The Only Ones (36 page)

When she saw me wake up, she stood up. “It was just a hand job, Ma.”

So then I stood up.

She says, “Technically, three hand jobs. I had to, for the Change.”

Now I am almost going to have another Episode but she goes, “It didn’t work. I went to a shady operation at Richmond Hill. I had to get around the blockades, that’s what took so long. They put the genes in on a virus, that’s how they do it, so the genes could mix with my regular DNA. The virus died.” She is really scarfing the Process down. “It was embarrassing.”

So she goes on the sofa and just sits down and turns on the TV. She just sits there and watches. So I just sit beside her and we both watch News of the lesser flu until the power goes. Then we just sit in the dark. We’re just sitting there in the dark until she says, really quiet, “Why did you tell me Rini Jaffur was the Host?”

“I didn’t want you to be ashamed.”

“It didn’t work,” she said. Then she went into her room.

She left the door open this time, though.

So I went to her doorway and stood there, in the dark.

So I thought she’s asleep, but she called out to me, from her bed, “What
did
happen?”

“When?”

“You know. When I was born.” She goes, “How did it work?”

So I leaned against her doorway. I could almost see her, in the dark. I think I could hear her breathe. “Well, at first it didn’t work. The first thing that happened was, it didn’t work.

“I mean, they tried. They spent months trying to even get one viable embryo, with soma from my ovary and breast and Rini Jaffur’s empty egg. It didn’t work. They tried with my egg and my soma and it did work. They got viables.” I sat down in the doorway, on the floor. “They spent two more months trying to make the viables stick in a Host. It didn’t work. They tried a virgin Host. It didn’t work. They tried Rini Jaffur. They tried me. It didn’t work. They tried the artificial Host, the tank. It did work. They started with five viables. Every one died but you. You were the only one who stayed alive.”

She doesn’t say anything for so long I thought she fell asleep, but in a while I hear her go, “What were their names?”

“There was Lily and Berthe. Chi-Chi.” Now I am crying, myself. I really liked Chi-Chi. I mean, not more than Ani. I loved Ani more. I did like Chi-Chi though. A lot. I never told Ani that. I tell you that. “And Ani and Madhur.”

“I was Ani?”

“Well, not at first. Originally you were Madhur. Well, not the
original
Original, who had died of Luzon Third, but, you know, in this lot. Then when Rini changed her mind and gave you to me, you became Ani. The original Ani died. There were other Madhurs too, in India. Rini adopted them. They are her daughters now. I mean, if they are still alive.

“In that lot, you were the only one who stayed alive.” I thought a minute. “In the next lot, there was e), who went to Buffalo, but to tell the truth, I’ve never been sure how great she turned out. I think it could of been a bad lot. Even if she worked, it is just one of ten. Your lot, one in five. The Santa Sofya lot, the Bucharest and Grozny thing? I think that is a really good lot. I think their numbers were really good.”

So this time, I was pretty sure she did go to sleep, but she calls out, “What happened to her though?”

“e)?”

“Rini Jaffur. Why did she change her mind? Did she think something was wrong with me?”

“Ani, she never even saw you born.”

Now she gets out of her bed and comes right to the doorway.
“Ma! Did you steal me?
”

“No, Ani, no. You were a gift.”

So she just slides down to the floor beside me. “What was she like?” And she leans against me, like she did when she was small.

“Rini Jaffur? I never met anyone like her. She was very original. She cared how you feel. She was always asking, How do you feel? She was brave too. She didn’t believe in Fate. She thought Fate was what happened. After something happened, you say, that was Fate. If you change what happens, you change your Fate. But I think it was just too much for her. I don’t think it was you she changed her mind about. She changed her mind about Fate. She gave me her Fate. I don’t know whose Fate she got in the end.

“You have to understand. None of us knew what we were doing. But, Ani—I don’t honestly know if anyone ever does. Even when they used to do it the regular way. Rauden had a plan. Most people don’t even have a plan. Even if they do, it doesn’t mean it works.

“She gave you to me, Ani. It was my luck she did. My life really began then. If she didn’t give you to me, Ani, what are we talking about here? I didn’t know I wanted you. I couldn’t pay that kind of rate.”

She was already asleep. She slept for a really long time.

I got myself settled in the doorway and lay there so if she runs off again at least I’m going to know. She has just nestled on my breast, like she used to do. Then she slid down, lying sideways, with her body in her bedroom and her head on me. I just lay there and try not to move so she will stay. I don’t even want to go to sleep. But I do.

And when I woke up later she is in her own bed.

In the morning, we’re out of Process and she says, Ma, get it. I’m not going anywhere.

When I come back, she says, “I don’t want anyone to know. Nobody.”

I said ok. “It’s going to be tricky though. And by the way, if you go public about it, we could maybe use it to get Aid to one of these experimental schools for unique kids, like, we are unique in not being unique.”

“No one would sit with me anyhow.”

“Well, it is experimental. The experimental school, sometimes they don’t have chairs.”

She just shook her head. “I want to find Rini Jaffur,” she goes.

So I just go, ok. We are eating Process. “She is in India though.”

“I will do the nuclear Transfer and sell viables to pay my fare.”

“Ok. I’m not sure Rauden will let you do that though until you are of age.”

“So I will find someone less ethical than him. I will use your ID with manual override and say I am thirty-five and live in Queens.”

I mean till now I’m handling it ok but this is just too much. “I wanted you to have a different life.” She said, “It’s my life now.”

“You could do so much with it, Ani. You could be anything.”

“Ma. Be a Tech yourself if it’s so important. This is my life, not yours. It’s not up to you.”

I guess she was right. It’s her life, not mine. If she wants to be me, I couldn’t stop her.

7 A
NI
F
ARDO

SO. THE PART ABOUT ANI’S LIFE WITH ME IS ABOUT done.

I mean, not at first.

At first, I’m getting her to stay till it is not so cold. Then we’re just trying to get to the Farm. There was a big deal getting out of Queens with the Alerts and checkpoints and blockades even though supposedly it is such a lesser flu. And there is some problem getting through to Rauden. We took the inland route by New Jersey because of bridge blockades upstate and we have to keep changing hybros and get dumped just over the New York border, at Sparrowbush. There is still snow on the ground. I figure out some back road way to walk toward the Farm. There is no public Board, plus no Signal for my Reader, and then I smelled smoke. I thought, let’s come back later and turned around, but I heard hoofbeats, or thought it is hoof-beats, oh man. I even saw the horse. Where did these nuts find a horse? I saw the rider in his cape! We hid in a bush. We went back to a dirt road, and there is horse droppings. There is a fire on a hill. She says, Ma, let me go alone. And I’m like, no, no, it is so dangerous.

She goes, Ma, if these nuts find us together and figure us out, it is more dangerous than that.

I just don’t want to leave her. But I see what she means. If they find us separate we could be regular. She could be regular, I could be regular. Together, who knows? We could be what we are.

So I say, let’s go off separate for now but meet up somewhere else and Ani said, no, she must do this on her own.

I go, Ani! Just at first.

She goes, “Ma. No. It’s time. Ma, if you try to stop me, I will turn myself in. I will say I am a crime against nature. We will both end up in jail.”

Man! Where did she learn to hang so tough!

So. That’s it.

She did let me walk her to the county road.

She also let me walk her to the regular road.

Then she just said that’s it.

Now maybe you are wondering, this India plan—how is she even getting there, with her problem getting anywhere? Maybe you already wondered, hello? How did she even get to Richmond Hill to try to do the Change?

Well I will tell you what she told me, right before she went off on her own. She said, “I walked backward. Ma! It’s not an SCNT thing, it’s an LD thing. The Special kids, the ones like me? We don’t know if we’re coming or going. So we walk backward. I’m not sure how it even works. To tell the truth, it could just be a placebo. But it seems to do the trick.”

So the last time I saw her, leaving, on a regular road a few miles over the border from Jersey, it was her face I saw. And right, maybe she stumbled a little, putting one hand on bushes or fence posts to guide her as she walked away, and ok, she looked scared. But so proud!

Not the last time I saw her face, period. I saw her face when she made the vidCall, seven months later, from Massachusetts. Also the Northeast Kingdom, a year later, when she could find a Board.

And from Canada, I saw her head to foot!

But not at first. At first I didn’t even get to hear her voice. I didn’t even get a message, though I checked every Board I saw. She jammed her own ID so I can’t message her and that even jammed my own ID until I rigged up a different entry. But she sends no messages to that.

I’m sneaking off three, four times a day from my Nassau County jobs to check the big Board there—that’s if I’m not in a personal Dome with a personal Board. I’m trying for Signal on my Reader from a personal Dome roof. Nothing. From Queens, I keep running up to check at the Little Neck. Nada.

I’m up on Mrs. Postow’s personal Dome roof when I got the first message, and it is just two words, STILL ALIVE. I almost slid right off the roof. I just am jumping around all day. No picture. No voice. No reply. But still alive.

It’s like when you are thirsty, you are so glad to have anything, you just gulp it down. It was like that. I just gulped her down.

Still alive! Still alive! All night I’m running all over the garden apartment.

Then nothing. Nothing so long I start to wonder if it was just some old message of mine that I had sent to Rauden long ago, bouncing back.

Nothing even on her sixteenth birthday. I spent the whole day out at the Little Neck Board. It was a Saturday, I had the day off. I had brought food and water. I even slept there on the ground. Nothing.

But the next morning, a message is blinking for me. Still alive. It is even the kind where you can reply!

I reply, “WHERE ARE YOU?”

Then I have to keep checking for
her
reply, which doesn’t come for two more hours.

“MA I DON’T EVEN KNOW.”

Then the Board crashes.

I pretty much camp out at the Little Neck Board till the system starts up again. There is no message even then. Then there is nothing but News Flash because they say lesser flu pathogens was IDed in the President’s Dome, then also in whatever Dome they transfer him to, and I’m like, I should care because! But the News went so ballistic, it’s already Monday morning before you could get any regular messages, but nothing from her. I try a few reverse codes Henry taught me that could hack recent message history, in case I missed something. The Board crashes.

When it finally comes back, this message is waiting. “I WANT TO GO HOME.”

Then it crashes again.

I hate this Board! I hate this Board!

I’m rushing back to Nassau County so I can try my clients’ personal Boards! Nothing. I never can get Signal from the garden apartment or even nearby. If I could move full time to the Farm, I could use Rauden’s system and keep trying night and day. But I can’t do that.

I went to Oakland Gardens but the area is closed off. In the end I found one right in Alley Park, set up an open line with a regular time she could phone me, if she could find a phone, and keep trying at the regular time. It worked! I mean, this is weeks later.

“Ma!” I hear her voice! It sounds different.

I’m like, “Ani! Ani! Thank God you are alive!”

She goes, “Ma. Come on. I am a Subject now. Don’t intervene.”

“Ani! I will come and get you!”

She goes, “If you try to intervene I will not ever message you again!”

So first I’m like, ok. Then I’m like, very good?

“Ma, you will be so proud! I did a Seal Room test. What Subjects call, Seal Room test.”

But she is just a minor! But with the new lesser flu interfering so much with who is available for Subject, I guess the guys who run those tests do not have a problem bending the rules. Well, they never did.

And I don’t know what happened but, well I’m not saying she knows where she is but she says it’s ok. “New York! Vermont!” she goes. “What does it matter?”

She does not want to go home. She is going to find a vidPhone!

Then the City Line hole is blockaded from the new lesser flu panic. I cannot even get to work, let alone the Nassau County Board with vid capacity. I end up at the Main Street library Board, but the screen is out. Still, the sound worked.

You probably want to know how the Seal Room test went to find out if it is in the genes, and, yes, she passed the Seal Room test. It was nothing bad, just some flus, like HP51, H1N1v, HP53, H274y. She didn’t get anything.

A lot of this stuff it is mixed up in my mind, what happened when. I guess at that time, it is July, August, and she is sixteen years, two or three months old and I am always wondering, is she still alive?

Then it’s fall. She’s in Massachusetts, doing another Seal Room test. So I’m like, oh, very good. I’m really trying not to intervene. I go, what pathogens?

She goes, they call it filovirus series.

Well, I will tell you this. You know how I used to do the Seal Room test, and I was like, what, I’m going to die? Well when she messages from Massachusetts she is doing the filovirus series, Ebola, Marburg, slatewipers, I could hardly move. I said, “Ani. Do you have to do this?”