Phae turns pale. I sincerely thought to make him happy with this statement. Instead he’s shocked. So I add, “In the rescue vessel, I am confident we’ll find a sarcophagus for both of us. It’s not very common for a clone to undergo suspended animation, but I think I’ll be able to persuade whoever is in charge to—”
“But you can’t spend nine years awake here in Ship! Nine broad cycles are more than three thousand cycles, Prince!”
He can’t read, but he certainly knows arithmetic. I caress his cheek. “I know, Phae. But we could be together. And I’m not that old. I’m twenty-two, and when the rescue vessel comes I’ll be thirty-one and the senator will still be a lot older than me.”
Phae is confused. “But you can’t even drink or eat Ship’s food!”
“I’ll get used to your food. If you can eat it, I can too, Phae.”
I don’t deny the prospect of spending nine years here, eating rotten food, fills me with dread. I regret the fact the aliens are gone. Maybe we could have gone with them. Learned to breathe liquid like fish and swim in their water planet, or something like that. The idea is almost more attractive than staying on this junk, eating rotten freeze-dried food for nine long years. But how can I abandon the only person who ever loved me?
We are two, but there’s only one sarcophagus. I can’t go back inside and leave him awake. It’s not fair. Perhaps one time I would have done it without flinching, but now I’m different. The bad experience has changed me, but especially Phae changed me with his love. I can’t pay him back by leaving him alone.
Phae trembles slightly. He hugs me tight, as if I am extremely valuable. This destroys my heart every time. He treats me as if I am the most precious thing in the universe.
I say, “We’ll be together, Phae. We could make love.”
“But you are a human purebred. You’re not a clone. You’re not born on Ship, unaware of what exists out there. This isn’t your only way of life. You aren’t a guardian angel, and this place is not for someone like you.”
He thinks he is, but he’s not stupid.
I stroke his cheek. His jaw is stiff and his Adam’s apple goes up and down. “Phae, I cannot leave you.”
I said the wrong thing. He winces. “You may not want to sacrifice yourself for me, Prince!”
Damn. “I want it for you and for myself. I want to stay with you, Phae. We have feelings for each other, right?”
He’s even more confused. “I… I can’t understand, Prince.”
I sigh. “Look into my eyes, Phae. Do you really think you are just an ordinary clone for me? I’m telling you the truth. Maybe when I woke up in this creepy place I just wanted to be comforted. I admit it.” I roll my eyes. “Being easy has always been my style on Earth. But you gave me a lesson and now I need you, because you make me a better person. Can you understand this, Phae?”
Phae puts his hand on mine, still resting on his cheek. “I understand. I don’t deserve your appreciation, and I thank you, but you have to think that all the love and devotion I feel for you won’t end if you go back in the sarcophagus. If you stay awake, instead, there will come a time when you’ll hate me for having allowed it.”
I sigh. I pass my hand over my face. He’s right, of course. I don’t think I could ever hate him, but what if it’s him starting to hate me? I’m not a frozen idol. If I start bitching and freaking out, maybe he would stop worshipping me so much.
Oh, shit.
“Okay,” I say, moving this annoying long hair out of my face. “We can do it this way. I’ll stay awake for a few cycles. If the food makes me sick, I can always return inside the sarcophagus.”
Phae frowns. “Prince, I find it hard to accept a situation where you can get sick, when my task—my only reason for life—is protecting you. So I beg you, let’s try the other way. You go back inside the sarcophagus and I’ll explore Ship once again. If I find edible food and drinkable water, I’ll wake you up before the arrival of the rescue ship.”
Stubborn as a mule.
“I don’t think I like being awakened continuously by that thing, Phae! Once has already been quite traumatic. In short, my body is almost killed and brought back to life. How many times do you think I can stand it?”
Phae holds my gaze. “Another good reason to return to the initial situation and keep it.”
I open my eyes wide. I can’t believe it. He wants me to go back in there for my own good, against his own interest. And he’s hard as a rock about it.
I get up on my toes and place a gentle kiss on his lips. “I won’t get sick, I promise you, Phae. Please, let me try. We could make love.”
Finally his jaw relaxes. He hugs me tightly and places a row of little kisses upon my neck. I melt in his arms, exulting inside because I won. I touch his cock, hard and promising, through the fabric of his pants. Mine is hard too.
Phae lifts me in his arms. He’s so tall, strong enough to make me feel like a twig. I glue my mouth to his, knowing he’s bringing me to his cot, where we can console each other.
Instead, to my total, utter amazement, he puts me down. I find myself seated on the padding of the damned sarcophagus.
I stare at him, outraged.
Phae holds my gaze with a remorseful look. “My task is to protect you. I can’t permit something bad to happen to you,” he explains.
Yeah. He’s the only person who really loves me, and is also the only person I can’t fool with flattery.
I clench my fists. “Phae, you are my servant. I order you to get the fuck out of the way!”
Phae winces, wounded, and I feel like shit.
“You can’t live here, Prince,” he starts. “You have to go back to sleep. I’ll always be here, and I’ll be here when you wake up, but that’s how it should go, because my task is to watch over you, and to let you live in hardship in this junk is not a good thing for you.”
If only he had been more selfish! Damn, everyone prefers the immediate, selfish pleasure. But not him!
Not him.
“Fuck!” I shout, beating my fist on the edge of this crappy coffin. “There must be another solution!”
Phae shakes his head, his eyes shining. “You can order me to leave you alone, and I won’t touch you anymore, Prince. I’m just a stupid clone, but I can tell you what will happen if you stay awake. You will hate me. You’ll hate me for leaving you to stay awake. Now you feel you owe me something, but you don’t need to. I have only done my task and I want to finish it. I have to take care of you and this is the only way. If you stay awake, probably you’ll get sick, or the resources won’t be enough and we will die. But if that’s what you want, I bend to your will. It’s true, I’m your servant. So you decide.”
My eyes fill. “Dammit!”
Phae says nothing and waits. He waits, motionless, even when I start to cry and tears flow down my cheeks.
Phae is right, of course. He thinks he’s an idiot, but he’s much wiser than me.
“At least promise that you’ll be there when I wake up!”
His determined expression falters and he sits on the edge of the sarcophagus. “No problem, Prince. I’ll be there.”
I throw my arms around his neck and sink my face in the crook of his shoulder. He buries his face in my hair. He’s crying, too.
I clean my face and grab his chin to look him in the eyes. “I don’t care if eighteen years will be spent, or a hundred. I want you there, Phae. When I wake up your task will be concluded, and you’ll stay with me. We’ll be free to live a life together.”
His eyes full of pain, he smiles at me. “Agree.”
“You promise to be there and I promise that you’ll stay with me in my new life on the colony. I’ll find a way. Even if I have to marry the senator, you’ll be with me and my mission will be to make you happy.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t deserve that much, Prince.”
I shut my eyes. I drag him toward me until our foreheads touch. “Tell me that you agree or I won’t return into this godforsa
ken interstellar fridge!”
“Okay. I will be there. You will find a way to take me with you.”
I nod against his brow. “Deal.”
“Deal.”
I open my eyes. He stares at me. Almost in slow motion, we exchange a deep kiss. The most beautiful and saddest kiss of my life.
Phae, my beloved guardian angel, pushes me down. I don’t resist. I lie on the sarcophagus padding, and he leans over me. Even though I try not to cry, my throat hurts and tears roll down my temples.
Phae stretches his mouth in a smile, cupping my cheek. “Don’t be sad for me, Prince. Your memory will help me to carry out my task.”
“Phae.” I swallow the lump in my throat and put my hand upon his. “Please. Forgive me for what I said. You are much more than a servant and I am willing to wake up a thousand times for you. Should it become too hard, just enter the fucking code and wake me up….”
He places a gentle kiss on my lips. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then he rises. His hand slips away from under mine, and Phae pushes down the lid.
So here I am again. At least I know it will be quick. But for him it won’t be quick at all. For him, this torture will last nine years, more than three thousand cycles, and then another three thousand to reach the colony. For me it will be short, but his heart will continue to break for six thousand cycles. I think it’s more than a human being can endure.
“Hold on. I’ll find a way!” I shout, as the lid closes with a huff.
All the lights inside the cover turn on. Even though I know I won’t feel pain, my breathing accelerates in fear and I hit the glass with my fists. “Hold on!”
Phae puts his hands over mine, through the glass, and nods. As the narcotic gas begins to fill the coffin, I look him in the eyes. My guardian angel, the bright star that will watch over me for another bunch of years. He says something. I read his lips.
I love you.
This is the last thing I see.
MY HEART breaks.
The gas catches him with his eyes open. Tears freeze on his face. A needle sticks in his neck, and the thing begins to suck his blood and replace it with refrigerant.
He’s gone.
My Prince.
I hit the glass with my fists. I hate myself. I hate my task and my whole stupid life. I collapse upon the lid and cry, inside of me a pain so deep I could scream. I think I’m going to die. This is simply too much.
Then the words of my beloved Blasius make their way into my tortured soul. It’s the secret of people like us.
Blasius said that humans are greedy, and this is their condemnation—the reason why they destroy all that they have of beauty. But clones are different. Clones don’t spend their time regretting what they don’t have, but they can rejoice in the little that has been granted to them.
I was lucky to have my Prince with me, even for so little.
His memory will help me to survive.
Chapter 9
A NOISE wakes me up with a start.
Coldness has seeped into my bones and my neck is painfully stiff. I fell asleep on the sarcophagus cover. An area of my cheek, the point resting against the glass, is completely numb.
I check the lights inside the lid. All green. The same for those on the console. And yet I have heard something.
Twenty-eight broad cycles, almost twenty-nine: after so much time on this piece of junk, I am able to sense the slightest variation.
“It’s too soon, Prince. Can’t be the senator’s vessel,” I murmur.
Prince just looks back at me. His open eyes are covered in frost, his white eyelashes garlanded with tiny crystals.
“But maybe they came faster….” I stay put, listening. Then I stand up. “Don’t worry, I won’t go away.”
Yes, I continued to talk to him. I know he can’t hear me, but it comforts me. It makes me feel closer to him. For nineteen years, Prince had been an abstract entity to me, but then we met and he became real, and he has remained real for these other eight and a half broad cycles.
Eight and a half years. Three thousand and one hundred cycles. They have been long, but somehow more bearable than the time before I met him. I had his memory to support me. I had hope.
For the first few years, I embarked on a long and extensive exploration of Ship in the hope of finding edible food, or a comfortable setting that would allow me to awaken Prince. For months I studied a way to open the sealed laboratories, those with the radioactive hazard symbol on the door, figuring a marvel of food and water and comfortable clothes for Prince might be hidden inside. Eventually I thought of a complicated way to steal a little fire from the depths of the incinerator, tying a piece of my uniform to the long wire of one of my treasures found in the dust of Ship, throwing it into the chute and withdrawing it smoking and charred. I tried to undermine the doors with fire. It didn’t help. But the smoke spread, and, at once, an automatic system began to whistle and blink and all the doors unlocked.
For a long time, I remained against the wall, trembling, waiting for the poisonous radioactive emissions to kill me. Then the smoke began to dissipate and I realized that nothing would happen, so I entered the laboratories.
A disappointment. The rooms were empty as the rest of Ship. I only found a few broken tools and an object no one had bothered to recover from a shelf. An object made of layers as thin as veils, filled with letters and colors, which I recognized as one of those legendary items Blasius called “Books.”
I had to give up. This is a completely emptied scrap. There’s no good food and there isn’t a place in which Prince could live safely. So I faced reality and began to look forward to the moment of our rescue, keeping my body in training, eating all the rations, although decomposed, running through the empty corridors until I was so tired I could sleep soundly and without dreams throughout my rest period.
At the end of my shift, or at the beginning, while still sleepy, as I crunched my disgusting ration, I sat on the edge of the sarcophagus and flipped through the pages of my last treasure: Book.
It was a book about Earth, full of mysterious pictures I have carefully studied one by one. I spent hours observing the fragile pages, comparing the tiny letters with those on the keyboard and trying to make sense of them. My knowledge of letters is limited to the sentence of the code. Bright Star. I became elated and used to scream if I could decipher a word as simple as “is” or “sat” or “right.” I have found many times the word “star,” and sometimes even “bright,” and I wondered if Book was talking about the two of us, me and Prince, as the last two remaining terrestrials.
Yeah, I didn’t really believe it. While Prince may be called without any doubt a terrestrial, I’m not sure the definition applies to me. However, I found it infinitely sad that Book contained so many heartbreakingly wonderful pictures of a world that no longer existed.
My favorite picture is one of those that occupies the entire page. It is a strange environment full of green plant forms. Blasius had spoken to me about Trees and Grass, but I wouldn’t have imagined these things could be so lush and enveloping. They fill the entire page. In the middle of a profusion of trees and grass, there is a small path that surely leads to a mysterious and beautiful invisible place.
I looked at the picture at each end of my cycle, before the lights went out. I looked at it so much that Book opened alone on that page, when I placed Him on my lap. Sometimes I dreamed of walking on that green path, holding Prince’s hand. We had a happy future, although invisible, at the end of that road.
I shake my head to clear it of memories. I walk toward the main elevator, but I feel a second bump. It’s not really a noise, it’s a kind of vibration. Ship is shaken to the core, but slightly. It’s something that only a clone born and living here for twenty-eight broad cycles could recognize.
I don’t need to go check. I return to Prince. “And so, the moment is arrived. Only eight and a half years. They came quickly, after all.”
Prince looks a
t me, eyes white with frost. My heart swells with emotion. It’s time for change, and this is good, even if I’m scared. I couldn’t have done it without having known Prince. I couldn’t have done it without his love, without his promise.
Sitting on the edge of Prince’s sarcophagus, I wait for the senator’s men.
ABOUT AN hour later, the light of the main elevator turns on. I stand up and wait for the strangers to reach our level. I don’t know whom I have to face, and my stomach is shrunken in a knot. Purebreds? Clones? I think they will be clones, but I don’t know for sure.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper to Prince. “I’m just a clone. I’m an idiot and I can’t even read, but when it comes to taking care of you, no one is better than me, you have to admit it.”
My breath fails when the elevator doors slide open with a sigh.
Two clones are inside the elevator.
They have a healthy and robust appearance, and gaze at me with the same narrow and elongated eyes I noticed in the clone who answered Prince’s call for help eight and a half years ago. Their regular features, as if sculpted, make them somewhat similar to robots. Both are perfectly identical.
The two clones advance inside the cocoon. I don’t move, my heart hammering. They could be aliens to me.
Then one of them quirks his mouth in a smile.
I blink.
“Don’t worry,” the clone says. “We are here to rescue you. It’s over.”
INCREDIBLE.
Of all the things I would have expected, what’s happening is not included.
The two clones are friendly.
I’d like to fill them with questions. I want to know if they have feelings, if they have been awake for nine years to get here, or if they have the privilege of their own sarcophagus, if they are annoyed to be so equal to each other, if they feel themselves as brothers, but I can’t talk. I simply watch them.
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