“Fine with me,” Paul replied. Ed rose and started to stack the remaining dishes. Anger simmered within him for a moment. He found himself resenting Paul for wanting to leave and the others for so easily agreeing to his plans. They had left him no choice but to go along with them.
“We’re staying home,” Al shouted from the sink. “Jim promised to help me with my English paper.”
“Just make sure he doesn’t write it for you,” Paul shouted back. The older man stood up. Kira and Mike had left the room and Ed could hear them near the front door, arguing loudly about something. “Ed,” Paul said more quietly, “how would you like to go for a little ride with me?”
“It’s all right with me,” Ed replied. I haven’t got anything else to do.
They had gone to the small park many times in the past. The park was not far from home and only a few people made use of it now with so many other places within easy distance by train or highway. When they had been small, Paul had brought them here for picnics in the summertime. Once they had run into another family who recognized them and pestered them with questions. Paul had told them afterward that the father had commented to him about his own two children having to spend three months in an ectogenetic chamber: “They’re twice-borns,” the father had said. It had seemed irrelevant to Ed. Anything was more normal than being a clone.
Another time he and Jim had walked to the park with a bottle of bourbon Jim had managed to purchase at a nearby liquor store rarely curious about the age of the buyer. They had been too sick to finish the bottle and barely managed to stagger home for supper. Paul had been mad. After restricting them to the house for a week, he had driven them over to the liquor store, threatening prosecution if the owner ever sold them alcohol again until they were older. Ed had been embarrassed but Jim, the man of the world, had been humiliated.
Often each of them came to the park alone to think in solitude. Even though each of them had a room at home, Paul knew that in a house of six people there were times a person needed to get away. It was also a place where Paul could talk to each of them individually, where each could express feelings freely without feeling constricted by the nearness of the others. Often after these talks Paul would take Ed to a house nearby that doubled as a homemade ice cream parlor. They would have a sundae together and go home with some ice cream for the others. Each of them had had these talks with their father about their problems and Ed knew they usually felt much better about things afterward. Paul was unlike some parents in that he did not wait for problems to arise before talking to his children. Several times a year, he made a point of taking each of them out to dinner alone and Ed had known him to turn down other invitations if they conflicted with one of these planned occasions. Perhaps he realized, Ed thought, that more than other children, they needed this individual attention and reassurance.
But now, as Paul’s car parked itself in the small lot at the bottom of a hill, Ed began to feel nervous about this particular talk. It had grown harder for him to talk to his father and he no longer felt, as he had when he was a child, that he could tell Paul everything he felt and feared.
The two got out of the car and began to walk up the path on the side of the hill. Paul did not speak until they reached the top.
Here there was a small grassy area surrounded by trees on three sides and marked off by a stone wall on the fourth. The clouds of the autumn sky hid the stars. Ed wandered over to the stone wall and looked down. The lights of the automated highway one hundred feet below glittered and he could hear the hum of passing automobiles.
Paul joined him at the wall. The air was cool but comfortable in the absence of a wind. Ed could smell dead leaves and pine trees. He waited silently for his father to speak.
“You don’t want me to go, do you, Ed?” Paul said quietly. He didn’t respond. “I imagine,” Paul continued, “that you don’t want to say anything because you feel pressured by the others, you don’t want to be the only one to say no. If I stayed, you feel it’ll be because of you, since the others already agreed. You might feel that somehow you’ve prevented me from doing something I want to do and you’ll feel guilty about it.”
Ed was silent.
“Isn’t that true?”
Ed nodded.
Paul leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. “Look, son, I don’t want you to feel guilty about anything. My first responsibility is to you kids. I took that on voluntarily and I don’t regret it. I don’t want to do anything that’ll cause you unhappiness. I did most of my important work a long time ago, as far as astrophysics is concerned, and I think of this trip as a luxury. Sure, I’d like to go up there and poke around, but I’ve kept up on what’s going on through the journals and by contacting people who have come back from the moon. It’s extremely doubtful that my old mind is going to be of any help on Luna.”
“But maybe it will,” Ed said almost belligerently. “It’s your theories they’re working on and at the very least they might be inspired just by having you around, you don’t know. And discovering a way to make a star drive work, maybe building a ship, is a lot more important than we are, you know it is. It’ll change everything. You should have gone before, and not just for a month but for a year or two years.”
“I don’t happen to think you are less important than a star drive. Maybe I’m mistaken but I think in time your existence and the research that develops out of cloning and other applications of biological science may change the world as much as a star drive could. I don’t think the bans on such research will last. You’ll probably live to see other clones born and stranger things than that besides. Anyway, I happen to think my kids are pretty intelligent and my most important job is helping make it possible for you to develop into people who will contribute to the world. I’ve done my work. Pretty soon it’ll be time for you to do yours.” He paused. Ed glanced down at the highway and back at his father.
“You know, a lot of crap has been written about me,” Paul went on. “Some people call me a great man. Even Hidey mouths those stupidities sometimes.” He sighed. “It occurred to me that most so-called great people make the lousiest parents in the world, they’re too involved in their work. When I was young, I used to tell my friends that every research scientist, creative artist, or scholar should be sterilized. I didn’t want kids then, I was happy working with Eviane, it was my life. If she were still with me I would have been content.” Ed was startled at the mention of Paul’s dead wife. “But when Hidey decided to go ahead on his project and wanted me to help that life was over. You shouldn’t feel that I was giving up anything for you kids. It was already gone. I was lucky to get the chance to begin something new, being a parent. A lot of people don’t get that chance at my age. Young people often don’t make good parents, they have too many other things to do. If biological science does nothing more than make it possible for more older and experienced people to become parents, I think the world might be a better place with happier children.”
Paul smiled. “My God, I can’t stop lecturing, can I? You’d think I had enough of it in my classes.”
“It’s all right,” Ed replied. Paul had never been quite as frank with him before. He felt older, and more lonely.
He’s asking me to make a decision. His stomach tightened.
“Well, Ed?”
“I don’t think it’s fair to ask me to decide,” Ed said almost angrily. “Besides, the majority already voted, didn’t they? You can’t stay just because of me.”
“I want to know what you think.”
Ed took a deep breath. “Go, Paul. I’m old enough to take care of myself. I wish you would stay, I don’t know why, maybe it’s just selfishness. I don’t have anybody else to talk to, I don’t have any friends and I can’t really talk to the others the way I used to. They’ve got other things to do anyway. But I don’t want you to stay just because of me.”
Paul was silent.
“Besides,” Ed continued, “it won’t be that long.” I should be g
lad he thinks we’re responsible enough to leave alone. Instead he felt empty. Suddenly he wanted to throw himself into his father’s arms as he had when he was small. He was ashamed of the feeling.
“I know how you feel,” Paul said. “A lot of kids are lonely at your age and it can hurt more than it should. Everything is so much more intense when you’re young. But if you can learn to deal with these feelings, overcome them somehow instead of giving in to them—I can’t do that for you, Ed. I wish I could.”
You have to go. I’d just feel worse if you stayed.
“You wouldn’t like it if I stayed anyway, son. By the time I get back, you’ll wonder why you were upset about it.” Paul moved closer to Ed and threw a comradely arm across his shoulders. “Why don’t we go to that new bakery and get fat on some pastries?”
“Sure,” Ed said with little enthusiasm. I have to stop being such a child. They walked to the path leading back down the hill.
Ed sat in the corner of the Student Resources Center with Cindy Jennick and Harriet Blum, waiting for the two girls to finish the math problem he had given them. His eyes drifted over the shelves of tapes and microfiche books, past the tables surrounded by seated students, past the learning booths at the other end of the room. Inside the clear cubes of the booths sat students, earphones on their heads, listening to lectures or viewing required holographs.
He found himself looking out the large window next to him. Outside, the girls’ cross-country team was doing laps. There was Mayli Chung, churning along behind the others, looking tiny in spite of the heavy gray sweatsuit she wore. Ed sighed. He had wanted to ask her out several times but kept putting it off. Maybe she’ll call me. She never had. He contented himself with sitting next to her in the calculus class at the university, snickering when she passed him a caricature of the professor or one of their classmates.
“Well?” Harriet said. He turned and faced the girls seated across from him. Harriet seemed threatening in her long black dress and dangling gold earrings. She had sprinkled gold dust on her eyelids and cheekbones. She brushed back her long dark hair and pushed a paper toward him with gold-tipped fingers. Cindy was hunched over her paper, scrawling on it with one hand and twirling a strand of her oily blond hair with the other. Cindy’s pimply cheeks were perpetually flushed, as if she were constantly feverish. She grunted and Ed caught a whiff of halitosis.
He looked down at Harriet’s paper. “Your mistake,” he said, “is right here, near the end. See if you can figure out what it is.”
“Christ,” Harriet said as he shoved the paper back. “I thought I had it this time. I can’t do this shit.”
Cindy handed him her paper. She watched Ed with her sad brown eyes. “Good, Cindy,” he said mechanically. She flushed even more and folded her arms over her large breasts. “Try the next problem.”
Harriet was still staring at him. “Why don’t you tell me what the mistake is?” she asked.
“I want you to find it yourself this time.” He could feel his cheeks reddening as he addressed the girl.
“But I looked at the way you did the last problem, I did mine the same way, I listened to everything you told us before. I just can’t do it.” For a moment Ed wanted to tell Harriet her mistake just to ward off her blue-eyed stare.
But then she looked down at her paper. “Oh,” she said, “oh. There it is. Jesus, I’m dumb.” She began to work on the next problem.
Ed wished he hadn’t decided to tutor the two girls. Still, he hadn’t had much choice. The school expected better students to help worse ones.
Cindy, already finished, was waiting for Harriet. The dark-haired girl completed her scrawlings and shoved the paper at Ed.
He looked down at the two papers, Cindy’s neatly organized one and Harriet’s messy one. “You both got it right,” he said, relieved.
“Thank God,” Harriet said, standing up. “I’ll see you next week, Ed.” She turned and strode from the room, her small buttocks bouncing under the shiny fabric of her black dress.
Cindy rose more slowly. Her plaid tunic made the big-boned girl look even larger than she was. She clutched her papers to her chest. “You going home, Ed? I can give you a ride if you want.” Her face had grown almost beet-red. “I mean, my father said he’d send the car over, it’ll be here any minute.”
He looked away from her. “Uh, I have some stuff to do here,” he lied.
“Okay,” Cindy said. When he looked up she was retreating across the room, tugging at her tunic with one hand.
Paul would not be home. The realization hit him with the force of a fist. He had almost forgotten. They had all been busy for the past week, looking after the house and the meals while Paul taped lectures for his classes. Then they had gone with him to the train station that past weekend to see him off on the first leg of his journey.
Kira had been the first to hug him goodbye at the station, then Jim, then Al. Ed had stood apart with Mike, offering Paul only his hand, ashamed of his sadness and fear.
When he was sure Cindy was gone, Ed got up, pulled on his parka and left the Student Resources Center, striding out the door and down the curving hall past the empty classrooms. The clicks and thuds of his shoes against the tiled floor echoed in the corridor. He remembered lying on the living room floor as a child, struggling against sleepiness but unwilling to go to bed, listening to the comforting murmur of Paul’s voice as he talked with his friends. He remembered the first New Year’s Eve Paul had let them stay up until midnight and Jim had fallen asleep, aroused at last when the others pummeled him with pillows.
With a longing so strong that it stung him, Ed wished he was a child again. For an instant, he could believe that he would find Paul at home, waiting with a cup of hot chocolate and some conversation.
He came to the school’s back exit and opened the door under the impersonal gaze of electronic cameras hidden in the wall. He had gone to school for years watched by the cameras, which were designed to monitor thefts and violence in the building. He and the other students were so used to it that he found it strange when he heard older people comment about the insidiousness of such devices. It was easy enough to outwit such things anyway if one wanted to and no point in worrying about them.
He walked outside across the athletic fields. The school, a three-tiered round layer cake made of metal and brick, receded as he approached the road which circled the university campus and led home. The weekend ahead, without Paul’s companionship, seemed as bleak as the sky and as empty and cold as the air that whistled round his head.
Saturday morning was cold and gray, with rain outside that threatened to become snow. Ed lay in bed for as long as he could stand it, wishing he could sleep through the weekend.
He finally got up at ten and wandered down the hall to one of the bathrooms, planning ways to fill his time. He could view some lectures in one of the learning booths downstairs, plan the meals for Sunday—it was his turn to cook, read that Nabokov novel and discuss it with Jim before doing his paper, look at the newsfax sheets when Kira was through with them.
When he went downstairs, Jim was lying on the sofa with a microfiche reader propped on his stomach. “You’re going to have a hell of a neckache,” Ed commented.
Jim turned his head. “I already do.” He sat up and put his portable reader on the floor.
“I thought you were going out with Joey and Olive.”
Jim shrugged. “I didn’t feel like it.”
“Paul isn’t here to stop you.”
Jim, apparently ignoring the sharpness in Ed’s voice, rubbed his neck with one hand. “I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of bored with them. That’s a shitty thing to say about my friends, but…” His green eyes met Ed’s. “I don’t know.”
Ed became aware of the house’s silence. “Where’s everybody else?”
“Al and Mike went over to Alasand to do some shopping and Kira’s over at the university pool, she’s thinking of going out for the swimming team. Takamura’ll give her a couple of aft
ernoons off. He doesn’t need her hanging around all the time anyway. Besides, she should get out of that place more.” Jim sneered. “Our birthplace. That goddamn lab gives me the creeps, God knows what they’re up to.”
“Not much, with the moratorium.”
“I don’t know how Kira can stand the place.” Jim picked up his reader and settled back on the sofa.
Ed went into the kitchen and took some eggs out of the refrigerator. He began to make an omelet, adding some leftover ham-flavored soy protein. He poured himself a glass of milk and gulped it down while he waited for the eggs. At last he put the omelet on a plate and sat down at the kitchen table. The food seemed tasteless as he chewed and he wondered absently if he should have used more seasoning. In Paul’s absence, the meals had gone downhill; none of the Swensons was as good a cook as he was. Ed sighed. He had plenty of time to plan something special for tomorrow. Maybe he would attempt veal and mushrooms in a white sauce. He had watched Paul prepare it often enough.
He heard the humming of a car in the driveway and wondered if Al and Mike were back. As he stood up and put his dishes in the sink, he heard loud knocking at the back door. Puzzled, he crossed the room and opened it.
Joey Melville and Olive Prescott stood there. Olive’s hazel eyes flickered across him briefly. “Hello,” he mumbled, holding the door open.
“Which one are you?” the girl asked.
“Ed,” he answered.
“Peas in a pod,” Joey said, chuckling, “peas in a pod.” The two shoved past Ed. Their raincoats dripped along the floor, leaving a wet trail beside theft footprints. “Where’s that brother of yours? Hey, Jim!” Joey pulled off his coat and threw it toward the table. It landed on the floor. Olive’s coat followed it. “Jim!” The two walked on through the dining room and Ed found himself picking up the coats and placing them on a chair in silent anger. I’ll have to wipe off the floor now.
He followed them into the living room. “What the hell are you doing here?” Jim was saying.
Cloned Lives Page 10
