Swans and Klons

by Nora Olsen

  “Please, help me,” Rubric whispered. “Please.”

  “Rubric, if I helped every sad case I saw, I would be lying on one of those gurneys. You have no idea.”

  It was hopeless.

  But then Shine deliberately overturned the entire instrument tray. “Oops,” she said, as the glittering instruments hit the floor with a crash.

  Just then, the petite Doctor opened the door. “The anesthesiologist is ready to—What’s going on in here?”

  “I’m so sorry, Doctor. I knocked this over.”

  “You’re terribly clumsy. All Klons are thickos.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Bring me a new tray of sterile instruments,” the Doctor ordered. “And don’t go flipping any more trays.”

  The Doctor remained in the room, out of Rubric’s sight, after Shine left. Rubric tried to send a mental pulse message of love to Salmon Jo. Maybe Salmon Jo would somehow feel something.

  “What’s taking that damn Klon so long?” the Doctor said. She left the room too.

  Rubric did not know how much longer she lay on the gurney, thinking about Salmon Jo. She didn’t think her thought pulses were getting through. Love was just a dream, and death was the only reality. She didn’t even deserve to see Salmon Jo one last time. It was better this way. Salmon Jo would find a new schatzie. The important thing was Salmon Jo would survive, and live a happy life.

  The next person who came into the room was the last person she expected.

  “Rubric, you are no end of trouble,” Panna Stencil Pavlina said. “Sometimes, I think you have no sense at all.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Rubric couldn’t understand what was going on.

  Stencil Pavlina’s dialogue with the Doctor, in which Stencil Pavlina repeatedly vouched for Rubric and promised to take responsibility for her, made no sense.

  “And I want her with all her kidneys,” Stencil Pavlina insisted.

  It wasn’t until Shine came in and jabbed something into Rubric’s abdomen—sure, what was a little more pain?—and said, “Congratulations, you’re one of us,” that Rubric understood.

  She had been chipped and was now a Klon.

  A Klon who was not an organ donor. Stencil Pavlina’s Klon.

  Shine gave Rubric an ill-fitting pair of leggings and a tunic, and Rubric was released. She followed Stencil Pavlina out of the hospital, dazed.

  “I must say, I expected a little more gratitude for saving your life,” Stencil Pavlina said, as they got into a tiny, hot-pink electric vehicle.

  “I am grateful,” Rubric said. “Very, very grateful. Thank you so much. It’s just that I’m a little disoriented.”

  Her words rang hollow. In fact, Rubric was not grateful to Stencil Pavlina. She was grateful to be alive. She couldn’t believe how delicious the autumn air smelled, with a crisp snap of winter in it. She was happy, even, to feel pain all over her body. But somehow her gratitude was not directed toward Stencil Pavlina. Her miraculous rescue seemed more cosmic than that, not something she could ascribe to any one entity. Especially not an entity like Stencil Pavlina.

  “I can well understand you’d be disoriented,” Stencil Pavlina said. “You’ve been in there for two days. And you very much smell like it.”

  “Two days? Really?” It had seemed like much longer.

  “Really.”

  “Stencil Pavlina, I haven’t eaten since…” Rubric wasn’t even sure. “Can we stop for some food first?”

  They stopped at the very same Comfort Station in downtown Lvodz where Rubric had changed into her phony Doctor’s robe. That was the last time she had eaten, Rubric realized. The toast was the best thing she’d ever eaten in her entire life. It was soft and hot and exploded with butteriness in her mouth. She almost cried. She gulped down three cups of tea before Stencil Pavlina even took a sip of hers.

  “Can you please explain what happened?” she asked Stencil Pavlina. “How is it that you’re here?”

  Stencil Pavlina was buttering her toast so that the butter was spread perfectly evenly. Rubric did that too, ordinarily.

  “I received a pulse from someone who claimed to be a Klon who is our Jeepie Similar.”

  Dream.

  “It said you had been captured by Doctors, and if I had any soul at all, I would do something to help you. Rather melodramatic, or so I thought. I had nothing else to do—inspiration has been failing me of late—and so I began to make some calls. After speaking to a shocking number of people, I did learn you had been taken for treatment here in Lvodz. And so I set out. I do think it is only fair and just for you to become a Klon, after everything you’ve done. But it is rather going too far to harvest your organs and then compost you. A truly bureaucratic frame of mind came up with that. No imagination, no flair. At incredible expense of spirit and rationing credits, I was able to secure you for my own, on a number of conditions.”

  “Why?” Rubric asked.

  “Why conditions or—”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “Oh, Rubric, exasperating as you are, I do care for you very much. It may irritate you to hear this, but you remind me so much of myself at your age: talented, rudderless, confused, susceptible to freakish ideas from others, prey to your overdeveloped sense of justice, unable to divine the purpose of life. We all get into scrapes, dear Rubric, but we don’t all destroy property. I have also always been fond of a good fire, but contained in a woodstove.”

  “Stencil Pavlina, what exactly did they tell you? Everything happened because I found out that humans and Klons are the same! We saw it on a spreadsheet, and—”

  Panna Stencil Pavlina interrupted her.

  “Most Pannas who are smart sense what you and your schatzie had to learn from a spreadsheet. The Klons are not human, because we say they’re not. It’s a construct. But constructs can be real. The experience of being a Klon makes them what they are, Klons.”

  Rubric wanted to tell her what scheiss she was talking, but Stencil Pavlina had saved her life less than an hour ago. She looked down at her plate.

  “A sulky Klon is even more unappealing than a sulky young Panna. Let me tell you the terms of your release to me. I had to pay half my rationing credits for the next seven years. We’ll be wearing out-of-style clothes and eating awful chazarai like this! No more swan-shaped ice cubes for me. If you disappear or set fires or make trouble, those credits are gone down the toilet for nothing. I also had to give both those Doctors a hefty bribe. So, right now, I am very poor. But it would have broken my heart if you had been composted. I am trusting you.”

  “All right, Stencil Pavlina,” Rubric murmured. She really was touched that Stencil Pavlina had sacrificed so much to help her.

  In the car again, Stencil Pavlina said, “You do understand that I don’t really consider you my Klon, Rubric. That was the only way I could get you out.”

  “Thank you,” Rubric said again.

  “Of course, I don’t know how to cook or clean, and I’ve had to de-acquisition the Gerdas because I can’t afford them anymore. So I’ll be expecting you to help out around the place. But, naturally, the main thing you’ll be doing is making art.”

  “Really?” It sounded too good to be true.

  “Absolutely. I’m going to put you right to work. You’ll start the moment we get home, which will be late tonight, or early tomorrow morning, depending on how you look at it. This little tin can only goes forty klicks an hour. Unlike the vans you’ve been stealing. You can start brainstorming during the ride, in fact. I want to have a big show in the late spring. It will blow everyone away! Some people mock me because I haven’t made anything new in so long. But that’s all going to change, and people will be stunned. I know you can do it, Rubric.”

  Rubric understood now. She would make the art, and Stencil Pavlina would take the credit. So what? There were worse things.

  “You see, Rubric, Klons have no souls, so all your creativity belongs to me.”

  “That sounds fine with me
,” Rubric said. “It’s a fair deal.”

  Rubric certainly didn’t feel like she had a soul anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  That night, Rubric and Stencil Pavlina stopped at another Comfort Station.

  “Your stench is overpowering,” Stencil Pavlina told her. “I want you to wash yourself thoroughly. I’m too tired to drive through the night, anyway. I’m getting a headache.”

  First of all, they had more tea and toast. Who Shall Be My Schatzie? was playing on the screen. Rubric was riveted. She couldn’t believe it was the same season that had been on before all this trouble started, before she and Salmon Jo had fled. Everything seemed so dreamlike now to Rubric, that the drama on the screen seemed more real than her own life. It was the antepenultimate episode, in which this season’s heroine had to choose between two bewitching Pannas, who both loved her truly. Next week, her choice would be revealed, and the last episode would show the key-exchanging ceremony. The new schatzies would wear exquisite gowns and crowns of myrtle as they pledged their love for each other and received the keys to their new shared home. Rubric used to daydream about having a key-exchanging ceremony with Salmon Jo one day, but that was clearly impossible now.

  Even better than the food and the edfotunement was the shower Rubric took in the overnight room. She turned the water as hot as it could possibly go, until the bathroom filled with clouds of steam and her skin began to turn red. She felt as though all her experiences were being washed away. It was so luxurious to scrub at her skin with the soapy loofah, one of the many small niceties that didn’t exist in the Land of the Barbarous Ones. Rubric pictured herself becoming a brand-new person with every invisible cell of dead skin that she exfoliated. At Stencil Pavlina’s, she could take showers all the time. Finally, Rubric began to feel faint, and she had to sit down, cradling her head on her knees as the water pounded on her back. She fingered the sore place on her belly where she had been chipped. If Salmon Jo were here, she would give a highly technical explanation of why Rubric felt lightheaded, something about capillaries or that kind of thing. Better not to think about Salmon Jo. By the time Rubric got out of the shower, Stencil Pavlina was snoring in her cot.

  The decadence continued as Rubric crawled into her own cot. When had she last slept in a real bed, rather than on cold ground? Rubric reassured herself that even Klons were allowed to sleep in beds. Some light housekeeping would be way easier than the labor she’d done in the Land of the Barbarous Ones. Plus, she’d never have to set eyes on a Cretinous Male or a pregnant woman. Materially, she’d be much better off.

  But it wasn’t enough. Rubric wanted desperately to believe that beds and hot showers were all she needed, all she wanted out of life. But she found hot tears leaking out of her eyes and pooling on the pillow as she thought about what she really needed. She swallowed back her tears so loudly she was afraid it would rouse Stencil Pavlina.

  I can’t stay, Rubric realized. I can’t do this.

  Rubric decided to wait just a little longer, to be sure Stencil Pavlina was deeply asleep. Rubric must have fallen asleep while she was waiting, though, because when her eyes suddenly snapped open, the moon had risen. Moonlight was shining into the window.

  It felt like her very bones were tired. Rubric considered getting just a little more sleep, or even staying a few days at Stencil Pavlina’s, to give herself a chance to build herself up. But she knew it was now or never. It was so hard to sit up in bed and swing her bare feet out from the warm covers and onto the cold floor.

  Stencil Pavlina rolled over restlessly in her cot as Rubric was rooting through her neatly folded tunic for the key to the pink vehicle. That scared Rubric so much that, as soon as she found the key, she crept out of the room, without even trying to find her shoes and stockings.

  The night remained still and quiet as Rubric let herself into the pink car and started it up. Good thing electric motors were so quiet. Rubric was a little worried that she didn’t feel even a moment’s remorse for betraying Stencil Pavlina immediately after she had saved her life. Did feeling remorse over not feeling remorse count?

  Rubric only drove a few miles before a terrible thought hit her like an icy wave in the face. She was chipped now! She had to get that chip out, or she would be caught immediately. What was she doing, worrying about an ethical dilemma when she had a Klon chip in her abdomen?

  Rubric passed a lake surrounded by reeds. A sign told her it was Wenceslah Lake. She pulled over. There had to be something sharp in this vehicle. Probably Stencil Pavlina carried a precision art knife at all times and she could have taken it if she had thought of it. Rubric berated herself for being so thicko.

  At last, Rubric found a flashlight-shaped tool labeled Window Punch Seatbelt Cutter. She supposed it was for if you got in an accident and were trapped in the car. There was a retractable pointy bit. Rubric reclined the seat and pulled up her tunic. She took a deep breath. She hadn’t even been able to watch the Klons cut out their chips. How was she supposed to do this?

  “No choice,” she muttered.

  In a way, it wasn’t as bad as she had feared, once she finally got up the nerve to cut herself. Her chip had been placed just that day. All she had to do was reopen the wound the Medical Assistant Klon had made, and the chip revealed itself. She remembered the other Klons, digging around in their bloody wounds trying to find the chip. It hurt, but nothing compared to crossing the fence. Rubric climbed out of the vehicle, clutching the slick chip. The lake was blue in the moonlight, and the moon was reflected in the center. Just a little dizzy, she threw the chip into the lake. Maybe they would think Rubric had jumped in and drowned. And then driven off in the pink car?

  There was blood all over the seat, but Rubric paid it no mind. She hadn’t known that she had this icy core inside her, that she was the kind of person who could betray someone and then perform surgery on herself without flinching. Rubric realized she had learned something from Panna Stencil Pavlina, after all. She could be as mercenary as her Jeepie Similar if she had to be.

  *

  It was still dark when Rubric reached the wall.

  When she realized she had brought nothing to help her climb the wall, she cried. She just couldn’t do it alone. Cut all the seatbelts and tie them together? Too short. Hopeless. She had made it this far, but she was totally screwed. Salmon Jo would never even know how close she had come, how much she wanted to get back to her.

  As dawn broke, she lifted her tear-stained face from the steering wheel and gazed out at the rosy horizon. As if in a dream, Rubric saw an object rising into the sky. It was shaped like a lightbulb. The light was behind it, so it was just a dark silhouette. It was either getting bigger or coming closer.

  The object stopped climbing higher and hung in the sky. Then it floated closer. Rubric caught her breath as she realized what it was. A hot-air balloon.

  The balloon was ungainly but beautiful. As the dawn grew brighter, Rubric could see that it was tethered to the ground in some way, on the Barbarous side of the fence. But the balloon was drifting purposefully over the fence. Sparks flashed from the tether where it intersected the fence. Now it was on Rubric’s side of the fence, and on Rubric’s side of the wall. Rubric started the car and drove toward the spot where the balloon hovered, bumping along slowly over the uneven ground. The tiny electric car wasn’t made to be an off-road vehicle, and the noise of rocks hitting the undercarriage was tremendous. Rubric didn’t care. Now she could see that ropes with sandbags attached were keeping the balloon in a stable position.

  A profusion of ropes, like a net, covered the top of the balloon, and from these hung strong cords that were attached to a wicker basket. The basket was a little smaller than the electric car Rubric had just left. From the basket hung two things. First, a big sheet with KLONS ARE HUMAN written on it and a badly drawn picture of a five-legged dog. Second, a rope ladder dragging a sandbag along the ground. The ladder bobbed up and down, swaying in the wind. A skinny figure clung to the ladder. Climbing
down.

  “Salmon Jo!” Rubric whispered. She drove as close to the ladder as she could. Jumping out, she left the car running and the door open. She scrambled over rocks and grabbed at the bottom of the ladder as it swayed in her face, whipping just out reach. Looking up, Rubric could see Salmon Jo clinging to the rungs about halfway down.

  A huge gust of wind brought the ladder closer. Rubric caught it and began to climb.

  The ascent was terrifying. The ladder twisted and tilted. But Rubric had maxed out on being scared. The only important thing was her shaking hands grasping higher rungs. The rope felt funny on her bare feet. She didn’t look down. She didn’t look up. Just when she was wondering how it was possible to climb so far, she touched the rough side of the basket.

  “You’re almost there!” It was Salmon Jo’s voice. Was Rubric still climbing? She couldn’t even tell. She felt strong hands grabbing her arms. She was at the top, and here were Salmon Jo and Dream, hauling her into the basket.

  Rubric couldn’t believe she was really holding Salmon Jo’s warm, strong hand.

  Dream was babbling, “Ru, I’m so glad you’re okay! Salmon Jo almost killed me when she heard what happened. She shamed all of Hot Buttered Toast Town into working around the clock to make the balloon.”

  There was more, but Rubric wasn’t listening. She took Salmon Jo into her arms and wrapped her arms around her waist.

  “I’m so sorry,” she tried to say, but Salmon Jo’s kisses didn’t let her speak. Finally, Salmon Jo tilted her head back so she could look at Rubric’s face and stroke her cheek. Rubric couldn’t stop shaking. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel blood singing through every part of her body. Her face was strangely hot. She realized the heat was coming from the balloon above and so was the rushing sound in her ears.