CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (26 page)

It was a lull; he suddenly began to pound everything within reach, to scream, to howl. Lisa slowed down, her ears drowned in the noise reverberating round the car. Shrill screams stabbed through her brain, preventing her from thought, from action. She could not drive through this. Desperate, she looked for somewhere to pull over, and saw Frank’s Landrover gaining on her. Taking his produce to Pakenham Moor kennels, she shuddered to herself. The last thing she wanted was that Frank should stop. She rolled down her window and waved him past, then saw an entrance to the Priddy woods on her right.

She had to find some way to stop the incredible din Janus was making. Whatever else was wrong with him, his lungs were very sound. His shrieks were piercing now, continuous. He’d no intention of quietening down. Was he trying to force her to return home again?

‘Wee!’ he screeched. ‘Wee-ee-ee!’

There was no other vehicle parked in the small space by the style leading to the woods. Lisa drew in, relieved. She was the only witness to the unbelievable racket Janus was making.

Janus’s head swung back as the car stopped, and he calmed down. His eyes, squeezed almost to oblivion, reappeared slowly, deeply sunk in folds. It seemed to Lisa he’d bloated even more. His neck wedged thick and tight against his anorak, a florid crimson mass against the yellow. His eyes were slits of animosity as he watched her every move.

His cries, less staccato, sounded like ‘wee’. Perhaps he needed to pee; he was so terribly puffed-up, so obviously waterlogged. Perhaps he was also in pain, needed to be taken out of the confining car seat. Besides, there was no way she could drive again with the child screaming the way he had.

Lisa unstrapped her child. He offered no resistance but stayed motionless, silent, staring beyond her.

‘Time to get out, Jansy.’

The head remained impassive, glazed eyes not focused.

‘Come on, Jansy. You need to go wee-wees and then we’re going for a walk. You’ll like the woods.’

He sat, fat legs outstretched, his arms unmoving by his side. Lisa pulled on the walking reins around his body. As soon as she relaxed the force he simply tumbled back. He seemed unable to move.

‘Come on, Jansy. Help Mummy get you out.’

She moved him slightly and his foot wedged inside the seat.

‘We’ve got to try!’ Lisa was almost ready to scream herself. She took a deep breath, bent her knees and attempted to lift the child out. He seemed wedged where he was, immobile, his eyes showing pain.

‘He
is
a big one, isn’t he?’ the young man smiled, parking his bicycle, a pair of greyhounds halting at his side. ‘Can I give you a hand?’

Lisa flashed teeth at him as he, using a young man’s strength, eventually managed to lever Janus out and hand him to her.

‘Hold on a mo’,’ he said, eyeing the style. ‘I’d better help you over that as well.’

‘Thanks,’ Lisa called after him. His dogs had moved off at a rapid pace and he was keeping up with them.

‘Any time!’ he called back, waving tan leather. He’d let the dogs roam free.

Janus was standing, stolid, on the style. Lisa grasped hold of him, all forty pounds, heaved him into her arms and walked unsteadily into a small track at the side. The child began to moan, to kick at her arms.

‘Stop it, Jansy. We’ve got to go further in,’ she told him, clinging on in spite of leg lunges into her abdomen. Changing tactics, Janus clawed at branches above him, began to tear at his clothes. They were a few yards into the woods now and, branching off into an even smaller track, Lisa searched desperately for cover. Her child was in pain, she had to help him. But what she suspected was about to happen needed to happen in privacy.

A stumble on a tree root brought her to her knees. Before she could balance herself Janus had tumbled out of her arms and into the soggy undergrowth. She grabbed the walking reins and pulled against the child, sinking down into woodland soil softened by decaying pine needles. Lisa looked around her. The spruces’ arms stretched overhead, blocked out daylight, and enfolded them in deep shadow. She grasped the child, now crying softly and pulling at his clothes, between her knees. Slowly, gently, methodically, she began to undress him, slipping the reins carefully under the clothes as she took them off, keeping the child secure. He made no attempt to fight her.

The naked child was now between her legs, the walking reins still round him, the earring still in his earlobe.

‘Keep still, Jansy. I’m going to take your earring off.’

Apparently he understood what she was doing. He made no further attempt to get away; he was going to cooperate.

Lisa undid the tiny clasp and removed the earring, then carefully slipped it on to her little fingertip. A lurching terror gripped at her. The child was naked. He could now clone. She could not stop it. That would be going against the child’s nature; it would be simple cruelty to do that. But this time it would be different, this time she was prepared. Prepared? She almost laughed at that, her face a twisted mask of fear and frustration. If she were right there’d be a second toddler this time: a child, a human being who could already speak a few words. How could that possibly be?

She didn’t know. All she could think of was that she had to allow Janus’s body to do what it wanted to. Even as she watched she could see him oozing around the walking reins. It would be torture not to free him.

‘I’m taking off the reins now, Jansy.’

She clicked them undone. The child was in front of her, naked, his body entirely free from any artefact. There was nothing she knew of now that would prevent him from cloning. He was, she saw, terribly swollen, podgier even than at the weekend - than this morning - than a few seconds ago! The time was ripe.

‘Go on, then, clone!’ she told him sadly, eyes wet, nose moist. ‘I’m not going to stop you.’

The child stood, motionless, and suddenly began to pee. A long, steady stream of liquid oozed out of him and she could dimly see the puffiness going down. Or was she imagining it? Had she imagined everything? Was Janus simply suffering from some sort of dropsy, and she’d chanced across the self-cure? Perhaps Alec had been right; the child was allergic to the gold earring and had swollen up because of that.

The stream of liquid continued, threatening her handbag and the little heap of clothes. Lisa pitched herself sideways on to her knees and lurched her body forward, shoving everything to the side. Though the light was filtered through dark greens Lisa could see the liquid was denser than urine, darker coloured. There was an odd chlorine-like smell. She sat back on her heels, almost convinced that nothing further would happen.

She drew a sharp breath in. When she looked at Janus again she saw his body, thinner now, bones showing, elongating sideways. Desperate, she rubbed her eyes and looked again. She saw the shape before her extend, broaden out. Tears cascaded down as she watched her son metamorphose before her. The rotund toddler of a few moments before was turning into an oval shape, arms spread wide. He stood silent, vacant eyes staring in front of him. As the shape continued to expand he lost balance, toppled on to his back.

Lisa felt a tight band drawing around her, a straitjacket of horror. It took all her strength to stop herself running away, to stay with her child. He was her son. She had to be there when the awesome act she was witnessing came to an end.

The pale shape was even wider now, the broadened head on top staring with eyes reaching further and further apart, fixed and unmoving. The mouth, Lisa saw, had become a huge round, gaping in a silent shriek. The whole form was spread-eagled on the ground. A shaking writhing motion rippled through it as the distended head showed a fissure forming at the crown. By the fontanelles, Lisa thought sadly, tears flooding her cheeks. And as she watched, every action played out in slow motion, a rift appeared, cleaving down, the bridge of the nose opening, splitting wide.

Riveted, unable to move her gaze, Lisa watched the neck divide, a snap of Adam’s apple, a moan from the little form as the collarbone burst forward, ribs lengthening out, dilating. A deep furrow channelled into the breast, running down towards the navel. Would his belly split open, its contents spewed over pine-needled earth? Would he die in agony before of her? Was Janus now too old to clone, the process gone terribly wrong?

As Lisa, unable to move, watched helplessly the long deep fissure reached the child’s genitals. There was a lurch, a rending tear as the shape split in two.

Lisa bent double, a pain inside herself, the pain of a mother watching, impotent, as her child is torn apart in front of her. Her heart pumped hard, adrenaline surged through and gave her the power to use her limbs. She crawled nearer the movements on the ground. There was no longer any doubt about it: there were two children.

Two heads, ears sprouting out between them; two pairs of eyes either side of a nose she recognised. Two necks, two trunks, two stumps of arms growing, like the horns of a snail emerged from its shell. Even as she looked, they sprouted to match the other sides. Looking down Lisa could see two small sets of genitalia, leg stumps emerging left and right, growing apace, becoming two completely formed bodies.

Two entities; two individuals who had taken on the look of two familiar toddlers, eighteen months, identical. Indistinguishable, in fact, from Janus; a thinner, unbloated Janus. There were two naked toddlers on the woodland floor, on their backs, side by side. They lay still, panting, then seemed to draw within themselves. To Lisa’s absolute astonishment they sat up, looked around, saw her, and smiled at her.

‘Mumumumum…’

Two
toddlers gurgling at her. A vision of the day, so long ago now, when she’d had her pregnancy confirmed came back to her. She had seen this happen before, she realised. Seb, standing in the meadow, had held two wings of a fritillary. She understood now why he’d been able to catch the butterfly. It was in the act of cloning, unable to flee. She could no longer hide the facts of cloning from herself, pretend it hadn’t happened. She’d witnessed it.

This new form of reproduction was more serious than even she’d conceived of. It was clearly not confined to Janus. She remembered the clover: leaves multiplied, flower petals crowded tight. The phenomenon had already spread, had infiltrated the lower forms of life. Infected eggs, larvae, seeds: they were all set to proliferate, to become a random burgeoning of life which could not be restrained. It was happening all around them: to insects, crops, farm animals, even to wildlife. Were other humans involved, or was Janus unique? What should she, could she, do?

Lisa looked round. Had anyone else observed this unbelievable event? She could not know. The scene she’d witnessed had petrified her, slowed her brain. She hadn’t been aware of her surroundings, had simply watched, incredulous, as Janus turned into two.

She could still hear the young man calling to his greyhounds. The actual cloning must have been virtually instantaneous.

Two Januses were with her now: mobile, already sitting up, then standing side by side. And about to head, she guessed, in different directions.

CHAPTER 22

Two pairs of limpid blue eyes gazed at her, two gentle smiles embraced her, two sets of arms lifted in unison to be picked up.

Which one was Janus?

A nearby bark warned Lisa that she was surrounded by people walking their dogs. The dim dappled light flickering across the children’s naked bodies under the trees made it impossible for Lisa to see clearly, but one thing was unmistakable. Whatever else she’d imagined that she’d seen, there were two children with her. One, by her knees, sat down, began to babble, to play with the damp earth, some pine cones, to crawl. The other, noticing, dropped to all fours, came nearer and started playing with his - brother? His flesh and blood,
her
flesh and blood. An unheard of new way for a human to reproduce, but the living proof was in front of her: cloner and clone.

Lisa looked down again at the two toddlers. Neither of them really seemed like the podgy swollen Janus of a few moments before, but they were both the same, identical in every way.

Two fair-haired naked toddlers; prattling, adorable. Her head began to spin. Had she brought two of her triplets? Was she forgetting everything, utterly confused? Was Alec right: she
was
going mad?

There could be no doubt that there were two children with her. Clones, cloners; whatever her imagination was trying to tell her, whatever her fevered mind was conjuring up for her, these were two
children
. Though she could not see every detail in the dim light they seemed exactly like the toddlers she’d left at home, indistinguishable from Jeffrey and James to people who didn’t know them well. But to her mother’s eye they were clearly more like Janus before he’d become so swollen.

And supposing she
could
tell the difference? Supposing, somehow, she could figure out which one was Janus? What should she do then? She tried to regain control of her mind. Think! she told herself sternly.
Think
what to do.

A wriggle of yellow caught a glimmer of light. One of the little boys tried to pull on the T-shirt. He pushed it, hopefully, against his head and teetered towards Lisa. The yellow cotton glowed as a ray of sunlight cut through the branches. The garment, incongruous at a rakish angle on the child’s head, began to slip. Lisa felt a spasm in her left side as if she’d been stabbed. These were her children; artless, enchanting, virtually irresistible. She loved them both.

Obviously satisfied with his effort with the T-shirt the child began to try putting on the shoes lying just by his feet. He started slipping a tiny foot into the heel part of the shoe.

‘Not like that, Jansy,’ Lisa found herself saying, smiling at the child. Then checked herself. One of these toddlers wasn’t Jansy. He was a newcomer. A single shoe - maybe that meant he was a Leprechaun... She brushed the fancy away. She had to know which was which. Had to - for the sake of the children who were not cloners.
Had to!
Which one? Her heart began to beat, faster and faster, as panic gripped her, trickled sweat. She’d have to be able to tell Morgenstein which was Janus, identify the cloner.

How could she tell? Was there something to point to the clone? Should she wait for another cloning? No; it wouldn’t happen again for some time now. She’d worked it out. Before he could clone Janus had to gather his strength together, feed on more food than any of the other children. Then, when he was ready, the signs would appear. He’d become chubby, waterlogged. Then he’d become edgy, turn aggressive and, as he bloated even more, become positively unbalanced with the need to clone.

The second child tried to crawl on to her lap. How could she choose? What if she got it wrong? A light clicked in her mind. The other toddler, the one she’d called Janus, had started pulling on his clothes - her instincts must have told her he was Janus! The new child, the clone, could not know how to dress himself, hadn’t had the experience. That was it; she’d got it now.
That’s
how she could tell the difference!

Thrilled, delighted with her reasoning, Lisa grasped the child who wasn’t playing with the clothes and held him tight within her knees. She pulled the earring off her finger and pushed it into his earlobe.

‘There!’ she said to him. ‘There you are. I’ll call you Jacob. You wear this so I know which one you are.’

He cooed at her, put his arms round her neck and kissed her. Just like her little James, her heart began to sing to her. Just like her lovely angelic docile little Jiminy. She breathed her love back to the child between her knees, wrapped her arms protectively around him, pulled on his trainer pants, his little trousers. Then she put on his socks, pulled on the little yellow shoes.