Free The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell Page B

circles and put them very careful in a large plexi box, shut the top, patted it, then tiptoed from the room. I went out of my room too, down the dark hall to where a different door was open to outdoors and Rauden sat in the sun on some green steps near a tree covered with leaves. We were inside so long I forgot how sunny the day is, but there are shadows too, and a small breeze.
    He already took his mask and gloves and even glasses off and now he closed his eyes. I almost think he would of gone to sleep for once, but the phone rang inside. He still looked relaxed when he was through taking the call. His skin even looked better. He looked shy. Music was playing. “I always like Sonny Rollins, after I do nuclear Transfer,” he told me. “That’s with an O.”
    Ok.
    And he lit up a cigarette. Where did he find that? He smoked it in the sun and when he finished, leaned back on the Quonset metal wall and told me a lot of things. He said if it works, the things he just made start splitting maybe in a day or so, the way it works the regular way, or is supposed to. If you were going for multiples, you separated at whatever cell number, up to eight, you had in mind. He did this routinely. “The first cloners used human hair for the separation.”
    I’m leaning on the Quonset metal too. “What do you use?”
    He turned his head and gave me a really long look. If I had to guess what he was thinking, he was thinking, who’d believe her, even if she told? “Sound waves.”
    He can be sure I’m not going to tell anyone that.
    I just closed my eyes and felt how warm the Quonset metal is, from the sun. “How long before you know if it worked?” I asked and don’t even open my eyes.
    “Forever,” he said. “This is so totally experimental. It would take the child’s entire life—maybe the child’s child’s life—to know if it really worked. Well! It’s still an open question what it does to all the fucking livestock we made! Not that they die young, though some have, and there is that business with the telomeres—well! You don’t need to know about that.” And he was quiet for a long time.
    There went the small breeze again moving the branches of the tree, and this shadow from them is moving over us where we leaned, like the shadow was tickling us. I honestly think I never been out in a nicer day than this.
    “But if it doesn’t work, period,” he said at last, “we’ll know that in a few days, if they die.”
    He went back inside to check the box.
    So. He got everything he could from me. I have to go back to Queens.
    We could still hear the music behind us when we headed down the road in the truck. “What do you think is going to happen?” I asked.
    He said he didn’t know, and we both laughed, like now Inez is asking the questions and he’s the one who says he didn’t know. “If we get working viables,” he added, “there would be a Bonus, if you came back.”
    We’re brushing up against the bushes he hit that first time, driving in the dark. This time it’s in the sun.
    “Why would I do that?”
    “Well!” he coughed. “To patch you up for Host.”
    “You know that’s never going to happen.”
    “Give me a break, I.”
    We’re back on the regular county road.
    “And if what you did today does make, you know, viables that work?” I went on. “And they are the only ones you ever get?”
    He waited awhile to speak, going down the regular road. “Well, Rini drives a hard bargain. But she does have an open mind.”
    “It won’t be her mitochondria,” I said.
    “I, will you give me a fucking break?”
    I didn’t say anything until we’re on the big road that goes to the Terminal. Then I say what I was thinking, and I think he was thinking it too. “So you think if they work, what you made today, she will want them to be her kid? Even if it’s not her mitochondria or what she discussed?”
    He got to fix the shade in front of him, because we are driving right into the sun. “I think she