Collected Short Fiction, page 29
Suddenly the car began to slow down. It came to a stop quickly and Paul could feel his belt holding him as he moved forward, then fell back.
The cars around them had stopped too. Paul looked over at the part of the highway going in the opposite direction. The cars there had halted also.
“I think we’re going to be late for dinner,” said Jon. “I hope it doesn’t take them too long to make repairs.”
There was nothing to do but wait in the car, which could not be driven manually while still on the highway. It was dangerous to get out since traffic could start moving again at any time. “This is the first time,” said Paul, “I ever heard of the highway breaking down.”
“Everything seems to, sooner or later,” Jon muttered. The car’s air cooling system had stopped functioning also. Paul leaned over and rolled down his window.
“Hey, mister.” A burly-looking man in the car on Paul’s right was leaning out his window. The man had apparently removed his belt and harness. “You know what the hell’s happening?”
“Probably a computer failure,” said Paul. “About all we can do is wait.” He didn’t tell the man it might take a while. Modern transportation systems rarely suffered breakdowns and were doubtless more efficient than their predeccessors. But if the repairs needed were complex, and they usually were, specialists would have to be rushed to the source of the problem and would have to take their time repairing it. Repairs at least were a more complicated process.
The people in the car on Paul’s left began to honk their horn. Paul glanced at them and saw that the car had five teenagers in it. One of them opened a door and stepped out onto the highway. He was a tall boy, dressed only in a pair of green shorts. He stumbled a bit as he came closer to Jon’s car.
“Get back in your car,” Jon shouted at the boy. “It’s dangerous, standing out there.”
The boy peered into the car with expressionless grey eyes. “We’re not going anywhere,” he said softly. “I might as well get some air.”
“These cars could start moving any minute,” Jon went on. The boy watched him coldly. Then he turned away and motioned to his companions.
“Come on out,” he yelled. The other adolescents clamored into the road. A small dark girl, giggling loudly, hurried to Paul’s side of the car.
“Come on out, mister,” she said, grinning. “You’re kind of cute for an old man.”
“Get back in your car,” he said. “These cars might start moving.”
“They’d warn us first, wouldn’t they? Sure they would.” She leaned in the window. Her hands, dancing on the car door, seemed to have a life of their own, disconnected from her body. Her black eyes seemed glazed.
She’s on something, thought Paul. One of her companions, a tall lean black girl dressed in loincloth and beads, was hollering at the burly man on his right. Paul had heard of the kids that cruised the automated highway, punching out distant destinations while they drugged themselves in their cars. There was little that anyone could do about the situation as long as the young people endangered no one else, which they were unlikely to do as long as they remained on the automated highways.
Someone pulled the dark-eyed girl away from his window and Paul found himself gazing at a scholarly-looking boy with glasses and freckles.
“Excuse me,” said the boy. His tongue seemed to trip over the words. “I feel kind of sick. You got any stomach stuff?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t.”
“That’s too bad. I think I’m going to vomit.” The boy’s speech was slurred. He squinted at Paul. “I’ve seen you,” he said in sonorous tones. “I know who you are, I know I do. I watch the news a lot.” The boy sighed. Paul could hear the black girl and the burly man exchanging remarks. “You’re the guy with the clones, Paul Swenson. You want to hear a good one? What’s two identical tornadoes? Bet you can’t guess.” The boy paused. “Cyclones.” Paul could feel the perspiration on his face grow cold.
The discovery seemed to galvanize the boy. “Hey!” he screamed at his companions. “It’s Paul Swenson over here in this car!”
“Who’s he?” asked the dark-eyed girl. The black girl came to the window and glared at Paul.
“He’s the man,” she said slowly, “who thinks he’s so damn fine there should be more of him around.”
“What the hell,” said the burly man. He was staring at Paul with astonishment. He was leaning far out of his window now, his thick arms over the car door. “You’re some kind of a pervert, Swenson, you know that? Why can’t you have kids like a normal dude instead of freaks?”
Paul felt a tap on his shoulder and turned. “Paul,” said Jon, “one of the kids passed out on the road.” Jon began to unfasten his belt. “We’ve got to get him back in the car fast.”
“Do you think his friends will let us?”
Jon didn’t answer. He was already opening his door. Paul released his own belt.
The tall boy and the black girl had moved toward the car on Paul’s right. “You fat bastard,” the boy shouted at the burly man. He opened the man’s car door suddenly and the man tumbled into the road. “I don’t like your looks and I don’t like you calling Corinne a black savage.” The man, on his knees now, was trying to stand up. The boy began to kick him in the stomach.
Paul was out of his car and beside the boy without thinking. He pulled him away from the man and suddenly felt nails digging into his arm. The black girl was clawing at him. He thrust her away.
He could see frightened faces peering out of the nearest cars. He would get no help from anyone else, he knew that. No one would risk getting out into the road.
“Come on, Swenson,” said the grey-eyed tall boy. He started to circle Paul, weaving uncertainly. “I can take you. I can take you and your clones all at once. Come on.” The boy threw a punch. Paul stopped it with his left arm and managed, almost accidentally, to hit the boy in the stomach. The boy groaned, then leaned over and vomited into the road.
The two girls had disappeared. Paul helped the burly man to his feet. The man got inside his car and Paul helped him fasten his belt. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” said the man. “I think so.”
“There’s a hospital at Alasand. Punch out at the next exit and drive over to it, just to be sure.”
“Thanks, Swenson.”
The tall boy had stopped vomiting and was leaning against the side of Jon’s car. Paul grabbed him by the arm and propelled him toward the left side of the highway. As they approached the boy’s car, he noticed that the freckled boy was already climbing inside. The two girls were in the back seat with the boy who had passed out. Paul pushed the tall boy into the car.
“Why should there be five of you?” the black girl shouted at him. The dark-eyed girl was giggling softly. Paul stood there in the road trying to figure out what to do next. He was afraid to leave the young people alone in their car now, hurtling to whatever destination they had. The freckled boy was moaning softly, holding his stomach.
“Paul!” Jon shouted. “Get inside, now!” Cars all around him were buzzing furiously in warning. He dived for the driver’s seat, barely slamming the door behind him before the car began to move forward on the highway.
The car was still buzzing. Paul fastened his belt. He was breathing heavily.
“That was close,” said Jon, wiping his face.
“Those kids,” said Paul. His hands were trembling slightly. He realized he was sweating profusely. He suddenly felt frightened, although he was now safe in the car. The highway looked the same as it usually did, streams of cars rushing toward their destinations.
“Are you all right now?” asked Jon.
“I’m fine.” Paul closed his eyes. I must be getting old, he thought to himself; I can’t even handle things well any more. I’m either a passive observer or I do everything wrong. What he should have done, he told himself now, was put two or three of the kids in Jon’s car, gotten into the kids’ car himself, and met Jon at the Alasand hospital with them. There was no telling what they had taken or what its effects might be. All they could do now was call the emergency center at the hospital and give them the car’s license number and the direction in which it was traveling.
Paul overrode the previous destination and punched out the next exit on the dashboard controls. Then he clenched his teeth angrily. Why should I care, he thought, about a bunch of idiotic kids who could have gotten themselves and me killed? Perhaps the drug had only brought out a viciousness that was already present. The anger subsided, leaving a residue of shame. He was being unfair. They were not doing anything that different from what he had done at their age. He had once possessed the aggressiveness and impatience of the grey-eyed boy and the uncertainty of the freckled boy. He had gone to parties and taken whatever the others took. It had been fear of what might happen to him that made him stop, nothing more.
Still, he had been sheltered from the world’s irrationality until recently, exploring his scholarly interests. He thought of the clones. If left alone by the public, they would grow up in the same sheltered atmosphere and perhaps be unable to deal with others unlike themselves. If, on the other hand, they were overly exposed to the publicity and occasional cruelties they might encounter, they might retreat from the world, hurt and bitter.
But were his worries any different from those any parent might have? Becoming a parent for the first time should worry any sane person and his circumstances were more troublesome than most. Maybe he was, at almost fifty years of age, a little old to be embarking on parenthood for the first time. But he could make up for that. He had experienced more than many younger parents. He also knew more about what his kids would be like than most parents did. He almost chuckled at this. It would not be hard for him to put himself into the place of one of them when sympathy was needed.
The car turned off the highway and buzzed at him as it circled the ramp. Paul took control and drove along the road until he saw a picture-phone booth on the side. He pulled over.
Jon unbuckled his belt. “I’ll make the call,” he said, opening his door.
Paul hoped once again that the teenagers would be all right.
xiii
PAUL WAS NERVOUS. He stood next to Zuni and Bill in the laboratory and wondered how he should feel. He would be a parent, probably before the hour was over if everything went as expected. He felt both anticipation and anxiety, each displacing the other in rapid succession.
“If they do take after me,” he said to Zuni, “they should each weigh about eight pounds.” She watched him, then placed a calming hand on his arm.
Mort Jason was standing to one side of the ectogenesis chambers, accompanied by a cameraman and sound recorder. The recorder was in a small pouch at Jason’s waist; in his hand the reporter held a silver wand. They had given Jason the story as an exclusive in return for a sizable sum of money from his syndicate. Their decision had been motivated partly by fear of having the room overrun by reporters and partly by economic necessity. Paul would put his share in a fund for his children, but Hidey and Eli would need theirs to sustain themselves during their two-year suspension. Hidey, never one to save money, was so deeply in debt that few businesses would accept his money card without checking his bank. Emma, who had somehow hung on to her psychiatric practice in spite of adverse publicity, had refused her share.
The small laboratory next door was set aside as a temporary nursery. The clones would stay there for the next few days for observation and protection from infection. Then Paul would take his children home.
Hidey entered the room and closed the door behind him. He was the last to arrive. Outside in the hall, Paul could hear the chatter of reporters milling around and waiting for pictures of the children after their “birth”. Hidey walked over to Paul and grasped his hand.
“Did you bring a box of cigars with you?” he asked Paul.
“Nope.”
“You should have.” Hidey looked solemn then. “The Senate passed that bill last night. It’ll be about as strict as the moratorium was. Now it goes to the House. It’ll be law by October.”
“Did anyone vote against it?” asked Bill.
“Garson and Jimenez,” said Hidey. “I took the liberty of sending them each a telegram of thanks. They’re finished politically.”
Jabbar came up to them. “We’re about ready,” he said. Paul followed the two men over to the sink near the chambers and stood with them as they washed their hands in disinfectant. Nancy Portland was giving sterile face masks to all the people in the room. There weren’t many of them: Jason and his cameraman, two lab assistants, Zuni and Bill, Emma Valois. Nancy handed Paul his mask.
“What are you doing with your money, Nancy?” he asked, trying to lose some of his nervousness in conversation.
“I am going to go to a health resort and try to lose weight, believe it or not. Then I’ll come back here and dazzle every man in sight.” She rolled her brown eyes in mock flirtation. “Or else I’ll travel and eat at the world’s best restaurants. I haven’t decided.”
Paul began to fasten his mask. “Don’t get too thin, Nancy, you’ll be malnourished.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Swenson. No one ever accused me of being malnourished.” The heavy girl grinned at him.
Emma, Zuni and Bill had retreated to the far side of the room. Paul stood awkwardly next to Hidey, feeling useless but wanting to be as close as possible to the chambers. He could see the clones, fully formed now, curled in their wombs. Next to him on one of the lab tables were five small beaded bracelets for the children, each with a name: Edward, Michael, Albert, James and Kira. He had not given them unusual names feeling that they would have enough problems, and naming one Paul, Junior seemed inappropriate under the circumstances. I hope, he thought, I’ll be able to tell the boys apart. Jabbar tapped him on the shoulder and Paul put on the white coat held out to him. Nancy had disappeared into the next room.
“We’re ready,” said Jabbar. Paul suddenly felt panic. Wait, he saw himself shouting, are you sure? Have you checked everything? Instead, he waited silently. He remembered stories of fathers who had psychological labor pains. He had never met one of those fathers. His muscles tensed.
Jabbar moved over to the first chamber and pulled a small lever on the console beneath it. Paul watched as the flexible material containing the infant began to open at the side. Hidey reached in and gently removed the child. Jabbar cut the umbilical, then Hidey held the child by the legs as he patted his buttocks.
The infant, still covered partially by membrane, gave a lusty yell.
Paul trembled with relief. One of the assistants took the child into the next room to be bathed and placed in a bassinet. Then Jabbar moved to the next chamber and the second child, then the third. It all seemed so fast to Paul, the birth, the cry, the baby cradeled in the arms of an assistant. He was trying to record all the details of each birth in his mind. Someday I’ll have to tell them about it.
The last one removed from her chamber was the little girl but she made up for it by giving the loudest cry. Hidey took her into the room next door himself. Paul followed with the small beaded bracelets.
The small room had been equipped with sinks, five bassinets, and a small stove for preparing formula. Heavy plate glass divided the room in half, separating the place where the children were from the part of the room next to the hall. Reporters could enter the room from the hallway and see them without risking contamination.
Paul handed the bracelets to Jabbar for sterilization, then peered into the bassinets. They seemed so tiny and frail, these identical infants. He was almost afraid to touch them. Then he noticed that each had a tiny mole on the right shoulder, exactly like his own. Their eyes were bright blue as all newborns’ were, but within six months he would see his green eyes in each face, and brown hair on their presently bald heads. This is what I looked like, exactly.
“They’re so small,” he said at last. “Have they been weighed yet?”
Nancy Portland nodded. “Right after we brought them in here. The boys are eight pounds and two ounces each and the girl is seven pounds and fourteen ounces.” Nancy scribbled something on the note pad she held. “How much did you weigh, Paul?”
“A little under eight pounds.”
Nancy raised her eyebrows. “Score one point for the ectogenesis chamber. Not only does it work, which we already knew, it’s an improvement.” She wandered off and Paul looked back at his children. He hoped they would not grow up to believe they were only part of an experiment. That might be a difficult task.
Jabbar was at his side, holding out a bracelet. “Would you like to put these on them, Paul?”
“I’d be all thumbs. You’d better do it for me.” Jabbar nodded. He attached Kira’s first, then one around each boy’s wrist.
The children were crying, not tearfully, but loudly nonetheless. Hidey came over to him and watched them. “They’ve got good lungs,” he said, “and they definitely take after your side of the family.”
“What other side is there?” said Paul, smiling.
“Well, we’ve done our job, Paul.
Now we just have to watch them grow up. What people do with these techniques may depend on what kind of people they become. That’s a lot of responsibility to place on them, I know.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility for me as a parent, Hidey.”
“You’ll have plenty of assistance from Eli and me, we’ve got at least two years of spare time.”
Paul leaned over Kira’s bassinet. They were his children, yet closer to him than children. They were his twins, his brothers and sister too, separated from him only by age.
“Okay if we let in those reporters?” asked Hidey. “We gave them the word, no bright lights and keep the noise down.”
“Fine,” said Paul.
THE REPORTERS crowded together on the other side of the glass, cameras aimed, tape machines busy, a multi-legged, many-eyed, curious being. They’re just babies, Paul saw himself saying to them, not monsters or genetic freaks, just babies, make sure your cameras catch that.
