Your One & Only

by Adrianne Finlay

  In the silence after Carson left, Althea sat on the ground next to Jack and waited. She didn’t know what else to do. When Samuel-299 finally arrived, he came with Nyla and two more Samuels from the clinic carrying a stretcher. A Hassan also came to repair the broken thresher.

  Samuel’s hand shook as he checked Jack’s pulse.

  “How did this happen?”

  “Ask the Council,” Althea said bitterly. “They’re the ones who caused all this, with their secrets and experiments.”

  “It was the Carsons,” Nyla said, her hand coming to rest on Althea’s arm, pulling her close.

  Althea’s anger began to drift away as her friend’s calm seeped into her. She jerked her arm back, needing the anger if only to keep from crying.

  The Samuels grasped Jack and lifted him onto the stretcher with no more care than if they were loading a cart with logs. Jack struggled unconsciously as they lifted him, as if he were still in the middle of a fight. Samuel-299 placed a hand on Jack’s chest and murmured to him. Althea couldn’t hear what he said, but Jack settled down again.

  They carried him across the field and into the town. Althea watched them go, wondering if the feeling consuming her was what Jack felt all the time, this feeling of being alone. She remained crouched in the dirt, his blood drying on her arms, not trusting her legs to carry her back to town. Nyla knelt beside her then, and this time Althea let herself be taken in her friend’s arms. She leaned into Nyla, searching for anything to ease the pain before it swallowed her as completely as the storm clouds swallowed the Novomundo Mountains in the distance.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack

  Jack remembered pain. He remembered the swerve of the sky as he was lifted from dirt. He remembered numbing cold, rough hands, and Sam’s voice as it had been years ago when he was a child. But mostly he recalled pain in every part of his body, pain that made him want to escape the world. And he held an image of Althea bending over him, her hair curtaining her face. You’ll be fine, she said, over and over.

  He was in the clinic, in clean scrubs and pressed white sheets. Someone had washed away the blood and dirt. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been here. Two, maybe three days?

  He licked his lips, feeling the cuts there, and when he shifted position, a sharp stab tore through his side. Gingerly he felt his ribs. They weren’t broken, but he knew he’d find dark, ugly bruises when he lifted his shirt.

  His head pounded, and his wrist was in a cast. His back, where most of the blows from the Carsons had landed, throbbed with an ache that radiated into his limbs.

  All in all, he was surprised it wasn’t worse.

  The room was dark, and there was no clock to tell time. Sam and Althea had visited earlier. They’d visited often while he was hovering in and out of consciousness.

  A form outlined by the moon perched on the windowsill across the room. Jack sat up in bed, avoiding leaning on his broken arm.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  The figure pulled a banana from a bag on his shoulder and peeled it with showy deliberation. “Hello, brother,” he said, taking a bite.

  All the aches in Jack’s body vanished at once. He took a long breath, steadying his pulse. Still his heart hammered in his ears.

  “I’ve wondered where you were,” Jack managed to get out.

  Jonah hopped down from the window, landing soundlessly on the tiled floors. His gray eyes, familiar yet unreadable, raked over Jack’s face.

  “They sure did a number on you,” he said. “Sorry I wasn’t around. I had some things to take care of in Copan.” He finished the banana in two quick bites, then threw the peel out the window.

  Althea had said her sisters were leaving for Copan in the morning to help the clones there. She said someone attacked them. She’d also told him she wasn’t going.

  “That was you,” Jack said, his voice level. “You destroyed Copan.”

  “They destroyed it themselves. I just helped them along.” Jonah wandered the room, opening a closet and peeking in the bathroom. He pulled out the drawer of a cabinet on the far wall and rifled through its contents. “Do they keep any Somnium here?”

  “I don’t know.” Jack’s head throbbed. Seeing Jonah felt surreal, like he was in a dream. He looked just like Jack, his hair and eyes, his build. Jonah had a scar at his hairline, and the skin on one arm was twisted by old burns, but in every other way, they were identical.

  Jonah moved on to another drawer. “The clones don’t dream, did you know that?” he said conversationally. “They kept altering their genetic code, and I guess they lost some things along the way. Somnium gives them hallucinations, like dreams while they’re awake. In small doses, I guess they find it pleasant, but give them enough, and it’s all weird visions and nightmares.” Jonah turned toward Jack with a genial smile. “They sure can wreck a place.” He returned to searching the cabinet, pulling out another drawer. “I tried Somnium once. Didn’t do anything for me. Turns out, it doesn’t work on humans because we already dream. That’s crazy, right? Not being able to dream.”

  “I guess,” Jack said.

  “Hey, there’s something I’ve been looking for. You ever hear them talk about something called the Ark?”

  Jack shook his head. “What is it?”

  Jonah shrugged. “A human thing. Doesn’t matter.” He found some tape and bandages in another drawer, and some vials of gold liquid that he opened and sniffed, trying to figure out what they were. He tucked it all inside his bag, then came to the foot of Jack’s bed. “I’m glad I found you,” he said. “I knew about you, but it took forever to finally get here. But this is good. We can work together. We have each other now.”

  Jonah’s ease and confidence was an advantage. He’d clearly had time to plan this meeting, knew what it was he wanted. Jonah’s head wasn’t swirling with countless questions. Jack, bleary with pain and drugged sleep, had no idea where to start.

  “Work together doing what?” he said thickly.

  “Destroying them, of course.”

  Jack shook his head. “Destroy who? The clones?”

  “Yeah, who do you think? Look at you!” Jack’s cuts and bruises stung anew under Jonah’s sneer. He thought of the yellow barn, the cage and shackles, laboring in the fields, the Carsons stalking toward him. “You’re nothing here,” Jonah said. “They think they want a tenth clone, but it’ll never work for them. No, we’re too human for them. They forgot they’ve had three hundred years to change themselves, and now they think they’re perfect. They look at you—​at us—​and they’re terrified.”

  “They’re not terrified of me.”

  “Listen, Jack, I’ve thought about this. In us, they see everything they’ve lost, things they didn’t even know they lost. Sure, their mental tricks make them feel connected or whatever. But they don’t love each other. You know that, at least. When one of them dies, they burn the body and move on like it was nothing. And why shouldn’t they? They have countless replacements. If they don’t even value their own lives, how are we supposed to? They’re just . . . cheap copies.”

  “It’s not like that,” Jack said. “They’re not all like that.”

  Jonah shook his head. “I get it. You have that Althea clone. I’ll show you, she’s just like all the others.”

  “Don’t go near her!”

  “Hey, take it easy,” Jonah said, hands up in surrender. “I’m your brother, I care about you. Nobody else here does, including the Althea.”

  “She does care,” Jack said, though his voice didn’t rise above a whisper.

  Jonah contemplated Jack for several moments.

  Lying in bed and seeing his own eyes squinting back at him, evaluating him, Jack felt as if his brother knew all his doubts, hopes, and fears.

  “At the barn, I heard the old Carson talking to you about how there was something wrong with you. They think we’re defective, but they’re the ones that are defective. We’re better than them.”

  “I am defective,”
Jack said. “In that field, I almost died because I couldn’t breathe. I’d call that a defect.” Something occurred to Jack. “Do you have asthma?”

  Jonah shook his head. “Genes are complicated. The clones think it’s all so simple, that they can manipulate everything until it’s exactly how they want it. But maybe there’s a reason you have asthma and I don’t.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It’s evolution, Jack. Back when there were humans everywhere, a lot of them had diseases. And sometimes, with certain diseases, those who had them were the only people in the whole world immune from things that could maybe kill everyone else. I read about it.”

  “Yeah, well. The humans are all dead now.”

  “Listen, it wasn’t asthma that almost got you killed. It was the clones. Come with me, Jack. We’ll get them back for what they did to you, what they’ve done to us.”

  “What are we supposed to do? There are only two of us, and hundreds of them.”

  “Try telling that to Copan,” Jonah said. He settled himself on the edge of Jack’s bed and pulled from his pocket a little feather. It was bright and iridescent, with streaks of turquoise, green, and orange. He handed the feather to Jack. “There’s this bird that lives in the jungle, a kind of bird of paradise. You’ve probably seen it. It lays these eggs on heliconia plants. The eggs are really small and sort of purple, and the thing is, they have these shells like paper. They’re thin, like they could break if you just breathe on them. No kidding, I once saw a butterfly put its leg through a shell.” He leaned toward Jack to make his point, and his eyes narrowed. “Vispera is like that. Strike the clones in the right way, and they’ll fracture as easy as those bird eggs.”

  Jack dropped his head into his hands.

  “You okay?” Jonah asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  When Jack looked up, he found Jonah watching him, worry in his face, and then voices came from the hallway. Jonah leaned over the bed. He grabbed Jack’s good hand and thumped it against his own chest.

  “You feel that, Jack? It’s blood, mine and yours.” He bent down and pressed his lips roughly to Jack’s forehead. Pulling his bag onto his shoulder, he went to the window. “Blood doesn’t lie. You’ll change your mind. And believe me”—​he winked—​“they’ll pay for what they did to you.”

  Jack swung his legs over the side of the bed, forgetting to be careful of his arm. “Don’t hurt them, Jonah,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m not going to hurt them, brother.” He looked at Jack over his shoulder. “I’m going to kill them.” Jonah sprang outside and disappeared into the dark.

  The air coming through the window, thick and wet, blanketed the room with an oppressive heat. Jack’s fist crumpled the sheet. He wondered if his brother might be crazy.

  Yet still . . . Jack lay back, the room spinning around him. He breathed in, trying to calm his racing pulse, and fought the call in his blood, vast and deafening, to follow Jonah into the night.

  By the time Althea came into the room, Jack had already hauled himself from bed and was struggling to tie his shoelaces one-handed.

  “You shouldn’t be up, Jack,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” he said, though when he straightened, he gasped with the pain. “I have to go.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Jonah was here. He’s plotting something.”

  Althea took his arm and turned him to face her. “Jack, slow down. What’s he going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “He wanted me to come with him, to help do . . . whatever he’s going to do. Maybe the same thing he did in Copan.”

  “Why would he do that?” Althea paled.

  “Why do you think?” Jack ran his hand through his hair, a rush of resentment building in him. “Look what happened to me. They were going to kill me. And I don’t mean the Carsons, I mean the Council.”

  “Calm down, Jack,” she said, trying to make him sit. “Even if you can find him, you’re in no condition to stop him. We need help.”

  “Anyone who helps us will kill him.”

  “Maybe you should consider what—”

  “Don’t,” Jack said, turning on her. “Don’t say it.”

  He wouldn’t let them kill Jonah, not when they’d only just found each other. He’d be damned if he’d let the clones take his own brother from him. If Althea said Jonah should die, Jack didn’t know if he could take it.

  “I was just going to say, maybe you should consider what you plan to do before running off.”

  What was he planning to do? Jack had no idea. He sat on the bed, his body shuddering with frustration and pain.

  Althea sat beside him. “I know he’s your brother. I understand that.”

  Jack struggled to concentrate. Something fluttered in the back of his mind, light as insect wings. “Jonah said he was trying to find something called the Ark. Do you know what that is?”

  Althea shook her head.

  “He said it was human.”

  “Samuel-299 would know. He’s spent lots of time in the Tunnels, and that’s where everything human is stored.”

  “I can’t trust Sam,” Jack said.

  “Then what do we do?”

  Jack suddenly heard his mother’s voice in his head, saying, These things are for you. They belong to you. She’d been talking about the guitars he’d collected from the Tunnels, and the boxes full of papers and books she’d stolen, things she’d taken for him. Or it would have been stealing if anyone had cared that they were gone.

  “Not everything is stored in the Tunnels,” Jack said. “I know where we need to go.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Althea

  The cottage was dusty, and Althea felt cold in the damp room that had been Inga-296’s office. She wished she’d brought a sweater.

  Althea would have been seven when they held the Binding Ceremony for the Inga. She’d heard the stories. That the Inga was crazy, that she’d locked herself away from the community, away from her sisters, surrounding herself with relics from the Tunnels. Jack had never been part of the story, and the image the other children conjured was terrifying—​a woman with tangled hair and wild eyes, cut off from everyone, her mind lost. Nobody liked going in the Tunnels, and the idea of someone fracturing from spending so much time there only reinforced the pall of superstition that hung over the place.

  What was called the Tunnels was actually a cavern running deep underground, entered through a cave to the north of Blue River.

  Even as their time was ending, humans had poured their energy and resources into preserving the relics of human history. Althea admired their resolve and courage, if not their attachment to what amounted to little more than junk. In the face of not just their own individual deaths, but the end of all humanity, they wanted the world to survive. Years ago an earthquake had collapsed all but one wing of the Tunnels. Althea supposed her people could have excavated the buried items, but little of the faraway past interested them anymore. All that was left of the Tunnels was the section marked Art and Literature. The other sections listed in the catalogue—​History, Science, Engineering, and Recreation, each with over a hundred subcategories—​were entombed close by under mountains of pulverized rock. The electronics, transportation machines, reels of microfilm, government documents, weapons from long-dead wars, seeds of extinct plants, tissue from extinct animals, clay objects from the Stone Age and Mesopotamia, and a matchless treasury of other things, all gone. Except for the Sample Room, Vispera had no use for what survived.

  Or at least, most of Vispera. From walls of boxes and piles of paper in disarray in the Inga’s office, it seemed she’d been consumed by the past. They’d come here to search for some clue of what Jonah was looking for, but it seemed an impossible task.

  Althea worried Jack had left the hospital too soon. His pale face shone with sweat as he attempted to hide his discomfort, and his bruises had turned a dark, garish purple. Now they were hidden under the cotton of his shirt, bu
t she’d seen them at the hospital while Samuel, with dazed eyes and methodical hands, had tended an unconscious Jack in the clinic.

  Althea picked up another of the boxes and riffled through it, looking for anything that might refer to the Ark. None of the debris Inga-296 had collected from the Tunnels helped Althea understand the woman’s fascination with what the humans had left behind. From the things she was finding—​old teacups, postcards, cartoon drawings, small ceramic statues and trinkets—​it was all nonsense, a massive waste of human effort. If they’d focused on survival, on the real world instead of imagined stories—​maybe they’d be alive now. She picked up a wooden box with a tiny latch, glanced inside, and set it aside.

  “Wait,” Jack said, retrieving it from the floor. “I haven’t seen this in years.” He turned it around, holding it awkwardly in his cast-bound hand. With his good hand, he wound a key on the back, and then opened it again. A cylinder inside spun slowly, hitting tines. Sound spilled out, jangling Althea’s nerves. She covered her ears and almost told him to make it stop, but then she saw the way he was holding the box like what it contained was so important, even though she could see herself it was a trivial thing. The satin-smooth wood, maybe rosewood, was inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a pretty scroll design. The noise was altogether different. What she heard initially was a sharp trill. She closed her eyes and concentrated, remembering the way the music had changed when Jack played his guitar. In a few moments, a melody fell into place. She heard the way the notes melded together, spoke to each other, turned into something strange and pretty. The cylinder slowed, a note or two ushering forth, and then it stopped.

  Althea thought the music might have made Jack sad. His head was down and the box had slid from his fingers to rest on his lap. But then he grinned at her unexpectedly, wound the key again, and offered his hand.