The Bradbury Report (37 page)

Before Anna could begin to answer, he said to her, “You are not my mother.” He said this calmly, definitively.

“I'm not,” Anna said. “No.”

“You are not my father,” he said to me.

“No,” I said.

“Who is?” he said. “Where are they?”

Alan was not upset. He was curious, determined to find out what he wanted to know, and it was clear he'd not be put off.

“These are good questions, Alan. Important ones,” Anna said. “I've been waiting for you to ask, hoping you would. If you will just sit at the table and give me a minute. I need to get something, then I'll be back, and I'll explain everything to you.”

I've made her sound condescending. She was not a bit condescending. As always, she was kind and straightforward.

“What will you explain?” he said.

“I'll answer your questions. I'll tell you everything you want to know.”

“You will tell me who my mother is? You will tell me who my father is? You will tell me where they are?”

“I'll do my best,” she said. “Just sit down and give me a minute. Then we'll talk. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “Can I have a Coke?”

“Sure,” Anna said. “Get yourself a Coke. Are you still hungry?”

“I am still hungry,” he said.

“Get yourself a cookie, too, then.”

“What cookies are there?” he said.

“What have we got, Ray?” Anna said.

“I think there are vanilla fingers.”

“I like those cookies,” Alan said. “Vanilla fingers.”

“Okay. Have a Coke and a few cookies,” Anna said. “Just not too many. I'll be right back.”

Anna went upstairs to her bedroom: as much, I knew, to collect her thoughts as to get the book she was carrying when, after five minutes, she came back down.

“Okay, I'm ready,” she said.

“I'm ready,” Alan said.

“Good,” she said. “I've got a book for us to look at.”

“What book do you have?” Alan said.

“Let me sit down, and I'll show you.” Anna took the chair from the head of the table and pulled it around to the table's side, so she could sit next to Alan. In front of him there was a now-empty plate and a can of Coke. I'd been sitting across from him as he ate his cookies, but when Anna sat down, I moved to a chair across the room. I'm not sure why I did this. Maybe it was simple skittishness, or, let's call it by its right name, cowardice, but I thought it would be harder for him to hear what he was about to hear having to look straight at me.

“It's a book about how babies are made.”

“I know how babies are made,” Alan said.

“I wondered if you did,” Anna said.

“I do.”

“Will you tell me what you know?”

“Why?”

“So we can talk about it.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Babies are made in the woman's stomach,” Alan said. “Then the woman goes to the hospital and the baby comes out and it cries.”

“That's right,” Anna said. “I wonder if you know how the baby gets inside the woman's stomach.”

“From fucking,” he said. “Fucking puts it in there.”

Anna let the profanity slide. “It is true,” she said, “that sometimes when a man and woman make love, a baby is made. Not all the time, but sometimes.”

“Sometimes a baby is made,” he said.

“When the woman's body is ready to make a baby.”

“Then they fuck,” he said.

“Here,” she said. “Let me show you in the book.”

She paged slowly through the book with him, beginning with the section after conception. There were drawings and color photographs of the fetus in the womb at various stages in its development. There were drawings of the birth canal, photographs of the moment of birth, and of the mother (and sometimes father) with the infant just after. Alan was patient and polite, as he almost always was with Anna, but you could tell this was not what he wanted to know. I confess I doubted the wisdom of using a book on human sexual reproduction to introduce the subject of Alan's birth.

Anna closed the book. “Do you have any questions? So far, I mean?”

“I do have questions so far,” he said. “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”

I stood up and approached the table. We had not planned for me to participate in this way, and I saw some misgiving on Anna's face.

“Your mother was my mother,” I said to him. “Your father was my father.” I could not tell what Anna thought of this tack. “You and I had the same mother and father.”

“We had the same mother and father,” Alan said.

“We did. Yes.”

“Your mother was my mother.”

“Yes.”

“Your father was my father.”

“That's right.”

Alan thought a moment. Anna put her hand on his.

“You are my brother,” Alan said, with neither perceptible joy nor relief nor sorrow.

“We
are
brothers,” I said. “We are identical twins.”

“What did you say?”

“ ‘Identical' means we are exactly alike.”

“We are exactly alike.”

“In most ways, yes. We are.”

Alan shook his head, not quite in horror. “You are old, Ray.”

“I am. Getting older by the minute.”

“I am not old.”

“No, you're not old,” I said. “You're young.”

“You don't look like me.”

“I don't now. When I was your age I looked like you. Though you look better than I did.”

He turned to Anna. “He looked like me. Is it true?”

“Yes,” she said. She had no choice but to go along. “He looked very much like you. But you
do
look better than he did.”

“We are brothers,” he said to me.

“Yes.”

“Why are you so old?”

“Because I was made a long time before you were made. You were made a long time after me.”

“Do you have any other brothers?”

“No.”

“Do you have any other brothers?” he said to Anna.

“I don't have any brothers,” she said. “Or sisters.”

“Do you have any sisters?” he asked me.

“I don't.”

“Do you know your mother?”

“I did,” I said. “Yes.”

“Do you know your father?”

“I did know him. He died when I was very young.”

“Did your mother die?”

“She did,” I said. “But later. When I was twenty-two.”

“I am twenty-two,” he said.

“You are.”

“Did I know my mother?” he said.

“No.”

“Did she know me?”

“No.”

“Was I made in her stomach?”

“No.”

“Were you made in her stomach?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You were made a different way,” Anna said.

“How was I made?”

And it was here Anna explained to him the process of cloning, the insertion of the nucleus of a donor cell into an egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed, etc. I was impressed, and touched, by the care Anna took in her explanation, by how she was able to translate a fairly technical business into language and concepts Alan might, but probably didn't, understand.

When she'd finished, Anna said: “You are what is called a clone. All those boys, all those men you were living with before you came to us, they were also clones, like you.”

“I am a clone,” Alan said.

“A copy,” I said.

Anna made it clear she did not find my use of the government's euphemism helpful or acceptable. “The word ‘clone' comes from a word that means ‘twig,' ” she said.

“The word comes from a word?”

“Yes,” she said. “The way you come from Ray. They took a twig from Ray and made you from it.”

“What is a twig?”

“It is a small part of a tree. A small branch. Part of a branch.”

“I come from a tree?”

“You come from Ray.”

“Am I real?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “You are very real.”

He put his head in his hands. I had never seen him do this. We were quiet for a minute.

He lifted his head and looked beseechingly at Anna. “What am I?”

“You are a person. You are a wonderful boy. A beautiful boy.”

Again he put his head in his hands. (He did not get this from me.) This was not in any way a pose. He was thinking hard, and this seemed to help him do it.

To both of us he said, “Did you find me?”

“You found us,” Anna said.

“Did you look for me?” He said this to me.

“No,” I said.

Then, to Anna: “Did you look for me?”

“I waited for you,” she said. “I watched for you.”

“Did you miss me?”

“I didn't know you. I'd miss you now if you weren't here.”

I'd been standing, awkwardly, by the table. I sat down now, across from Alan, so there'd be less of me for him to look at.

“Did you make me?” he said to me.

“I did not make you. I agreed to have you made.”

“You agreed to have me made.”

“I said it was okay to make you.”

“You said it was okay.”

“Yes.”

“Who made me?”

“People who knew how to do it,” I said.

“Say who they are,” he said.

“They are scientists,” Anna said. “You know what a scientist is.”

“I do know what a scientist is.”

“They made you,” she said.

“They are not my mother.”

“No,” she said.

“Who is my mother?”

“Your mother was Ray's mother,” Anna said.

“I was not made in her stomach.”

“No,” Anna said.

“She didn't know me.”

“She didn't.”

Right here I considered apologizing to Alan. “I am sorry I had you made.” I didn't say it, because I wasn't confident that, once it had been said, I could keep control of its meaning. I
was
sorry. For the first time, really. Up to then I'd have contended, however he'd been made, now that he was outside the Clearances it was better for Alan, for all of us, that he existed. In my most complacent moments, watching him, I was gratified to think I had given him life. Removed as I'd been from the process. Now he looked undone, and I thought it would be good to stop there. For the time being, at least. I don't know if Anna thought the same. We had told him who and what he was, and given him more than enough to think on. Imagine hearing that, for Pete's sake. “You're a copy.” Like being told you are a figure in someone else's dream. He'd been unnaturalized. Reconceived. De-selfed. Subhumanned. Interesting that the churchy words seem apt: he'd been desecrated, dis-graced, unhallowed. What covenant for him? Maybe I'm wrong. How could any of us know how he was feeling?

Alan was not ready to stop. “Why did you make me?” he said to me. “Why did they make me?”

I told him the truth. “I don't want to say.”

“Will you say?” he said to Anna.

“I will,” she said. “It is a terrible thing, why they made you.”

“Why did they make me?” he said.

“They made you for Ray,” she said.

“They made me for you.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“So that . . .” Anna began.

“I should tell him,” I said. “I am responsible.”

“What did you say?”

“I am to blame,” I said. “It is my fault.”

“It is your fault,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “They made you for me, and it is my fault.”

“Why did they make me? Now do you want to say?”

“I don't, but I will. They made you for me, so that if I got sick, or hurt, you would be there to help me.”

“I would be there.”

“Yes.”

“Where?” he said.

“Where you were,” I said. “Before you came to us.”

“I would be there to help you.”

“If I lost an eye,” I said, “they would take your eye and give it to me.”

“They would take my eye.”

“Yes. If I needed a kidney, they would take your kidney and give it to me.”

“What is a kidney?” he said.

“It's a part of your body that cleans your blood,” Anna said. “You have two of them.”

“They would take my kidney,” he said.

“Yes. If I needed a lung, they would take yours.”

He looked at Anna. “How many lungs do I have?”

“You have two lungs,” she said.

“They would take one,” he said.

“They would take two,” I said, “if I needed them.”

“I am a thing you eat,” he said. “I am food.”

“You are not food,” Anna said.

“If I were sick,” he said to me, “would you help me?”

“I would now,” I said.

“How many lungs does Ray have?” he said to Anna.

“Two.”

“If I needed a lung, would they take one of yours and give it to me?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because I was not made to help you.”

“I was made to help you,” he said.