Swans and Klons

by Nora Olsen

  “Sssh, not so loud,” Prospect said. “That’s how they do things here. That’s the way it is. They want their Sons to do stuff, even if they suck at it. It’s their philosophy.”

  “That’s my clever Prospect,” Dream said, her hands still a blur of apple picking. “She understands all about philosophy. Whatever that is. I knew you hadn’t really been redistributed, my snuggle bunny. I could feel it in my bones.”

  “There were lots of other ladies here who were interested in me,” Prospect bragged. “But I waited for you. I knew you’d come after me.”

  They stopped their whirlwind of picking long enough for a sloppy kiss. These two were so happy it was almost disgusting. Dream looked like she was having an otherworldly experience, her eyes just barely slitted open in bliss. Rubric couldn’t help wondering if that was what she looked like when she smooched Salmon Jo. Rubric thought it must almost be worth it to be separated if you got back together again in the end.

  Just then, a woman blew a trumpet, and everyone broke for a picnic lunch that was spread out for them on a huge blanket. There was chicken, cheese, a cabbage dish, a funny kind of bread, water, lemonade, and cider. Rubric got her food eagerly.

  Theodorica joined them. “Do you have enough to eat?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rubric said. She was tired of the woman hovering over them. It wasn’t Rubric’s fault the Barbarous Ones had some veruckt custom about being responsible for people they found.

  Rubric watched the Cretinous Males eat. She was getting used to looking at them. Most of them were very pale and wore visors to protect them from the sun. They ate boluses of medicine along with their food, so they must be sick. Some of them were being fanned, so they were either very spoiled or they got overheated easily. And from the languid way they lounged around, they seemed to have no get-up-and-go. One teenaged Cretinous Male was repeating, “I pick apples? I pick apples?” over and over to an elderly woman. She paid no heed to his words and kept encouraging him to drink a vast quantity of watered-down lemonade.

  “Panna Theodorica, I’m afraid I’m going to be rude again,” Salmon Jo said quietly. “But I’m just trying to understand. Why do you want to keep people who are so damaged perpetuated in your society?”

  “We love our Sons,” Theodorica said. “Their lives have value. We like having them around. Taking care of them makes us better people. We don’t think we’re better than our Sons, and we don’t want to obliterate them. Our only consolation when they die is that another of their icon—what you call Jeepie Type—will be born. It’s so obvious that I don’t know how to explain it to you. I always hope that when newcomers meet our Sons, everything will become clear to them. If you are going to live here, you have to display tolerance, at the very least. We didn’t ask any of you to come here.”

  The Barbarous Ones didn’t want them here, and Rubric didn’t want to be here. On that, at least, they could all agree. She didn’t understand why she and Salmon Jo were wasting time picking apples when they should be working on how to pass back through the fence safely.

  Dream and Prospect invited them for a post-apple-picking party in Hot Buttered Toast Town that night. Hot Buttered Toast Town was only a couple of klicks away. Superficially, it was exactly like the Barbarous village, with the same style of cottages. The wonderful difference was they didn’t have to worry about seeing any scary Cretinous Males or pregnant women.

  Rubric was worried that the Klons there would be angry at them for being Panna humans, but that wasn’t the case. Everyone seemed to accept them as being on the right side. Rubric almost felt like an honorary Klon. It was funny, she would have thought they would stop calling themselves Klons, but they seemed to like the name. The party naturally devolved into a strategy session about how Society could be overthrown and all the Klons freed. Rubric felt she didn’t know enough to contribute to the conversation, but she found it very interesting.

  At first, she felt joy. This was the group of comrades she and Salmon Jo had been looking for. Wasn’t this why they had decided to free Klons in the first place? Maybe coming to the Land of the Barbarous Ones had been worth it.

  But soon her emotions gave way to uncertainty. The biggest problems that the Buttered Toast Rebels had to overcome were their small numbers and the oath of nonviolence they had pledged to the Barbarous Ones.

  “But, at some point, we’re going to have to stop taking that oath seriously,” said an intense blond-haired woman named Shade. “The Barbarous Ones have helped us, but our first loyalty is to our own people. Who are imprisoned, who are exploited, who are slaving fourteen hours a day for scum, who are treated worse than animals, whose lives are being thrown away in the eth-fruit fields and factories, thrown away wiping human Hatchlings’ behinds. And the only way to make it stop is to overthrow the Doctors, kill the scheiss-eating Pannas, and let the Klons take over.”

  Everyone murmured in agreement.

  “Hear, hear!” shouted Prospect, climbing up on the table. “Strangle the last Kapo Klon in the entrails of the last Panna!”

  “We need to get weapons to our Klons, so they can rise up and kill their masters!”

  Rubric felt a chill. She took Salmon Jo’s hand. They went outside and sat on the fragrant grass in the dark. “Isn’t there some way to have a revolution without violence?” Rubric asked.

  “No,” Salmon Jo said.

  It was nice sometimes how Salmon Jo was so sure of herself. But this was not one of those times.

  “I don’t like the idea of everyone I’ve ever known being killed,” Rubric said. “Are you okay with that?”

  “Of course not,” Salmon Jo said. “People who are being killed never like it. I’m just saying, I think they’re right. If Society is going to be overthrown, that’s probably how it will happen. And I can’t blame them. Their point of view is pretty legitimate.”

  “Well, I can’t help them kill all my friends.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “But I want to stop slavery. Don’t you?”

  “It would be nice,” Salmon Jo said. “But I don’t think I’m cut out for that kind of thing. I hate to be a killjoy, but I’m not sure it’s even possible. You’re the kind of person who likes to change things. I’m the kind of person who likes to run away.”

  “We are away,” said Rubric, and rested her head on Salmon Jo’s shoulder. “And it turns out the only place more awful than Society is here.”

  “Panna Theodorica said there are other lands,” Salmon Jo reminded her. “We could keep traveling.”

  “What, in our imaginary airship?” Rubric asked. “Good gravy! We can’t just leave this hot mess. Can you just imagine Prospect killing all the girls in Yellow Dorm? Filigree Sue hanging by her toes?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Salmon Jo said. “It’s all talk. The Klons have got it good here—they won’t go and risk their lives. They just want to get drunk and rant.”

  Rubric wasn’t so sure. “There must be some other way,” she said. “If people at home only knew the truth, things would change. What about that documentary we were pretending to make? I could interview the former Klons here, explain what you found in the lab, and pulse the video to people’s screens.”

  “The Doctors would never let anyone see it,” Salmon Jo said. “They can monitor the screens. For our health, of course.”

  “What if I made posters, really well-designed ones with nice graphics, and put them up everywhere. Saying Klons Are Human. They wouldn’t be able to take them down fast enough.”

  “I don’t know if that phrase would mean anything to people,” Salmon Jo said. “It’s like saying dogs have five legs. It appears to be not true. And not everyone cares about nice graphics like you do.”

  Rubric pulled a fistful of grass out of the ground and threw it.

  “I hate it here,” she said, tearing up. “I just want to go home. But I don’t want the Klons to be slaves.”

  “Look,” said Salmon Jo. “I’ll find some way to get us out of h
ere. I promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  As the fall got colder, Rubric hated the Land of the Barbarous Ones more and more. The more she learned about it, the more she hated it. She and Salmon Jo spent a lot of their time helping Theodorica harvest squash, cook, clean, and do laundry. Theodorica was urging them to take up residence inside the house as the nights became more chilly, but Rubric didn’t want to. As long as she and Salmon Jo were sleeping in the tent, it felt like they were only there temporarily.

  The structure of a family became clear to Rubric over time, what it meant that Theodorica had a mother, aunt, sister, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew. It seemed that you could never escape your family. They were hung around your neck for life, even if they were annoying and you didn’t like them. In Society, you could choose the people you loved, they weren’t thrust on you.

  Rubric felt especially sorry for Theodorica’s little niece, a cute girl named Krizika. She didn’t get to grow up in a dorm, surrounded by a hundred playmates eager for games and fellowship. Krizika and her cretinous brother had to share one distracted and overworked mother. There was no team of Nanny Klons whose only job was to care for them. The thing that seemed to take the place of Nanny Klons was the Center for Sons, a collective effort to help women raise the Cretinous Males they were so keen on having. The Center for Sons was the nicest building in the village by far, large and airy, with special gradated lights to help Cretinous Males who were sensitive to changes in illumination.

  Salmon Jo was helping out at the Barbarous Ones’ lab, just as she had talked about on her first day. The Barbarous Ones were pleased at her willingness to share her knowledge of the process at the Hatchery, and they liked her quick mind. While Salmon Jo was on the cutting edge of Barbarous science, Rubric was doing tasks like shoveling manure. She was never asked to do anything but manual labor. No one appreciated Rubric’s art. They had a different aesthetic here—that was the nicest way Rubric could phrase it—and people just grunted at Rubric’s attempts to beautify the village. She had given Theodorica a watercolor painting and later found it in the compost pile, neatly shredded for quicker decomposition. The only person who was interested in visual art was Dream, and Rubric spent many long evenings with her in Hot Buttered Toast Town. They egged each other on to greater heights of creativity and self-expression. The low-tech paper the Klons used was a revelation to Rubric, and she loved drawing in charcoal. Rubric spent a lot of time telling Dream about Panna Stencil Pavlina. Dream found the exploits of their Jeepie Similar hilarious. “All she needed was a schatzie,” Dream would say. “That’s all that matters. I bet if she got a schatzie, she’d start making pretty art again.”

  The lowest point for Rubric came when Theodorica proudly told her the village had reached a consensus to add a few extra souls to their number because of the excellent harvests they had been having. One of the Jeepie Types—icons—they had chosen was Rubric’s.

  “I didn’t donate any genetic material,” Rubric said.

  “No, but Dream did.”

  Rubric was outraged. She didn’t want any Jeepie Similar of hers to grow up in this backward place.

  “Aren’t you afraid the child will grow up to be a worthless artist?” she asked bitterly.

  Theodorica laughed. “Your genetics don’t determine your destiny. People can be whatever they want.”

  Salmon Jo wasn’t back from the lab in time for dinner that night. Rubric had to eat alone with Theodorica and Branknor again. Rubric decided not to help clean up. Why should she help? She missed Salmon Jo and hated being abandoned with these people.

  Rubric sat on the dirt floor in the sitting room, trying to distract herself with a puzzle. A puzzle was another craze of the Barbarous Ones, a tessellation of interlocking pieces that had to be put together in a certain way. The Barbarous Ones had no edfotunement, and Rubric had to do something. Branknor sat near her in an upholstered chair. Rubric no longer feared harmless Branknor. He liked to copy what other people were doing, so he was playing with a puzzle of his own. His was easy, since it came in a sturdy wooden tray with the picture of the puzzle on it, so his only task was to match the few pieces to the picture. A two-year-old girl could put this puzzle together.

  Branknor kept interrupting Rubric. “Rooobric, do a puzzle! Yes. Rooobric, do a puzzle with meee!” He’d wave a piece at her until she came over to help him.

  The way he said her name was actually kind of cute. He was far from the most horrific Cretinous Male in town. Others were more craggy and hairy than he was. When she’d first laid eyes on him, he seemed ageless. But now she knew he was actually only nineteen. His skin was smoother than older Cretinous Males, and he didn’t have a beard, only peach fuzz.

  She kept helping him finish the puzzle, but then he would dump the pieces out in his lap and start again. Finally, she abandoned her own puzzle and crouched by the side of his chair. If she gave him the puzzle with just one piece missing, he could slot it in the right place with his pale, slow hands. He could do it if she removed two pieces. But if three were gone, he didn’t even try; he just thrust it at her and said, “Do a puzzle, Roooobric!”

  “No, no,” she said. “You have to do it. I’m tired of doing it for you.”

  They went back and forth like this for what seemed like forever. Then, finally, Branknor picked up the pieces and began trying to fit them in. He seemed to have no sense that he had to orient the pieces correctly, that the picture on the puzzle should match what was on the wood, or even that the pieces had to go in the holes. But, through trial and error, he was able to slot the pieces in with satisfying clicks. When he had completed it, he laughed and said, “Branknor do a puzzle!” Then he dumped the pieces out again.

  Rubric was moderately impressed. She hadn’t known he was capable of problem solving. Maybe he wasn’t as thicko as she’d thought. This time, she left out four pieces from the completed puzzle. The picture of the puzzle—a poorly drawn dog—began burning itself into her brain.

  Salmon Jo came in when Branknor was up to solving five pieces. She got sucked into the puzzle game.

  “Fill in the middle and give him the pieces on the edge,” she suggested. “Maybe that’s easier.” She sat down on the arm of the chair. “Move over, Branknor.”

  Branknor could complete the puzzle with seven pieces missing by the time Theodorica came into the room.

  “Look, Branknor can do a puzzle!” Salmon Jo said.

  “Look, Branknor can do a puzzle,” Branknor affirmed.

  “Half a puzzle,” Rubric amended.

  Theodorica was full of admiration. “He’s been messing around with that thing for five years,” she said. “You girls are good teachers.”

  “Pretty soon we’ll have him doing the laundry for you,” Salmon Jo joked.

  Rubric didn’t think it was allowed to make fun of how cretinous Branknor was. He was so counterproductive with laundry that it was one of the few tasks Theodorica did without his “help.” But Theodorica must have thought it was an okay joke because she laughed like a maniac.

  “I could make him a puzzle with fewer pieces,” Rubric offered. “One he could do on his own. And I’d make the pieces thicker.” Silently she added that she would put a nice picture on the puzzle, not like that cretinous-looking dog.

  “That would be very thoughtful,” Theodorica said. “Girls, I have some wool overtunics for you. As a gift. It will be so terribly cold in your tent.”

  In their terribly cold tent, Salmon Jo said, “I’m learning more about those boluses of medicine the Sons take. At first, I was so cynical after everything we’ve been through that I wondered if the medicine even helped, or if it only made the Sons worse, or if they might even be making their Sons more cretinous on purpose. But it’s all completely aboveboard, and it’s actually a really promising treatment. They’re taking these quaternary ammonium cations that have been biosynthesized from amino—”

  “C’mon, Salmon Jo,” Rubric grumbled. She knew pretending to listen to Salmo
n Jo’s scientific rambling was part of being a good schatzie, but she was too miserable.

  “Okay, sorry. How about this? I think the Sons are really fun.”

  “They don’t bother me anymore,” Rubric admitted. “I don’t know about fun.”

  “I really get it now, why they like having the Sons around the place. They’re very pure people. What you see is what you get. And even though they’re cretinous, they’re good at some things, but it’s unpredictable and they need a lot of coaching. I think Branknor understands more than he can express. He always knows how Theodorica is feeling, and she’s hard to read. All the emotional stuff is there.”

  Salmon Jo seemed to be paying plenty of attention to the Cretinous Males and their emotions. Then why couldn’t she see how lonely and sad Rubric was?

  “The Barbarous Ones have just bought into a mass delusion that Cretinous Males are really glam, just like we have our mass delusion about the Klons,” Rubric said.

  “Maybe every place has their own delusion. But I think the one here is better, kinder. You know how before we left home I said I didn’t know what human was? I know now. The Sons taught me what it means to be a human being. Even if they’re sick or not brainy, they’re just as human as us. I think they make you learn more about yourself, and that’s why the Barbarous Ones think they’re such an asset.”

  “You’re fitting right in here,” Rubric said acidly. “I bet you like the pregnancy thing too.”

  “The pregnancy thing is interesting,” Salmon Jo said, ignoring Rubric’s tone. “It’s kind of amazing that the human body can naturally do all those things that are so hard to replicate in the Hatchery. Theodorica says giving birth is like going through the fence. It hurts, but afterward, you don’t remember the pain very well. But childbirth doesn’t cause seizures, and at the end of it you get a Hatchling.”

  “Would you…you would never do that, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out as completely out of the question, someday,” Salmon Jo said.