Blood Ties (16 page)

‘Come on, babe.’ Mel sounded apprehensive. ‘Downstairs.’

I followed her down to the living room. Theo was in there already, standing beside the sofa.

The atmosphere in the room was taut. I could feel Mel all jumpy beside me. Lewis was nearest the front door, reaching out to pull back the bolts. Were his hands actually shaking? My own heart was beating fast.
God
. If it was this big a deal for the rest of us, imagine what it must be like for Theo. Meeting his dad for what was, really, the first time.

I took a step over to him. He was staring at the door. I badly wanted to put my arm round him. But, frankly, I would have found it easier to have cartwheeled across the floor.

I looked up as the door opened.

This was it. This was really it. My mouth felt dry. I was going to meet my dad.

I could feel, rather than see, Rachel right beside me. She seemed almost as tense as I was. My eyes were fixed on Lewis, pulling back the door. It was dark outside. I could only see a silhouette of a man. Tall. Well built.

He stepped into the light and smiled at me.

It wasn’t my dad.

James Lawson had been in his early twenties when I was born. That’s how he looked in my photograph. Which meant he would now be in his late thirties.

The man in front of me had to be way older than forty – his tanned, leathery face was heavily lined. Plus James Lawson had blue eyes and a long, oval face with a dimple in his chin, whereas the man in front of me was dark-eyed and square-jawed. No dimple.

We stared at each other.

I could feel the tension in the room building. Everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to move or speak. You couldn’t help it. There was this aura about him – of power or confidence or something. And he took his time. He kept on looking at my face, poring over it like a map, then his serious, brown eyes flickered over my whole body.

I shuffled, feeling self-conscious. He ran his hand through his slicked-back hair. Rachel gasped beside me. He glanced at her briefly, smiled, then looked back at me.

‘Theodore,’ he said. His voice was deep and strong. American, with the trace of a Spanish accent. He smiled – a warm, charming smile. ‘It is the great happiness of my life to see you here. Now. Today. Safe.’

But you’re not my dad
.

I didn’t know what to say.

The man raised his hand and made a light, flicking gesture with his little finger. ‘Leave us,’ he said.

Lewis melted away towards the kitchen. I could hear Mel and Rachel crossing the room behind me. The kitchen door shut. We were alone.

The man waved me towards the sofa. As I sat down, he took off his coat. He was wearing a dark suit underneath – it looked expensive – and a crisp, open-necked white shirt. He strode over to the nearest armchair and eased himself into it.

‘Theodore. Theodore,’ he said, still staring at me.

‘Theo.’ I looked down.

Several long seconds passed in silence.

‘My name is Elijah Lazio,’ the man said.

The Gene Genie. The man who owned the clinic where my dad worked. Except . . .

‘As you can see, I did not die in the firebomb attack.’ The man smiled. ‘The press were as easy to fool as the police were co-operative.’

I realised my mouth had fallen open. I closed it.

‘Call me Elijah,’ he said. ‘I think I would prefer it to Daddy.’

‘But . . .’ I didn’t know what to say.

You’re not my father
.

‘You know me as James Lawson.’

‘But you’re not him,’ I said. ‘I have . . . I had a picture. He . . . he looked different.’

‘James Lawson was a cover. Always.’

I stared at him.

‘Do you understand, Theodore? James Lawson. Elijah Lazio. A different face. A different name. A different past. But the same
person
.’

‘The same person?’ The world started spinning inside my head. What was he saying? ‘You mean, my . . . my . . .?’

A lazy smile crept across Elijah Lazio’s face. ‘Ah, the ego-centricity of youth. All others are the planets around your sun. Still, yes, I do mean partly that.’ He chuckled. ‘Anyway, you
are
the sun. Apollo. The god of the sun. And therefore, in a way, truly my son.’

I had no idea what he was talking about. I gritted my teeth.

Elijah Lazio leaned forwards in his chair. ‘Do you not see it, Theodore? Do you not see it in my face?’

His eyes laughed at me.

Suddenly my temper reared up. How dare this man talk in riddles to me? I’d been sold a pack of lies about who he was for years, then nearly killed when I tried to find him. At the very least I was owed a straight explanation of who he was and why – thanks to something
he
had done – RAGE wanted me dead.

‘No. I don’t see it,’ I snapped. ‘I don’t see at all. Who are you? What did you do to me and Rachel when we were babies? And if you are my dad, why has everyone been lying to me about you all my life?’

Elijah Lazio’s eyes widened. For a second he looked shocked. Furious, even. And then he laughed. A deep, rich belly laugh.

‘Perfect,’ he grinned. ‘You are perfect. And I am, truly, a genius.’

‘Yeah, and modest with it,’ I spat.

‘Okay.
Vale
.’ Elijah Lazio ran his hand through his hair again. ‘Let us begin at the beginning. In this sense you are my son: since you were born I have cherished you. Provided for you. Protected you. But genetically no, you are not my child . . .’

‘Then who . . .?’

‘Genetically we are more like twins.’

I stared at him. How could we be twins? The man was at least forty years older than me.

‘Don’t you see, Theodore? The truth is in your name – it means “Gift from God”. I am far more than your father. I am your creator. I gave you life in a way no father could.’

What the hell was he talking about?

‘Come on, Theodore. I know you have nearly guessed the truth. You know something special happened around your birth. Yours and Rachel’s.’

‘Rachel?’ My mind was spinning.

‘Yes. In fact . . .’ Elijah turned towards the closed kitchen door. ‘Mel,’ he barked.

Mel poked her head round.

‘Send Rachel out.’

A few seconds later, Rachel stumbled into the living room, her head bowed. Mel stood behind her, her hand on Rachel’s shoulder.

Elijah introduced himself, then stood up.

‘I shall tell you together,’ he grinned. ‘Oh, Theodore. My first full success. My bright, shining boy. My past, my present and my future. Do you not see how alike we are?’

I stared at his lined face. What did he mean? Then I looked into his eyes. And I saw.

It was like looking into a mirror.

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Yes. You are a clone, Theodore. My clone. A clone of me.’

I stood there, shaking, vaguely aware of Theo sitting on the sofa, his mouth open in shock. Mel squeezed my shoulder.

Theo was a clone? A genetic replica of this man? It was crazy. Ridiculous. And yet the way Elijah had run his hand through his hair before – it had made me gasp precisely because I’d so often seen Theo make the exact same gesture.

I looked into Elijah’s eyes. I didn’t need to look over at Theo to make the comparison. They were exactly the same colour.

Elijah moved closer to me. ‘How are you, Rachel?’ His voice was smooth and confident.

I forced myself to hold his gaze.

‘Do you know who
you
are?’

I shook my head, my mind spinning.

‘Well . . .’ He smiled. ‘I created you too. I cloned you from your parent’s dead child, Rebecca. I did it for them. They were my friends and they had suffered such a terrible loss.’

I stared at him, unable to speak. Unable to take in what he was saying.

‘I was at your birth. That is how I avoided the firebomb.’ Elijah glanced at Theo. He was still sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands.

‘
Guapa?
’ Elijah nodded at Mel.

Mel nodded back, then glided away, towards the sofa.

Elijah put his arm round my shoulders. His presence was overpowering. Like a tidal wave.

‘You must have wondered about your sister, no?’ he said. ‘How alike you are?’

I stared at him.
No way.
Rebecca had been beautiful. I wasn’t. Even if cloning was possible, we simply didn’t look the same. At least . . . I remembered how much like her I had been as a little girl.

‘I didn’t think it . . . that you could . . . that it was . . .’ I tailed off.

Elijah glanced at Theo again. Mel was talking to him, but his hands were over his ears, his eyes cast down at the floor.

Elijah cleared his throat. ‘All my life I wanted to be someone who made a difference. I became a doctor. A specialist . . . driven to help people who are denied the greatest gift of life – a child. I became obsessed with the power and the beauty of somatic cell nuclear transplantation – what the world knows as cloning. I was the first scientist to clone a primate – and I knew that I was close to creating a human embryo.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Despite the creation of embryos used for stem cell research, no one else has yet successfully managed full reproductive cloning of a human. Do you know why that is?’

I shook my head.

‘Because it is hard.’ Elijah smiled. ‘The understanding is there. The technology . . . though making it work is another matter . . . But what really held – holds – science back is fear: fear of the genetic and physical defects that all cloned animals so far have demonstrated – chromosomes with shortened telomeres or . . .’ He flicked his fingers impatiently. ‘But never mind that. The important area is that of methyl molecules. These are molecules which attach to DNA in all cells, controlling the functions of the DNA to an extent. Do you understand?’

‘Er . . . not really.’ I blushed, feeling stupid.

‘Well, anyway.’ Elijah took a deep breath. ‘This process – the methylation of DNA in adult cells – happens unpredictably. Not at all like the way DNA is formatted in eggs and sperm. I knew that if I could find a way to control this process I could control the vulnerability of cloned subjects to genetic deformities.’

I frowned, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. ‘You mean . . . you mean you worked out how to stop the clones you made from being deformed?’

‘Yes, the discovery . . . I did it almost by accident,’ he said. ‘Of course this now minimised the risk of the human cloning, and I pressed on with my experiments until finally Theodore – and then you – were created.’

My head felt like it was too full, like I couldn’t take in what he was saying. I was only dimly aware of Theo standing up, crossing the room and disappearing up the stairs.

Elijah and Mel exchanged looks. ‘Leave him for a minute,’ Elijah said. He took my arm and led me over to the sofa. We sat down.

Elijah sighed. ‘I did not want to make any claims for my creation until I was sure Theodore was viable. I wanted my work to be properly verified by independent experts, of course, but I knew my life would change forever if I had succeeded. Look at the controversy surrounding the unsubstantiated claims of Pavel and Andropovich in past years, for example. And of course reproductive cloning is also illegal in the UK – though the initial stages of the process are identical to therapeutic cloning, which is not. Anyway, I tried to keep what I was doing a secret. But even before Theodore was viable, RAGE discovered his existence. They tried to alert the press but their claims were ridiculed. The death threats started. But I kept going. I created you, for your parents. My friends.’

My heart thudded. Elijah smiled at me again. ‘You know your mother was a beautiful woman, Rachel. And your father was a good friend to me. Not a geneticist. That is why he was never, individually, a RAGE target. But a good friend, nevertheless. He knew much of what happened, though not the details of where I sent Apollo. And he told no one. So, then the firebomb, which I escaped, and the running away to Germany where RAGE found me and tried again to kill me. And I realised that I would be running for the rest of my life. And I nearly killed myself, Rachel. Maybe you cannot imagine that suffering. I was alone and despised with no money, no backing, no resources. No life. It took me nearly ten years to find a way to build back my research. And all the time I thought of Theodore, whom I was keeping carefully hidden from RAGE – and of you, whom they didn’t realise even existed. My two precious creations.’

There was a long pause. Elijah Lazio held me with his eyes. They were like laser beams, probing right inside my head.

‘Why do you not believe, Rachel?’ he said softly.

His eyes were somehow drawing the truth out of me.

‘Because Rebecca was beautiful.’ Tears welled up, a twisting, miserable sensation in the pit of my stomach. Mel had been standing near the kitchen door. Now she walked over and squatted down beside me. She squeezed my hand.

Elijah sat back in his chair. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘I wish I could show you to those
idiotas
at RAGE. You are proof, all the proof needed, that a clone is not a carbon copy of another individual. That each fresh unit is a new creation and that, if given a different environment to grow in, even one where the parents are the same, it will develop differently from the original – both physically and mentally.’

Each fresh unit?

He sounded as if he was delivering a lecture or something. I stared at him uncertainly. His eyes had glazed over, as if he were thinking about something far, far away. Then he snapped back to attention and I felt the full force of his gaze again. Mel let go of my hand and stood up.

‘Go to the bathroom, Rachel,’ he ordered. ‘And this time look – really look – in the mirror.’

I did as I was told. The way Elijah spoke, you didn’t feel you had much choice. There was no sign of Theo on the landing – his bedroom door was shut. I wondered vaguely how he was feeling – but my mind was mostly focused on Elijah’s command.

In the bathroom I stared at the dark-edged mirror above the cracked enamel sink. An anxious, plump-faced girl with lank, skank hair stared back at me.