Your One & Only(42)

Althea glanced in the direction of the building where the youngest Gen would be.

“They won’t like it if you go there,” Nyla said, following Althea’s gaze.

“They don’t have to know.”



Samuel-299 sat on a bench on the nursery playground with little Gen-320s running around him. His feet were planted flat, and his eyes were far away despite the bedlam of the bright outdoors, alive with the chatter of rambunctious seven-year-olds.

Samuel was a doctor, not one of the caretakers. Usually the nursery was staffed with the Gens who had retired from their jobs in the community. It was unusual to see a Gen-290 Samuel there. He looked ill at ease and out of place.

The nursery sat alongside the school in the south part of town. Inside, it had nine different stations. Every child could play in any station they chose, as they often did, but they’d been designed specifically to hone the inborn skills of the individual models. In one corner, paints and easels had been set up, and the Ingas liked to play there. Samuels chose the dolls and toy doctors’ kits. Althea remembered the nursery as a child, and she could still clearly recall the smell of old books and records, and the brittle paper of faded maps.

She briefly considered turning around, walking away from the playground, and leaving Samuel-299 be. But she needed to see Jack. She needed to know he was still alive.

She sat on the bench next to Samuel and touched his hand. It was cold, even in the bright sun. His skin had a grayish pallor.

“Althea,” he said, unsurprised at seeing her. “You want to know where they took Jack.”

“You know, don’t you?”

He nodded, but didn’t tell her. “I’m off the Council.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

His hand clutched hers, pressing her fingers together. His eyes sharpened. “Go to him! He needs help.”

When she’d first touched Samuel, she’d felt only a dim sense of anxiety, something faded and weak. When he mentioned Jack, however, the feeling that had been no more troubling to her than a slight headache burst forward, a sharp, stabbing pain directly between her eyes.

He’s fracturing, she thought. He was losing control of his emotions, and his ability to commune with others had become erratic, weak at times but then sudden and strong. This was why the other Samuels in his Gen had sent him off to the nursery. They either felt nothing from him or they felt too much. Althea pulled her hand free of his, not wanting to feel his pain again.

The children played in the yard. It was some game where they raced after each other, one group of siblings chasing another. One of the little Ingas tripped and fell, scraping her knees on the gravel. She cried as blood oozed from the broken skin. Samuel’s gaze flickered toward the commotion, but he didn’t react. The Inga’s sisters had already converged around her, their red-ribboned braids hanging in their faces as they comforted the girl on the ground.

“Samuel, where’s Jack?” Althea asked.

His eyes drifted away from her. She saw the struggle in them, and then watched a light die inside him as all his calculations failed him. Pain was etched clearly on his face.

“He’s locked up, in the yellow barn by the east field,” he said. “But, Althea, you should leave it, let the Council do what’s best.” He seemed at war with himself, and she’d disrupted whatever intense concentration it was taking him to forget. “He’ll only bring you heartbreak. And then you’ll fracture, too.”

It had occurred to Althea that she was courting trouble. By helping Jack, what if she ended up fracturing, like Samuel-299? She would have to be careful.

Samuel’s gaze bore into her. “I’m weak,” he said. “I’ve been so weak. He needed me, and what have I done? Let the others be cruel to him. That’s what Inga-296 said would happen, and I didn’t listen. After Copan, I thought I could protect him. But he needed protection from us. What’s wrong with us?”

“Copan?” Althea asked. But he wasn’t looking at her anymore.

His words, gravelly and low, rumbled in his chest. “There’s something wrong with us, Althea.”

Althea leaned toward him. “What do you mean?”

“We’re clones, Althea. I know we don’t like the word, but that’s what we are. We’re copies of copies of copies of manipulated genes. And those genes are degrading, eroding those parts of us we think we don’t need. The human parts. The Council thinks I’m exaggerating the problem. But we’re broken.”

“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

He pointed to the children. “Look,” he said.

Althea followed where his finger pointed to the little Ingas. They weren’t crying anymore. They were communing, their hands held in a circle, placid smiles on their faces as they waited for the last Inga sitting on the ground to join them. Althea stood to leave. The Samuel had become too confused to make sense, and she didn’t know anymore how to talk to him.

Then she saw the blood.

The girl on the ground had stood to join her sisters. Dropping a rock, she took hold of their hands. The rock fell to the ground, smeared in red from where she’d rubbed the skin of her knees raw until it matched the cuts of the first Ingas. It was impossible to tell which Inga was the one who fell, as now every one of their knees was scraped and bleeding. Red lines dripped down their shins in a garish reflection of the red ribbons in their hair.