by Ann Halam
“You can call me Mum for as long as you like,” said Pam: the words bursting out of her, as if she’d been holding them back by force until this moment. “I knew I couldn’t have a big place in your life, Tay. I knew you belonged to Mary and Ben. But in my heart I’ve called you my daughter since the day you were born. Since I saw you being born. Oh, Tay—”
Tay held out her arms. They hugged, with relief and joy, in the midst of all the tragedy. “I’ll never take Mary’s place,” said Pam fiercely, her cheek pressed against Tay’s hair. “Never, never. Mary and Ben will always be your mum and dad—”
“I belong to them. And Donny. But you and me, we’ll have each other.”
“We’ll have each other.”
They let go, both of them embarrassed, because getting emotional didn’t suit them; but very glad. Tay lay back, and Pam tucked the covers around her. “Now I’m going to leave you for a while. I want you to doze there and do nothing—except you can use the bathroom, which is through that door, and here’s a pager: press a button if you need anything, and someone will come. I’ll be back with some soup at lunchtime. If you’re good, you can sit up and read in the afternoon, or I’ll bring in a video-TV and you can watch a movie—”
“Not more soup.”
“Yes, more soup. It’s the kind of food you need after a trek like that.”
Pam stood up. Tay felt so many unanswered questions buzzing in her brain. Questions that must be answered before she could go on into that unknown country, beyond the eaves of the forest. Why did you let other people bring me up if you loved me? Why did Lifeforce make me? Was it truly for the benefit of humankind; or just to see if they could? What kind of life am I going to have . . . ? Not yet. Not until she knew what had happened to Mum and Dad, and Clint.
But there were other things, less important things, that puzzled her.
“Are you sure I can see Uncle? Are you sure he’s here and he’s okay?”
“Of course I’m sure,” said Pam. “He’s very sad, poor old boy, but he’s in safekeeping. You can see him soon.”
“All right.” Sleep was rushing over her again. “Pam? How did anyone know?”
“How did we know what?”
“That I was with him?” said Tay. “He must have told you. If he didn’t tell you, how did you know to look for my beacon signal? You thought Donny and I were with the hostages.”
“Oh,” said Pam, looking slightly uneasy. “I suppose that was me. Sometimes I, well . . . it seems as if I know things, if it’s about you.” She left the room quickly.
Tay looked at the buttons on her pager and the narrow door that must lead to the bathroom. She thought of her bedroom in the clearing, and all her possessions. Gone, all gone . . . She closed her eyes and drifted into sleep, her grief for Mum and Dad and Donny like a quiet, dark ocean that surrounded her but would not drown her. But even in sleep a nagging worry about Uncle was troubling her, at the back of her mind.
Next day Tay was pronounced well enough to get up in the afternoon. She dressed in clothes that belonged to one of the Marine and Shore lab assistants who was slim and small enough to be the same size as Tay. It was great to be clean. She’d almost forgotten how it felt. She went in search of Pam Taylor: barefoot, because her European feet were too big for the lab assistant’s sandals and too sore for boots.
The Marine and Shore Station was a big ship. The helicopter pad and the seawater tanks were just part of the scenery on the forward section of the main deck. There were two decks of labs besides the cabins, the bigger saloons and the storage holds. Tay stood at the rail for a while, in the shade of one of the ship’s boats—which were held up in the air over the deck, in the fat claws of the davits that would swing them down and launch them on the sea. She could hear Donny’s voice. She could remember running around these fascinating cluttered decks with him. . . . She stared at the golden shore of Kandah, across the calm, blue sea: and some part of her wished she was back there, alone with Uncle. Being lost means you only have to put one foot in front of the other. Being found means you have to deal with everything.
Marine and Shore people passed her, the crew and the science staff. They stopped and said admiring things about her trek, and that they were very sorry. Tay thanked them, because it seemed as if she had to thank them. Eventually she found Pam in one of the labs, alone and working at a microscope. Beside her, on the long counter, there was a row of small tanks for live specimens. Tay looked into them. There were starfish lurking in holes in pieces of coral rock, from which they reached out spidery, crinkly-tentacled arms that were green or gold or red. They looked like wriggling bunches of underwater Christmas tinsel.
“You’re still working on the brittle stars?” She knew about Pam’s research.
“Mmm,” said Pam. “They’re boring as pets, but they’re a good indicator of the health of a tropic shoreline—and they have some interesting genes.”
“They’re pretty.”
Pam switched off the microscope and pushed her chair back. She was wearing a lab coat today, over shorts and a T-shirt. She smiled, and Tay felt a jolt. That’s my smile. Before she knew the complete truth, she’d known she looked very like Pam. It hadn’t bothered her, it had seemed natural. Now it seemed so weird.
She looked out the window, trying to put the photocopy idea out of her mind.
The glass in the lab windows was solar collecting, and polarized to shut out the glare. The burnt-gold shore was toned down to a muddy yellow, the sea looked dull.
“What’s happened about the little girl who was born a medical clone in England?” Tay asked. “I haven’t seen any world news for ages. Is she all right?”
Another medical corporation had announced its first human clone baby this year. This baby had an older sister, six years old, with a rare and terrible disease. If the older sister was to stay alive, she needed a transplant that only a genetically identical twin could give. That was why the parents had wanted a clone. The baby had been grown from one of her sister’s cumulus cells, a special kind of cell best suited for the cloning treatment. The first-ever human clone in the world . . . or so the makers had thought.
“She’s doing well,” said Pam. “She’s a normal, healthy baby.”
The first cloned farm animals had often had hidden defects that only appeared when they were a few years old. That was one reason why people had said there should never be human clones. But there were better tests now, and better ways to start the embryo’s development. The other medical corporation was certain their baby would have no problems.
“Is that why Lifeforce had to announce that we existed?” asked Tay. “Because the other company had got in ahead of you?”
“Not quite,” said Pam. “We’d decided you should be anonymous until you were old enough to deal with the flak. We succeeded, although of course there were rumors, but it’s been getting difficult. When the Welcare Foundation broke their silence, that was good, because it meant we could tell the world and you five wouldn’t have to bear the full weight of being the first.”
“So now a cloned baby really is just a special kind of test-tube baby.”
“That’s how we’d felt all along.”
Tay went on staring out the window. It isn’t the same, she thought. It’s not the same thing because it feels different. It feels different to me, standing here, to know I’m physically the same person as Pam. And I know it feels different to her too.
“Do you think the parents of the Welcare baby were right to have her?” asked Pam quietly. The baby didn’t have a name in the news reports. She was the “Welcare Baby.” Her real name was being protected. That was the way people were talking about Tay too, all over the world. She was one of the “Lifeforce Teenagers.”
“No. When she’s older, she is going to know that no one wanted her for her own sake. She was made for her sister’s sake. She’s going to know that all her life.”
“People have children for all kinds of reasons, Tay. Sometimes they have children
without wanting them at all. That doesn’t mean—”
Tay turned from the window and stared at the brittle stars. They didn’t know they were specimens in a lab. They thought they were normal animals, living for their own starfish reasons in a rock pool somewhere. She shouldn’t have started talking about the Welcare Baby. She wanted to deal with everything, but she wasn’t strong enough yet. Now she was choked up again, and she didn’t want to cry.
“Let’s go and see Uncle,” said Pam. “I’ll take you along to see Philippe, to pay your respects, and then we can go and visit him.”
At the refuge things had been easygoing. Mum and Dad were in charge, there was no question about that, but everybody lived in the same conditions, everyone socialized together (the ones who wanted to be social); and pitched in, if necessary, on any kind of jobs. High-powered people like Pam Taylor behaved like anyone else when they came visiting. At the Marine and Shore things were different. Dr. Philippe Levier was the director. He was strict and stiff in his manners, he liked life to be that way too; and though Pam outranked him, he was in charge of running the station. They went along to his office. Dr. Levier said that he was very sorry. He made a stiff speech about how much he had admired Tay’s mum and dad. He kept on for about ten minutes: it felt like hours. Tay tried to think about something else. “I’m sorry about that,” said Pam under her breath as they left the director’s office.
“It’s all right, I know people have to say those things.”
They went along a passage on the same level as Tay’s cabin, but on the shore side of the ship. Pam knocked on a door. “He’s in a cabin because we don’t have anywhere better,” she explained. “The Marine and Shore Station doesn’t do captive studies of large mammals: and if they did, we couldn’t put an orangutan in the same accommodation you’d use for a dolphin—”
“Captive study?” said Tay, sharply. “What? Uncle’s not a captive—”
The door was opened by one of the lab technicians.
“Hello, Chen,” said Pam. “This is Tay, our other brave survivor. How’s the patient?”
Chen shook Tay’s hand. “What a hero! I’m so very sorry. The uncertainty must be terrible. Maybe you don’t recall, but I was here the summer your family came. I met you, and your brother. Very nice boy. All this, everything that’s happened, very terrible.”
Tay was trying to look over his shoulder. She’d half expected Uncle to open the cabin door: but he was nowhere to be seen. The cabin was like her own, except that there was a desk, with a computer on it and some books, tucked beside the bunk.
“Tay,” said Pam, “I ought to warn you, Uncle’s not in very good spirits—”
There was an inner door to an adjoining cabin. It was standing open. The other room had been stripped bare. There was no mattress on the bunk: no chair, no workstation, no carpeting. Heaps of dry grass covered the floor, and a pile of tired-looking green branches lay on the bed. There were a bowl of fruit, an enamel bowl of water and a tin mug. In one corner someone had strung up a piece of cargo net and a couple of knotted ropes.
Uncle was sitting on the bunk, beside the branches but not touching them. His chin was on his chest, his long arms lying slack, as if they were broken. He didn’t look up.
Something inside Tay turned over. She felt suddenly, completely bewildered.
“Hello, Uncle?” said Chen brightly. “You’ve got visitors. Look, here’s Tay!”
Tay couldn’t speak. Uncle was . . . Uncle was . . .
“Uncle?” she managed to say at last. “Hello? It’s me. It’s Tay—”
The ape raised his head. His eyes moved listlessly, his glance passing over the three humans without a sign that he recognized any of them. He lifted his chin and scratched underneath it. Tay saw with a shock that there was a collar round his neck.
“We freshen the branches for him every day,” said Chen. “And the bedding, of course. We’ve been taking the dinghy in to shore, after dark, and making a quick trip to the nearest trees. We’re not afraid of the rebels, but we don’t want to be spotted by the Kandahnese army helicopters—”
“They already think we’re too near the coast,” said Pam.
“But he doesn’t touch them,” said Chen sadly. “They’re supposed to make nests out of branches, aren’t they? I’ve, er, tried giving him toys as well. I know apes like toys.”
Tay noticed that there was a child’s beach ball on the floor by the bunk. And a skipping rope, and a bright-colored plastic truck. The plastic truck made her especially mad. Uncle is a grown-up! He’s as old and wise as anyone—
“Why is he like this?” she cried, the words coming out far too loud. “Why are you keeping him locked up? What have you done to him?”
Uncle sat like a stone. Chen looked puzzled.
“We haven’t done anything to him,” said Pam. “Just tried our best to make him comfortable. We had him up on deck, but he’s calmer down here. I’m sorry. I should have given you more warning, but I hoped he’d be different with you.”
“I know he was the refuge mascot,” put in Chen. “And very tame. Everyone knows about Uncle . . . but we can’t seem to cheer him up, the poor old guy.”
“Uncle?” cried Tay. “Oh, Uncle—”
She’d been standing in the doorway. She’d almost felt that she wasn’t allowed to go into his cage (because the cabin seemed like a cage). She and Donny had never been allowed to go into the orphan apes’ clubhouse. She broke free from her shock, went to him and took his hand. It was too late. The ape’s furred, leather-palmed hand lay dead in her grip. He wouldn’t look at her. She should have run to him at once. Now he counted her the same as the other humans, who had put a collar on him and locked him up.
“You can’t treat him like this! He isn’t a wild animal! He won’t attack anyone!”
Chen the technician and Pam Taylor looked at each other.
“Maybe we’d better leave him for the moment, Tay?” suggested Pam. “He doesn’t seem to be responding. You can come back another time.”
Tay heard the uneasiness under Pam’s calm tone. An adult orangutan is extremely strong, and Uncle did not seem to recognize the human girl as his friend. A shudder went through her. How could she be afraid of Uncle? But she was. She was afraid because he was so different. She let go of his limp hand: but stayed, defiantly, crouched by the bunk.
“Uncle? Please? Look at me. Talk to me? We made it, Uncle. You saved us both—”
There was a patch of blue half hidden in the dry grass. She looked again and saw it was her charred, battered pocket Shakespeare, with the blue cover. But how—? She’d thrown this book away. She knew she’d thrown it away, to lighten her pack.
“Uncle, where did you find the Shakespeare?”
“Oh, his book!” Chen exclaimed. “That’s his best toy. I don’t know where it came from. One of his other keepers must have given it to him. We have a rota . . . He likes that book. I’ve seen him handling it.”
“It’s mine. This is mine. We saved it from the refuge.”
A flood of bittersweet memories came rushing into her mind. Oh, the night when Donny died in our arms. . . But if Uncle had the Shakespeare, then Uncle was . . . Uncle was . . . Was he acting dumb? But why? Why would he be doing that?
“Oh,” said Chen. “Well, then I don’t know how it got here. Please, take it.”
Suddenly the ape moved. He swung down from the bunk, shambled over to his food bowl and sat like a russet-furred sack of potatoes, turning over the pieces of fruit.
“That’s a good sign,” said Pam with rather forced cheerfulness. “He’s eating. I really think we should leave him, Tay. You can come again tomorrow.”
Tay stood up and went back to the doorway, brushing dry grass from her knees. This felt so wrong and strange, she wondered if she was awake or dreaming. As she looked behind her, she saw only an animal, a large ape sitting dull-eyed in his captivity, as if he’d never known anything else.
She told Pam she wanted to be alone and fled
to her own cabin.
The face in the mirror in her tiny closet of a bathroom was suntanned and sunburned, with parched hair and hollow eyes and a mouth fastened tight so that no sobs could escape. She stared at herself and for once—since she’d been told the truth—she wasn’t thinking My own face doesn’t belong to me. She was thinking of Uncle. An orangutan face isn’t pretty to human eyes. The nose is dinted in when it should jut out, the domed forehead looks clownish. The skin is slack and wrinkled, the male ape’s jowls look like unnatural growths. Tay was used to the apes and saw them as individuals. After days alone with Uncle she’d looked at human beings and seen them as comic and strange—
But seeing an ape as an individual isn’t the same as—
Isn’t the same as knowing an ape is as intelligent as a human, despite his appearance.
“What’s going on?” she whispered aloud. “What on earth’s going on?”
She was still holding the pocket Shakespeare. It was falling apart: soaked by river water, dried by the sun. The pages were coming out in handfuls. She opened it, thinking of those long hours on the savannah, waiting for the sun to go down. Tay had read to Uncle, and then she’d given him the book. She remembered how he’d turned the pages, studying the washed-out print with such care. And here were his fingerprints, big rusty fingerprints, stained by the red earth. . . .
I had conversations with him, she thought. Was I delirious that whole time?
Someone tapped on her door.
“Come in.”
“Hi,” said Pam, shutting the door behind her. “Are you okay? I wanted to say I’m sorry about Uncle. I should have told you. . . . I didn’t want to upset you. You said Uncle saved both of you, and I know it’s true. I know how important he was to you. If there was anything more I could do, I’d do it. But I’m not an animal psychologist—”
“He doesn’t need a psychologist. He needs to be treated like a person.”