The Experiment

by John Darnton

  The crowd was strangely silent. What was odd was how everyone in the audience appeared separate and isolated. She could not put her finger on it exactly, but never before had she sat in a group that felt so atomized, less than whole. Everyone, she imagined, was thinking of himself. Maybe this is the way it is, she thought, when a group of men are about to go into battle.

  The reason that she did not want to be close to the stage was that Uncle Henry was sitting upon it. He looked stiff in a straight-back wooden folding chair, looking out upon the crowd as if he were a captain surveying a rough patch ahead in the ocean. He was about to speak, she could tell, because he took an envelope out of his breast pocket and jotted a note upon it.

  Sure enough, he stood and approached a lectern at stage left. He cleared his throat. It was not a gesture to capture attention, for no one in the crowd was talking and all eyes were already upon him.

  "You know why we have gathered," he began, dispensing with an introduction.

  "There is no need for me to recall the road that brought us here. Let me just say on behalf of all the Elder Physicians—and on behalf of Dr. Rincon—that we regret this temporary setback in our journey, though temporary we are confident it will prove to be. There is no road worth the taking that does not double back upon itself at some point. This is not going backward. This is going forward in a different direction."

  A man sitting near her in a three-piece suit scoffed under his breath. The sound did not carry far, but it created a slight stir that caused the speaker to frown.

  "What went wrong? you might ask. Let me remind you of the first axiom: Science does not know right and wrong. The double helix has no moral content. We are, each of us, a universe unto ourselves—just as profound, as benighted, just as shallow, as lighted. 'Each living creature,' wrote Darwin, 'must be looked at as a microcosm—a little universe formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in the heaven.'

  "Do not worry. The pendulum of the historical-cultural cycle is swinging to our side. May we all recite Rincon's First Law: 'Human life alone is sacred, its preservation and extension is our mission.'"

  Tizzie noted that most people had not joined in.

  Uncle Henry lifted the envelope out of his breast pocket.

  "We have already begun the heroic measures. We will perform ten operations a day—three surgeons working full time. They are our own. From start to finish, the operations will take three days. The schedule will be posted upon the bulletin board outside this hall. If you do not keep your appointment, you will not be rescheduled. Is that clear?"

  His hatchet gaze swept the hall.

  "Are there any questions?"

  There was a rustling of discontent, a cough here and there. A hand shot up—only one.

  "Dr. Baptiste. What are the chances?"

  "The chances?"

  "Of survival."

  "I would say the chances are not inordinate. But neither are they insignificant."

  That man called him Dr. Baptiste, Tizzie thought.

  My God! Uncle Henry is Baptiste!

  The realization frightened her more than she would have thought possible. The man in the three-piece suit complained in a stage whisper to no one in particular. "One hundred and fifty years," he said. "I'll be lucky if I see the other side of forty."

  She looked at him; he appeared to be about forty-five.

  Another man glared at him and said: "Be quiet, Judge."

  From on stage, the voice of Uncle Henry—Baptiste—boomed out.

  "You will all be happy to know that the clones are in good shape. They have been prepared their whole lives for an event such as this. It truly is their finest moment. They have weathered the travel well and have adapted readily to their new environment."

  His voice dropped a notch, now the stern schoolmaster.

  "Obviously, you should not encounter your clone while it is still alive. That would be a violation of protocol of the highest order. It is recommended—required—that you stay here indoors."

  Tizzie tried to shrink lower in the chair. His gaze was moving up and down the rows, like a whip.

  It settled on her. He seemed to squint, as if trying to make out her face but not quite succeeding.

  "And you," he thundered. "You there in the lab coat. Did you have a question?"

  She felt the blood rushing to her head, a numbness spreading up from her legs. She shook her head no.

  "But surely I saw your hand. Tell us who you are. Why are you wearing a lab coat? What are you doing here?"

  Tizzie was vaguely aware of people turning to look at her, a buzzing beginning throughout the auditorium. One of them was a red-haired man, whose eyes widened. Alfred. He began to open his mouth.

  "The birth," she said, faltering. "I'm here for the birth."

  "The birth," repeated the man on the stage with false mirth. "The birth. I would say you have come to the wrong place if you're expecting to witness a birth."

  The audience laughed, too, but it was not a jovial sound.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Tizzie saw two men coming toward her—men with white in their hair. She felt their hands roughly grabbing her arms, lifting her out of the seat and hustling her out of the hall. In the process, her sunglasses were knocked off. Tizzie looked back and saw Uncle Henry looking at her, his face suddenly, unexpectedly sad.

  They took her outside and frog-marched her across the yard to another building that she hadn't noticed before. It had an outside staircase running up one side, and they dragged her up it and through a thick wooden door. By the time they started down a long corridor lined with doors, she realized where she was—in the military prison.

  They put her in a small room. She had been there less than a minute, when she heard a voice from a next-door room call out her name. She recognized the voice instantly—Jude's.

  Chapter 31

  Skyler knew from the plans he had memorized that the hospital had a false roof. The question was how to get inside it.

  He went to the short back side of the rectangular one-story building, stepped away and looked up. The two sides of the roof came together in a gradual peak. In the center of the triangle underneath was a round object—a vent for an attic fan. It was not far from the outstretched branch of an oak. Instantly, a flashback vision seared his brain—the memory of him and Julia clambering up the tree to spy on Rincon, so long ago.

  As he climbed the tree, his own agility surprised him. No more than ten minutes ago, he'd felt barely able to run the distance between two buildings, and now here he was, pulling himself up branch by branch. He came to the limb he had spotted. Leaning over, holding onto it with his left hand, he stretched out the fingers of his right hand and fastened upon the blade of the fan. He pulled, hard, but it would not budge. He tried three times without success. Then he climbed higher, stood upon the branch sideways and edged his feet out until he was within striking distance. He leaned outward and gave the fan a swift karate kick. It fell inside and hit the floor with a thud. He waited breathlessly to see if anyone came. No one did. He disappeared into the hole.

  Inside, the attic was no bigger than a crawl space. It had apparently been built for storage, though it appeared that it had never been used. The darkness was cut by blades of light shining up through the floorboards from the room below. A sliding ladder was pulled up in its resting position next to a trapdoor. It looked as though it would descend into the ward where the Gemini were. That was a stroke of luck. It would save him from having to climb down the tree and break into the room from outdoors.

  The attic gave him a perfect vantage point to reconnoiter the hospital. Through the cracks he could see into every room. He leaned over and put his eye to the sliver of light. Directly below was the ward with the clones. From here he could see the thick belts that bound them to their beds, their fearful, uncomprehending looks. They made no noise, and he wondered if they had been sedated. If they were heavily medicated, he realized, his chances
of saving them, remote enough to begin with, were practically nonexistent.

  The beds were lined headfirst against the wall, but one was out of place. It had wheels on it, and he could only see the foot. Moving quietly on his hands and knees, he positioned himself above it and bent down to look again. It was not a bed but a gurney, he saw, and lying upon it—the knowledge struck him like a slap across the face—was Benny. His friend was instantly recognizable, though he looked small and wan and was swathed in white with sheets and pillows surrounding his round face. An IV stood beside the gurney, feeding his veins with liquid of some sort, but he was not unconscious, not yet. And his eyes darted around nervously, even at one point passing by Skyler's, so that there was briefly an illusion of contact.

  Skyler tore himself away and moved on, crawling to another position. He looked down and saw a room with no one in it. It had swinging doors on both sides and banks of monitoring equipment and five empty beds, ready for occupancy. Clearly, a recovery room. He crawled on and came to the point where a second, smaller ward joined the room he had just seen. Looking through the crack, he saw something that he had already feared seeing, something that was pointing him toward a conclusion his mind resisted. There, right beneath him, was another gurney, and lying upon it was a patient who looked exactly like Benny.

  The prototype.

  They're going to perform a transplant, thought Skyler. They're getting ready to take out Benny's organs and put them into the prototype.

  He knew he was right even before he looked down into the next room. But what he saw there confirmed the hideous realization. For he found himself looking down upon a fully equipped operating room, in which surgeons were washing up and preparing for surgery.

  "Jude—is that you?"

  Tizzie talked at a half whisper, even though she had heard the jailers leave.

  "Yes."

  "So they got you, too."

  "I was at the computer. I had just downloaded the files when they grabbed me."

  "The phone—do you have it?"

  "No such luck."

  "So you know what's going on—about the operations?"

  "I saw a schedule on the computer. They're going to do all of them right here. We've got to figure out some way to stop them."

  She looked around her cell-like room. It was sparsely furnished with a tiny window high up on the wall, covered with wire mesh embedded in glass and beyond that metal bars. The door was thick, but it was not metal, and it did not quite touch the threshold.

  "That's not going to be easy—from in here," she said.

  "Where did they get you?"

  "In the auditorium. They recognized me. Even that guy Alfred was there. I was stupid to go. And you want to hear something amazing? Uncle Henry—it turns out he's Baptiste. All that time Skyler was talking about him, it never occurred to me that he was the same person."

  "Me, neither."

  "It was unbelievable—all those people, my age, they look like normal people, like yuppies. And they're about to kill off all these other people, just like themselves, without a second thought."

  "They're desperate. Their whole lives have been dedicated to a single proposition—that they'll live twice as long as anyone else—and now they're dying twice as fast. It's enough to make you believe in a higher power. I always thought God had a highly developed sense of irony."

  "Jude. What about Skyler? Do you think they got him?"

  He was sure they had by now.

  "He's probably all right. He's a pretty smart guy. Hopefully, he's kept himself hidden."

  "What do you think they're going to do with us?"

  He was tempted to lie again, but then again, he thought, she deserved to know what he really thought.

  "I think—if you really want to know—that we're dealing with fanatics. With people who will do anything to achieve their goals. And like I said, they're desperate. I think they're going to kill us."

  She didn't answer right away, not only because what he said was frightening to her, but also because she was partly occupied examining her cell, inspecting every inch of it—looking for a way out.

  * * *

  From his vantage point Skyler could see and hear almost everything that was going on in the makeshift O.R. There were five people, three men and two women, dressed in faded green scrubs, moving around the room in a complicated choreography. Some were checking instruments, others taking readings from machines or taking inventory. At first, Skyler couldn't tell which were the doctors and which the operating assistants.

  The room itself was small and packed with equipment. Beside the operating table, an impressive array of tools had been laid out, ranging from minute knives to saws and mallets. There were four-foot-tall cylindrical tanks for the anesthetic, a white cabinet with sliding tray doors for surgical implements, drawers filled with large swaddling bandages, bins for trash. One bin, mounted on wheels, had a thick white plastic liner, which he realized—with a rush of horror that almost caused him to shudder—was probably for discarded body parts.

  When they talked, their voices were so clear that Skyler felt as if he were in the room with them.

  "This year I did two of these at Minnesota," said one of the men. "I thought I needed the experience."

  "How'd it go?"

  "The operations themselves, okay. The patients—that's a different story. One lived for a while and the other died. The one who lived—I don't like to tell you this, but it wasn't easy. Poor son of a bitch didn't know whether he was coming or going. Eating, crapping, pissing, you name it—it was done by someone else's organ. With all those wastes backing up, he blew up like a beach ball. Eventually, his body rejected the organs. Or the organs rejected his body—it's hard to say which."

  "That won't happen here."

  "True. But you should know—it's no picnic."

  "I've done three," said one of the women. "They're tricky, but not impossible. Believe it or not, the hardest part is lifting the organs out all at the same time. There's always some little connection or other you forget about. And their viability times differ. So you have to reconnect them in the right order and do it fast. Once I forgot to connect the urethra. That didn't work out so well."

  "There's something I've been meaning to ask," said the third surgeon. "Which one of you two is going to do me?"

  "I thought I would," said the woman. "And Dr. Higgins"—she gestured at the first surgeon—"he can do me."

  "But he's the best."

  She smiled. "I know."

  "And then who does Higgins? Nobody's left. We'll all be recovering."

  "I'm going to have it done on the outside, obviously," replied Higgins. "It'll have to be finessed. Timing's important. My clone will have a car accident just the right time. And of course his face will have to go. We don't want any questions asked."

  "Another damned car accident. You'd think we'd be more imaginative by now."

  "I don't see why. If it works, stick with it."

  "That's right. If it's not broken, don't fix it."

  "And if it is broken, pull out every goddamned organ and start over."

  They chuckled, but it was not a jovial sound. At that moment Higgins walked over to the basin and washed his hands. He removed his green cap, and as he splashed water on his face, he tilted it upward toward the ceiling. As a result, Skyler got a good long look at it.

  He recognized it instantly—or rather, he recognized the clone who was the surgeon's double. That was no great feat, considering that Skyler had awakened some six feet away from him every morning for two and a half decades.

  Gradually, a plan was forming in Skyler's brain; it didn't leap there all at once, but sort of crept up and settled in. It was audacious and hardly foolproof—still, it was a plan; it was better than doing nothing. And who knew... it might just work.

  He was feeling much worse. He took a deep breath and tried walking quietly back across the attic. He made it about halfway when his legs would no longer follow his commands, when he star
ted to hobble painfully. He reached the ladder and sat down next to it to catch his breath. His chest was on fire. The pain was mounting.

  He stayed like that for some time, recovering. Finally, through sheer will, he pushed himself up again and stood, a bit shakily but nonetheless standing, which made him feel slightly better. Now all he had to do, he told himself, was lift a ladder that weighed about a hundred pounds.

  Jude hadn't expected them to come for him so soon. He had barely had time to inspect his cell when he heard the footsteps in the hallway. At first, they sounded like a single person walking with a heavy tread or maybe an echo. Then he realized that the footsteps came not from one person but two—marching in lockstep. That should have been a clue, but he did not grasp it. He didn't comprehend who his visitors were, until the cell door swung open and he was face to face with the two remaining Orderlies.

  Jude was shocked to see them in person. They looked older than he expected, but now that he was confronted by them, he felt fearful—more than he would have anticipated. It was something in their demeanor, the glint in their eyes underneath those disfiguring swatches of white hair.

  They smiled, both of them. But not seemingly because they were overjoyed to see him—or rather, not because they were cheered to be in his presence, but for the simple reason that they were gratified to be holding him prisoner and powerless. One grabbed him by the throat while the other held him from behind, squeezing his arms together roughly and slapping on a pair of handcuffs. The first one looked him in the eye steadily, with an unwavering hatred. He leaned back like a discus thrower winding up, and then abruptly straightened, swinging his fist in a round arc and smashing it against his chin. Jude felt his head snap back, pain slicing through his lower jaw, back across his neck and into his vertebrae. The Orderly grabbed his fist and shook his hand in a little dance of pain.