Swans and Klons (12 page)

“Picker Klon, these Pannas need to interview you. Be cooperative and truthful with them, and I might have something nice for you at breakfast time tomorrow.” Then she leaned back and folded her arms.

Rubric wanted to be alone with the Klon but didn’t know how to ask Castle Mattea.

Salmon Jo solved the problem. “Actually, Panna Castle M—”

“Please! Just Castle Mattea.”

“I’d be very curious to learn more about those birds, so I was wondering if you could show me while my schatzie interviews the Picker Klon.”

Castled Mattea beamed. She led Salmon Jo off, talking excitedly.

Rubric cleared her throat. The other Klons had melted away. She wished Salmon Jo could help her with this. “So you probably noticed that you and I are Jeepie Similars.”

“Yes, Panna.” The Klon crossed her arms. Okay, there was another difference. This girl had a lot more muscle definition in her arms.

“That’s what my project is about. Can I ask you some questions?” Her voice sounded totally phony to herself. She had no idea how to talk to Klons like they were human. She had no practice.

“Yes, Panna.”

“First of all, what is your name?”

The Klon’s expression was unreadable. “I’m Picker Klon,” she said.

“But don’t you have a name that you Klons use among yourselves, to tell each other apart?”

“We tell each other apart just fine,” Picker Klon said.

“Okay,” said Rubric. This wasn’t going so well.

“Can I ask you a question, Panna?”

“Please do.”

“Shouldn’t you turn your camera on?”

Rubric flushed. “This is just sort of preliminary. Would you like to look at the camera?”

“Yes, Panna,” she said, looking pleased. “I’d like that very much.”

Rubric handed the camera over to Picker Klon. Picker Klon did just what Rubric had done when she first got it, turned it over and over, trying to figure which end was up. She held one end up to her eye, and then the other. Reluctantly, she handed it back to Rubric.

What could she do to show she was an ally before just blurting everything out? Rubric plucked a few eth fruits and threw them on the ground. She pulverized them under her foot.

The expression on Picker Klon’s face didn’t change, but there was a subtle shift, as though there was an expression behind her expression. Which was disgust. Rubric had the sensation of seeing herself through Picker Klon’s eyes. A dissolute, spoiled Panna, cloddish enough to destroy the eth fruits which were the foundation of Society’s energy supply.

How could two people be genetically identical but so different that they couldn’t communicate?

No. Picker Klon couldn’t be expected to read Rubric’s mind. Rubric hadn’t told her anything.

“What’s really going on here, Picker Klon, is my schatzie and I discovered something really ghastly that happens in the Hatcheries. You know how it’s supposed to be that entities like me are human and entities like you are not human?”

Picker Klon nodded. “I’m called a Klon, Panna,” she said, as if talking to a half-wit.

“It turns out there’s no difference, biologically speaking, between me and you. The Doctors don’t do anything special to the Klons to make them not human. As far as we can tell, they select some of the Hatchlings to be designated human and the rest to be Klons.”

Picker Klon raised one eyebrow. Rubric often did that. It looked good.

“Do you believe me?” Rubric asked.

“To me,” Picker Klon said in a hoarse voice, very different from the way she’d been talking up to now, “what you’re saying doesn’t make any difference. I’m not even sure I know what biology is. And I don’t care whether I’m a human or identical to you. But I know my own worth. I know I’m as good as a human and I deserve everything you have. I don’t care what the official story is. You still haven’t turned your camera on, Panna.”

Wow. All her life, people had been calling Rubric impulsive and idealistic, and now she finally understood why.

“Okay,” said Rubric. “So the thing is, my schatzie and I are traveling around Society, and we want to free our Jeepie Similar Klons.”

The eyebrow raised again. “Free? Are you coming to take me to the Barbarous Ones?” Picker Klon asked in a low voice.

“The Barbarous Ones?” Rubric echoed, confused. “No. Why?”

“Oh.” Picker Klon looked equally confused. “I thought…Sorry, what is your plan exactly?”

“To take you away from here, so you don’t have to pick eth fruit any more,” Rubric said.

“Uh-huh. And then where are we going?” Picker Klon asked.

“We haven’t worked that out a hundred percent yet,” Rubric admitted. “You’re the first Klon on our list. We were just going to play it by ear.”

They stared at each other. Then at the same time, one flatly and one apologetically, they said, “It’s not much of a plan.”

“I would be willing to go with you if you take me to the Land of the Barbarous Ones,” Picker Klon said.

“Why do you want to go there?” Rubric asked.

Picker Klon rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I don’t, not really,” she said. “But I have my reasons. And not a whole lot of options. So are you ordering me to go with you?”

“Um, what?”

“Are you ordering me to go?”

“No,” Rubric said.

“Well, Panna, not to put words in your mouth, but maybe you could order me to go,” Picker Klon said.

Rubric didn’t know if her brain could absorb any more confusion. Might her brain actually explode and drip out through her ears?
Girl’s Head Explodes
, in the dark style of Stencil Pavlina.

“You see, Panna,” Picker Klon explained patiently, “if I get caught carrying out this lunacy, the penalty for Klons leaving their posts is very severe. So I’m thinking, if this was a case of you ordering me to do something, it is naturally my job to carry out orders from a respected Panna. If your orders turn out to be contradictory to the wishes of other Pannas, then that would be your responsibility.”

“Ah. I see,” Rubric said. “Picker Klon, I order you to accompany me to the Land of the Barbarous Ones. What I want you to do is sneak away from here and meet me and my companion outside the perimeter of the farm, as close to the entrance gate as you can without attracting attention. Can you do that?”

“Yes, thank you, Panna.” She shot off in the direction of the Klon dormitory.

Sweating more than ever, Rubric rejoined Salmon Jo. They took their leave from Castle Mattea. “So?” Salmon Jo asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Picker Klon is coming with us,” said Rubric.

“Wow,” Salmon Jo said, and swallowed. “You know, I’m not sure I really believed this could work.”

“But she wants to go to the Land of the Barbarous Ones.”

“Good gravy. Why?”

“Don’t know. She said she has some purpose for it.”

Salmon Jo shrugged. “We have to go somewhere.”

Chapter Seventeen

They didn’t have much parley with Picker Klon until they were sitting around the campfire. Picker Klon said she had never slept anywhere except in a dormitory, so she simply watched with interest as Salmon Jo set up the tent while Rubric made the fire and dinner. Rubric had discovered she had a wonderful talent for building blazing fires, so she was always in charge of this.

They ate quickly without speaking. Salmon Jo, who polished her food off first, poked the fire and said, “I think we’re just one day’s ride from the fence that separates us from the Land of the Barbarous Ones. But I don’t know if there’s a place that’s better than any other to cross it.”

“Klons say that near the town of Lvodz is the best place,” Picker Klon said. “I don’t know if that’s true. Klons escape, but they never come back. So we don’t know what happens to them. My schatzie escaped two years ago. The Kapo Klon said she was captured and redistributed. But they would have to tell us that, whether it was true or not. I mean, they want us to think escape is pointless.”

“Do a lot of Klons escape?” Salmon Jo asked in surprise. “I never heard that before.”

“Of course you wouldn’t hear that,” Rubric said. “That would imply that Klons don’t like their lives and have something to escape from.” Rubric felt self-conscious talking to Picker Klon. Every second, she couldn’t help thinking that Picker Klon was a Klon, a Klon, a Klon. She wanted to think of Picker Klon as just another girl, but she didn’t know how to shake off sixteen years of training. She kept wanting to prove to Picker Klon that she thought she was a real person, even though Picker Klon clearly wasn’t worried about Rubric’s opinion.

Picker Klon nodded. “We don’t escape a whole lot. But it does happen. And there are so many different stories and songs about the Barbarous Ones. Some say they are bestial and they will make you mate with Cretinous Males and, you know…” She made a pregnant belly shape with her hand and crinkled her face in disgust. “Then others say the Barbarous Ones don’t really have Cretinous Males or”—she made the pregnancy gesture again—“that these are just stories that Panna humans made up about the Barbarous Ones to make them sound bad. That actually the land of the Barbarous Ones is a wondrous paradise.”

“Wow,” said Rubric. She felt that brain-exploding thing again and glanced at Salmon Jo. She looked pretty shocked herself. Rubric inched closer to her schatzie.

“I suppose that could be true,” Salmon Jo said slowly. “How would we really know?”

“But some of the stories about the Land of the Barbarous Ones being paradise seem too good for true,” Picker Klon said. “Like, they say there are trees that grow hot buttered toast with honey, and waterfalls that have vodka instead of water.”

“Preposterous,” Salmon Jo muttered.

Picker Klon smiled at her. “You
are
like Panna Castle Mattea, except not so cracked up in the head.”

It bothered Rubric that Salmon Jo was able to talk to Picker Klon so easily. And Rubric kept thinking about how much
she
had liked Salmon Jo when she had first talked to her and wondering if Picker Klon might feel the same way. Yup, that was a recipe for paranoid thoughts. What if Salmon Jo liked Picker Klon more than she liked Rubric?

“Also, some of the stories say that in the Land of the Barbarous Ones you Pannas will have to wait on us hand and foot while we Klons lie down on the softest pillows and listen to music,” Picker Klon told them.

“This is all assuming we can get past the fence,” Salmon Jo said severely. Rubric could tell she didn’t like the idea of being a slave any more than Rubric did. It seemed none of the stories about the Barbarous Ones mentioned Klons and Pannas living in harmony together. “Should I tell you what I know about the fence?”

“If you would, Panna Salmon Jo,” Picker Klon said. “Our stories about the fence are very vague. They say you need special shoes which I don’t have.”

“First of all, the fence extends fifty feet in the air and is invisible. There’s a condenser that’s charged by a polycrystalline device—”

“S.J., please, skip the boring part,” Rubric asked.

“I am skipping the boring part,” Salmon Jo said. “You have no idea.”

Picker Klon smiled and ducked her head to hide it. Rubric had never realized how ineffective that strategy was until she saw someone else do it.

“What you really need to know is that the fence itself doesn’t exist in a solid state, but when a living thing makes contact with it, they receive an electric shock. Until just a few years ago, the shock was lethal. They had colored flags near the fence to warn people not to wander into it. But deer and elk were always getting cooked. Then a few years ago, there was a rash of human suicides. Lovelorn young Pannas, all copying each other. They put up a big brick wall all along the fence, about fifteen feet high, to stop the suicides.”

Picker Klon nodded. “I know someone who worked on that wall. Her back was never the same afterward, and she had to become a Chef Klon, at our dorm.”

“The thing was, the locals didn’t stop killing themselves. It just became more of a challenge to get over the wall. Now it wasn’t lovelorn young Pannas anymore, but middle-aged Pannas. You know how sometimes people have a bit of a crisis, and they get jaded and think their lives are empty and have no meaning?”

“I remember this,” Rubric said. She had always been afraid this could happen to her when she became middle-aged. The tales of the bored suicides had been exquisitely painful to her.

“What thickos!” Picker Klon said. “If I were a Panna human, I would never throw my life away.”

Rubric bristled. How could her Jeepie Similar be so insensitive?

“They had to change the voltage in the fence to a nonlethal amount,” Salmon Jo said. “So that’s good news for us.”

“Some Klons say the current is off to save energy,” Picker Klon said. “Other Klons say the fence is only deadly to Klons because of the chips we wear.”

Salmon Jo shrugged. “It depends whether you believe the main point of the fence is to keep out the Barbarous Ones. Either way, they can probably track you down if you’re wearing that chip.”

“I’m going to slice it out tomorrow morning,” Picker Klon said.

“What about tunneling under the fence?” Rubric asked.

“Negative,” Salmon Jo said. “They have metal plates underneath the earth all along the fence, to carry the current.”

“That’s what my friend who worked on the fence said too.”

“I wonder if there’s a way to turn off one section of the fence,” Rubric said.

The others shrugged.

“We’d better go to sleep, so we have the strength for all this slicing chips and jumping walls and getting zapped,” Rubric said. She was cross that they had to navigate this dangerous fence and go to the Land of The Barbarous Ones just to please Picker Klon. And it disturbed her how sketchy and contradictory all the information was.

“Okay,” said Picker Klon immediately, unrolling the sleeping bag Rubric had lent her. “Dream of butter!”

Salmon Jo smiled. “We say, sweet dreams.”

Picker Klon smiled back. “That’s sort of my nickname, Dream. Because I’m always having a dream of something better.”

Me too,
thought Rubric, but she didn’t say anything. She crawled into the two-person tent she and Salmon Jo were sharing and hung her flashlight from its ceiling. The tent was starting to smell sort of like a pungent combination of herself and Salmon Jo. She liked it. Maybe they really would live in this tent for ever and ever.