Perhaps they would have starved otherwise, perhaps not. Kira often found peace in the park and in places like it, removed from the noise of people and their machines. At other times she was depressed and disturbed by the wilderness, suddenly aware of the constant warfare among species. Ants were dying by the thousands around her, birds searched for food, deer guarded their young, rabbits fled from larger creatures, and people found beauty and peace.
She thought of her brother Al on the moon and understood how he and others had come to love its austere surface, where nothing died and only humans lived. Yet even there life was precarious; a punctured dome, a defective spacesuit, a flittercraft accident, a malfunction in life-support systems, and death would arrive there also.
A wren alighted on a tree below and warbled. Kira smiled slightly. At least for now, the bird was happy, at home in the park. Time enough for food-gathering later, or for fleeing from a dark shape overhead.
“You’re not worrying again,” Jonis Ettinger said. Kira turned to the slender blond woman beside her. Jonis was already growing pink in the sunshine; she rarely went outside, preferring to spend her time in study or experimentation. Her pale gray eyes flickered over Kira.
“What do you mean, worrying again? I don’t worry that much.”
“I do,” Jonis replied. “I worry about whether we’re going to get any money for some real work someday, or whether Hidey is going to drop dead with all his cigarettes, or whether I’m going to lose my job or whether the moratorium repeal is going to pass. Right now I’m worrying about what this goddamn sun is doing to my skin.” Jonis picked up one of the cages they had brought and motioned to Kira. “We could have let one of the students who trained the birds bring them out here.”
Kira picked up the other cages and began to follow Jonis down the hill. “It’s good for you to come out here,” she said. “You need some exercise anyway. Besides, I like to bring the birds and animals here, it makes me feel a little more responsible for them, more…I don’t know.”
“I guess you feel you have something in common with them.” Kira was not offended by the remark. She was used to Jonis after being friends with her for so long. Anyway, Jonis was probably right.
They reached the bottom of the hill and headed along a path to the small truck they had parked near the edge of the woods. They passed a group of well-constructed Indian homes almost hidden among the trees. The wooden houses, with their rounded sides and pointed tops, suggested tepees. But these tepees were heated by solar power, not campfires. The people who lived in them were now spending the summer looking after the park while pursuing old crafts. In the winter, when they returned to their homes, their children would study on their computers and holos. Many would leave for high school and college and many would remain to work in the outside world. But others would return here to apply what they had learned and to train their own children to hunt, track, and fish.
“Hidey’s been looking tired lately,” Jonis muttered as they put the crates into the truck. “Has he been working too hard or have you been keeping him up nights?”
“I haven’t seen him, except at work,” Kira said. Her throat grew dry. She had said nothing to Hidey during the past few weeks that did not concern laboratory work, and Hidey had gone back to living in his office, with occasional trips to his apartment.
Kira was not sure how it had all started or what had precipitated it. Hidey had stopped at her house several weeks ago, as he often did, probably out of habit more than anything else. They talked, mostly about the growing movements to repeal the legal restrictions on experimentation which had culminated in a bill being brought to the floor of the Senate. Hidey spoke about some of the projects he might want to pursue if the bill passed the House. She offered him some tea.
Suddenly she was more aware of him than she had ever been. She began to grow conscious of his eyes, of the gray hairs sprinkled across his head, of his stocky body. She felt awkward and knocked over one of the empty tea cups with her hand. She reached for him at the same time as he reached for her.
Hidey stayed with her that night. He remained with her as they both traveled from the house to the university. She had pushed her doubts aside, trying to forget Hidey’s age, his relationship to Paul, his responsibility for her own existence. Everything around her grew more intense, things seemed to happen more rapidly; her life seemed bounded by Hidey both at the lab and in her home. Eventually the feelings she had for him, she knew, would change. The longing and desperation would become a peaceful contentment with sparks of warmth and passion from time to time. Or the feelings of love would die completely and she and Hidey would be left with friendship and some memories. Or the relationship would grow sour, they would grow away from each other, perhaps with bitterness and anger, and never feel at ease together again. These were the alternatives she saw in her mind; her feelings were ruled by the present reality. She could not bring herself to believe that she would ever feel differently about Hidey, although it was probable that in time she would.
He had remained with her for two weeks, migrating to the biological research center with her. But he had not been able to put aside his own doubts. He began to feel foolish; a man in his late seventies having an affair with a young woman. She noticed that he became uncomfortable with her in public, worried about what people might think, afraid that they would guess their relationship. He expressed doubts about the wisdom of allowing their love to develop when she would inevitably survive him and spend most of her life without him.
At last Hidey was unable to make love to her one night. He worried about that too. The anti-aging shots could not preserve him forever, in spite of the fact that he had been unusually vigorous and youthful for his age when he began receiving the treatment more than ten years ago.
She tried to put his mind at rest. He worried too much. He was just feeling tired. If she had to live without him eventually, she would at least have memories of him and would not regret the years spent with him.
She discovered that his doubts went deeper than she had suspected. She was Paul’s clone. He had brought her into the world. He too was her father in some sense. And he had been one of Paul’s closest friends.
Finally he had come home with her and refused to stay. “I have to think a while, by myself,” he said. In the light by the front door, he looked older than she had ever seen him look before.
“I think you should stay,” she said desperately. “If you brood over things, they usually just look worse than they are. I love you, Hidey. All that other stuff doesn’t matter, not to me.”
“I can’t help it. I’m an old man, it’s not easy for me to forget things, to dismiss a past I have to lug around on my shoulders wherever I go, that constantly produces certain associations in my mind. I was Paul’s friend, I keep thinking of him when I see you. I’ve got about fifty more years to haul around than you do, and it makes a difference.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“It does anyway.”
She had wanted to cry, to scream at him, somehow force him to see things her way. Instead she simply kissed him goodbye, leaning slightly over the shorter man as she did so, and watched him drive away.
“You scare me sometimes,” Jonis said as they got into the truck. “I get to thinking you’re more sensible than I am, that you know what you’re doing, and then you go into such a gloomy mood that it even scares me.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Sometimes you think too much. You look too closely at things and it just gets you depressed. Let’s go somewhere for a drink this evening and get our minds as close to a blank as possible.”
Kira was tired when she returned home. I ought to move, she told herself as she walked through the house, get out of here, move to Alasand or a campus apartment if there’s an opening or maybe to the city for a change of pace. She was beginning to grow tired of being keeper of the hearth, ready in case one of her brothers should return for a few days. She was still
tied to the past of her family both through the house and through her work as well. I should close the house and sell it. But then she would have to pack the books, find a place to store some of the furniture, decide what should be given away or sold, and she did not have the time nor the stomach for that.
She began to climb the stairs to her room, then stopped and went back downstairs. Hidey might have called and left a message. She tried not to hope too much. She went to the phone in the living room and pushed the message button.
Mike’s moustachioed face appeared on the screen. “I’m calling from L.A.,” the face said. “I’ll try to call back later.” The life-sized image, slightly fuzzy around the edges, faded.
The voice had sounded weary. She decided not to wait for the call. She pressed the numbered buttons below the screen, seating herself as she did so.
She heard a click, then saw Mike’s face again. As usual, the image was slightly blurry; getting a good connection had been almost impossible lately. “Mike?”
“How’s everything, Kira?”
“All right. I was out having a drink with Jonis Ettinger. What’s bothering you? You look upset about something.”
“Just tired. I’ve been working late. I’m responsible for our whole research section now. We’ve been constructing a model scanner and we’ll be testing it soon. I have high hopes for it.”
“When are you coming to visit? Take a few days off and bring Sita, I’d like to meet her.”
“Site’s gone.” His voice was cold, “She wasn’t at home here. She went back to Patna. I can’t blame her, she’s needed more there.”
“Oh, Mike, I’m sorry.” The words seemed an empty formality.
“There’s no need to be. We had a good few months. It just didn’t work out. I might have gone with her, but I have too much to do here. We did the only practical thing.”
She was sure Mike was more hurt than he cared to show. She remembered his call from Bihar when he had been married. He had looked happy and carefree for the first time in his life as he brought the small dark woman with him over to the phone screen. He had at last dropped the cold facade that had shielded him from everyone, including his family.
Now his reserve was back. He might never open up to others again. She suddenly saw her brother slump in his chair, covering his forehead with his hand.
“Maybe I should have tried to stop her,” he muttered, “maybe if I had tried, we could have worked something out, I don’t know. She’s gone.” He straightened up and his face hardened. “I talked to Jim the other day.”
“Is he still visiting Ed?” Kira asked, hoping to distract him from his troubles.
“He’s with Aunt Sonia in New York, she got him some sort of editorial position with a microfiche publisher. I don’t know how long that’ll last. He sounded bored. Sonia said he could have her apartment, she’s retiring and moving out of the city; she wants to be a senior in a child care center. But I don’t think he’ll stay there. He never sticks to anything. He asked me if there was anything going on in L.A., but I’ll be damned if ‘I’ll have him out here, catering to his delicate creative constitution, and I told him so. I have too much to do. He might try finishing another book just once.”
“He’s had problems, Mike.”
“Most of them are self-imposed. You’d think no one else had any worries. He ought to settle down somewhere and get to work instead of leading that gypsy existence.” Mike sighed. “How’s everything with you?”
“All right.” There was no point in discussing Hidey with him or with the others for that matter. She had not even told them about it while it lasted.
“Maybe you should pull up your roots, Kira, get out of that house.”
“I don’t mind it. My work is here, I don’t have the time to move around. I should think you’d understand that.”
“I guess you’re right. But I couldn’t stand it myself, staying there. I’d better get off now. I’ve still got some reading to do.”
“Mike,” she said impulsively, “try to be a little more sympathetic to Jim. He doesn’t need to have somebody picking on him.”
“That’s exactly what he does need. He gets enough sympathy from everyone else. I’ll try to call you again when I get a chance.”
“Good night.” She pressed a button and disconnected. She continued to sit by the phone, staring into the darkened living room. She felt a stab of guilt. There I was, asking Mike to be more sympathetic to Jim. It was Mike who needed some understanding now.
Soon Al would come downstairs and they would make plans to do some viewing through his telescope if the sky was clear. Paul was calling them to dinner.
At last she got up and walked through the empty house, then up the stairs.
“Drop your weapons, everybody,” Bert Ramsey shouted from the laboratory door. “We’re having a party in the lounge down the hall. The anti-moratorium bill just passed the House.”
Kira, in the middle of making some notes for a report, heard the others in the lab give a few quiet cheers. Chairs and stools squeaked across the floor as people began to file out of the lab and down the hall.
She got up slowly and turned toward the door. “Coming?” Bert asked.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” she said slowly.
“You must be even happier than the rest of us, you probably feel vindicated.” The short, slightly overweight man leaned against the door. “This may mean more funds, more lab assistants. I bet Hidey’ll have us pretty busy applying for grants.”
“It doesn’t mean we’ll get any. There may not be that much money, and most of it’s already tied up. The medical people will get more.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Bert straightened up. “I’ll see you in the lounge.”
Kira sighed as Bert disappeared. The passing of the bill was a mixed blessing for her. As a scientist, she welcomed it, but she was sure that even now some reporter was looking for her. She and her brothers would get some more unwanted publicity, more stupid questions, and she was not ready for that. They had avoided it for so long now. And when the press realized that she was herself a biologist…she shuddered. She could tell them she had nothing to say but then they would voice their suspicions about what she, a clone, might be up to. No, she would have to rehearse a few harmless and innocuous statements for them: We are still considering possible projects. Of course, anything we do would have to be approved by the university administration, and whatever it is will, we hope, be of value to everyone.
The President could veto the bill, but this was unlikely. Kira did not follow politics closely, but she was sure that the President would still sign the bill. The world was well on the way to being a more peaceful, quiet, middle-class place, but there were a lot of younger people who thought it was time to be more adventurous and a lot of old people, lives lengthened by anti-aging shots, who could remember more exciting, if more dangerous, times. And the middle-aged, who might be expected to wish that things would remain quiet, were starting to look at their older relatives and wish that they might themselves be able to stay around longer and enjoy more of the things they were at last able to have. People were basically greedy. There were still many who would make noise about the bill’s passage, but more who believed they had a good chance of living long enough to reap some of the benefits of new research. Greed would win out, as it usually did. It was probably the only thing that cemented people together in the end.
Of course a fuss would be raised in the United Nations. But no one would pay attention, since other countries were already passing their own bills or, in the case of dictatorships, setting up their own projects. But we’ll have to be careful, Kira thought, we’ve messed things up before and if we do it now it may set us back permanently.
She left the lab and walked down the hall toward the lounge. The gathering there was getting fairly noisy. As she entered the room, a strong smell of tobacco and marijuana reached her nostrils. The room was already blue with smoke. A man shoved past her with a plastic bag
of ice.
“Kira!” Jonis shouted. Kira pushed her way through the crowd over to her friend’s side. “What do you know, real work for a change. Hidey’s almost rolling on the floor with glee.” Jonis waved her glass, managing to spill some of its contents on Kira’s lab coat. “That is, if we can get any money. And if we can decide what we want to do and if we can get some time off from teaching to get the work done, which is doubtful unless we can hire more people. We’ll probably have to work on our own time. I guess the bill doesn’t mean much after all. Well, it was a nice dream while it lasted.”
“You always find the dark side.”
“I’m a realist. That’s usually the only side there is. Well, not entirely. We get the rest of the afternoon off so we can get stewed.”
“You do. I have a class to teach in an hour.”
“What did I tell you? There’s always a dark side.”
“Excuse me, Jonis.” Kira moved through the room, managing to shout hello to Emma Valois as she went.
Hidey was standing in a corner with Moshe Spatz, who had wandered over from the chemistry department. “You tell me,” the bald chemist was saying as he gestured with his bony hands. “Everybody in my department is starting to come to me with his own pet project now, not even waiting for the news to sink in. I am going to have my hands full keeping them from flying at each other, I should not be chairman at such a time. I am a teacher. My talent is organizing teaching schedules and advising students.” He glanced at Kira. “Hello, Ms. Swenson, you are looking charming today as always.”
Kira smiled as Moshe turned back to Hidey. “You will decide what your people will do and they will do it, however they might feel. You command a personal loyalty. I haven’t that talent.”
“You’re flattering me,” Hidey mumbled, lighting a cigarette.
“I am stating a fact.”
Hidey looked uneasily at Kira. “Moshe’s right,” she said to him then suddenly realized that Hidey might misunderstand her remark. “I mean, we all feel that way.” She felt as though she was floundering, searching for the right words.
Cloned Lives Page 19
