Swans and Klons

by Nora Olsen

  Rubric whirled to Stencil Pavlina. “Why did you do that?”

  “Don’t ask me why I’m not making something,” Stencil Pavlina said. “I won’t abide it.”

  “You don’t slap people!” She couldn’t believe she had to explain this to a Panna.

  “Look, Rubric, I know when you’re a teenager there’s only the Golden Rule,” Stencil Pavlina said. “But in the real world, you have to treat people a certain way, or they’ll punish you. So you can’t act like a thicko young snot nose all the time. Once you leave the dorm, you’re part of Society, and you have to know your place.”

  Her place? “I’ll show you my place,” Rubric said and slapped Stencil Pavlina back. Apparently she did it pretty hard because Stencil Pavlina’s head snapped back, and there was a wet plaster handprint on her face.

  Stencil Pavlina’s eyes flashed. “You can’t slap me,” she told Rubric. “You are supposed to slap my Klon!”

  “Weird, weird, weird,” Rubric declared. “You know what? You are veruckt.”

  “Gerda, throw a tantrum,” Panna Stencil Pavlina ordered.

  The other Gerda, the one who hadn’t slapped Rubric, threw down the cloth she was using to rub emollient on the bird. “Waah!” she cried and stamped her feet. She balled her hands into fists and shook them at Rubric. “Waah!”

  Rubric was startled at how genuine the Klon’s dictated emotions seemed to be. The other Gerda just watched, slowly stirring the plaster so it wouldn’t thicken and harden. Was the stirring Gerda smiling ever so slightly? Rubric’s eyes darted back and forth from stirring Gerda to tantruming Gerda. Finally, she returned her gaze to Stencil Pavlina. She had often seen humans ask Klons to act out their emotions for them on edfotunement. She had believed it was in poor taste, but it had never before struck her as insane.

  “I’m not impressed at all,” she said.

  To her surprise, Stencil Pavlina smiled a little crooked smile. “No?” she said. “Neither would I have been at your age. Gerda, that’s enough.”

  Gerda stopped screaming and stamping.

  “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” Stencil Pavlina said. “We’ll make a fresh start tomorrow. We must not stain our artistic bond with this unpleasantness.”

  Rubric nodded. Being around Pannas who didn’t know the truth was stressing her out. She would go spend some time with someone who always made her feel better. She would visit her Nanny Klon.

  Chapter Ten

  Rubric knocked on the wall beside the doorway to Nanny Klon’s room. She was trying hard to treat Klons like the humans they were. Humans had doors to their rooms, and you wouldn’t go in without knocking.

  “My pet!” Nanny Klon said. Her wide face crinkled into a smile.

  “Can I come in, Bloom?” Rubric asked.

  Nanny Klon seemed surprised at being called by her name. “Of course,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” said Rubric. Lies, lies. “Only I was going to bring you some peppermint oil and I forgot.” She felt guilty. That’s all she felt these days.

  “Oh, what a sweet thought,” said Nanny Klon. “What’s that expression? I walked a thousand klicks and presented a feather as a gift.”

  “I’ve often heard that expression, but it makes no sense,” Rubric said.

  “I can explain that to you,” Nanny Klon said. “When I was training to be a Nanny Klon, I learned hundreds of folktales from human history. You don’t know until you’re assigned, you see, what age child you’ll be working for. So I might have been with little girls only five years old, and in that case I would need to tell them lots of stories. As it is, I need to know a lot about how to help resolve disputes and counsel people on the affairs of the heart.”

  “Would you tell me the story, Bloom?” Rubric asked, sitting down with Nanny Klon on the bed. “My Nanny Klon when I was small used to tell me stories.”

  “Certainly,” said Nanny Klon. She began to tell her story, smoothing back the hair from Rubric’s forehead. “Once, long ago, there was a young Panna who wanted to pay her respects to the supreme Doctor of her Society. So she got two beautiful swans and put them in two wicker baskets and began a journey of one thousand klicks. On the way, the swans got all dusty and rumpled from being locked up in those wicker baskets so long. Since the young Panna had almost reached the castle where the Doctor lived, she wished to make them more clean and presentable. Just before she arrived at the palace, she came to a lovely lake with reflecting waters. She decided to wash the swans in the lake. But those ungrateful swans! Do you know what they did?”

  “They flew off,” Rubric said. “Obviously. That’s what I would do too. I think the Panna was a bit of a thicko not to foresee that.”

  “Girls of your Jeepie Type are always so judgmental,” Nanny Klon said fondly. “You’re right, though. The swans flew off. And the poor young Panna was left with nothing but a handful of white feathers.”

  “And a couple of baskets,” Rubric said. “Were the two swans really girls who were under a spell of enchantment? And now they were free?”

  “No, you’re thinking of a different story,” Nanny Klon said. “These were just swans. And the story is not about them, it’s about the young Panna. So the young Panna, truly dispirited, continued the last leg of her journey to see the supreme Doctor. And when she got there, there was a whole line of people presenting gifts to the Doctor. Each more fabulous than the one before. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds, gold, that sort of thing. And when the young Panna came face-to-face with the Doctor, she presented one white feather and told her, ‘I traveled one thousand klicks to bring you swans, but they flew away, and now all I have left to give you is this feather.’”

  “She should have given her the baskets,” Rubric said. “You can never have too many baskets.”

  “The Doctor was very impressed by the young Panna’s sincerity,” Nanny Klon continued. “So the Doctor declared that the white feather was the best gift she had ever received.”

  “That’s thicko,” said Rubric. “The Doctor was lying.”

  “The moral of the story, and the meaning of the expression,” Nanny Klon finished doggedly, “is your intentions count for more than the value of the gift you bring. That’s why I’m pleased you had the intention of bringing me peppermint oil.”

  “But wouldn’t you prefer to have the intentions and the peppermint oil?” asked Rubric. “I mean, you can’t bring a gift without having intended to bring it.”

  “But you could give a gift with an empty heart,” Nanny Klon said. “Now, Rubric. Tell me what the matter is. I know you. You aren’t so argumentative except when you’re worried about something.”

  And then Rubric couldn’t hold it in anymore. She spilled the whole story to Nanny Klon.

  *

  “So you’re not really a Klon,” Rubric concluded. “Or maybe I’m a Klon too. What I mean is, there are no Klons! Only human beings! And you should be free, free to do whatever you want, like I am.”

  Nanny Klon’s lips began to tremble. She looked very pale. “Stuff and nonsense!” she told Rubric. Her voice was quavering. “And what do you mean, free to do whatever you want? Don’t you think I like what I do? Don’t you think I take pride in my work, molding you young children into pillars of society? I’ll have you know I’m one of the best! Without Nanny Klons like me, Society would crumble into the ground, and that’s no lie! Why, you humans are too flighty and spoiled to raise your own young.”

  “But, Bloom—”

  “Stop calling me that!” snapped Nanny Klon. And then covered her mouth.

  Rubric remembered that she had only found out what Nanny Klon’s name was by snooping in her private possessions.

  “I’m sorry, Nanny Klon,” she said.

  “All right, enough of you,” said Nanny Klon. She emitted a big fakey laugh, but her eyes were not laughing. “You’ve had your little joke, now get out of my room.”

  Rubric got up. Nanny Klon practically pushed her out of the
room, laughing inanely as she did so.

  Rubric went straight to Salmon Jo in Maroon Dorm and told her everything. While she talked, she played with the packages of oatmeal that Salmon Jo had started hoarding in her room.

  “Do you ever wonder if maybe the hatching process has done something to our brains?” Rubric asked. “Like maybe we’re all devolving. I can’t believe that we as a Society could do something so evil. I mean, you hear about humans in the olden days, when there were males. They had wars and people dying of diseases and deformed people and poverty and global warming and people dying in childbirth and stuff like that. We look so great by comparison. But we’re really not. Maybe none of us is really human anymore.”

  “I think this is totally a regular human thing,” Salmon Jo said, smoothing Rubric’s tunic down onto her back. “I’ve been doing a little research, and apparently slavery is almost a constant throughout human history. I was even thinking that maybe it’s okay that the Klons are enslaved. I mean, we’ve been wrong about everything we ever thought. Maybe we’re wrong about this too. It seems all the slave-owning societies had some kind of rationale, some kind of justification of why it’s right. Maybe that’s just the way it has to be.”

  “It’s wrong,” Rubric said. She grabbed Salmon Jo’s hand and pressed it between hers. “I just know it is.”

  “How can we be sure of anything anymore? What is the meaning of anything we think or feel? You know we two are now the most fringe people in Society. Like, there are those vegetarian women who refuse to get organ transplants. Everyone thinks they’re thickos. And we are believing something way more veruckt than them.”

  “Think about your Jeepie Similars,” Rubric said, stroking Salmon Jo’s slender fingers. She really wanted Salmon Jo to understand her. “Imagine a girl who is exactly like you. She has the exact identical DNA to you, only she was brought up to be a Klon instead of a human. She has to do menial labor, and maybe give away her cornea or anything else someone might need. How can you sleep when you know she’s a human being? I keep thinking about my Jeepie Similars who are Klons. They’re not creating art. They’re not writing poems. They’re not lying on lavender-scented pillows. It’s just a complete accident that I’m me and they’re them. And they’re exactly like me. So I know how they feel about it. I know how I would feel about being a Klon. Bad!”

  “Well,” Salmon Jo said. “Well. They don’t feel exactly the same as you would feel about it. I mean, they’ve been in this role since hatching. They’re used to it.”

  Before Rubric could even argue with her, Salmon Jo burst into tears. Rubric folded her into her arms, but she didn’t know what to say.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next day, Rubric played hooky from Stencil Pavlina’s. What difference did it make if she went or not? Instead, she went to the apothecary and picked out a bottle of peppermint oil. It was her first purchase off campus, and she liked the atmosphere in the apothecary shop. The shelves were lined with glass bottles, and serious-looking Klons in white tunics waited on the Pannas and pounded mysterious substances into boluses for them. The Klon made her promise to bring the glass bottle back for reuse when the peppermint oil was gone. Rubric was looking forward to doing something nice for Nanny Klon.

  But when she gave it to Nanny Klon, she just stared at her blankly.

  “You know, the peppermint oil to help you drink your vial of fat every day? Like we were talking about yesterday.”

  Nanny Klon grabbed her arm and said, “Oh, Rubric! That is so thoughtful. Thank you!”

  Rubric thought she knew why Nanny Klon was acting so oddly. “Listen, what I was telling you yesterday, forget about it. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I think I should tell you something,” Nanny Klon said. “You and I have a particularly close relationship. Am I right?”

  “I think so,” Rubric said softly.

  “Well, it’s not necessary for me to tell everyone this, but I’m not the same Nanny Klon. She was reassigned last night, and I’m her replacement.”

  Rubric looked closely at Nanny Klon. She had the same round face, the same haircut. Was she perhaps a little bit younger? She didn’t seem to have Bloom’s wrinkles around her eyes. And maybe she might be a little bit thinner too. Rubric wasn’t really sure.

  “I tell you, I stayed up all night learning all the names and information about the students in Yellow Dorm. What a challenge! But I know how kind and considerate you are, Rubric, and that you like to be surprised with a nice cup of hot chocolate when you’re up late doing your art projects. Right?”

  “Yes,” Rubric said faintly. “But what happened to Bloom? Why was she reassigned? Where did she go?”

  Nanny Klon blinked in surprise. “My, you and I are very close!” she said. “I’m not sure, honey. They don’t give me that kind of information.”

  “Is it something that she requested?” Rubric said. “Maybe something so that she could be closer to a friend? Or a schatzie? Maybe a Klon named Shine?” Of course, Klons weren’t supposed to have schatzies, they just had snuggle buddies, since they weren’t supposed to be capable of deep relationships. She desperately tried to focus on this thought, so she couldn’t start to think of any bad reason why Bloom might have been reassigned. Like that Rubric might have caused trouble for her. Scheiss. She had thought of it anyway.

  “It doesn’t generally work that way, dear,” Nanny Klon said. It was so disconcerting, the way she looked exactly like the old Nanny Klon. “Listen, dear, is it distressing to you to find that I’m a different Klon than my predecessor? I know that can be disturbing sometimes for you when you grow close to us. But you should know that I am her Jeepie Similar, I’ve received exactly the same training, and I’ve received exhaustive information about you and your likes and dislikes. I might be a bit off today—it’s only my first day, I’m sure I’ll know you better by tomorrow. I know there are conversations we’ve had that I don’t remember, but you can always bring me up to speed on whatever we talked about.”

  “I never had a conversation with you,” Rubric said flatly.

  “In a way. We’re interchangeable, you know.”

  “How many Nanny Klons have there been since I arrived at the dorm?” Rubric asked. What if there had been several and she’d never even noticed?

  Nanny Klon furrowed her brow. “I don’t know, dear. We usually stay somewhere for a long time.”

  “Then why did she leave?”

  “You really are upset! I can try to find out some of these things for you, but I am not sure if you should really be interested in them. Honey, I’m sure you’ll feel better about this by tomorrow. But if you really feel upset, you should definitely talk to another human about this, maybe Panna Lobe or Panna Stencil Pavlina. Or”—Rubric could see her racking her brains—“your schatzie…Tuna Jo?”

  “Salmon Jo,” she said.

  “Yes! Tomorrow I’ll remember that. You two are so close, so much in love. Maybe you should talk to her.”

  “I think I will. Thank you, Nanny Klon,” she said politely.

  “Thanks for the peppermint oil,” Nanny Klon said. “I’m sure it will make my fat slide down smoothly.” She squeezed Rubric’s arm, and Rubric walked away.

  Rubric couldn’t stop a few tears from trickling down her cheek. She would never see Bloom again. And she had no one to blame but herself.

  Her vision was so blurry that in the hallway she bumped into Filigree Sue.

  “Rubric, what’s wrong?” Filigree Sue asked.

  “It’s no big deal, Fil.” Rubric sniffed. She didn’t even know if she should tell her. But why should she have to keep it a secret? “It’s just that Nanny Klon has been replaced by another Nanny Klon.”

  “Huh, no kidding. So?”

  “So I miss her.”

  Filigree Sue laughed and clouted Rubric on the back of her head. “You thicko, next you’ll be missing the pierogi you ate for lunch! You need to get more sleep and stop drawing pictures. I remember when you were a little
child and you used to have tea parties with your dolls and gave them all different personalities. You haven’t changed at all. Too much imagination is your problem. You’re just another Hollyhock!”

  Completely unexpectedly, Salmon Jo appeared at her side. Salmon Jo was looking particularly disheveled. Her curly hair was sticking up, and her chest was heaving as though she had been running for klicks. Rubric wondered why she wasn’t at the Hatchery like she was supposed to be.

  “Ru!” she gasped. “We have to leave right now. We’re in mortal danger!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember what happened to Hollyhock?” She grabbed Rubric’s hand and started pulling her down the hallway.

  Chapter Twelve

  Filigree Sue shouted after them, but Salmon Jo didn’t even turn around. Her grip was unrelenting.

  “I went to get you at Panna Stencil Pavlina’s,” Salmon Jo said. “But I saw her talking to a Doctor, so I ran. I’m so glad I found you!”

  “I need to pack a bag!”

  “No time. And leave your screen. They might be able to track us with it.”

  Rubric took out her screen, which she used to draw, take pictures, pulse, make calls, read, watch edfotunement, and tell the time. It was flashing red, pulsing, Rubric report to Panna Lobe’s office at once. She placed it carefully on the hallway floor. It was the strangest feeling, like she was leaving one of her eyes behind. They ran down the stairs and out the door.

  It was odd to be running through the tree-lined campus, the handsome redbrick buildings glowing in the sun, the students lounging on the lawns, and to feel her heart pounding in her chest. Everything around her seemed so normal. But she felt like an animal trying to escape.