Chapter 22
Two pairs of limpid blue eyes gazed at her, two gentle smiles embraced her, two sets of arms lifted in unison to be picked up.
Which one was Janus?
A nearby bark warned Lisa that she was surrounded by people walking their dogs. The dim dappled light flickering across the children’s naked bodies under the trees made it impossible for Lisa to see clearly, but one thing was unmistakable. Whatever else she’d imagined that she’d seen, there were two children with her. One, by her knees, sat down, began to babble, to play with the damp earth, some pine cones, to crawl. The other, noticing, dropped to all fours, came nearer and started playing with his - brother? His flesh and blood, her flesh and blood. An unheard of new way for a human to reproduce, but the living proof was in front of her: cloner and clone.
Lisa looked down again at the two toddlers. Neither of them really seemed like the podgy swollen Janus of a few moments before, but they were both the same, identical in every way.
Two fair-haired naked toddlers; prattling, adorable. Her head began to spin. Had she brought two of her triplets? Was she forgetting everything, utterly confused? Was Alec right: she was going mad?
There could be no doubt that there were two children with her. Clones, cloners; whatever her imagination was trying to tell her, whatever her fevered mind was conjuring up for her, these were two children. Though she could not see every detail in the dim light they seemed exactly like the toddlers she’d left at home, indistinguishable from Jeffrey and James to people who didn’t know them well. But to her mother’s eye they were clearly more like Janus before he’d become so swollen.
And supposing she could tell the difference? Supposing, somehow, she could figure out which one was Janus? What should she do then? She tried to regain control of her mind. Think! she told herself sternly. Think what to do.
A wriggle of yellow caught a glimmer of light. One of the little boys tried to pull on the T-shirt. He pushed it, hopefully, against his head and teetered towards Lisa. The yellow cotton glowed as a ray of sunlight cut through the branches. The garment, incongruous at a rakish angle on the child’s head, began to slip. Lisa felt a spasm in her left side as if she’d been stabbed. These were her children; artless, enchanting, virtually irresistible. She loved them both.
Obviously satisfied with his effort with the T-shirt the child began to try putting on the shoes lying just by his feet. He started slipping a tiny foot into the heel part of the shoe.
‘Not like that, Jansy,’ Lisa found herself saying, smiling at the child. Then checked herself. One of these toddlers wasn’t Jansy. He was a newcomer. A single shoe - maybe that meant he was a Leprechaun... She brushed the fancy away. She had to know which was which. Had to - for the sake of the children who were not cloners. Had to! Which one? Her heart began to beat, faster and faster, as panic gripped her, trickled sweat. She’d have to be able to tell Morgenstein which was Janus, identify the cloner.
How could she tell? Was there something to point to the clone? Should she wait for another cloning? No; it wouldn’t happen again for some time now. She’d worked it out. Before he could clone Janus had to gather his strength together, feed on more food than any of the other children. Then, when he was ready, the signs would appear. He’d become chubby, waterlogged. Then he’d become edgy, turn aggressive and, as he bloated even more, become positively unbalanced with the need to clone.
The second child tried to crawl on to her lap. How could she choose? What if she got it wrong? A light clicked in her mind. The other toddler, the one she’d called Janus, had started pulling on his clothes - her instincts must have told her he was Janus! The new child, the clone, could not know how to dress himself, hadn’t had the experience. That was it; she’d got it now. That’s how she could tell the difference!
Thrilled, delighted with her reasoning, Lisa grasped the child who wasn’t playing with the clothes and held him tight within her knees. She pulled the earring off her finger and pushed it into his earlobe.
‘There!’ she said to him. ‘There you are. I’ll call you Jacob. You wear this so I know which one you are.’
He cooed at her, put his arms round her neck and kissed her. Just like her little James, her heart began to sing to her. Just like her lovely angelic docile little Jiminy. She breathed her love back to the child between her knees, wrapped her arms protectively around him, pulled on his trainer pants, his little trousers. Then she put on his socks, pulled on the little yellow shoes.
All fitted to perfection. Not strained, as a few moments before, but with a bit of give.
Lisa looked around for the T-shirt. The second child, the one she’d momentarily forgotten, was approaching her, tumbling to his knees, crawling over to her, the yellow T-shirt incongruously trailing along the needled ground behind him.
‘I’d better put that on Jacob,’ she said, a sadness in her voice. Jacob was a clone. He’d be more delicate than Janus. The little boy squirmed determinedly towards her. ‘You always wanted to be free to clone, Jansy,’ she told him. ‘Well, now you are. You can do it as often as you want. I’ll see to it that you’re not stopped again.’
She’d dress Jacob, and then take them both back to the car, and wrap Janus in the cardigan she’d left there. Slowly, methodically she finished dressing the child who was wearing the earring. Carefully she brushed off the pine needles, the damp grass, small spikes of pine cone. He was dressed. The time had come for action.
She had no choice but to explain what had happened to Morgenstein - she could not hide the new toddler. And there was no law against cloning, after all! She would take both children to the doctor, ask him to check them both over, and then take them both home. That would be the time to explain everything to Alec. She had two children with her, and they were hers. There was no way she was going to give either of them up.
She slung her handbag over her shoulder and contemplated the two toddlers in front of her. She had to get them back to the car. How was she going to do that with two children? She couldn’t carry both of them together for any length of time, even if each one was ten pounds lighter than the Janus of a few moments ago.
A loud ferocious bark distracted her attention away from her thoughts. Looking behind her she saw the huge black and white body of a Dalmatian advancing on her. Her mind stopped functioning rationally. She snatched both children up and began to stumble, teeter, blunder across hummocky grass still wet with dew, pine needle carpet slick under her, the naked children slithery under her arms.
‘Rover!’ a male voice shouted, loud and commanding. ‘Stay, boy!’
The dog, crashing at her heels, stopped howling, but still loped after her.
‘Rover!’ she heard again, the repeating sound filling her mind, excluding rational thought. ‘Heel, damn you, heel!’
Lisa was moving more slowly now. She couldn’t go on like this. The naked toddler snaked out of her arm and she held his hand tight. She had to think. Stop and think!
‘Mumumum,’ he burbled at her.
She put the dressed child down as well, released her bag, sank to the ground and tried to take stock. Whether Janus was normal in the usual sense or not, he looked like any other toddler, he acted like one. More than that, he was identical to her other toddlers, and he was her son. Could she deal with the aftermath of a world which would know he was a cloner? At least she could vouch for the fact that only these two children were involved. But would her other two toddlers, safe with Betsy, escape the consequences of her decision?
Lisa pulled her knees up to her face, put her head between her hands, and wept. Great gulps of emotion welled through her. She could not help herself.
Little fingers grasping at her brought her back to the present. Straining her ears she thought she could hear a rustling in the undergrowth, a yapping which sounded oddly familiar. Was someone watching them? Startled, Lisa looked at the naked child playing with pine cones, then turned and saw the dressed child waggling away, her handbag trailing behind him. He giggled happily, his little legs, strong and fast, windmilling through the debris on the forest floor.
‘Jacob!’ she called. ‘Wait! Wait for Mummy!’
He carried on unheeding. Lisa looked at the naked child now sitting down. She could catch the dressed child faster if she was on her own. She’d have to run and leave the other for the moment. He couldn’t possibly stray far while she went after his brother. Galvanised into action she sprinted after the small yellow figure.
A surface root of a tree already felled trapped her left foot. She tumbled head first, momentarily stunned, then picked herself up and only dimly saw the yellow gleaming ahead, taunting her to go after him.
The child swayed on and Lisa followed him. Was there someone behind her? Someone with a dog whose yapping sounded familiar? She had the oddest feeling she was being trailed, then concentrated once again on the child running away from her.
She saw him again, sprawled on the ground, like herself a victim of the roots. He dadadaed happily, his fall cushioned by pine needles, his little legs sticking in the air. One shoe was missing.
‘You’re as bad as Jansy,’ Lisa gasped, grabbing the child, hitching her handbag to her left shoulder. ‘That’s got the car keys in it. Now then, let’s go back and find Jansy.’
She picked the toddler up and tried hard to remember just where she’d come from. There were no distinguishing marks; one spruce after another, all at the same stage of development, all dripping green. Was this the way?
A yellow shoe! They were stepping through the trees in the right direction. Lisa put the shoe on the child. Tiring rapidly, she put him down to walk. He dragged hard against her hand, the trees grew denser, the forest floor more slippery, less even. Lisa pulled the toddler along, ignoring his moans, looking stonily ahead, no thought now in her mind except to search for the second child.
How could she find him? What was there to lead her to him? A dog ran past her. The taut off-white coat of a bull terrier, she noticed dimly. And she caught sight of a trouser-clad figure with the dog. He ducked away and into the shadows.
The child with her began to wail. He stumbled, half crawling, half dragged by her hand. Lisa panted, fatigue overwhelming her. All she’d ever wanted was to be a mother, to take her children into the countryside, the woods, singing to them as they walked, hand in hand, through Hansel and Gretel land. The situation now was very different. She strained to pick up sounds which would lead her to the second toddler.
She made out the small soft mewls of a young child crying. Jansy! Was she getting near him at last? Would she find him quickly? Would he come running up to her?
Lisa had a little lamb, his fleece was white as snow, chattered through Lisa’s mind. Where was the other toddler, her little lost lamb?
‘Jansy? Is that you, Jansy?’ she called out, searching the undergrowth, peering into the shade.
A thin wail as she followed the direction of the cry.
‘Jansy!’ she called again hopefully, her voice becoming high and squeaky. ‘Where are you, Jansy? Can you hear me?’
And everywhere that Lisa went, the lamb was sure to go, she murmured to the child with her, comforting herself. She could hear nothing but the heaving in her chest, the whining of the toddler beside her. He was tottering, hardly able to stand. She picked him up and held him close. He became quiet.
Lisa listened again: only the distant barking of dogs, the roar of traffic. No sound of crying now. Plop. She heard a big plop. They were deep in the woods, the ground was sloping downwards and she found it relatively easy to carry the tired, almost inert, toddler she had with her. His arms embraced her neck. She kissed him.
The ground became wetter, spongier. She skirted a deep hole, almost slid down into it and, as she wondered where she was, heard something slipping on the other side of her, down, down... What was it? She couldn’t see, she had no more energy, she let it go and sank to her knees.
She could hear the same odd, plopping sound, more yapping, snuffling, a bark. There was the sound of something falling into the pit. But what? A stone, a squirrel scurrying nuts, a small rabbit hunted by a terrier?
Lisa could not see anything. The trees were dense and foreboding above her, the daylight only just filtering through. She peered down into the void, through the gloom and leaves, but could not distinguish anything. A small keening sound, quite faint, then even that faded away. An owl, a child? Impossible to tell.
Exhausted now, no longer able to think, Lisa staggered to her feet, then reeled. How could she leave without the other child? She floundered round the trees, then noticed movement.
A stolid striding shape, a gait she vaguely recognised, followed by something on all fours, slithered away from her. Not a child - much too large. Someone walking their dog.
A chill shuddered through Lisa. Her head began to throb, her limbs to ache. She looked desperately round her. The trees, all the same size, waved mocking branches at her. They formed a circle of darkness which surrounded her, closed in on her, threatened to suffocate her.
A curtain crashed down on her mind. What other child? Lisa scolded herself. Jansy was with her. She’d undressed him, allowed him to pee the bloating away. And he’d turned into a lighter brighter delightful child just like her other three. He needed her to mother him, to look after him. That’s what she had to do.
‘You’re my little lamb,’ she whispered into the child’s ear. ‘You’re one of Lisa’s little lambs.’
Resolute now, she hoisted him across her shoulders and took her bearings. ‘We’ve got to find our way out of here,’ she said. ‘We’d better try to find some sort of road.’ And Lisa began to walk towards the light, the path, and finally the broad avenue leading to her car.