CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (32 page)

Lisa unstrapped the three boys in the middle seats and allowed them to run free. She released Janus from his car seat but carefully kept his walking reins on, holding him secure as she tried to formulate a plan.

‘Let’s build some sandcastles,’ she suggested to her little brood.

They trooped along cheerfully, scooped sand, toddled about. Seb built a sandcastle, Jeffers stuck shells all over it, Jansy was collecting stones. Stones - he could hit the others with stones! Lisa began to panic, an odd lurching of prescient danger flooding through her mind.

It wasn’t, apparently, what he had in mind. Janus set the stones out carefully. He selected different colours for different positions. The speed, the way he seemed to know precisely what he was doing, astonished Lisa. She watched him build a complicated looking honeycomb.

He looked up at her expectantly. ‘Dinnay,’ he told her, pointing. ‘Jansy make Dinnay.’

‘It’s very pretty, darling.’

‘
Dinnay
, Mummy.’

‘We’ll have the picnic now, shall we?’ she said. ‘Let’s walk over to the car to get the basket out.’ She grabbed Janus by the walking reins again, and firmly kept him by her.

‘You go first, Jeffers. Jiminy?’ She turned to see the little boy apparently still sitting on the sand.

‘He’s asleep, Mummy. Shall I wake him up?’

In her confusion she let go of Janus and ran towards the sand again. ‘Jiminy?’ she called, a spike of worry scratching her back. ‘Jiminy? Are you tired? Shall I carry you?’

The toddler just seemed to sit there. When she came up to him he smiled that glorious sweet smile that only Jiminy seemed to have. Love for the little boy came flooding over her. She scooped him up, raised him to her neck, and walked slowly towards the car.

‘Help Jeffers with the last bit, Seb,’ she asked her eldest son. ‘He might slip backwards.’

‘I’ve got him, Mummy,’ Seb shouted gaily. He loved to help with the triplets. ‘Shall I get Jansy now?’

Janus hadn’t moved; he was still busy with his stones. ‘No! I’ll see to Janus.’

The child looked at her solemnly. ‘I know how to do it, Mummy.’

‘Just make sure Jeffers is all right, would you Seb?’ Lisa said, softening her tone.

There was no need to help Janus. He scrambled up behind them, then butted ahead, elbowing into Seb.

‘Jansy!’ Lisa called, unsure how to control him while she was carrying James. ‘Don’t push!’

He turned; was that a wistful look? He seemed to be trying to shrug his clothes off.

‘Look, boys.’ Lisa, puffed from the short walk and herding the three boys in front of her, still carrying James, pointed to a stretch of inviting grass by the car. ‘Let’s sit down over there.’

The little boys began to troop obediently towards the spot. Lisa was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. The burden of coping with Janus, together with the secret she was hiding, were beginning to take a huge toll. She felt completely drained, almost lightheaded. Sitting down gratefully, she placed James next to her and called Seb to gather the others round. She put her arms around the little boy, did up his coat. Was it too late in the season, would he catch a chill?

‘Wee wees,’ Janus announced.

He looked strained, puffed, white. He was about to clone again: Lisa could sense it. She couldn’t face the consequences of another cloning. Not now; not ever again, maybe. She had to try the method she’d thought through. She prayed that it would work.

‘Wee wees!’ Janus repeated, urgent and loud.

Lisa grabbed the walking reins, pulled the loop around her wrist, and turned to Jeffrey. ‘Come here a minute, Jeffers.’ She pulled the child towards her and unclasped the gold earring. He didn’t need it. She’d use that one for Janus. She smiled at him, pushing him off, and turned to Janus.

‘All right, Jansy,’ she said, gathering him into her arms, holding him to her, kissing him.

‘Wee wees,’ he cried out.

Quickly she stripped the child naked and set him to pee. A long deep yellow stream came out of him. Lisa’s tears overflowed as she remembered Priddy Woods - and the bathroom scene of so long ago.

She let him pee for a time, saw the deep yellow turn even darker. Before he could finish she pulled the child to her, grasping his arms, and tried to push the gold earring back into his ear. He wriggled, twisted to get away. The odd yellow liquid sprayed everywhere. On Lisa’s legs, on Jansy’s clothes. She didn’t care. She had to get that earring in.

‘Mummy,’ Seb tried to get her attention. ‘Mummy! Come quickly! Jiminy’s gone!’

Her mind, in limbo between the world of reality and out of it, stayed focused on Janus. ‘Keep still, Jansy.’

He was still peeing, visibly slimming down. She struggled with the earring. The hole in Janus’s earlobe had grown smaller since Alec had taken the earring out, virtually joined up. Would she manage it in time? He couldn’t clone while she held on to him. Or could he? She shuddered. Perhaps, once the process had started, he couldn’t stop.

Even as she held tight she could feel the earlobe reduce. This was her chance. Resolute, she pushed the earring through. She’d drawn a small trickle of blood. That and their sweat mingled into a slippery ooze. She heard the click of the fastener shutting, and let the child go.

‘Mummy!’

Lisa returned herself into full consciousness of what else was going on around her. She noticed, alarmed, that the other two toddlers had wandered off. Where were Jeffrey and James?

Her body drenched in sweat Lisa pushed herself to her feet to follow Seb. The reins she’d taken off Janus were still in her hands - but he wasn’t! Then she remembered. She’d unlatched him to let him start the cloning process. She dashed back to the child and scooped him up. There was just one of him, and he was quiet now, submissive.

‘Jiminy! Jeffers! Where are you?’ she called frantically.

‘Jeffers is over there, Mummy, building a house.’

She saw the red-clad rear lifted high as he collected stones and shells to build some sort of fortress. Where was James?

‘Mummy! You’ve got to fetch Jiminy.’

‘What d’you mean, fetch Jiminy?’

‘He’s down there, Mummy. Look!’ Seb took her arm, walked her to the edge of the cliff and pointed down.

‘You mean he fell down there?’ She choked. She’d neglected her little Jiminy, allowed him to get hurt. The sweetest, most delightful of her children.

Seb pulled at her hand again. ‘Over here, Mummy.’

‘No, Sebbie,’ she gasped at him, feeling the dizziness of vertigo, not capable of any movement, forward or back.

‘He’s down there, Mummy,’ Seb assured her again. ‘He slidded down.’

Lisa cautiously approached the ledge, put Janus down, laid herself on the sand and forced herself to look at the rocks below. A heap of blue: the body of a toddler. Her Jiminy. How could she have been so distracted? Had Janus deliberately drawn her attention away?

Absurd. She was being utterly unfair. The child had been about to clone again; she’d
had
to counter that. It wasn’t Jansy’s fault. He couldn’t help himself, he needed her as much as her other children did. More, perhaps.

Lisa made herself get up, intending to run down the small path and on to the beach below. And then she saw that right beside her was a slide. A long sandy slide no doubt made by children in the summer months. That’s what Seb had tried to tell her. The child had used that.

‘Look after Jansy and Jeffers,’ she told Seb as she took her anorak off and sat on it, sliding down quickly, landing by the child on the beach. He half sat, half lay, quite still.

Heart pounding, disgusted with herself, appalled, she understood that the burden she was carrying had been responsible. It was too much for her, it was no longer safe to keep this harrowing knowledge to herself. She had to confide in someone, trust some other human being with her grim secret. But who was there to confide in? Crying and sobbing, she rushed towards the inert body and saw the child stir, sit up and rub his eyes.

‘Mummy,’ he said, holding out his arms and smiling at her.

He couldn’t be badly hurt, he wasn’t even crying. What was she thinking of? Was she really deranged, unbalanced? Why had she thought that he was dead? She gathered up the child, nuzzled into his neck, and covered his head with kisses. He gurgled at her. He seemed as chirpy as before, a cheerful little boy. Heart beats subsiding, satisfied at last, Lisa lurched up the short steep slide towards the other children.

‘I couldn’t stop him, Mummy. He slidded down.’

‘He must have been tired,’ Lisa said, uncertainly. Was something wrong with Jiminy? Did Morgenstein have a point and all three were allergic to metal? Afraid of damaging her delicate child she took his earring out.

Lisa could not shake off a feeling of danger, of impending loss. Dark forces, she sensed, were gathering again. This time she was afraid they might well overwhelm her.

‘We’d better get home,’ she told her quartet, first settling Jiminy into the car, then dressing a curiously docile Janus. ‘It was a bit too late in the year to come to the beach.’

CHAPTER 28

‘Where
is
everybody?’

Alec’s voice rang out, cheerful, reverberating through the lofty hall and up into the big stairwell leading to the bedrooms. Seb appeared instantly at the top. He hauled his body on to the banister rail and started sliding down the first section, backwards, towards his father.

‘Hello, Daddy.’

‘I’ve told you not to do that, Seb.’

He grinned. ‘It’s like the beach, Daddy. Jiminy slidded down to the beach.’

‘You’ve been to the beach? Today?’

‘We was going to have a picnic, but Mummy helped Jansy pee, and Jiminy fell asleep and then it was too cold.’

Alec looked up the stairs, surprised to see Lisa there, a bath towel in her hands.

‘Bathing them? At this time?’

He hoisted Seb on to his shoulders and vaulted up, galloping and trotting by turns, then running into the children’s bathroom.

‘Hello, you lot,’ he said, bending down and kissing each toddler’s head, then turning to Lisa. ‘It’s only half past four! I came back early especially to take them off your hands.’

Lisa could feel him looking at her intently. He’s sure I’m going off the rails completely, she realised, panic rising, and tried to gather her strength together.

She couldn’t manage it. Her face, when she turned to look at her husband, was ashen.

‘My God, Lisa! What on earth’s the matter now?’

‘We went to Brean,’ she said quietly, holding her breath to stop herself from shaking, then breathing out slowly. ‘We were just about to have our picnic when Jiminy slid down a sand run on to the beach and seemed a bit stunned. I thought I’d better come back immediately and bath them all early. Just to check that Jiminy’s OK.’

Alec looked carefully at his triplets, happily splashing in the bath, then back at Lisa.

‘I can’t even see a bruise on any of them,’ he said, examining the children carefully, ‘But I must say, you’ve got a point about those earrings.’ He looked up at his wife sombrely. ‘If it weren’t for the gold earring I’d say Jeffers looks just like Jansy. Well, a thinner Jansy, somehow. His ear’s a bit red.’ He looked from one child to another. ‘So which
is
Jansy? Neither of these other two has an earring on!’

He stooped, tilting up the face of one child without an earring. ‘Hi, Jeffers.’ He turned to Lisa, his eyes perplexed. ‘Why did you take his earring off?’

‘Jeffrey’s, you mean?’ A forced laugh which could hardly have fooled a stranger, let alone Alec. ‘It must have slipped out when they were playing on the beach,’ she lied bravely, her voice barely audible.

‘Slipped out? What d’you mean, slipped out? And slipped into another child’s ear? This boy has a gold earring!’

Alec lifted the child with the gold earring out of the bath and looked him over carefully.

‘He looks like Janus,’ he said. ‘Except he doesn’t seem to have any of that bloating which has been coming on again. He seems almost back to normal.’

‘Yansy,’ the child smiled at him.

‘He even says he’s Janus,’ the father said, alarmed. ‘You haven’t been changing earrings to test me out, or anything, have you?’

‘Jiminy slidded down to the beach.’ Seb said, taking his father’s hand and holding it. ‘Jiminy was gone.’

Alec turned amiably towards Seb, smiling, not understanding him. ‘Turned into a toad, did he?’ he asked him jocularly.

‘Turned into a bwabbit!’ Seb shouted happily. ‘Turned into lots of bwabbits!’

‘That conjurer seems to have made a lasting impression,’ Alec laughed. ‘You’ve all decided to play tricks on me, haven’t you? You’ve changed the earrings to trick me, eh?’

‘Turned into another Jansy,’ Seb told him solemnly.

‘Just because he’s lost his earring? And which one’s he?’ Alec pointed to the child without an earring he’d just called Jeffers.

‘Jeffers!’ Seb laughed. ‘You know he is, Daddy. You just said so!’

‘And what about the one with the gold earring?’

‘That’s Jansy,’ Seb said pragmatically.

‘So you did change them.’ Alec’s lips drew tight as he looked at his wife. ‘If we’re going to use the earrings, let’s get them sorted back again, Lisa,’ he said. The cold calm modulated voice which drove her mad. ‘I really wouldn’t have thought you’d have the energy.’ He turned towards her, forcing a smile, trying to keep his temper. ‘Why did you take Jiminy’s off?’

‘He wasn’t well. I got really worried about him.’ She looked helplessly at Alec. Would he ever understand? ‘I thought maybe it was his way of showing an allergy to the earring.’

‘Oh, right. Good thinking. Let’s just forget about it all.’ He was, Lisa saw, about to take the gold earring out of Janus’s ear.

‘Don’t!’ Lisa’s shriek of horror stopped Alec in his tracks.

‘What on earth d’you mean, don’t? Janus is definitely allergic to gold!’ He stared at her. ‘So you didn’t just play around? You did put the gold earring back on him deliberately?’

‘I needed one for Jansy. Jeffers is all right without his.’

‘You’ve decided to change Jansy back to gold again? Is that it? After all the trouble we had?’

‘It’s not like that at all,’ she said, soft and low. And then the tears came. A trickle at first, then more and more. She could not stop them. ‘Later, Alec. I’ll have to explain it to you later. Let’s get them bathed.’

‘Mummy’s tired,’ Seb told him. ‘Because Jansy peed and Jiminy slidded down.’

At last Lisa saw he realised that this wasn’t a game, that she was in deadly earnest, trying to tell him something. He looked at her, the tears still rolling down her cheeks, unchecked.

‘Right,’ he agreed. ‘Later.’

Mechanically he helped her bath, dry and dress the children in their night things. They avoided speaking to one another.

‘I’ll give them tea,’ Alec said crisply. ‘You get some rest. Doesn’t help any of us if you overdo it.’

There was nothing further she could do. Looking bleakly at her family Lisa left them to make herself some valerian tea and went to lie down on a sofa in her living room. She felt exposed, alone, vulnerable. She closed the shutters tight and lay back. Her eyelids drooped, but she heard the sounds of Alec romping with the children, putting them to bed. Such ordinary sounds...

Exhausted, strained, she drifted away into her thoughts, seeing the Priddy Woods, two toddlers where there had been one, identical. Could anyone believe a thing like that? Would Alec have her certified? She heard his footsteps, determined, bouncing down the stairs and shut her eyes. The living room door burst open.