by John Darnton
She paused and watched a drop of wax run down the candle.
"I don't know if you remember—I didn't, until I talked to my father—but even when we were young, they began our education. I think a lot of it was scientific stuff, and we felt special—we were going to be like little pioneers. And one day—this was sometime after you left—we had to go to a regular school down in the valley. I guess the state made us. I remember a yellow school bus would come all the way up the mountain to get us and then bring us home. It was exciting. But suddenly one day we had our own school right here—in some kind of old hotel. I recall being sad because I liked going down into the valley and meeting all these other kids. I thought of them as normal, and I liked something about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and making cutouts of the state flower—it made me feel connected to the outside world.
"All that changed when we got our own school. And now here's why I remember all this. There was one day when inspectors came—from the state, I guess—and we put on a show for them. We prepared special classes ahead of time for that day and fixed up the schoolroom. We made paper cutouts of leaves or snowflakes or something and put them on the window just like a normal school. It was to fool them. The whole thing was a charade to make them think we were getting the same education as all the other kids. But of course we weren't.
"And what I remembered was the feeling of lying—the shame of it. And my father said it was all right to do it. This weekend, when my father told me that he was dying and my mother was dying, he told me not to tell her. He said it was all right to lie. And just then, I had this memory breakthrough—everything about the school and playing here in the mines with you—it all came back to me in a single block. It was amazing."
"When you were growing up in Milwaukee, you didn't know about your parents?"
"No, not really. I felt they were different in some way. When I was young, I used to fantasize that they were scientists engaged in a supersecret project. Like the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos. That the research they were doing was invaluable and one day they would be famous for it, but in the meantime we had to keep quiet. That we couldn't talk about it, not one word, because there were benighted forces trying to stop them. It was a fantasy, but on some level it was real. I must have known about it."
"How much did you know about the breakthroughs they were making?"
Tizzie answered without hesitating, speaking now in low, urgent tones.
"Only some of it. I knew that life was important, that living long was desirable. I knew that it was important to expand my mind, to cram it with facts and research and scientific data. And I knew that taking care of my body was important. These were the values inculcated in me.
"Especially taking care of the body. Whenever anything went wrong—a cold, a cut, in the worst case, a broken arm—I was showered with attention. After all, my father was a doctor. Nothing was too much. Antibiotics were given freely."
She stopped for a second, now that she had come to the hard part.
"But if you're asking when I needed that kidney, did I know what was going on... where it would come from... the answer is no. What I told you before was true. When I was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen—funny how much of this I've repressed—I was ill. I got this urinary infection that went untreated for a while and turned serious. I was running a high fever, and it hurt so much when I urinated, I tried to hold back and that made it worse. I didn't want to tell my father, but finally he noticed. And he gave me this stuff, Gentamycin. And for a while I seemed better, but then I took a sudden turn for the worse. I recall going to a hospital in Milwaukee and being attached to a machine for dialysis. And then one day, I was operated on. It was done at a small clinic. I don't remember much about the operation at all, just that I spent days in bed and missed so much school that I had to have a tutor."
Tizzie paused for a moment, searching for the right words.
"I didn't even stop to think... to wonder where the kidney came from. I mean, why would I? I was just a kid. And the strange thing is, I don't think I've really thought about it since then. I must have questioned it at some point—I know now, obviously, that kidneys are scarce—and it struck me after the operation, much later, that I didn't have to take immunosuppression drugs and undergo that whole regimen, but I don't think I ever really came to grips with it. And then when I heard Skyler talk about Julia and about her operation, it registered somewhere. I still didn't take it in—not until my father told me. I was shocked. At least he had the decency to be embarrassed."
She stared again at the candle.
"But if I'm honest, I admit that I had a funny feeling—a feeling that I had known something about it all along on some level. The thing is, I don't know how I would have known. Because I was certainly never told. Imagine—telling a kid she's getting a body part from someone raised just for that purpose. So I didn't know about clones. I didn't know they existed. But on some level, I think I guessed that something horrible was going on."
"How many of you... us... I don't know what to call us... prototypes. How many prototypes are there?"
"I don't really know. Maybe twenty—twenty or thirty. Scattered all over the country. All are children of the original members of the Lab. I asked my father last weekend how they could have done it. As you can imagine, he didn't want to talk about it. What he finally said was that it was viewed as giving us a wonderful gift, the gift of extended life. They themselves couldn't live a long time, and back then—don't forget this was the late sixties—their own research was not that far along. They couldn't create clones of adults. In fact, most of them believed back then that couldn't be done, ever. But it wasn't all that hard to create clones of your children.
"As he explained it, he was almost proud. You take the fertilized egg, separate the cells out at an early stage, and put their nuclei into other eggs. You deep-freeze them and start them up whenever you want. Your mother gets the embryo implanted down the road. That's why Skyler is younger than you and Julia is... was... younger than me. If you think about it—and I've been thinking plenty about it—if you're raising clones to be organ donors, you'd want them to be younger. The organs would have to be vital and strong."
"But they'd be no good for inherited diseases. Because then the organ would eventually give out in exactly the same way."
"Yes, probably. But the organ wouldn't have any environmental component to disease. In that way, it would be stronger. And it would work for any disease caught by contagion. And of course for any accident."
She leaned closer toward Jude.
"You know, there's something else. There might even be still younger ones out there. You heard Skyler talking about the nursery, that place right next to the island. Maybe that's what that's for."
"Did your parents say that?"
"Not in so many words. But I inferred it."
"Why don't they tell you everything?"
"I don't know. They're scared of something. They've been scared for as long as I can remember. They had some kind of break with the Lab, too. It wasn't as dramatic as your father's and it wasn't a complete rupture, but they drifted away. It happened when I was maybe six years old. That's when we moved to Milwaukee. I don't know much about it, and whatever I did know, I've probably forgotten or repressed.
"But I recall some things. For one thing, there was suddenly money around. For another, my parents were distracted, bothered by things. They talked alone in their bedroom in low voices. And after we picked up and went to Wisconsin, we didn't lose all contact with the Lab. My uncle Henry used to come for visits, so I guess you could say it was an amiable parting. But it was definitely a parting."
"Tell me more about this uncle Henry."
"He's my mother's brother. He's been around as long as I can remember. I've never liked him—in fact, something about him is downright repulsive. I don't like the way my parents look up to him. I can't put my finger on it—but he seems to have something over them."
"What?"
"
I don't know. I've thought a lot about it—he's on a power trip and they're on the losing end of it. They're ill and they seem to do whatever he says. He says they're working on a vaccination to cure them, and he uses that to pressure me. He came by the house last weekend and stopped me in the hallway. He said he had something he wanted me to do."
"What was it?"
"I'm not sure he said we'd talk soon. But he was sneaky when he said it. I bet he's going to ask me to spy on you."
"To spy on me? And what will you say?"
She shot him a cold look. "No, of course."
"Tizzie, you said before that you were afraid that they had followed me here. Who are they?"
She looked into his eyes. 'Jude"—she used his name for the first time—"believe me, I don't know. I've told you everything I know."
"Do you know where the Lab is? The island?"
"No, but we should be able to figure it out. We can piece it together from what Skyler knows."
"How has he taken all this?"
"You mean about me and Julia?"
"Yes."
"He's confused. He's angry. He knew from the first night he met you that Julia and I were exactly alike. He saw my photograph."
"He did? Why didn't he say anything?"
"I don't know. I guess he was afraid—he didn't know he could trust us."
"And now?"
"Now he knows that I didn't know about it—about her and how she was just like me—and that seems to make a difference."
"So you've talked about it?" Jude made an effort to keep his voice normal.
"Yes."
"I see. When?"
"Just yesterday. When you left us and drove off. And some before, bit by bit. Where did you go, anyway?"
"To the Verde Indian reservation. I looked up my birth certificate. Yours, too."
"And that's how you knew?"
"That's how I knew for sure. I'd been thinking about it for some time. Skyler acted strangely toward you from the start. When he's with you, he can't disguise his feelings, much as he tries to. He either never looks at you, or he looks at you all the time. And then there was your operation and Julia's—that was quite a coincidence. You weren't listed in the national registry of organ transplants—I got the information on that from Hartman—so I knew your operation had to be illicit. And some other little things that matched up—both of you being nearsighted, for example."
"I see."
"But beyond all that, there were two things that really disturbed me."
"What?"
"First, it was that you didn't tell me about it right off the bat, which indicated that you were probably in on the conspiracy. Then when Skyler told us the whole story as we were driving out here, he said something that stuck in my mind. Julia was killed because she had found something in the records—she knew too much and had become a threat. But as he described her body when he found her lying on the slab, he said all her internal organs had been removed. I asked myself: why would they have done that? Only one reason: they wanted to preserve them for some future use. They wanted them in case you needed them."
The horror of it all hit home, and Tizzie slumped against the rock wall.
"Jude, I feel so bad. I feel guilty about everything. What a grotesque, hideous thing to do, to make a clone. And I feel responsible for it. Julia was like a sister, a twin—only younger. I had nothing to do with creating her, but I feel that I did. It was done for me, so it's almost as if it was done by me. I took her kidney. I caused her to suffer. And then she died a horrible death, and I feel I'm responsible for that, too."
Jude went to her and knelt down beside her. She smiled up at him weakly.
"And you want to hear something strange? The whole thing is so upsetting I don't even want to think about it. But I want to know everything about Julia. When Skyler talks about her, when he describes her with such love, I could listen for hours."
Jude nodded.
"I think I knew, almost from the first time I saw him—well, not the very first, that was in bed, thanks to you—but from the first time I heard Skyler speak her name, I knew that she and I were the same."
"Not exactly the same. Remember everything you told me back when we first met."
"Right. Not the same. But similar—very similar, connected in some way. And I knew it from him. You're right—he acts strange in front of me. And when he looks at me that way—you described that look—it's a look of love. Just the way he must have looked at her. That's when I feel most connected."
They were silent for several moments.
"Anyway," she said. "I'm sorry—for everything."
He felt a rush of feeling for her and realized that it had been some time since he had felt like that.
"Let me ask you one thing," he said. "When we first met—that interview and everything—was that set up?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, were you told to meet me? Were you operating under some kind of instructions?"
She put her arm on his. "No. You came to me, remember?"
"Yeah, that's what I can't figure out."
"I liked you the moment I saw you. But I'll tell you this—I think that somebody was pulling strings, that somehow it was arranged for us to meet."
"But why?"
"Maybe they were worried about you, maybe they wanted to keep an eye on you—after all, Skyler had already escaped. Maybe they knew he would try to contact you."
"I've thought of that. But it doesn't make sense. They could have just bumped me off—they don't seem adverse to doing that kind of thing."
"That's a pretty extreme step. And it's messy—it brings in the police."
"Okay. But then why send a spy who's ignorant of her mission?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why send a spy who doesn't report back? Unless, of course, you have been reporting back."
Tizzie looked at him, her eyes blazing.
"I suppose I deserve that. But I want you to know—it's just not true. I think that was their plan. But the moment I met Skyler and we all began figuring out the truth, there was no possibility. Don't ever think that—not for one moment. I would never do something like that."
Jude believed her—something in her tone convinced him. And he liked the fact that she didn't turn contrite but angry.
"That whole business about being a researcher in twins studies—that was true?" he asked.
"Of course. I couldn't bluff something like that. And I wouldn't."
"Quite a coincidence."
"Not really. I was always attracted to that research, lost twins and all that. And now, of course, I know why—somehow I knew deep down I had one."
He waited half a second before asking the next question.
"Tell me," he said. "When we went for dinner that first time, when we went to Brighton Beach, when we made love—all that was real, wasn't it? I mean, none of it was scripted?"
"Of course not. They just brought us together—like two little protozoa in a petri dish. They just let nature take its course.—My God," she suddenly exclaimed. "I never thought of this. They had reason to think we'd fall for each other. Because that's what happened to Sklyer and Julia. They knew what would happen. We were like... puppets."
Jude looked at her; she was attractive, anyone would find her so. But he refused to believe that his feelings for her could have been determined by someone else ahead of time.
He thought he heard a sound way off in the distance, but he didn't mention it.
He took her in his arms. She yielded and placed her head into his shoulder. They stayed like that for some minutes, until she drew back, wiping her eyes with her wrist.
"You're right about one thing," he said. "The people we're dealing with here—whoever they are—they're powerful. They think they're invincible. We can fight them, and the odds aren't in our favor. But we've got one thing on our side."
"What?"
"They don't know what to make of us. They think you're on their side—or could be, with a
little muscle. And as for me—I don't get it, but they seem to think I'm potentially of some use. I think that's why they haven't killed me."
He had another question, but he never got to ask it.
At that moment the sound in the distance grew; it turned into an ominous rumble, and the small cave they were in began to tremble slightly. He looked at Tizzie and saw his fear reflected in the pallor of her face. Then a little puff of wind extinguished the candle.
They felt for their flashlights and turned them on.
"What is it?" she uttered.
His answer came out in a single word: "Cave-in!"
They ran from the hideaway back through the tunnel they had used shortly before and came to the large research chamber and then the main tunnel. After two yards, they halted—ahead was a boiling brown cloud, a curtain of dust that swirled around them and out into the chamber.
"Stop! Go back!" cried Tizzie.
They leapt back into the room to wait for it to settle. Jude felt his fears grow and crystallize into the claustrophobe's panic: the unmentionable fear of entombment. His abdomen tightened, and he felt a wave of heat circulating through his bloodstream like bubbles of seltzer water.
"I can't believe that was an accident," he said. "Someone heard us. Or they knew we were in here. They made it happen."
"That wouldn't be hard to do. But that tunnel was shaky when I came through it. Maybe it just happened by itself."
He cast her a skeptical look. "You've become a great believer in coincidences."
The dust had settled into a thin blanket that covered the metal table nearby. Jude looked at the mouth of the tunnel, mostly clear now that the brown cloud had turned to a thin mist whose particles glittered in their flashlight beams. He dreaded going back in.