“Come on. You look like you could use something to eat,” she said, tugging at the hand she held to urge Lena inside before she released it. “Not really,” she answered the question once she’d pointed out to Lena where to get a tray and utensils. “I’ve met him though.”
Lena swallowed a little thickly. “My brother was supposed to meet me at my apartment the night the home guard picked me up. I don’t know what happened to him.”
Mel sent her a look of sympathy. “He’s all right.”
Relief flooded Lena. “You’re sure? They didn’t get him, too? You wouldn’t … just say that, would you?”
Mel grimaced. “I might. But it just happens to be true.” She thought it over. “At least, he was alright the last I knew. You’ll see him soon. I promise.”
Still not completely convinced, Lena nevertheless relaxed enough to return her attention to the food spread along the buffet.
She was starving. By the time she’d gotten to the end she discovered she’d put a little of everything on her tray. It looked like enough food to feed a small army. She stared at it with a mixture of embarrassment and dismay.
Mel chuckled. “You do have an appetite!”
“I think I got more than I need,” Lena responded with a grimace. “I didn’t realize I’d put so much on the tray.”
“Don’t worry about it. Come on. Sit with us and I’ll introduce you around.”
They were a rough looking bunch. If Lena had seen them anywhere else she would have turned around and walked the other way or crossed the street. She discovered they were all very pleasant and polite, however.
It was still one of the most uncomfortable meals she’d ever sat through, mostly because her arrival seemed to have deprived everyone of any ideas for conversation even though they didn’t seem to be having a problem before her arrival. She had always been pretty reserved around people she didn’t know well and couldn’t come up with any ideas that might get a conversation of some kind going.
All in all, she was glad when she’d eaten all she could swallow, which wasn’t nearly as much as she’d taken out on the plate, or even nearly as much as she might have been able to eat if she hadn’t felt that she’d created a strain in the atmosphere.
“Done already?” Mel asked, her voice tinged with disapproval.
“I can put it up for later,” Lena said uncomfortably. Food wasn’t wasted. She doubted even the wealthy wasted food, because it was still pretty damned hard to come by, and it occurred to her that she’d either given them the impression that she was criminally wasteful, or, almost as bad, greedy, grabbing more than she could eat to make sure she got her share even if it deprived others of getting theirs.
“I’ll show you where to store it,” Mel volunteered. “You’re just not used to eating what you used to after being out so long, and then the time in the jail. I’m sure you didn’t get fed much in there.”
Lena smiled at Mel gratefully. “I guess that’s it. I was just so hungry I didn’t realize I’d gotten so much. This will probably hold me for three or four meals.”
She couldn’t tell that the soldiers’ opinions toward her had improved that much but at least none of them glared at her when she got up and followed Mel into the kitch/galley to wrap the food and store it.
“You’ll be better off eating small amounts at first anyway. Feel like walking down to the med lab with me so I can check you out?”
She didn’t, but she could see Mel wasn’t actually asking. She was just trying to be polite about it. She nodded, following Mel from the mess hall and up another level.
“They think I’m a clone, don’t they?” Lena asked as she stripped and climbed onto the examination table.
Mel frowned over the chart she was studying on her screen. “What makes you think that?”
“I don’t remember things very clearly about what happened when we got on the ship, but I know Dax thinks I’m a clone,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “I’m not,” she added as Mel moved to the head of the examination table and set up the scanner.
“I’m convinced,” Mel retorted a little absently.
Lena studied the woman’s face. “You aren’t.”
Without responding, Mel moved to the computer again and set the scan cycle. “Actually, I am more inclined to think you’re Lena. I didn’t see anything to convince me you weren’t. But I did see a lot to convince me you were.” She was silent for several moments, studying the read out as the scan began. “You have to understand that, around here, people are pretty jumpy about it. We’ve seen it--enough times to find it really scary--and mostly we’d rather err on the side of caution.”
A sense of hopelessness invaded Lena and a touch of anger along with it. How was she supposed to prove she was the real Lena? She knew she was. She remembered things from her childhood and the clones didn’t have a childhood, couldn’t.
The thought reminded her of her conversation with Dax. Why hadn’t he accepted, when she’d told him about her memory, that she was who she claimed to be?
It was because Dax didn’t believe, she realized, that everyone else doubted her. They respected him. She knew that from just the little she’d seen him with his crew.
“I remember my childhood,” she said tentatively. “A clone wouldn’t have had one.”
