Lost Past (11 page)

             
“How could we be divorced for thirty years?” he asked. “I didn’t think I was old enough.” His driver’s license said he was thirty-four, although his mirror told him he was ten years younger. Remembering Linda’s comment suggesting he was older, he realized he believed it, not because he had an older body, but because his knowledge and attitudes were more consistent with an older person.

             
He didn’t remember
Katrine
, but there was a trace of familiarity. He believed there was once something between them, but the emotion wasn’t there.

             
“You’re almost sixty,” she said. “We’re much better than the animals you seem to like. We live years longer and look young until we are past eighty.”

             
“Tell me about us,” he said, making himself feel he cared for her, knowing it would be visible in his voice and eyes. He hid his satisfaction when he realized she fell for it.

             
“I could marry anyone, but you intrigued me. You were genetically engineered to do something on Earth, given a different education from the start, studying biology, chemistry, and medicine. I thought that was exciting and you thought I was exciting.” As she told him about their courtship, he understood what she didn’t say as much as what she said. She was beautiful, and for all his special education, he was naïve. She wanted him and decided to get him. “You were only eighteen and so madly in love with me, you insisted we marry.

             
“You thought it was unfair for me to be without love for your long absences, which made you suggest an open marriage. It was years before you could bring yourself to have a relationship with anyone else, but I thought it was unfair that, when we were separated, I have the benefit of a sexual life and you not.” She strayed, I found out, then I looked elsewhere, John interpreted. He realized she believed he had amnesia or she wouldn’t lie.

             
He couldn’t tell if his deductions came from his intelligence or memory, since he was remembering things about this place.
Vigint
City. He knew the name. It wasn’t really a
memory, he realized, but background knowledge, like how to use a computer. No specific memories returned, but he knew that the exercise equipment behind the door was attached to the wall, and how much exercise a person did each day was monitored; everyone was required to average two hours a day. No wonder he exercised so much with Arthur.

             
“But then you decided you wanted to live there permanently. You always enjoyed slumming, but I never understood how you could live with the animals.”

             
“Perhaps I didn’t consider them animals,” he said, keeping his temper. “Why did I leave?” When she hesitated, he added, “For that matter, what did I do when I was on Earth?”

             
“It was
Plict
business,” she said in a shocked tone. For her, that settled it, and John’s initial reaction was that it did for him too. No, he had a right to know. It was his life, and he knew once.

             
“Hernandez and his clones were involved, but I never knew the details. I asked you why you were leaving, and all you said was you were going to Earth to make reparations.”

             
She was lying about not knowing, but there was no point in confronting her, since he suspected she had other knowledge he wanted
and antagonizing her wouldn’t help him get it
. “Tell me about Hernandez and his clones.”

             
“You disappointed the
Plict
,”
Katrine
said. “You were in your mid-twenties when they decided you weren’t the right tool. They took some of your genetic material and altered it to make Hernandez.” She had a dreamy look on her face, which made him wonder if Hernandez was her lover. He decided he was.

             
“By the time he was eight, they knew he was what they wanted, so they cloned him.
Alvar
, Franz,
Goran
, and
Teo
were raised together and always follow Hernandez. They go to Earth and do things for the
Plict
,” she said.

             
There was no point in asking what they did. “What’s with the brown hair?”

             
“That was done when he was a teenager because blonds are so noticeable in many places on Earth. It’s permanent, but not genetic. He likes to be noticed, which is why he changed his name to something not Swedish.”

             
“Swedish?”

             
“The Founding Foundlings were Swedish. The
Plict
give us Swedish names. Yours isn’t. The
Plict
gave us all our names, but yours was special. Zhexp is a
Plict
name.”

             
John wasn’t yet comfortable with the name John Graham, but didn’t find Zhexp any more natural. Perhaps it was significant that he didn’t consider it less natural.

             
The Swedish names took on a different significance now. Didn’t pandas get Chinese names and lions African names in American zoos? Did the name Zhexp make him an honorary
Plict
? That seemed almost blasphemous.

             
He led the conversation to other matters, asking her what she did since his absence. As she talked, he gradually concluded she was stupid. He wondered how he could love a stupid woman, but he may not have cared when he was eighteen. As she told him about her bureaucratic job and the minor happenings in her life, he realized that she didn’t have enough challenges to develop intelligence. For all the technology and advances in this society, there were no real difficulties to overcome. There was little crime or real production. People wore identical clothing and mainly ate identical food. Wealth meant moving to a
two hundred
square foot apartment and strawberries, but poverty had food, safety, and shelter. She was at least sixty years old and lived in a world as unvarying as a prison.

             
A few questions led him to the knowledge that was hidden in his mind. Even
children were not the reward given to successful people, since the
Plict
controlled the breeding. Every
Vigintees
, male and female, was sterilized. Fertile eggs were implanted in women’s wombs. Although people spoke of these as their children, they had no way of knowing if they really were their biological children.  There was no evolutionary advantage to be intelligent.

             
“Did we have children?”

             
“No, I didn’t want to raise them alone. But we can have them now.”

             
On Earth, that would be a sexual advance. Here, it meant applying to the
Plict
.

             
“You want children?” he asked.

             
“Oh yes. Next year, I’ll be too old. I wanted you to come back and help me. We could marry again.”

             
Again, there was a flicker of something she was concealing. “
Katrine
, what aren’t you telling me?”

             
“Nothing.” She flinched away from him.

             
He wanted to grab her and shake it out of her, but he pushed his anger aside and used his best clinical manner. He modulated his voice to soothe her and spoke in a hypnotic tone, “Just relax. You are tense, but that will go away. Let me massage your shoulders.” He went behind her chair and worked on her shoulders and neck, saying soothing things while he did so. His motions seemed familiar, as if he had done this before. He felt her muscles relax, and after several minutes, he got her into a state where her barriers were down.

             
She finally started talking. “I wanted to prove to you that you didn’t
care. You thought you did. You
really didn’t. You couldn’t. I called you and you came. You came for me, which proved you cared. We were to meet near the school because you had to drive past it. The bomb went off and you weren’t supposed to stop. It would prove you didn’t care. They were animals. But you stopped. You must be crazy. No one risks themselves for animals.”

             
“But I did stop.” His hands stopped working during this speech. He had a fleeting urge to hurt her, but he clenched his fists and kept silent.

             
“You didn’t care enough about me. You wanted me to wait. If you loved me, you would have come to me,”
Katrine
said, believing the absurdity.

             
He tried to understand how she could believe he wouldn’t stop to save lives. Did she know him so little, or did he assume too much about himself? He was unsure of what kind of person he was before his amnesia, but his stopping to help proved something he approved of.

             
“Did you set the bomb?”

             
“I couldn’t set a bomb,” s
he giggled
. “Hernandez set it. We planned it together. He likes me. He told me that if you died in the school, he would marry me. But I knew you wouldn’t go in the school.”

             
“But I did.”

             
“To save the animals.”

             
“Are they really animals? Are we a different species?”

             
“No, we can still interbreed. But there are so many differences. We don’t get so many Earth diseases.“

             
“Which ones?”

             
“I don’t know what they are called,” she said irritably. She stood up and walked over to a computer and mouthed some words. Fascinated, John realized why he couldn’t visualize
Vigintees
with a keyboard. The vocal cords didn’t need to be used, but the
remaining act of speaking was enough. The list on the screen started with allergies, Alzheimer's, arthritis, cancer, and diabetes. The remainder of the list included
Tay
–Sachs, Huntington's chorea, sickle cell anemia, and other hereditary diseases.

             
“We don’t even have words for most of them,” she said with pride. “We never get contagious diseases. Our immune systems are much more advanced.“

             
AIDS and other contagious diseases weren’t on the list, but John saw no reason to comment on that fact. 

             
“I have allergies.” Whatever bothered him on Earth didn’t bother him here, but the mold, dust, or pollen could easily be different.

             
“Yes, but that’s a mistake. They did something to you so you could live on Earth, and allergies came with it.”

             
They had a choice, John realized, a good immune system or no allergies. They gave him the immune system and the allergies were a side effect. For all
Katrine’s
talk about animals, she never touched an animal. There was no danger of an animal-borne disease mutating to infect people, no swine or bird flu here, because there were no pigs or chickens.
Katrine
continued to extol the virtues of the
Vigintees
, and seemed resentful that John was not the perfect man for the
Plict
. John wondered how a sex drive would continue to exist if it wasn’t bred for, but realized that they must have bred for it, although he couldn’t understand why.

             
But he had more relevant questions. “Why did Hernandez kidnap Arthur Saunders, and where is he?”

             
The spell was broken when she realized she said too much. He knew he couldn’t get her into that semi-hypnotic state again. She didn’t answer his first question, but answered his second. “We don’t know where he is.”

CHAPTER 9

             
“They don’t know? What’s going on?” Linda asked, after John recounted his conversation with
Katrine
.

             
“Arthur disappeared shortly after he was brought here. That’s why we were tagged: so we can be found,” John explained.

             
Linda announced she was going to bed and Wilson pointedly looked at the bunkroom, where Cara was half-awake, and said, “I wish they hadn’t put four of us in a room designed for three.”

             
“The room is designed for six,” John said. “They take turns on the bunks.”

             
“With only three cups?” Wilson asked.

             
“You’re expected to share,” John replied.

             
“I think we’d prefer to keep the same schedule,” Wilson replied. “And I’ll wash the cup before and after using it.”