CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (42 page)

‘Let go, Mummy! Run!’ Strong hands waved her away, implored her to leave. Her son; her son Janus was trying to save
her
, to make himself the target.

She pushed the handle down and careered the pushchair on two wheels across the road. There was time, precious seconds to rush herself and Janus to the safety of the field before the driver could return.

Panting, blood trickling from her legs, Lisa pushed Janus beyond the iron gate and crashed it shut. The hasp clicked tight to keep the lorry out.

‘Run, Seb!’ she called. ‘Take Jeffers and run! Don’t wait for us!’

They scampered off ahead of her as Lisa pushed Janus, fast, along the track between rank vegetation. Tall meadow grasses bent away, grass kernels flicked into her mouth, her eyes. She charged on blindly, saw the farm buildings shadowing close, rushed the wide open gate to follow Seb and Jeffers across the cobbled farmyard.

The pushchair rocked a wheel between two stones, held fast. Janus lurched his weight to the other side to free it. Lisa, exhausted, forced one last effort, prayed there’d be help. The big barn doors to her right yawned wide. Frank was standing there, beside a bale of hay.

He pulled the foil-paper ring off his favourite brand of cigar. The gold and silver of the wrapper sparkled sun into Lisa’s eyes, into her brain. She recognised the glinting ring of paper, heard again the squeal of tin against the fork as Alec dug the lower spit of the grave between the fruit trees.

So it was
Frank
who’d plundered the little body Don had buried, Frank who’d filled the grave with innocent earth.

Memories flocked fast. Lisa saw herself driving Janus in the Volvo, the Landrover behind her, urging her on, Frank’s clenched fist, the anger as he tailgated her up Milton Lane and past the Priddy Woods. He must have followed, seen the cloning, enticed Janus away. Then doubled back to abduct the clone, to set Duffers on to a defenceless naked child. Her child, her son. Frank had stolen him, killed him.

Lisa saw Frank grin at her now. That same mean grin she’d seen in her nightmare long ago. Frank with a pillow in his hands, lowering it over the cot, pushing it down, pressing hard ...

‘Stop!’ Lisa heard herself screaming in her dream. ‘You’ll smother it!’

Frank turning to her, his small eyes spots of venom. ‘Baint human.’ His cold, firm voice. ‘Baint nothing there but vermin. Old Don be shooting the whole lot of they damn critters.’

Not
her
baby, as she’d thought. His own -
Meg
’s baby. Phyllis’s clone hadn’t been born dead. Frank had killed it, smothered it, before Meg even knew of it. Betrayed Meg, too. Forced her to keep the brace on Phyllis’s leg, cowed her away from confrontation.

Why was the man leering at her, now?

Pounding through her ears Lisa heard the roar of a lorry surging up the drive, caught the blaze of Flaxton yellow rattling the cobbles reflected in Frank’s eyes, ready to pounce again, with only Frank as witness. She turned, saw the jet hair framed massive round a snarling twisting face, dark glasses mirroring her and her child, revving the motor up to destroy them forever.

Fury drove strength into her hands, into her body. With one deep lunge she pulled the champagne bottle out and kicked the pushchair towards the farmhouse. Fire in her veins she reeled her arm back, heaved hard, propelled the missile at the windscreen, pitched forward towards the pushchair.

The bottle shattered; great spurts of exploding frothing liquid foamed the screen opaque. A hard glittering scree of glass blazed towards her. She heard Frank’s frenzied shout, then a tormented bellow as the lorry displaced air and ploughed into the hay barn at full speed. A scrunch as hot metal made contact with tindered grass, belched out a shower of sparks flashing flame which then ignited into hell. Lisa felt the full blast of the explosion throwing her body forward, down.

She landed on soft grass, lay numb. Then felt the movement in her belly: a shift, a split - the great divide. It wasn’t Janus they’d been aiming for. They wanted her - her and her unborn child. That’s why the Flaxton assassin had lain in wait to crush her, to annihilate her. They knew there was another cloner in her womb!

She sensed her daughters starved of blood, felt the deep tugs as they struggled to survive. And then all movements stopped; her little girls had died. Her heart seared the pain of that loss as her eyes opened to search for Janus. Billowing black smoke hid him from her as she struggled to find him. Where was he? Had Flaxton finally managed to rid themselves of him?

The roar of hay on fire behind her spurted the effort to try to find her child. Dimly she could make out a figure beside her, kneeling by her. Alec’s lips covered her face with kisses, his hair entangled with hers, his hands mingled with her blood.

‘Lisa! Darling, don’t die! Stay with us, Lisa! We need you.’

‘Where’s Jansy?’

‘He’s with us, darling; he’ll be all right.’

Janus needed her, she had to live for him. She knew her daughters had died for them, so that she could be with Janus, protect him from his curse, the curse she’d so unwittingly wished on him. She had to live, to take care of him, to make sure no harm would come to him.

‘I want to hold him.’

There was no pain now. All Lisa knew was that they were safe. Alec handed her son to her, lifted them up, rushed them away into the calm stone darkness of the farmhouse. He kicked the door shut tight against the inferno outside.

Janus lay, panting, at her side. Small fingers fondled her face, his eyes gleamed tears, smiled pride. It was when she saw the love in Janus’s eyes that Lisa knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that her struggles of the past two years hadn’t been in vain. He was her son - she had protected him, safeguarded his liberty, made Alec aware of what had been happening. Together they would prevent Flaxton, and others like them, from putting humanity in jeopardy again.

EPILOGUE

What my dear, sweet mother did not, could not, know was that it was just another beginning.

My parents never dreamed I understood things they did not, that I could predict events far beyond their comprehension. They didn’t realise that my mind, caged in the frail body of a child, was formed way beyond its years, was able to generate thoughts beyond the minds of others. I tried to warn them not to seek advice but they didn’t listen, couldn’t hear me. To them my piping voice was just a noise, a fact of childhood.

We left the green fields of Somerset behind us, just as planned - but not their legacy. We could never rid ourselves of that, you see; it is within me, a part of me. And though I pass my genetic make-up on to my - well, let me call them brothers, for want of a better word - I am the only custodian of my special attribute, the one that haunts me.

On Islay my father began to safeguard us, to obliterate the past, just the way my mother had always done. Painstakingly he plotted his revenge, let retribution against Flaxton take root. He infiltrated their stronghold bit by bit. A whisper here, a comment there. The cancer spread, the figures showed the profits dip, then slump away to nothing.

It was too late for my father to undo the damage Flaxton had already done. The force unleashed could no longer be contained. It lives within our universe, biding its time.

For us that time came all too soon. I remember it so well, the way I remember everything - every tiny detail, right from the moment of my conception. It was six months after Frank’s death that my parents took me for a check-up. That’s when it all came back to haunt us, that’s where it all began again. The doctors insisted that they had to do it, reproached my parents for leaving it so long. They cajoled my father, murmured admonishments in soft caring voices to my dear sweet mother.

It didn’t hurt. I healed up fast. They weren’t to know what they had done. That was the time they opened up my leg, you see. That was the day they took the plastic splinter out.

About the authors

Emma Lorant
is a mother and daughter writing team.

Tessa Lorant Warburg
lives in England with her elder son, his Thai wife and their three lively children.

Originally a mathematician, Tessa began her working life as a computer programmer, then married an author who encouraged her to start writing. She wrote a series of unexpectedly popular books about her hobby of knitting, and patented two knitting aids:
The Golden Gauge,
a device for isolating long knitting pattern lines, and
The Silver Gauge
, useful for substituting a given yarn with others of the same thickness. She is featured as one of a handful of knitters in Richard Rutt’s seminal
A History of Hand Knitting.

After her husband died of cancer Tessa wrote, at his request, her first non-knitting book,
A Voice at Twilight.
This takes a look, not always solemn, at the experience of living
–
and dying
–
with the Big C. Tessa was awarded the
Oddfellows Social Concern Award
for this book
;
the prize was presented
at the House of Commons. As family members kept telling Tessa how like her husband the book sounded she thought she might be able to use that skill to write fiction.

Tessa has now published six suspense novels and a family saga
–
a trilogy
–
set in North Germany and based on her mother’s family.

And she’s busy writing more books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Madeleine Elizabeth Warburg
lives in the beautiful countryside of southern England. After many years in children’s television, working on programmes including
Bob the Builder
and
Angelina Ballerina
, she is now a primary school teacher.

Madeleine is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in world literature. Other interests include music; as well as leading Music at her school, Madeleine runs a community choir in her village, and enjoys singing in local choirs.

More novels by Tessa Lorant Warburg:

http://www.tessalorantwarburg.com

Thou Shalt not Kill

Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1991

Ruth Samuels is moving to Guernsey. She feels alive again for the first time since her husband’s death.

Ruth recently met islander Matthew Frelé and knew right away that their attraction is mutual. He is enigmatic and exciting, but there’s something odd about him. She senses secrets and a disturbing inner anger barely controlled.

Who is this man? What is he hiding? What is there in his past that holds him back from committing to a relationship? She guesses at horrors during his childhood under the German Occupation of the Channel Isles.

Having fled the horrors of Nazi Germany Ruth knows the terrible legacy of childhood trauma. When she presses Matthew for details of that time he refuses to discuss it. It’s only when Nicol Rochet, a childhood friend, together with the one-time parish priest, the Abbé Saint Jude, bring pertinent facts to her attention that she’s able to piece together the horrifying facts about Matthew’s forbidden past.

The details are more dreadful than she could ever have imagined. The vile act of barbarism she unearths put even Hitler’s henchmen to shame.

Can she save Matthew from those appalling memories? Or will they forever consume him, and destroy both him, and any hope of their future together?

The Girl from the Land of Smiles

Taiella Motubaki, originally from a remote Thai village on the border with Laos, meets Luke Narland, a London businessman. They fall deeply in love and plan to marry.

Luke decides it is only proper to visit Taiella’s parents so they can get to know him. Luke has been on many business trips to Bangkok, but nothing has prepared him for this excursion into rural Thailand. When the village beauty is found raped and murdered Luke, a farang – a Western foreigner – is immediately accused of the crime.

Entangled in a web of suspicion he finds nothing is as it seems. Taiella, sure that Luke did not commit this atrocity, is desperate to free him. But she’s in her twenties, unmarried, and with a farang boyfriend – and therefore a person of no account.

Who will help Luke prove his innocence? Will it be his Thai business manager, Teng Japhardee, his wealthy investor, Howard Spelter, Taiella’s older sister, Pi Sayai, or perhaps it will be ladyboy Panjim Narcoso, Taiella’s best friend in Bangkok?

The story’s resolution is both exciting and unexpected.
The Girl from the Land of Smiles
is not just a murder mystery, it is a fascinating journey through the real Thailand, hardly glimpsed by visitors to the Kingdom.

Spellbinder

New Englander Dwight Delaney, traumatised by his mother’s unsolved murder, longs to blot out his troubled past. He leaves the States and buys a country house set in West Sussex woodlands. But he can’t escape his tragic memories.

The springtime woods, serene and captivating, are calming. Dwight is thrilled to meet neighbours Valerie Brooke and her seventeen-year-old daughter Emily.

But Dwight’s beloved dog Sheba noses out weird happenings in the woods. The uncanny parallels between past and present are at first startling, then uncomfortable and, eventually, threatening. Dwight recognises a disturbed personality at work and knows that this can only lead to tragedy.

He warns Valerie that both she and Emily are in real danger. Valerie brushes his caution aside. But Dwight can sense evil lurking, feel it. Is misfortune shadowing him across the Atlantic?

The woodland incidents escalate. Dwight’s troubled past alerts him that something terrible, sinister and completely overwhelming is about to happen.

When it does he’s shocked into a new consciousness. The climax is as astonishing to Dwight as it is to everybody else.