Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (7 page)

       He had turned and left abruptly and had not spoken to her again in the intervening years. Sometimes he thought he saw her watching him warily, and each time he glared at her and hurried away.

       C-l had been like his own child. He had watched her develop, watched her learn to walk, talk, feed herself. His child, his and Celia's. C-2 had been much the same. A twin, somewhat smaller, identical nevertheless. But C-3 had been different. No, he corrected: his perceptions of her had been different. When he looked at her he saw Celia, and he ached.

       He had grown chilled on the ridge, and he realized that the sun had set long ago and the lanterns had been lighted below. The scene looked pretty, like a sentimental card titled "Rural Life." The large farmhouse with glowing windows, the blackness of the barn; closer, the hospital and staff building with the cheerful yellow lights in the windows. Stiffly he descended into the valley again. He had missed dinner, but he was not hungry.

       "David!" One of the youngest boys, a Five, called to him. David didn't know whom he had been cloned from. There were people he hadn't known when they were that young. He stopped and the boy ran to him, then past him, calling as he went, "Dr. Walt wants you."

       Walt was in his room at the hospital. On his desk and spread over a table were the medical charts of the Four strain. "I've finished," Walt said. "You'll have to double-check, of course."

       David scanned the final lines quickly, H-4 and D4. "Have you told the two boys yet?"

       "I told them all. They understand." Walt rubbed his eyes. "They have no secrets from each other," he said. "They understand about the girls' ovulation periods, about the necessity of keeping records. If any of those girls can conceive, they'll do it." His voice was almost bitter when he looked up at David. "They're taking it over completely from now on."

       "What do you mean?"

       "W-one made a copy of my records for his files. He'll follow it through."

       David nodded. The elders were being excluded again. The time was coming when the elders wouldn't be needed for anything—extra mouths to feed, nothing else. He sat down and for a long time he and Walt sat in companionable silence.

       In class the following day nothing appeared to be different. No pair bonding, David thought cynically. They accepted being mated as casually as the cattle did. If there was any jealousy of the two fertile males, it was well hidden. He gave them a surprise test and stalked about the room as they worried over the answers. They would all pass, he knew; not only pass, but do exceptionally well. They had motivation. They were learning in their teens what he hadn't grasped in his twenties. There were no educational frills, no distractions. Work in the classroom, in the fields, in the kitchens, in the laboratories. They worked interchangeably, incessantly—the first really classless society. He pulled his thoughts back when he realized that they were finishing already. He had allowed an hour, and they were finishing in forty minutes; slightly longer for the Fives, who, after all, were two years younger than the Fours.

       The two oldest Ds headed for the laboratory after class, and David followed them. They were talking earnestly until he drew near. He remained in the laboratory for fifteen minutes of silent work, then left. Outside the door he paused and once more could hear the murmur of quiet voices. Angrily he tramped down the hallway.

       In Walt's office he raged, "Damn it, they're up to something! I can smell it."

       Walt regarded him with a detached thoughtfulness. David felt helpless before him. There was nothing he could point to, nothing he could attach significance to, but there was a feeling, an instinct, that would not be quieted.

       "All right," David said, almost in desperation. "Look at how they took the test results. Why aren't the boys jealous? Why aren't the girls making passes at the two available studs?"

       Walt shook his head.

       "I don't even know what they're doing in the lab anymore," David said. "And Harry has been relegated to caretaker for the livestock." He paced the room in frustration. "They're taking over."

       "We knew they would one day," Walt reminded him gently.

       "But there are only seventeen Fives. Eighteen Fours. Out of the lot they might get six or seven fertile ones. With a decreased life expectancy. With an increased chance of abnormality. Don't they know that?"

       "David, relax. They know all that. They're living it. Believe me, they know." Walt stood up and put his arm about David's shoulders. "We've done it, David. We made it happen. Even if there are only three fertile girls now, they could have up to thirty babies, David. And the next generation will have more who will be fertile. We have done it, David. Let them carry it now if they want to."

       By the end of summer two of the Four-strain girls were pregnant. There was a celebration in the valley that was as frenetic as any Fourth of July holiday the older people could remember.

       "You might have to deliver those babies come spring," Walt said, grinning. "Might start a class in delivery procedures. Waltthree is ready, I guess."

       "We'll manage," David said. "Don't worry about it. I expect you'll be there."

       "Maybe. Maybe." Walt closed his eyes for a moment, and without opening them said, "You were right about them, David. They're up to something."

       David leaned forward and unconsciously lowered his voice. "What do you know?"

       Walt looked at him and shook his head slightly. "About as much as you did when you first came to me in early summer. No more than that. David, find out what they're doing in the lab. And find out what they think about the pregnant girls. Those two things. Soon." Turning away from David, he added, "Harry tells me they have devised a new immersion suspension system that doesn't require the artificial placentas. They're adding them as fast as they can." He sighed. "Harry has cracked, David. Senile or crazy. Wone can't do anything for him."

       David stood up, but hesitated. "Walt, I think it's time you told me. What's wrong with you?"

       "Get out of here, damn it," Walt said, but the timbre of his voice was gone, the force that should have propelled David from the room was not there. For a moment Walt looked helpless and vulnerable, but deliberately he closed his eyes, and this time his voice was a growl. "Get out. I'm tired. I need rest."

       David walked along the river for a long time. He hadn't been in the lab for weeks, months perhaps. No one needed him in the lab any longer. He felt in the way there. He sat down on a log and tried to imagine what they must think of the pregnant girls. They would revere them. The bearers of life, so few among so many. Was Walt afraid a matriarchy of some sort would develop? It could. They had discussed that years ago, and then dismissed it as one of the things they could not control. A new religion might come about, but even if the elders knew it was happening, what could they do about it? What should they do about it? He threw twigs into the smooth water, which moved without a ripple, all of a piece on that calm, cold night, and he knew that he didn't care.

       Wearily he got up and started to walk again, very cold suddenly. The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen.

       The hospital wing where W-l and W-2 were working now was ablaze with lights, and David turned toward it. As he neared the hospital he began to hurry; there were too many lights, and he could see people moving behind the windows, too many people, elders.

       Margaret met him in the lobby. She was weeping silently, oblivious of the tears that ran erratically down her cheeks. She wasn't yet fifty, but she looked older than that; she looked like an elder, David thought with a pang. When had they started calling themselves that? Was it because they had to differentiate somehow, and none of them had permitted himself to call the others by what they were? Clones! he said to himself vehemently. Clones! Not quite human. C
lones.

       "What happened, Margaret?" She clutched his arm but couldn't speak, and he looked over her head at Warren, who was pale and shaking. "What happened?"

       "Accident down at the mill. Jeremy and Eddie are dead. A couple of the young people were hurt. Don't know how bad. They're in there." He pointed toward the operatingroom wing. "They left Clarence. Just walked away and left him. We brought him up, but I don't know." He shook his head. "They just left him there and brought up their own."

       David ran down the hall toward the emergency room. Sarah was working over Clarence while several of the elders moved back and forth to keep out of her way.

       David breathed a sigh of relief. Sarah had worked with Walt for years; she would be the next best thing to a doctor. He flung his coat off and hurried to her. "What can I do?"

       "I'll come now," he said, and the small group opened for him. He didn't look again at David after dismissing him with one glance.

       David followed him to the emergency room and watched his deft hands as he felt Clarence's body, tested for reflexes, probed confidently along the spinal column. "I'll operate," he said, and that same confidence came through with the words. He motioned for S-l and W-2 to bring Clarence, and left once more.

       At the arrival of W-l, Sarah had moved back out of the way, and now she slowly turned and stripped off the gloves that she had put on in preparing to stitch up Clarence's wound. Warren watched the two young people cover Clarence and strap him securely, then wheel him out the door and down the hall. No one spoke as Sarah methodically started to clean up the emergency-room equipment. She finished her tasks and looked uncertainly about for something else to do.

       "Will you take Margaret home and put her to bed?" David asked, and she looked at him gratefully and nodded. When she was gone David turned to Warren. "Someone has to see to the bodies, clean them up, prepare them for burial."

       "Sure, David," Warren said in a heavy voice. "I'll get Avery and Sam. We'll take care of it. I'll just go get them now and we'll take care of it. I'll . . . David, what have we done?" And his voice that had been too heavy, too dead, became almost shrill. "What are they?"

       "What do you mean?"

       "When the accident happened, I was down to the mill. Having a bite with Avery. He was just finishing up down there. Section of the floor caved in, you know that old part where we should have put in a new floor last year, or year before. It gave way somehow. And suddenly there they were, the kids. Out of nowhere. No one had time to go get them, to yell for them to come running. Nothing, but there they were. They got their own two out of there and up to the hospital like fire was on their tails, David. Out of nowhere."

       He looked at David with a fearful expression, and when David simply shrugged, he shook his head and left the emergency room, looking down the hall first, a quick, involuntary glance, as if to make sure that they would permit him to leave.