Collected Short Fiction, page 27
“Did you get my message, Paul?” said Emma Valois. She was standing in the doorway of Hidey’s office, arms folded across her chest. “I taped it on your phone.”
“No, I didn’t.” They entered the office and sat down. “I should have checked, but I was tired when I got in last night.”
“Well, it looks good on the Hathaways. They’re so well adjusted they make me feel unbalanced.” Emma crossed her legs and tugged at her dark green slacks. “I don’t know how many others you talked to, but I’d wager a year’s salary on the Hathaways. I can’t be specific about anything without violating their confidence, but I’d hire them in a minute to look after my kids, and they’re a handful sometimes, believe me.”
“Good, at least that’s one less problem for me. I just hope they take the job. Where’s Hidey?”
“He just went to the lab to check on things. I’ve been trying to convince him he needs more for breakfast than coffee and a cigarette, maybe you can . . .”
“Paul.” Hidey was at the door, his face anxious. “Come to the lab, we’ve got trouble.” Hidey disappeared down the hall. Paul rose from his seat and followed him, with Emma close behind.
As he entered the lab, he could see Nancy Portland and a male assistant cowering near the wall by the door. On the other side of the room near the chambers, Elijah Jabbar was holding the shoulders of a small pale man. “I ought to punch your face in,” Jabbar was shouting as he shook the man. “You stupid son of a bitch, I’ll see you blacklisted at every lab in the country.”
Hidey began to pull at Jabbar’s arm. “Come on, Eli,” he pleaded, “that’s not going to help us now. Let him go.”
“What happened?” asked Paul, hurrying toward the three men.
Jabbar released the small man. “Tell him, Hidey.” Hidey turned and looked up at Paul.
“It’s one of the clones, Paul.” Hidey seemed to be saying the words only with great difficulty. “The umbilical, well, it got clogged somehow, we’re still not sure how. Johnson here was on night duty, he should have noticed it right away and taken emergency measures, spliced in a new section of tubing.”
“He was asleep,” said Jabbar. “Nancy found him when she came in this morning. The bastard was asleep.”
“It was a mistake,” the man named Johnson protested. “It could happen to anybody. I only dozed off for a couple of minutes, it seemed like, and then when Nancy came in, we hurried as fast as we could with a new tube . . .”
“A couple of minutes,” shouted Jabbar. “You must have slept half the goddamn night away.”
“Which one?” asked Paul. He felt stunned, as if someone had just hit him in the stomach. “Which one?”
“Number six,” said Hidey. “The female we were a little worried about.” He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one, apparently oblivious to restrictions. No one stopped him.
“Is she all right? Is she going to be all right?”
Jabbar turned away from Johnson. “No,” he said. “I checked the gauges. That fetus was deprived of oxygen for quite a while, it’s been damaged. It’s barely alive now.”
“She’s still alive then.” Paul wiped his face with his sleeve. He wandered over to the side of the sixth chamber and stared at the tiny fetus. It seemed defenseless, curled up in its womb.
“With brain damage,” said Hidey. “I think it’s dying now, Paul, and even if it doesn’t, it won’t be normal.”
“At least she’s alive,” said Paul.
“Paul, are you listening to me?” Hidey was at his side, holding his arm. “We have to make a decision. Do you want this fetus to survive in that state? Wouldn’t it be more merciful not to allow it to? You’re going to have plenty of problems as it is. I think we should abort.”
“No.”
“Paul, consider the child, what things will be like for her.”
“No.”
Johnson was wringing his hands. “I’m sorry, Dr. Swenson,” he said. “It was an accident.”
Paul turned away from the ectogenesis chambers and stared at the pale laboratory walls. He was acting unreasonably, he knew that. This was an experiment and he knew there would be risks and spossibly mistakes. There were problems enough with natural children. It would be nothing more than an abortion. Yet he felt a sense of loss.
“I’m sorry,” muttered Johnson.
“It’s settled,” Jabbar suddenly said. His deep voice drummed at Paul’s ears. “It’s dead. No life functions.”
Paul turned back to Hidey and could think of nothing to say.
“I’ll take care of things here,” said Jabbar. “Why don’t you two go back to the office.”
“Stay here, Johnson,” Hidey said, “I’ll talk to you later.” Paul left with his friend, joining Emma at the doorway of the laboratory. She said nothing, quietly following them back to Hidey’s office.
When they were seated, Hidey pulled a bottle from his desk. “Have some whiskey, Paul, you’ll feel better.”
“No thanks.” Hidey poured some for himself and Emma. “I’m not really that depressed, Hidey, but I can’t help feeling a little sad about the whole business. Number six. She didn’t even have a name. I guess she’ll just go down the chute with all the other failed experiments.”
“Come on, Paul, you know we’re not that callous. She’ll go to the crematorium and we can bury her ashes somewhere if you like. I’ve been working with life for too long now not to feel a lot of respect for it, or sorrow when it dies, in whatever form.” Hidey drummed at his desk top with his fingers. “God, how I hate death. This may be the first step in a battle against it, preserving your genetic traits in these clones. Someday maybe we’ll beat death altogether, and I hope we’re all around to see it. That fetus didn’t die for nothing, Paul.”
“I know,” said Paul.
“Considering the circumstances, I guess it’s just as well.” He wondered how the other clones would feel when they learned about the death of their sister, as they were bound to some day. They might regard it as a sad accident, or they might react with horror. There was no way to know how it would affect them.
“Now I’ve got another problem.” Hidey dragged thoughtfully on his cigarette. “That idiot Johnson. If I can keep Eli from committing homicide, I have to keep Johnson around until we release this story. If we fire him now, he may start talking. I’ve got to convince him that we won’t and give him something innocuous to do until I can bounce him out of here.” Hidey sighed. “I just hope he buys it, that’s all.”
“And we’ve got to tell the Hathaways about the clones,” said Emma. “I think we can trust them, though. We’d better do it soon, in case they have second thoughts about your offer, Paul.”
“I’ll tell them,” said Paul, thinking about how they might react to the news.
ix
“THAT’S EVERYTHING, up to this point,” said Paul. He had invited the Hathaways to the house for dinner, but had eaten almost nothing himself while relating the story. Now he stared at his still full plate, hesitating to look at them. Finally he forced his head up. He had left out nothing, not even the fate of the sixth clone.
Zuni was sipping her wine. She put the glass down and raised her head. “It sounds,” said Zuni, “as though you want us to take care of identical quintuplets. It’s about the same thing, isn’t it?”
“There have never been any identical quintuplets as far as I know,” said Bill. “Twins, yes, but . . .”
“And they’ll be like you,” she interrupted.
“There’s no doubt about that,” said Paul. “I’m the only parent, after all.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Bill. “You’re a nice fellow, Paul. I imagine the kids will be asking questions all the time when they’re not being quiet and thoughtful, and doing quadratic equations by the time they’re four. And they’ll be good cooks too. That was a great dinner.” He patted his stomach.
“And,” said Zuni, “you’ll want us to treat them as individuals, not just as a group.”
“How,” asked Paul, “did you know that?”
“I had two friends once who were twins. In fact, that’s what people called them, the O’Hara twins, never Mary and Molly. Their mother used to dress them in identical outfits, the whole business. They got to resent it after a while, but they were very dependent on each other too. It’ll be a thousand times worse with your kids, they’ll be just like you as well as each other, and people are bound to make comparisons. They won’t even be mirror images of each other, the way twins are. They’ll be completely identical.” She smiled slightly. “You want to be sure that each one has a sense of being a person in his own right.”
“You sound,” said Paul carefully, “as if you’ve already taken the job.”
“Of course,” said Bill. “We’re looking forward to it, and to meeting the kids as well.”
Paul felt relieved. Maybe things were not going to be as bad as he thought. Zuni and Bill hadn’t found anything to fear in the idea of clones. On the other hand, he thought pessimistically, how many people were like the Hathaways? He had been lucky to find them at all.
“By the way,” said Zuni, “when do we meet them?”
“In the middle of September,” Paul answered, “if everything goes as planned.”
“No reason to think it won’t,” said Bill. “An artificial womb isn’t going to have labor pains in the middle of the night.”
x
PAUL STOOD on his front porch, surveying the lawn. His house stood at the top of a small hill and at the end of the road leading past his neighbors’ houses. The small suburban neighborhood was beginning to look a bit run down. Many people were moving into arcologies like Alasand, where they could live in houses on the various levels and yet be within walking distance of whatever they needed. Some had moved back to the city, which was almost pleasant without cars roaring through the streets. But Paul had grown used to the house. It was almost surrounded on three sides by wooded land; since suburbs were becoming unprofitable, a lot of land that would have been developed was reverting to its natural state.
Bill and Zuni had decided to move into Paul’s house at the beginning of June and he had readily agreed. It would give them time to feel at home in the house and, more importantly, feel at home with him. The Hathaways still worked at Alasand on weekends, but would quit their jobs there in August, take a vacation, and then begin their new job with the clones.
They had brought surprisingly little with them when they moved in. They owned few books, having access to whatever materials they might need through the “learning booth” computer linkup that almost every home had. Paul owned two booths, and would probably get a third when the clones were older, but he also owned about three thousand books in paperback and hard covers. The Hathaways, as did many people, purchased microfiche copies of those they wanted to keep and read them on portable readers. Paul was old-fashioned, and still found pleasure in holding a book in his hands, in the smell of old print and paper.
Zuni and Bill had quickly settled in one of the upstairs bedrooms down the hall from Paul’s room. Almost immediately, Zuni decided to paint the two rooms which would serve as nurseries for the clones. Luckily, the house was big enough so that by the time the children started school, and the Hathaways moved out, each clone could have a separate bedroom. Paul could easily make room for the things in his study in his bedroom, and two other rooms had been used for guests. Eviane had insisted on a large house. She had lived in apartments all her life and had wanted room to sprawl.
The weather was warm and sunny. Gentle summer breezes ruffled Paul’s hair as he stood on the porch. Billowy white clouds sailed across the clear blue sky. Zuni was upstairs, busily painting walls, hoping to finish the rooms before the end of June, when the weather would become hot, humid and “lazy-making”, as she put it. She had also managed to buy five used cribs from the Alasand child-care center. Paul had been ready to buy new ones, but Zuni had persuaded him that would be a waste of money. Instead, she got new mattresses for the cribs, painted each crib a different color, and made toys out of old beads and wooden objects that could be attached to the cribs. These, she explained, would help the children develop their perceptual abilities. She had also insisted on installing a sound system in each nursery, after telling Paul of the marvelous results they had at Alasand when classical music was played for the children. “We have to stimulate them,” she told Paul. “We have to encourage them to explore with all their senses. We already know that music can work as an antidepressant and we think it helps the children in understanding mathematical concepts. It might make them smarter, believe it or not.” As it turned out, Paul had saved little money on the used cribs after purchasing the sound system.
Bill was puttering around on the lawn mower in the front yard. He turned slightly in his seat and waved at Paul. “Hey,” he shouted, “how about joining me with a cold beer?”
“Okay,” Paul shouted back.
“I’ll be done in a couple of minutes.”
Paul headed back inside and went through the living room to the kitchen. He rummaged in the refrigerator for the beer. He was surprised at how easily he had adjusted to having the couple in his home. There were no arguments about how to handle things around the house. They had quickly settled into a routine, each taking on different household tasks in turn. It was good to hear voices in the house again, voices that managed to take his mind off the spirit of Eviane that he often felt was lingering in the rooms.
Bill was already on the porch when he returned, seated in the wooden rocking chair he had appropriated since moving in. Paul handed Bill his beer and sat in the plastic lounge chair next to him.
“That tastes good,” said Bill, taking a swig. “I’d better relax while I can. Zuni’ll be ready for the second room soon and she needs me to paint the ceiling.”
“You two are working pretty hard already, you’re going to be worn out by the time the kids arrive.”
“Don’t worry, when we’re done, you’re welcome to polish the floors and move in the cribs while we relax.” Bill swallowed more beer. “Paul,” he went on, suddenly sounding serious, “I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s something bothering me.”
“What is it?”
“Maybe it’s nothing. When Zuni was visiting our friend Alice at Alasand yesterday, she ran into this fellow, well, she didn’t run into him exactly. She thought for a while he was following her. Then she got annoyed, turned around, walked up to the guy, and asked him if he was looking for something. He gave her some story about looking for a friend and losing his way. But then he started to pump her, began to ask a lot of questions. It seemed innocuous at First, she thought maybe he was trying to pick her up or something, but then he mentioned you.”
Paul was startled. “What did he say?”
“Not much at first. He said he heard we were working for you and he wondered why, since he knew we were working at the child care center. He turned out to know a lot about us. He gave her a lot of talk about what a great fellow you were, how he read one of your books once and so on. She was ready to tell him off, but she controlled herself and said you’d hired us for some editorial work. It’s a clumsy story, I guess, but our friends bought it. She said this guy looked like he knew it was a lie.”
“Look, Bill, he could just be a nosy guy.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but then Zuni described him to me. I know this sounds weird, but I could swear he was a man. I saw hanging around the biological sciences building the day Zuni and I went to meet Dr. Takamura and Dr. Jabbar. I wouldn’t have remembered him except that I could swear I saw him driving around this neighborhood the same damn day.”
“Couldn’t Zuni tell you if it was the same man?”
“No. She didn’t see him the day we went to the lab. Dr. Takamura’s coffee machine wasn’t working and I went to the lounge to get some. I saw the guy lurking at the end of the hall.”
“What did he look like?” Paul asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.
“A tall blond man, good-looking, with a lot of hair and a thick beard.”
“I’ve seen him,” said Paul, “intermittently. I thought maybe he was seeing one of the women students or something. I always had the feeling he was nosing around, but I thought I was getting paranoid.”
“Maybe he is looking around, but if he knew anything, you probably would have heard about it by now. It could be just chance.”
“Maybe.”
“How are the clones coming along?”
“Great. Eli says they should be very healthy kids.”
“Good.” Bill was silent for a few seconds, then went on. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, Paul, but I think I can be frank with you. I’ve been thinking a lot about cloning lately, and suddenly I realized that if it works, if the kids turn out to be normal, it means I could have my own kids.”
“You’re assuming,” said Paul, “that there won’t be any restrictions, that anybody would be allowed to clone and that facilities would be available.”
“That’s not the point. Let me see if I can explain it. I’ve known I was sterile ever since my teens. Frankly, it didn’t really bother me much, it didn’t affect my virility, I knew that, and I grew up in a family where my brother and sister were adopted. I adjusted to the fact that I would never have a child that was physically mine, whether we had artificial insemination or adopted or did both. But now . . .” Bill paused for a moment. “Now I know that theoretically at least I could have my own child. I don’t know how to explain it, but it started to matter to me. I honestly never thought it would. I know logically that it’s extremely doubtful I would ever be cloned, but emotionally . . .” Bill stopped.
“Do you think it’s going to bother you, Bill, being in this house with clones?”
“If I thought it would, I wouldn’t be here now—it wouldn’t be fair to you. But I did go to see Dr. Valois about it. She told me pretty much the same thing you did, said she thought new restrictions would probably be put in effect by somebody. She told me that eventually I would accept the fact and realize it wasn’t really possible for me to have a child, I had lived with it before and would again. It might just take a little while.” Bill finished his beer and placed the bottle next to his chair. “She’s probably right. I don’t resent you or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. She asked me if I wanted to stay, I told her I did, and she said I should.”
