by Ann Halam
“I don’t want it to stop hurting,” said Tay fiercely. “If it stops hurting, that means I’ve started to forget. I don’t want to forget them. I’d rather go on hurting forever.”
“Then take the Eumnesystin. It will help you. The pain won’t be a monster that you have to fight, or run away from. It’ll be something you can accept. You’ll be able to live with your grief. You’d take painkillers if you had a broken leg, wouldn’t you?”
“Is that what the future is going to be like?” demanded Tay, disgusted. “Emotions you can order like hamburgers? Hold the pickle, extra mayonnaise? Is that what you think I need? A pill to mend a broken heart?”
“I don’t know what the future’s going to be like, Tay. I’m talking about you, now. I want to help you because I love you. I know I’m clumsy. I’m not your mum, I’m not your dad, I’m a crabby old scientist who never had any family except my friends—”
Tay had to look away or she would have started crying again. For a while they sat in silence, holding hands. Finally, they both got out of the Land Rover. The Marine and Shore had run out of fresh fruit and vegetables days ago: the helicopter that had brought Tay had also brought fresh supplies. They dragged one of the boxes out of the back and arranged a tempting pyramid of fruit—which instantly attracted a buzzing swarm of flies.
“If he’s anywhere around, he’s been watching us,” said Tay.
They waited, but Uncle didn’t turn up. They drove to the coastal water hole, which was even more shrunken than when Tay and Uncle had passed by. In the cracked and trampled mud Tay found two orangutan footprints, but they were old and dry: she couldn’t tell how long they’d been there. Above the dell, out in the open where it would be clearly visible, they set another offering of fruit.
“When I was in Singapore,” said Tay, “I heard someone on the TV say the Lifeforce Teenagers were ‘human pharm animals.’ Genetically engineered animals bred so their bodies will produce medicine. I suppose it’s better than being Frankenstein’s monster, made just for an experiment. . . . I don’t think Uncle’s going to turn up here either.”
They drove around until sunset, leaving caches of fruit and bottles of water. Tay knew that Uncle could deal with a screw cap easily. But they both felt it was useless. They kept calling in to the shore camp: Uncle hadn’t reappeared there either.
“I think I know where he’s gone,” said Tay as they drove back to camp in the dusk. The feeling had been growing on her all day. Uncle was nowhere near. He wasn’t hanging around, watching the humans from hiding. He was far away. “This isn’t his country, he can’t live here. I think Uncle is trying to go home.”
After two more days of useless searching and waiting, a detachment of the Kandahnese army arrived at the Marine and Shore camp. The Kandah River Region was in the army’s control again. They were ready to recover Donny Walker’s body for a proper burial. Tay and her gene mother set off with the soldiers, but in their own Land Rover, heading for the Waruk River. They were still searching for Uncle, and the soldiers were eager to help. The Lifeforce mascot had become a symbol of peace and renewal. The cavalcade stopped frequently, and the soldiers fanned out on either side of the track, beating through the long grass. A helicopter, cruising in wide sweeps across the savannah, kept reporting to the surface party by radio. Tay knew that all this was completely useless. Uncle would never let himself be caught, or even spotted, by people in uniform. He’d seen what happened to Clint. She said nothing. She knew where Uncle was heading. Her only fear was that he could not possibly have survived the journey. But orangutans are tough. They’re adapted for the trees, but in great need they can make long journeys on the ground. They can do without food or water, if they must, for at least as long as a human.
At Aru Batur the raft ferry had been repaired, but the village was still a smoldering ruin. It was dark by the time they’d crossed the Waruk. Tay and her gene mother put up their tent on the edge of the soldiers’ camp, on a patch of clear ground near the mosque. There’d been rain here, though the savannah was still dry as bone. Everything that had been burned was thick with wet ash and mud. People had been back, to salvage what they could from the wreckage of their homes. There were trails of discarded clothes, broken household things, lying in the dirt between the abandoned houses. The sky above was thick and heavy, without a star or a ray of moonlight; the air was full of the choking incinerator smell Tay remembered only too well. One of the soldiers came over with a tray of rice and spicy mutton stew; and bowls of broth. Neither of them had much appetite, but they ate a little. They pasted themselves with insect repellent and sat on the groundsheet in the mouth of their tent.
“I wish we could leave Donny where he is,” said Tay softly.
It was the families in England, Aunt Helen and her husband, the Walker grandparents and the relations on Mum’s side, who wanted Donny’s body to be brought out. Tay had conflicting feelings. Really, she knew it didn’t matter. Donny would always be with her, whatever anyone did. But it was horrible to think of his body being taken from the grave of green branches and river stones that she and Uncle had made.
“I suppose the family has a right.”
Pam said nothing, she just put her arm around Tay’s shoulders.
Tay noticed that there were hardly any insects dancing around their lamp. The fire had driven every kind of life away, even the tiny creatures. They would be back. When a firestorm passes through, what isn’t destroyed grows stronger.
“Pam? What about the other clones? I’m Taylor Five. I read that in the papers, in Singapore. What about four and three and two and one? Where are they?”
It was the first time Tay had ever mentioned the other Lifeforce Teenagers of her own free will. Pam didn’t show any sign of surprise.
“Well . . . there’s Takami Three Abe. He lives in Singapore, with his birth parents. He’s had a tough time since the news broke because someone leaked the story to a rather nasty newsgroup on the Internet. Taki . . . the original Takami . . . flew out from California to be with him: he’s okay now. And there’s Nancy One Delacroix, she’s a Texan, and she’s a live wire. It didn’t work out between her and her birth parents; she’s been with her gene mother, who is a friend of mine, since she was ten. So, you see, Lifeforce’s plans did not run smoothly. . . . They’re both going to the Inheritors, in due course. You could meet them both one day, if you want to—”
The Inheritors was another Lifeforce project, the college in Canada that the company had founded and partially financed. Before the fire Tay had thought she was going to go there, when she was sixteen.
“What about Two and Four?”
Pam smiled and shook her head. “You’ll never meet them.”
“They died?”
“No, they decided they didn’t want any publicity at all, and we intend to respect that. I’m afraid you’re going to have to bear some publicity, Tay, because of what’s happened. With luck, it won’t last. There’ll be another shocking science-news story along in a few weeks, there usually is. But if it’s what you want, you can make the same decision. You can go back to England and live with your aunt Helen, and have nothing more to do with Lifeforce. Or me.”
Tay’s ticket to London had been canceled because she had to come back to Kandah and join the search for Uncle. She didn’t answer at once: she didn’t know what to say. Everything depended on what happened to Uncle. . . .
“So I’d be Tay Walker, an orphan with a trust fund, and not your daughter?”
“Mmm. That’s about it.”
“What do you want?”
Pam stared ahead of her. “I want you to be happy, that’s all.”
Tay listened to the noises of the night, and thought about the way that she had been made. It was very strange to think that her cells, and her M-389 altered gene profile, had become the source of a medicine as powerful against disease as penicillin had once been. Human beings are supposed to make discoveries, not be discoveries. . . . It’s as if I’m a tree, she thought.
Or a fruit, or an animal. She thought of the great forest trees, the guardians of life, that she had loved so dearly. The forest must be felled, and nothing would make up for that loss. But there are always new things, she thought: and this time, something new is also a someone: a girl called Tay Walker, with all her memories and griefs and hopes and dreams. And this was life, good and bad so closely woven together. And this was science too: the great romance of finding out, by accident or on purpose, stretching back through history, and reaching on ahead—
Correction, she thought. Not Tay Walker. Taylor Five Walker.
That’s me. That’s who I am. It was very strange to know she had a brother and a sister (she thought of them as brother and sister, the other Lifeforce Teenagers): when she had thought she had no family at all. But she couldn’t think about them now.
In the morning they made their own breakfast: coffee and sweet rolls for Pam, juice and rolls for Tay, who didn’t like coffee. The Kandahnese soldiers were very friendly, but Tay couldn’t talk to them. She flinched when they came near. With their camouflage fatigues and their rifles they looked exactly like the rebels who had stopped Clint. Whenever she looked at them, she remembered the terrible look in the eyes of those other men, and she felt sick. The officer in charge knew she was the daughter of the orangutan refuge wardens, and he could see she was unhappy with the escort. He tried to reassure her.
“I hope you will love Kandah again someday,” he said in English. “You will remember that this is a beautiful country, and you have been happy here.”
Tay shook his hand: but she didn’t feel much better.
Now only thirty kilometers of dirt road and rough track stood between Tay and the place which had once been her beloved home. But they were not going to the refuge clearing—though Pam would have to go there soon, when the search was made for the bodies of her friends. This time they set out along the track that led from Aru Batur to the valley where Tay’s brother lay. The farmhouse where Tay had looked for help and found none had been burned out, sometime in the last few days. They drove past the blackened framework. Soon after that the track became too narrow for vehicles. Some of the soldiers stayed behind. The others, carrying a stretcher and other necessary things, kept their distance behind the young girl and the older woman—so alike in their jungle clothes, their golden-brown hair; in the way they walked, in the set of their shoulders and the way they glanced around them, that they could have been twins of different ages. There were no more traces of the fire. Everything was green. They made their way along the side of the clear, rippling water of the little tributary of the Waruk.
“Look,” said Tay. She pointed to a pale strip of tattered plastic tied around a branch. It was one of the signs she’d left, on her way back from Aru Batur the second time. “I put that there. I tore up a T-shirt and an old carrier bag that I’d picked up in Aru Batur market. I used the T-shirt first. The plastic means we’re getting near.”
She looked ahead and saw, with a stab of mingled grief and tenderness, the river beach where she had spent her little brother’s dying days. Where she had talked to Donny, and sung him the songs he liked best, and cuddled him, and laid him down to rest. The burial cairn was still there, covered in a heap of green branches.
The branches were fresh.
Tay stopped, when she saw that. “Pam,” she said, “I can’t talk to the soldiers. Will you ask them to stay back? That’s Donny’s grave, and Uncle’s here. I knew he would be.”
Pam spoke to the officer, then she and Tay went on alone.
They came to the cairn. Tay knelt on the pale sand. “This is where he died,” she said softly. “We didn’t move him. Uncle didn’t want to move him, or bury him. . . . Oh, I know it was me. I know I was m-making up that Uncle talked to me. But I remember it still, and what I remember about Uncle is true, inside. We couldn’t save Donny. When I had to give him the morphine, I knew he was going to die. On the last evening . . . well, I can’t talk about it. He died, and we buried him, and look, Uncle’s put green branches. He’s made Donny a sleeping nest, like a mother ape looking after her baby—”
She stopped. She had seen movement in the green shadows of the valley side. She touched Pam lightly on her arm, and Pam nodded. She moved off, to let the two companions mourn their dead together in peace.
The red ape came slipping out of the trees. Tay just stood there. He bounded toward her, and the ape and the human girl hugged each other tightly. Tay started to cry. The orangutan, ragged and thin after his long, lonely trek from the coast, rocked her in his long shaggy arms, stroking her hair. There’s a time when you daren’t let go, there’s a time when tears have to attack you unawares. There’s a time when you know it will be all right to cry. At last Tay wiped her eyes. Totally unafraid, she unpeeled Uncle’s powerful arms and looked him in the face.
“Uncle, I left you alone with strangers. I know it was wrong. I understand now. You’d taken me back to the other humans. Then you’d done what you knew Clint wanted, and you didn’t want to go on. You were mourning for him. That’s why you were the way you were, wasn’t it? That’s why you wouldn’t take any notice of me—”
Pam came over to them. Uncle didn’t move away, but he grunted warily. “Hnnh?”
“It’s all right, Uncle,” said Tay, taking hold of the ape’s hand. “She’s our friend. She had to keep you shut up because of Philippe. She couldn’t help that. And she’s not going to send you away to live in a zoo.” She stared at her gene mother defiantly.
“Hmm,” said Pam. “I don’t know about that. We’ll decide what’s best—”
Uncle made a long lip, eying Tay sideways, as if he understood every word.
“He wants to stay with me,” said Tay, chin up. She and Uncle were standing together at the eaves of the forest, and she was not going to go a step further without him by her side. “I know he does. He came back here because I’d left him alone. But he can’t stay in the forest, and he doesn’t want to die, so he has to stay with me. He can’t be in a zoo, not even the best zoo in the world. He’s a person, and he needs me, and I need him. And you’re my mum, so I expect you to fix it.”
Uncle looked at Pam with wise round eyes.
“All right,” said Pam gravely. “We’ll work something out. I promise.”
Uncle grunted again, this time in what sounded like satisfaction. He freed his hand from Tay’s grip, touched the green branches that covered Donny’s grave with his long, graceful fingers; and brought his fingers to his lips, again and again. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
“We aren’t going to leave Donny behind,” Tay told him. “I wish we could, in a way. But we can’t. That’s what we’re here for, Uncle, as well as finding you—”
The ape seemed to follow this explanation. He squatted down, picked up one of the branches, put it aside and started tugging at the stones underneath.
“Hey, no!” exclaimed Pam, shocked. “No, not you! Don’t do that! You don’t have to do that. The soldiers will do the work, we only had to show them the place. Leave it, Uncle! We have to take Tay away from here—” He paid no attention. Thin and worn as he was, he was still immensely strong. He had no trouble lifting one of the river boulders that he’d put in place weeks ago. He tossed it aside and looked at the woman and the girl, making a crooning sound.
“That’s his Clint noise!” cried Tay. “What is it, Uncle? What are you trying to tell us?”
“Clint!” sounded Uncle again. He pulled out, from behind the stone that he’d removed, a square bundle of black plastic. He sniffed it all over and hugged it in his arms.
“Oh!” gasped Tay, amazed. “It’s Clint’s package!”
“The package you told me was lost crossing the river?” said Pam.
“That’s what I thought. That’s when I noticed it was gone. I emptied the rucksack after we’d had to swim for it, to see what we’d lost, and Clint’s package wasn’t there—”
“He must have decided it belonged here,” said Pam softly. “You were burying Do
nny. Uncle must have decided that this cairn should be Clint’s memorial, too. . . .” She hunkered down, putting herself on a level with the ape. “Uncle, may I take that? I don’t know how much you understand, cousin. But I loved Clint too, and that’s his last work. He didn’t want it buried. He wanted it to live.”
“Uncle wants to live,” whispered Tay. “He came back to Donny’s grave to die, because he thought I didn’t need him anymore. But I’m here, and so he wants to live. I think. . . . I think Clint told him he had to look after us, no matter what—”
“Your choice, Uncle,” said Pam, holding out her hands. “Do you want me to have that?”
Uncle grunted, looked at the sky and handed the package over.
“Thank you.”
She tore through the wrapping with shaking hands. There were computer disks inside, and a stack of typescript. “Ah,” she breathed. “It’s . . . I think this is Clint’s new book.”
“Is that important?”
“He was such a scatterbrain. We only have his notes, and an early draft. This is the whole thing. Yes, it’s important. It’s something saved, Tay. It’s something saved.”
Pam went to tell the soldiers that Donny’s grave was found, leaving Tay and Uncle to make their last farewells alone. “This will be Donny’s grave forever,” said Tay. “It doesn’t matter where they take his body; or if we never come back. Donny will always be here, and we will be with him, by this stream in the forest.”
We will always be with Donny, agreed Uncle. He’ll always be with us.
And if Tay made up his words, still it wasn’t make-believe.
The spirit of the great forest, distilled into this narrow valley, folded its arms around the river beach, and two mourners, and a cairn buried in green boughs. Tay knew that this time there was nothing left undone, and it really was farewell.
