CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (21 page)

The first thing she saw was the bathmat. Soggy tufts of blue cotton were heaped in the tub, mounded but innocuous. Gingerly she pulled it back - and there was nothing. Nothing but a filthy bathtub, disgusting plastic ducks, a rather curious yellow colour staining the ring of dirt around the bath. Nothing more.

A surge of hope rippled her frame. Had she really imagined it all? Was Alec right, and she was heading for a nervous breakdown? She pinched herself and the pain was real enough. She was here, in her bathroom, now. She wasn’t dreaming.

She looked around. The bathroom was still a mess, heaped linen on the floor. But she’d seen another little boy. Tears poured as she remembered his small lifeless body. Had that, somehow, got under the jumbled laundry on the floor?

She flung pillow cases, cot covers, nappies around the small room. No sign of a body, of anything except the usual attributes of a children’s bathroom. It wasn’t there! She’d been wrong; she must have been. Apparently she’d fantasised it all. There was no body, no clone. It had all happened in her imagination. Alec was right.

Water - she desperately needed water. Lisa turned the tap on full, felt the cold water over her hands, splashed it on to her face. She guzzled great swallows of it, grabbed a mug and greedily poured the cold liquid down her throat, over her hair, her neck, her breasts. She felt contaminated and needed cleansing, felt the flow of water gush over her, liberating her, cooling her, permitting her to leave. There was nothing she could do here. There was no body, no incriminating evidence. She heaped the dirty laundry into a pile, placed it outside the door. Her breathing was becoming laboured again - she was overwrought, overdone, out of control.

Lisa went down the corridor to her bedroom, exhausted, unsteady on her feet. She opened the windows wide, breathed in cool, evening air, fanned her face eagerly with the day’s newspaper. A deep crimson glow across the skyscape thinned slowly into grey across the moors and dimmed the green into black. The willows stood silhouetted, a faint gold dripping from the top branches, firing them into a dying flame. So much beauty hiding so much pain. The whisper of a bat chasing nocturnal insects, the predatory hooting of an owl. Balmy country noises to calm her down.

Lisa smiled to herself. The silence would heal her. There was too much upheaval in her life. Once the children spent several hours a day away she would be able to enjoy time to herself again, be free to think of her paintings, how to progress her work. Even mothers needed time off.

A muffled sound she assumed was some nocturnal animal pierced into her consciousness. Rhythmic, continuous, it seemed to stem from the bottom of the garden by the fruit trees Alec had planted earlier that spring. A rabbit, perhaps, was digging a warren. Or a badger sett busy making a home inside their boundaries. The idea appealed to her.

A constant steady slurp reminded her of metal cutting through earth. Was someone digging in the field? Using a spade at this hour?

‘Doin’ a spot o’ gardenin’, tha’n it?’ a disembodied voice spoke up, fluttering on the damp night air, clear as a bell. ‘Bit o’ extra cash.’

Lisa felt long black shadows closing in on her as she stared across the moor. The voice sounded like Mark Ditcheat, their neighbour beyond the rhyne. Whoever he was talking to didn’t reply.

‘Yer be out late.’ The demanding voice, evidently not to be stopped, sounded suspicious.

‘Arr; git t’plant t’tree.’

Another familiar sound; where had she heard those gruff tones recently?

‘Tree? This time o’night?’ A laugh. ‘Where be the fire, then?’

‘Cum when ’im at t’house be Lunnon way,’ she recognised Don’s voice.

Don was planting a tree in
their
garden in the middle of the night? That was absurd; Don had no business being in their garden at all. Saunders did all that...

“Them be dead; not’ing as be done but bury they critturs”; the words Don had muttered only a short time ago reverberated in Lisa’s mind. The cool, so welcome minutes earlier, was making her feel cold. Don was digging up earth - to bury something. To bury a something - a ‘crittur’.

She hadn’t imagined it at all. There
had
been another cloning, another clone. Another child - just like her triplets. And Don had taken it. Taken it off, just like he did with the farm animals. He was digging a grave for flesh of
her
flesh, burying it because “Tha’ be t’right t’ing as us ’ud do”.

Lisa leaned her head against the window frame, drew in her breath. No doubt Don meant well, meant to help her. But what he was doing was without her permission, her consent. She wanted - needed - the body. To mourn him; he was her child just as much as Jiminy was hers. And she’d to show him to Alec. How else could she convince him of something which was so unbelievable?

‘Us be tellin’ Frank yer be moonlightin’,’ Lisa heard Mark cackle now. ‘Us be seein’ yer at t’Young Farmer’s meetin’ ternight. Him be talkin’ ’bout that there Multiplier. Got a promotion on.’

‘Oh, arr.’

‘Gie they trees Multiplier and yer be bound ter git good crops,’ Mark volunteered.

‘Arr.’

‘Bin lookin’ o’er they cattle,’ Mark went on, his voice tailing off as he walked away. ‘Can’t be too careful…’

Cattle rustling was a thriving crime on the Levels. Most farmers counted their animals morning and evening. Presumably that’s why the man was there.

Lisa remained at the window, listening intently. There was a slow shuffle of metal dragged over the local quarry chippings Alec liked to spread along his paths. No doubt that was Don hiding the evidence of his nocturnal digging. What should she do? Confront him, demand to know why he was in her garden?

She hadn’t the strength for that, she couldn’t possibly. She had to let it be for now, talk to Alec about it when he came back, let him take the responsibility. She’d done enough. It was time for Alec to shoulder some of the burden.

Would Don tell Frank? Probably not, because there was no reason to. As far as Don was concerned, he’d buried a body - just like he did at Crinsley Farm. It was unlikely he’d tell anyone.

Soft summery air billowed around her, stroked her shoulders, her cheeks, her hair, embraced her with the balm of the fresh scents of nature. Lisa leaned her head against the window frame. Damp evening mist laid drops of water on her lips, her eyes. She breathed in deeply, felt the contentment of the country night suffusing through her.

Calmer at last, she stole into Seb’s room to see him fast asleep. She crept into the triplets’ nursery again. Three babies, breathing, sleeping,
present
in three cots. She checked that they were there time and again. She moved, as in a dream, to Janus’s cot. She stood and watched as his head turned on the pillow, serene, the sleep of innocence.

CHAPTER 17

The house, hushed and enveloping, hugged Lisa’s secret within its massive walls. She reassured herself that her family was sheltered, protected by the solid structure. The dark outside intensified as Lisa switched on soft lighting in her bedroom, in the bathroom leading away from that. She felt the events of this afternoon fading from immediacy, felt released enough to pamper herself with a relaxing bath, to plunge herself into hot water laden with Badedas-perfumed bubbles.

Lying in the silken liquid, unleashing her experiences of the last few hours, Lisa wondered whether she was the only mother who had a child like Janus. She needed someone she could tell her thoughts to, someone to share her fears and her anxieties with. Above all, she needed someone she could trust to listen to her.

Thinking about it convinced Lisa that she couldn’t tell Alec about what had happened. Even if she could get him to take notice of what she was trying to tell him he’d never believe her incredible story. She thought back to the way he’d assumed she, not Geraldine, had been the problem when she’d tried to tell him how the girl had let her down after the party. He’d taken Geraldine’s part. He thought more about the wretched girl than about her! If she now started telling him about Don, if she tried to explain how he’d buried the dead clone to help her and indirectly, of course, Frank, Alec would, she was sure, find such a story completely unacceptable.

Her husband lived in his own world, away from hers, involved in his career, driven by his ambitions. He wasn’t prepared to accept that she, or his family, had difficulties in their lives. Not because he didn’t love them, Lisa was sure he loved them dearly. He simply needed everything in their world to be right, under control, properly ordered. Like the digits in his ledgers, she supposed. He was an accountant, he dealt in figures, in matters of known fact. If she told Alec she’d seen a fourth baby, identical to Janus, in the bath, that Janus had cloned a virtually still-born brother, then followed this by telling him she suspected that Don had stolen the body in order to bury it in their garden late at night, Alec’s most likely reaction would be to think he’d been right all along - she was unstable, about to have a mental breakdown. He might even think she’d already lost her reason and send an ambulance round!

What about Meg? Why not confide in her? Meg would believe her. She already suspected that Jeffrey and James had cloned in the womb. But something held Lisa back: the troubled brown eyes, the uncharacteristic shiftiness of late. Meg had her own burdens. Lisa hadn’t the energy to work out what they might be.

An image of Trevor came into her mind. Trevor was used to the quirks of creative people; they were his living. She could talk to Trevor. He would let her chatter, pour out her misgivings. He would calm her down. But he wasn’t the man to confide in about this afternoon’s happenings. She had, after all, sounded him out before on that point. Though he’d always been ready to help her in a friendly way, she was sure he wouldn’t wish to be involved, to share any real responsibilities. And why should he?

Perhaps Don’s instincts had been wise. The old countryman, level-headed and experienced, had known what to do. Bury the evidence, let sleeping clones lie - undisturbed, undisturbing.

That left only one course of action open to her. She’d have to make absolutely sure that nothing like this could ever happen again. She must prevent further cloning at all costs. Janus - and she now had proof that it was only Janus she had to worry about - must always have something fixed to him which neither he, nor any casual meddler, could remove. Something extraneous fastened to his body - a foreign object, something which could not clone itself - would stop the cloning. But it had to be a tight fit, had to stop the cloner’s body from being able to discard it, or split inside it. Metal, Don had insisted, was better than clothing. What could she do? She couldn’t force her triplets to wear bracelets all through their childhood. In any case, the bracelets were already becoming tight, and they were too intrusive. Relieving Janus of his constricting band was precisely what had caused her earlier predicament.

She weighed up possibilities in her mind: bracelets on the triplets’ ankles rather than on their wrists, for example. No more useful than the present system, and harder to keep a check on. Perhaps a silver chain around each child’s neck, small nametag attached, like soldiers’ identification tabs?

None of these ideas worked. And a chain could easily be taken off, might even be dangerous. There must be something suitable! A ring, perhaps? She laughed out loud at that. She could give Trevor a ring right away. That was the sort of problem he would be happy to discuss, to help her with. His pleasant friendly voice would make her feel better. She dripped out of the bath, sheeted her body in luxurious towelling, lay on her bed. Reasonably relaxed, she tapped Trevor’s number on the keypad.

A soft, low ‘Hello’ answered after the second ring. It didn’t sound like Trevor. Too young - and too come-hitherish, for that matter.

‘That you, Trev?’

There was a pause, and then a high-pitched irritated voice spluttered ‘Who wants him?’ down the line. Leo, Lisa guessed at once; Leo discouraging all Trevor’s entanglements other than himself. Thinking about it, Lisa felt sure even Leo could not be jealous of her, though Trevor had warned her about his possessiveness. The mother of four children under three could hardly be considered a sexual threat by anyone, Lisa decided firmly.

‘It’s Lisa Wildmore here, one of his clients,’ she cooed. ‘I just wanted a tiny word with him.’

‘Lisa Wildmore?’ There was a pause as Leo screened the information. ‘Ah, yes; I’ve heard about you. The one with triplets!’ His voice rang out triumphant, lightened into friendliness. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Rather too busy,’ she said, hoping not to sound curt. ‘Trying to keep some semblance of normality.’ Clearly she could not talk to Trevor now, but she could, at least, ask him about her very practical problem.

‘Poor you. I’ll get himself for you.’

Trev was on the line within seconds. ‘Lisa? Anything wrong?’

‘Sorry, Trev. I didn’t mean to intrude. Just thought you’d be the right person to solve a rather tricky issue for me.’

‘Anything I can do, my dear.’

‘The triplets have outgrown their silver bracelets, so they’ve got to come off. I’m still worried about the babies getting muddled up, and Alec only laughs at me. Any ideas about something less officious we could use?’

She heard the scraping of a chair, presumably Trevor making himself more comfortable. There was the sound of a slight scuffle, then a giggle.

‘Trevor? Are you still there?’

‘I’m looking at the perfect solution,’ he told her gaily.

‘Looking at it?’

‘The elegant Leo. He wears a darling little earring in his left ear.’

A tiny earring, the sort that people wore to keep a pierced ear open. ‘That’s brilliant, Trev,’ she sighed. ‘You’re absolutely marvellous.’

‘Any time, darling. We’re just off to the opera.’

‘I won’t keep you. Thanks a million - well, thank Leo!’

Lisa clicked the cordless off, carefully placed it into its charger. She would have to think of some reasonable excuse to have an earring put in Janus’s ear. Not only his, of course; Jeffrey’s and James’s as well. And then it came to her full force. The real reason was the best reason. They needed earrings so that people outside the family could tell the triplets apart. And if the children were to go to Anne Marsden’s playschool that’s exactly the sort of identifying mark which would work.