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some of the hair off her face and leaned forward. "You know," Dr. Takamura went on, "she resembles a
girl Paul was seeing when he was about your age when we were both at Chicago, Julia something, her
name was, she left for Israel a couple of years later. He was very serious about her for a while."
Jim began to feel uneasy. Kira sensed his mood. "It sure is raining," she said. "Must be about two inches
by now."
Jim leaned toward Dr. Takamura. "What was she like?" he asked. His hands felt sweaty. Kira was still
watching him.
"I didn't really know her that well," the older man replied. "She seemed, well, distant somehow. She was
always friendly, some times very talkative, but she always seemed to be holding something back
somehow, never really telling you anything about herself. Paul was always with her. He practically lived at
her apartment and they were thinking of getting one of their own."
The weather seemed to be colder. Kira coughed softly. "Certainly took me back," Takamura said. "I
haven't thought about that whole business in years."
"What happened," Jim mumbled. "What happened," he said more clearly.
Dr. Takamura was gazing out at the lawn. "She broke it off, I don't think she ever told him why. Paul was
pretty damned depressed for a while, apathetic about everything, but he pulled together. Jon Aschenbach
and I managed to get him through his finals."
Jim shivered. "That was a long time ago," Dr. Takamura said.
Ed came out on the porch, carrying a tray with three mugs of tea. Jim took one of the mugs as his brother
exchanged greetings with the biologist. Ed looked austere with his clean-shaven face and short hair, a
monk who loved mathematics and music more than people.
Jim heard their voices but not their words. He saw Paul and Julia on the Chicago streets, Paul and
Moira…he had thought Moira could not bring herself to accept him because he was a clone. Perhaps it
was not that at all, but something else.That would change the way I feel , he thought.
No.
This was worse.
I'm living Paul's life. He felt paralyzed. He saw himself as a puppet, walking through an ever-repeating
cycle.I'll go through it again , his mind murmured,I'll go on feeling the way I do, acting the way I do,
and I won't have any choice. It's all happened before and I have no way of changing it .
Moira was gone. He knew it. Moira was gone forever. Julia had not come back to Paul. Paul had
eventually forgotten Julia and Jim supposed he would forget Moira too. The thought, instead of cheering
him, simply sat there in his mind, cold and damp, with no power to move him at all.
The early July weather was hot. The grass was beginning to look scorched; the flowers were wilting. The
sun glared down at the earth, only occasionally disappearing behind a cloud and then emerging once
again to mock the stifled world below.
Jim sat on his heels, removing weeds that threatened the bushes alongside the house. His hair was tied
back on his head. He had debated with himself about shaving his beard and decided against it, knowing
he would regret it when winter returned. There was another reason for not shaving it, he knew. It was his
way of differentiating himself from his brothers.
He put down his trowel, sat back and looked over at Kira. She was seated under one of the trees,
reading a book. She held the small flat microfiche projector in her lap with one hand, turned a small knob
on the projector with the other. Jim still preferred the feel of a book in his hands. He enjoyed turning the
pages and liked the smell of print and old paper. He had insisted on keeping the books in Paul's library,
even though they took up more space than the tiny bits of tape he could have purchased to replace them.
He was like Paul in his attachment to old things. Paul had remained in this slightly run-down house. He
had raised them in the peaceful, almost timeless atmosphere of the university, feeling that this would be
best for them. He had wanted them to have a quiet place where they could discover themselves and gain
intellectual tools. The university had been, in a sense, a retreat for them. Now Jim wondered if they might
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