Taylor Five (11 page)

The second water hole was a churned and trampled mud patch in a dell among starved-looking trees, with a shrunken pool in the middle. Tay drank, and filled their bottle. Dimly, dimly, she remembered: the second water hole is near the coast.

“We’re nearly there,” she said to Uncle as she sat on a boulder by the side of the pool, in the first light of dawn. She tried to smile for him, and her parched, sunburned face cracked like a dry leaf. “You see, I told you. I’m a copy of a very remarkable person, and I have DNA memories all my own, and you are a very remarkable orangutan. We belong together, you and I. We’re both of us
real people
now.”

She walked again, until her legs gave way under her, and then she slept where she fell.

When she woke up, it was another day and she was completely alone. The water bottle was by her head. It was empty. The rucksack was beside her. She searched through it. There was no water, and no food except one battered trekking bar. Her mouth was cracked and sore, inside and out.

“Uncle!” she called. “Uncle, where are you?”

Her voice came out as a faint croak. The rolling burnt-gold grassland stretched away, empty to the horizon. The trekking bar had been soaked at the river crossing; and dried out again. When she opened the packet, straw-dry fragments crumbled onto her palm. She tried to lick them up but her tongue was too parched.

“Uncle!”

Uncle’s gone to fetch help, she thought. When he didn’t come back, she decided she’d better go and look for him. She had to lighten her pack, she was getting weak. She threw away everything except for the piece of Donny’s blanket and the radiophone. The sun was beating on her and it was hard to think clearly. She walked around in circles, holding the radiophone, and calling
Hello, hello
. Nothing happened, and she’d forgotten about the GPS beacon. The phone felt heavy, so she threw it away.

Soon I’m going to die, she thought. She didn’t mind. She’d tried her best. She hoped Uncle had made it through. He would have to be the one to tell their story.

Then she was walking across some flat ground that seemed strangely cooler. There was a roaring in her ears, a haze in her vision and the taste of salt on her scorched lips. She didn’t see the dark shape of the Lifeforce Land Rover come shimmering out of the heat until it was nearly on top of her. People jumped out of it. “Help me!” she croaked. “Please help me! Everyone’s been kidnapped. My mum and dad, and Donny and Uncle, and everyone. We have to find them.”

Suddenly the world was full of faces and they looked so strange—smooth skinned, no red hair. Noses that stuck out, thin cheeks and small mouths, and such weird eyes.

“Where’s Uncle?” she asked. “Did you find Uncle?”

“Uncle is okay,” said a voice that was magically familiar. “He found us. He’s safe.”

Someone had picked Tay up, or she had fallen down: she wasn’t sure which. A face that was like her own face grown up looked down at her. It broke into a photomosaic, hundreds of images, all the same face, all the same eyes, full of grief, looking at her with love and understanding. Tay began to cry, the sobs hurting her dry throat. Pam Taylor held her, in a hug that grew tighter and tighter. The babble of strange voices faded. Someone was dripping water into her mouth. She was a package, full of grief and loss, a terrible story that must be told, and after that a great blank—

But for this moment, she only knew that she was found.

f
or two days (she found out afterward it had been two days) Tay slept, and half woke, and slept again. She had been bathed and put to bed like a baby. She sipped broth and drank milk. The scorched, baked skin of her face and lips, and hands and feet, was cleaned and soothed. She was told later that when they’d found her she’d been barefoot. They’d found her boots where they’d found her phone: she couldn’t remember taking the boots off, or why she’d done that. Sometimes she heard voices, and sometimes she spoke to the people caring for her, but they didn’t come into focus. She dreamed a lot when she was asleep, but when she was half awake she couldn’t remember the dreams: she could only feel them there, vague and cloudy in her mind.

At last she dreamed very clearly that she was standing with Uncle at the eaves of the forest. Ahead of them was the lonely golden country of the savannah. Behind them was their beloved home. Both of them knew that once they had stepped out of the trees they would never, never return. The clearing in the beautiful forest would be gone forever, because they would start to forget. The great majestic trees, stately guardians of life: the butterflies, the caves in the outcrop, the singing gibbons in the bamboo stand, the silence in the deep green shadows. Everything would start to fade if they took one more step. But they had to go on because there was no way back, and if they didn’t go on, nothing new would be born.

We have to go on, Uncle,
Tay murmured in her dream.
We choose to go on.

Then she woke up. She was lying in a bed, under a clean white coverlet, and Pam Taylor was sitting in a chair beside her, holding her hand.

“Where’s Uncle?” Tay said at once.

“He’s safe,” said Pam. “You won’t remember, but I told you when we found you. It was Uncle who came to us. We’ve had to leave our mooring because the army isn’t in control of East Kandah. We’re out at sea. . . . Three days ago someone on deck saw an orangutan, wandering on the shore. We couldn’t believe our eyes: we came ashore and it was Uncle. Then we started looking for whoever might have brought him here. We thought of your phone, we traced the signal . . . and then we found you.”

“Uncle told you I was with him?”

Pam smiled. “Well, he didn’t exactly
tell
us—”

“Can I see him? Can he come and see me?”

“You can see him soon.”

There was something wrong. Tay could feel it. But she let the wrongness about Uncle go by, until she was stronger. She closed her eyes, then opened them again and looked around. The room was small, with greeny-white walls. There was one window, it was round and blue. Two shades of blue, with a gently moving horizon between. Of course, she thought. I’m on a ship. I’m on the Marine and Shore. It seemed right to be at sea. Between her past and her future. Between what had been and whatever might be.

“Is there any news of . . . of my mum and dad, and Clint and everyone?”

“No,” said Pam. “I’m sorry, no news yet. No bad news, no good news. The rebels are still in charge in Kandah River Region. No one can get near the refuge, and we don’t know where the kidnapped staff were taken.”

“We told you about Donny, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” said Pam, squeezing her hand. “Yes, you told us, darling.”

Donny is dead. My little brother is dead.

“Did you know the refuge had been attacked?” Tay asked, after a silence. “I expect you already told me, but I don’t remember. Tell me again.”

“We knew,” said Pam. “The first anyone outside knew of the attack was a call to Singapore. Mary and Ben had locked themselves in the telecoms suite. They were trying to save what they could of their work, and raise the alarm. They couldn’t get through to me, or to Kandah City: but they managed to get through to the Lifeforce headquarters building in Singapore. They were talking to Rei when—”

Rei Van der Hoort was the chief executive of Lifeforce and a friend of Tay’s parents. She heard the familiar name, and what Pam was saying became real. Something inside her closed up, small and hard. . . . She couldn’t bear to know what was almost certainly true. She couldn’t bear to hear Pam say
There was an explosion
. Not now, not yet.

“They were cut off,” said Pam. Their eyes met, and they understood each other perfectly. “Your mum and dad had said that the rebels were rounding up the staff, the apes had been released and Lucia had been shot. We got a call from Singapore telling us what had happened and that Rei had called the sultan, asking for help. . . . But the Kandahnese army was fighting in Kandah City, and that was all we knew, for two days. Then we heard that the rebels had made contact and the refuge staff were being held hostage. Ben and Mary had said that you two—you and Donny—weren’t on site when the attack came, you were at the caves. But the rebels claimed that they were holding
everyone
, including the white children. We believed them . . . until someone saw an orangutan on the shore, where no wild ape would ever be.”

“I expect they said they’d caught us to make you pay a bigger ransom. What about Clint? He saved our lives. Do you know where he is? Where did the rebels take him?”

“We don’t know. We’re trying to find out, now we know he was taken prisoner.”

Their eyes met again, with the same message.
We know what’s probably happened to Clint, but we can still hope—

“We’ll have to be patient, Tay. I think the sultan is really doing everything he can to help us, but the refuge staff are not his only problem. The army is getting the situation under control again. But we are foreigners, and we’ve been told to leave, to get away from Kandah’s coastal waters because they can’t guarantee our safety—”

“But we’ll stay!”

“Oh yes,” said Pam grimly. “We’ll stay. If we’d left for Singapore when they told us, we wouldn’t have been here to find
you.
We’re going to keep the Marine and Shore as near to the coast as I dare, until I
know
. Ben and Mary thought that if we left, we might never be allowed back, and I let them stay. Lifeforce will maintain a presence here until I know what’s happened to them, and all their staff.”

Tay felt all the self-blame that Pam Taylor couldn’t put into words, because then she would cry: and she mustn’t cry. “You didn’t know the People’s Army would attack an orangutan refuge. You couldn’t have known that. It was crazy.”

“I should have known it was time to get everyone out. The alarm bells were ringing. I ignored them.” Pam shook her head. “But that’s my problem, Tay, not yours.”

“Is there a record of my mum and dad talking to Rei?”

“Yes, we do have a recording,” said Pam gently. “Of part of it, anyway. You’ll hear it one day: and you’ll be proud. But not right now.”

“No,” agreed Tay. She knew she couldn’t take it yet. “Not right now.” She swallowed back the tears and lay quietly, thinking about the day that Donny had come home from school, and all the bruised and bitter thoughts she’d had. They were gone. She looked at the hand that was holding hers. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, she thought. All her life there’d been this grown-up person, Pam, who was such a true friend, who always knew how things felt, who was like a mirror. . . . Now she knew why. She
understood
, which is different from knowing the facts.

“When the story broke,” Tay said, “I mean, the ‘teenage clones’ story . . . I was very angry. I couldn’t help it. I thought I never wanted to see you again.”

“Every one of you has reacted differently,” said Pam. “All along. You’re the one who has surprised us most, Tay. You were always so cool and calm. But I knew how you must be feeling inside. I knew it would burst out sometime, and I didn’t blame you-—”

“I don’t want to hear about the others. That’ll make me feel weird again.”

“Tay, I’m sorry you have to be with me, if it makes things harder—”

“No,” said Tay, “I don’t feel like that anymore. When I was on the trek, alone with Uncle after Donny died, it all came out. How . . . I thought I wasn’t a real person, because real people are different from each other, and I’m only a copy. But DNA isn’t what makes you a person. It’s what you do. Dad said that. I have memories that are all my own, not yours. They’re the blueprint of being me, same as DNA is the blueprint that tells the cells how to develop.”

Pam was looking impressed. “That’s very good. A good way to think about it—”

“Yes.” Tay grinned slightly. “I didn’t make it up myself. Uncle explained it to me.”

“Uncle?”

“Yeah. He was wonderful. I thought I was saving him. . . . Now I know, of course. he was saving me. He let me help him, because he knew it helped me. He’s
so wise
. We had such long conversations . . . and we read the Shakespeare . . . and . . .”

Tay’s words trailed away. Pam nodded, smiling very kindly. There was something Tay wanted to ask, only she hardly liked to say it. She hesitated. “Would you mind . . . if I called you my mum? In m-my thoughts, I mean, not out loud. I know it would be stupid if I said it out loud. But j-just for a while?”

“You can call me Mum for as long as you like,” said Pam: the words bursting out of her, as if she’d been holding them back by force until this moment. “I knew I couldn’t have a big place in your life, Tay. I knew you belonged to Mary and Ben. But in my heart I’ve called you my daughter since the day you were born. Since I saw you being born. Oh, Tay—”

Tay held out her arms. They hugged, with relief and joy, in the midst of all the tragedy. “I’ll
never
take Mary’s place,” said Pam fiercely, her cheek pressed against Tay’s hair. “Never, never. Mary and Ben will
always be
your mum and dad—”

“I belong to them. And Donny. But you and me, we’ll have each other.”

“We’ll have each other.”

They let go, both of them embarrassed, because getting emotional didn’t suit them; but very glad. Tay lay back, and Pam tucked the covers around her. “Now I’m going to leave you for a while. I want you to doze there and do nothing—except you can use the bathroom, which is through that door, and here’s a pager: press a button if you need anything, and someone will come. I’ll be back with some soup at lunchtime. If you’re good, you can sit up and read in the afternoon, or I’ll bring in a video-TV and you can watch a movie—”

“Not more soup.”

“Yes, more soup. It’s the kind of food you need after a trek like that.”

Pam stood up. Tay felt so many unanswered questions buzzing in her brain. Questions that must be answered before she could go on into that unknown country, beyond the eaves of the forest. Why did you let other people bring me up if you loved me? Why did Lifeforce make me? Was it truly for the benefit of humankind; or just to see if they could? What kind of life am I going to have . . . ? Not yet. Not until she knew what had happened to Mum and Dad, and Clint.

But there were other things, less important things, that puzzled her.

“Are you sure I can see Uncle? Are you
sure
he’s here and he’s okay?”

“Of course I’m sure,” said Pam. “He’s very sad, poor old boy, but he’s in safekeeping. You can see him soon.”

“All right.” Sleep was rushing over her again. “Pam? How did anyone know?”

“How did we know what?”

“That I was with him?” said Tay. “He
must
have told you. If he didn’t tell you, how did you know to look for my beacon signal? You thought Donny and I were with the hostages.”

“Oh,” said Pam, looking slightly uneasy. “I suppose that was me. Sometimes I, well . . . it seems as if I know things, if it’s about you.” She left the room quickly.

Tay looked at the buttons on her pager and the narrow door that must lead to the bathroom. She thought of her bedroom in the clearing, and all her possessions. Gone, all gone . . . She closed her eyes and drifted into sleep, her grief for Mum and Dad and Donny like a quiet, dark ocean that surrounded her but would not drown her. But even in sleep a nagging worry about Uncle was troubling her, at the back of her mind.

Next day Tay was pronounced well enough to get up in the afternoon. She dressed in clothes that belonged to one of the Marine and Shore lab assistants who was slim and small enough to be the same size as Tay. It was great to be clean. She’d almost forgotten how it felt. She went in search of Pam Taylor: barefoot, because her European feet were too big for the lab assistant’s sandals and too sore for boots.