Your One & Only(83)
Their hands fell away and they looked at each other for a long moment, neither smiling. Althea’s optimism aside, Jack figured that was the best they were going to manage today.
Jack went to Althea and pulled her away from the crowd so they were hidden. He drew her close and kissed her.
“Hi, Jack,” a Nyla said cheerfully as she walked right past them, even hidden as they were. It was a different Nyla from before, he guessed, but he couldn’t tell. Maybe someday he’d get them all straight.
“They keep doing that,” he said to Althea. “Saying hello to me.”
“They’re being friendly.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “But you know I’m yours, right? Only yours. Do you understand?”
Althea gave him a small, pleased smile. “I think so,” she said.
After the second day, thirteen of the clones who’d left with them turned around again, returning to Vispera. On the third day, they lost four more. By the fifth day, the remaining clones weren’t clinging to each other so desperately, and the crying Jack heard during the night had dissolved into occasional soft sobs.
They crossed the mountains, finding the store of things Jonah had left for himself along with the boat. Jack looked for some sign that Jonah had come back to this place, but found none. He considered Jonah might have collected his supplies intending Jack to find them. The thought was comforting. It told him that, wherever Jonah was, he’d be okay.
In her search, Althea uncovered a package of inhalers tossed in with other medical equipment, and Jack tucked it in his bag. Jonah had brought the inhalers to this place with the hope that they’d be together. Jack held one of the slim gray tubes, realizing it was a gift from his brother. He wondered how long they’d last. He wouldn’t be able to get more.
The boat was too small for everyone, so they took what they could from the stockpile and waded across the river on foot, the mules pulling the wagons against the current. After a lifetime of questioning, Jack finally saw what was beyond the Novomundo Mountains, and his heart sank when it turned out to be more mountains. Althea seemed to know where they were going, however. She told him about a place called Merida. She said there might be others there, and whether she was right or not, it was a relief to have a place to go, a destination to aim at.
They passed crumbling stone temples, older than anything that’d been stored in the Tunnels. They headed north and saw a hundred more decrepit buildings, their naked metal beams reaching into the sky like broken fingers. Where the buildings rose from the earth in dense clusters, with silent agreement the group gave them a wide berth, and not just because they seemed about to topple over and crush anyone nearby. They weren’t like the stone pyramids in the jungle, ancient and untouched for millennia. These tumbledown buildings were pitch-black and forbidding, and a damp rot seeped from every corner of their cast-iron skeletons. Jack felt no affinity for the people who’d built these things. They were long dead, and what they’d left behind was of no use to him.
For a number of days, a pair of jaguars kept pace with them, their orange-speckled coats glimmering through the green forest. They heard muted roars at night and glimpsed cat eyes reflecting the flare of fires ringing their encampment. The group drew close and encircled their camp armed with pointed sticks and cattle prods jammed on extended staffs. Then the animals disappeared and, with a collective sigh of relief, the group continued on.
After several weeks, they reached a low sloping valley. Jack climbed a steep rise that overlooked the expanse of land below where the mist rose off the distant hills colored with flowers—the purple and red, green and gold—that looked like amaranth in Vispera. Althea came over and sat beside him. They leaned close, sitting together quietly.
“You think we might not make it, don’t you? You’re worried no one here is strong enough to survive outside Vispera,” she said.
Althea had grown thinner since they’d left, and Jack supposed he had as well. Everyone looked tired and hungry. They had blisters on their feet, and their muscles ached. A Kate had broken her wrist, and two weeks ago half of the group had come down with a sudden and dangerous fever. They’d never been sick before, and it terrified them. But Jack had begun to notice the clones’ legs and arms were harder now, and there was a determination in their faces that was new. They were stronger than they’d been when they left.
“I don’t know if we’re strong enough to survive,” Jack said. “But everyone at least deserves a chance to try. Isn’t that what matters?”
The clones had changed in other ways, too. A Hassan told a story at the campfire one night. It wasn’t a very good story—mostly about losing his knife while trying to catch a large snake. But Jack noticed the embellishments he added, the ways the story wasn’t entirely what Althea would call true. Another night Jack played his guitar, and a few of the clones didn’t look quite as disgusted as they usually did. A Mei and Carson-312 even moved together in one of the ritual clone dances as he played. After, the two slipped away to a tent, gazing at each other in a way he hadn’t seen before from the clones.
Lying in their sleeping bag at night, Jack said to Althea, “Have you noticed people are talking more than they used to?”
“Their ability to commune is fading. We’re a long way from home, separated from our brothers and sisters, and there are fewer of us. It makes the bond weaker.” She paused for a long time and then said, “They think when you play music, that’s your way of communing with me.”