“When we got out, everybody stood around and I remembered you were at the county jail and went to find you. It was dark and cold. It reminded me of that.,. Other place that I can’t remember. Then someone or something rushed at me, hit me again and again—and I can’t really remember that! I woke up in the snow and the cold. I only knew that you were gone, Hattie was gone, all my clothes were gone—I felt this… pull. From myself, almost—”
“Shhhh. Don’t hit me with it all at once. It’s too mind-blowing. The police said you were mugged for your clothes. From what you say, it probably happened that way. Only the police never found you, but… someone else.” Kevin pulled her close. Jane was wearing an expensive sweater woven from long, soft angora fibers. She felt solid and damn good and like she needed warming up.
“Kevin, I’m so glad to see you, but—”
“But?”
“I don’t know what happened to me. I remember walking, looking. Looking for something… my clothes, you, Zyunsinth—I was so cold at first until I made my body fight it. And I couldn’t let anyone see me that way. I mean, I didn’t even have a hospital gown…”
“You did all right.” He found himself laughing a bit too hard as he fingered the new fur coat, “You must have dug up this rig somewhere. Pretty toney. I’d been worried sick about you, but your survival instincts seem to have gotten more sophisticated.” He threw the coat down on the bed, fur side up.
“They had to. I was… called.” Jane’s face sobered. “Oh, it’s confusing!” Her fingers, smelling faintly of mayonnaise, brushed his lips. “I know what’s not confusing. Being with you again.”
Maybe it was the touch of her warming fingertips. Maybe the bittersweet certainty in her eyes. It was one of those moments nothing can stop, not even terminal confusion, and least of all six years of higher education.
They tumbled back on the bed together in breathless, mindless, heedless reunion. What did mere reality matter when they were caught in the inescapable skeins of their emotions, their marvelous, mutual love and lovemaking?
Moments passed like the continuum of a stop-action film. Moments new and moments remembered. Kevin felt his mind releasing the unanswered questions that tormented him, felt his body bucking off doubt and reticence.
He shed his borrowed clothing, and Jane her alien garb, in unconscious inches. Zyunsinth’s furred breadth upheld their frenzied union. When Kevin found his body once again poised to merge with hers, he barely knew he paused.
A question began to form in her eyes, and was answered by completion. They were together again, in the way they required, oblivious to everything but each other for a few time-exempt moments. Feeling into feeling, flesh into flesh, and no barriers of any kind to their union and reunion. The euphoria of physical climax, when it came, seemed redundant.
“I hope Turner’s getting his jollies.” Kevin lay staring at the ceiling, reality convening over him like a thunderhead, feeling paranoid about surveillance equipment even though he knew the room was only watched, not bugged.
“Turner?”
“Don’t sound so polite.” He tweaked the tip of Jane’s nose. It was red and a trifle runny. “Timer’s a government man. He wants to—” Kevin sat up abruptly, pulling his clothes on. Reality was storming the door like gangbusters.
“What?”
Jane still lay naked on the rich brown pelt, no shadows of doubt pillorying her flesh. For the first time Kevin felt free to regard her nudity without flinching, without remembering. Yet sitting there, his head and hormones cooling again, he realized that he’d managed to forget a hell of a lot.
“He wants things from you neither of us can let him have. And—holy Christ… you can’t realize what this— you being here, wonderful as it is—means! I’m confused.”
“You’re not confused. I’m confused. You’re Kevin.” Jane sat up and began pulling on her disheveled clothes. She wore no underthings, as she had started out in Crow Wing. Somehow Kevin found that comforting. “You always know the answers.”
“Not this time. Besides, all I ever knew was the questions.” He waited until she had dressed, debating confronting her with the incredible truth, debating facing it himself. As always, he decided to protect her from what he himself couldn’t face yet. “Jane.”
She paused in zipping up her wool slacks and tilted her head at him. The Jane tilt, deceptively docile.
“Jane… how exactly did you get here? Why?”
“I don’t know. I feel as if I’ve… been where I began. I feel as if I’m going there again. All I know is that I woke up, and it was cold and dark again, and I had no clothes. So I went to find you and—”
“Me? At my condo? Did you go to my condo? Once before then? After I… lost you at the bank?”
“Yes.”
“And did you eat something there? Meet my parents?”
She looked at him as if he were crazy.
44 Yes… of course. Then I ate the funny stew at the place with all the people in line. And I had some of Boomer’s medicine. Then there was the fire and the pain and the emptiness. When I woke up, I was sleepy still. And cold—I had to get some clothes. First I tried to find you. I remember seeing your place again through a fog. There was a light in your window, but—”
44Oh, my God! That was you out there! If only I had—”
“But then…” Jane stared at the closed door to his room. Kevin pulled her into his arms, so her cheek rested on his sweatered shoulder. Her voice grew drowsy. “Then the Call came. It was as if I’d always heard it. What is the word you like to use? Subconscious. I was called and I came. Something had called me to your place, too, but I was too late.”
“I was there, Jane! An infant could have seen my silhouette in the window! I remember thinking that Turner’s people could see me if they wanted to, and I didn’t care. Why didn’t you see me?”
“You were there?” Her fingers tightened on his forearms. “No. There was only the small light, far away. And the dark and cold. And the Call. The Call came, and I went. I came—here. And now—now I hear the Call again.”
She pushed free of him and got off the bed, turning slowly in the room. Her arms elevated slightly from her sides, as if she were thinking about trying to flap them and fly.
Kevin’s fingers reached out to uphold her palms. The contact seemed to galvanize her. Jane’s eyes jolted into his again, leaving their dreamy expression behind.
She said his name, her eyes and mouth burning, and leaned toward him. Even at the moment of meeting, he felt her body slacken, then twist in his arms.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “Somewhere. Somewhere else yet. It’s not enough. The Call still screams. Like an ecnalubma… an ambulance. Up and down, over and over. I’m so tired—” She moved toward the door.
“No.” At the threshold, he interposed his body between Jane and her Call. It worked. Her expression cleared, her eyes sharpened. As much as his ego wanted to believe that his mere presence had drawn Jane here, he began to suspect that she’d been lured by another presence, almost as negative attracts positive, or matter anti-matter. To catch a thief, you use a thief. To disarm a probe, you send another probe. To destroy a clone, you use… a clone.
“Jane.” He could hardly stop himself from shaking her. “Whatever this Call is, it’s lethal to you, it’s got to be. Listen. We’re leaving. Now! Here’s your coat; put it on. We’re going to sneak out of this oversized pillbox. You and me. Together. Again. All right?”
Dazed by his swift decision, she nodded.
“That’s my Jane. Come on.”
Kevin had no outerwear; he’d worry about that later. No wheels, either. He had Jane and she was a damn good compass, he told himself; she’d found him, hadn’t she?
His watch squinted the hour back at him: eleven forty- five p.m. The staff had taken him for granted lately, accepting his comings and goings as if he were one of them at last. Maybe he wasn’t as worth watching as Nordstrom now. Maybe they’d all gotten careless.
He took Jane’s hand in his. It felt cold despite the warmth of her fur coat. They walked down the faintly lit hall, their footsteps falling to the floor as softly as shingles from a roof. Kevin looked back as much as he did forward. Every second seemed to tremble with the potential of a door along the corridor opening, of Turner rounding a corner.
No one came.
In front of one particular closed door, Kevin hesitated. He felt his own “call”—part conscience, part terror. A thin snake of night light slithered under the door. Jane turned and lunged mindlessly for it, but her long midwinter odyssey had weakened her; she succumbed to his restraining embrace.
“No,” he said—sharply, as he would command a dog. “Not there. Anywhere but there.”
Jane’s attraction for that particular door only strengthened Kevin’s resolve. His mind was shuffling the chess pieces around, coming close but still jumping the truth like a berserk knight. Like calls to like. Like is used, designed to call to like. Like lays in wait to destroy like. Some instinct told him that Jane must never encounter what waited behind that door, what had been sent to encounter her.
He hustled Jane down the hall, rushing her through a door he’d never seen anyone use, looking for escape in any direction but the ones he already knew.
Jane went with him.
Chapter Thirty-eight
* * *
Nordstrom’s thumb and forefinger sawed the sliver of metal against the frayed canvas webbing.
The steel pressed red welts into his skin. He had so little grip on it, and his fingers felt so numb from pinching it, that sometimes he doubted it was there.
He kept on sawing, back and forth, tiny worrying motions.
Nordstrom had to twist his wrist back on itself to reach the restraint, but he had a genetic advantage. He was double-jointed. He had used the anomaly to disgust certain middle-school girls in his youth and had never found it useful since.
Now it was coming in… handy.
Nordstrom giggled.
Sweat squeezed from behind his glasses’ plastic nose- pieces. He remembered when his imprisoned hand had first discovered the razor blade. At first his forefinger had swung over a raised surface in his mattress, back and forth. It had felt like a staple. And then… and then Nordstrom had set his idle mind to working the staple out. And out. And out.
When he had freed it and contorted his upper body enough to glimpse his prize, he found himself holding a fresh single-edged razor blade. He had never needed a razor blade until now.
Nordstrom’s fingers pressed tighter and he sawed faster. He owed it all to Jane Doe. Jane Doe and her telekinetic talents. She had sent the blades flying from their safe harbor in the bathroom medicine cabinet. She had imbedded one in the mattress—exactly positioned to meet his questing fingers when he lay bound in the bed.
Then Turner had ordered Nordstrom’s original, specially requested bed brought to his new room, probably because it was the only restraint-equipped hospital bed—besides hers—they had. Trust the government to run a cheesy operation.
Now Nordstrom sawed away, a victim of the bonds he loved to inflict; by the play in the material, the webbing hung by only strands. He didn’t know what he’d do when he got free; it was interesting enough to get free, given the obstacles. Perhaps he’d visit her. With his razor blade. It would be a bit dulled but still should… suffice.
His hand pulled away from the side of the bed, trailing a ribbon of frayed canvas. Unbuckling himself in seconds, he slipped to the floor. Cold tiles chilled the soles of his feet. They’d given him a stupid hospital gown, and when he checked the closet, he found it empty.
That gave him his goal: to slip down the hall and get some clothes. Then… He glanced at the blank stare of mirror across the room. Supposedly, they were watching him through it. But Nordstrom was a watcher, too. He knew how numbing surveillance can get, especially when the object of one’s vigilance is bound hand and foot. Very, very boring.
He gambled that they’d locked him away and forgotten about him. People were always forgetting about him, to their regret. Look at Kevin Blake. Only Julie hadn’t forgotten him. Julie. He studied the slim blade in his hand. Jane Doe had awesome powers, but if she could be taken by surprise, with her powers sleeping…
Nordstrom smiled. It was a fine night for a stroll. He plumped his pillows into a semblance of himself, then cracked his door open, listening for any alarm. None came. The hall was empty, puddles of thin light spaced at regular intervals.
He slipped through the door, shutting it behind him. He began padding down the hallway on icy feet, a draft drilling up the back of his hospital gown. He wondered which door he’d hit on first—his old room. Or hers.
At a turn in the hall, he paused, sensing something. Some noise. Some… motion.
His heart speeded up, but he poked his head around the corner. The door ending the corridor was just closing on the back of a woman wearing a fur coat. Curiouser and curiouser, Nordstrom thought. He skittered down the hall after her, his feet barely whispering over the tiles.
Chapter Thirty-nine
* * *
Beyond the rats’ maze of cubbyholes erected to imitate hospital rooms and the spartan staff living quarters, the complex swelled to inhuman scale.
Kevin and Jane passed through sound-stage-sized arenas. Kevin kept expecting a megaphone-amplified voice to shout “Lights, camera, action!”
But he and Jane seemed the only moving targets traversing the vast interlocking chambers, and any cameras were concealed. Worklights shone just bright enough to throw spooky shadows into far corners, onto bare pipes and huge iron tracks suspended from concrete struts. Echo and distance and emptiness occupied everything.
Their boots clicked over the cement floor, every footstep amplified. The place smelled of forbidden zones from Kevin’s youth: afterdark gymnasiums, janitors’ domains in school basements, abandoned buildings.
Lines of rail-sided chutes and idled conveyer belts ended in empty troughs. Abandoned tools—saws, electric probes, curved knives with seven-inch blades, and massive cleavers —littered the slaughtering stations. The crude sinks and instruments inevitably reminded Kevin of a back-alley abortionist’s setup in the bad old days. Obviously, the packing plant had been unused for years.
Yet it reeked with the imagined scent of fresh blood and still-warm guts. Kevin half expected the iron rails high above to begin vibrating, announcing the imminent arrival of what the building had trafficked in—carcasses on meat hooks. At any moment he dreaded confronting a row of headless, limbless beef torsos swaying on some ghostly production line, or shaking to the mock-serious cinematic jabs of a Sylvester Stallone.
But the laundry line of hooks above them remained vacant, the metal curves reflecting intermittent scythes of light until they seemed to swing like wind chimes.
Jane shared none of Kevin’s memories or fears, whether primitive or sophisticated. She stumbled behind him, her boot toes scuffing into periodic troughs in the concrete floor—runoff trenches, Kevin supposed, and then considered what sort of runoff a slaughterhouse would produce.
“Kevin. I’m tired.”
“I know. But we can’t stop. They may be after us already.”
“I can’t go any farther. Please. I’m… so… tired.”
“Jane—” He stopped, reaching for her in the dark.
He grasped slick, uncontainable fur. She stumbled against him as if semiconscious. He had seen these symptoms before—at Professor Neumeier’s cabin. Jane’s master cellular programming was again superseding her native human instincts.
“I’m… sleepy,” Jane repeated drowsily. “And I belong back there. I’m getting… too distant.”
“No! You don’t belong back there. Come on—” But she resisted his tugs, and Kevin finally felt too beat to propel them both. “Okay. Sit for a minute. Here. Here’s a…”—he found a metal-topped table in the gloom behind them—“a resting place.”
Jane slumped against the table. By the m
eager light, Kevin could just trace the familiar jigsaw of her profile.
“There’s… something behind me.” She twisted to study the dimness.
He leaned on the table, too, talking rapidly, softly. “There is something behind you. More than you want to know about right now. More than I want to think about, even. You’ve got to resist that pull. It’s not you; it’s them. It’s… her. My God, Jane, I used to think I was crazy for feeling the way I did about you, knowing what you were. A clone—”
“A coed clone,” Jane corrected, her voice energetic enough to convey irony.
“A coed clone. A creature of the Eternal Now, with only a coil of mutated DNA for a past. A personality filtered through an infinity of genetic mirrors, through information perceived but not experienced. I thought there must be something missing in you—or in me for loving you. But I was wrong. What we consider human ‘personality’ may be only neurosis. What’s missing in both of us is what’s right.”
“I’m confused again.”
“Welcome to the human race. And you are human—I know that now. The best of what’s human. I don’t want to change you.”
“Then… let me go back.”
“Why?”
“The Call. I can hear it now.” A new, adult tone leaked into Jane’s voice; Kevin recognized its ruling emotion from every childhood occasion he’d been told he couldn’t have what he wanted—weary compassion. “The Call didn’t bring me to you, Kevin. You just happened to be here. It brought me to something else, something I can’t quite see, but I can feel. I’ve got to go back and face it.”
She pushed off the butchering table. In Kevin’s mind that’s what it was; the nicked steel surface screamed to him of old blood even as his palms braced on the chill metal, hemming Jane in.
“Not back, Jane. You don’t know what’s there.”
“What Calls is there. Kevin, please.”
She struggled against him until his palms lifted off the table’s cold surface. Kevin recognized unarguable compulsion when he felt it. He knew her strength.
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