
    “You do, Wendy.” She leaned across the table and tapped my hand gently with her knife. “It’s me.”
    “Surprised?” Dr. Harrow grinned and raised the sleeves of her embroidered haik so that the early morning sunlight gleamed through the translucent threads.
    “It’s beautiful,” I said, enviously fingering the flowing cuffs.
    She smiled and turned to the NET beside my bed. “I’m the patient this morning. Are you ready?”
    I nodded. There had been no Aides in to see me that morning; no report of my stolen dreams; no blood samples given to Justice. Dr. Harrow had wheeled in a rickety old wood-framed cot and now sat on it, readying her monitors. I settled on my bed and waited for her to finish. She finally turned to me and applied electrolytic fluid to the nodes on my temples, placed other wires upon my head and cheekbones before doing the same to herself.
    “Justice isn’t assisting you?” I asked.
    She shook her head but made no reply as she adjusted her screens and, finally, settled onto her cot. I lay back against the pillow and shut my eyes.
    The last thing I heard was the click of the adaptor freeing the current, and a gentle exhalation that might have been a sigh.
    “Here we stand …”
    “Here we stand …”
    “Here we lie …”
    “Here we lie …”
    “Eye to hand and heart to head,
    Deep in the dark with the dead.”
    It is spring, and not dark at all, but I repeat the incantation as my brother Aidan Harrow gravely sprinkles apple blossoms upon my head. In the branches beneath us a bluejay shrieks at our bulldog, Molly, as she whines and scratches hopefully at her basket.
    “Can’t we bring her up?” I peer over the edge of the rickety platform and Molly sneezes in excitement.
    “Shhh!” Aidan commands, squeezing his eyes shut as he concentrates. After a moment he squints and reaches for his crumpled sweater. Several curry leaves filched from the kitchen crumble over me and I blink so that the debris
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