“…if they had cloning then,” Ilyasah was saying. Jim sat up with a start.
“What?” he said, then suddenly realized he had shouted the word. Ilyasah looked surprised and ran her hand over the hair that stood out around her head like a black cloud.
“I was only contemplating,” Ilyasah said. Moira glared at Jim. “I was thinking about what an Egyptian Pharaoh might have done with cloning. Instead of marrying brothers to sisters, they could have…” Ilyasah stopped. Jim, almost unaware of his actions, found himself standing over her, fists at his sides.
“It was a dumb idea,” Ilyasah said softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think…”
He turned quickly and left the room, unable to speak. He moved through the curved hallways of the dormitory, unaware of his surroundings.
He suddenly found himself outside next to his car. His hands shook. He looked back at the dormitory and saw Moira standing in the doorway. She had followed him, and was undoubtedly ready to vent her anger.
Goodbye, Moira. He had lost her too. He was numb at the thought. It hardly seemed to matter.
The car hurtled along the automated highway at high speed. The headlights of cars moving on other lanes were bright blurs streaking past him.
Jim huddled in the car, his back against the door, arms around his knees. His safety belt and harness were tight around his body.
He was a child again, standing with Mike at the doorway of the bright yellow school building, watching the other children. Some older boys walked toward them. He looked around uncertainly.
“What comes in vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, and vanilla?” a large fat boy said. “Ice cream clones,” his companions shouted in unison. Jim laughed hesitantly, not quite understanding why he was laughing, not quite sure of what the real joke was.
Clone jokes, old ones revived temporarily by some of Jim’s classmates had been popular at the school for a while. At last Mike and Kira had put a stop to it by beating up a couple of the offenders on the playground.
A buzzer sounded on the dashboard, signaling that his car was approaching the exit he had punched out earlier. The car turned off the highway, moved around the exit bypass, and stopped as it reached a narrow road perpendicular to the exit. It waited for Jim to give it further directions.
Impulsively he took manual control of the car and turned onto the narrow road. He accelerated recklessly until he could hear the sound of wind rushing past him. He had pushed the vehicle almost to its limit when his buzzer sounded again, signaling danger. The car slowed automatically.
Ahead he now saw the small park where he had often gone when he needed solitude. He drove around its parking lot and continued into the park along a narrow path. He kept driving, moving the car up a steep hill, until the road became bumpy and he was forced to stop in front of a clump of trees.
He got out and walked along the path on foot. The area seemed deserted. Student ecologists had recently finished the restoration of a large wilderness section farther out. Kira had assisted Dr. Takamura in creating cloned eagles for the wilderness, and had taken time off from her studies the year before to work for the park service. Jim shuddered, thinking of the identical eagles flying over reforested land. He preferred the small park to which few people now came.
He came to the clearing at the top of the hill. The stone wall he knew so well sat at the edge of the clearing, overlooking the automated highway. He walked toward the wall, stood by it and looked down at the highway one hundred feet below him.
He sat on the wall, dangling his feet over the side. He was a child once more, sitting with the others counting cars on the highway. He thought about his past. They had few friends as children and fewer now. He thought of Moira and felt pain. He had never grown as close to her as he had once been to the other clones and knew he never would. She was gone now, he was sure, annoyed by his moods and unable to understand what was torturing him.
His body was a prison, forcing him to live and struggle. He was too tired even to fight the feeling. I should go to Dr. Valois and get some moods to tide me over. But he would not dance on the strings of a chemical puppeteer, not now. He thought of the drugs he had once taken with Joey and Olive, wondering if they had forever damaged his mind.
He saw himself writing a report to Dr. Takamura and Dr. Valois. The experiment with cloning has failed. One of the experimental subjects can no longer live with himself;
the others are only four bitter people, denied even the small pleasure of feeling like unique individuals. He knew they had wanted a team, a Paul Swenson multiplied by five, working together, synthesizing what they learned in different fields, minds so alike they could see connection where others might not.
Jim felt far away from the house where he had grown up, the house that even now was dominated by Paul Swenson’s presence. He thought of his father with bitterness. I’ll at least rob you of part of your immortality, he thought, looking down at the highway beneath him. And at last he admitted to himself what he had always known unconsciously; he had been almost relieved at Paul’s death, saddened but relieved, freer to go his own way. But he hated himself for the feeling.
It made no difference. He had no real ties to anyone. He would leave only four young people lost in their own worlds, a puzzled psychiatrist and biologist who had taken part in an abortive experiment, and a minister trying to recapture an old friendship.
He pulled one leg up on the wall and prepared to leap.
“Jim,” a familiar voice called from behind him. He turned and saw Kira standing near the trees, Dr. Aschenbach at her side.
He groaned. “Kira, leave me alone, please.”
She began to walk toward him. He shifted forward on the wall, holding on with one hand. “Get back!” he screamed. “Don’t make me jump in front of you, give me that much.”
“Wait, Jim,” Kira said. She moved forward.
“Stop!” he cried. She halted. “Why are you here? Quite a coincidence, isn’t it.” He looked from her to Dr. Aschenbach. The stocky minister stood silently behind Kira. “And you,” he said to the clergyman, “don’t you have any other souls to save? You might better spend your time with people you know have them.”
Al and Mike appeared behind Dr. Aschenbach. They stopped suddenly. Jim watched the four shadowed figures. Dr. Aschenbach held out his hands, pleading silently. The three clones stood in identical positions, hands clutched to their chests.
Jim found himself chuckling, “What is this, a jamboree?” he shouted. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring a newsfax team, and I don’t see Ed around.” The four figures were quiet. “I guess he has other things to do.” His voice was shaking. He felt tears trickling down his face, losing themselves in his beard. He tried to ignore them. “Well, where is he?” he shrieked. Why should I care?, he thought.
“He’s home,” Kira said, “waiting, in case you went back there.” Her face, in the moonlight, seemed shinier than. usual. He could see silvery streaks under her eyes.
“For God’s sake, will you go!” he cried. Kira began to move toward him. He held up his free hand. Still clinging to the wall, he pulled up
both legs, squatted, then stood up, wobbling precariously. He looked back at Kira. She seemed paralyzed. He began to walk along the wall, arms held out for balance.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” the minister said.
“Save your breath.” Jim balanced on one leg. “I wonder why you came to see me die.” He stood on two legs again. “Maybe you’re just seeing Paul die again, I don’t know. Don’t worry, old man, you’ve still got four Pauls left.” The tears continued down his face; he could not stop them.
He turned from the four people and looked down past his feet at the highway. There were fewer cars on it now. He found himself wondering almost absently whether or not he would land on a car. He decided that his body would hit near the edge of the road.
He heard Kira’s voice, although it sounded faint. “Jim, please come down.” Mike was saying something too, but he co
uld not hear the words.
He poised himself on the wall. Please give me some peace, his mind murmured, let me rest. He thought of the others. Forget me, he cried to them silently.
He felt his feet lift off the wall. Silence thundered in his ears. He strained, trying to hear voices, and heard only wind whistling past him. He was weightless, arched over a cushion of air, seeing the ground turn under him…
Kira was next to him, one leg over the wall, hand clutching his. She straddled the wall, holding on to him. Her face was streaked with tears, She was shouting something at him, but he could not make out the words. He squatted, then sat on the wall. At last he heard her clearly.
“Jump, then,” Kira said, softly this time. “Jump, but you’ll have to take me with you.” She continued to cling to his arm. “Go on.” He tried to free himself but she would not let go.
He looked down at the highway. The spring wind was growing cooler and his beard felt cold and wet. Suddenly he found himself shaking with sobs. He clung to her. “I’ve lost Moira,” he managed to say. “I know it. We shouldn’t fall in love. How could anyone love us?” He stopped for breath, “And you, you’re all strangers.”
“No, Jim,” she replied. She released his arm and held his hand gently. “Moira called tonight. She was worried and she said you were depressed. Why do you think we came here? I knew you’d be here, we always did come when we had to, and poor Ed, he would have come too, except he thought you might come home and need him.” She grasped his hand more tightly. “Can’t you see? We need you, Jim, come back with us.”
Mike and Al had come over to the wall and were leaning against it, watching him. Dr. Aschenbach stood behind them.
“And why are you here?” he asked them. “I know what it’s like, I look at you every day and see all my gestures, all my features, sometimes even the same thoughts going through our minds. Don’t you think I know you feel the same? We’re all trying to pretend the others don’t exist.”
“Maybe we’ve been wrong too,” Mike said. “I know, it sounds funny coming from me. I haven’t made a secret of how I feel.” He paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t try so hard. We are different. I’m doing physics. I suppose I have some imagination, but I can’t look at a theory and express it in a poem the way you can, or even explain it to people. You can.” Mike looked over at Al. “And Al thinks he’s competing with Paul, but he isn’t really. Paul did his work, now Al will do his.”
“He’s right,” Al said. “After we study what we have to, there’s no reason why we can’t work together the way Paul wanted.”
“Certainly,” Jim said bitterly. “People expect that of clones. They think we have one mind as it is.”
“Oh, Jim,” Kira said, “don’t you see? People have to work together. If you’re apart from them, with no ties, you work only for yourself. People can’t live like that. Are any of us so unusual? Don’t people all have the same roots anyway? No one’s an isolated self, we’re all different really, but that doesn’t mean we have to isolate ourselves.”
He shivered. The night air had grown very cool. Kira was still watching him. She swung her legs over the wall and stood up. “I’m getting cold,” she said almost apologetically. “I guess you have to make your own decision. You know how we feel, but we can’t force you.” She turned, then looked back. “Please come home. Give us a chance, give Moira a chance.”
She began to walk toward the trees. Al and Mike looked at him uncertainly, then followed her.
Dr. Aschenbach remained. Jim glared at him. “I suppose Paul sat here once and thought of jumping.”
The minister shook his head. “No,” he said. “I won’t say he never got morose, but there were people around who loved him and he cared about them too. He didn’t want to hurt them.”
“Didn’t he hurt you when he decided to have us cloned?”
“I disagreed with him, but I never doubted that he only wanted to do what was right. He felt he was under an obligation to use his talents for humanity’s benefit. And when he was offered a chance to perpetuate those talents, he took it.”
Jim turned from the minister. Dr. Aschenbach had not lightened his burden, only increased it. He had reminded Jim of obligations he would abandon if he jumped. He turned back to the clergyman, but he had left, disappearing among the trees.
There was no one to prevent him from leaping off the wall now, nothing to stop his escape from the chains Dr. Aschenbach had tried to place on him.
It would be quick, a few seconds of soaring over the earth, then oblivion, no chance for thinking or regret. They had left him alone after all. He stood up on the wall and looked down.
No, not alone. They have left me free. Or maybe they had known that he could not jump now and felt safe in leaving him there. He sighed.
The scent of pine reached him, wafted to him on the night air. He jumped off the wall and hurried toward the trees. “Kira!” he cried. “Al, Mike! He shouted their names at the trees which stood silently, holding their leafy limbs toward him. He heard the rustle of underbrush, of running feet.
The four appeared. Kira was the first to reach him, then Al, then Mike and Dr. Aschenbach.
He stumbled toward them.
After they made love, Jim leaned back on his elbows and looked at Moira, gazing at her 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, 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 Ilyasah Ahmal’s high-pitched laugh and the deeper rumblings of Walt Merton. He traced the outline of shadows on Moira’s body, shadows created by the summer sun’s rays and the leafy branches of the trees overhead. A 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. The grass brushed against his feet, tickling his soles. Two grackels perched on the wall, cawing loudly at 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. The cars fled along the road in orderly rows. 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, hiding 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 sat 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 or 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. He 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, I heard they might limit the number that go up there at one time. Something wrong, Moira?”
“No,” Moira muttered.
“Give us half an hour,” Ilyasah went on, “then we’ll get the food out.”
Jim took the hint. “Sure,” he said. Ilyasah left and disappeared among the trees. Moira’s roommate had still not shaken off the remnants of her rigid Muslim upbringing and wanted to be certain 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 the 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. “Why didn’t you tell me this before,” he said more quietly.
“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?”
Cloned Lives Page 13
