Swans and Klons (20 page)

The Medical Assistant Klon was bustling around making preparations, sanitizing her hands repeatedly. She cut off Rubric’s clothes. She gave her a shot. She swabbed Rubric’s abdomen and chest, then covered her torso with a sheet. Rubric could hear her clinking around in parts of the room that she couldn’t see from her position, flat on her back on the gurney. The Klon wheeled her down the hall. Rubric counted the light fixtures in the ceiling, wishing the last sights of her life could be more beautiful. The Klon brought her into a brightly lit room that Rubric knew from edfotunement was an operating theater. A tray of shining scalpels and other instruments was the centerpiece of the room, next to some other more mysterious equipment.

Then the Klon did a strange thing. She asked, “Did the Doctor say your name was Rubric?”

Rubric nodded. The Klon had short fuzzy blond hair and a round face. She had crinkly lines around her eyes. Rubric bet she smiled a lot. She wasn’t smiling now. This was the last face Rubric would ever see.

“That’s an unusual name. Did you live in Mountain City, in Yellow Dorm at Masaryka Academy?”

She nodded again.

“Oh dear,” the Klon said. She looked disturbed. Then she disappeared out of Rubric’s view.

That was too much for Rubric. She began to thrash and grunt as loud as she could through the tape. Finally, the Klon reappeared.

“Oh dear,” she said again. “What to do, what to do.”

Rubric kept grunting, and finally, the Klon addressed her directly again. “You see, dear, my schatzie was a Nanny Klon in your dorm. I’ve heard all about you, from her missives. She said you were her favorite.”

Rubric grunted even louder. Finally the Klon took off the tape.

“Are you Shine?” Rubric asked hoarsely.

“Oh dear,” the Klon said. “Yes, I am.”

“Will you help me?”

“I must say, I’ve never seen a Panna as an organ donor before. It makes me think it must be true that we’re all the same, if they can just decide to redistribute you. It’ll be hard to tell Bloom that I helped redistribute her favorite young Panna.” Then her face hardened, and she said, “But if it wasn’t for you, Bloom wouldn’t be sweeping the streets now.”

“I didn’t mean to make problems for Bloom,” Rubric said. “I loved her.”

“That’s all right, dear. You’re certainly paying for it now. Getting your just deserts. Can you imagine, a talented Nanny Klon like her, now a Street Sweeper Klon? At first, they just transferred her to an academy in Soot City. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the things you said. Before long, they said she was no good at her job, and she couldn’t work with young Pannas anymore.”

“Please, help me,” Rubric whispered. “Please.”

“Rubric, if I helped every sad case I saw, I would be lying on one of those gurneys. You have no idea.”

It was hopeless.

But then Shine deliberately overturned the entire instrument tray. “Oops,” she said, as the glittering instruments hit the floor with a crash.

Just then, the petite Doctor opened the door. “The anesthesiologist is ready to—What’s going on in here?”

“I’m so sorry, Doctor. I knocked this over.”

“You’re terribly clumsy. All Klons are thickos.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Bring me a new tray of sterile instruments,” the Doctor ordered. “And don’t go flipping any more trays.”

The Doctor remained in the room, out of Rubric’s sight, after Shine left. Rubric tried to send a mental pulse message of love to Salmon Jo. Maybe Salmon Jo would somehow feel something.

“What’s taking that damn Klon so long?” the Doctor said. She left the room too.

Rubric did not know how much longer she lay on the gurney, thinking about Salmon Jo. She didn’t think her thought pulses were getting through. Love was just a dream, and death was the only reality. She didn’t even deserve to see Salmon Jo one last time. It was better this way. Salmon Jo would find a new schatzie. The important thing was Salmon Jo would survive, and live a happy life.

The next person who came into the room was the last person she expected.

“Rubric, you are no end of trouble,” Panna Stencil Pavlina said. “Sometimes, I think you have no sense at all.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Rubric couldn’t understand what was going on.

Stencil Pavlina’s dialogue with the Doctor, in which Stencil Pavlina repeatedly vouched for Rubric and promised to take responsibility for her, made no sense.

“And I want her with all her kidneys,” Stencil Pavlina insisted.

It wasn’t until Shine came in and jabbed something into Rubric’s abdomen—sure, what was a little more pain?—and said, “Congratulations, you’re one of us,” that Rubric understood.

She had been chipped and was now a Klon.

A Klon who was not an organ donor. Stencil Pavlina’s Klon.

Shine gave Rubric an ill-fitting pair of leggings and a tunic, and Rubric was released. She followed Stencil Pavlina out of the hospital, dazed.

“I must say, I expected a little more gratitude for saving your life,” Stencil Pavlina said, as they got into a tiny, hot-pink electric vehicle.

“I am grateful,” Rubric said. “Very, very grateful. Thank you so much. It’s just that I’m a little disoriented.”

Her words rang hollow. In fact, Rubric was not grateful to Stencil Pavlina. She
was
grateful to be alive. She couldn’t believe how delicious the autumn air smelled, with a crisp snap of winter in it. She was happy, even, to feel pain all over her body. But somehow her gratitude was not directed toward Stencil Pavlina. Her miraculous rescue seemed more cosmic than that, not something she could ascribe to any one entity. Especially not an entity like Stencil Pavlina.

“I can well understand you’d be disoriented,” Stencil Pavlina said. “You’ve been in there for two days. And you very much smell like it.”

“Two days? Really?” It had seemed like much longer.

“Really.”

“Stencil Pavlina, I haven’t eaten since…” Rubric wasn’t even sure. “Can we stop for some food first?”

They stopped at the very same Comfort Station in downtown Lvodz where Rubric had changed into her phony Doctor’s robe. That was the last time she had eaten, Rubric realized. The toast was the best thing she’d ever eaten in her entire life. It was soft and hot and exploded with butteriness in her mouth. She almost cried. She gulped down three cups of tea before Stencil Pavlina even took a sip of hers.

“Can you please explain what happened?” she asked Stencil Pavlina. “How is it that you’re here?”

Stencil Pavlina was buttering her toast so that the butter was spread perfectly evenly. Rubric did that too, ordinarily.

“I received a pulse from someone who claimed to be a Klon who is our Jeepie Similar.”

Dream.

“It said you had been captured by Doctors, and if I had any soul at all, I would do something to help you. Rather melodramatic, or so I thought. I had nothing else to do—inspiration has been failing me of late—and so I began to make some calls. After speaking to a shocking number of people, I did learn you had been taken for treatment here in Lvodz. And so I set out. I do think it is only fair and just for you to become a Klon, after everything you’ve done. But it is rather going too far to harvest your organs and then compost you. A truly bureaucratic frame of mind came up with that. No imagination, no flair. At incredible expense of spirit and rationing credits, I was able to secure you for my own, on a number of conditions.”

“Why?” Rubric asked.

“Why conditions or—”

“Why did you do this?”

“Oh, Rubric, exasperating as you are, I do care for you very much. It may irritate you to hear this, but you remind me so much of myself at your age: talented, rudderless, confused, susceptible to freakish ideas from others, prey to your overdeveloped sense of justice, unable to divine the purpose of life. We all get into scrapes, dear Rubric, but we don’t all destroy property. I have also always been fond of a good fire, but contained in a woodstove.”

“Stencil Pavlina, what exactly did they tell you? Everything happened because I found out that humans and Klons are the same! We saw it on a spreadsheet, and—”

Panna Stencil Pavlina interrupted her.

“Most Pannas who are smart sense what you and your schatzie had to learn from a spreadsheet. The Klons are not human, because we say they’re not. It’s a construct. But constructs can be real. The experience of being a Klon makes them what they are, Klons.”

Rubric wanted to tell her what scheiss she was talking, but Stencil Pavlina had saved her life less than an hour ago. She looked down at her plate.

“A sulky Klon is even more unappealing than a sulky young Panna. Let me tell you the terms of your release to me. I had to pay half my rationing credits for the next seven years. We’ll be wearing out-of-style clothes and eating awful chazarai like this! No more swan-shaped ice cubes for me. If you disappear or set fires or make trouble, those credits are gone down the toilet for nothing. I also had to give both those Doctors a hefty bribe. So, right now, I am very poor. But it would have broken my heart if you had been composted. I am trusting you.”

“All right, Stencil Pavlina,” Rubric murmured. She really was touched that Stencil Pavlina had sacrificed so much to help her.

In the car again, Stencil Pavlina said, “You do understand that I don’t really consider you my Klon, Rubric. That was the only way I could get you out.”

“Thank you,” Rubric said again.

“Of course, I don’t know how to cook or clean, and I’ve had to de-acquisition the Gerdas because I can’t afford them anymore. So I’ll be expecting you to help out around the place. But, naturally, the main thing you’ll be doing is making art.”

“Really?” It sounded too good to be true.

“Absolutely. I’m going to put you right to work. You’ll start the moment we get home, which will be late tonight, or early tomorrow morning, depending on how you look at it. This little tin can only goes forty klicks an hour. Unlike the vans you’ve been stealing. You can start brainstorming during the ride, in fact. I want to have a big show in the late spring. It will blow everyone away! Some people mock me because I haven’t made anything new in so long. But that’s all going to change, and people will be stunned. I know you can do it, Rubric.”

Rubric understood now. She would make the art, and Stencil Pavlina would take the credit. So what? There were worse things.

“You see, Rubric, Klons have no souls, so all your creativity belongs to me.”

“That sounds fine with me,” Rubric said. “It’s a fair deal.”

Rubric certainly didn’t feel like she had a soul anymore.

Chapter Twenty-eight

That night, Rubric and Stencil Pavlina stopped at another Comfort Station.

“Your stench is overpowering,” Stencil Pavlina told her. “I want you to wash yourself thoroughly. I’m too tired to drive through the night, anyway. I’m getting a headache.”

First of all, they had more tea and toast.
Who Shall Be My Schatzie?
was playing on the screen. Rubric was riveted. She couldn’t believe it was the same season that had been on before all this trouble started, before she and Salmon Jo had fled. Everything seemed so dreamlike now to Rubric, that the drama on the screen seemed more real than her own life. It was the antepenultimate episode, in which this season’s heroine had to choose between two bewitching Pannas, who both loved her truly. Next week, her choice would be revealed, and the last episode would show the key-exchanging ceremony. The new schatzies would wear exquisite gowns and crowns of myrtle as they pledged their love for each other and received the keys to their new shared home. Rubric used to daydream about having a key-exchanging ceremony with Salmon Jo one day, but that was clearly impossible now.

Even better than the food and the edfotunement was the shower Rubric took in the overnight room. She turned the water as hot as it could possibly go, until the bathroom filled with clouds of steam and her skin began to turn red. She felt as though all her experiences were being washed away. It was so luxurious to scrub at her skin with the soapy loofah, one of the many small niceties that didn’t exist in the Land of the Barbarous Ones. Rubric pictured herself becoming a brand-new person with every invisible cell of dead skin that she exfoliated. At Stencil Pavlina’s, she could take showers all the time. Finally, Rubric began to feel faint, and she had to sit down, cradling her head on her knees as the water pounded on her back. She fingered the sore place on her belly where she had been chipped. If Salmon Jo were here, she would give a highly technical explanation of why Rubric felt lightheaded, something about capillaries or that kind of thing. Better not to think about Salmon Jo. By the time Rubric got out of the shower, Stencil Pavlina was snoring in her cot.

The decadence continued as Rubric crawled into her own cot. When had she last slept in a real bed, rather than on cold ground? Rubric reassured herself that even Klons were allowed to sleep in beds. Some light housekeeping would be way easier than the labor she’d done in the Land of the Barbarous Ones. Plus, she’d never have to set eyes on a Cretinous Male or a pregnant woman. Materially, she’d be much better off.

But it wasn’t enough. Rubric wanted desperately to believe that beds and hot showers were all she needed, all she wanted out of life. But she found hot tears leaking out of her eyes and pooling on the pillow as she thought about what she really needed. She swallowed back her tears so loudly she was afraid it would rouse Stencil Pavlina.

I can’t stay,
Rubric realized.
I can’t do this.

Rubric decided to wait just a little longer, to be sure Stencil Pavlina was deeply asleep. Rubric must have fallen asleep while she was waiting, though, because when her eyes suddenly snapped open, the moon had risen. Moonlight was shining into the window.

It felt like her very bones were tired. Rubric considered getting just a little more sleep, or even staying a few days at Stencil Pavlina’s, to give herself a chance to build herself up. But she knew it was now or never. It was so hard to sit up in bed and swing her bare feet out from the warm covers and onto the cold floor.