Taylor Five (3 page)

The only thing was that after the big revelation, she’d stopped writing to Pam.

She’d been truly
friends
with her test-tube mum. Wherever Pam’s work took her, she had always stayed in e-mail contact. They’d talked on the phone when they could, as often as if they were friends of the same age. Somehow that had stopped. Tay hadn’t meant it to happen, she just . . . didn’t have anything to say.

Since that time, life had carried on as normal. Tay had done her schoolwork and helped out as much as she was allowed with the apes. There’d been school holidays, and she’d had great times with Donny. There’d been a visit to England (which Donny and Tay had both hated). There’d been trips to Singapore. Tay had often almost forgotten about the secret, and she’d almost started hoping that Lifeforce had decided to keep the clones’ existence a secret forever.

But now the news was out, on the TV and on the radio, on the Internet and in the papers, all over the world. Tay was very thankful that she lived in the middle of the rain forest and she didn’t have to know a thing about all the publicity.

She just wished she knew why she suddenly felt so bad.

What does it
mean
to be a clone? How is a clone supposed to feel?

She switched on her computer, chose a picture file and sat looking at video clips of Pam Taylor, shrinking and copying them until the screen was a photomosaic of Pam’s tanned face: smiling, laughing, using her hands to talk, the way Pam always did. . . . And so did Tay. She clicked with the mouse, enlarging one detail and then another, studying the way Pam’s hair grew. The shape of her nose. The color of her eyes.

Every little bit of me is
exactly
the same as that. That’s
exactly
what I will look like.

Tay knew it was Mum and Dad who’d come into the room before she looked round. Too late to switch off the screen. . . . They sat down on either side of her.

“Hi,” Mum said quietly.

“Hi,” said Dad. He took Tay’s hand.

“Hi, you,” said Tay. “I’m all right, honestly. I’m sorry I was snappish.”

“Tay—” said Mum. “You’re not a freak. Everyone you know . . . everyone who matters knows you are a wonderful, brave, clever,
excellent
young woman.”

“It’s
okay
, Mum. I understand what a big deal it is. I know that me being a clone is an amazing triumph, and it will have huge benefits for medicine, and I’m fine. I just wish . . . Oh, Mum. If I had to be a copy of someone, why couldn’t I be a copy of you?”

“It didn’t work out that way,” said Mum. “Tay . . . I was nearly forty, and—”

“We thought we couldn’t have children,” said Dad. “We were contemplating fertility treatment. The clone project came along, and they were asking for volunteers—”

“I wasn’t sure, but I tested,” put in Mum. “I was histo-compatible with one of the donors. You know what that means: I had the right kind of cell profile, like a biochemical fingerprint: and it turned out to be Pam, who was our dear friend. We thought about it long and hard, but we’ve been so glad we said yes.”

“Because it gave us
you
,” said Dad. “Just the way you are. You were a miracle to us.”

“And then you had Donny.”

Mum nodded. “Yes. It sometimes happens. A test-tube pregnancy and then an ordinary one, when there’s been unexplained infertility before. No one understands why, not yet. So we had two miracles.”

Every time Mum and Dad told her the story (and they’d told it to her over and over, in different ways, since they’d told her the truth) she could see in their eyes how much they loved her, and how much they wanted her to say everything was okay.

“In the
Straits Times
it said something about a ‘human photocopy.’ I didn’t want to read any of it, but I saw that.”

“Well, the
Straits Times
got it wrong,” said Dad. “You are not a copy. You are an original. It isn’t the DNA that counts: it’s what you do with it. It’s the person. You aren’t a photocopy of Pam. You are our daughter, and our proudest achievement.”

“Yes,” sighed Tay. “And I love you too. True.”

“Do you want to see Pam?” suggested Mum. “She could be here in a few hours.”

Tay’s gene mother was working on the Marine and Shore Station—another part of the biotech company’s conservation work. The floating research lab was moored off the northeast coast of Kandah State just now. Tay knew this wasn’t an accident. It had been arranged so that Pam would be nearby if Tay wanted to see her when the story broke.

But she didn’t want to see Pam.

Not now, maybe not ever
. . .

“N-no. I’ll talk to her soon, honest. Just not right now. Right now, er, I really do have homework to finish. I ought to have done it before Donny came home—”

“Okay,” said Mum.

“Okay,” said Dad. “We’ll leave you in peace.”

They hugged her, and left her in peace.

The ceiling fans ticked around and around. The refuge buildings had air-conditioning, but Donny and Tay made it a point of honor not to use aircon, except in their bedrooms on unbearably sticky nights. It was better to learn to accept the heat as normal, so that you could be free and comfortable outdoors. She switched off Pam Taylor’s face and took out her art portfolio from one of the drawers in the worktable that stretched down the middle of the room. She began to work on coloring some sketches she’d done of a spray of orchids. It wasn’t urgent, but it soothed her mind.

About half an hour later Donny arrived. He plonked an untidy parcel on the table.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you still miserable about being in the papers? Are you afraid the journalists will track you down, like a celebrity?”

Donny knew, of course. Mum and Dad had said it was Tay’s choice and he didn’t have to be told, but she couldn’t have imagined keeping a secret like that from him.

“Nah,” said Tay. “The Lifeforce Teenage Clone Protection Program will look after me. I’m like someone giving evidence against the Mob. The newspapers and the TV will never find me. . . . Is that the frog?”

“Yes.” He unwrapped his parcel, revealing a splendid tree frog standing on its back legs. It was varnished in red and green and fixed to a bamboo stand. There was a perpetual calendar fitted into the frog’s belly, and the frog had a wide, gaping mouth for holding letters. One of the frog’s back feet was missing.

“I’ve got her foot. But the clamp I made for holding the letters has come unsprung.”

“Right,” said Tay. “The doctor is in.”

They fixed the frog (as well as could be expected for a papier-mâché model that had spent time knocking around in an airplane hold with Donny’s socks). Then they checked the status of Mum’s big present: which was a dozen Old English rosebushes, specially genetically adapted for the tropics, that Tay had ordered on the Internet (she’d got Dad to do the ordering on his credit card and promised to pay him back).

The bushes wouldn’t look like much, but there would be pictures of how the flowers were going to look: and Mum would love them. She was the one with the green fingers who was responsible for the success of all the flower beds in the refuge clearing. They ought to be arriving with the next mail drop. Donny and Tay would have to make sure they got to the mail parcel (however it reached the refuge) before their mother.

“If they don’t come because of the rebels,” said Donny cheerfully, “at least she’s got my frog. It can be from both of us if you like.”

“Thanks. Did you buy her a card?”

“I thought I’d make one. She likes homemade things.”

“Me too. Let’s get to it. Then it’ll be done and we’ll be all set.”

The schoolroom grew busy, and cozy and quiet: the two children working together, tearing up colored tissue paper, passing the glue, asking for the scissors, like long ago. In two years, thought Tay, I’ll be sixteen. I’ll be old enough to go away to college, and then I’ll face my destiny. People will find out I’m a clone, but I won’t mind. I will be the second Pam Taylor. I will be a brilliant success. Mum and Dad won’t have to blame themselves for how they had me, and everything will turn out well. But I’m not going to think about it until then. Until then I’m just going to be Tay.

When they’d finished the cards, they left them to dry and went over to the observation studio. The baby apes spent all their time with their carers, the way orangutan babies live alone with their mothers in the wild. The older apes had an enclosure on the edge of the clearing so that they could start learning to forage and look after themselves. They also had a suite of indoor pens, which the refuge staff called the clubhouse, where they were free to come and go and socialize with each other—and where the scientists could observe their behavior on closed-circuit TV.

Sometimes there was a proper experiment. One of the visiting primatologists (people who study apes), or the graduate students, might be observing how the apes solved a puzzle. But there was always
something
going on, and even though everything was being videotaped, usually one of the scientists would be watching. Today they found Dr. Suritobo, the refuge’s animal psychologist, on his own in front of the monitor screens—like a security guard watching some very hairy teenagers hanging out in a shopping mall.

“Hi, Clint,” said Tay. “What’s up?”

Dr. Suritobo was Indonesian. He’d been with Lifeforce as long as Mum and Dad had, and he’d written a shelfful of books, but he never seemed entirely like a grown-up. He could make bows and arrows that really worked; and strange musical instruments out of bamboo. He was the best guide for jungle walks too. No one called him anything but Clint because he was a fanatical Clint Eastwood fan. He even had a poncho (a striped, handwoven Dyak poncho; but it looked the part). You’d find him loping around with his hat brim pulled down over his narrowed eyes, chewing on a thin black cheroot, obviously deep in some
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
fantasy. . . . The children loved him, though they sometimes wondered how he managed to hold down a responsible job.

But Clint had told them there should be no difference between work and play anyway.

He was pleased to see them. He stretched his arms above his head and ran his hands through his hair, which was already standing on end.

“Hi! Always something new on orangutan TV! Sit down! Bring on the popcorn.”

Five “teenage” orangutans, nearly ready to be introduced back to the wild, were sitting together in the section of the clubhouse that had a climbing gym of tree branches, ropes and swings (like a sofa and armchairs to orangutans, Tay thought). An ape called Potter was up in the tree; another ape called Genevieve was there too. Bima, the most dominant of the adolescents, was sitting with two young apes known as Juju and Henry. The human children weren’t allowed near the babies, and they were supposed to keep away from the older apes (though they could sometimes earn pocket money cleaning out the clubhouse). It was very important that the animals didn’t get used to humans: they weren’t pets. But Donny and Tay had watched a huge amount of “orangutan TV.” It was their favorite entertainment. They sat down to watch: Clint making careful notes of the apes’ interaction with each other.

“Don’t you ever wish you could just
ask
them what’s going on?” wondered Tay. “I bet our orangutans are clever enough to learn sign language.”

Clint shook his head. “Maybe, but that’s not our job. Already these young apes have been changed too much. They have been stolen from their mothers to be sold as pets, or orphaned when their mothers were killed by human activity, in one way or another. They have learned to depend on each other for company, when they should be solitary creatures. They will become solitary again, if we can return them to the forest. . . . No, Tay. I don’t want them to learn to ‘talk’ like fake human beings. I want them to be orangutans.”

“Why’d you say
if
?” asked Tay, picking on this word uneasily. “Of course we’re going to release them.”

“Of course,” said Clint with a sigh. “Of course, yes, for a while longer. We have the Sultan of Kandah on our side. But who knows what the future will bring?”

“If the rebels win, do you think they’ll want to close us down?” Donny wondered.

“Ha! I don’t think they will ever agree on what they want. But with luck, please God, none of those outlaw bands is going to ‘win.’ They’ll just back down again—”

The door of the studio opened and another orangutan ambled in. Unlike the apes on the screen, he was an adult: and he was different in other ways. If you knew anything about orangutans, the shape of his cheek jowls told you that he came from Sumatra, not Borneo. This was Uncle, the refuge’s mascot. Uncle had been sent to the Lifeforce Refuge when one of the last orangutan rehabilitation centers in Sumatra had to close down. The staff there had tried and failed to return him to the forest: Uncle had just kept coming back to them. Now it didn’t matter if he spent his time with humans, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t belong in Borneo, because he was too old to be released. He had the run of the compound, but Clint was his special friend.

Uncle pushed out his lip to the children in greeting and stood knuckling the ground with one hand while he scratched his throat with the other. He gazed severely at Clint.