Multitude

by Swanson, Peter Joseph

  Venus added, “That’s when the union got started… really started.”

  “Yeah.” Lady Hatchet nodded. “When Earth protested the damn robber scientists’ complete power, there were protests. So what. A few people yelling way far away on Earth didn’t do a thing.”

  Venus stated, “But Earth did cut off all financial support. And there was almost a total war between the prison corporations and the clone corporations. The only thing that prevented that from really doing anything much was the huge distance between here and Earth. The clone corporations on Earth later split with the scientists out here so we’re not even a part of that anymore. So suddenly the damn robber scientists had to reckon with us more seriously as a union out here.”

  Lady Hatchet started to laugh but then her attention was drawn away. “What was that in the damn water?” she asked, rushing to the edge of the bridge to sit on the low wide railing to peer over it.

  “Don’t fall in like damn idiot!” Venus cautioned her.

  “I’m fine. I saw something right there! There was some kind of a big thing in the water. Big and long.”

  “I don’t see anything.” Venus leaned over the railing. “You’re seeing spots again. When’s the last time you had your eyes changed?”

  Thorn asked Lady Hatchet, “What did it look like?”

  “I don’t know, like a big rope slowly shaking itself out. Sliding side to side in the water. Right there. Damn. Or something squishy. Like a big blob of… of… squish!”

  Venus shook her head impatiently. “You’re damn nuts.”

  “Was it the monkey mob?” Thorn asked, staring at where she was pointing, his eyes wide as saucers. “Is it the monsters they talked about at the hippistick camp?”

  Venus said, “Don’t be a dumb clown. That’s damn fairytale nonsense the hippisticks make up when they’ve decided they need to scare the kids into behaving.”

  Lady Hatchet insisted, “I saw something in the water and it wasn’t a rusted person. Pfff! Look! There’s bubbles! Right over there. Look!”

  Venus laughed. “Those are just some old clone farts.”

  “But I saw something else, too!”

  Venus gave it a dismissive wave of her hand. “It could just be a loose cable or hose. Let’s go before it decides to whack us in the head.”

  As they stepped off the bridge, Thorn felt something tapping underwater against the bottom truss but he decided not to mention it. It didn’t matter to him what it was. He was looking in awe at the city. He wondered if he should just run ahead and see if it really was heaven or if the old women needed to be with him to vouch that he was indeed worthy to enter.

  “I really wish Eleven Jane was with us now, it looks like we’re going to heaven!”

  Venus remarked, “She’d rather drop dead.”

  chapter 6: a union meeting with treats

  An unoccupied car playfully zigzagged around the huge legs of a tall statue of a union worker, The Colossus of Gaol. Then it parked in front of the three of them, greeting them, its top flipping up and unfolding like wings. They climbed aboard. The car drove up several flights then down a long shadowy veranda lined with dead pine trees interconnected with dusty cobwebs. The car entered a hall and passed hundreds of identical apartment doors. “Nobody lives inside there?” Thorn finally asked.

  “A damn few,” Venus answered, “and we’re going to go pick them up.”

  “Who?”

  “The damn few.”

  After passing a dizzying labyrinth of many more indistinguishable doors, another car raced up from behind. It was empty. “What’s that doing?” Thorn asked.

  Lady Hatchet vaguely gestured to the other vehicle. “Oh phhh. Just ignore it and maybe it’ll go away. Let’s not encourage bad behavior.”

  “Damn rude,” Venus agreed. As Thorn thought about that, another empty car turned in from a side hall and rode in front of them. Although they stayed at a steady speed, the cars before and behind them took turns pressing close, almost touching. “Just ignore them,” Venus repeated, as Thorn watched the cars nervously.

  “What is this?” he asked. “There’s nobody in them. Are they controlled by someone who wants to intimidate us?”

  “That’s the conspiracy theory.” Venus made an irritated face. “It could be damn spies or just intimidation. It’ll take more than near miss bumper cars to scare me.”

  “Spies?” Thorn asked.

  “It may not be malicious at all, though,” Lady Hatchet said. “We don’t always have to be so damn paranoid.”

  Venus looked at her. “I’m not paranoid. You’re just being contrary again.”

  Lady Hatchet snapped, “You just said there was a conspiracy.”

  “I said that I admitted there was the theory. I didn’t make it up.”

  Lady Hatchet raised her eyebrows. “You just hunt down any old gossip, though.”

  “I do not.”

  Thorn ignored their bickering, to ask, “What else could make these cars cluster up on us?” He was impressed that the one he was in was so steadfast amidst the odd interplay.

  Lady Hatchet suggested, “It might not be about us at all. Maybe the cars got bored. They could just be gaming with each other. They’re pretty smart, you know, for cars. And even things as damn dumb as goldfish play with each other.”

  “Why can’t they go play on their own damn time,” Venus said as she shooed at one. It swooped out as if it saw her hand and then swerved close again as if belligerent.

  “They seem to like to come out and play when people are sitting in them. Maybe they really like the feel of our butts.” Lady Hatchet yelled at the cars, “Knock it off! You’re scaring the damn clone!”

  Venus said, “If it’s anti-union intimidation, the robber scientists are damn dumb.”

  They slowed to a stop at a lobby where an ancient skeletal woman sat in a big stuffed chair, waiting for them. A young man was at her side as her care attendant. He helped her up. Venus introduced, “Madam Wintermirror, here’s the living clone.”

  “Isn’t he a super damn specimen?” Lady Hatchet grandly gestured to him. “Clone meat to high heaven. And it’s still got a pulse!”

  “Heaven?” Thorn asked. He glanced farther down the hall for it.

  “Get the clown hose in the back of the car.” the ancient woman ordered. “I’m not sitting next to that.”

  “Why,” Venus asked her, as Thorn obediently hopped to the back, feeling ashamed for no reason.

  The attendant carried her into the car and sat next to her. “Nice clone,” he remarked.

  The old woman yelled a few obscenities and then laughed to herself like she was nuts. The car started off again down the vast halls.

  “How are you?” Lady Hatchet asked Madam Wintermirror, in concern.

  She swore angrily.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My goddam feet swelled up yesterday. I forgot to move for a few hours and they just swelled.”

  “What’s wrong?” Venus asked. “Why would your feet swell up? That’s damn exotic.”

  “My doctor bag said my blood was pooling up. Damn. Shit!”

  Venus asked, “Damn, yeah. What’s that?”

  “It’s not all pumping through my heart, anymore. Some just stays down in my feet. I’ll be dead of a blood clot in no time and I won’t care.” She swore again.

  “You’ll live to reach one hundred and sixty,” the care attendant assured her. “Now calm down and don’t have an apoplectic fit.”

  “I don’t want to live another year! Live another year and do what?” She swore some more as she watched the passing doors.

  “Live life.” Venus smiled.

  Madam Wintermirror frowned. “The other day my stomach broke loose and they shouldn’t have stuck it back on. I think my stomach was trying to tell the rest of me something. It was saying, Let go.”

  Lady Hatchet patted her on the bony shoulder. “Oh, now, that happens sometimes. And that was years ago. And people as old as us always h
ave that happen. Sometimes. Anyway, that’s what doctor bots are for and it would be so rude to not give them anything to do.”

  “Do you think anybody will come to the meeting now that we have a clone that’s alive?” Venus asked everyone, looking back at Thorn.

  Madam Wintermirror bitterly answered with a few swear words, then added, “People only come if there’s good snacks. A live clown hose show might help though. It’s all gotten so puritanical and bleak around here. Maybe he can show us all some of his damn perverted tricks and make us all laugh.”

  As the car entered a large pearly-floored plaza surrounded by long intermittent panels of gathered white curtains, dozens of empty cars raced out and swirled around them. They all seemed to dare to get as close as possible but none actually bumped into each other.

  “Go crash and die!” Lady Hatchet yelled at them.

  Venus moaned. “What a damn nuisance.”

  Madam Wintermirror pointed at them. “The damn robber scientists are losing control of their experiments.” A gleaming blue car pulled up alongside her. She yelled at it, “Go pee in your pants and then tell me how it felt!” The car backed off.

  “Oh,” Lady Hatchet asked. “Is that what’s happening? The experiments are going crazy? Phhh them, then!”

  “Yeah look at them.” Madam Wintermirror waved at all the cars. “They think they’re cute.”

  The care attendant blew a hefty wad of spit out onto one of the cars. “There!” he hollered. “Now it’s off to the wash!” The vehicle turned and sped away down an adjacent hall.

  Venus asked, “Why aren’t we going to the meeting, straight away?”

  Madam Wintermirror explained, “We’re meeting Mack, first, at his apartment.”

  “Oh that makes sense.” Venus turned to Thorn. “He’s our new president when Madam Wintermirror leaves the post. I suppose he wants to meet you, first, in a private audience.”

  “Phhh. What a spineless ninny.” Lady Hatchet frowned. “He just wants us all to think up his script for him, first.”

  Thorn nodded, glad, since he wasn’t cozy to the idea of a large room filled with his makers. He remembered how the birds of Earth would gang up and peck all the feathers off the odd bird so it would die of exposure, slowly and shamefully. He saw it happening to him. “I’m not looking forward to a room full of firstborns at all,” he admitted to Venus.

  “Oh, don’t look so damn upset. The hippisticks were nice, enough, right?”

  “Yeah, but they were trying really hard to be full of peace and sunshine.”

  “And we’re damn warriors, yes we are,” Madam Wintermirror said. “And we’re gonna win this big fat rock all for ourselves!”

  “But it’s not ours to take,” her personal care attendant calmly reminded her. “Just like it wasn’t theirs to take.”

  “But they damn took it.” She elbowed him. “You don’t read enough history.”

  “What?”

  “Anybody takes what they can. That’s what always happens. You take it and then you just say, You don’t like it? Too damn bad! Fuck You! That’s all history in a nutshell.” Madam Wintermirror chuckled nastily.

  A long string of cars followed and proceeded them as far as the eye could see up and down the hall, and followed them all the way to an apartment door. When the ensuing car backed away, a burly steely-eyed man stepped out of the door. “My what an escort!” He looked down the hall at the retreating mob. “I knew I was special but now I know.” He leaned down to help pick Madam Wintermirror out of her seat.

  “Careful, Mack,” she crabbed at him. “My bones are loose and I’ve got blood pooling up in my feet and my stomach just popped off and there’s a crazy living clown hose in the back seat trying to get us all arrested for public indecency.” She added some swear words.

  “Sorry.” Mack took her as gently as he could and helped her inside. They went to the back of his apartment to a balcony where they could see out across the lake to an orange point of light beside a waterfall and patch of green lawn. If Thorn concentrated he could spot a few figures strolling about.

  Mack reiterated, “So, we have a clone who can talk and make sense, and in our very own custody. That has to mean something. Right? Yes. What does it mean? What do we want to do?”

  Venus smiled sweetly. “Can we have a clone war now?”

  Mack looked dismayed. “What would that be? One clone against who? Them? Where are the ones we’re fighting against hiding?”

  “Kill him.” Madam Wintermirror said. “All we need to do is keep his hand or a finger, just a smear of him on a glass slide, one dot of him. We can clone a dozen hostages, later.” For that comment, Thorn gave her his dirtiest expression. She noticed and added. “So you’re self-aware. You’re still a damn factory clown hose that got out and we don’t have to treat you the same as ourselves. It’s in the rules.”

  Thorn gasped.

  She added, “I’m not going to feel bad for all my many years of eating baloney. I’m not going to start now.”

  Mack looked at Madam Wintermirror in confusion. “If we kill him then what’s the point of having one that’s already grown so far into manhood? They don’t get any older in that city of theirs. I don’t think we have enough lab machines to spare, to grow a completely new clone. We can grow spare parts for ourselves just fine, but growing a whole new clone, like they do, is too much for us right now. We already have access to all the dead clone tissue in the world. This one is alive and grown and schooled and out walking and talking. This is a first for the union!”

  Madam Wintermirror looked at Mack angrily. “I asked for entire clone labs, not a few machines yanked out of the zoo, like you did. Why haven’t you found me entire labs? The ones where the whole humans are made. You’ve had years to work on that. How can we not know where they all are by now?”

  Mack shrugged. “We can’t just run around looking for new back hallways into new places without risking ending up dragged off by a claw and put inside an ice pillar.”

  She looked at him in confusion. “An ice pillar? What year am I in?”

  “That’s where the clones start off dead.”

  Madam Wintermirror laughed. “Is that how they still do it? They always said they’d modernize the clone killing. It was supposed to have been done before I was even born. That place back there was first built to be a cement factory for the first prison and it hasn’t changed much from then.”

  “It’s inhumane and primitive!” Thorn said. “And savage!” He remembered what he saw when he fell out of the broken elevator into the freezer room. Chrysalis Joy was frozen dead. Thorn choked up. “It’s terrible! A freezer full of death!”

  Madam Wintermirror nodded at him. “I just said that. But water and ice are damn cheap and there’s nobody around to care to install something different, I guess. So the clones get iced like they’re cavemen.” She swore to nobody in particular.

  Mack said, “And we’ll be iced too if we tangle with it. It hunts anybody who’s in there, assuming it’s a clone off the elevator. The computer doesn’t take names, it’s so primitive. I’ve gotten as close as I can without getting killed, myself. It’s dangerous even trying. I’ve killed so many decoys trying. I don’t know how many manikins and clay pigeons have blown up or have been iced away, so that it would be them and not me. There’s a lot of security to the clone labs, to keep the busybodies away.”

  Madam Wintermirror said to him, “You once told me you found some labs besides the zoo.”

  “The labs that we’ve found and can walk into are just the minor ones. They only study plants and fish and other little things. They don’t have all that we need to build a whole human body. They aren’t the main clone labs.”

  While Madam Wintermirror breathed heavily in irritation, Venus smiled at the clone, and said, “And there’s been some bonding between him and us. Another clone just wouldn’t be the same.”

  Lady Hatchet looked at her hard. “You need to get out more.”

  Venus stared do
urly back at her. “I like him. Don’t chop him up… just yet.”

  Madam Wintermirror rolled her eyes. “Damn, all of you. Clone lovers.”

  Venus added, “This one already knows us so much.”

  Thorn said, “What makes you think I’d let you destroy me, anyway. I could throw you all off this balcony if I wanted, before you lifted a finger.”

  Mack put up his hands. “No need for any of that. You know that you’re worth a lot to us the way you are.” He gave Madam Wintermirror an expression of exasperation.

  Madam Wintermirror finally nodded in acquiesce. “I suppose we can take on a pet from time to time. Pets are fun. Pets do things. What do you do?”

  “What’s gotten into you?” Venus scolded her.

  Madam Wintermirror shrugged, uncaring. “I have a pounding headache and I’m so much damn older than you that it isn’t funny.”

  Mack said, “There’s certainly complications here I don’t understand. I’d rather swim out there in that filthy black water than try and navigate the scary shit the robber scientists leave us with.”

  “What’s wrong with the water out there?” Thorn asked. “I swam in it.”

  “And I’m sure you could have taken it on.” Mack regarded the clone’s physique.

  Lady Hatchet asked, “Is there really damn monsters out there?”

  Venus walked to the railing of his balcony. “Big foot… or whatever it is they called it back then? We had a swim. I wonder if it was safe to swim. The kids do it everyday and call it religion.”

  Mack said, “Leviathan or Loch Ness or sea monkeys.”

  “Oh my!” Venus looked out at the lake. “We did see bubbles.”

  “I did,” Lady Hatchet said. “She didn’t see anything. She misses everything.”

  “We must assume the robber scientists also use the lake for testing things in,” Mack said. “They don’t waste space in space, as they say. And they say water is a good place for odd life. Remember how on earth the ponds had fish and bugs?”

  Lady Hatchet agreed. “There could be a whole damn breed out there of something. I’m glad I always stay high and dry. I had enough swamps when I was on Earth, for three lifetimes.”