Cloned Lives

by Pamela Sargent

  He remembered again the pain he had felt when first learning of Paul’s death. He had not known how he would deal with it, how he would go on. But he had found his way. He thought about what Paul must have felt when he discovered that the world had got along perfectly well in his absence. In spite of what his rationality must have told him, Paul must have found it a slightly demoralizing realization.

  Well, none of that mattered. Paul had become something new in the world, as the clones had been years before. They had been conscious all their lives of their responsibility, trying to prove to others that they were, after all, human beings, yet having to accept the fact that they were different in certain ways as well. But there had been some privilege attached to their position. They had been given the advantage of a sound heritage and an environment that was more carefully planned than it might have been if they had been normal children. Even Paul’s resurrection was part of that privilege; Kira had restored him with the aid of organs cloned from her own body. He had been, for that reason, the ideal subject. Now they would have to extend their privileges to others.

  “I’m looking forward to going home,” Paul said suddenly.

  “Do you remember it?” Ed asked.

  “I think so. I seem to recall the house, but my memories probably won’t match the reality exactly. They never really do anyway, do they?”

  “Mine never do,” Ed answered. “I used to remember the house as bigger than it was. And Hidey’s always changing something, painting a room or getting a new piece of furniture.”

  “Hidey.” Paul smiled and Ed knew that he was remembering a few things at least. “That may be a little weird at first, getting used to Hidey being my son-in-law.” Paul shook his head. “Especially since he must be twenty years older than I am now.” Ed noticed a glint of apprehension in his father’s eyes.

  “Don’t worry.” Impulsively, he reached for Paul’s hand. “He hasn’t changed all that much, I guess he’s a little more gray. He’s still pretty lively and he still smokes too much.”

  “And Jon Aschenbach. I remember Jon too, I think. How is he?”

  So Kira had not told him yet. Ed sighed and braced himself. “He died seven years ago,” he managed to say. “It was unusual, a cerebral hemorrage. His body’s in the university cryotorium…” Ed stopped, suddenly jolted by the thought. He saw that Paul had been jolted too.

  “Well, then, maybe we can’t consider him dead,” Paul said softly. “Strange, isn’t it? I would have thought a clergyman would have had more faith in the hereafter.”

  “I think he wanted to donate his organs to patients,” Ed said. “But they hardly ever take them from the dead, what with mechanical replacements arid being able to keep people alive until they can clone new organs.” Ed began to feel that his conversation was aimless. “My God,” he said, and heard his father echo the words. “Everything’s…”

  “…changing,” Paul finished. The words seemed completely inadequate.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes while Isaac peered at the medical computer. Paul would be going home, to a friend once his contemporary, now twenty years older, to a granddaughter who could never have existed without a variety of medical techniques, to children who were suddenly older, to a dead friend who might even live again. And that was only Paul’s one life. How much else would change? How many lives would they all live?

  “You played…I mean, you play the violin too, don’t you?” Sheila said awkwardly, breaking the silence.

  “I imagine,” Paul replied, “that I’ll need a lot of practice.”

  “Isaac brought his violin,” Ed said, “and Sheila brought her clarinet. I might be able to borrow two violins from the musicians up here. We’ll play, maybe tomorrow.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Ed leaned over and kissed his father on the forehead. Paul’s back. He felt himself trembling slightly and repressed some tears. He could not speak, but then, there was little more to say.

  Jim had said his goodbyes, or, more accurately, farewells. He would see them all again, probably sooner than he expected.

  He sat in a waiting room. He would be leaving the Descartes space colony in an hour on the next Earth shuttle. At least that was when the shuttle was scheduled to leave. It would no doubt be late, what with delays and the problem of the very few phobic travelers who still insisted on donning space suits before the trip, so distrustful were they of the craft.

  Jim had been on Descartes for two days, exercising and adjusting his body to its three-quarters of Earth gravity before returning home. He still felt somewhat heavy and weary, but better than when he first arrived.

  He did not care for the space colony and would be glad to see the last of it, Descartes offended him aesthetically; the hollowed-out landscape inside the cylindrical structure was to him a poor imitation of Earth’s fields and forests, as bothersome to him as the trees and plants in the underground lunar settlement had been. There was no point in trying to transplant pieces of Earth which looked woefully out of place in such alien settings. Better, he thought, to cultivate the particular beauties of the tunnels under the bleak lunar surface or the space colony, creating something that would have more coherence. Better to recognize the fact that one was not on Earth, to attempt to be in tune with the new environment. Oddly enough, some of the younger people on Luna had agreed with his views.

  Jim adjusted the reading screen attached to the end of one of his chair’s arms, bringing it closer to his chest. He punched a button and the words of a newsfax sheet began to appear on the screen’s flat surface. He scanned it quickly. There was an editorial about Paul’s resusitation, oddly void of sensationalism or panderings to fear. That seemed to be the pattern in the few print-outs Jim had seen. It was almost as if people had been expecting it and were prepared to accept it. He remembered what Mike had told him about Lilo’s reaction. But this might just be the calm before the storm, he thought to himself. He imagined that angry protests might begin before long.

  They had, all the clones, spent the last two days before Jim’s departure together. They had been more at ease then, sometimes chattering about Paul, sometimes falling into an uneasy silence about him. They had talked mostly of other things. Mike had seemed more easygoing, Kira less tense but a bit depressed, suffering a letdown after her months of work. Sheila had confided in him, telling him about Isaac’s plans while he sought to reassure her.

  He still carried a numb pain inside him, a pain that would occasionally seize his heart or his throat when he saw something or someone that reminded him of Carole’s thick dark hair or her small chubby hands. But the sorrow had subsided at least a little.

  He felt something push against his leg and looked down. A young girl, no more than ten or so, was picking up a ball that had rolled near his feet. “Excuse me,” she said politely. She had coppery skin and short frizzy dark hair. Except for the small gold earrings in her ears and the name “Alia” embroidered on her red overalls, he might, have taken her for a little boy. She scampered away with her ball.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and let his mind drift. He recalled his journey to Descartes aboard the moon shuttle. The shuttle had passed the almost-completed Nikita S. Khrushchev, that cathedral to humanity’s new gods, the product of thousands of engineers and crafts-people. The ship was a prayer to the universe, a request for its secrets, the embodiment of an enter

  prise based largely on faith. But the priests and priestesses of this shrine would not wait for revelations; they would actively seek them. Their chants and holy words would utilize the power of mathematics, observation, and physical laws.

  Jim remembered how small and frail the Khrushchev had seemed from a distance. It would seem even smaller in the space between stars. Al would be on that ship, or one of its companions. For a moment, he wondered again at how his brother could face the risk and uncertainty of such a voyage.

  But Al’s decision was not really surprising. Jim had taken risks, foolish ones, and faced uncertainty
himself, living as he had. Kira had faced it in her work with Paul as the subject, Ed when he had finally decided to live alone. Mike was facing it now, having to redefine his relationship with Lilo and with others, with no assurance that it would work out; his replicator might topple the world’s economic systems, once based on scarcity and now based on the equitable distribution of technology and the solar system’s resources.

  We’ll all have to change, Jim thought sadly. I can’t deal with any of this. He glanced around the waiting room. Passengers sat in the bright red chairs, staring at reading screens, talking, or sipping drinks brought from the nearby bar. One small stocky woman was chewing tobacco, the only way a smoker could survive in the space colony which, like the moon, allowed no smoking. Occasionally she spat into one of the white spittoons. The little girl named Alia was seated next to a brown-skinned man, presumably her father, clothed in white overalls.

  He remembered his last meeting with Al. His brother had brought Simone Tran along. Jim had wondered how Al could leave her behind until he realized that there was no alternative that made any sense. I should have let Carole go, not dragged her along like an excess piece of baggage. Remorse seized him, the pain circled his throat again, and he lowered his head, staring for a moment at the pale blue floor until he regained his composure.

  Well, Paul was alive, at least. No matter what he might think of Kira’s work, of what it might do to the world, he could not reasonably wish that Paul had remained dead or should return to that state. He was alive, and Jim would grow to accept it, in fact be happy about it. He would have to try to think of the changes that would take place in a more positive way. People untimely severed from each other could be reunited; death could become a choice at the end of a rich and fulfilling life instead of an unavoidable conclusion that hovered over all from the moment of birth.

  He would have to rethink everything if he were not to be only a voice of the past, an interesting irrelevancy. His entire aesthetic, all his work, had taken as its presupposition the inevitability of death, the ultimately hopeless struggle against the universe’s overwhelming odds. What would he find to write about in the world Kira envisioned? What could anyone possibly find in his work that would be at all valuable?

  Kira had tried to tell him. She had told him of a people who might find time to explore both the vastness of space and the almost infinite capacities of their own minds. She had told him of a world where life would no longer be a flower blooming briefly before fading and passing away; where it might itself become an art, shaped and developed beyond anything now possible. His task might become something new; in addition to depicting, refining, and interpreting human experience within a linguistic and dramatic structure, he might also become the creator of scenarios that people could construct and experience for themselves. Such an art would be demanding, calling on every resource of the artist. It would require new structures, new rules and limitations, new purposes. He did not know if he was capable of participating in such an art.

  He sensed a movement at his side and looked up. The little girl named Alia stood there, her father at her side. “Excuse me,” the man said, “but are you one of the Swensons? You look a great deal like a holophoto I once saw in a story about you.” The man’s voice had a faint British intonation.

  “I’m Jim Swenson,” he replied. The question did not really bother him now. Few people were that interested in them any more, and he had been so isolated recently that he had almost forgotten how he had once felt about inquisitive people.

  “I’m Andrew Alcott and this is my daughter Alia. She wanted to meet you.”

  “I’m a clone too,” the child said. “Father told me you were the first one.”

  “I was one of the first,” Jim responded. “I have three brothers and a sister who were cloned with me. Are you a clone of your father?” He glanced from Alia’s face to Alcott’s and realized his question was ridiculous. The father’s face was round with small dark smiling eyes; the daughter’s slender, with a turned-up nose and large hazel eyes.

  “No, Alia’s not my clone. She was cloned from her sister.” Alcott’s face grew more serious. “Years ago, my wife died in a train accident near London. I was crushed by her death, so saddened that I fear I neglected my daughter Anna, the only child I had. She died only a few months later. I had taken her on a picnic in the countryside and she somehow wandered away from me. It was days before they found her at the bottom of a small pond. She had never learned to swim.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jim said, not knowing what else he could say.

  “I petitioned to have Anna cloned. You must know what a difficult business that is, since permission is rarely granted except in the case of certain exceptional people or in unusual circumstances. I realized of course that Anna couldn’t be returned to me, but I wanted the chance to be a better father to a child like her, who would be a part of my dead wife as well.” He looked down at his daughter. “Alia was cloned for me. She renewed my life. As soon as she was old enough to understand, I explained to her who she was.”

  “What was it like, Mr. Swenson?” Alia asked. “Being one of the first, I mean.”

  Jim was silent for a moment, considering his reply, “In some ways it was hard, I guess,” he said finally. “We were different and people were a little afraid of what we might be. But most of the time we had the same problems everybody else has. Maybe in a way we were better off. At least we had each other.” He watched the girl, wanting to say something to her that might be important for her to realize. “We knew we were really wanted too,” he went on. “That’s important for any child. A lot of people, even now, are born almost by chance. But your father, like my own, was willing to go to some trouble to make sure that you came into the world. You don’t ever have to feel guilty or unloved.”

  Alia nodded gravely. He could nor be sure that she understood everything he had said, but maybe some of it got through or would at least remain in her memory for a time she might need it.

  “Are you waiting for the shuttle to the Dallas-Fort Worth field?” Alcott asked.

  “Yes,” Jim replied.

  “Would you join me for a drink? I believe we still have some time ahead of us.”

  “I’d be delighted.” He got up and walked toward the bar with Alcott and Alia. A fleeting thought jostled against his mind, then fled before he could grasp it. Somehow he knew that it was important to talk to Andrew Alcott and his daughter, that they might provide a key to his difficulties.

  Kira, sitting next to Al, watched as Paul, lying on one of the gymnasium mats, lifted and then lowered a barbell that would have weighed almost two hundred pounds on Earth. Behind him, several people jogged on moving platforms near the back wall while wearing weighted belts. Six children in elasticized suits, designed to help them use their muscles as much as possible, performed acrobatics in the center of the floor.

  “He’s doing pretty well, isn’t he?” Al said.

  “He was always healthy,” she replied. “We may still have to take him home in a water tank, though. We’ll have to do it by stages, going to Lagrange first, then to Descartes, and he may still need an exoskeleton on Earth for a while, to hold him up.”

  “I’ll probably be home soon after you leave, we’ll get some vacation time before training begins and I may bring Simone with me.” He smiled, but his eyes seemed pensive. “Maybe I shouldn’t be going. By the time we get back, or even before, you may be sending your redesigned immortal superhumans out into space. Maybe we’ll meet them along the way.”

  “You’ll know before you leave if that’s likely. You may be leaving with most of our techniques by then. You’ll change too.”

  “God knows what we’ll come back to.”

  Kira looked at Paul and then back to her brother. “I don’t know,” she said. “You should probably talk to Paul about it. I imagine in some way he knows more about that now than I do.”

  As he walked back to the hospital through the corridor, Paul felt a little tired, bu
t stronger than he had been. He grew conscious of an emptiness in his stomach. He was hungry. He hoped that supper would taste better than the bland stuff that had passed for lunch.

  He was still a bit puzzled. Even with the return of some of his lost memories, he could not feel particularly paternal toward the two people named Al and Kira who were walking with him, nor to their brothers. This was perhaps inevitable, but at least he did feel some degree of closeness to them, undoubtedly because of their basic biological similarity.

  He rifled through his thoughts, turning them over in his mind. He had been told that the hypnotechnician would only aid him in his recollections; the man would not plant incidents in his mind. He was sure the technician had kept to that procedure. Yet it seemed as though his memories had been grafted on to him. There was no emotional connection with the images of people and far-off places that had settled uneasily into his mind, with the pressured, somewhat frantic individual named Paul Swenson who had existed twenty years before. He did not share these ideas with the two people who were accompanying him through the hallway, sensing that they might be hurt or disturbed by them.

  The experience of death had already receded in his mind. It had become a distantly remembered event, a bit disorienting but otherwise of no great importance.

  He could look forward with some anticipation. He had much ahead of him. He would have to catch up on his scientific studies. He might even be able to aid in some way the expedition going starward. If not, he would still have time to do some work, to read, maybe do some writing. It did nor really make any difference what he had done during all the years of his previous existence. He could complete whatever he had left undone and then try something else. He had time enough for almost anything he wanted to do.