The Only Ones (7 page)

I looked at Rauden too. He was rolling his eyes like Henry.

She just ignored him. “Do you know what I asked this rube to do?”

I didn’t know.

“To make a new child from what remained of my last one’s skin, and this child would be gene for gene Madhur’s living replica. Did Rauden tell you that?”

I heard him say that name. The gene for gene thing, maybe not.

“Did he say some would call it a crime against nature?”

“Rini, I don’t think this is absolutely necessary.”

“What if it is a crime against nature? What if nature committed a crime against me? Four daughters! One husband! I say, go bury two daughters who are so young they cannot even speak. Then tell me what is ethical!”

I shot a really fast look at Rauden. He shook his head.

“Do you know what this rube said? He said, to do what I had in mind, it
is
unethical. He said I am just asking a child to be born who will die like the rest from one Pandy or another.”

I was so surprised he cares if it’s ethical, I did look right at Rauden. Nobody else seemed to notice. They were looking at each other. Suddenly, they were both smiling. Rauden was saying, “She drove a hard bargain though.”

Rini explained, “I was mad with grief.”

Now it was like a song, where everyone knows the parts before they sing. Rauden went, “I asked her to consider something radically different. I said, Rini, it’s not what we discussed, but at least you will end up with a child who at least has a goddamn chance of staying alive.”

“At first I refused. This time it was me who said it was unethical.”

I remembered that.

“But then I changed my mind. And I will tell you why. You see, while we discussed all this by phone and message, I was in Sydney, Australia, and then in Vancouver, in quarantine, watching on TV, like everyone, the spread of Mumbai, which everyone says is a variant of that terrible Luzon virus that killed my family. I watched on the News the bodies of corpses, and some of them were tiny children, babies, and I will tell you, I tore my hair, I scratched my cheeks! Do you know why I did these things?”

I said as quiet as I could, “Mad with grief?”

I don’t know if she even heard. “It was because I thought,” now she pointed a finger straight up, “whatever I do, this terrible disease will kill whatever child I have! It is my Fate! My Fate to be the mother of a child who dies of it. As Luzon Third killed the original Madhur, so Mumbai would kill the new child I would make from Madhur’s skin, which would be gene for gene her living replica. It is my Fate that no child I will ever have will stay alive.

“And then I thought,” and she grabbed me, “what is Fate?”

She kept grabbing me, so I said I didn’t know. It turns out I was right!

Because Rini said, “Nobody knows! Fate
is
unknown. It is unknown until it happens. Then, when it happens, you say, that was Fate. Fate is what happened. So then I thought, if I change what happens, that will change my Fate. I will change my child’s Fate to someone else’s Fate, who would stay alive. If I was ready to be unethical with my own daughter’s skin, why not with someone else’s daughter’s skin?”

I forgot not to look at Rauden. I looked at him and asked, “The child won’t be her daughter?”

“No, no, no!” said Rauden. “She means you.
You’re
someone else’s daughter.”

Rini just went on, “I do not want a genius or a beauty star! She could be tall or short. Dark or fair. Smart or dim. All I want is one child who will stay alive. Is it so much to ask? So you must tell me,” she told me, “what do you think of that?”

I said, “Am I a Sylvain hardy?”

Rini went stiff. “Why bring this up now?”

I said, “Are their eggs subpar?”

Rauden started to laugh and laugh and Rini to weep and weep so hard I wished I never said anything. “You must tell her,” she gasped. “This is not some cow or pig or bird or treefrog. This is not tissue in a jar. This is a human being.”

“Yes. Well!” Rauden cleared his throat. “It’s not so much your,” cough, cough, “eggs we would be working with.”

I looked back and forth between them.

Rini wiped her eyes and told Rauden, “You must explain.”

Rauden ran his hands through his hair. He cleared his throat again. “Well! Normally—if anything can be called normal any more—when the reproductive product is mixed in a dish, male and female, the female product, well, the solo, the egg, contains,” he coughed, “genetic information. Genes! DNA! Like letters—A, C, G, T, which spell words—which tell the baby what it is. Through protein! The male solo too, sperm. Each gives half the genetic information, half the letters, the words. But we have something else in mind. We don’t use the male solo. We don’t use the sperm.” And he looked at me and waited, so I will have time to get what he said.

Which I didn’t.

So he just stood up and walked around the room. “You may well ask—will this child be half a child?”

I’m not going to ask that.

But Rauden bends over where I’m sitting and says, quiet, “It will be a whole child.”

They both got really quiet now.

Then he takes a deep and noisy breath. Then he starts talking really fast. “We empty out that egg until it has nothing in it. Well! Mitochondria—which arguably makes the whole thing happen. Well, cytoplasm.”

Rini is going, “Rauden, that is beside the point.”

So he leans back and goes on, “How will this child know who to be, then?”

Ok.

Rauden opens both puffy hands wide, like here is the answer. “It will simply take its cues from somewhere else, not eggs, not sperm, but a single cell of a complete human being from, say, the skin, or breast—what we call soma! From a single cell from one Donor—say, you—from the nucleus of that cell, actually—which is the center, or boss, or instructions—the code—well! DNA—of that somatic cell from the skin, or breast—”

“Rauden!”

“Yes! And all that information from the single nucleus of that somatic cell will go into that egg which has—for the purposes of this discussion—nothing in it. And it will tell the child who it will be. Do you get that, I?”

Now Rini says, to me, “You must tell us, Inez.”

This is not regular intake. This is like a game, where they know the answer, and I must guess it. I take a few deep breaths like Rauden told Delmore to. Then I give it a shot. “You want me to provide the egg with nothing in it.”

They both look at each other. Then Rini sat up tall, like she is proud. “I will provide the egg with nothing in it.”

So try again. “Bernie will patch me up, though it is risky, Rini will change her mind again, and I’m the Host.”

Rauden just looked at me this time, hard, like, where did that come from, before he answered, “She wants a virgin Host. God help us all.”

I’m running out of answers here. “I don’t provide anything, but will still be paid.”

Rauden coughed, the way he does. “You provide the soma, actually,” he said.

Nobody said anything.

The Alert buzzed. Nobody went to pick it up. So I go, “Like the pigeon for Larraine?”

Rauden seems stunned again, like something hit him on the head. Finally he goes, “Well, yes! You could say that.” Then he adds, “Like Daisy too.”

Wait.

Rini said, “People will say this child is you.”

I start to think I heard of this.

“Rini, the child won’t be her. That’s a physical impossibility.”

“The child will look exactly like her.”

Maybe I saw it in a cartoon.

“Well, so do twins. Take Henry and me. We even shared the same environmental factors in our upbringing and you know he’s not me.”

“You must tell Inez what that means.”

“Well! Yes!” He mops his sweat off with a sleeve. “The environmental factors are—well! What happens in someone’s life. It’s someone’s life, but—not the kind the Knights are on about—it’s not a
thing.
Well—neither is Life. But environmental factors can legally be bought and sold.” He seemed to have trouble following himself here.

I go, “You want to make a clone from me.”

So now it’s like they are both stunned, like what fell on their heads is a heavy box. They are never going to talk again, they are so stunned.

“Well!” Rauden gets out. “You can call it that if you want. We prefer SCNT. Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer.”

I look at both of them, like, that’s the answer?

“You could just say Transfer,” he goes, “if it’s simpler.”

“Clone sounds so negative,” goes Rini.

“And then—we could go to jail. Or worse.”

But Rini shut him up. “It does not matter what you call it. What matters is how Inez feels about it.”

Not this again.

She pulls me around by my shoulders so I have to look right in her face. “You must tell me how
you
feel. Because there will be foolish people who will tell you she is you.”

“For God’s sake, Rini! Nobody’s going to know! They’d have to see them in the same room, side by side.”

But Rini would not let me go. “How will you feel, if they say the child is you?”

Man! How do I know? But she is not going to let me go till I come up with something, so I try. “I would feel, will I still be paid?”

Rini let go of me so fast I almost fell. She sank back on the couch. She looked loose and floppy, like an old rag. “Does this girl think only about money? Has she no self-esteem? No character? Has she no feelings at all?”

I’m never saying anything again! Every time I say anything, it is a problem. Even Rauden’s eyes are closed.

Finally Rini whispered, and it is like a hiss, “Why do you do this? Why do you treat your life like something that can be bought and sold? New Life labs—my God! Will you do
anything
for money?”

Well, Rini knew more than me about Fate, but how it looked, she was a little challenged when it came to girls like me. But remember when I said she was a part of it? And I don’t mean mito-whatever or even money. She was like an environmental factor. And I will tell you this. I never met an environmental factor like her. I did need the money, but I never gave any thought before why I do these things? I gave it now.

“I like to see what happens,” I told Rini.

And I could see her eyes change when I said that, like, would someone do these terrible things just to see what happens? Then they change again, like, ok. There are worse things. “In school,” I told Rini, “one of the Sisters said I could of passed, if I did the work.”

“She gets it, Rini. She gets more than she shows,” Rauden said.

But Rini got something else. She burst into tears and pulled me to her, right where her breasts were large and warm and damp under her dress, gasping, “She wants me to know her good points, in case my child is her!”

Well, I’m not even sure that’s why I said it. I don’t know why I said it. But I’m glad I said it if it worked for her.

I just know when Rini pulled back, and I could breathe, she looked down and said, “You must think about it and say is there any part you do not understand.”

And I did think about it. Hard. Then I go, “If we have the same gene for gene, you know, DNA. If somebody runs her pure code ID, will it come up,
Subject: I Kissena Fardo. Origins: unknown?”

Now Rini and Rauden are looking at each other the way Rauden and Henry did. Do sofas think?

Finally Rauden said, “It can be a problem. Henry and I have to deal with that sometimes. You can usually talk your way out of it. The conventional ID swipe is less of a problem. Henry will fix that when he rigs up her ID. Why do you ask?”

“I got a way to bump stuff off I could show Rini.”

Now they are both staring at me.

So I just say, “That I heard.”

Finally Rauden says, very polite, “Inez.” He calls me that in front of Rini, like he doesn’t want her to hear him call me I. “Will you come in the next room for a moment?” We get to the Box Room and, remember how Rini hissed? He hisses, “Did you bump something off your files?”

I shook my head. “Lonnie Vertov did.”

“Can you call it back?”

“It doesn’t all come back.”

“You sit down at the goddamn keyboard and show me how to call your files back. You fucking show me now.”

I sat down at the keyboard, swiped in my ID, and punched in a reverse code I saw Lonnie Vertov use.

“But!” Rauden’s gasping, when files start coming on the screen. “You’re nineteen years old! You were born summer of ’40, right in the middle of the goddamn Big One!” He leans over me and starts punching in keys. Next thing I knew, up popped a bunch of test sites from—“Dear God! You have a track record!”—’52, so what’s it going to be but clinic tests the Vargas brothers ran after virgin Cures, but before he can print anything, the screen goes ballistic, then blacks out.

Rini is saying, from the other room, “She wants this to work! Even after she is paid.” She is totally sobbing.

Rauden looks like his face is going to fall off. I mean, he hardly slept for two months, now the system crashed, and, well, if he accessed my test records to start, how much more could he charge? Fifteen percent? He probably already cut the deal.

But he pulled himself up straight and turned right around in his chair. He pulled his face right up. And where he sometimes was a mess, like slush, now he was hard, like, I don’t know, plexiglass.

“It goddamn
will
work,” he said.

2 T
HE
W
ORK

THERE WAS THIS HORROR SHOW CALLED
THEM
that came up a few years later. I used to watch it even though it was really stupid. Well, guess who
Them
is supposed to be? Clones. No one but Rauden and us ever said SCNT or Transfer or any of that. In this stupid Horror show, how you make a clone, you drop product in a dish and bingo, it’s a clone. Well, it doesn’t work like that. It usually doesn’t work period. Let alone, first try. So try again. Still doesn’t work. You just got to keep trying and trying. Sometimes it never works.

And that’s true even the regular way. The regular way got all kind of problems. That’s why Bernie does such good business. He sells product that doesn’t work good any more—male, female, pre-pandemic like the dickhead clients insist on. Plus for an extra fee, he will hook you up with a virgin Host. Though it is pretty hard to find one who wants the work.