Clones

by Gardner Dozois

  At last, unable to bear it any longer, he thrust again, and she moved to meet him, gasping quietly at first, then crying out, shattering the night silence. He felt himself spurt inside her, and he trembled, moving with her, suspended in a pocket of timelessness. He was adrift with her in a universe contained by the skin of their bodies, and he called out as his pleasure compressed itself in his groin, then erupted throughout his body. He cried out again, could no longer tell which cries were his and which were Kira's.

  Then it was over and he realized with a tinge of sadness how short a time it had actually been. He withdrew from her slowly but remained beside her, resting his head in her arms. He became aware of the sweat that covered their bodies, the warmth of the night. Now he kept his eyes from meeting hers.

  Kira, as if responding to his fears, held him more closely. "Don't, Jim," she whispered. "Don't feel ashamed. I love you. I've known it for a while. How could I help it?" She was right, of course, the old codes and ancient prohibitions could not apply to them, had not even allowed for their existence.

  He looked at her face. She lay at his side stroking his hair. It was Paul's face that watched him, smiling, gently reassuring him with love. He curled up next to her.

  The thunderstorm had passed by morning, leaving behind it cool air and large fluffy clouds. The sun, previously a malevolent eye peering balefully at the earth, was now a friendly presence, occasionally hiding behind one of the white clouds as if ashamed of its former fit of temper. Jim had carried the light plastic chairs off the porch and placed them on top of old newsfax sheets and computer print-outs in the front yard. Aiming his spray can at one, he began to cover it with a surface of gray paint.

  He glanced at Ed and Kira. They had moved two of the three cars out into the road and were washing them down with the hose. Their shorts and shirts were plastered against their bodies. Kira hooted as she aimed the hose at Ed, drenching him completely. He grabbed the hose from her and began to spray her with water. Kira danced on her toes, laughing loudly.

  Jim moved to spray the next chair. He had been trying to accept and understand his new relationship with Kira. He turned it over in his mind, trying to view it objectively: It wasn't harming them, it affected no one else, it gave him pleasure. It seemed cold and somehow negative to think of it that way.

  "Is it so strange, Jim?" Kira had asked. They were sitting on her bed, legs folded in front of them, elbows on knees, head in hands, perfectly matched. "It would be stranger if we didn't feel this way, weren't drawn to each other."

  He continued to spray the chairs. How do I feel about it? he asked himself. I'm able to reach someone else, able to love and communicate without rejection. He thought of Moira. His love for her had been nervous and feverish, an uneasiness that was always with him occupying his entire mind, refusing to let go. With Kira he was at peace, except for the occasional guilty doubts that nudged him from time to time, then retreated under the onslaught of his rationalizations. With Kira, he could work at his poetry or talk, easily sharing his thoughts and feelings and understanding hers as well.

  Kira and Ed were walking toward the house, leaving the hose on the lawn. They seemed to be discussing something. Ed gestured with his right arm as they climbed the steps to the front porch and disappeared into the house. Jim finished spraying the last chair, then glared at the hose. All the clones had inherited an almost obsessive tidiness from Paul, and he was annoyed that Ed and Kira had not rewound the hose. It was not like them.

  The chairs would need a little time to dry before he moved them back to the porch. He ambled to the front door, depositing the can on the porch, and went inside.

  The house was silent. Al and Mike had gone to the university earlier to do some lab work. Jim wandered through the living room, which was furnished with old overstuffed chairs and sofas. Two learning booths stood in the corner. They resembled large transparent eggs; their screens were blank and their earphones were lying idly on the writing surfaces next to the chairs. Paul had installed two more booths upstairs in the room he had once used as a study. Few people had that many booths in their homes, but Jim knew that few people used the one booth they usually had, preferring to watch the large vidscreens on their walls. Al had left several print-outs on the writing surface of one booth. He was the "pack rat" of the clones and would gather piles of neatly folded printouts until someone, usually Mike, threw them out. He continued through the living room to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was empty. Jim was surprised, having assumed Kira and Ed had come in for a sandwich. He left the kitchen, went back through the living room and up the stairs, and decided he would ask them if they wanted help with the hose and if they wanted to have some lunch with him. He walked past Ed's room. The door was open and there was no one inside. He went past Mike's room, then his own, stopped at Kira's door.

  It was closed. He knocked, heard the sounds of someone moving in the room. "Kira?" he said. He knocked again, then opened the door.

  Kira and Ed were sprawled on the bed. Both were naked. Ed turned and looked at Jim and appeared startled. Kira seemed calm. "Oh, no," said Jim. He clenched his hands into fists. "Oh, no." He felt himself shaking. The twin faces on the bed were watching him.

  He wanted to pound his fist into the wall. He turned and fled down the hall to his own room. He stood there, alone, trying to sort out the thoughts that tumbled through his mind. He heard soft footsteps coming down the hall. They stopped at his door. "Jim." He did not move. "Jim." He turned and saw Kira standing in the door, a long red robe draped over her shoulders.

  He gestured at the robe. "Your one concession to modesty," he said bitterly. She came into the room and closed the door.

  "Why are you so angry, Jim?"

  He turned from her and sat on the chair at his desk. "There's no reason to be angry," he muttered. "I found out that we're interchangeable to you too, that's all."

  "No, Jim," she said softly, leaning against the door. "That's not what you found out. Do you think for one moment I confuse Ed with you? Forget about yourself for

  one minute and think about him. He's just about given up trying to reach out to anyone, including us. He's so quiet about his problems, it's easy to pretend he's just shy or not that interested in people. You know how you felt, how lonely you were, but at least you kept trying with Moira, and you could reach me. Ed gave up trying, and about all you've accomplished today is reinforcing the way he feels. Now he's sitting in my room feeling guilty."

  Jim looked over at Kira. She was looking at the floor, folding her arms across her chest. "Oh, Jim, I don't know. Maybe I have my own problems too. Don't I have a right to solve them, or at least try? Or am I supposed to limit myself to you, or ignore Ed? Has this business really changed anything you might have found out through me?" She sighed. "Maybe it'll be harder for us, Jim. We have to find our own answers in our own way, and we don't even have the rough guidelines everybody else has. Some people would look at us and talk about incest taboos, and others would probably find it strange if we loved anyone else but the other clones. The point is, we have to try, and maybe we'll make mistakes, but . . .

  She turned and opened the door. "I still love you, Jim, just as much as I did before. Maybe none of us will ever feel the same way about anyone else. Maybe we really can't, being the way we are, and that means that Ed needs me too, and maybe Al and Mike will if they ever look beyond each other."

  She left the room but did not close the door. He sat at the desk trying to sort out his thoughts. He considered himself and the other clones, turned over their problems and relationships in his mind, and wondered what he should do now.

  He was with Kira, hands on her belly. She looked up at him as he hovered over her, guided his hand between her legs. He felt her wetness with his finger, moved forward and embraced her, embraced himself, and sighed as they merged

  Jim lifted the suitcase and put it in the back seat of the car. Al leaned against the open car door. "We'll miss you," he said.

  "I w
on't be gone long," he replied. He turned to Kira. Her brow was wrinkled with worry. He reached over to her, grasped her shoulders. "Come on, cheer up," he said. "I'll be back in a month or so. I'm not running away. I know what I'm doing, and I know why."

  She smiled at him tentatively, and he kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then he climbed into the car, waving his arm at the porch where Ed and Mike sat.

  He had explained himself to them as best he could, and he was satisfied that they understood him as well as could be expected. He would drive up to Moira's home first. He would not make demands of her, would not force himself on her. He would not give up if she drew away from him. He would leave and go to a poetry workshop in Minnesota he had heard about, meet people there, be like anyone else.

  Kira had come to his room the night before. They lay on his bed, arms and legs entwined, as he told her about his hopes and his plans.

  It would be easy to stay with Kira, easy to give up on other people. He would not let himself do it yet, not until he had tried and failed many times.

  He started the car and drove away from the house slowly. When he got to the end of the narrow road, he turned his head and saw Kira and Al walking to the front porch. Suddenly he felt doubtful about his actions, wondered if he should leave, asked himself if he really wanted to go.

  He continued to drive until the house was out of sight and he was on the road leading to the automated highway. He thought of Kira again, saw her head resting on his shoulder, and wondered if he were making a mistake. Will I love anyone else as completely? The image of Kira faded from his mind. She had given him as many questions as answers.

  The world out there was just as worthy of his attention as his own personal problems. It was a world very different from the sheltered enclave of the university, a world of neatly organized cities inside pyramids and under domes, and disorganized cities that sprawled across the landscape. It was a world of people who looked beyond the earth to the stars, and people who sought to preserve old customs and ancient ways. It was a world of abundance for many and starvation for some, of green and fertile reclaimed wildernesses and eroded deserts. It was time that he tried to understand his own place in this world.

  He drove the car onto the bypass, punched out his destination, and leaned back as the highway control took over, guided his car around the curved bypass, and shot him forward into the stream of cars on the highway.

  WHERE LATE THE

  SWEET BIRDS SANG

  Kate Wilhelm

  Kate Wilhelm began publishing in 1956, and by now is widely regarded as one of the best of today's writers—outside the genre as well as in it, for her work has never been limited to the strict boundaries of the field, and she has published mysteries, mainstream thrillers, and comic novels as well as science fiction. Wilhelm won a Nebula Award in 1968 for her short story, "The Planners," took a Hugo in 1976 for the novel version of the story that follows, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (perhaps the most famous and acclaimed of all clone novels), added another Nebula to her collection in 1987 with a win for her story "The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky," and won yet another Nebula the following year for her story "Forever Yours, Anna." Her many books include the novels Margaret and I, Fault Lines, The Clewisten Test, Juniper Time, Welcome, Chaos, Oh, Susannah! , Huysman's Pets, and Cambio Bay, and the collections The Downstairs Room, Somerset Dreams, The Infinity Box, Listen, Listen, Children of the Wind, and And the Angels Sing. In recent years, she has become well known as a mystery novelist as well with novels such as The Hamlet Trap, Smart House, Seven Kinds of Death, Sweet, Sweet Poison, Death Qualified, and The Best Defense. Her most recent book is a new mystery novel, Justice for Some. Wilhelm and her husband, writer Damon Knight, ran the Milford Writer's Conference for many years, and both are still involved in the operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers. She lives with her family in Eugene, Oregon.

  In the complex and darkly lyrical story that follows, she takes an incisive look at humankind's age-old trait of seeing what they want to see, instead of the unpleasant and uncomfortable truths that are right under their noses.

  What David always hated most about the Sumner family dinners was the way everyone talked about him as if he were not there.

  "Has he been eating enough meat lately? He looks peaked."

  "You spoil him, Carrie. If he won't eat his dinner, don't let him go out and play. You were like that, you know."

  "When I was his age, I was husky enough to cut down a tree with a hatchet. He couldn't cut his way out of a fog."

  David would imagine himself invisible, floating unseen over their heads as they discussed him. Someone would ask if he had a girl friend yet, and they would tsk-tsk whether the answer was yes or no. From his vantage point he would aim a ray gun at Uncle Clarence, whom he especially disliked because he was fat, bald, and very rich. Uncle Clarence dipped his biscuits in his gravy, or in syrup, or more often in a mixture of sorghum and butter that he stirred together on his plate until it looked like baby shit.

  "Is he still planning to be a biologist? He should go to med school and join Walt in his practice."

  He would point his ray gun at Uncle Clarence and cut a neat plug out of his stomach and carefully ease it out, and Uncle Clarence would ooze from the opening and flow all over them.

  "David." He started with alarm, then relaxed again. "David, why don't you go out and see what the other kids are up to?" His father's quiet voice, saying actually, that's enough of that. And they would turn their collective mind to one of the other offspring.

  As David grew older, he learned the complex relationships that he had merely accepted as a child. Uncles, aunts, cousins, second cousins, third cousins. The honorary members: brothers and sisters and parents of those who had married into the family. There were the Sumners and Wistons and O'Gradys and Heinemans and the Meyers and Capeks and Rizzos, all part of the same river that flowed through the fertile Virginia valley.

  He remembered the holidays especially. The old Sumner house was rambling, with many bedrooms upstairs and an attic that was wall-to-wall mattresses, pallets for the children, with an enormous fan in the west window. Someone was forever checking to make certain that they hadn't all suffocated in the attic. The older children were supposed to keep an eye on the younger ones, but what they did in fact was to frighten them night after night with ghost stories and inhuman sighs and groans. Eventually the noise level would rise until adult intervention was demanded. Uncle Ron would clump up the stairs heavily and there would be a scurrying, with suppressed giggles and muffled screams, until everyone found a bed again, so that by the time he turned on the hall light that illuminated the attic dimly, all the children seemed to be sleeping. He would pause briefly in the doorway, then close the door, turn off the light, and tramp back down the stairs, apparently deaf to the renewed merriment behind him.

  Whenever Aunt Claudia came up, it was like an apparition. One minute pillows would be flying, someone would be crying, someone else trying to read with a flashlight, several of the boys playing cards with another flashlight, some of the girls huddled together whispering what had to be delicious secrets, judging by the way they blushed and looked desperate if an adult came upon them suddenly, and then the door would snap open, the light would fall on the disorder, and she would be standing there. Aunt Claudia was very tall and thin, her nose was too big and she was tanned to a permanent old-leather color. She would stand there, immobile and terrible, and the children would creep back into bed without a sound. She would not move until everyone was back where he or she belonged, then she would close the door soundlessly. The silence would drag on and on. The ones nearest the door would hold their breath, trying to hear breathing on the other side. Eventually someone would become brave enough to open the door a crack, and if she was truly gone, the party would resume.

  The smells of holidays were fixed in David's memory. All the usual smells: fruitcakes and turkeys, the vinegar that went in the egg dyes, the greenery, and the thick, cream
y smoke of bayberry candles. But what he remembered most vividly was the Fourth of July smell of gunpowder that permeated their hair, their clothes, that lasted on their hands for days and days. Their hands would be stained purple-black from berry picking, and the color and smell were one of the indelible images of his childhood. Mixed in with it was the smell of sulfur that was dusted on them liberally to confound the chiggers.

  If it hadn't been for Celia, his childhood would have been perfect. Celia was his cousin, his mother's sister's daughter. She was one year younger than David and by far the prettiest of all his cousins. When they were very young they had promised to marry one day, and when they grew older and it was made abundantly clear that no cousins might ever marry in that family, they had become implacable enemies. He didn't know how they had been told. He was certain that no one ever put it in words, but they knew. When they could not avoid each other after that, they fought. She pushed him out of the hayloft and broke his arm when he was fifteen, and when he was sixteen they wrestled from the back door of the Wiston farmhouse to the fence fifty or sixty yards away. They tore the clothes off each other and he was bleeding from her fingernails down his back, she from scraping her shoulder on a rock. Then somehow in their rolling and squirming frenzy, his cheek came down on her uncovered chest, and he stopped fighting. He suddenly became a melting, sobbing, incoherent idiot and she hit him on the head with a rock and ended the fight.

  Up to that point the battle had been in almost total silence, broken only by gasps for breath and whispered language that would have shocked their parents. But when she hit him and he went limp, not unconscious, but dazed, uncaring, inert, she screamed, abandoning herself to anguish and terror. The family tumbled from the house as if they had been shaken out, and their first thought must have been that he had raped her. His father hustled him to the barn, presumably for a thrashing. But in the barn, his father, belt in hand, looked at him with an expression that was furious and strangely sympathetic. He didn't touch David, and only after he had turned and left did David realize that tears were still running down his face.