Beta

by Rachel Cohn

  So much energy has gusted inside me, I feel that I could explode. “Please can we run somewhere?” I ask Tahir.

  We enter the FantaSphere room in Tahir’s quarters. He sets the game to FloodQuest. To survive, we must run through the ruined remains of one of the old floody cities. We scavenge in alleys and climb stone walls and sprint past sentries until we reach the apex of the central castle, the high sanctuary that ends the quest. To get there, we must beat off hordes of panicked refugees, thieves, and plunderers, live rats and dead dog carcasses. And we must not get swallowed by the flood.

  We can get there together.

  Tahir tells me what happened to his First as we quest.

  It had been a surfer’s dream day. The wind and swells were cooperating just right. The First Tahir got towed out to the gigantes by hovercopter, determined to take advantage of the optimal conditions surfers dream about, wait for, long for. But the ocean is so feisty and unpredictable. Once he’d arrived, the swells had changed, moving faster and harder. The tow-in captains urged him not to make the jump, but he saw a liquid mountain rising that he just had to conquer. They dropped him down to catch the swell. It was a fifty-footer, by far not the biggest wave he’d ever ridden, but this one was different: mean and angry, heavy and thick, with unbelievable power and velocity. Nobody should have been on that wave. First Tahir took off onto the wave a few seconds too late, as if he’d contemplated in those last moments whether he should even take the plunge, but he went in anyway. He managed to make the drop onto the wave face by standing on his toes. It should have been a miraculous and wondrous surf down that moving mountain, but instead he appeared to struggle throughout the entire ride. He recovered at the bottom of the drop, and attempted to pull up under the wave’s lip, but it crashed on him and sent him under. He fell from his board and was pulled under by the beast, which blasted his board out into the whitewater. He drowned.

  The surf team was able to retrieve the body and return it to the Fortesquieu compound. Bahiyya went crazy with grief. She’d already buried five children. Her anguished screams could be heard across the entire estate. Tariq secretly called in Dr. Lusardi. He asked her to create a clone from his son’s deceased body. So he could always pass for human, clone Tahir was not vined, and his First’s hazel eyes were transplanted into the new body.

  As clone Tahir emerged, while he was waking and aware but his eyes still closed, one of the first things Tahir heard was Dr. Lusardi telling her assistant she had not wanted this dangerous job, but she also couldn’t deny such powerful people.

  “Why did she not want the job?” I ask Tahir. I couldn’t imagine Dr. Lusardi resisting a direct commission from one of the most influential families in the world.

  Tahir says, “Dr. Lusardi told my parents that she was only in the Beta stage of creating teen clones. She said she could not create a teen clone that would live past the approximate time of its First’s adolescence. My parents had very little time to make a choice. They decided to take the risk and hope for a cure.”

  “Risk? A cure? For what?” This makes no sense. There is no “cure” needed for a clone, unless he means a cure for soul extraction. Could this Tahir clone have a soul?

  “A cure for the Awfuls,” says Tahir.

  “What are the Awfuls? Do you mean how adults say teenagers become awful but it’s just a stage that will pass?”

  “Stop!” Tahir yells out, invoking the safe word that ends the game. The FloodQuest city and its vices instantly disappear.

  We both fall to the floor, out of breath, exhausted.

  I had been about to execute a marauding thief running at me to stab my heart with his sword, but apparently Tahir’s news about the Awfuls is more important than my side maneuver of a karate kick to the head of the marauder. Tahir couldn’t wait to call stop until I’d had the glory of the kill.

  “You seriously don’t know about the Awfuls?” Tahir asks me.

  “I thought I knew, but I think you mean something else. Do you mean…could you possibly have a soul?”

  “I have no soul. There wasn’t enough time for Dr. Lusardi to prepare. She had to do the standard extraction in order to replicate the body. To try otherwise would have risked the cloning not working at all.”

  “What is so awful about that?” I ask, curious about how a standard cloning could be deemed so terrible.

  “The Awfuls is the built-in stage Dr. Lusardi’s teen Betas go through. They terminate before adulthood.”

  “What?” I yell. These humans—they are cruel monsters. Liars. Deceitful. For the first time, I want to hurt them the way they hurt me. This is so unfair. My body feels numb, my energy spent, my mind deceived and angry.

  I’m barely emerged, and I’m already marked for death?

  Tahir says, “Is this really the first you’ve heard of it?”

  I nod. I know so little other than what’s been told to me.

  Tahir says, “You are upset. Legitimately upset.”

  “Aren’t you?” I demand.

  “Before, I was indifferent. Since I took the ’raxia, I am confused. I feel surprising anger. Do you want to know why we experience Awfuls?” I nod. Tahir continues. “Because they haven’t figured out how to transition a teen clone to adulthood, and they didn’t want to risk human owners experiencing attachment to teen clones that wouldn’t make it to adulthood. So Dr. Lusardi designed the teen Betas to go through a stage she termed ‘the Awfuls,’ around the same time that human teens would be transitioning from the end of adolescence into adulthood. Basically, we become so rebellious and obnoxious that we alienate our humans, who then can’t wait to get rid of us.”

  “Surely your parents with all their wealth and power could have asked for a clone with no such predetermined problem.”

  “They could ask. But Dr. Lusardi has not figured out how to accommodate this request. Cloning as a science was intended to replicate humanity, not to undo a tragic death.”

  “So what is a human supposed to do with their Awful?” I ask. “Are we expired?” I have sudden visions of being thrown from a cliff just for the crime of being a teenager.

  “They don’t have to expire us. It happens naturally. Once we turn Awful, we burn out quickly, and die. The point is that by then, no one would miss us. They’d want to get rid of us. The whole thing is a safeguard for the human buyers, but also for Dr. Lusardi.”

  I don’t want to believe. “There have never been Awfuls here. We are the first teen Betas.”

  “We are not the first teen Betas. Who told you that?”

  I realize no one actually told me that. I had just assumed.

  I shrug. I have no answers. All I’ve ever had is questions.

  Tahir says, “Dr. Lusardi created a crop of teen Betas before us. They were used in experiments at the Base. They all died within months of turning Awful. Except for the ones who escaped. No one knows what happened to them.”

  There are others out there like me. Like us. How ignorant I was to have thought I was special. Different.

  It never occurred to me I would live only a few years at best, just to descend into madness and die. Is there any comfort in knowing that this other teen Beta probably will too?

  Xanthe knew hate.

  Now, I know hate. I hate the humans who programmed me to die before I will barely have gotten a chance to live.

  With his human eyes transplanted from his First, he easily passes as human. He has no aestheticizing tattoos. Teen clones have a very different hormonal balance from humans, which is why I do not suffer the usual PMS-y girl problems that Dementia and Greer complain about, and why Tahir has no chest or facial hair. Tariq and Bahiyya think they are subtle when they affectionately rub their hands over Tahir’s chin and cheeks, but he knows they are hoping for signs of facial hair. Maybe if his face and body were no longer smooth and perfect, it would mean he might transition to adulthood rather than Awful. They want so much to hope. They have everything in the world, but without that hope, they seem to think they truly
have nothing. Strange humans: they’d rather their clone look and behave exactly as their real son rather than set it free to determine his own course.

  They have gone to extreme lengths to make sure no one discovers their son is a clone. When he was first emerging, when his parents thought he was asleep, Tahir heard what happened to the five members of the surf team who recovered First Tahir’s body from the gigantes—the only people besides Dr. Lusardi and Tahir’s parents who knew Tahir had actually drowned. They all received first-class passage and a lifetime of wealth to disappear to the farthest settled colony in the galaxy.

  And yet, by inviting me into Tahir’s life as they have this week, his parents have now entrusted me with his secret information. The humans must assume that as a soulless clone, I am an easy repository for their secrets. Knowledge equals power. How can I harness that power?

  Tahir has spent the time since he emerged as a clone cloistered with his parents in Biome City, being tutored on the life that was his First’s so that he can act out that life’s continuance since the accident. The family is now back on Demesne for Dr. Lusardi to give Tahir secret “treatments” to prevent his teenage hormones from descending into Awful. Tahir is anesthetized during these treatments and does not know what happens during them.

  “Do you feel changed after the treatments?” I ask Tahir.

  “I feel nothing,” he states. “Before, during, or after. I am empty.”

  Impulsively, I grab his hand. “You are not empty. You have me.”

  He clutches my hand in return, but his face is set to disbelief. The extension of his hand is a mimicked behavior, not based on a real desire to touch me. “Thank you,” he says politely. “Shall we resume our FloodQuest game now?”

  I need to make this Beta more like me. Before we both die, I need to make him feel.

  “Let’s run again,” I say.

  Even if there’s nowhere real to go, I’d still rather get there with him.

  SLEEP IS MEANINGLESS TO HIM, TAHIR SAYS, just another human exercise in empty time. He mimics it to keep his parents from harping on his need for it, but while I am on loan, they will not bother him about it. They are too hopeful that his wakeful time with a female Beta will somehow improve his dispassionate disposition.

  When I awake the next morning, Tahir is lying on the floor on his stomach, with his arms bent and his head propped on his fists. He has been watching me sleep.

  “Good morning,” says Tahir. “Have you slept satisfactorily?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I might sleep so much better nestled against you. So would you. Datacheck: spooning.

  “Who is Z?” he asks.

  My eyes go from bleary and half open to instantly wide and alert.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “In your sleep,” says Tahir. “Several times you mumbled, ‘You know you own me, Z.’”

  I turn over in bed, away from him. “I don’t know who Z is,” I say. Technically, I am not lying. I don’t know her. I am her. But I never knew her.

  I hear him move closer to me from the floor and feel his breath hot against the back of my neck. “There is no need to lie to me,” says Tahir.

  “How do you know I lie?” I ask. Please say it’s because you’re also a Defect. Please.

  “A guess,” Tahir says.

  “An intuition?” I ask, understanding now how just the smallest sign from Tahir might give Bahiyya and Tariq hope that their son will “wake.”

  “Unlikely,” says Tahir. “So who is Z?”

  “Please will you keep it secret if I tell you?” I whisper.

  “Of course,” says Tahir.

  I shouldn’t, but I do.

  I trust.

  I turn over to face him and just say it. “Z was my First. I have memories of her. Not a lot, actually, just one specific memory. Of a boy she loved.”

  Tahir nods, with no expression of shock or disapproval. “Yes, that is not information that should be shared except between us.”

  I like that. There’s an us.

  “Do you think I’m a Defect?” I ask him.

  “Whether or not you are a Defect has no relevance to me,” says Tahir.

  His indifferent reply is somehow comforting. Nonjudgmental. Maybe it shouldn’t matter if any clone is a Defect. Maybe being a Defect or not has no relevance to our existence as living, breathing, sentient creatures.

  “I am a Defect,” I confess, surprised how easily the words come forth, and how relieved I feel to let them go.

  “So what?” says Tahir. It felt like the biggest admission in the world to make, but he clearly couldn’t care less. “Father says we are all Defects, in our way. Humans and clones. He says the word is really just a scare tactic to incite disobedient beings into subservience. He says that’s all it really is—just a word.”

  Tariq Fortesquieu is freaking cool, for someone’s dad.

  Tahir adds, “Father would consider it encouraging that a Beta could make this connection with their First.”

  “Do you have real memories of your First?” I ask Tahir.

  “If you mean, do I feel the memories, or relive them, the answer is no. The memories are basic ones, with no real details. Just data. It’s like having a coloring book with all the pictures outlined in black and white, but no color to the images. And in case the chip does not do its job enough, his parents—my parents, I keep being reminded—continually ply me with flash-card exercises, to associate names and faces with people and events particular to his life. They fear that I am a wooden approximation of their real son. They want me to play the part of my First without anyone knowing I’m a clone. But it’s not just for show. They actually want me to feel like I am the real Tahir. Of course, I cannot.”

  “You are better.” He will think I mean he is better because he is science; I know he is better because he is kinder and gentler than the real Tahir.

  “I am a continual disappointment to Tariq and Bahiyya. I am incapable of returning their affection and love, or sharing in their fond memories. I can mimic First Tahir, but the feelings are not there. They know that.”

  “Do you wish you could have his real feelings?”

  Tahir’s face adopts the expression our databases label curious. “For a moment, when I took Ivan’s ’raxia, I did. But then the sensation passed. I cannot wish, Elysia. You know that.”

  That afternoon, we are called to join Tahir’s parents for a picnic lunch on the beach. Bahiyya awaits us in the hydromassage pool built into Io’s waters for her. It’s a small, triangle-shaped tidal pool with jade walls, offering a soft contrast to the violet seawater lapping over the walls and feeding into the pool. She wears a purple velvet turban on her head, covering her gray hair and giving her slightly wrinkled but serene face a more youthful veneer.

  “You look very relaxed,” Tahir tells her as we stand on the shoreline. The servants are setting up the picnic lunch on the beach, placing a blanket on the sand, and setting up tables to hold our drinks. “The air here benefits you, I can see.”

  “I can’t get enough of it.” Bahiyya inhales a gulp and lets it out with great content. “I told you it was magic here on Demesne, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Tahir states.

  “Do you love being here?” she asks him.

  “I love being here,” he repeats.

  She recognizes his mimicry and tells him, “Your generation, you don’t understand these pleasures. You don’t understand war and suffering. May you never have to.”

  “Thank you,” says Tahir.

  Perhaps she also recognizes the futility of her hope for her cloned son to appreciate all the hardship her generation experienced, because she is eager to let go of the topic. She gazes at me wearing my one-piece swim costume. “Elysia, I’ve been told you are an excellent swimmer.”

  I exhibit. I step from the shore onto the jade rim of her pool and dive from the pointed edge where the pool meets the ocean. I swim a butterfly stroke a distance equivalent to the length of a competitive pool and retu
rn to the ocean side of the hydromassage pool. “My goodness,” Bahiyya enthuses. “Your First could have been an Olympian. Such speed and grace. Come over to my side, darling.”

  I glide over the wall and into her pool. The warm water swirls over my skin and massages my muscles. The water offers pure silken warmth.

  “You too, Tahir,” Bahiyya says. “Come sit with me. I love having you children near.” Tahir complies, stepping over the jade wall and into the pool. “It’s wonderful here, right?”

  Tahir nods and I can see him start to say “Yes, Mother” again, but her face is directed at him and not at me, so I smile and try to twinkle my eyes, so Tahir will know the expression to offer his mother. He sees my look, smiles, and opens his hazel eyes wider so they appear brighter and sweeter. I mouth the words Marvelous, Mommy, and Tahir answers, “Marvelous, Mommy.”

  She has noticed his gaze at me and is not unaware that his response was coached, but she is not displeased. Instead, she claps her hands together. “Excellent, Tahir,” she exclaims. “You told Elysia?”

  “Elysia knows I am a clone,” Tahir says.

  “Sssh,” Bahiyya says softly. “There are servants on the beach. We don’t want them to hear. We thought she might figure it out.” She turns to me. “Did you?”

  I nod.

  She smiles at me. “You realize what this means?”

  That I will be expired if I reveal this secret information?

  Bahiyya says, “We might just have to keep you forever, Elysia.”

  They could easily coach him via Relay or hologram, but Tahir’s parents choose to prepare him for the Governor’s gala using old-time flash cards. I nibble freshly baked, warm chocolate chip cookies on our picnic blanket as I watch Tahir drink from his green shake and answer his parents’ queries.

  Tariq holds up a photo of an older gentleman wearing a crown. “The king of Zakat,” Tahir identifies.