CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (2 page)

‘Look at the pretty clover, Seb,’ she called to her little boy, holding out her hand for his and pulling him towards it. ‘I think we’re going to find a four-leaf one. That’s for luck!’

And then she blinked, amazed, as the leaf she was now concentrating on turned out to have four lobes, not three. She could have sworn there were just three a moment ago, even though she’d been quite sure of finding one with four. Startled, delighted, sensing good fortune, she picked it eagerly to show Meg and Alec.

‘Look, Seb,’ she almost shouted, turning to him. ‘I’ve found one. A lucky four-leaf clover!’

‘Cloner,’ he lisped.

She laughed. ‘Clover,’ she said. ‘V. Clov-ver. Can you say that?’

‘Clowler,’ he smiled at her.

‘Very nearly right,’ she said. ‘Try again. Clo-ver!’

‘Cwo-ver,’ he mimicked her as best he could.

‘Watch,’ she turned to him, her dress swirling a circle in the grass. The red clover goblets above the streaked foliage seemed larger than the rest. She picked a flower and pulled the petals off in chunks. They were massed solid, tight as she’d never seen them before. Plucking some seemed to make no difference. ‘It tastes really good.’

Seb pushed petals into his mouth.

‘Don’t eat them,’ she grinned at him. ‘Just suck the nectar out.’

‘Well, fancy a townie like you knowing that. And how be ourn birthday boy?’

Lisa looked over towards the old-fashioned wooden gate Frank Graftley had put up only a couple of weeks ago. In keeping with the perpetual meadows he was nurturing. Meg was opening it, smiling at them.

‘Meg! I didn’t notice you were there. We were just coming to see you.’

‘I know; you think my teas baint filling enough so you be stuffing yourself up.’ The brown eyes steadied. ‘Not too much, mind. Baint good fer you.’

As russet as a cider apple, and as round, Meg Graftley unlatched the new gate and waited for Lisa and Seb to amble through.

‘Not good for you? You mean the clover?’

‘They cattle and they horses be really sweet on it, but it be dangerous for sheep. Makes they swell up. Get off, Mikey, do,’ she urged a towhead clambering up beside her. Bare feet swung across the top bar as he grinned his gapped teeth back at her and pivoted himself on the swinging gate. Another boy, a slightly younger version of Michael, suddenly emerged from behind Meg and twirled himself up on to the top bar and at his big brother. Both boys tumbled off, breathless and sun kissed, in front of Lisa.

‘You’ve got your hands full in the holidays, I see.’

‘Not really. Alan and Mikey just come along of me ter meet yer. Them be with Frank most times. Or they be round Don, helping with they chores.’ She turned to smile. ‘Well, it do start the boys on farming ways, and them can do their bit right early on.’

‘Isn’t Don about today? He isn’t sick or anything, is he?’

‘Sick? Don? Never missed a working day for Frank, nor for his Dad afore him.’ Meg laughed. ‘Steady as a rock, old Don. He be about right enough; just Alec asked to talk to Frank and Don together. Said the boys would get in the way of it.’

The thought crossed Lisa’s mind that Alec might find his own children ‘got in the way’ of his life. So far his interest in Seb had been somewhat peripheral. And her husband had been decidedly grudging about her getting pregnant again.

‘Alec mentioned there’s been another fertiliser breakthrough.’

‘Flaxton’s special,’ Meg said. ‘That Multiplier stuff we done testing out. Some of they clover leaves be doubled up - two for the price of one.’

Lisa smiled vaguely, then slipped her sandals on. ‘So now I’ve got a one-year-old, and another on the way.’ Delightedly she swung her son up in her arms and held him away from her, her hands under his armpits, clover-leaf in her mouth.

‘Yer be an earth mother, Lisa,’ Meg told her, sober now. ‘I do own as I didn’t think yer had it in yer when yer first come. But yer be quite blossomed out.’ There was a slight pause as she eyed her friend’s son. ‘And Seb be that clever,’ she added thoughtfully, looking him over. She tousled her own two sons’ hair and pushed them playfully together. ‘Not like they two pumpkin heads!’

‘I don’t know about Mikey and Alan,’ Lisa said gaily, ‘but I know Paul and Phyllis are just as bright as Seb; and much sturdier, I’d say.’ It irritated Lisa that her son was so slight compared with the Graftley twins, born a mere nine weeks before him.

Meg beamed her delight. ‘That bit stockier, maybe; but them don’t talk the way Seb do.’ Her eyes shone joy. ‘Get that gate shut, Alan. Purdle along now; the twins’ll be finishing their nap and wondering where I be.’

‘I’m pregnant again,’ Lisa confided to Meg, speaking softly. ‘Found out this morning; Seb’s birthday! Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Very true, my duck. After all the trouble yer had before settling here. Right in the air, I swear it.’

‘And I found a four-leaf clover,’ Lisa told her, holding it out.

Meg took the clover leaf and looked at it carefully. ‘There’s that many with leaves doubled into two sets of three,’ she said. ‘But this one be different, somehow.’

‘I know!’ Lisa could hardly contain her delight. ‘It’s a good luck charm; means my wishes will come true.’ Her eyes shone happiness. ‘Guess what? I have a hunch it’ll be twins this time.’

‘Twins?’ Lisa was surprised to hear her friend sound startled, almost shocked. ‘Whatever makes yer think o’ that?’

‘Just intuition, really. And wishing on that four-leaf clover.’

The pause before Meg spoke again made Lisa search her friend’s face.

‘That really what yer be after?’ Meg sounded oddly unenthusiastic about the idea.

‘I’d love it,’ Lisa said, exulting in the thought. ‘I’d really love it. Why? Did you prefer having one at a time?’

‘Not me.’ Meg laughed; a curiously brittle laugh. ‘The more the merrier as far as I goes. Just that - well, women be made to have one at a time, I reckon. Country folk don’t much go for twins and such.’ She paused and turned back to look at Lisa. ‘Just ter give yer fair warning; saying be as clover be bad for women in the family way.’

‘Really? D’you think that’s true?’

‘Well…’

Lisa could see Meg hesitating. Afraid to worry her, perhaps. Meg always insisted Phyllis had a clubfoot because, being a twin, she’d been crowded in the womb.

‘Thing is, Phyllie do seem to suffer a bit o’ pain. Not much, really; just the odd twinge.’ She paused, then blurted out: ‘Frank be the one as got flummoxed; went on about Phyllie’s foot needed straightening, right early on. Made ’un ’ave the operation when she be only just born.’

‘The doting father.’ Lisa laughed Meg’s unease away. Meg didn’t favour medical intervention except as a last resort. Lisa felt Frank’s concern did him credit, though she was surprised he’d thought an early operation necessary. It didn’t quite fit the image she’d formed of him - a man who only tolerated interference as a last resort. ‘Phyllie always looks quite fit to me,’ she continued.

The child had often outpaced her twin Paul in spite of the brace on her foot. Seb wasn’t even in the running.

‘Yer did say as Alec don’t want more’n two young ’uns altogether.’ Meg’s glow of contented motherhood, so evident only a few moments before, had been replaced with troubled eyes, the soft lips drawn grim.

Lisa saw Sally and Jean, both darker than their brothers but with the Graftley smile, skipping towards them bearing trugs brimming with peas.

‘We done picked along all they rows, Mum.’

‘Lovely, me ducks. We can all ’ave a go at shelling.’ She lifted Seb up high, then brought him down again. ‘Yer’d like to help we with that, eh, Sebbie? Yer be such a big boy now.’

CHAPTER 2

Crinsley farmhouse, its stone walls keeping the inside cool, sprawled long and narrow. A cobbled courtyard separated it from a scramble of outhouses Lisa always found somewhat daunting. It seemed that everything the Graftleys touched multiplied. They had six children, and the Graftley Friesians, speckling black and white against the glossy green of their thriving pastures, bore ever-sturdier calves.

‘Frank do reckon as fertilising with Doubler don’t just increase grass and milk yields, he do reckon the old orchard trees have took on a new lease of life,’ Meg explained.

‘I do that,’ her husband agreed quietly. Lisa’s eyes, as yet unaccustomed to the dark after the brilliant sunshine, hadn’t spotted the farmer sitting by his empty fireplace draining a mug of something she suspected was the scrumpy he made every autumn. ‘Just for we and a few friends,’ Frank had expounded to her several times. ‘Can’t abide that stuff them peddle in they shops. Cider’s meant to be still; not that frothy rubbish them sells in they supermarkets.’

Frank’s cider came straight out of his hogshead barrels, at least twenty of them stacked neatly in one of his barns. Lisa turned dutifully to smile at him. He seemed obsessed with having more of everything.

‘Dangdest thing,’ he said, looking right at her. ‘Reckoned us’d have to grub out they old trees and buy apples in. But no, us had a decent crop last year.’ He turned to Alec whom Lisa could now make out sitting across the fireplace from Frank, politely taking tiny sips at his cider.

‘And Flaxton’s little baby doesn’t stop at increased crop yields,’ her husband put in sagely. ‘It boosts profits very nicely, thank you. There’s reason to suppose that sales of Doubler will increase exponentially.’ He placed the pewter mug on the floor beside his chair and opened his briefcase. Alec didn’t much care for cider, Lisa knew, though he’d been careful to drink his whack whenever he was with Frank. ‘In fact, their latest figures suggest that their market share has tripled in a single season. It’s really quite astonishing.’

The newly-qualified accountant Lisa had married eight years before, when she’d given up teaching at Hornsby Art College, had almost immediately joined the prestigious City firm of Grew, Donsett & Tyler. Two years ago he’d been invited to become a full partner of the renamed Grew, Donsett, Tyler and Wildmore. Alec had been elected their man out West, chosen to open an office in Bristol.

‘Bristol,’ he’d told Lisa at the time, ‘is going to be the second city in the UK. All the banks are moving out of London. Lloyds has already built Bank House in Wine Street.’

The first organic fertiliser from Flaxton, enthusiastically called Doubler and more than living up to its name, had been as good for the firm of accountants instructed by Flaxton as it had for West Country farmers shrewd enough to switch to organic. Small farmers, hardly able to make ends meet before, found they could sell their produce at a good price. They flocked to buy Flaxton’s products.

On the back of Flaxton’s success Grew, Donsett, Tyler & Wildmore had quickly become
the
leading agricultural accountants. Flaxton’s headquarters was sited in an old mansion set in the Mendips. Their chief executive, Nigel Carruthers, owned a country estate there, near Priddy. Alec, astute as ever, had rapidly worked out that this dynamic West Country firm would expand, in fact be quoted on the Stock Exchange, before much longer. That was why he’d looked for his country house near Wells, the smallest city in England.

‘Good schools there,’ he’d explained to Lisa when she’d objected to moving to such a remote rural area. ‘Millfield’s in Street, and Wells Cathedral School has a very good reputation.’ It was the assuredness with which he’d talked of schools which had persuaded her to move from London.

Doubler, based on algae and patented world-wide, was obviously a winner. Now Flaxton were testing their latest product, Multiplier, first manufactured eighteen months before. The new fertiliser incorporated plankton, and promised to be an even greater success than Doubler. Somerset was the trial ground again, and the Graftley farm had been chosen as the first experimental site.

‘Somehow or other,’ Alec said as he peered through steel-rimmed glasses at his balance sheets, ‘though the chemists haven’t worked out the reasons yet, they think the strain of plankton they’re using for Multiplier encourages the shedding of extra ova in mammals, and increased egg laying in fowl.’ Alec beamed round the room as though he, personally, had invented Multiplier. ‘Give your chickens corn fertilised with it, and you’ll have more free range eggs than you can handle!’

‘Us can always sell they,’ Frank put in coolly, setting down his mug and sauntering over to Alec. ‘Get a good price for they.’

‘What d’you mean, ‘plankton’?’ Lisa asked. ‘Are you saying Multiplier’s completely organic?’

‘Absolutely; no artificial ingredients at all.’ Alec was drawing his finger along the lines of figures. ‘Just look at these projections we’ve been working on.’

‘Manufactured like Doubler, or is it a new process?’ Lisa wanted to know.

‘What? Yes, of course.’ He looked over his shoulder at the farmer peering suspiciously at the figures. ‘It
is
completely organic, Lisa; I told you. Algae are purely vegetable matter; plankton does contain some animal organisms. But they’re primitive organisms,’ he added hurriedly. ‘That’s still organic.’

‘Easy to tell by seeing the bigness - healthy enough,’ Frank assured Lisa. ‘No need for yer to worry none.’

‘Isn’t plankton something whales live on?’ Lisa persisted, holding Seb on her lap and helping him drink the Graftleys’ goat’s milk from a cup. Most children, Meg had assured her, tolerated it better than cow’s milk.

‘Exactly,’ Alec agreed. ‘The stuff can be produced rapidly and in vast quantities. And I’ll wager the eggs will be larger as well as more of them.’

‘The hens be mine to see to,’ Meg put in. ‘I do run a few for the family. No need for more’n that.’ She looked across at Alec’s papers, then at her husband. ‘I do like they to scratch around for their grub,’ she said firmly. ‘I reckon feed fertilised with Multiplier makes ’em double-yolk.’

‘Folk do like they double-yolkers,’ Frank gruffed, frowning at his wife. ‘If us do get a surplus, us can always sell they,’ he repeated. He cut the end off his Havana, placed it in his mouth, and lit it. It smouldered like a gun which had just fired.

Meg’s eyes slid away from him. She said nothing further.

‘I know you need the money, Frank,’ Alec said wickedly, the left side of his mouth rising more than the right. ‘You want to buy more privatisation issues to add to your little portfolio.’

Frank grinned. A brawny man, his neck and arms a deep darkened reddish-brown, his curly black hair showing wisps of grey, he still moved gracefully and quickly. ‘Only doing me bit for me country.’ He reached easily towards the floor, lifted his pewter mug to his lips again and took a long deep swallow.

‘We saw an enormous duck on our way over,’ Lisa told them. ‘Didn’t we, Seb?’