Read Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Online
Authors: Kate Wilhelm
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #General
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (8 page)
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Several of the elders were still in the waiting room when David went there. Lucy and Vernon were sitting near the window, staring out at the black night. Since Clarence's wife died, he and Lucy had lived together, not as man and wife, but for companionship, because as children they had been as close as brother and sister, and now each needed someone to cling to. Sometimes sister, sometimes mother, sometimes daughter, Lucy had fussed over him, sewed for him, fetched and carried for him, and now, if he died, what would she do? David went to her and took her cold hand. She was very thin, with dark hair that hadn't started to gray, and deep blue eyes that used to twinkle with merriment, a long, long time ago.
"Go on home, Lucy. I'll wait, and as soon as there is anything to tell you, I promise I'll come."
She continued to stare at him. David turned toward Vernon helplessly. Vernon's brother had been killed in the accident, but there was nothing to say to him, no way to help him.
"Let her be," Vernon said. "She has to wait."
David sat down, still holding Lucy's hand. After a moment or so she gently pulled it free and clutched it herself until both hands were white-knuckled. None of the young people came near the waiting room. David wondered where they were waiting to hear about the condition of their own. Or maybe they didn't have to wait anywhere, maybe they would just know. He pushed the thought aside angrily, not believing it, not able to be rid of it. A long time later W1 entered and said to no one in particular, "He's resting. He'll sleep until tomorrow afternoon. Go on home now."
Lucy stood up. "Let me stay with him. In case he needs something, or there's a change."
"He won't be left alone," Wl said. He turned toward the door, paused and glanced back, and said to Vernon, "I'm sorry about your brother." Then he left.
Lucy stood undecided until Vernon took her arm. "I'll see you home," he said, and she nodded. David watched them leave together. He turned off the light in the waiting room and walked slowly down the hall, not planning anything, not thinking about going home, or anywhere else. He found himself outside the office that W-l used, and he knocked softly. W-1 opened the door. He looked tired, David thought, and wasn't sure that his surprise was warranted. Of course, he should be tired. Three operations. He looked like a young, tired Walt, too keyed up to go to sleep immediately, too fatigued to walk off the tension.
"Can I come in?" David asked hesitantly. Wl nodded and moved aside, and David entered. He never had been inside this office.
"Clarence will not live," Wl said suddenly, and his voice, behind David, because he had not yet moved from the door, was so like Walt's that David felt a thrill of something that might have been fear or more likely, he told himself, just surprise again. "I did what I could," Wl said. He walked around his desk and sat down.
W-l sat quietly, with none of the nervous mannerisms that Walt exhibited, none of the finger tapping that was as much a part of Walt's conversation as his words. No pulling his ears or rubbing his nose. A Walt with something missing, a dead area. Now, with fatigue drawing his face, W-1 sat unmoving, waiting patiently for David to begin, much the same way an adult might wait for a hesitant child to initiate a conversation.
"How did your people know about the accident?" David asked. "No one else knew."
W-l shrugged. A time-consumer question, he seemed to imply. "We just knew."
"What are you doing in the lab now?" David asked, and heard a strained note in his voice. Somehow he had been made to feel like an interloper; his question sounded like idle chatter.
"Perfecting the methods," W-l said. "The usual thing." And something else, David thought, but he didn't press it. "The equipment should be in excellent shape for years," he said. "And the methods, while probably not the best conceivable, are efficient enough. Why tamper now, when the experiment seems to be proving itself?" For a moment he thought he saw a flicker of surprise cross Wl's face, but it was gone too swiftly and once more the smooth mask revealed nothing.
"Remember when one of your women killed one of us a long time ago, David? Hilda murdered the child of her likeness. We all shared that death, and we realized that each of you is alone. We're not like you, David. I think you know it, but now you must accept it." He stood up. "And we won't go back to what you are.''
David stood up also, and his legs felt curiously weak. "What exactly do you mean?"
"Sexual reproduction isn't the only answer. Just because the higher organisms evolved to it doesn't mean it's the best. Each time a species has died out, there has been another higher one to replace it."
"Cloning is one of the worst ways for a higher species," David said slowly. "It stifles diversity, you know that." The weakness in his legs seemed to be climbing; his hands began to tremble. He gripped the edge of the desk.
"That's assuming diversity is beneficial. Perhaps it isn't," Wl said. "You pay a high price for individuality."
"There is still the decline and extinction," David said. "Have you got around that?" He wanted to end this conversation, to hurry from the sterile office and the smooth unreadable face with the sharp eyes that seemed to know what he was feeling.
"Not yet," W-l said. "But we have the fertile members to fall back on until we do." He moved around the desk and walked toward the door. "I have to check my patients," he said, and held the door open for David.
"Before I leave," David said, "will you tell me what is the matter with Walt?"
"Don't you know?" W-1 shook his head. "I keep forgetting, you don't tell each other things, do you? He has cancer. Inoperable. It metastasized. He's dying, David. I thought you knew that."
David walked blankly for an hour or more, and finally found himself in his room, exhausted, unwilling yet to go to bed. He sat at his window until it was dawn, and then he went to Walt's room. When Walt woke up he reported what W-1 had told him.
"They'll use the fertile ones only to replenish their supply of clones," he said. "The humans among them will be pariahs. They'll destroy what we worked so hard to create."
"Don't let them do it, David. For God's sake, don't let them do it!" Walt's color was bad, and he was too weak to sit up. "Vlasic's mad, so he'll be of no help. You have to stop them somehow." Bitterly he said, "They want to take the easy way out,
give up now when we know everything will work."
David didn't know whether he was sorry or glad that he had told Walt. No more secrets, he thought. Never again. "I'll stop them somehow," he said. "I don't know how, or when. But soon."
A Four brought Walt's breakfast, and David returned to his room. He rested and slept fitfully for a few hours, then showered and went to the cave entrance, where he was stopped by a Two.
"I'm sorry, David," he said. "Jonathan says that you need a rest, that you are not to work now."
Wordlessly David turned and left. Jonathan. W-l. If they had decided to bar him from the lab, they could do it. He and Walt had planned it that way: the cave was impregnable. He thought of the elders, forty-four of them now, and two of that number terminally ill. One of the remaining elders insane. Forty-one then, twenty-nine women. Eleven able-bodied men. Ninety-four clones.
He waited for days for Harry Vlasic to appear, but no one had seen him in weeks, and Vernon thought he was living in the lab. He had all his meals there. David gave that up, and found D-1 in the dining room and offered his help in the lab.
"I'm too bored doing nothing," he said. "I'm used to working twelve hours a day or more."
"You should rest now that there are others who can take the load off you," D-l said pleasantly. "Don't worry about the work, David. It is going quite well." He moved away, and David caught his arm.
"Why won't you let me in? Haven't you learned the value of an objective opinion?"
Dl pulled away, and still smiling easily, said, "You want to destroy everything, David. In the name of mankind, of course. But still, we can't let you do that."
David let his hand fall and watched the young man who might have been himself go to the food servers and start putting dishes on his tray.
"I'm working on a plan," he lied to Walt, as he would again and again in the weeks that followed. Daily Walt grew feebler, and now he was in great pain.
David's father was with Walt most of the time now. He was gray and aged but in good health physically. He talked of their boyhood, of the coming hunting season, of the recession he feared might reduce his profits, of his wife, who had been dead for fifteen years. He was cheerful and happy, and Walt seemed to want him there.
In March, Wl sent for David. He was in his office. "It's about Walt," he said. "We should not let him continue to suffer. He has done nothing to deserve this."
"He is trying to last until the girls have their babies," David said. "He wants to know."
"But it doesn't matter any longer," W-l said patiently. "And meanwhile he suffers."
David stared at him with hatred and knew that he couldn't make that choice.
W-l continued to watch him for several more moments, then said, "We will decide." The next morning Walt was found to have died in his sleep.
Chapter 9It was greening time; the willows were the first to show nebulous traceries of green along the graceful branches. Forsythias and flaming bushes were in bloom, brilliant yellows and scarlets against the gray background. The river was high with spring runoffs up north and heavy March rains, but it was an expected high, not dangerous, not threatening this year. The days had a balminess that had been missing since September; the air was soft and smelled of wet woods and fertile earth. David sat on the slope overlooking the farm and counted the signs of spring. There were calves in the field, and they looked the way spring calves always had looked: thin legs, awkward, slightly stupid. No fields had been worked yet, but the garden was green: pale lettuce, blue-green kale, green spears of onions, dark green cabbage. The newest wing of the hospital, not yet painted, crude compared to the finished brick buildings, was being used already, and he could even see some of the young people at the windows studying. They had the best teachers, themselves, and the best students. They learned amazingly well from one another, better than they had in the early days.
They came out of the school in matched sets: four of this, three of that, two of another. He sought and found three Celias. He could no longer tell them apart; they were all grown-up Celias now and indistinguishable. He watched them with no feeling of desire; no hatred moved him; no love. They vanished into the barn and he looked up over the farm, into the hills on the other side of the valley. The ridges were hazy and had no sharp edges anywhere. They looked soft and welcoming. Soon, he thought. Soon. Before the dogwoods bloomed.
The night the first baby was born, there was another celebration. The elders talked among themselves, laughed at their own jokes, drank wine; the clones left them alone and partied at the other end of the room. When Vernon began to play his guitar and dancing started, David slipped away. He wandered on the hospital grounds for a few minutes, as though aimlessly, and then, when he was certain no one had followed him out, he began to trot toward the mill and the generator. Six hours, he thought. Six hours without electricity would destroy everything in the lab.
David approached the mill cautiously, hoping the rushing water of the creek would mask any sound he might make. The building was three stories high, very large, with windows ten feet above the ground, on the level where the offices were. The ground floor was filled with machinery. In the back the hill rose sharply, and David could reach the windows by bracing himself on the steep incline and steadying himself with one hand on the building, leaving the other free to test the windows. He found a window that went up easily when he pushed it, and in a moment he was inside a dark office. He closed the window, and then, moving slowly with his hands outstretched to avoid any obstacle, he crossed the room to the door and opened it a crack. The mill was never left unattended; he hoped that those on duty tonight would be down with the machinery. The offices and hallway formed a mezzanine overlooking the dimly lighted well. Grotesque shadows made the hallway strange, with deep pools of darkness and places where he would be clearly visible should any one happen to look up at the right moment. Suddenly David stiffened. Voices.
He slipped his shoes off and opened the door wider. The voices were louder, below him. Soundlessly he ran toward the control room, keeping close to the wall. He was almost to the door when the lights came on all over the building. There was a shout, and he could hear them running up the stairs. He made a dash for the door, yanked it open, and slammed it behind him. There was no way to lock it. He pushed a file cabinet an inch or so, gave up on it, and picked up a metal stool by its legs. He raised it and swung it hard against the main control panel. At the same moment he felt a crushing pain against his shoulders, and he stumbled and fell forward as the lights went out.
He opened his eyes painfully. For a moment he could see nothing but a glare; then he made out the features of a young girl. She was reading a book, concentrating on it. Dorothy? She was his cousin Dorothy. He tried to rise, and she looked up and smiled at him.
"Dorothy? What are you doing here?" He couldn't get off the bed. On the other side of the room a door opened and Walt came in, also very young, unlined, with his nice brown hair ruffled.
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