CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (7 page)

CHAPTER 6

‘Quite the little shrimp, isn’t he?’ Rita’s loud voice dismissed the newborn she was weighing. ‘He’s only just on five and a half pounds.’

‘He’s two weeks early,’ Alec said coldly. ‘I’m much more worried about his being all right until the special unit arrives. They’re taking their time, aren’t they?’

‘Your little lady pipped them to the post, old man. But we won’t need them now,’ Witherton said. ‘This chappie’s very fit. Look at that hold!’

The new infant gripped the doctor’s hand in such a vice that he could support his own weight. As the doctor demonstrated this feat to Lisa the baby’s big blue eyes seemed to gleam, then wink conspiratorially at her.

‘Doesn’t he need special care?’ Alec was clearly mystified at the sudden change in attitude. ‘I thought anything under five and a half pounds was considered delicate.’

‘It isn’t really just a question of weight. Anyway, he’s virtually there.’ The doctor smiled, as though he personally had been responsible for producing a lusty child. ‘He may be small, but there’s no mistaking those lungs - he could become an opera singer with a pair like that!’

‘He’s certainly going to be a six-footer,’ Rita said, reading the tape measure she was placing from the top of the baby’s head to between his heels. ‘He measures fifty-eight centimetres. That’s nearly twenty-three inches.’

‘Really?’ Witherton went over to look. ‘That’s quite unusual,’ he told Alec. ‘The average is more like twenty.’

‘And just look at those eyes!’ Lisa thought she could hear admiration in Rita’s tone. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was focusing from about four feet. Looking me over.’

Lisa lay back, watching, listening. They weren’t paying any further attention to her. They’d delivered her safely; they were now busy with the new baby, absorbed in their own world. Whatever problems
they
had anticipated hadn’t appeared. But she knew there was more to it than that - another human being more. She could feel further life stirring within her: a sudden turn as, she imagined, the second baby engaged his head in the birth canal.

Was
it another baby? Or was she simply so determined to have twins it was a sort of pseudo pre-birth experience?

‘The bump doesn’t seem to have gone down that much,’ she tried out softly.

‘What, dear? I’ll bring your baby over in a minute.’

‘There still seems to be quite a bump,’ Lisa repeated, raising her voice a decibel. Her unsteady nervous quiver confirmed for Lisa that she was still convinced she was about to produce a second infant. Was she courting disaster with her obsession?

‘Just extra fluid, I expect. There did seem to be a lot of that.’ The midwife glanced at the new mother over her shoulder, her tone bored and long-suffering. ‘You’ll get rid of it in no time.’ She brought the baby over and patted Lisa’s shoulder. ‘What are you going to call him?’

‘Janus,’ Alec announced. He walked after Rita, peering at his new son. ‘He’s even smaller than Seb was.’ He smiled indulgently at Lisa. ‘My wife goes in for small babies,’ he explained to Witherton, ‘but then she’s quite a dainty little thing herself.’

‘A cup of tea would be most – ’

‘The second one’s coming,’ Lisa gasped, bearing down. She’d been right, and this time even the medical profession couldn’t dismiss what was happening.

Rita, caught in the act of sitting down, stood up again. ‘Second one?’ She laughed. ‘Doesn’t like to give us time to get our breath back, eh, doctor? It’s just the afterbirth, my dear.’

Witherton had approached Lisa rapidly. One last strong push and the baby’s head crowned.

‘It
is
another one! My goodness!’ The doctor was clearly delighted. ‘And you had no idea, of course.’

The actual birth, quicker even than the first, appeared almost ridiculously easy to Lisa. The child’s first cry was almost as powerful as his brother’s. Was this child also healthy? Why hadn’t Meg said how easy it would be? Thinking back, Lisa found it even harder to understand the shifting of Meg’s eyes, her reserve.

‘Twin boys! Isn’t that lovely. And another respectable five and a half pounder!’ the midwife announced, awe creeping through her voice. ‘Fancy that. Normally one twin’s quite a bit smaller than the other.’

‘Looks like another long one, too.’

‘Not quite such piercing eyes,’ Rita said slowly, thoughtfully. ‘That’s the only difference I can see.’

Alec was standing by Janus in his carrycot, staring from one new arrival to the other. Lisa could not see his expression, could only guess at his reactions. He’d only wanted two children, after all.

‘We could call this one Jeffrey,’ she heard him say, gruff and low. ‘My father’s name was Jeffrey.’

Lisa, almost delirious with the fact that she had, indeed, given birth to twins, decided not to make an issue of the name. She didn’t care, she had two more healthy sons, and the four leaf clover had come through with flying colours.

‘Where on earth shall we put him?’ Alec now wanted to know. ‘We haven’t made any sort of provision for two babies.’

‘Don’t worry about that.’ Rita was cleaning the second infant’s nostrils. ‘Just pull out a drawer from a chest, that’ll do nicely.’

‘There’s all the rest of Meg’s old gear in the airing cupboard,’ Lisa told them, feeling smug. ‘Including another carrycot.’

She saw Alec’s mouth drop open, then close without comment.

‘All nice and warm. I asked her to let me have her old things, just in case we ran short of anything.’

‘I suppose,’ Dr Witherton mentioned to Alec, dropping his voice, ‘your wife resisted the idea of twins. Many women simply cannot cope with that. It’s only natural. It
is
a great deal of extra work.’ He smiled benignly at Lisa. ‘I’ll be very glad to counsel you. Mother and child care is my speciality, you know.’ He turned to look as Rita brought in the second carrycot. ‘And we’ll make sure you have sufficient help.’

‘I think the scan showed only one – ’ Alec began.

‘Not possible.’ The doctor brushed him aside. ‘Fraternal twins are conceived within days of each other. Identical twins do often develop later, but not as late as after a scan. The embryo can only split within two weeks of fertilisation. Some sort of mix-up in the notes, I expect.’ He smiled again. ‘I’m afraid getting the paper-work right is one of our greatest difficulties.’

He evidently misinterpreted the slight dismay on Lisa’s face. ‘Don’t distress yourself, my dear.’ Witherton patted her arm. ‘They’re definitely yours, whether the paper-work was right or wrong!’ He laughed uproariously.

‘There’s still something moving,’ Lisa said nervously, turning to the midwife for support.

Even Rita’s impatience was held in check this time. ‘Don’t worry, love. That really is the afterbirth. And you’ll lose that little bit of flab before you know it, when you get your muscle tone back.’

This time, Lisa thought grimly to herself, she was quite keen that the medical profession should have produced an accurate diagnosis. She was perfectly content with twins.

‘They
are
both all right, are they?’ she heard Alec ask. He sounded anxious, even a trifle suspicious.

‘Beautiful little boys, perfectly formed in every way.’

‘No defects?’

‘Ten fingers and ten toes, all present and correct,’ Rita put Alec down, back to her old form.

‘I’m being serious.’

Witherton took over. ‘As far as I can tell they’re completely normal. They’re both unusually long, and the first one has a remarkable grip. Their eyes are extraordinarily well developed. The first little lad almost seems to be focusing at a range of distances, even at this stage. No need to worry, Mr Wildmore. You have a pair of strong healthy sons. You’re very lucky.’

They were identical: big ears, wide mouths, and the silken fuzz of premature hair so fair as to be almost invisible, deep frown lines across their foreheads. And there was a tiny mark, right on their lower left earlobe, identically present on them both.

‘No need to check whether there’s one afterbirth or two,’ Dr Witherton laughed, ‘we know these two are monozygotes - identicals. Have you seen those little indentations on their ears? Exactly the same, in exactly the same spot!’

How would she and Alec be able to tell them apart, Lisa wondered, rather vaguely, to herself. Perhaps it was just tiredness which gave her the uncomfortable, almost unnerving, feeling that there was no difference between them whatsoever. It was positively uncanny.

Alec had, by now, put the second baby in one of Meg’s cots and marked it ‘Jeffrey the Second’.

‘Could you bring them a little nearer?’ Lisa’s eyes, sharpened by motherhood, had noted a difference after all. The firstborn, Janus, had a somewhat pointed skull. ‘Janus has a differently shaped head,’ she announced triumphantly.

‘That’s temporary,’ Witherton pointed out. ‘The head is very soft, you see. The bones aren’t closed. The top - the fontanel - is open, to avoid damage when pushing through the birth canal. The second twin has obviously profited from his brother’s work and was able to slide through with his head much squarer.’

‘It’ll sort itself out quite quickly,’ the midwife told them. ‘You can’t rely on that staying different for more than a few weeks at most.’

Lisa, content, had exactly what she’d wished for - two more sons, Janus and Jeffrey. Both strong, thin bodies, limpid blue eyes, squat noses. She would sort out how to tell them apart another time. An overwhelming sense of motherhood, of flesh of her flesh, flowed through her, warmed pink into her cheeks.

‘Could you bring the cots right up to the bed?’ she asked Rita. ‘I’d like one on either side.’

The midwife moved the cots without a murmur. ‘They’ll be with you for life,’ she said. ‘You’ll never be free of them.’

Lisa stretched out sensitive fingertips, felt the silky fuzz on her newborns’ heads, pulled Janus to her and brushed her lips over his eyes. They opened wide, brilliant, aware. A surge of happiness brought tears to Lisa’s eyes. She put him back and picked Jeffrey up, snuggled him to her breast, oblivious to the rest of the world.

‘Right, then, mother, you’re on your own,’ Rita announced, packed up and ready to leave.

Lisa smiled, nodded at her absently.

‘They look just like Seb when he was born,’ Lisa mentioned to her husband as soon as they were alone.

‘I know,’ he laughed. ‘We seem to have reproduced ourselves in a set of three.’

‘By the time they’re ten or eleven people might think they’re triplets.’ It just slipped out, as though pre-programmed. Lisa had no idea why she felt impelled to talk of triplets.

‘The doctors could be wrong again,’ she worried, keeping Alec from going to bed. ‘That bulge has not gone down at all. I
might
be carrying another one.’

He laughed at her. ‘Honestly, Lisa. You really are taking this obsession of yours too far. First you imagine you’re...’ He stopped and looked at her again, and frowned. ‘I suppose they did mix up the scan, or misread it, or something,’ he finally conceded. ‘Though I can’t see how. After all, we both saw the one baby.’

‘They can’t have it both ways, Alec. Either they didn’t interpret the scan properly - and we simply allowed them to do it for us - or the foetus split later.’

‘Or they were lying in such a way that one completely obscured the other,’ Alec said gently. ‘That could account for it.’

‘I thought of that as well,’ she smiled at him. ‘Perhaps that explains it.’ She sat up straighter in the bed. She felt exhilarated, unwilling to go to sleep. ‘I did think that tiresome Parslow was holding something back. Perhaps he saw some sort of shadowing.’

She hoped that’s what it was. Instinct told her there was more to it than that, that Parslow had identified something, but hadn’t recognised its significance. But still - so what? She had her twins, healthy and strong. Nothing else mattered.

‘D’you really think you might be carrying another baby? Is it possible for one to be born later?’

‘I looked it up when I was doing my researches,’ Lisa explained. ‘It’s happened in the past. Quite rarely, of course, but twins have been born one or two weeks apart. If that can happen with twins, presumably it can also happen with triplets.’

Alec wasn’t smiling now. ‘I certainly hope you’ve got that wrong,’ he said. ‘We planned a family of two.’

You may have, Lisa thought coldly to herself. I planned on rather more.

CHAPTER 7

Lisa was lying on the couch in her conservatory, revelling in the luxury of having some time entirely to herself. The twins were sleeping in their prams beside her, and Seb was still at Meg’s. She had, she thought, about half an hour before he was due back.

‘Don’t you at least need a home help?’ Alec had nagged at Lisa several times in the last few days.

‘I’m managing extremely well,’ she’d snapped at him, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. ‘Rita gives the babies their bath, and I don’t want anyone else around them, spreading germs. Lucky it’s such torpid weather; I don’t even need to dress them most of the time. And God bless Pampers!’

Help, Lisa felt, meant someone constantly about, someone she’d feel obliged to talk to, someone who’d want to chat over coffee and biscuits, require regular cups of tea. Lisa preferred her own way of coping. She knew that Meg managed a much larger family
and
her chickens and goats. For the moment Lisa wanted as little interference as she could get away with. There was a sense, she realised vaguely, of not wanting to be spied on.

Alec’s returning interest in her body was a different issue. Something impelled her to try to keep him away for the time being, though why she felt this she couldn’t really understand. There was, after all, no longer any reason for it. She shelved the problem neatly by insisting he help her with the two o’clock morning feed. As she’d worked out, that knocked him out.

In any case he wasn’t at home all that often. The launch of Multiplier, due around the time of the twins’ birthday, had unexpectedly been postponed. The delay had infuriated Alec. All his hard work, all the time he’d spent, were wasted. Flaxton, overwhelmed with pre launch orders of what promised to be an even more commercially important fertiliser than Doubler, needed Alec’s presence both in Bristol and in London.

‘And d’you really have to go on wearing that awful gear?’ Alec had demanded several times, exasperated.

For some reason she could not explain even to herself Lisa continued to wear her maternity clothes. The bump, she had to admit when she examined her body in the bath, though marginally there, was flattening rapidly. Was she disturbed, suffering from post-partum depression? Did her conviction that another child would soon appear mean some sort of mental illness? She’d heard of women becoming psychotic after childbirth. Was that why she was so irritable with Alec, so on edge? Perhaps she’d ask Meg for some of the valerian tea she’d always sworn by.