Your One & Only(7)

Beyond the wall at the foot of the cottage’s hill, the lawn dipped down to the banks of Blue River, which flowed north until it disappeared, swallowed by dense jungle. On the far side, fields of corn, barley, and wild rice, dotted by the lingering shadow of summer clouds, stretched all the way to the Novomundo Mountains. Novomundo, the New World Mountains. They’d been named by scientists, years before Jack was born, and the world they’d made was no longer new.

Jack had spent his whole life isolated from the clones his own age, and when he’d finally been allowed to join them, it’d been a disaster. The Council never let him go back to school. Now he spent his days living in the tiny bedroom they’d built for him in the labs, occasionally performing some task in the clinic for Sam, like rolling bandages or folding linens. They would never let him forget what had happened, or that it had all been his fault.

Jack hadn’t spoken for several moments, so Sam sighed and sat next to him in the grass. He watched Jack throw the ball. Again and again, he caught and threw, and Sam waited.

If that’s how Sam wanted this to go, that was fine. Jack plucked the ball out of the air once more.

For some reason, Sam couldn’t catch a ball if his life depended on it. Jack had tried to figure out why Sam had such a hard time. He simply couldn’t get the rhythms down, and he missed every throw. Inga-296 had given Jack the ball when he was little. Jack couldn’t remember exactly when, but he must have been about five years old.

“It’s called a baseball,” she’d said. “Young people from your time, they played with it.” She held it out, smiling. “Who knows, maybe your original did.”

Jack had looked up a description of baseball in one of the books that filled the little cottage he and Sam and Inga-296 had shared back then, before Sam brought Jack to live in the labs in town. Before she died. The book said you needed nine people to make a team, so now he just tossed the ball at the side of the house. If the clones ever wanted to play, even with their lousy coordination, they already had their nine models. They wouldn’t include him.

Sam stopped watching the ball. He frowned at Jack while Jack ignored him, each trying to outlast the other. Sam finally heaved a breath and gave in.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said. “It’s not safe outside the wall. You need to come home.”

“This is my home.” Jack felt familiar resentment welling in his veins.

“This hasn’t been your home for years. Your home is in Vispera.”

Jack tossed the ball. “You should have told me.”

“My brother told you.”

“You should have told me. You act like you’re all the same person, but you’re not. You’re different from them.”

Sam bristled. “I’m not different from them. They’re Samuels, and I’m a Samuel.”

“They’re Samuels. You’re Sam. Don’t send them to me thinking I can’t tell the difference. They don’t care about me. They wouldn’t care if I died.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

Jack knew Sam didn’t really believe they’d care, but he let the man lie to him.

“I’m sorry, Jack. The Council won’t budge.”

“You’re on the Council. Did you even try?”

“Of course I did.”

“It’s that fat Carson, isn’t it? He thinks I’m a freak, and the others listen to him.”

“It’s all of them. They think it’d be disruptive.”

It wasn’t fair. He was turning seventeen, just like the Gen-310s, and he should be in the Declaration with them. He’d had as much of an education sitting in the labs as they had at school. More, he’d guess. It was just like last year, when they wouldn’t let him participate in the Gen’s first Pairing Ceremony. He’d wanted to, desperately, but the Council had said no, citing that disastrous day at the school.

That night, when everyone had Paired for the first time except him, he’d watched their celebration hidden in the branches of a tall tree. They’d danced and eaten colorful foods he’d never seen before. The girls wore gauzy dresses, and the boys wore the ceremonial robes tied with leather belts, and in the evening they’d all chosen their partner for the first Pairing and then spent the rest of the evening laughing together and talking. Jack wasn’t even allowed to sit at the table with the Gens in the Commons for their meal. Sam would bring him potatoes and carrots from the dining halls, or rice and lentils, and sometimes Sam would stay and eat with him, but mostly he was alone. For Jack, those nights were the worst. And it would all happen again tonight after the Declaration. They would eat and dance and laugh, they would Declare and let the community know what apprenticeship they’d chosen, and then they’d Pair in the evening.

The laughter of the children in the schoolyard carried up the hill on a breeze. Usually they romped on climbing ropes, swings, and slides that the Ingas had made for them, but today they played a game. The children stood in a row with their fisted hands extended, while a single girl walked down the line and cupped their hands in her own one by one. Jack had seen this game before. Sam had told him it was called Button. One child would hold a button in his hand, and the rest would pretend they also had a button. The finder had to guess who actually had it. When Jack had first seen it, he’d thought the point of the game was to keep the secret of having the button, but he’d been wrong. He slowly figured out that the child wanted to be found out. If they played the game well, everyone would know where the button was. It was a way for them to practice communing, not just with their siblings, which seemed to come easily to them, but with the other children in their Gen.