Your One & Only(38)
Genetics were complicated, and his mother’s journals contained only a quick reckoning of what had happened to the humans, but Jack gathered they had been a convenient resource. When the Viktors needed to work hard to keep up with the others in the scientific breakthroughs being made, the clones borrowed a genetic marker from one of the humans to help future Viktors become quick studies. The Kates seemed to lack self-control, the Meis tended toward irritability, and so on, until these humans had provided the genetic nuances the clones needed. In only a few generations, the clones had what they would need to mold themselves into perfectly balanced specimens, each model complementing the others’ particular traits and strengths. Which was good, because the humans had become problematic.
In Vispera and the other communities, violence was virtually unknown, and conflict rare. The clone models communed, reaching peaceful resolution to disagreements, short-circuiting possible dissension. The humans, on the other hand, became increasingly difficult to manage and predict. They began fighting the tests and refusing work. Some ran away, only to be brought back again, as it wouldn’t do for a human to go unmonitored. And then there was the difficulty that they kept getting pregnant.
The women were eliminated first. It was unfortunate, the Council members agreed, but the humans had served their purpose. The men were kept in the barn and put to work tending the fields and cattle. But they became violent and dangerous, and the measures in place to control them weren’t working. In any case, the clones had devised machines to do the jobs of the men. Within a year, they had been eliminated as well, their water poisoned so they drifted off to sleep. The clones saw nothing to be gained in making them suffer. The only remnants of their existence in Vispera were the vestiges of the women’s huts on the edge of a field, now nothing more than piles of thick grass and mud bricks, and also the barn.
Once painted a bright chrome yellow, it stood out against the red barns that held cows, mules, and horses. On the inside, instead of animal stalls, the yellow barn held cages with iron bars, and iron rings poked out from the walls to hold the rusted shackles attached to clusters of manacles. The yellow barn hadn’t been used since the last human men had been caged in it over two hundred years ago, and it sloped precariously to the side. The yellow paint was hardly recognizable, the wood rotted, and the roof had caved in, letting in the torrential rains, nesting birds, and ambling rodents.
When Jack was a child, he liked to explore the planted fields, and he’d naturally come across the yellow barn sitting in a barren isolated plot of its own. He would climb the beams, falling to the ground more than once. One time his mother had found him there, and he’d seen the way a veil fell across her eyes when she saw him playing in the open cages. She’d taken his hand and led him away, telling him that the yellow barn was a bad place.
“All creatures are precious, Jack,” she’d said. “My people have done terrible things. We need to learn how to do better.”
That was the same year she ran away from Vispera. The same year she died.
After the fiasco of the trial, it hadn’t taken Jack long to figure out where the clones were taking him when they led him away from town. He’d been confined to the yellow barn, though none of them, not even Sam, had bothered to tell him what that meant. As each hour passed in the barn, however, he became more and more certain that they’d decided he should die.
The rusted bars of the cage cast long shadows across the floor at night. Jack couldn’t reach them to see if any were loose. The Viktors had strung shackles through the rings bolted to the far wall of the cell. They were just long enough for Jack to lie down, though even then the cuffs pulled at his wrists and cut into his skin. They’d taken his clothes, and he shivered each night against the wall, hugging his knees. They’d brought him no food, and nothing to drink but a murky bowl of water filled by the rain that streamed through the open roof. He’d been abandoned. He yelled that first day until his voice was hoarse and his throat raw, then he’d given up, exhausted. He felt hollow with hunger, his lips were dry and cracked, and his muscles cramped. If they had decided to kill him, he was beginning to wish they’d just get on with it.
On the first night, he’d been unable to sleep. He was too cold, too constrained by the shackles, and simply too angry. Sleep came on the second night, though it felt more like drifting into a dark abyss than rest. The next morning, he woke with the first beam of sun trickling through the cracks in the barn walls.
The rumble of a man clearing his throat caused Jack to shift position, and he cringed at the jagged needles of pain in his limbs. An older Carson, probably one of the 290s, sat before him on a rough chair on the other side of the bars. A Council badge was sewn into his shirt. His legs were crossed, and one hand was folded over his knee. He ate a cut of meat on torn bread and sipped from a bottle of clear water in his other hand. A small parcel lay by his feet.
Jack eyed the Carson warily, squinting against the bright light from outside. His eyes followed the water to the man’s mouth. It wet his lips, and Jack licked his own with a parched tongue.
“The Council argued for a long time,” Carson said after swallowing a mouthful of the sandwich. “They decided someone should let you know what we’re doing with you. I volunteered.” His mouth, shining with moisture and grease, twisted in a half smile.
“Where’s Sam?” Jack asked. His voice, dry and unused, came out rough.