Anna To The Infinite Power

by Mildred Ames

  “I’m sure you’re wrong, Rowan. There isn’t anyone who hasn’t known suffering of one kind or another.”

  “Not Anna,” he said stubbornly.

  “Oh, Rowan, you might as well say Anna doesn’t have a soul.”

  “That’s it! You put your finger on her trouble. If there’s any such thing as a soul, Anna doesn’t have one.”

  “Oh, Rowan --” Michaela laughed. “If that’s the case then it’s a good thing your father wants me to develop her musically. Someone said that in music one thinks with the heart and feels with the brain. Music is very therapeutic, you know. It can reach far into the depths of being and, like Pandora with her box, free all the dark, hidden emotions. Perhaps you and I together can help her.”

  “Me!”

  “Well, of course. You’ve diagnosed a very serious problem in Anna, Dr. Hart,” she said jokingly. “After all, one can’t let people run around without souls now, can one?”

  “But there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Oh, yes, there is. People always respond to kindness and understanding. Perhaps you could even try sharing your music with her.”

  Her suggestion only made him peevish. “I don’t see how I can do that.”

  “And I can’t tell you how either. Just keep the thought in mind and when the opportunity presents itself, your own good sense and heart will tell you how.”

  He doubted it. “You said ‘you and I.’ What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not completely sure yet, but I’ve dealt with people like Anna before.”

  “Brats, you mean.”

  She shrugged. “If you will. I have my own methods for handling brats, as you call them. Usually I start with a little shock treatment -- at least, that’s what Anna will consider it. And when she complains, I’m sure she’ll appreciate your sympathy.”

  So that was how she planned to get to Anna. It will never work, he thought. “All I can say is, I wish you luck.”

  A few minutes later, when he was on his way home, he couldn’t imagine why he’d had such a compelling need to talk to her that day, to confide in her. As for his sharing something like his music with Anna -- forget it.

  On Saturday morning, Anna, swinging her carryall, walked clear around the park on her way to Michaela Dupont’s apartment, anything to delay facing that awful woman. If it were not for him, Mr. Graham Hart, she wouldn’t be in this situation. He had insisted she keep the appointment with Michaela. They were all her enemies, Anna thought -- Rowan, who didn’t like her, Graham Hart, who had said all those nasty things about her Thursday night. The only one who seemed to be on her side was Sarah Hart. And not even she had come to Anna’s aid the next morning. All she’d said was, “Humor your father right now, Anna. He’s in a foul mood. When he calms down, I’ll get you out of those lessons with that woman.”

  Anna knew all about his foul mood. After the argument that night, she had tiptoed to the living room, only to find that Graham and Sarah Hart had obviously taken themselves to their soundproof bedroom to tall. Anna followed them there to stare at the closed door, then press her ear against it. Still she couldn’t hear anything. And they were talking about her, she knew. She had every right to know what they were saying. Every right. Carefully, she turned the knob and eased the door open the slightest bit.

  Graham Hart’s voice boomed against her ear- drams. “I don’t believe you. You’re making up some poor excuse to explain away someone else’s child.” Then her mother’s voice, calm, controlled. “That’s beneath you, Graham. How can you have so little faith in me? Please be reasonable. You know I never lie to you.”

  “Never he to me? Ho, ho, ho. That’s a good one! What do you call all this, anyhow? One big lie is what I call it.” Anna could hear his heavy steps pacing the floor.

  “Graham, if you will just calm down for a minute and read this, you’ll see that I’m telling the truth.” The steps ceased and a paper crackled. After a long, long silence, he sputtered, “How could you do such a thing? I’m not sure that’s not worse than having another man’s child. No wonder you never told me. You knew I’d never agree to anything like that. Why, the whole idea is positively obscene!”

  “How can you talk to me like that? It just shows -- you have no concern for my feelings.”

  “Your feelings! What about my feelings?”

  They started hurling angry words back and forth so fast that Anna could hardly follow them. Finally she heard him say, “If you want to know, when it comes right down to it, I’m really relieved to find this out.”

  Sounding distracted, Sarah Hart said, “I know this comes as a shock, but I didn’t plan for you to learn it this way.”

  “You know why I’m relieved?”

  “I know that I’ve done something you don’t approve of, but if you’ll just listen to my side of it --”

  “I’m relieved because that kid scares me. I don’t know how many nights I’ve sat up reading psychology books trying to figure out what’s wrong with her.”

  “Maybe I’ve made a mistake, but please don’t judge me for it. You’ve got to understand how passionately I felt about the experiment at the time.”

  “You know why she scares me? Because when I hear her spouting off all those numbers like some damn machine, I think, ‘Oh, my God, what have I wrought?’ “

  “You just don’t understand what an honor it is to be a part of something like this.”

  “Not only does she scare me, at times she makes me ashamed. For one thing, take her sticky fingers I’ve talked and talked to her about why stealing is wrong. I’ve even made her return things. Oh, she promises to behave, but her promises mean nothing. I just can’t seem to get through to her. Even worse is her lack of feeling for other human beings. Then there’s her dislike of animals -- that certainly doesn’t seem normal for a young kid.”

  “If you’d only listen to me, you’d understand how privileged we are, Graham.”

  There was a moment of silence before he said, “Listen to you. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you? I’ve just been telling you that I’m glad Anna is not my kid!”

  Anna heard a sharp intake of breath, then, “Graham, don’t you ever say anything like that in front of Anna. How you feel isn’t nearly as important as how she feels now. We have to think of her. We have to help her.”

  Sarah Hart had gone on talking, but Anna didn’t care to hear more. She’d returned to her room and immersed herself in a calculus book for a time, then spent the rest of the night frantically filling pages and pages with involved equations, working them out quickly and brilliantly, shoving everything else from her mind.

  Now as she approached Michaela Dupont’s apartment, she went over the whole thing again. Perhaps she should run away. But where? What family the Harts had was scattered throughout New York State, thousands of miles away. She knew none of them well, had seldom seen them, the aunts, uncles, cousins she’d once thought hers. No, that was no answer.

  What about them? What would they do if she went to them and said she didn’t want to live with the Harts any longer? Would they put her in a foster home? And who were they anyhow, the scientists in charge of this secret experiment? Maybe I don’t want to know, Anna thought.

  Finally she decided there was only one thing to do. Find out everything she could about Anna Zimmerman, just as she’d planned. Surely the woman would have had some family, and her relatives would be Anna’s, too. Although she was related to them in a peculiar way, they would be of her blood, as the Harts were not. Her family. She would find out their names and search for them. That was why she’d been willing to keep the appointment this morning. She would have access to another INAFT machine. In the meantime, she thought, trust no one. The enemy is everywhere.

  Michaela Dupont’s first floor apartment had its own private door. As Anna stood outside, staring at it, she told herself she had nothing to fear. The woman was surely harmless. Even if she wasn’t, what could she do during the hour Anna was there, with the Harts
knowing where she was? Nothing, of course.

  As Anna approached, the door swung open. Michaela stepped out and said, “Come in, Anna. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  For a moment a feeling of panic raced through Anna. I have to get away from her, she thought. Run. Her legs refused to move. Then the woman turned the full brilliance of her smile on Anna. Dazzling. Anna found herself obediently trailing Michaela into the apartment.

  “What do you think of this business about Anna?” Graham Hart asked his son.

  They had both stayed on at the conservatory after Saturday orchestra practice, Rowan at his father’s request. Although the concert hall had emptied, Rowan was aware that he must speak softly or the sensitive acoustics would pick up his words and bounce them off the walls. “If you mean about her being a clone, I don’t know what I think.” He carefully wrapped his violin in a soft cloth and placed it in its case.

  “The thing I can’t overlook is the way your mother deceived me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive her for that.”

  Rowan glanced up in surprise. His father often confided in him, but not about arguments that concerned his mother. They’d had their differences, Rowan knew, with both so dedicated to their work, but on the whole they got along well enough, his father’s usually easy-going disposition balancing his mother’s rigidity.

  Rowan could sense how disturbed his father was. That’s the only reason he’s talking to me about it, he thought. There just isn’t anyone else. After all, it’s a great big government secret. He said, “You know how keen Mom always is about any new discovery or experiment. She said she sounded you out at the time and you were against it.”

  He grunted. “If she did, I’ve certainly forgotten after all these years. But you’re darned right I’m against it. She had no right to make me a party to something I’m philosophically opposed to.”

  Rowan almost felt responsible for defending his absent mother. “It meant a lot to her, I guess. She says a great deal of good for humanity can come of it.”

  “Ah, yes, humanity. That’s what they always say, these people who want to play God. I believe it was Leon Kass, back in the seventies, who said that we stand in the greatest danger from the well-wishers of mankind, because folly is much harder to detect than wickedness.”

  “You think cloning people is wicked?”

  “I’ve been considering the idea all night and, yes, I’ve concluded that it’s wicked. There’s too much potential for bad. For one thing it doesn’t make me feel all that comfortable to realize it could render the male of the species obsolete. Everything it requires -- human eggs, nuclei, and uteri -- comes from women.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “Another thing -- who decides who is to be cloned? Why not clone tyrants? Certainly someone will want to. Cloning people isn’t the only aspect I don’t like. This also means that now scientists can design new organisms. What if a new bacterium that could alter or endanger people’s lives were accidentally, or even deliberately, created? Those are the things I think about.”

  “Mom says they only cloned this Anna Zimmerman because of the work she was doing on the replicator.”

  “That’s something else I worry about, that replicator your mother’s involved with. Do you realize what will happen if they ever perfect a machine that can produce food or any other three-dimensional object from basic elements?”

  Rowan had heard his mother talk about it many times. “Mom says that material things would be so cheap that other things would become valuable -- craftsmanship, art, professional services, that kind of thing. Sounds good to me.”

  “Oh, I know what your mother says. But there’s another side. What happens to industry, farming, commerce? A machine like that would make them all obsolete. Instead of money, we’d probably be trading with matrices or whatever kind of coded recordings they’d use to operate the machine.”

  “But Mom says --”

  “Rowan, I know what your mother says. That doesn’t mean she’s right. When it comes to science, she’s blind.”

  The sudden bitterness in his father’s voice frightened Rowan. “You wouldn’t do anything, well, drastic because of this?”

  Graham Hart gave a wry smile. “Like get a divorce?”

  Rowan nodded.

  “No, of course not. My bark is worse than my bite. Although I’m not sure your mother won’t divorce me, the way I sounded off last night. Did you hear any of it?”

  “No.” When his mother and father wanted to discuss something private, they used their bedroom, so Rowan and Anna seldom heard any squabbling.

  “I don’t often blow up, but when I do, I make up for it. Said a few things last night that I’m already sorry for. Today I’ve been rehashing the whole thing, trying to get a handle on it. The thing I’m trying to accept is that it’s an accomplished fact. If I’d been consulted, I’d never have given my consent. But I wasn’t consulted. Now I’ve got to learn how to live with it.”

  “We’ll probably get used to the idea in time,” Rowan said.

  “If I had no part in it, I shouldn’t feel guilty, now should I?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I’ll try not to.” Graham Hart gave a resigned sigh. “Your mother’s right. The important thing now is Anna herself. Whatever she is, she’s a human being, a person. Knowing how I feel, I can imagine how she feels, learning about her origin at this late date. We’ll have to help her all we can, Rowan.”

  “Sure, Dad,” Rowan said, but his heart wasn’t in the words. One of the things he’d looked forward to, should he win the Bellamy Scholarship, was that an ocean would separate him from Anna. If anyone should feel guilty it was he. He had to admire the way his father could explode, then quickly put aside his anger and forgive and forget. Rowan wished he had the same capacity. If he felt a grudge about anything he hung on to it for so long it ate away his insides.

  He felt guilty, too, that he hadn’t mentioned the scholarship before this, but he was afraid his father would be hurt when he found out Rowan wanted to guide his own career. I should tell him now, Rowan thought, but he’s got enough on his mind with Anna.

  “Well, I guess I got that out of my system. Anyhow, I feel better. Are you about ready to go home?” his father asked.

  Rowan quickly wiped rosin off the stick of his bow, placed the bow in the violin case, and closed it. “Ready.”

  “Let’s go, then. Let’s find out if your mother’s started dividing up the community property yet.”

  8

  Inside Michaela’s apartment, Anna sneezed. She glanced around suspiciously. “Do you have a cat or a dog? If you do, I’ll have to leave right now. I’m allergic. And phobic.” She would have complained about perfume as well, except that Michaela was wearing none today.

  “No, I don’t have animals,” Michaela said. “I was just dusting a collection of mine. Maybe that made you sneeze.” She wore a black leotard over which she’d fastened a skirt. Jet earrings dangled from her ears.

  “Are you a dancer, too?” Anna asked.

  “Dancer?” She glanced down at her outfit. “Oh, the leotard, you mean. Oh, no. I just find it comfortable for meditation.”

  Meditation? Was that some sort of new fad? Anna didn’t know anyone who meditated. What would the woman meditate about anyhow? Nothing good, Anna was sure.

  “Come along,” Michaela said, leading the way to a sparsely furnished living room with a spinet tucked away in a corner. “It’s not exactly a grand, but it has good tone.” She motioned to the bench. “Sit down, Anna.”

  Anna put her carryall on the floor and took a seat at the piano. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to pretend I am not in the room. Play anything you like.” She sat down on the couch. “I’ll just listen. After I’ve heard you, I shall be able to tell in what areas you need work.”

  Anna was not at all interested in playing anything. She thought for a moment, then decided on the easiest thing she could think of,
Beethoven’s Für Elise. Although she had several pieces of sheet music in her carryall, including the one she’d chosen to play, she needed none of them. Once she’d learned a piece, she could see the notes as clearly in her head as if she were staring at the page. As far as she was concerned there was nothing wrong with her playing. She learned quickly, made few errors, and held to the rhythm called for. What more could anyone ask? “Don’t you have a metronome?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  That upset Anna. She was used to a metronome, liked a metronome. The tic, tic, tic, tic seemed to frame a little unit of time which she could precisely fill with just so many notes, all very neat. Oh, she would be lost without a metronome.

  Michaela said, “You mustn’t worry about anything like that. Just go on and do the best you can. I shall be able to tell what you need.”

  Anna felt very cross. She was certainly not going to perform well without a metronome. As her hands touched the keys, picking out notes, her tongue began to cluck out tics against the roof of her mouth, on and on relentlessly, a full accompaniment to the music. When she finished, she said, “Well, how did I play?”

  Michaela grinned. “I don’t think you would have played a bit better with a metronome.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “Shall I play anything else?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. That’s enough for today. I think I see exactly what’s needed. I’ll work up something for next week and we’ll really begin then.”

  “But I’m supposed to have an hour.” Anna was disappointed. She had planned to concoct some excuse to give her a chance to find the INAFT machine. Now there would be no time.

  Michaela said, “On the first day I always like to get acquainted with my pupils. Do you think you can amuse yourself while I see if I can find us a snack? You might enjoy looking at my collection of boxes.” She pointed toward a decorative screen that appeared to cut off a view of a dining room. “I’ve just put them all back in the cabinet near the dining table.”

  This was the opportunity Anna had been waiting for. “May I use your bathroom first?”