Swans and Klons (2 page)

“The first time I ever saw pictures of her sculptures, I felt a special connection with them,” Rubric said. “Then we saw some of them in person on the annual trip, and I felt it even more. I was almost jealous, like, why didn’t
I
make them? So I always wondered if she was the same Jeepie Type as me. I looked her up, and she looks just like me, only old.”

“She sounds nice, dear,” Nanny Klon said. “But don’t get your hopes up too much. I’m sure whoever they pick will be just right for you.”

“Does that really always happen?” Rubric asked. “You’ve seen lots of girls get matched when they turned sixteen.”

“They always get the right mentor,” Nanny Klon said.

That wasn’t really the same as getting the mentor you want, Rubric thought.

“Okay, thanks,” she said, even though Nanny Klon had been no help. As a little child she had been trained to be polite to the Klons.
Just because they’re not human is no reason they shouldn’t be treated with respect
, she had been lectured.

“I can understand why you’re nervous,” Nanny Klon said. “This is a big moment in your life. You’re growing up—why, you’re almost a Panna, not a child anymore! What about Salmon Jo? Is she hoping for someone specific?”

“Of course,” Rubric said. “Not a specific person, but she wants to be matched with a scientist who’s studying Cretinous Males from the olden days. You know how she is—she’s dead set on it.”

“Her Jeepie Type sometimes has trouble being matched with a mentor.”

“I never heard that,” Rubric said. “What makes you think so?”

“I’ve seen so many girls over the years in Yellow Dorm. Her Jeepie Type is complicated. They have a hard time with certain things.”

Rubric was surprised Nanny Klon would tell her this. “What kind of things?”

“Oh, that won’t happen to Salmon Jo,” Nanny Klon said. “She has a good head on her shoulders. And she has you to look out for her!”

“I definitely keep Salmon Jo out of trouble,” Rubric said. “Oh, I almost forgot. There was something that looked like…paper? in one of your drawers.”

An expression Rubric couldn’t classify passed quickly across Nanny Klon’s face.

“Who are Bloom and Shine?” Rubric asked. “Why do you have their messages?”

Nanny Klon smiled gently. “Is that all? Why, I’m Bloom.”

“What do you mean?”

“We Klons have names too. So we can tell each other apart. There are lots of Nanny Klons in this city, even just in this academy. How would anyone know which one was me? And don’t forget, when I was a child I wasn’t a Nanny Klon yet.”

Rubric never saw Klon children; they were kept at their own academies. “I never thought about that before,” she said.

“You never asked before,” Nanny Klon said. “Now, you run along. I bet Salmon Jo is pulsing you right now. You should be out enjoying yourself, not stuck with your boring, old Nanny Klon.”

Rubric walked down the stairs, thinking about Klons having names. Some people gave individual names to their personal Klons, but Rubric had always thought it was kind of affected. Bloom and Shine were strange names. They were nouns, like a name should be, but they were also verbs, which was not normal.

Her handheld screen pulsed in the pocket of her tunic. It was Salmon Jo, asking her to meet at the VR arcade. Rubric left the dorm and cut across the lawn in front of the stately yellow-brick building that had been her home for four years. Girls always took this shortcut, and the grass had worn away. Everything about the campus—the seven dormitories, the centuries-old classroom buildings, the refectory, the ivy-covered library—was so familiar to her, that looking around gave her a tired feeling. She couldn’t wait until she was matched with her mentor and allowed to leave campus and roam the city whenever she wanted.

A Gardener Klon had parked her tiny electric car by the main green and was pulling out rakes. Rubric realized something was still nagging her about her conversation with Nanny Klon. It wasn’t until she had crossed the main green on the flagstone-tiled path that she figured it out. Nanny Klon hadn’t entirely answered her question. Who was Shine?

The VR arcade was right behind the refectory where the girls ate all their meals. Rubric was startled to see so few people in the arcade. There were a few young kids at the driving game and the flying game. But there was no one waiting in line at
Who Shall Be My Schatzie?
The Game. That was only the best, most popular game ever. Then Rubric heard shouts and laughter, and she saw a crowd in the far corner where the boring educational games were. All the girls were clustered around one game, jostling each other to see. Had everyone gone veruckt?

As Rubric got closer, the situation began to make sense. There were about thirty girls pushing and shoving to see the display. The game was called Parade of Perfection, and it was supposed to teach you about notable women of every Jeepie Type, from the earliest days of Society through the present. Ordinarily, it would be stultifyingly dull. But not the day before you were matched with your Jeepie Similar mentor! Some clever girl had realized they could use this game to figure out who they might be matched with. Rubric grinned and shook her head. She got herself a frozen lemonade from the drinks dispenser and went to join the others.

Her friend Banner had the controls. Banner was tossing her head to get her wavy black hair out of her eyes. The display flashed dizzyingly through graphics of different Pannas who all looked kind of alike. It came to rest on one, a woman who resembled Banner but was older, sophisticated looking, and had glam black hair down to her knees.

“I bet she’s the one!” Banner cried. “She lives in the city! Look, it says she has a pet leopard with a diamond collar!”

Rubric tapped Banner on the shoulder.

“Hey, Ru!” Banner said. “Guess what, that artist you keep talking about is in here!” She manipulated the controls and whizzed through the menus until she came to a graphic of Panna Stencil Pavlina, the sculptor Rubric was hoping would be her mentor. The older woman looked haughty and overbearing.

“This is what she looked like when she was in academy,” Banner said, clicking on something. Another graphic leapt to the front, and Rubric caught her breath. Except for the fact that Stencil Pavlina was wearing the uniform tunic of a different academy and a hairstyle of yesteryear, it could have been a graphic of Rubric herself. Same tall, sturdy frame. Same straight brown hair, same open and direct gaze in her hazel eyes.

It made Rubric feel funny. She had always resented her ordinary and wholesome appearance. She wished she looked wan and temperamental. If only her Jeepie Type had pointy cheekbones and soulful coal-black eyes. But maybe Rubric would be able to change her appearance as much as Panna Stencil Pavlina had.

“My turn!” another girl said, pushing Banner out of the way and snatching the controls. The display flickered back to the top menu, and the music changed. “You’ve been hogging it long enough.”

Rubric couldn’t see her schatzie anywhere, but she saw her friend Filigree Sue. “Where’s Salmon Jo?” Rubric asked her. It was so loud she had to shout.

“I’m not sure,” Filigree Sue said, not flickering her gaze away from the game. “She went through that door.”

Rubric fought her way back out of the crowd. She almost made it out unscathed, but at the last minute a girl knocked her drink onto the floor. Summoning the Klon behind the counter to clean up the mess, Rubric got another frozen lemonade and opened the door in the back.

It was the room where all the circuit breakers and electrical things were. Salmon Jo’s toned runner’s legs were dangling out of one of the ceiling panels.

Rubric went over and tickled her ankle.

“Aah!” Salmon Jo shrieked. More of her slowly emerged. She jumped down, all dusty. There was some kind of gray powder in her tightly curled dark hair. Her golden eyes shone with her usual enthusiasm. “
Mmm,
can I have some of that?”

Rubric surrendered her lemonade. “What’re you doing up there?”

“It’s kind of a tunnel. I want to see where it goes, but there are so many wires in the way that it’s hard to maneuver.”

“How can you be thinking about some tunnel at a time like this?”

“Everyone is freaking out over nothing, and acting thicko,” Salmon Jo said. “I’m sure we’re all going to get exactly who we want. Why shouldn’t we?”

Her complacence was half reassuring, half annoying.

“You really think so?” Rubric asked.

“Of course. Would you give me a boost back up? I’ll be real fast.”

Rubric did, and Salmon Jo wriggled all the way up and disappeared. Suddenly, the cheerful music from the VR room stopped, and she heard a collective cry of dismay. Then the lights flickered out.

“Oops,” said Salmon Jo from the ceiling.

Chapter Two

Before she had started dating Salmon Jo, Rubric had thought there was only one problem with her life: she knew everyone. Sure, it was a close-knit community in the dorms and at the academy, but it was hard to find a schatzie. How could you get romantic about someone if you had known her since before puberty and remembered the time she threw up in the cafeteria, or how she used to pretend she was a pony? You just couldn’t. Rubric had always wanted to meet a beautiful, brooding stranger. And it had finally happened. Sort of.

She had known who Salmon Jo was. But they had always lived in different dorms and moved in separate circles. Rubric respected her in an abstract way because Salmon Jo was well-known for being a science head. Of course, science was boring, but at least the girl cared about stuff other than parties, gossip, who was whose schatzie, and what the coolest clothes were. Beyond that, she never thought about Salmon Jo at all.

Until six months ago in the Sky Room. The Sky Room was Rubric’s favorite place, even though it was just a small room on the top floor of the Rec Building. She liked it because it had so many windows and a huge skylight. Rubric liked to bring her handheld screen and draw there. It was rare for Rubric to have the room all to herself. It was funny to think now that she had actually been disappointed when Salmon Jo came in. Salmon Jo didn’t bother her, though; she just took out her own screen and started reading.

Rubric was making up a graphic novel about an airship that traveled around the world, its people living happy and fulfilled lives. It was just like real Society, except the people had to keep everything they needed on the ship. She couldn’t exactly come up with a plot, since she had made their lives perfect, so she was sketching the airship. She wanted it to be constructed of modern transluminum but to be powered like the zeppelins of the ancient past.

She had drawn two balloons filled with helium and was working on the engine, when Salmon Jo spoke.

“Excuse me, but I think you should house the engine cars outside the hull to reduce the chance that the hydrogen gets ignited by the exhaust flame or some kind of spark.”

Rubric had never even seen Salmon Jo glance up from her screen, let alone examine the drawing. For that matter, Salmon Jo was barely looking at her now. Her eyes kept flitting away. “It’s helium, not hydrogen,” Rubric said. Why was this girl criticizing her drawing? That was totally veruckt!

Salmon Jo shrugged. “Either way. I think hydrogen would give you more lift, though.”

Rubric realized the girl had understood exactly what she was drawing without having to be told. So it must be a pretty good picture. Rubric really didn’t want to have to start all over, just to put the engine cars in a different place.

“Of course, I shouldn’t just point out all the mistakes without saying what a mouthwateringly good drawing it is, but there is just one more thing. I mean it’s really lovely—”

“Oh, just spit it out,” Rubric said.

“The swimming pool. It’s a bit unrealistic. A swimming pool must weigh hundreds of tons. It would be way too heavy.”

“This is a huge ship. You can’t see the scale from the drawing.”

“It could be huge, but it still couldn’t hold that much weight.”

“I think it could,” Rubric said. If the people were going to be happy, they obviously needed a swimming pool. She sniffed and turned away from Salmon Jo.

“This is just a question of fact,” the girl persisted. “It’s not a matter of opinion.”

“There are no facts here,” Rubric said. “This is an imaginary airship we’re arguing about. I mean, the swimming pool is the least of your worries here when it comes to plausibility. But it’s my imaginary ship so I’ll have a swimming pool on it if I want to.”

She was immediately embarrassed at her own childishness. She looked over at Salmon Jo and saw that she was biting her lip to keep from laughing. Then Salmon Jo snorted, appallingly loudly.

“I’m sorry,” Salmon Jo said.

“Probably all the water would slosh out of the pool every time the airship made a hard turn,” Rubric admitted. She noticed that since the last time she’d really looked at Salmon Jo, Salmon Jo had gotten a new haircut that made her short corkscrew curls look very cute. Salmon Jo had nice eyes, a golden color that reminded Rubric of agave nectar. Salmon Jo was shorter than Rubric, but her sinewy frame and abundance of energy made her seem tall.

“Actually, I have an idea for an airship too,” Salmon Jo said. “Instead of hydrogen or helium, a vacuum would make it float. It would be shaped like a diatom.”

“A what?” Rubric asked.

“It’s a kind of phytoplankton,” Salmon Jo explained. “The kind I’m thinking of is sort of in the shape of a ribbon. Very pretty.”

Rubric wondered why she hadn’t just said the ship would be shaped like a ribbon. Who thought about the shapes of phytoplankton? And thought they were pretty? Salmon Jo, apparently. Rubric was going to ask what a phytoplankton was but thought better of it.

“The ship would require elements and sheets with tensile strength,” Salmon Jo said, warming to her subject. “Ideally, a frictionless material, which of course doesn’t actually exist. My airship might implode, but it definitely wouldn’t burn. So that would make a nice change from hydrogen.”

“I don’t understand a word you just said, except for
and
and
the
,” Rubric said.