CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (31 page)

Horseshoes -
that’s
why Frank, who’d killed off everything else on his farm, could get away with selling, not killing, the foals. They couldn’t clone, of course. They were shod, permanently tagged in their own unique way.

‘Perhaps you’ll invite me down sometime. The country sounds intriguing.’ Leo smiled at Lisa, calling the waiter to order wine. ‘Better make the most of venison while it’s still from the wild.’

Janus needed something like a horseshoe, some sort of equivalent, to stop him cloning. He was an innocent victim, doomed to clone in the way thalidomide victims were doomed to have stunted limbs. Was there an antidote? Could she find something to take away this heavy burden from her child? The earring hadn’t stopped the bloating, or the aggression. What triggered actual cloning, anyway? And would it continue throughout Janus’s life?

‘What about the Fleury ’85?’

‘Sounds perfect,’ Lisa said. ‘Of course you must come down to see us. Next time Trevor drives down, come with him.’

‘Jansy really is a handful,’ Alec’s mother greeted her as soon as she returned. ‘He pushed Jiminy into the mud by the drain. Quite dangerous, Betsy says. A sort of mini quicksand.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid we’re short one blue boot. And while we were dragging Jiminy out a whole lot of cows started towards us, would you believe.’

Lisa smiled, relieved at Sarah’s ignorance. ‘Not cows, Sarah. Bullocks. Steers, as they call them locally. Nothing to worry about there, they’re just curious, or think someone’s come along to give them extra food.’

‘You could have fooled us!’ Sarah flopped on to a sofa, tossed off her shoes and stretched her legs out along the seat. ‘Betsy and I were quite worried.’ She wiggled her toes.

‘Worried? Why? What happened?’

‘The whole lot started to move towards the children – ’

‘I told you! They thought they were bringing them some extra food.’

‘Kind of bearing down on them, snorting and beginning to trot. We’d just pulled Jiminy out, and were quite a few yards away. Betsy left Jiminy to it and began to run towards the animals, trying to head them off, hollering as she went. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been so nervous. I shouted at Jiminy to stay where he was and rushed after her, shrieking as loudly as I could.’

‘You really were worried.’

‘That’s when the most extraordinary part of it happened. Jansy picked up a fallen branch and brandished it at them. It was really quite a big one, I couldn’t believe he could lift it. But he did. Not only that, he bashed one of the animals on the nose. It stopped the brute in its tracks.’ A brittle laugh, a deep breath in. ‘You should have seen it. The front one sort of stopped and stared, then backed. Jansy took another swing at it, while Betsy and I were panting and shouting just behind him, so they all turned tail.’ She finished up out of breath. ‘I could use a stiff drink.’

Lisa poured out a Malvern and malt.

‘Easy on the water.’ Sarah drank deep. ‘So the child isn’t all bad. An excess of energy, I take it. When’s Alec taking him to the specialist?’

‘In a couple of weeks.’

‘The sooner the better, I suppose. Not that I’d want anyone to break his spirit, or anything like that. Sorry, Lis. I put it all down to your being neurotic. The child really is quite - well, let’s say difficult. Betsy made all kinds of excuses for him, but the fact is he pushed Jiminy deliberately. I saw him do it.’

A scheme was beginning to form in Lisa’s mind. ‘I expect he’ll settle down,’ she dismissed the incident. ‘He’s going through a bad patch. Whatever that specialist maintains, there’s something physically wrong and it’s bothering the child. More than an allergy, I mean.’ Lisa was pleased with herself. Her whole body relaxed as she smiled at her mother-in-law.

‘You think you know what the problem is?’

‘I think it may be earache.’

‘Earache? You mean that bit of infection he sometimes gets?’

‘The nurse at the surgery told me they often insert grommets to relieve pressure. It may be that that’s what needs doing.’ A small plastic tube through the eardrum, left in till it fell out after eighteen months or so. That would be brilliant. She’d ask Gilmore to arrange an appointment with an ear nose and throat consultant as soon as possible. There should, she’d worked out, be plenty of time before the next cloning.

CHAPTER 26

‘Kitty bumped, Mummy. Poor Kitty’s hurt.’

‘Yes, darling, I know. Kitty can’t see. Auntie Meg’s vet came over yesterday and said he couldn’t make her better. Remember?’

‘Kitty’s isn’t ill!’ Seb shouted at her, stamping his feet. ‘Kitty can’t see!’

‘She can’t manage without seeing, darling. We talked about that, didn’t we?’

‘Don’t want Kitty deaded!’

‘You know it happens, Sebbie. You know everything dies.’

‘Old things die; my Kitty’s not old.’

‘Not always, darling. Sometimes a pet is too sick to live. It’s kinder not to let them suffer. The vet is coming this morning to put Kitty to sleep. We talked about that yesterday.’

‘She isn’t tired.’

‘I think you should say goodbye, Sebbie. Give Kitty a big hug.’

‘Seb help Kitty,’ he mumbled, head buried in the cat’s fur. He held his pet tightly to himself, trying not to allow the tears. ‘
My
Kitty. You can’t dead her.’ Grief welled out under his eyelids, down his cheeks; long gulps of grief.

‘She’d always be hurting herself, Sebbie. It wouldn’t be fair on her. She might jump on the cooker and burn her paws  – ’

‘Poor Kitty,’ he kept saying. ‘Poor Kitty.’

Jeffers and Jiminy, infected by their brother, also began to cry. Even Janus, Lisa saw, his eyes solemn, had a single large teardrop running down his cheek.

Lisa gently took the calico cat from Sebastian and put her in the willow basket, shutting the lid. ‘She needs to sleep now, Sebbie.’

He tried to get back to the cat, wriggled out of her restraining arms. Even Seb could show a nasty temper when he was upset.

‘Why not play a game on Daddy’s computer?’ Lisa distracted him, taking his hand and leading him to Alec’s study. ‘There’s just time for one before we have to leave.’ She turned the machine on and inserted the latest game Alec had bought him.

Seb sat on Alec’s chair, an unusual look of anger in his eyes, and thumped his fingers over the keyboard. ‘Why’s Jansy staying home?’ he asked. ‘Is he sick?’

‘He’s going to see Dr Morgenstein again,’ Lisa evaded the issue. ‘As soon as he comes back from holiday.’

‘Jansy’s not in bed,’ Seb said. ‘Jansy’s not ill.’ His look was openly hostile. ‘Is Jansy going to be deaded?’

Lisa had to clear her throat several times before the words would come. ‘Don’t be silly, Seb. Daddy is taking him to the doctor soon,’ she managed. ‘Then he can go to school again.’ She put her arms around the child. ‘Come along, Sebbie. Time to get ready.’

‘I’m not finished!’ he insisted, overturning Alec’s chair, banging the table. ‘I’ve nearly won – ’

‘When you get back, Seb. We have to go now, we’ll be late.’

‘It isn’t fair!’

Lisa walked all four children to the school, then walked back with Janus. He was often difficult, destructive even. But the fits of bad temper were not as uncontrolled as before. She could only be thankful that something seemed to have changed.

Without the competition from his brothers Lisa had been surprised to find herself drawn to the child. He was extraordinarily perceptive, and positively gifted. His drawings were remarkably accomplished. An early artistic talent, Lisa assumed. The bond between them, so often disturbed, was cementing into more than the usual love between mother and child. Lisa felt admiration for her son, pride in the way he handled an attribute he had to live with but could not regulate.

She saw him take Seb’s place at Alec’s desk. She must have forgotten to turn the machine off. ‘You’re too young to be playing with the computer,’ she said gently, looking at the screen as Janus knelt on the chair and flicked deft fingers over the keyboard. ‘Let’s do some drawing.’

The child ignored her, clicked keys, brought up one screen after another. No real harm in that, Lisa thought to herself, relieved to have time to clear the breakfast. He couldn’t mess up Alec’s files, they needed a password to be accessed.

When Lisa finally returned, about to switch the computer off, the screen which greeted her spelt FLAXTON PLC in enormous letters. There was a list of names and figures beneath. These must be Alec’s private files, the figures he was putting together for the company.

She knew Alec was working towards an initial public offering of Flaxton shares, due to come out within weeks. Lisa had had neither time nor energy to give thought to that aspect of Alex’s work before. With a start she realised she must, from now on. She had to work out what she could do to stop Flaxton selling Multiplier.

‘How did you get that screen, Jansy?’

‘Daddy files,’ the child said easily.

They were top secret. How could he know Alec’s password to get to the Flaxton files, let alone the one for the spreadsheets? That couldn’t be coincidence. Was this child really bright enough not merely to have remembered Alec’s passwords, but to have memorised them as Alec keyed them in?

‘Look, Mummy.’ Janus leant backwards and twisted his head towards her, beckoning at the screen. ‘Pretty,’ he said, encouraging her.

She examined the colour monitor. It wasn’t displacing a spreadsheet. What she saw there were some graphs and some lettering. Janus must have brought up the biological files, the ones that dealt with the components which made up Multiplier and Flaxton’s other products.

‘You like those?’ she asked the boy. Perhaps if she approached a government agency and told them about the disks…

He pointed to the illustration. ‘Find Jansy,’ he said. He tapped his fingers over the keys and brought up another screen.

‘How do you know what to do, Jansy?’

‘Just know.’ The screen had changed again. The screen showed several similar structures on different backgrounds. Colour-coded, just like her triplets’ clothes.

‘Look, Mummy!’ he said, again. There was an urgent tone in his voice.

Lisa stared as the child flicked from screen to screen. They all seemed virtually identical to Lisa. The boy was positively excited. Strings of symbols spread across the monitor.

The child was looking, rapt, at the different characters. Molecular structures, perhaps - or chromosomal charts.

One screen seemed to interest the child more than the rest. He pointed at it with his fingers, traced out the lines, took her index finger in his hand and traced them with her. They meant nothing to Lisa; just a diagrammatic form of something she didn’t recognise and wasn’t interested in.

‘Very nice, darling,’ she said, as she turned off the computer.

Lisa was more concerned with Janus’s body. The swelling, so rapid once it had started in the past, had slowed down in the last few days. He was definitely puffing up again, parts of his body painfully swollen. But Janus was nothing like as belligerent, nor as waterlogged, as in the two weeks before the cloning in the Priddy Woods. Something was clearly different. But what?

The child was curiously intent on only eating certain foods. He appeared to adore the large supermarket just outside Glastonbury, refusing the organic produce grown in their own garden, the good food proffered by neighbours. He simply wouldn’t eat it.

Lisa, reluctantly, had consulted Gilmore.

‘They all go through a stage of refusing food,’ he’d told her. ‘Don’t worry about it. The more you worry, the more he’ll hold back.’

None of the boys had ever been fussy about their food. Lisa had always boasted how they ate everything in sight, clearing their plates, aware of competition from their brothers.

She had the feeling that Janus was trying hard to tell her something. It was possible that he knew what brought on the cloning. It happened to
his
body, and he was trying to avoid it. As far as Lisa could judge, he was trying to avoid any food grown locally.

CHAPTER 27

‘Where’s Bestie, Mummy?’

‘It’s Saturday, Seb. You know that.’

‘Where’s Daddy?’

‘He won’t be back till late. I told you, we’re going on a picnic.’ Lisa opened the back of the Volvo estate she found so useful for the family, and piled in a picnic basket and her bag of bits and pieces. Four child seats were permanently anchored in the car  – three behind her and one right at the back, leaving a small amount of room for luggage. ‘You sit between Jeffers and Jiminy, Seb. Jansy can sit in the back.’ She strapped them all in. ‘We’re going to Brean Sands. We can play on the beach and look for wildflowers on the cliffs.’

It was one of those glorious late autumn days that occur surprisingly often in Somerset. Sunny, mild, almost like summer.

She got into the driving seat and started out. The children all sat quiet. Jiminy, she could see in her rear view mirror, was nodding off. He seemed to need more sleep than the others. Seb counted the number of tractors they passed, Jeffers tried to repeat them after him.

Janus had bloated up again alarmingly in just ten days. Perhaps, Lisa conjectured, the pre-cloning had escalated because there was nothing fixed to his body. She was sure the time had come again. She was taking them to the beach because she was about to put her new theory to the test.

She heard Janus kick steadily sideways, squirming into impossible positions. She saw fat arms raised, holding apple juice, and heard him spit the biscuits he’d demanded. Lisa, exasperated and almost near breaking point, drove on regardless.

It was clear to her that he knew what she had in mind. She was sure he could read her thoughts. She ignored the sounds coming from the back, concentrated on her driving across the moors and down towards the sea.

They arrived to find the water calm and glittery, the short grass on the cliffs sprouting its mantle of vivid green. A small level headland was ahead, approached by a lurching track which no one else would be keen to navigate in the off season. The shore line here had rocks among the sand. Debris was strewn around. She drove the car up the sandy track towards a place which overlooked a stretch of sandy ground a few feet above the beach. No one else was about.