Daughter of Nothing

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  What surprised Jacey was that Belle’s Nine stood around looking to her for direction. All except Belle’s second, Leslie, who stared at the grate, dumbstruck.

  “Leslie,” Jacey said, “attend to your Nine.”

  The girl snapped out of it and turned to the gaggle of girls standing behind her. “Dajeet, Dansha, Grace, Suki, Chloe, Christina, Celia,” she said, clapping as she announced their names. “Roll call in Girls’ Hall immediately. Go!”

  The girls spun and fled back into the dormitory.

  Jacey started back to Girls’ Hall, her Nine falling in around her.

  “Dr. Carlhagen likes taking things from us,” Livy said as they walked back to Girls’ Hall. “I don’t understand why everyone allows it. He is just an old man.”

  Hearing her own thoughts coming out of Livy’s mouth jolted Jacey. Once again, admiration for the Dolphin filled her.

  “Wanda, see that the Nine gets ready for breakfast. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She watched her Nine file into Girls’ Hall then checked to see that all the boys had returned to their dormitory. She returned to the grate to peer in. Belle hung from the ladder, her feet just above the water level. The rains had diluted the worst of the smell, but Jacey knew that wouldn’t last long with two people trapped in there. She could make out very little of Humphrey’s face, but he didn’t look well, almost skeletal. She wanted to call down to them and tell them that she was going to get them out, but she didn’t know how she would deliver such a promise.

  She started back toward Girls’ Hall, but then changed her mind. She spun and headed to the hacienda. Anger fueled her steps as she climbed the path to the mahogany doors. She pushed on them, but they did not open. She pounded on them. “Mr. Justin! Mr. Justin!” She continued to pound, and when her fists got sore, she kicked.

  One of the doors swung open, and Mr. Justin’s kindly face peeped out. “Can I help you, Miss Jacey?”

  She pushed through, not caring if she knocked him out of the way. “Where is he?”

  “I assume you are referring to Dr. Carlhagen. He is in his office.”

  The office door stood slightly ajar, but she could see a light was on inside. She shouldered it open and stormed through.

  Dr. Carlhagen sat at his desk wearing his white suit and blue bow tie. “I wasn’t expecting you until tonight,” he said with a friendly smile.

  “After what you’ve done to Humphrey and Vaughan, and now Belle, what makes you think I would ever agree to come here again? I can barely stand to be in the same room with you.”

  A muscle beneath his right eye twitched, but he kept the smile firmly in place. “And yet you are now in the same room with me. I assume you have something to say.”

  “I demand you let Belle and Humphrey out of the pit immediately.”

  “Demand?” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t think you are in the position to demand anything. Nurse Smith also identified you in her assault. And Kirk and Horace and Wanda.”

  “So why aren’t all of us in the pit?”

  “Two at a time is sufficient I think. It gives the others a chance to watch and anticipate their own punishment. Make no mistake, they will be punished.”

  “And what about me, why don’t you put me in the pit? Why is it that I can break every rule?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out?” Dr. Carlhagen asked, standing. He took the cane from his desk and hobbled around to face her. “Aren’t you the one who reads everyone’s face, knows their feelings and motives by observing their body language, manipulates with your smile? I spare you the punishment I give to others because it serves my purpose. And before you ask,” he said, holding up a gnarled hand, “my purposes are my own, and I don’t intend to share them with you.”

  Jacey wanted to strike him, wished that Sensei had taught her the martial arts he had taught Vaughan. Instead she spun away and headed out of his office.

  “I’ll see you tonight, Jacey,” he called after her.

  She stopped and turned back. “Only if Humphrey and Belle join us. Otherwise, the only way you will ever get me here is to have Sensei drag me.”

  Dr. Carlhagen tapped his cane on the floor and nodded appreciatively. “Done. I’ll let them out.” He chuckled, eyes gleaming. “It’ll be a little soirée.”

  ° ° °

  GIRLS’ HALL LAY EMPTY. WANDA AND Leslie had gotten their Nines washed and dressed and to the dining hall for breakfast. Jacey paced up and down the aisle between the bunks, seething with rage. She had gotten one thing she wanted, which was Humphrey and Belle out of the pit, but the idea of sitting at Dr. Carlhagen’s dining room table made her want to throw up.

  And having Humphrey and Belle there wouldn’t make it any easier. Belle might actually attack Dr. Carlhagen on sight, and that would get them nowhere.

  Nowhere.

  That’s where Jacey was. It was where she’d come from, and it was where she was headed. Even if she gave up her hunt for the truth and settled in and toed the line, even if she went to class and performed Swan Lake and kept her mouth shut during Socrates’s classes, a year would pass, she would go into the medical ward after graduation, she would meet her mother, and the next day her mother would be dead. And then where would Jacey be?

  Nowhere.

  Like Sarah, raving about her body not feeling right. That same fate awaited Humphrey, Belle, and every other Scion. All the way down to Livy.

  The only source of information she had beyond what she discovered for herself was what Socrates was trying to tell her.

  She skipped going to dining hall, heading straight to the classroom. She summoned Socrates over her desk. Without greeting or preamble, she said, “Dr. Carlhagen had Belle put in the pit this morning.”

  “Have you recited the lines I gave you yet today?” he asked.

  She slammed her hand on the desk. “No! They don’t make any sense. Just tell me what you want to tell me.

  He went on as if she hadn’t shouted. “This time you don’t need to use Madam LaFontaine’s mirrors. I accomplished what I wanted to with her. I hope you paid attention to our conversation. Today you can use any mirror you like to recite the lines.”

  “What other mirror?” Jacey imagined herself in the bathroom in Girls’ Hall, reciting her lines. It seemed pointless.

  “I suggest you use a different mirror. Try the bougainvillea hedges. One Scion is like another.” He disappeared.

  In a fury, Jacey tried to summon him again, pounding her fist on her desk. He did not return.

  The professor had finally lost his mind. The confrontation with Madam LaFontaine had pushed him completely over the edge.

  She wandered out of the classroom and onto the grassy quad, not sure what to do next. She went to the pit and saw that Belle and Humphrey were both clinging to the ladder.

  A cough off to her right startled her, and she looked up to see Nurse Smith on her rocking chair on her front porch. Even from far away, Jacey could see the dark bruises around the woman’s eye and cheek.

  The day was growing warmer as the sun rose higher, and even the strong breezes didn’t cut the heat that had rolled in following the previous night’s squall.

  Jacey’s head pounded from lack of sleep, from frustration. The rage that had powered her to this point seemed to have run out, leaving her numb. Without really knowing where she was headed, she trudged toward the south path. She had a notion to take a long walk around the loop.

  As she neared the path, she saw one of the bougainvillea hedges, Dr. Carlhagen’s pride and joy. The project every Scion tended and helped expand during their Crab year.

  Socrates had referred to it as a mirror.

  It seemed so stupid.

  Jacey stared at the hedge, trying to understand in what way it could be construed as a mirror. How did it reflect her back to herself? She squeezed the bridge of her nose and tried to remember what he had said last.

  One Scion is like another.

  She recited the first quote. “‘Why d
o you call us orphans if our noble father be alive?’”

  That was the very question she had been asking. Dr. Carlhagen had always called them orphans. A lie, of course.

  She moved on to the next quote, a line from Macbeth. “Fathered he is, and yet he is fatherless.”

  It seemed to say the same thing. They had parents, and yet they didn’t. Was that because they had been kept from their parents, or because their parents had rejected them? Jacey had no idea.

  The next line didn’t seem to relate at all. “He was skillful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.”

  She rephrased it in her mind. He was smart enough to still be alive if knowledge was enough to defeat death.

  She spoke the last quote. “Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere Scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.”

  Jacey decided that “man” referred to all mankind. She rephrased the second line. Mankind sometimes behaved like a Scion of the devil, but at other times appeared noble and good.

  Aside from the word Scion, which meant child or descendant, she didn’t see much of interest in the quote. From her experience, its sentiment was certainly true.

  So she was back to Socrates’s cryptic remark about one Scion being like another.

  “The bougainvillea hedge is a mirror,” she said to herself, trying to figure out how that could be true.

  She took hold of a twig and plucked it, drew the bloom close to her nose.

  Mirror . . .

  Had Socrates been telling her she was beautiful like the flower?

  That was more like one of Dr. Carlhagen’s lines.

  Socrates had called the hedge a mirror. One Scion is like another.

  Jacey gasped as she looked at it, remembering the work she had done as a Crab, of taking cuttings from the bougainvillea and planting them farther down to begin a new section. A cutting could be called a “scion.”

  Fathered he is and yet he is fatherless.

  “The cutting isn’t a child of the bougainvillea,” she said, losing her breath. “It is the same plant.

  Once scion is like another.

  Socrates was telling her that, like the bougainvillea, she had been grown from a cutting.

  Is that even possible?

  A burst of noise came from the dining hall as the students came out and headed toward class. She sprinted toward them and waved her arms over her head. “Who knows about biology and botany?”

  Some of them raised their hands nervously, obviously unsure of what she wanted.

  “Reproduction,” she said. “Is it possible to make babies without intercourse?”

  “Are you pregnant?” Horace asked, then snickered and said something so gratuitously rude that even Kirk looked shocked.

  “No! I just need to know. Tell me.”

  She shook the bougainvillea twig in Horace’s face. The rest of the students looked at each other nervously and scurried away.

  Wanda pushed Jacey back. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “She’s crazy,” Horace said, looking for Kirk to laugh with him. But Kirk was walking away. Horace trailed after, muttering.

  Jacey took a deep breath and grabbed Wanda by the elbows. “I need to know if there is another way to make a baby.”

  “I suppose the egg could be fertilized outside the mother and then re-implanted, but what would be the point?”

  “Why do children resemble their parents?”

  “That’s easy. Genetics.”

  Jacey wished for the millionth time that Socrates had taught her more than the basics in science and math. “Explain. Slowly.”

  “Every cell in the human body has a molecule called—” Wanda stopped seeing Jacey’s blank look. “You don’t know what a molecule is?”

  “Something very small, right?” Jacey squeezed her temples.

  “Yes, that’s fine. Something very small. And our bodies are made of molecules that form larger pieces called cells. Did Socrates ever magnify cells for you?”

  “No.”

  “Every part of our body—our skin, our fingernails, our hair—is made up of cells. You can only see them under magnification. And in every cell is a molecule called DNA. It’s big for a molecule, but it’s super tiny from our perspective.”

  She must have seen Jacey’s frustration, because she waved her hands. “Trust me, it makes sense. And the DNA contains all the information that makes up a person—feet, hair, eye color, shape, height. So when a father fertilizes a mother’s egg, the DNA molecules combine. That’s why the resulting child resembles both parents.”

  Jacey considered this. “So in the transmission I heard from Dante, when his father said he was a chip off the old block, I recognized that to mean they looked similar.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not identical.”

  “No. Because a child is a blend of her two parents.”

  Jacey thought of Dante and the dead face of the man who was certainly his father. They had looked a lot alike. She could imagine that Dante could have turned into that same man given enough years.

  “Wait a second.” Jacey started to pace, recalling something she’d heard during Dante’s transmission. Something she’d never paid attention to before. Toward the very end, Dr. Carlhagen had interrupted. “‘We must get started. Graduates, Progenitors—I mean, Sponsors—if you please.’”

  Jacey noticed Wanda had a reader tucked under her arm. “Look up the definition of ‘progenitor.’”

  Wanda spoke to the device, then read from the screen. “Progenitor. The individual from which a person, animal, or plant originates.”

  “That sounds like a parent to me,” Jacey said, skin going cold. “Except it suggests a single source. Would it be possible to make a copy of someone?”

  “You mean clone someone? I’m sure it’s possible, but there are all kinds of ethical problems with that.” She put a gentle hand on Jacey’s arm. “What’s wrong with you, Jacey?”

  “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  Wanda did not look convinced. “But why are you asking all these questions? What did you find out?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I didn’t sleep last night, and I haven’t eaten, and everything is changing. I think I need to lie down.” She wriggled free from Wanda’s grasp and staggered to Girls’ Hall.

  She returned to her bunk, her mind spinning faster than the rattan fan on the ceiling. Faster than her room in the hacienda after drinking too much wine.

  She fought to keep the truth at bay, to lock it in a deep corner of her mind and throw away the key. Perhaps if she refused to believe it, it would disappear.

  But in doing so another horrible truth bobbed to the surface. Socrates’s words to Madam LaFontaine. “It is a pity. Maybe Dr. Carlhagen will make a backup of her before she’s overwritten.”

  Overwritten . . .

  Like the stupid dog in the video.

  There were four dead people frozen in the medical ward. Jacey could only conclude that the man who looked like Dante had been like the smart dog in the video. And his knowledge had transferred to Dante.

  Which meant Dante had been overwritten.

  Ping had been overwritten.

  Vin had been overwritten.

  But Sarah . . . ? Something had gone wrong. Sarah had been partially overwritten by Janicka, but she still recognized Jacey and Sensei.

  Janicka’s mind couldn’t handle waking up in a different body.

  Her clone’s body.

  Jacey shivered.

  No. She would not think about that.

  Poor Sarah.

  What evil motive would compel someone to invade another person’s mind? And for what purpose? To have a younger, fitter body? To live another lifetime?

  He was skillful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

  That was what Socrates h
ad been trying to tell her. That knowledge could be set up against mortality. Dr. Carlhagen’s machine had conquered death. . . . As long as there was a younger vessel to fill, one could transfer again and again.

  Dr. Carlhagen’s prophecy, that the Scions had great destinies to be leaders of men, was true. But it wouldn’t be the Scions leading; it would be their Progenitors, using the bodies of their clones as hosts for their ancient minds.

  I’m a clone.

  The thought ripped free from where Jacey had kept it caged. It tore sobs from her chest, burned out of her eyes in a torrent of tears. It rent apart the fantasy that Jacey would one day meet her mother.

  She had no mother.

  That was why Nurse Smith hated them all. And feared them. And called them “soulless abominations.”

  Jacey was being raised to host someone else’s mind, someone else’s memories. But not her mother’s.

  I have no mother.

  I am the daughter of nothing.

  29

  From Light to Dark in an Instant

  Jacey awoke to a rush of girls entering the dormitory. They moved quietly, faces drawn. Too many strange things had happened to them in such a short span of days.

  The bell rang six times.

  Jacey gripped her covers, overwhelmed by a sense that time had sped up. Not just because she’d slept all day. Watching the girls flop onto their bunks and start on their assignments, Jacey realized that time was running out.

  Every single one of them was doomed to be overwritten.

  Livy climbed up to Jacey’s bunk. The child stared at her with those wise, green eyes. “When are Humphrey and Belle getting out of the pit?”

  Jacey covered her face, remembering her bargain with Dr. Carlhagen. The last thing she wanted to do was eat dinner at the hacienda. But she knew if she didn’t show, Dr. Carlhagen would be happy to leave them in the pit for another night. And then there was Vaughan. She had to search for his body in the hacienda.

  “I’m going to get them out tonight.”

  And after that . . . Jacey decided she could only focus on one thing at a time. After speaking briefly with Wanda and Leslie about her deal with Dr. Carlhagen to get Humphrey and Belle out of the pit, she took a long shower and changed into fresh clothes.