A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Then Chad heard his father speaking. “We’ll stay, but my son will take the aircar back to our settlement to tell everyone that you’re here and to bring some others back to meet you.” Then, in a low voice, he said to Chad, “When you get back, tell Mason and Sephton to fly back here. Make sure they’re armed. You stay there.”

  “How about taking some of them with you?” the man next to Chad whispered. “They’d be our insurance that we’d be safe here.”

  Chad wasn’t too sure he liked that idea. He could feel hostility and suspicion in the air, so thick it almost choked him, but his father was walking toward the enemy. He stopped in front of their spokesman, and then he indicated the boy and girl, who had moved away from the group. “How would these youngsters like to go with my son and see our settlement?”

  The spokesman looked startled for an instant, before his expression was masked with a smile. “My son, Ling Won, and my daughter, Ti-San,” he said.

  “Glad to meet you.” Chad’s father nodded at them. “I’m Lan Reynolds, and my son is Chad. Like to go for a ride in the aircar with him?” The boy spoke briefly to his father in his own language and then, without waiting for an answer, strode over to Chad. Ti-San had to run to keep up with him. His eyes flickered black fire at Chad as he spoke. “Okay, hotshot,” he said in perfect English, “here are your hostages. But we had better get back safely, or I will personally beat your head in!”

  The aircar hovered over the crimson beach at the edge of the purple sea. Ti-San’s black eyes shone as she looked down, but Ling Won sat stiff, silent, and unfriendly.

  “Our settlement’s over there.” Chad pointed to his left. “We’ve already got houses built, and we’re clearing the land for planting. You’ll see it in a minute.” He headed the vehicle inland. “It’s surrounded by jungle. You probably know that this planet is mostly jungle. We’ve discovered small animals and fish and birds of different varieties, but we seem to be the only intelligent life here.”

  Ling Won lifted an eyebrow. “Is that what you call yourselves?”

  Chad felt his face getting hot. He jerked the lever that controlled the altitude and sent the craft into a climb. He’d shake this guy up a bit.

  He guided the car into a loop and climbed again for another, watching Ling Won’s face turn white. But after the second loop, Ti-San was crying with terror, so he leveled the aircar and skimmed it over the blue gray tops of the trees.

  Ling Won’s face was grim, and his hands were clenched into fists. “I don’t want to go to your settlement,” he said tersely. “Take us back to our ship.”

  “My father told me to go to our settlement, and that’s where we’re going.”

  Ling Won’s hands shot out and clutched at the controls. Chad tried to pry them off, but he couldn’t break the rigid grip, so he grabbed Ling Won’s neck—and then they were struggling, while the craft dipped and shivered, out of control. Ti-San screamed. Chad felt fiery pain as Ling Won chopped at his neck, and he lashed out with his fists at the other’s face. Another chop made his head spin so that he had to close his eyes, and when he opened them, he could see the trees surging toward them. He grabbed the control lever and pulled, but then another blow at his neck made everything go black.

  Chad lay with his eyes closed, not even trying to open them. His head throbbed with pain. He tried to remember what had happened; then he did remember, and he opened his eyes. He was lying on his back under thick-branched trees, and the boy and girl were watching him from their seat on a log close by. Ti-San had a bruise on her delicate face and one on her bare upper arm. She looked as though she had been crying. Ling Won held one leg stiffly in front of him, and Chad could see that his nose had been bleeding and one of his eyes was blackening.

  He sat up. “What happened?” His head throbbed wildly, so that he had to close his eyes until the pain subsided.

  “We crashed, of course,” the girl said. “We are lucky to be alive.” She felt her bruised face tenderly. “What else could happen when nobody controls the aircar?”

  “Well, that wasn’t my idea,” Chad said bitterly, scowling at Ling Won. He tried to stand up, but his head hurt so much that he sank back to the ground. He put his hand up to his forehead and felt raw pain under his fingers, and

  CLONE SISTER

  Pamela Sargent

  After they made love, Jim Swenson leaned back on his elbows and looked at Moira Buono. She was a slender dark-haired girl with olive skin and large black eyes. Her nose was a bit too large for her delicate face. As she lay at his side, her small breasts seemed flattened almost to nonexistence. Her abdomen was a concavity between two sharp hipbones. Her legs contrasted with the slenderness of her torso; they were short and utilitarian, well-muscled appendages that carried her around efficiently and without much strain. She was beautiful.

  She watched him with dark eyes. Her black hair lay carelessly around her head in the green grass and her face bore a calm and peaceful smile. She reached out for his hand and drew it to her belly. In the distance he could hear the high-pitched laugh of Ilyasah Ahmal and the deeper rumblings of Walt Merton. He traced the outline of shadows on her body, shadows created by the summer sun’s rays and the leafy branches of the trees overhead. A summer breeze stirred the branches, the shadows drifted and changed shape on Moira’s body.

  Jim took his hand away from her and got up. His penis felt cold and sticky. He pulled on his shorts and began to walk toward the clearing ahead. He knew Moira was watching him, probably puzzled, perhaps a little angry. He came to the clearing and walked toward the stone wall at its edge. The grass brushed against his feet, tickling his soles. Two grackles perched on the wall, cawing loudly at some sparrows darting overhead. As he approached, the two black birds lifted, cawed at him from above, and were gone.

  Jim leaned against the wall and looked down at the automated highway two hundred feet below him. The cars fled along the road in orderly rows, punched into the automatic highway control. He watched them and thought of Moira. She had retreated from him again, hiding even at the moment he had entered her body. She had been an observer, looking on as he held her, sweating and moving to a lonely, sharp spurt of pleasure. She was an onlooker, smiling at him from a distance as he withdrew, her black eyes a shield between their minds.

  They stood in a gray formlessness. “Moira,” he said, and she looked at him, seeming to be perplexed, seeming to be impatient. She withdrew, and clouds of grayness began to cover her, binding her legs, then her face and shoulders.

  His view of the highway was suddenly obstructed. “Are you trying to ruin today, too?” Moira’s voice said. He pulled at the shirt she had draped over his head and put it on. She was sitting on the wall to his right. Her skin looked sallow next to her yellow shorts and shirt. She stared past him at the trees.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “it’s just a mood.” He wanted to take her hand, touch her hair. Instead, he went back to leaning against the wall. He looked up at her face. Her eyes were pieces of onyx, sharp and cold. Her skin was drawn tightly across her cheekbones.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just a mood,” she said. “How many moods do you have? Must be half a million by now. And they’re always ones you have to apologize for.”

  Jim turned and saw Ilyasah coming toward them, black hair a cloud around her dark face. Jim forced himself to smile.

  “You were right about this place,” Ilyasah said. “Nice and quiet. Ever since they reclaimed that area up north, you can’t go there without falling over bodies. Something wrong, Moira?”

  “No,” Moira muttered.

  “Give us half an hour,” Ilyasah went on, “and we’ll get the food out.”

  Jim took the hint. “Sure,” he said. Ilyasah left and disappeared among the trees. The black girl had still not shaken off the remnants of her rigid Muslim upbringing and wanted to be sure no one observed her with Walt. Moira had returned to her dormitory room with Jim one evening a little too soon. They had calmly excused themselves and gone to one of th
e lounges instead, but Ilyasah had been embarrassed for days afterward.

  “I guess we’d better watch the path,” he said to Moira. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to embarrass your roommate.” Moira shrugged and continued to sit on the wall.

  He tried to fight the tightness in his stomach, the feeling of isolation that was once again wrapping itself around him. Talk to me, Moira, he thought, don’t make me stand here guessing and worrying.

  The dark eyes looked at him. “I’m leaving next week,” she said quickly. “I’ll probably come back in August, but my mother’s fixing up her new studio and she needs some help.” Her eyes challenged him to respond.

  “Why?” he cried, suddenly realizing that he had shouted the word. “Why,” he said more quietly, “didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t know before.”

  “Oh, you knew it before. She’s been after you for a month about it, and you said she had enough help. Now all of a sudden you have to go home.”

  Moira hopped off the wall and paced in front of him. “I suppose,” she said, “I have to go through a whole explanation.”

  “No,” he said. Of course you do.

  “All right,” she went on. “I decided to go home a while ago. I would have told you before, but—”

  “Why not? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Moira smiled suddenly. “You really don’t understand, do you? If I had told you before, you would have gotten upset and tried to talk me out of it, or acted as though I did something terribly wrong. So I tell you now, so you don’t have time to talk me out of it. I thought I was doing you a favor. But of course you’re going to act the same way anyway.”

  “I want to be with you, is that so wrong?” Jim swallowed, worried that he had whined the words. “I don’t like to be separated from you, that’s all,” he said in a lower tone.

  “No, you’d rather be underfoot all the time,” she said. “I can’t even meet your brothers and sister. Every time I mention that I might like to talk to them, you evade the whole thing. Why?”

  He was silent. He could feel sweat forming on his face and under his beard.

  “I guess,” she said, “you’re jealous of your own family too.”

  He shrugged and tried to smile. “It isn’t so bad,” he said. “You’ll be back in August, and we can—”

  “No.” She stopped pacing and stood in front of him, arms folded across her chest. “No, Jim. I don’t know yet. I want to think about things. I don’t want to make any promises now. I’ll just have to see. Maybe that’s hard on you, but . . .”

  She sighed, then walked over to the trees. She stood there leaning against a trunk, her back to him.

  “Moira.”

  No answer.

  “Moira.” She was gone again, having said what she had to say. He could stride over to her, grab her by the shoulders, shake the slender body while shouting at her, and she would look at him with empty eyes.

  Do I love you, Moira? Do I even know you? He stared at the girl’s back, stiff and unyielding under the soft yellow shirt. Am I too possessive, too demanding? Or is that just an excuse, a way to avoid telling me that you can’t love a freak, that it would be as easy for you to love one of my cloned brothers if you knew them, that we’re all interchangeable?

  Moira, look at me, try’ to understand me, he wanted to shout. He walked over to her, afraid to touch her, afraid to reach out and hold her. She was lost in her own world, and seemed unaware of his presence.

  It was over. He was sure of that, in spite of Moira’s comments about waiting until August.

  She turned around and looked at him, black eyes expressionless. “Surely you realize,” she said, “that I’m getting a bit sick of the newsfax guys always asking for exclusive interviews on what it’s like to be with a clone, that’s one thing. The fact is, you’re trying to use me to prove something to yourself, to show everyone that you are an individual, that I only love you, that I’m completely yours. Well, I’ve got better things to do than build up your ego.” She still refused to speak. You could at least say what you mean, Jim thought as he looked at her back.

  “Hey!” Jim turned and saw Walt Merton on the path leading into the woods. “Come on,” Walt said, “we’re getting the food out.”

  “Yeah,” said Jim. “We’ll be along in a minute.”

  Walt looked from Jim to Moira. “Sure,” he said. His dark face showed concern. He looked doubtfully at Jim, then turned and went back down the path.

  “Let’s go,” Moira said suddenly. “I’m starving.” She smiled and took him by the hand. She was hiding behind a shield of cheerfulness now: Nothing’s wrong, Jim; everything ’s settled. “Damn it, Moira,” he said harshly, “can’t you at least talk it over, or let me try to get through to you?”

  She ignored his question. “Let’s go,” she said, still smiling, still holding his hand.

  The rain had started as a summer shower, but was now coming down steadily, forming puddles on the lawn. Jim sat on the front porch of the large house he shared with his brothers and sister. The evening air was cooler and fresher than it had been for several days.

  The large house stood at the end of a narrow road amid a grove of trees. Farther down the road, near one of the other houses, Jim could see a group of naked children dancing in the rain. On the lawn in front of him his brothers Al and Mike were throwing a football. Mike was always ready to use any excuse for fooling around and had dragged Al outside almost as soon as the rain began to fall.

  Al’s thick brown hair was plastered against the back of his neck and shoulders and Mike’s mustache drooped on both sides of his mouth. “Whup,” yelled Mike as he drew his arm back and made a forward pass. As the ball left Mike’s arm, he slipped on the grass and landed on his buttocks, bare muddy feet poking high into the air. Al hooted and caught the ball. He began to run with it, laughing as Mike got up with mud on his shorts.

  Jim watched his brothers. They had not insisted that he join them, understanding almost instinctively that he needed some solitude. He had gone to the university early that morning to drive Moira to the monorail that would take her home.

  He had tried once again the night before to talk her out of leaving. “I can’t believe your mother needs your help with all those others around,” he had said. Moira’s mother lived with five other women and Moira herself had been raised communally by the group with three other children. She saw her father only rarely. He had retreated to Nepal years before, emerging only occasionally to face a world that frightened him.

  Moira shrugged. “She can still use some extra help,” she said.

  “Come on, Moira,” he shouted. “Stop being so evasive and at least be honest about why you’re really going.”

  She was silent as she packed her things. He had finally left her dormitory room, angrily telling her she could take the shuttle from the university to the monorail.

  He had relented, of course, driving onto the automated highway, punching a button, leaning back in his seat as the highway took control of his car. He had reached for Moira, pulled her to him. She had watched him, her black eyes seemingly veiled. She unfastened her blue sari and draped it on the back of the seat. Then she unzipped his shorts, crawled onto him, holding his penis firmly with one hand. He was suddenly inside her, clutching her, gazing up at her face. Her eyes were closed.

  “Moira,” he had whispered to her. “Moira.” He came quickly. She withdrew from him and moved back to her side of the seat.

  Jim shivered in the air-conditioned car. He zipped up his shorts and looked over at the dark-haired girl. She was fastening her sari while staring out her window at the blurred scenery. What was it, Moira, a formality because you’re leaving? a way of saying you still care? a way of saying, Goodbye, Jim, it’s the last time? She gave him no answer, not even a clue. Once again she had remained unresponsive, giving him no sign that she had taken pleasure in the act.

  He grabbed her, pulling her sari from her and pushed her agai
nst the seat. Her face was against the back of the seat, hidden from him. Her buttocks pointed up at his face. He crawled on top of her, pushing inside roughly. He pounded against her, waiting to hear her moans, waiting to see her abandon herself to him at last.

  He continued to sit behind the wheel, still watching her. She had finished fastening her sari. She turned toward him, a tentative smile formed on her face. I’ve never reached you, Moira, he thought. At last he pulled her to him, and she lay there, head on his shoulder, her body stiff, her muscles tight. He was alone once again.

  Al stumbled onto the porch, picked up his towel from the chair next to him, and massaged his head and shoulders vigorously. “Am I out of shape,” Al said. “I’m going over to the gym tomorrow. I have to go to the library anyway, so I might as well work out.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said.

  “Want to come along? We can play some handball.”

  “No.” Jim looked up at his brother. “I don’t think so.” He looked away, sensing what Al was probably thinking: Is it that girl, Jim? You’ve been sitting around for months, no interest in much else. You haven’t even written any poetry for a while.

  “Well, if you change your mind,” Al said. He turned and went inside the house, towel draped over his shoulders.

  “Catch,” shouted Mike. He threw the football to Jim as he followed Al through the front door.

  Jim tucked the football under his chair and continued to watch the rain. Again he felt separated from his brothers, seeing them as others might: identical people, clones of the same man, undifferentiated and interchangeable. Some had thought that they and their sister Kira would be identical in interests and achievements, as well as exactly like their father, Paul Swenson. But Paul, who had raised them and lived with them until his death in a monorail accident two years before, had different ideas. He had encouraged the five clones to develop individual interests. Al had become a student of astrophysics, Mike was studying physics, Ed was interested in both mathematics and music, and Kira, the only female clone, was a student of the biological sciences that had brought them into existence. Jim, however, had decided to study literature. Although he had been interested in the sciences and had studied them to some extent, it was to literature that he responded most deeply. He had often thought that he was the most emotional of the clones, that he had inherited somehow, or at least empathized with, a part of Paul’s personality that had not been apparent to most of them who had known his father.