Your One & Only(71)
“Calm down, Jack. You’ll have an attack.”
“Please, Sam,” he said. “Don’t tell me it was you.”
“Why not? The Bonding is one of my specialties. I’ve gone through it myself. It’s not that bad, even if it doesn’t always work.”
Jack stared at Sam, speechless. Sam only shrugged. He motioned for Jack to sit down. Jack shook his head.
“Fine.” Sam sank into a brown couch against the wall. “You stand. I need to sit.” He rested his elbows on his knees and looked as if he had a headache he was trying to ignore. A clock ticked on the wall above Sam’s head. Jack stared at it, struggling to control the violence of his emotions, waiting for Sam to speak. “I’m sorry you saw that, Jack,” he said at last. “I’m sorry about the Altheas.”
“What was that, Sam?”
“I can see why it would be hard for you to understand. But they volunteered; it’s the only way we do it. They wanted to reinforce their bond. It’s a legitimate medical procedure.”
“It’s cruel.”
“Our research has suggested—”
“Everyone around me, I hurt them. Inga, you, Althea. Everyone who comes near me, I seem to hurt.” Jack put his head in his hands. His voice came out muffled. “What’s wrong with me, Sam?”
Sam stared at his folded fingers dangling between his knees. His fingernails were ragged, the skin along the edges broken. “It’s not you, Jack. It’s us. It’s always been us.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
Jack shuddered, feeling a wave of dizziness for the second time that night. He blinked away spots that obscured his vision, focused again on the ticking clock.
“Inga had a theory,” Sam continued. “She thought that we’d changed ourselves so much, we’d left something important behind. She thought you were the answer, that raising you to be more human, more compassionate, would help the rest of us. The Council saw you as a possible tenth clone, but she thought it was your humanity that would save us.”
“It didn’t work.”
“That’s not true.”
“I don’t have any compassion, Sam. I’m angry. All the time, at everyone. At you. I’m no better than Jonah. I can’t save anyone. I hurt everyone who comes near me, and sometimes I don’t even care.”
“Maybe we’re not capable of being saved.”
Jack slowly crossed the room and settled in the chair facing Sam on the couch.
“What’s the Ark?”
Sam blinked at the sudden change of topic. “It’s an old term for the Sample Room, in the Tunnels.”
“That’s where my original genetic material came from. What would happen if the Sample Room was destroyed?”
Sam sighed. “The Council thinks we can integrate your genes into ours.”
“Why do they want to do that?”
“Because we’re dying. Inga-296 wasn’t wrong. We’ve manipulated the codes so much, we’ve copied them so many times. The problems we face now will only get worse. We don’t have the original samples, so the only answer is new variations from freshly cloned humans. Like the variations they think we can get from you.”
“From me, and from other human samples in the Sample Room.”
“Yes. If it’s destroyed, we have no ability to strengthen genes that have weakened over centuries of replication.” Sam narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking me this, Jack?”
“Jonah’s looking for the Ark, and I think he wants to destroy it. I told him I didn’t care what he did. But now I can’t find Althea, and I’ve looked everywhere. I’m worried. Jonah said he’d show me she was just like the others. What if he has her?”
Sam looked at Jack and rubbed a hand across his mouth. The only sound between them was the relentless tick of the clock.
Chapter Twenty-One
ALTHEA
Althea dreamed.
She dreamed about red apples on low-hanging trees falling like jewels on silk dresses that swirled in firelight. She dreamed of music, and the strings of Jack’s guitar that plucked notes so rich and warm they drifted like dust into the air before turning all at once into spices, pungent and rosy—cinnamon, anise, coriander, and pepper.
She dreamed about mountains falling into oceans, rivers melting into earth, and jungle vines creeping over every living and dead thing until there was nothing left but a continent of twisted, choking green.
She dreamed about worlds ending.
The riot of colors resolved slowly. After a time, a row of letters became visible, and she found by focusing on one, she could concentrate on dissolving the fog in her head. The letters gradually cleared. She was in the Sample Room, in the Tunnels. The walls of the room were stone, like the rest of the caverns of the Tunnels, but these walls glittered with intersecting glass slides carrying thousands of genetic samples. Human genetic samples. She was in the Ark. Althea had figured it out back in the dorms, reading the book with the list of names of humans who’d left their genetic material to be stored in the vast caverns of the Tunnels. It hurt her eyes, looking at all the brightness, and then Jack’s imposing body blocked her view, except it wasn’t Jack. It was Jonah. He crouched above her, peering down. Her arms were sore, and she understood that she’d been fighting in her sleep against a slim wire binding her wrists to a post.