Free Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm Page A

conversation, to hurry from the sterile office and the smooth unreadable face with the sharp eyes that seemed to know what he was feeling.
           "Not yet," W-l said. "But we have the fertile members to fall back on until we do." He moved around the desk and walked toward the door. "I have to check my patients," he said, and held the door open for David.
           "Before I leave," David said, "will you tell me what is the matter with Walt?"
           "Don't you know?" W-1 shook his head. "I keep forgetting, you don't tell each other things, do you? He has cancer. Inoperable. It metastasized. He's dying, David. I thought you knew that."
           David walked blankly for an hour or more, and finally found himself in his room, exhausted, unwilling yet to go to bed. He sat at his window until it was dawn, and then he went to Walt's room. When Walt woke up he reported what W-1 had told him.
           "They'll use the fertile ones only to replenish their supply of clones," he said. "The humans among them will be pariahs. They'll destroy what we worked so hard to create."
           "Don't let them do it, David. For God's sake, don't let them do it!" Walt's color was bad, and he was too weak to sit up. "Vlasic's mad, so he'll be of no help. You have to stop them somehow." Bitterly he said, "They want to take the easy way out,
    give up now when we know everything will work."
           David didn't know whether he was sorry or glad that he had told Walt. No more secrets, he thought. Never again. "I'll stop them somehow," he said. "I don't know how, or when. But soon."
           A Four brought Walt's breakfast, and David returned to his room. He rested and slept fitfully for a few hours, then showered and went to the cave entrance, where he was stopped by a Two.
           "I'm sorry, David," he said. "Jonathan says that you need a rest, that you are not to work now."
           Wordlessly David turned and left. Jonathan. W-l. If they had decided to bar him from the lab, they could do it. He and Walt had planned it that way: the cave was impregnable. He thought of the elders, forty-four of them now, and two of that number terminally ill. One of the remaining elders insane. Forty-one then, twenty-nine women. Eleven able-bodied men. Ninety-four clones.
           He waited for days for Harry Vlasic to appear, but no one had seen him in weeks, and Vernon thought he was living in the lab. He had all his meals there. David gave that up, and found D-1 in the dining room and offered his help in the lab.
           "I'm too bored doing nothing," he said. "I'm used to working twelve hours a day or more."
           "You should rest now that there are others who can take the load off you," D-l said pleasantly. "Don't worry about the work, David. It is going quite well." He moved away, and David caught his arm.
           "Why won't you let me in? Haven't you learned the value of an objective opinion?"
           Dl pulled away, and still smiling easily, said, "You want to destroy everything, David. In the name of mankind, of course. But still, we can't let you do that."
           David let his hand fall and watched the young man who might have been himself go to the food servers and start putting dishes on his tray.
           "I'm working on a plan," he lied to Walt, as he would again and again in the weeks that followed. Daily Walt grew feebler, and now he was in great pain.
           David's father was with Walt most of the time now. He was gray and aged but in good health physically. He talked of their boyhood, of the coming hunting season, of the recession he feared might reduce his profits, of his wife, who had been dead for fifteen years. He was cheerful and happy, and Walt seemed to want him there.
           In March, Wl sent for David. He was in his office. "It's about Walt," he said. "We should not let him continue to suffer. He has done nothing