Cloned Lives

by Pamela Sargent

  The car was still buzzing. Paul fastened his belt. He was breathing heavily.

  “That was close,” Jon said, wiping his face.

  “Those kids,” Paul said. His hands were trembling slightly. He realized he was sweating profusely. He suddenly felt frightened, although he was now safe in the car. The highway looked the same as it usually did, streams of cars rushing to their destinations.

  “Are you all right now?” Jon asked.

  “I’m fine.” Paul closed his eyes. I must be getting old, he thought to himself, I can’t handle things well any more, I’m either a passive observer or I do everything wrong. What he should have done, he told himself now, was put two or three of the kids in Jon’s car, gotten into the kids’ car himself, and met Jon at the Alasand hospital with them. There was no telling what they had taken or what its effects might be. All they could do now was call the emergency center at the hospital and give them the car’s license number and the direction in which it was traveling.

  Paul overrode the previous destination and punched out the next exit on the dashboard controls. Then he clenched his teeth angrily. Why should I care about a bunch of idiotic kids who could have got themselves and me killed? Perhaps the drug had only brought out a viciousness that was already present. The anger subsided, leaving a residue of shame. He was being unfair. They were not doing anything that different from what he had done at their age. He had once possessed the aggressiveness and impatience of the gray-eyed boy and the uncertainty of the freckled boy. He had gone to parties and taken whatever the others took. It had been fear of what might happen to him that made him stop, nothing more.

  Still, he had been sheltered from the world’s irrationality until recently, exploring his scholarly interests. He thought of his children-to-be. If left alone by the public, they would grow up in the same sheltered atmosphere and perhaps be unable to deal with others unlike themselves. If, on the other hand, they were overly exposed to the publicity and occasional cruelties they might encounter, they might retreat from the world, hurt and bitter.

  But were his worries any different from those any parent might have? Becoming a parent for the first time should worry any sane person and his circumstances were more troublesome than most. Maybe he was, at almost fifty years of age, a little old to be embarking on parenthood for the first time. But he could make up for that. He had experienced more than many younger parents. He also knew more about what his kids would be like than most parents did. He almost chuckled at this. It would not be hard for him to put himself into the place of one of them when sympathy was needed.

  The car turned off the highway and buzzed at him as it circled the ramp. Paul took control and drove along the road until he saw a pic-phone booth on the side. He pulled over.

  Jon unbuckled his belt. “I’ll make the call,” he said, opening his door.

  Paul hoped once again that the teenagers would be all right.

  Paul was nervous. He stood next to Zuñi and Bill in the laboratory and wondered how he should feel. He would be a parent, probably before the hour was over if everything went as expected. He felt anticipation and anxiety displacing each other in rapid succession.

  “If they do take after me,” he said to Zuñi, “they should each weigh a little under eight pounds.” She watched him, then placed a calming hand on his arm.

  Mort Jason was standing to one side of the ectogenetic chambers, accompanied by a cameraman. A sound recorder was in a small pouch at Jason’s waist; in his hand the reporter carried a slender silver wand no larger than a finger. They had given Jason the story as an exclusive in return for a sizable sum of money from his syndicate. Their decision had been motivated partly by fear of having the room overrun by reporters and partly by economic necessity. Paul would put his share in a fund for his children but Hidey and Eli would need theirs to sustain themselves during their two-year suspension. Hidey, never one to save money, was already deeply in debt. Emma, who had somehow hung on to her psychiatric practice in spite of adverse publicity, had refused her share.

  The small laboratory next door was set aside as a temporary nursery. The clones would stay there for the next few days for observation and protection from infection. Then Paul would take his children home.

  Hidey entered the room and closed the door behind him. He was the last to arrive. Outside in the hall, Paul heard, the chatter of reporters milling around and waiting for pictures of the children after their “birth.” Hidey walked over to Paul and grasped his hand.

  “Did you bring a box of cigars with you?” he asked Paul.

  “Nope.”

  “You should have.” Hidey looked solemn then. “The Senate passed that bill last night. It’ll be almost as strict as the moratorium. Now it goes to the

  House, It’ll probably be law by October. It will allow the use of ectogenetic chambers from the time of conception and a bit more research on genetically inherited diseases and not much else.”

  “Did anyone vote against it?” Bill asked.

  “Garson, Jimenez, and Langer. Langer didn’t think it was strict enough. I took the liberty of sending Garson and Jimenez a telegram of thanks. They’re finished politically.”

  Jabbar came up to them. “We’re about ready,” he said. Paul followed the two men over to the sink near the chambers and stood with them as they washed their hands in disinfectant. Nancy Portland was giving sterile face masks to all the people in the room. There were not many of them: Jason and his cameraman, two lab assistants, Zuñi and Bill, Emma Valois. Nancy handed Paul his mask.

  “What are you doing with your money, Nancy?” he asked, trying to lose some of his nervousness in conversation.

  “I may go to a health resort and try to lose weight, believe it or not. Then I’ll come back here and dazzle every man in sight.” She rolled her brown eyes in mock flirtation. “Or else I’ll travel and eat at the world’s best restaurants. I haven’t decided.”

  Paul began to fasten his mask. “Don’t get too thin, Nancy, you’ll be malnourished.”

  “You’re a sweetheart, Swenson. No one ever accused me of being malnourished.” The heavy woman grinned at him.

  Emma, Zuñi, and Bill had retreated to the far side of the room. Paul stood awkwardly next to Hidey, feeling useless but wanting to be as close as possible to the chambers. He could see the clones, fully formed now, curled in their wombs. Next to him on one of the lab tables were five small beaded bracelets for the children, each with a name: Edward, Michael, Albert, James, and Kira. He had not given them unusual names, feeling that they would have enough problems, and naming one “Paul, Junior” seemed inappropriate under the circumstances. I hope, he thought, I’ll be able to tell the boys apart. Jabbar tapped him on the shoulder and Paul put on the white coat held out to him. Nancy had disappeared into the next room.

  “We’re ready,” Jabbar said. Paul suddenly felt panic. Wait, he saw himself shouting, are you sure? Have you checked everything? Instead, he waited silently. He remembered stories of fathers who had psychological labor pains. He had never met one of those fathers. His muscles tensed.

  Jabbar moved over to the first chamber and pulled a small lever on the console beneath it. Paul watched as the flexible material containing the infant began to open at the side. Hidey reached in and gently removed the child. Jabbar cut the umbilical, then Hidey held the child by the legs as he patted its buttocks.

  The infant, still covered partially by membrane, gave a lusty yell.

  Paul trembled with relief. One of the assistants took the child into the next room to be bathed and placed in a bassinet. Then Jabbar moved to the next chamber and the second child, then the third. It all seemed so rapid to Paul, the birth, the cry, the baby cradled in the arms of an assistant. He was trying to record all the details of each birth in his mind. Someday I’ll have to tell them about it.

  The last one removed from her chamber was the little girl but she made up for it by giving the loudest cry. Hidey took her into the room next door himself. Paul
followed with the small beaded bracelets.

  The small room had been equipped with sinks, five bassinets, and a small stove for preparing formula. Heavy plate glass divided the room in half, separating the place where the children were from the part of the room next to the hall. Reporters could enter the room from the hallway and see them without risking contamination.

  Paul handed the bracelets to Jabbar for sterilization, then peered into the bassinets. They seemed so tiny and frail, these identical infants. He was almost afraid to touch them. Then he noticed that each had a tiny mole on the right shoulder exactly like his own. Their eyes were bright blue as all newborns’ were, but within six months he would see his green eyes in each face and brown hair on their presently bald heads. This is what I looked like, exactly.

  “They’re so small,” he said at last. “Have they been weighed yet?”

  Nancy Portland nodded. “Right after we brought them in here. The boys are eight pounds and two ounces each and the girl is eight pounds exactly.” Nancy scribbled something on her note pad. “How much did you weigh, Paul?”

  “A little under eight pounds.”

  Nancy raised her eyebrows. “Score one point for the chamber. Not only does it work, which we already knew, it’s an improvement.” She walked away and Paul looked back at his children. He hoped they would not grow up to believe they were only part of an experiment.

  Jabbar was at his side, holding out a bracelet. “Would you like to put these on them, Paul?”

  “I’d be all thumbs. You’d better do it for me.” Jabbar nodded. He attached Kira’s first, then one around each boy’s wrist.

  The children were crying, not tearfully, but loudly nonetheless, Hidey came over to him and watched them. “They’ve got good lungs,” he said, “and they definitely take after your side of the family.”

  “What other side is there?” Paul replied, smiling.

  “Well, we’ve done our job. Now we just have to watch them grow up. What people do with these techniques may depend on what kind of people they become. That’s a lot of responsibility to place on them, I know.”

  “It’s a lot of responsibility for me as a parent, Hidey.”

  “You’ll have plenty of assistance from Eli and me, we’ve got at least two years of spare time.”

  Paul leaned over Kira’s bassinet. They were his children, yet closer to him than children. They were his twins, his brothers, and a sister too, separated from him only by age.

  “Okay if we let in those reporters?” Hidey asked. “We gave them the word, no bright lights and keep the noise down.”

  “Fine,” Paul said.

  The reporters crowded together on the other side of the glass, cameras aimed, tape machines busy, a multi-legged, many-eyed, curious being. They’re just babies, Paul wanted to shout, not monsters or genetic freaks, just babies. Make sure your cameras catch that.

  Instead he reached over for Kira and picked her up, cradling her tiny diapered form in his arms. She pouted at him, puffing her cheeks. “You’ll be all right,” he said to her.

  Then he held her out to the reporters and smiled defiantly. “My daughter,” he said to them through the glass, and felt pride in the words.

  Kira let out a loud cry.

  “The nature of the bond between parents and their children, not to mention everyone’s values about the individual’s uniqueness, could be changed beyond recognition, and by a science which they never understood but which until recently appeared to provide more good than harm.”

  —James D. Watson

  ”Moving Toward the Clonal Man,” in The Atlantic

  “It is not mere sensationalism...to ask whether the members of human clones may feel particularly united, and be able to cooperate better, even if they are not in actual supersensory communication with one another.”

  —Gordon Rattray Taylor

  THE BIOLOGICAL TIME BOMB

  “Two like faces, neither of which makes us laugh when we see it alone, make us laugh when we see them together, because of their likeness.”

  —Blaise Pascal

  2

  Edward: 2016

  EDWARD Swenson circled around the university campus, feet pounding against the hard surface of the road leading to his home. The house was about two miles away along this circuitous route. He paced his running almost automatically, moving his legs in a slow easy rhythm. His arms, bent at the elbows, kept time, alternating with his feet.

  The autumn air had grown colder and sharper. Soon he would have to do his running at the indoor track his school shared with the university. He almost shuddered at the thought. He preferred to run by the road, alone. At the track he would see other people and could only hope that they would not recognize him or pay him little attention.

  He left the campus behind him. The silvery towers surrounding a central courtyard, the glassy squares, rounded ziggurats, and stony gray rectangles which seemed to clutter the hollow below him, disappeared. He passed a coppery cylinder, a student dormitory, nestled among the almost denuded trees, and reached the most peaceful part of his journey. Ahead of him lay about half a mile of deserted road, bounded only by trees and shrubbery on both sides. He smelled dead leaves and heard them crackle under his feet. Parts of the road were strewn with them, bright red, orange and yellow shapes against the pavement. The wind rustled them and the trees sighed.

  Ed had not joined any of the informally organized student groups that worked out on the outdoor track, nor had he tried out for the almost-professionalized school cross country team. He had rationalized his decision. He did not have time for the afternoon practices, the frequent trips to other cities for meets, he probably would not have made the team anyway, he preferred spending his time on extra math and music courses. Yet his brothers Al and Mike were on the soccer team and seemed to have plenty of time left over for more intellectual pursuits.

  The truth is I don’t want to be around anybody who thinks I’m a freak. It was better not to risk embarrassment and surreptitious remarks, to avoid any activity that might require camaraderie or close personal contact with others. In the winter he would be on the chess team, where nothing was asked of him except expertise and concentration. For enjoyment, he had his violin and music. For companionship, he had his sister and brothers. For advice, he had Paul, to whom he often felt closer than to the others.

  He had left the road, turning into a side street. He began to pass houses in various states of repair, some with leaves neatly raked into piles along the road, others with toys carelessly thrown into the yards. His calf muscles were aching as he approached his own house, a rambling wooden two-floor structure set on a small hill at the end of one of the side roads. The suburban neighborhood was unpretentious, inhabited mainly by young couples, some students, and older people who could not afford to live in arcologies, new apartments or country houses. Several of the houses were owned by people who had pooled their government allotments and chose to pursue their own interests rather than working. Ed passed a split-level where one such group had started a business selling hand-made furniture and another that was actually a small restaurant. The police ignored these small businesses, which operated in violation of obsolete zoning laws. The successful businesses would probably, in time, move to new locations.

  Ed had often thought about his father’s reasons for staying in the rundown area. Paul had given several reasons for not moving: he enjoyed being near the university, where his work was; he doubted he could get used to an arcology; country houses were too isolated; he did not like cities; he had been nomadic enough in his youth and wanted to stay where he had roots.

  But there were other reasons Paul had not mentioned. Ed and the others had pieced together the story of their first year of life from computer records. That year had been a time of turmoil for their father. Paul had gone to court to establish his right to bring up his children, defending that right against a move to declare the clones wards of the United States government. His lawyer had cited an early twentiet
h-century case in which a set of quintuplets had been declared wards of the Canadian government and the detrimental effect the action had on those children. Paul won the case, setting a precedent for the future. But it had cost him time and money. He had not regained his university teaching post until the clones were seven and he at last had acquired some financial stability. He could not have afforded to move before.

  But Paul had emotional ties to the house as well. He rarely talked about Eviane but she was still present in the house. The books and papers she had written were on Paul’s shelves and her photograph peered out inconspicuously from a corner of his desk. Her ashtrays, scattered throughout almost every room in the house, were never used except by visitors, yet Paul never put them away.

  Ed slowed down as he reached the driveway leading up to his home and jogged slowly up to the front porch. Paul was probably still at the university and Kira was undoubtedly hanging around the biological sciences building pestering Dr. Takamura. She had persuaded him to give her a job during the summer and had been surprised, Ed knew, when she discovered that the job was nothing more than keeping track of equipment, cleaning out test tubes, and taking on any little jobs the regular staff did not feel like doing. But she had not complained, except to Ed and the rest of the family. She was now hoping to get more important work at the biological center. Kira had already decided she wanted to study biology and took courses at the university three days a week, showing up at the high school on the other two days. This was-n’t unusual; many of the high school students had the same kind of arrangement. Ed himself studied calculus and topology two days a week at the university and he was sure Al and Mike would have made similar arrangements if they were not playing soccer. Jim, of course, went his own way.

  Ed opened the door and walked toward the stairs. He needed a shower. “Hey,” a voice called from the kitchen. Ed changed course and headed toward the voice.