Anna To The Infinite Power (4 page)

“I wonder what Dad will say when he knows.”

“But why should it make any difference to him? Anna will be the same Anna he’s loved and accepted all these years. The fact that she isn’t his natural child doesn’t make her different or any less important. He’ll still love her, just as you and I do.”

“Don’t include me!’ Rowan exclaimed. Although his mother looked shocked, no one could have been more shocked than Rowan at his outburst. Never in his life had he voiced his feelings about Anna. And now he didn’t have to feel guilty. After all, she was Anna Zimmerman, a stranger, not even a relative, let alone his sister.

“You can’t mean that, Rowan.”

“Oh, yes, I can. I don’t love her. Why should I? She’s never had any feelings for anyone except herself. I’ve never known anyone more selfish. She’ll steal if it suits her, lie if it suits her. Not only do I not love her, I don’t even like her.” Instantly Rowan hated himself. Why did he have to spout off like that? If he couldn’t love Anna, that was his problem. Why worry his mother?

“Rowan, I’m sure you’re exaggerating because of what you’ve just found out. I know it’s a big shock, but think of Anna. It’s a shock to her, too. We have to do everything we can to help her accept her identity.” She pondered for a moment, then added, “She wasn’t supposed to be told until puberty. But when this happened--and it was all because of your carelessness, Rowan--I felt she had to know. But I don’t suppose it really matters. She’s so close to puberty now anyhow.”

“Why were you supposed to wait until then?”

“That was the time we all agreed upon. Otherwise Anna or one of the others might have given the whole thing away at some point. You know how youngsters are. That was not a chance worth taking. And then there was the other aspect.”

“What other aspect?”

Her eyes measured him for a time before she said, “You mustn’t mention this to Anna. It could only worry her. They felt that puberty would be the most critical time of the experiment, when the body cells change so greatly.”

“What could happen?”

“Nobody knows, of course. Personally, I think they’re being overly cautious. They just want to be sure that nothing physically bad happens.”

“Like what?”

She said impatiently, “Honestly, Rowan, I don’t know--cancer, perhaps.”

That startled him. She made it sound as if Anna and all the other Annas were living machines that might explode at any moment. A sick feeling washed over him. Perhaps that was what they were. Living machines. That would certainly explain a great deal about Anna. Or had the first Anna Zimmerman had the same unfeeling kind of personality?

Rowan wasn’t quite sure his mother was any more ethical than Anna, fooling them all that way. She had even insisted Zimmerman was an old family name that she wanted to carry on, and no one had even questioned her. Rowan couldn’t begin to imagine how his dad would feel when he found out.

Then a horrifying thought struck Rowan. “What about me?”

For a moment his mother looked perplexed. “What do you mean?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, but she must have seen the fear in his eyes and understood, because she quickly reassured him. “Oh, no, Rowan. You were born in the old-fashioned way, the way babies have always been born. You have only to look in the mirror to see how much you look like me.”

That was true. He did look like his mother. They were both tall, slim, and leggy with dark chestnut hair, olive skin, high cheekbones, and brown eyes. They even had similar cowlicks. Yes, she was obviously telling the truth. And what a relief that was. For the first time, he felt a stab of sympathy for Anna. “Have they cloned anyone else?”

“I don’t know, but I must admit, I’ve wondered. With everyone pressing for the one-child family these days, it almost seems suspect when you see couples with two or more. Believe me, I’ve felt the social stigma myself. At a time when we so desperately need to reduce population, you can’t help but feel guilty for overbreeding.”

“Then why make more people by cloning them?”

“Because of all the good it can do.” She went on to explain all the possibilities cloning would open up. Nothing was left to chance that way. You could duplicate any kind of person you wished or needed. “You see,” she said, “we’ve foiled nature. We’ve stopped the process of evolution. We’ve found too many ways of keeping alive people with genetic diseases, giving them the chance to reproduce themselves and perpetuate their weaknesses. Cloning will be a way of mastering evolution.”

“I don’t understand. How?”

“For one thing, we’re learning how to reprogram body cells, possibly alter the message within them that determines whether a person will have an inherited disease like diabetes.”

His mother was always most convincing when she put forth a scientific argument, yet why did the thought make his skin crawl? He’d never felt quite easy with many aspects of what was considered technological progress. Was it progress that so many people were living on manufactured foods these days? Fortunately his family fared better than most because of his mother’s connections. Or was there another reason for that? he wondered now.

“Does all this business with Anna have anything to do with our getting more and better food than most people?” he asked.

“Yes, it does, Rowan. Because of our participation in the experiment, we get preference and even gifts. Of course, that had nothing to do with my decision to be a part of one of the great moments in science.”

Rowan could believe that. He was well aware that, with his mother, the need to know always took precedence over everything else. In some ways, she seemed to him a kind of innocent with the sublime faith that the knowers would always use their knowledge sensibly and for good ends.

It was now five days since they’d talked about it, and he still wasn’t used to the idea. As he sat at his desk, mulling over all the disturbing elements of the situation, he was only dimly aware of the teacher’s voice going on about something. He forced himself out of his reverie as she was saying, “The nineteenth century gave us Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, and Brahms.”

There was a breathless lilt to her voice that made him think of a violin playing saltando, bouncing the bow lightly on the strings. Ms. Dupont was an interesting-looking woman, he decided. Some might even call her handsome. She wore her straight black hair parted in the middle and pulled tightly back into a chignon at her neck. Her fair skin and green eyes contrasted with her dark hair, but it was not her coloring but her exotically oriental look that made her seem mysteriously intriguing.

“The nineteenth century also gave us Dvorak, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini. Yet it gave us nothing better than the first movement of Beethoven’s Eroica.” Ms. Dupont’s glance moved over the class and settled on Rowan. “Do you agree, Rowan Hart?”

He flushed at being singled out, surprised that she remembered his name. This was his first time in class since she’d taken over. He opened his mouth to answer her question with a docile yes, then found himself saying, “I think that’s a matter of opinion.”

She smiled, and he almost had the feeling he had passed some test. Then she said, “You’re quite right. And can you tell me whose opinion that was?”

He wanted to say yours, but that was obviously not the answer she was looking for. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“I see.” She paused, her eyes resting on him long enough to make him shift uncomfortably in his seat. Finally she said, “Well, someday I must tell you. For now, I would appreciate it if you would remain a few moments after class.”

Apparently he had not passed the test. Now he felt thoroughly annoyed with her. Perhaps she didn’t realize the conservatory was a very special school for the musically gifted. Its teachers were not in the habit of doling out punishment, if that’s what she thought she was doing, for something so trivial. He brooded about it until class ended, then stayed in his seat until everyone had left. When he saw her coming toward him, he got up.

To his surprise, she said, “I’m so happy to meet you, Rowan. Your father is very proud of you and with good reason, I’m sure.” She stood close enough for him to catch her scent. She smelled like a garden, he thought.

“You’ve met my father?” he asked, knowing full well that, of course, she would have met his father, a department head for stringed instruments as well as orchestra master for the conservatory symphony.

“Oh, yes, a delightful man. And now I have met his son. And tomorrow evening I will meet the rest of your family. Your father has asked me to dinner.”

“Oh,” Rowan said, somehow surprised. Yet it was like his father to ask a member, especially a new member, of the faculty to dinner to share the largess that so often fell to his wife. “My father’s a good cook.”

“Is he? Then I’ll certainly look forward to the evening.”

So will I, Rowan thought. “See you then,” he said, and hurried on to his next class, feeling, for some reason, better than he’d felt all day.

Anna had never had any real interest in other people. She had no friends and needed none.

The members of her family she accepted as people who were there to provide for her needs. Rowan had told her many times that she was obnoxious. What he didn’t know was that she was not nearly as obnoxious as she might have been had she not learned that pretending to comply with other people’s needs and wishes made life simpler and even attracted rewards. If you were clever, and Anna was, you could always find ways to get around the rules and get what you wanted.

Although she could not empathize with other people’s pain, she was very concerned with her own. The knowledge that she was a clone was a blow. It was all she could think of in the days that followed her encounter with the other Anna Zimmerman. They might as well tell me that I’m not me, Anna thought, that there isn’t any me. And if there isn’t any me, who am I, this body I can see in a mirror? Am I the dead Anna Zimmerman living a second life? Are my thoughts only her thoughts? Who am I? What am I?

The way Rowan was treating her now, she might have been the INAFT machine or a robot of some sort to whom you only spoke to give orders or directions. He even seemed to avoid looking at her now. And Dad, how would he act with her when he found out? But he wasn’t her dad anyhow. She kept forgetting that. What about other people? Would they eventually find out? Would it appear in all the newspapers with headlines that read First Clones Great Success?

Probably there would be a documentary on television called Clones, the Great Experiment, starring all the Anna Zimmermans. What would the emcee of the show ask them? How does it feel to see so many other girls who look exactly like you? And how many girls would there be anyhow? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Are you all math brains? he would undoubtedly ask. Yes, we’d say, of course we are. Can you give the audience a demonstration Of course we can.

What would we do? Anna wondered. Outshriek each other giving answers to complicated problems? Finally the emcee would get around to the big question: How does it feel to know you are a clone? All the Anna Zimmermans would shout, “I am a very special person with a very important destiny.” Yes, yes, but how does it feel? Special. Important. But how does it really feel? Special, important, special--oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

Anna could not come to grips with her new knowledge. She tried to put it aside by keeping her head full of numbers, working out difficult equations, harder and harder problems, but between each answer, clone kept worming its way in. Finally she knew what she had to do. She had to find out who Anna Zimmerman was, who the woman’s mother and father were, and anything else she could learn.

It was a Thursday evening, just before the Harts’ dinner guest was due, when Anna came to that conclusion. As she headed for the communications room, the door buzzer sounded. Even so, she told herself, she should have enough time to get her information. Rowan’s parents, as she was beginning to think of them, would spend some time having drinks with the guest first.

Inside the room, she made for INAFT, the communications console, which had a TV screen, camera, microphone, computer keyboard, and a printout device. For a nominal monthly service fee the Harts were able to take advantage of satellite transmittal, hooking into the National Research Data Processing and Information Center. Anna often used the machine for schoolwork. By dialing the proper number, she could make everything from newspaper articles to information from books and periodicals flash on the screen. There was even a button to toss out hard copy.

Now Anna started to feed in her name as she had always done, then thought better of it. She was not supposed to know anything about Anna Zimmerman. Instead, she fed in Sarah Hart’s name and the number that identified the kind of information available to her. Then Anna slyly asked the machine for the names of all female physicists working during the years 1962 to 1990. She waited impatiently through all the familiar clicking sounds that told her the machine was busily handling the problem. At last, lists of names flashed on the screen, one after another. There were more women in that profession than Anna would have guessed, but not one Anna Zimmerman.

Finally Anna decided to brazen it through. Sarah Hart, she directed the machine, wished all biographical material on Anna Zimmerman, physicist, who had died around 1987. Anna waited again. To her disappointment, the words “No Information Available” appeared on the screen. She couldn’t believe it. There had to be information about a woman important enough to be cloned. There had to be.

She stared and stared at the letters until a new thought struck her. It did not say “No Information.” It said, “No Information Available.” As far as Anna was concerned, it might as well have added “To the Hart INAFT machine.” Damn. If her mother had only let them know that she’d told Anna the whole story, they would probably have released the information. But, no, her mother was too concerned she’d be criticized for carelessness.

And it wouldn’t do a bit of good to try the library in the complex. They would have made sure there was not a scrap of material about her namesake there. Namesake? That was a laugh. She was much more. But exactly what is she to me? Anna wondered. My twin? My other half? My alter ego? It was a question she couldn’t answer. She was only grateful that her search for knowledge about Anna Zimmerman gave her something concrete with which to grapple, a goal, the kind of thing she knew how to handle. She would have to gain access to someone else’s INAFT machine. The information had to exist and she had to have it.