Swans and Klons (11 page)

Was that too over the top? But the Klon was wavering. Rubric picked up the camera and put it under her arm. The Klon frowned and began consulting her handheld screen. Rubric wasn’t sure if she should stalk out now. Maybe run. Or wait?

She felt she had missed her tide, when the Klon said, in a completely different voice, “Oh, I do apologize, but it seems I’m going to have to ask the Kapo Klon to come anyway. It seems some tragedy may have befallen one of your Jeepie Similars.”

Rubric’s heart began to pound hard. Scheiss, scheiss, scheiss! “I don’t have time for that!”

“There’s a young girl who’s your Jeepie Similar who has disappeared along with her schatzie, and it’s feared some harm could have happened to them. Schatzie suicide pact or some such. So they want to talk to all their Jeepie Similars.”

“That’s very sad, but it has nothing to do with me,” Rubric said curtly. “I have to leave now.” She grabbed the battery and turned.

“Wait, Panna!” the Klon shouted.

Other people turned to look. A short, burly Security Klon with brown hair in two pointy buns on the top of her head, giving her extra height and a diabolical aspect, was approaching. Rubric could get all high and mighty with the first Klon, who would never dare lift a hand to a human, but the Security Klons were actually trained to do that.

Then Rubric saw the one thing that could make the situation worse. The real Stencil Pavlina an aisle away. Frowning at some glass eyes in a box.

“Look!” Rubric shouted. “It’s Rubric Anne, the girl who is missing!” She pointed straight at Stencil Pavlina, who looked up, deeply confused, as well she should be. The Security Klon changed direction and lurched toward Stencil Pavlina, who had a deer-in-headlights expression. Rubric ran past her, out the door, elbowed through the crowd and down the steps, and fled across the street.

Rubric was a polite girl, and she had never pushed and shoved before. Despite her fear, she felt a surge of pure happiness, as if what she had been waiting for all her life was to knock over women carrying packages.

“Watch it!” snapped one Panna.

“Oof! They should discontinue that Jeepie Type!”

Rubric kept on running. She jumped on through the rear door of a trolley and leapt off again a block away, before the Conductor Klon could even open her mouth. She had no idea she was capable of such coordinated athleticism. Finally she came to her senses and realized she had left Pearl far behind. A Security Klon could very well stop her now just for being a rude menace. She slowed down.

She was so overheated that her skin was prickling all over. She took off her cloak and then her tunic, but she still felt like she was boiling. Luckily, she had arranged to meet Salmon Jo at the Singing Fountain. The Singing Fountain was a great meeting place for schatzies, as its many plashing arcs of water created a romantic atmosphere. Although it was usually crowded, people were too focused on their own love affairs to stare at other couples. But right now, Rubric wished she could dive into the water. She was splashing water on her forehead when she heard Salmon Jo’s voice behind her.

“We agree not to attract attention to ourselves, and I find you topless, using a historic monument for a bathtub?”

Rubric grinned and turned. Salmon Jo looked tired and still a bit grubby from camping. She was starting to look like a Klon. But her golden eyes were very lively. She gave Rubric a greedy kiss, and her mouth was pleasantly cold. She took Rubric’s cloak and wrapped herself in it.

“How is it that you are freezing?” Rubric asked. “It’s like summer again today.”

“I was hiding in the zygote freezer for the longest time,” Salmon Jo said. “Guess what? It turns out that—”

“They’re questioning our Jeepie Similars, I know, I know,” Rubric said wearily. “How did you get away?”

Salmon Jo bit her lip and looked down at her feet. “I had to clock the Security Klon and run away,” she admitted. “A really nice Klon—
woman
—who was always real sweet to me. She knew me. I thought she wouldn’t be on shift, but she swapped with someone else.”

“It’s okay,” Rubric told her, rubbing her shoulder. “You had to do it. There’s no such thing as a bloodless coup.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve read that phrase in old texts. It means when you smother your enemies instead of something bloody.”

Salmon Jo looked at her. Salmon Jo usually had a very self-contained expression. A lot of times when Rubric looked at Salmon Jo, she couldn’t tell what she was thinking. But when Salmon Jo did stare into her eyes, her gaze was so direct and open and unguarded that it was almost too much. Rubric didn’t look away.

“You had to do it,” she repeated. “It really is okay.” Salmon Jo smiled at her in a watery way.

“So I guess you weren’t able to get anything,” Rubric said. Without knowing where they should go, a vid camera wasn’t much help.

Salmon Jo’s smile broadened a little bit. From her pocket she pulled an orange handheld screen with holograms of dolphins on it. A puff of frost flew off it.

“This is Tensility’s,” she said. “She coordinates with other cities’ Hatcheries about what Jeepie Types to create, so I figured she would have good information on her screen. She has a bunch of different screens, and she’s
real
absentminded. It might be days before she realizes it’s stolen, not mislaid. While I was in the zygote freezer I practiced my hackering skills. Did you know there’s an extinct kind of whale that is really a dolphin, called an orca? Anyway, that’s her password. I got some of the locations of some of our Jeepie Similar Klons in Velvet City.”

Rubric squealed and did a little jumping dance. Some Pannas who were walking by smiled at her. “I got the camera and the battery. I had to run out, but I think it was fine. I wish I could have gotten a second battery. It’s always a pain when you’re filming and then you have to pause to plug in.”

“Ru, it’s just a prop. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even have to work.”

“If we’re going to be holding a camera, we might as well be filming.”

“You know we’re not really making a documentary, though,” Salmon Jo said. Now she looked worried. “Ru, if this is going to work, you have to focus. We are doing one thing—freeing Klons!”

Rubric thought Salmon Jo was talking too loudly in a public place. Then she reflected that it wouldn’t matter if anyone overheard her. In Society, the phrase
freeing Klons
was nonsensical. It was like saying
having a conversation with rats
or
playing a song on the zucchini squash
.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Rubric reassured her. Salmon Jo was such a worrier. “It’s just that the documentary is such a great idea too.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Gee, no one has ever asked me that before, Panna,” the Kapo Klon said. She was practically wringing her visor in her hand out of nervousness. “I better be asking our Panna, the manager. This is something for a human to decide. Is that okay? I’ll be right back.”

“Certainly, Kapo Klon,” Rubric said politely. It was a freakishly hot day, so the sweat pouring down the back of her neck probably didn’t seem strange. A week after they had stolen the vid camera and the handheld screen, they were standing in an eth-fruit farm just a few klicks outside of Velvet City. It had been a week of stealing: stealing electric bikes, stealing pies from windowsills in rural areas where there were no Comfort Stations, stealing clothes from lines. Now, Rubric was ready to steal a Klon. She and Salmon Jo were standing under the blazing sun in a huge field filled with row after row of eth-fruit trees.

The Kapo Klon walked off, hoisting her cylindrical stun baton over her shoulder. The group of Klons in the area immediately slowed their pace. They were picking eth fruits and dropping them into mesh sacks.

“I like this documentary thing already,” one Klon said to another, loud enough for Rubric to hear. Her companion laughed. The first Klon straightened up and pushed her visor off her forehead. She pulled her tunic by her collar and wiped her face, revealing a slice of tummy about ten shades lighter than her sun-reddened arms and face. One by one, most Klons dropped their sacks and went to the water trough to drink and dunk their heads. Some flopped right down on the ground. But a few continued working, radiating disapproval to the others. Off in the distance, Rubric saw oxen pulling plows, led by other Klons.

Rubric heard the whine of an electric vehicle. Most of the Klons returned to work. A few seconds later, a little blue vehicle came over the hill into view and parked. The Kapo Klon asked the human manager something, and the manager replied with a curt shake of her head. Rubric had seen that gesture dozens of times from Salmon Jo. With a shock, she realized the manager was Salmon Jo’s Jeepie Similar. Rubric and Salmon Jo exchanged glances.

The manager had many long braids. She looked weather-beaten and about fifty years old. As she walked closer, Rubric saw that she limped a little, and there was something not quite right about her face.

“Hello, I’m Castle Mattea,” she said in a rougher, more mature version of Salmon Jo’s voice. Then a happy grin split her face. “How wonderful! How wonderful! I love to see my little Simmies!”

She embraced Salmon Jo. Salmon Jo was smiling too and returned Castle Mattea’s hug. Since Salmon Jo wasn’t much of an actor, Rubric figured it must be genuine. They introduced themselves, with fake names.

“So you girls are making a documentary?” Castle Mattea asked. “I’m surprised. Our Jeepie Type is typically not artsy.”

“It’s really her project,” Salmon Jo said. “I’m just helping my schatzie.”

Castle Mattea smiled.
If she says anything about how she once had a schatzie of my Jeepie Type, I’ll puke on her,
Rubric thought. Stanky older women on the trolley had given her that line.

But Castle Mattea didn’t say anything like that. She said, “I want to help you. But this can’t be one of those movies about how conditions for the Klons aren’t good enough. I’m going to show you our operation here. We do everything perfect, and I have nothing to hide.”

“It’s absolutely nothing like that,” Rubric said. “We really only want to interview Klons who are our Jeepie Similars.”

“I’m going to show you the living quarters here, just in case,” Castle Mattea said doggedly, in a way that was familiar to Rubric. She brought the girls in the electric vehicle to a concrete building. Inside, the building was just like a dormitory, except there were no doors on any of the rooms. Everything was clean and recently painted. Except for a certain sterility, there was nothing to complain about here. Castle Mattea led them through the hallway, and Rubric saw that each room was different, some messy, some tidy and prim. Some had a single cot, others had two cots shoved together, which took up most of the room. A few had no cots. Most had some sort of decoration on the wall. Some, graphics of popular edfotunement celebrities, others had homemade art on the wall featuring found objects. Parts of the eth-fruit tree were displayed prominently in the art: leaves, stems, flowers, and even dried eth fruits were woven in. There was a great use of duct tape, staples, and string.

“Can I film some of this?” she asked. This Klon art would be an amazing addition to the documentary that she wasn’t really making.

“Sure, go ahead,” said Castle Mattea. “I keep telling them they have to take that scheiss down, that it’s a fire hazard. But they don’t listen to me.” She showed them a spotless kitchen and a tiny shower room that was being cleaned by one of the Klons. “See? It’s like I said. They have nothing to complain about. If they want to couple up with each other, they can. Play loud music after work, they can. If they get injured on the job, they rest up. No one interferes with them and there’s no violence. I try to get them a special treat just about every week, like edfotunement or a dessert. I’ve had to send less than a dozen for treatment the whole time I’ve been here, and a couple of them even came back. I know each one individually. Sometimes the Kapo Klon gets a bit overzealous with the stun baton, but it’s better if I take a hands-off approach. It’s just their way, the Kapos, to be very strict. If I keep doing a good job here, I could become a managers’ manager. I bet you didn’t even know that existed! They report directly to the Doctors.”

“I’m impressed with the whole setup,” Rubric lied. Actually, the Panna’s smug attitude made her sick to her stomach. She was patting herself on the back for not being brutal? “The Klons are clearly being treated very humanely. Can we do an interview now? This is going to blow the art world wide open.”

“Sure, sure,” Castle Mattea said. She hesitated and then said to Salmon Jo, “It’s nice to see a little Simmie like you on the right track. Don’t ever get confused and do anything veruckt. It’s very important. You have to be a get-along girl and don’t make any trouble. You could be a Doctor someday! It’s not so bad being a manager. But it wasn’t my dream. You could do better.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Salmon Jo said expressionlessly.

Castle Mattea led them back outside. Rubric had to admit, the farm was beautiful. Wide open space, bucolic views. As they were driving back to the eth-fruit field, a flock of birds flew by. Rubric was startled to see that the birds were a red metallic color, except for their undersides, which were white with silver flecks. As they wheeled and turned in the sky, following their leader, they made pretty sparkling patterns.

“I’ve never seen birds like that,” Salmon Jo said. “What kind are they?”

“They’re Castle Mattea Birds. I invented them. I have a hobby lab here, down by the waterwheel, that I’ve built up over time to be quite good. I did a bit of genetic tinkering on some local birds. I feed them, so they always stay in the area. Actually, the metallic red was the easy part. The white-and-silver undercarriage took seven generations. Let’s just say some of the failures were not pretty.”

“And you say our Jeepie Type doesn’t become artists,” Salmon Jo said. This seemed to please Castle Mattea.

The Klons had spread out, working on different eth-fruit trees. Mattea seemed to know who was where, and she led them to a grove where Rubric immediately saw her Jeepie Similar Klon. Just Rubric’s age or maybe a couple years older. Sweating, picking fruit, looking bored. It felt to Rubric like she was looking into the mirror, except this girl had a low-maintenance buzz haircut and a bit of a sunburn. And Rubric had never picked fruit or done any other kind of manual labor in her life. The girl startled when she saw Rubric.