by Mildred Ames
Anna, fully clothed, lay on the bed, staring vacant-eyed at the ceiling. The attendant had just left a late-afternoon snack in her room, but she wasn’t at all hungry. She glanced at the calendar on the wall, a calendar used by all of the former occupants of the room, as well as by Anna, to count the passing days with a line drawn through each. Tonight she would cross off the twenty-seventh of February.
The twenty-seventh of February . . . She kept going over the date in her mind. It seemed to her that in some other life the day had some important meaning. Now she couldn’t remember what it was. And did it matter anyhow after what she had overheard yesterday? Never had she felt more alone, more depressed. She was going to die, but not of natural causes. They were going to kill her. And did that matter any more than the twenty-seventh of February? Surely it was better to die than to live on thinking of yourself as a freak, someone who really wasn’t anyone. A shell of a person, that was all she was. No wonder she’d so often experienced that strange feeling of incompleteness.
She was so immersed in her melancholia that she was only dimly aware of the light knock on her door. She ignored it. The attendant had undoubtedly come back for the snack dishes. The woman always rapped before unlocking and entering. When the knocking continued, Anna glanced fretfully at the door. She couldn’t open it from the inside. The attendant should certainly know that.
When the sounds grew more urgent, Anna got off the bed and went over to the door. “Who is it?” she called.
A muffled voice said, “Anna, open up.”
Rowan? No, it couldn’t be. “Who is it?” she said again.
“Rowan. Let me in before someone sees me.”
It was Rowan! She couldn’t believe it. “I can’t open the door, Rowan. It’s locked. Go around back. There’s an alley. I’ll be looking for you.”
When she heard his footsteps hasten away, she ran out into her patio, dragged the metal table over to the back wall, got up on it, and waited. Each Cottage unit had five rooms side by side with passageways between units. Rowan came through one of them and into the alley. When he spotted her, a finger over her lips cautioned him to be quiet. She pointed to one of the trash cans that sat along the backside of the wall. He understood immediately. With as little noise as possible, he moved the can to a spot below Anna. He hopped up on it, then hoisted himself over the wall, and onto the table. Quickly, they both jumped down into the patio. She led him into her room and closed the sliding glass doors.
He stared at her anxiously. “Why are you locked in?”
She shrugged. “It’s the way they do things here. They don’t want you prying into secrets.” She noticed that his jacket looked wet. “How did you ever get here? How did you get so wet?”
“I stowed away on a hydrofoil--a supply ship. I was outside with the cargo, so I took some of the spray until I smartened up and got under a tarpaulin.”
“But how did you get past the guards on the island?”
“While the crew was unloading, I left with a bunch of passengers. I tried to lose myself among them until I discovered they were lining up to show identification. Then I didn’t know what to do. I hung around the dock for a while, trying to look as if I belonged there. When the crew finished unloading, they started carrying boxes on their shoulders and heading up past the guards toward a warehouse. All they seemed to do was point back toward the ship and the guards motioned them on. I waited until the last man was far enough ahead so that he wouldn’t notice me. Then I took a box, did the same thing, and it worked.”
“But how did you find me?”
“Simple. When I called you, I found out you were in something called The Cottages, and the operator mentioned your room number. These are the only buildings that look like cottages, and they’re all numbered outside. I acted as if I had every right to be here, and no one stopped me.”
Anna couldn’t get over it. Rowan had taken an awful chance to come to her. She was so happy to see him, yet terrified to think of what would happen if he was discovered. She tried to keep the sound of panic from her voice as she said, “Oh, Rowan, you shouldn’t have come here. You’ll be caught.”
“No, I won’t,” he said stubbornly, but she could see the look of fear in his eyes. “Besides, it was the only way to find out what was going on.” He placed the small flight bag he was carrying on her dresser. “Now tell me what’s happening. And what did you mean about tomorrow?”
Anna told him about meeting the two girls who, she was certain, were Anna Zimmerman clones. “I’m not sure, but I think they’re all here, Rowan. The second girl I met said there was another girl about our age just two rooms down from her. For some reason, they had to test all of us at the same time, but they’re trying to keep us apart.”
“What’s supposed to happen tomorrow?”
Her voice trembled as she said, “They’re going to do away with us.”
He shrank back in horror. “Oh, my God, Anna--what makes you think a thing like that?”
She sat down on her bed to steady herself as she told him. “I had my last test yesterday. When the nurse finished with me, I had to wait for the attendant to come pick me up and take me back to my room. She was late, so I decided to go back to the doctor who had tested me and ask him when I’d be going home. When I got to his office the door was open. I was about to go in when I heard someone say, ‘The Anna Zimmerman reports are all in now.’ “
When she paused, Rowan said, “Is that all?”
“No. I recognized the voice of the doctor I’d just seen. He said he knew all about the outcome of the tests. Then I heard him ask, ‘What does Jelliff plan to do about it?’ “ Anna’s lips quivered. “The other man said, ‘Get rid of them, of course. What else can he do?’ The doctor asked when, and the man said, ‘Saturday.’ “
Rowan sat down beside her, silent, stunned, to reflect for a long time on her words. Finally, he said, “That doesn’t have to mean what you think.”
“Oh, Rowan, if you’d been here as long as I have, going through all those tests, you’d know what it meant. Every time a doctor examined me, every time one looked at my test results, I could tell what he was thinking, even when he didn’t say anything. I could see it in his eyes, in the way he frowned. The experiment is going terribly wrong and they don’t know what to do about it.”
Again Rowan was silent. Before he’d left home he had tried to prepare for every eventuality. He had left a note for his mother and father, telling them where he was heading. He had even devised several plans. A, B, and C, he’d called them. Now he decided the circumstances called for the ultimate plan, Plan C. He glanced at Anna’s beige sweater and skirt, then opened the flight bag, taking out what Anna recognized as her navy blue slacks and jacket, as well as Rowan’s old watch cap. “I wasn’t sure you’d have any dark clothes with you,” he said, handing them to her. “Hurry and put them on. It will soon be dark and you won’t be so easily seen in these. As soon as you’re ready, we’re getting out of here.” Even if those doctors hadn’t meant what Anna feared, Rowan was taking no chances. It was hard for him to believe his government would kill, execute innocent people, but he knew from his history books that governments, even his own, had sometimes committed heinous crimes. Although it had happened many years ago, he remembered reading about how a branch of the government, as an experiment, had given some unsuspecting man LSD. The man had jumped out of a window and died. Suicide, the government had said at the time. And then there was this experiment with Anna. No, he was not about to trust the government.
Anna knew he meant for both of them to try to sneak off the island, but there were some things he wasn’t considering. “Rowan, even if we made it home, they’d find me there and make me come back.”
“If we can just get out of here, we’ll fight this. I’ll find someplace to hide you--or Dad will.”
“There’s something else you haven’t thought of. You don’t know what’s going on with me. What if I get terribly sick or weird things happen to me? What if my arms a
nd legs rot away or some other awful thing happens?”
“Anna, don’t talk that way!” Sure, he thought, she was changing, but that was natural at her age. If she looked thinner and paler, it was because of worry, stress, because of all she’d been through these past weeks. “Besides, even if you should get sick, at least you’ll be with someone who cares about you.” Someone who cares about you. The words took
Anna aback. For a very long time now she had believed that no one cared about her.
“Hurry up and change,” he said.
Anna hurried into the bathroom and quickly changed. When she returned to the bedroom, she grabbed the snack the attendant had left earlier, a couple of high-nutrition bars. As she thrust the food into Rowan’s flight bag, she noticed the gift-wrapped box at the bottom and drew it out. “What’s this?”
“That was Plan A. If I was caught, I was going to play innocent and pretend I didn’t know I couldn’t pay you a visit and bring you a present. I figured that if everything was all right here, that maybe they would let me visit you.”
“Oh.” Anna returned the gift to the flight bag.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not a real gift,” he said quickly. “In fact, I bought it to give you when you came home. I didn’t even know then I’d be anywhere near this place.”
For a moment Anna’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. It wasn’t her birthday or Christmas or anything special, yet Rowan had bought her a present. She started to take the gift from the bag again, but Rowan stopped her.
“There isn’t time now,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“But what’s in it?”
“Something I hoped you’d like. You’ll see when you open it. Come on.”
They made their way out to the patio and over the wall into the alley, which was deserted. Earlier, the day had been overcast. Now a fog, heavy in spots, was moving in from the ocean, bringing with it an early twilight. “We’re in luck,” Rowan said.
“But they won’t run the hydrofoils in fog.”
“That’s all right. We’ll find someplace to hide until morning if we have to.”
Anna stuck close to Rowan as they made their way through the alley and out onto the road. In the fading misty light, she could, now and then, make out the white uniform of some medical person, hurrying from one building to another.
“Just act as if we have business here, and no one will bother us.” His easy success in reaching her had made him brave.
Anna had to admire his courage and coolness. Her own heart was beating wildly. In some areas the fog lay in thick patches. Rowan plunged through these as if he knew where he was going. As the gray closed around her, Anna felt panicky, her sense of direction gone, certain that the next step would lead her off the edge of the world. When they emerged from the cloud and into a thin mist where buildings and people were again visible, her tension broke in relief.
Finally Rowan reached the building for which he’d been heading, a huge warehouse. “This is where the crew was taking supplies when I followed them. If it’s still open, we’ll hide inside until morning. In this fog, nothing will be running tonight.” The sound of a distant foghorn confirmed his words.
“Our luck is still holding. The door’s open. Somebody must be working inside. Don’t make a sound.”
One of a pair of double doors stood ajar. Rowan slipped around it and into the shadows along the wall, Anna after him. To the rear of the building, a light burned on a desk. They both had a quick glimpse of the back of a man seated there, poring over papers. Rowan and Anna took the opposite direction, tiptoeing around tall stacks of boxes, until Rowan found a satisfactory spot to hide. Then they both sat quietly on the floor, hidden by the cartons all around them. Rowan whispered, “We’ll stay here until he closes up.”
They sat in silence for what seemed like hours to Anna. Finally the man began making the kinds of noises that suggested he was preparing to leave. A loud click plunged the place into darkness. Another click, and an overhead nightlight cast a dim light over everything. The sound of the man’s footsteps echoed through the building and, when the double door squeaked closed, disappeared. Another click padlocked them in.
“Oh, Rowan, we couldn’t get out now if we wanted to,” Anna whispered.
“Relax. I noticed a side door. That’s got to lock from the inside.” He got up and stretched. “Right now, I need something to fortify me. How about one of those bars you brought along?”
Anna, too, got to her feet. She dug into the flight bag for the food. Then they both perched on the edge of one of the boxes while they ate. As Anna nibbled on one of the bars, she found herself staring at a calendar on the warehouse wall. She thought of the one in her room and of how she would not be drawing a line through that date, the twenty-seventh of February. Then she glanced at Rowan and the significance of the date hit her. “Wasn’t this the day for your last play-off recital?” she asked.
He avoided looking at her, afraid some of his disappointment might show in his eyes. “That’s right.” He tried to sound indifferent.
She studied him curiously. “Did you postpone it?”
“I--well, yes -- yes, I did.” He just couldn’t bring himself to talk about it at that moment. Besides, he told himself, rescuing Anna was the only important thing now. If he could pull that off, it would be worth a hundred scholarships. He quickly changed the subject. “Did Michaela tell you she was leaving?” Anna thought she must have misunderstood. “What do you mean--leaving?”
“She’s taking another job in northern California. At least, I suppose that’s where she meant. She just said up north.”
Once that news would have delighted Anna. Since she’d been on the island, she had often thought of Michaela. Was it she who had said, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears”? Surely, there was some truth in the words. Anna thought again of the many facets of her teacher’s personality. She was Michaela, the disciplinarian, Michaela, the quoter of famous people and wise sayings, Michaela, the musician with fire in her fingers, Michaela, the meditator in a leotard. Anna wondered how many other Michaelas there were whom she would never have the chance to know now. “I’ll miss her.”
“Me, too.” When Rowan finished his bar, he said, “Well, it’s not exactly a five-course dinner, but it helps.” Again he got to his feet. “I’m going to investigate that side door.”
Anna, afraid to stay alone, grabbed the flight bag with her precious present and hurried after him. Just as soon as they’d satisfied themselves about the door, she decided she would open her gift.
Rowan made right for the door and examined the lock. “Just as I thought--dead bolt.”
“Then we’re not locked in.”
“Of course not. See here --” He turned the lock to show her, then pulled the door wide open.
They both stared shocked into a blinding light. “Over here, Reilly,” a man’s voice said. “I guess this young fellow’s had enough time on his own.”
Rowan and Anna were both too stunned to move. Anna thought, they knew all the time that Rowan was here. They knew. She might have known it would be useless. There was no escaping them.
Rowan thought, I’ve failed. I’ve failed Anna. It didn’t matter what they did to him, but what would they do to her now? “Oh, Anna, I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Take her back to her room, Reilly,” the voice said. “You, young fellow, come with me.”
21
A foghorn moaned continuously. How sad it sounded, Anna thought, as she lay sleepless in the dark of her room. A grief-filled voice mourning for lost ships. Or lost souls. Sometimes she imagined it was calling her name. Annn-na . . . Annn-na . . . Mourning for her?
She worried about Rowan. Where had they taken him? What would they do to him? Nothing, she told herself. After all, they couldn’t know she had guessed that all the Anna Zimmerman clones were here and that she had told Rowan. Not even the telephone operator could have known what she and Rowan were talking about--she c
ertainly was not in on government secrets. “But why were you running away with her?” they would ask him. What would he tell them? Knowing Rowan, he would probably say, “It just seemed like a good idea.” Perhaps he could pass it off as an adventure. Yes, that was what he would do, and they would merely send him home. Tomorrow he would be back on the mainland.
And she would be alone again.
She thought of the following day, fully accepting the idea that there was no way to escape, no way to get off the island undetected. The man who’d taken her back to her room had told her that they had known every movement of Rowan’s, had left him free only to find out what he was up to. No, escape was impossible.
How foolish of her to have even tried to run home with Rowan. If they had made it, what good would it have done? Something dreadful was happening to her, and apparently nothing could stop it. Why make other people suffer watching her? Better to resign herself to whatever end they had in mind for her. She was sure it would be painless, and all for the best. The only solution. Soon it would be over. All over. She would be over--her life. No, Anna Zimmerman’s life. Yes, all for the best.
The melancholy call of the foghorn insinuated itself into her thoughts. Annn-na . . . Annn-na . . . Who would mourn for Anna? Anyone? Mom? Dad? Rowan? Rowan, who had postponed his play-off recital to try to rescue her? Would he mourn?
Anna sat up suddenly and turned on her bedside lamp. He had brought her a present and she had never even seen it, had almost forgotten about it. She got up and found the flight bag on the dresser where she’d left it. She took out the gift and carefully unwrapped it, then lifted the lid of the outer cardboard box to stare down at the Renaissance lovers. Was it what she thought it was? She picked it up. Yes. A music box. And different from any she could remember seeing at Michaela’s. Where had he ever found it?
When she turned it over to see what melody it contained, her eyes misted over. “The Love Theme.” How hurt she had felt that day when he’d refused to learn the piece to try a duet with her. He had acted so annoyed, had hardly listened to her. Yet he’d obviously remembered the name of the song. Was this a way of saying he was sorry? She rather thought it was.