Taylor Five (16 page)

She stared at the office door, pierced by a shaft of grief as clear and true as a laser beam. They were dead. Mum and Dad were dead. Maybe there was some hope for the other staff, but Mary and Ben were dead. If only Tay could stop hoping . . . The cruel secret was that she had
pretended
to give up hope, but she couldn’t—

She could not bear it. She backed away from the door as if it had demons behind it.

Clint’s office was down the corridor. The door was still adorned with a sketch of a sombrero smoking a cheroot. She used the key card and shut the door behind her very quietly. The venetian blinds were closed, the air-conditioning was cool but not chilly. Thin fingers of burning sun lay across the floor and across the shelves of books: weighty tomes on animal behavior and a shelf of tatty paperback Westerns. A pack of cigarettes, his thin black cheroots, was still lying on the desk.

For a moment his presence was so strong she felt as if she had come to see Clint, the way she would have done at the refuge: to sit with him in the young apes’ clubhouse, and just know he understood that she was feeling bad. But already there was a film of dust over everything. Already it was like walking into a tomb. She remembered Clint with Uncle, taking potshots at tin cans in the rain. In her memory he seemed so alive. How could someone so alive be dead?

She sat down at his desk and powered up the computer. She knew no one would mind. She wasn’t going to mess with anything, or look at anything private. She just wanted to feel close to everything she’d lost. Just once more . . . A window appeared, prompting her to enter Clint’s office password. She smiled. People were supposed to change their passwords regularly, but Clint didn’t accept you weren’t supposed to get attached to a password, and he never changed his. . . . It used to drive Mum mad. There were eight spaces for her to fill. Eight spaces, eight letters.

EASTWOOD

The screen cleared to Clint’s start-up page.

Mohammad Yamin K. Suritobo
. . . You couldn’t imagine Dr. Mohammad Yamin K. Suritobo wandering around in a poncho, pretending to be in a Western. There were icons for all of Clint’s books and a huge folder on the refuge, with records for every orangutan that had passed through Clint’s care. She opened the folder with her own name on it.

Here were e-mails she and Clint had sent to each other. Here were childish pictures she had drawn, and games and puzzles saved from when she was a little girl: things she’d typed with one finger, sitting in this office while Mum and Dad were busy and Clint was baby-sitting. . . . She found an old packet of e-mails from ten years ago: the kind of thing that gets stowed away on a big computer system, like a box of papers in a corner of the garage, and never thought of again. Ben and Mary Walker, Clint Suritobo and Pam Taylor: all talking about founding the orangutan refuge. But they weren’t just talking about the red apes. They were talking about a little girl and a baby boy. How would the children feel?

Would Tay be happy in the forest? Would it be a good thing for her?

“She loves the outdoors,” wrote Mary Walker. “We want her to be
free
—”

“I just want her to be happy,” wrote Pam—

“I was,” whispered Tay aloud, her tears falling fast. “Oh, I
was
. I was happy—”

She shut the folder, feeling like an eavesdropper. But now she couldn’t bear to leave Clint’s desk. She opened the Kandah Refuge folder and started looking at the orangutan records: which Clint called his rogues’ gallery, or sometimes “The Kandah Refuge Yearbook.” There was the young orangutan who’d been called Melissa, a famous thief and escapologist . . . with a caption on her photo, from Clint, saying he didn’t know Melissa’s name for the psychologist at the orphanage, but he was sure it was something very rude, and he knew she would prosper in her future career because she had a fine criminal mind—

There was a file for Uncle.

She didn’t want to open it. Here, if anywhere, she would find out the truth about Uncle being different. She would find out why Pam had lied to her. I’ve come this far, she muttered to herself. I might as well—

There was a photograph of Uncle with Clint, beside Clint’s cottage. Uncle was wearing the Dyak poncho, and he had a cheroot in his mouth. The caption said, “Me and My Secretary.” There were scanned documents about Uncle’s transfer from the Sumatra orangutan reserve that said he was free of TB infection and he was not to be released. There was a lot of other stuff, normal stuff, the same as for all the other apes: and a reminder from Clint to himself. He was such a scatterbrain, he was always leaving himself notes about things. It read: “Uncle and the rest of us on video, clips filed at Kandah, with disk copy of new Kandah book.”

This is strange, she thought. There’s nothing here that says he’s a weird, different ape. Everything here says he’s special because we loved him, he was our mascot, our—

She kept looking at the photograph. She’d been bitterly telling herself that she was right and Uncle was a person, but she had not thought about him, not really
thought
about him, since she’d left the Marine and Shore. But there he was, Uncle, her friend: not a listless sad sack of a cage animal, her friend. Suddenly, with a shock like being dumped in icy water, like a light coming on in a dark room, so bright it hurts your eyes, she realized that she’d done something terrible. She had left Uncle alone! All the time that she had desperately needed him, the ape had been there. But when Uncle desperately needed Tay, when he’d been sunk in misery, she had just walked out and left him!

It was a horrible shock. Mum and Dad and Clint and Donny had been brave and faithful to the end, but Tay had run away. . . . How awful! She felt as if she’d been sleepwalking and suddenly she was awake; as if she’d been out of her mind and suddenly she was sane. And she’d been unjust to Pam too. There was still a mystery, because
Pam had still been lying
, but if someone you love does something you don’t understand, you don’t just give up on them. You tell them how you feel. She could hear Dad’s voice, so much a part of her it was like her soul talking to her:
Don’t clam up, Tay. Don’t go off into one of your silent sulks. Talk about it, get it out
—

Tears were running down her face. I’ll come back, Uncle. I’ll come back straightaway. I let you down, but I’ll make it up to you. I won’t go to England. I’ll argue my case, I’ll fight to keep us together—

The door behind her opened.

She turned and saw an untidy young woman clutching a stack of tatty plastic folders. On the Conservation Projects floor nobody dressed to impress.

“Hi,” said the young woman. “Tay? Remember me? Lucy Hom. General dogsbody-person for Conservation Projects. Tay, I’m so very sorry. We’re all just trying to hope—”

She came and sat down and gave Tay a tissue from her pocket. “Rosetta said I’d find you in your mum and dad’s office. When you weren’t there, I thought I’d find you in here. I knew you hadn’t left the building because you still have your security tag.”

It seemed as if Tay had to spend her life taking handkerchiefs from people.

“Hello, Lucy. Is it—is it news?” she gasped, wiping her eyes.

“No, I’m sorry. . . . It’s not that. I have a satellite call for you from Pam on the Marine and Shore. If you switch your phone on, I think I can patch it through. Pam needs you to go back. It’s Uncle. Apparently he escaped. They don’t know how, but he’s disappeared.”

t
he Marine and Shore laboratory ship was back at its mooring, in the deep-water bay at the tip of East Kandah. Tay’s helicopter landed on the foredeck about noon of the day after Lucy Hom had found her in Clint’s office. By the time she’d got the message the day before, it had been too late to arrange a flight back out here: the Kandahnese army wasn’t allowing Lifeforce helicopters to fly in at night. She could see Pam waiting for her. Tay had only been away a week, but she felt so different it was as if the world had turned upside down. There was a fluttering in her stomach. She didn’t know how she was going to face her gene mother, after the way they’d parted: after the things Tay had said.

She was afraid for Uncle, and she was afraid for herself.

The helicopter settled, and Tay waited for the rotors to slow before she got down. “I hope you find him,” said the Singaporean pilot. “It would mean a lot to us if we could know poor old Uncle was safe.” The refuge mascot’s story had become important to everyone at Lifeforce Asia. People who had friends and colleagues among the hostages, who were desperately waiting for news just like Tay and like Pam, clung to the story of Uncle: the faithful orangutan who had survived. Maybe his miraculous appearance on the shore, and the way he’d led the rescuers to Taylor Walker, had become a little exaggerated: but that was understandable. People will exaggerate anything that helps in a crisis.

Pam stood waiting with Chen, the technician who’d been Uncle’s chief baby-sitter.

“Is there any news?” said Tay. It was the question everyone had been asking all the time, since the attack on the refuge.
Is there any news?
But this time it meant Uncle.

“No,” said Pam. “Come inside, we’ll tell you what happened.”

She didn’t try to hug Tay, and hardly even smiled. She just led the way to her office on the upper lab deck. As they walked through the lab, Tay saw that the brittle stars were still waving their tinsel arms in their row of tanks: and she had the strange feeling that she was coming home. Her lonely journey through the wilderness had not been over when she arrived at the Marine and Shore the first time. Now, maybe, it was nearly at an end. But only if Uncle was safe . . .

The three of them sat down. “It was my fault,” began Chen, looking miserable. “I’m
so
sorry, Tay. You see, I was trying to help him. I thought he was tame, fixed on human company. He seemed so docile, so quiet. I didn’t know he would—”

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Pam broke in. “The day after you left, the army lifted the restrictions on our position, and we were allowed to move back to our mooring. As soon as we’d made the move and reoccupied the shore camp, Chen wanted to get Uncle on solid ground again and I agreed. It was a good idea.”

“We set up a home for him in one of the storage huts,” explained Chen. “We rigged an open run in front of it. There wasn’t a padlock on the gate to the run, but it was roofed over, and there was a secure catch. Some of us were sleeping onshore: he wasn’t there by himself. He was still pining, but he seemed happier.

“We took him out and let him wander around in the daytime, but we kept him on the collar and lead. Of course he was loose at night, in his run and his sleeping quarters. The day before yesterday he was there okay when I took him his breakfast. An hour later I came back, the run was open and Uncle was gone. I thought someone had taken him for a walk. I didn’t think he would have escaped. I went looking for him, asking people. I called the ship, to see if someone had taken him back on board. So, you see, this meant it was a while before we really knew he was out on his own. Too long. He must have opened the catch somehow and climbed the perimeter fence—”

“We searched the area,” said Pam. “We couldn’t find him, but we were sure he wouldn’t have gone far. We waited, but he didn’t come back. When he’d been missing overnight, I decided we had to send for you.”

“He’s microchipped,” said Chen. “We can identify him if we find him. We’ll know him from a wild animal, even if he doesn’t know us. But that’s not much use. If only we’d thought to put a radio tracer on him. We could have done that easily, we do it to marine mammals all the time. We never imagined he would run away!”

“We can identify him anyway,” said Tay. “He’ll be the only orangutan on the savannah, it isn’t their country. And he doesn’t look a bit like a Borneo ape.”

“That’s good!” said Chen, looking doubtful. He had done his best for Uncle, thought Tay. But he was a Marine and Shore technician, he didn’t know anything about the red apes.

“I shouldn’t have left him,” Tay whispered. “I
knew
I shouldn’t have left him. I was the only one who knew about orangutans. It was my job to look after him. . . . It’s not your fault, Chen. I’m the person who let Uncle down.”

“Well, you’re here now,” said Pam rather stiffly. “With your help, I’m sure we’ll find him. I want you to come out with me into the savannah, Tay. We’ll take a Land Rover and go to where we picked you up when you arrived here. The chances are he isn’t far away. There are trees, there’s long grass, he’s smart. He could be hiding, watching us search. If he sees you, he might decide to show himself.”

“Maybe I should come along?” offered Chen. “He knows me best of all the crew. We’ll need a net, and a dart gun if he comes near: and you’ll need help.”

Tay and Pam looked at each other.
He means well
, said their glance—

“No,” said Pam. “We won’t go after him with a net and tranquilizer darts, not yet. We’ll try to get him to trust us again, try to make him believe that we’re his friends. That would be best.” She was looking at Tay as she spoke, smiling sadly.

Tay felt herself blushing.

“Come on,” said Pam. “Let’s go. He’s been missing for two days and there isn’t much water out there. Or much that an ape would eat. We have a few hours of light left.”

Marine and Shore was linked to the beach by a bridge of floating pontoons. Chen went over with Tay and Pam. He showed Tay the run the crew had made. It had been put together with care and roofed with panels of heavy wire mesh: but the catch on the gate was pathetic. It wouldn’t have puzzled a monkey, never mind an orangutan. Some of the shore-camp staff came hurrying to greet Tay and tell Pam how things were going. They’d been in touch with the East Kandah National Park headquarters: the people there were sending a tracker. But it was a hundred kilometers away, and every vehicle that moved on the roads had to have an army escort—

We have to find him ourselves! thought Tay, dismayed. If he sees people in uniform hunting him down, he’ll never, never come near. He’ll die out there—

They got into the Land Rover and drove into the golden landscape, leaving the huddle of huts and the tall fence behind them. Neither of them said a word as Pam left the trail and they went jolting through the dry grass. At last she pulled up, in the shade of a half-starved acacia tree.

“Is this where you found me?” said Tay. “I don’t remember anything—”

“It’s roughly the place. Tay, before we go any further you’d better tell me, do you still think we’re looking for an ape with superintelligence? A ‘human’ ape?”

Everything that she’d gone through with Uncle on the trek was clear in Tay’s mind, and everything was true, but it looked different now, after those few days in Singapore. She had been with the kind Van der Hoorts, doing ordinary things. She had talked to Dr. Soo-yin, and she knew that had done her good. But what happened to her in Clint’s office still seemed like a kind of miracle. Clint had made the world come straight again, just the way he always used to do. . . .

“Why didn’t you want me?” she said at last. “I was bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh. Nothing can change the way I feel about Mum and Dad, but I was
your baby
. Why did you let Lifeforce take me away? Was there no room for me in your life?”

Pam didn’t tell Tay that they were supposed to be talking about Uncle.

“You want to know that now? Tay, I was fifty-three when I started taking M-389—”

Tay glanced at her, startled. There was gray in Pam’s golden-brown hair: but Tay had always assumed her gene mother was
younger
than Mum.

“Yes, fifty-three, and I was developing arthritis in my hands.” She lifted them from the steering wheel and flexed her strong, tanned fingers. “That’s not a good thing for a lab scientist. It’s gone now. . . . But in those days no one tested drugs on women of childbearing age. Like the other women among the M-389 volunteers, I was too old to bear my own child. Of course, anything’s possible now, but we didn’t even consider the idea. But there was another reason, Tay. We were sure it would be wrong. What would that be like, having an identical twin for a parent? We thought it would be unbearable. I believed it was for the best. I wanted Ben and Mary to have you. But when I held you in my arms for the first time, oh, it was very hard to let you go—”

“I think you never thought about the consequences. I think you never thought about how it would feel to be us. Me, and the other four clones.”

“Maybe we couldn’t imagine that. What we thought of was . . . all the diseases that can be treated by M-389. It’s to do with ageing, Tay. I’ve always looked younger than my age, and yet I was developing arthritis at fifty-three. That’s one of the things that made me a suitable candidate for M-389. I was young enough to respond, but I obviously had the defect. But I wasn’t young enough for the altered DNA to express strongly enough. . . . It’s complicated. The drugs we’ve developed will preserve and enhance something called collagen. That will reduce signs of ageing, even in healthy people. But the important thing is that we can prevent autoimmune disease from taking hold. Arthritis can be treated effectively, as never before. The many variants of arthritis. Multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy. Lupus. Scleroderma. Transplant rejection. There are many more effects—”

“All right, all right . . . When I was in Singapore, I heard them saying on the TV it was like discovering penicillin.”

Pam nodded. “Yes. It’s like penicillin, it’s as important as that. We haven’t found a cure for old age, but we can dramatically improve the quality of life in our natural life span. It’s been a long road, more complex than we could have imagined, but we are there now, and it’s because of you five clones. Your blood, your tissue, gave us what we needed. That’s another thing I want you to understand. M-389 alone wasn’t the miracle. It’s what your DNA, your genetic profile, does with the original therapy. It’s the whole complex of what happens in
your
cells that makes the difference.”

Tay stared at her, trying not to let any expression show, though shivers were going down her spine. She had been told the facts, often, but she’d never taken in how strange they were.
My
blood,
my
tissue, giving so much . . . “Is that why I’m rich?”

“Well, no. We made the M-389 antibodies open-source, nonprofitmaking. But we’ve made money out of other less important things. You’re rich because you’re a member of Lifeforce, you have shares in the company.”

“It’s always
Lifeforce
. Why do you let the company rule your life?”

Pam had been staring through the windscreen. She turned and looked at Tay, with an expression that Tay had often seen in a mirror.

“Lifeforce is me, Tay. Don’t you understand? Lifeforce is
me
. And Ben and Mary Walker, and Clint Suritobo, and Rei Chooi, who is Rei Van der Hoort now; and some other people you’ve met but you don’t know so well. We started the company. When Lifeforce turned into big business, Ben and Mary and Clint and I decided to branch out into conservation. Clint had always wanted to study ape behavior, instead of testing drugs on them. That’s how the Kandah Refuge project started. . . . But the clone idea was ours too. Oh, Tay, people talk about big faceless corporations being dangerous. But the faceless corporations have nothing on the danger of a group of friends with ambitions and ideals and a brand-new science to play with. We thought we could do
anything
. We did something that should have been impossible, to keep hold of what we’d found in M-389. . . . Maybe we were mad to do what we did, no matter what the benefits. But how can I regret it, when it gave me
you
?”

“I think
you’re
the irresponsible teenager here,” said Tay. “I think you are nuts.”

“You’re probably right.”

They hugged each other, and in that hug a lot of painful trouble was burned away.

“It was the book,” said Tay when she let her gene mum go. She knew now that she’d been half out of her mind in the days after her trek, but she felt she had a right to defend herself. “Uncle was my friend, my guide, when I had no one. When I saw him on the ship, he was like a zombie. I thought he must be
pretending
to be a dumb animal because he was afraid of you. And . . . there was my Shakespeare in his cage. How could he have got hold of that? I’m
sure
I’d thrown it away, out on the savannah—”

“It was in your pack,” said Pam abruptly.

“Oh.”