Swans and Klons (17 page)

“We’re following eth fruits from their earliest days on the tree until they are turned into energy!” Rubric said, giggling.

“Charming,” declared the Kapo Klon, an older woman with a lined face. “I will personally escort you around the factory.”

“That’s not necessary,” Dream said.

“Oh, but it is,” the Kapo Klon said. “There are a lot of dangers in a factory for young Pannas like yourselves.”

Dream’s smile began to look a little strained. But Rubric knew a Panna could always get her own way. “We must go by ourselves,” she said haughtily. “It’s part of the assignment.”

“In that case,” demurred the Kapo Klon.

Rubric was actually a little shocked at how easy it was. Security was so lax in Society. They could probably do a lot more damage to this factory than just steal one Klon.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Rubric asked, as they walked through a dirty hallway, clutching floor plans and safety equipment.

“I know you’re thinking we could destroy this factory while we’re here, and I agree,” Dream said. “But that’s not what I’m thinking.”

“Okay, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking it’s so much fun to be a Panna!” said Dream.

They found the staircase that led down to the basement where Salmon Jo’s Jeepie Similar Klon was working. They donned the face masks and polycarbonate goggles that the Kapo Klon had told them to wear.

When they reached the basement, they couldn’t see at all. The whole area was a cloud of white dust. They could hear Klons talking and coughing, but they couldn’t see them. Rubric turned on the flashlight she kept in her pocket, but it only made the cloud of dust more luminescent. They walked around, peering at each Klon they saw. Big chutes came down from the ceiling, emptying piles of eth-fruit detritus into dumpsters, but the white dust settled all over the room. The Klons were scraping the white stuff into piles and then shoveling the piles into the dumpsters. Finally, Rubric caught sight of a characteristic stooped posture at the other end of the large room. Even through the white swirl, she recognized Salmon Jo’s Jeepie Similar Klon.

The girl was younger than Rubric, barely into her teens, but she was gaunt and hunched. Her face was covered in white dust. Her golden eyes seemed to pop out of her goggles.

“Hello,” Dream said, and the girl jumped.

“Are you inspectors?” she said. “I’m sorry I’m not wearing my mask. Kapo Klon always tells me to put it on.”

They had agreed that Dream had to handle the big reveal. “No offense, Panna Rubric, but you did a lousy job,” Dream had said. “You seemed completely veruckt. Leave it to me. And be ready to run, because some Klons are very loyal and aren’t receptive to the idea of escape. I know that seems strange, but that is how it is.”

Now, Dream knocked the girl on the arm. “Listen, Gold Eyes, I know your Kapo Klon doesn’t want you to wear a mask. ’Cause it makes you breathe too slow, and then you work too slow, eh? You know how I know?” Dream was using what sounded to Rubric like an exaggerated Klon accent.

The girl’s eyes got wider and she shook her head.

“Eh, I’m a Klon too,” Dream whispered.

“You’re her personal Klon?”

“Keep your voice down! No, I was a Picker Klon. Maybe I picked some of the eth fruits you’re shoveling now. But I escaped. This Panna human helped me. If you want, we can take you to the Land of the Barbarous Ones.”

The girl began to tremble. The trembling started her coughing.

“The Land of the Barbarous Ones isn’t as good or as bad as the stories say,” Dream whispered. “They really do have Cretinous Males and give birth to Hatchlings out of their you-know-whats. They’re odd people, but they leave you alone. Know why? Because you’re free there, a Panna, a human. You still have to work, but only half as much, and it’s real gentle work. So what do you say, Gold Eyes, are you coming or what?”

The girl tried to answer, but she was racked by coughing. “Do I have to decide right now?” she choked out.

Rubric felt so sorry for her. “No, of c—”

Dream slapped Rubric’s arm, silencing her. “Yes, Klon, it’s now or never. This is your once-in-a-lifetime chance. But we’re not trying to sell you anything. We’ve got a list of suitable Klons as long as your arm, and if you don’t want to go, we just move on to the next. Only don’t tell anyone what we said, or we’ll come back and smother you in your sleep. From the sound of your lungs, it wouldn’t take very long.”

“It’s difficult to make such a hasty decision,” she said. “I need more…” She sighed. She looked like she might just fall asleep on her feet.

“Data?” Rubric suggested. Salmon Jo was always saying she needed more data before she could decide anything.

The girl just looked blankly at her. Where was this girl’s lightning-fast intelligence? From what Rubric could see through the dust cloud around her, other figures were shuffling closer. They probably wanted to hear what they were saying. Dream needed to wrap this up.

“Why am I on the list?”

“The Panna here’s got a soft spot for your Jeepie Type,” Dream said. “Her snuggle mate is the same Jeepie Type.”

Now the girl looked alarmed.

“It’s not like that,” Rubric assured her. “I only have eyes for my schatzie. She’s back in the Land of the Barbarous Ones. Also, your Jeepie Type is very brainy. We need people like that.”

The girl smiled faintly. “No one’s ever called me brainy before.”

“All right, brainy, we’re leaving. Are you coming?” Dream asked.

“Yes,” she said, in the most indecisive way you could possibly say yes.

“What’s something that breaks down in this factory that we might need your help with fixing?” Rubric asked.

“The cane-splash mixer is always getting sucrolated,” the Klon replied.

They shuffled through the sugar mist toward the elevator they had spotted earlier.

“The cave splasher is sugarcoated,” Dream announced to no one in particular.

“She means the cane-splash mixer is sucrolated,” Rubric said louder, smacking Dream.

“Not again,” someone said.

“I can help,” said another.

“Nah, we got it covered,” Dream said.

In the elevator, they removed their goggles and safety masks. Dream shook out her tunic and brushed at her leggings, but Rubric didn’t bother.

“The floor plan said the back door is on the ground level,” Dream said.

“Yeah, but the finished ethanol is on the mezzanine level,” Rubric said.

The girl just followed them without comment, although she was a bit startled when Rubric stopped in the hallway and smashed the glass on the fire-alarm panel with her flashlight. She pulled the fire-alarm handle, and a loud bell began ringing.

“So do they even let you guys out of the building if there’s a fire?” Dream asked. “Or do you have to keep working?”

“They let us out,” the girl said. “They removed some fire-alarm panels because we set off a lot of false alarms so we could have breaks. But we have drills all the time. If we all got toasted up, they’d have to get all new Klons who wouldn’t know how to do things. Our jobs are harder than they look.”

“Looks hard enough already,” Dream said. “What do you work, twelve-hour days?”

“Sixteen, sometimes,” the Klon said. “Without our long hours, Society would grind to a halt.” Talking about numbers seemed to soothe her. Rubric wondered if Dream had noticed and that was why she had asked.

“How many minutes does it take everyone in the factory to exit during a fire drill?” Rubric asked. Dream smiled at her, but there was a reason Rubric wanted to know.

“Just four minutes,” the Klon answered. Rubric knew she could trust her response.

Rubric checked the watch around her neck. It had been Salmon Jo’s, and she had given it to Rubric. “It’s probably safe to start a fire now,” she said.

“How can it be safe to start a fire?” the girl asked.

Rubric pushed open the door that led to the finished ethanol storeroom. Another alarm went off, but it didn’t matter. The big room had many fans turning lazily on the ceiling and was filled one end to the other with tanks of ethanol. There were several fire extinguishers placed on the walls next to the doors. Rubric took two and tossed them to the Klon and Dream. The Klon dropped hers on the floor, and some foam hissed out. Rubric went to work with her pocket knife, poking a tiny hole in the sealed spigot of the nearest tank.

“Um,” said the Klon. “I don’t know if this is such—”

Rubric took her flint out of her pocket and struck it. A spark appeared, and she was able to light her cloth safety mask. The girl edged closer to the door, speechless.

Rubric stuck the flaming mask in the spigot of the tank. Nothing happened, and she was thinking it wasn’t going to work when
whumph!
a huge flame shot up. She turned and ran.

Rubric heard a successive series of
whumph
s behind her as the other tanks began to catch. She bumped into the Klon, who dropped her fire extinguisher again. Dream and Rubric were running for the stairs, trying to drag the girl with them.

“No, close the door, close the door!” cried the girl, bumping into Rubric in her frenzy to get back, past them, the other way to shut the door. She slammed the metal door shut just as balls of flame belched out of the doorway. When she turned back again, she had no eyebrows. But Rubric had no time to look. The three of them kept jostling each other on the stairs in a way that would have been comical if it wasn’t so scary. She did notice with part of her brain that the girl wasn’t racing far ahead of them as she would have expected. Maybe if your lungs were full of dust, you wouldn’t be in top running condition like Salmon Jo.

They burst out the door, through the parking lot, and into the underbrush.

“The bike is no good for three people,” Rubric said.

Dream cradled her head in her hands. “What kind of thicko am I? Why are we only thinking of that now?”

Rubric went to get the bike anyway. She didn’t know what else to do.

They crept through the scrub to the car parking lot on the other side of the factory, Rubric pushing the e-bike. The trees were thin, and they could have been seen easily if anyone had looked in their direction. But no one was. Although the parking lot was jammed with every Factory Klon, they were all gazing up at the building.

It was a magnificent fire. Rubric was surprised it had spread so quickly. Walls of red fire shot up everywhere, and the brick building was blackening. Every now and then, there would be a small explosion from within. The roof was warping and buckling. Glass windows burst outward.

In the parking lot, Kapo Klons began taking attendance. Then a fire truck pulled up, sirens wailing. Firefighters, Klons in green uniforms and Pannas in dirty white ones, leapt out of the truck and began uncoiling a long hose. Rubric was watching with interest when Dream grabbed her arm and pointed to something.

A van. The key was in the ignition. Nearby, a Repair Klon and her human manager were standing around, gawking like everyone else. They had probably arrived in the van right before the fire started.

“Do you know how to drive?” she asked Dream.

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

The Klon was shaking her head.

“I’ve played a lot of VR driving games,” Rubric said.

“Well, great! How hard can it be?” asked Dream.

They walked nonchalantly over to the van. Rubric could see there were only two seats.

“You climb in the back,” Rubric told the golden-eyed girl and brought the e-bike around to the rear of the van with her. Was the back unlocked? Yes. The girl silently helped Rubric lift the bike inside and then climbed inside herself, wedging herself among tools, hardware, cans of paint, and the bike. She swung the doors in but didn’t close them all the way. Probably afraid it would be too loud. The van’s rightful owners were still standing around, looking at the blazing building.

Rubric hopped into the driver’s seat and Dream into the passenger seat. Quick as she could, she turned the key. The engine started up, but so did a horrible dinging sound. The repair people turned around.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Dream shouted unhelpfully. Rubric accidentally hit something that made the windshield wipers turn on. She tried to move the gear stick to a different position, but it wouldn’t move.

There was a woman running up to the car. Without hardly looking up, Rubric swung the door open and hit her with it. Oh, in the VR games you had to step on the brake! She found the brake and was able to move the gear stick. She stepped on the gas and the car zoomed backwards.

“Wrong way, wrong way!” Dream shouted. Again, unhelpfully.

It took Rubric a little while to find the brake again, but a tree stopped them, anyway. While she was trying to figure out the gear stick, a woman ran up to the passenger side and opened the door, grabbing Dream. She shrieked.

Rubric stepped on the gas again, and they lurched forward. The woman holding Dream fell, and Dream slammed the door shut again.

Rubric made a very wide turn out of the parking lot. They began careening down the road.

“Can’t you go any faster?” Dream asked.

Rubric sped up. She accidentally clipped a couple of mirrors off parked cars. “Oops.”

“There’s a Security vehicle behind us,” Dream shouted, looking into her own side mirror. “Do something!”

“Like what?”

“Oh wow!” Dream said. She rolled down her window and stuck her head out to get a better look. She was almost decapitated when Rubric risked a look in her own mirror and swerved all over the road. Every time Rubric moved her eyes, her stiff, terrified arms gripping the steering wheel followed.

“Gold Eyes is throwing stuff out the back,” Dream reported. “Good gravy! She just threw a can of paint, and it smashed into their windscreen. They’re slowing down.”

But Rubric had to slow down too to go around a corner.

“Quick, turn here,” Dream said. “While they can’t see you.”

“Here?”

“No, not into the bush! Where the road is.”

Their new road was straight and empty. Rubric pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

After a while Dream said, “There’s no one back there. Maybe you should pull into one of these driveways. Woah, slow down!”