Wherever we go, I feel alive, I feel proud, I feel loved. The way people look at us can only be envy. And why not? It should be clear to anyone that August, handsome and devoted son that he is, does enjoy being with me.
It happened five hours ago. I am still shaking. I should move from this chair, but I am afraid to, afraid that if I do I will lose my mind.
August came to us a week ago.
Today he asked to use the special room.
To
I stared at him, unable to speak, and he asked me again.
As I took him to it, I did my best not to look at him, afraid of what I might see.
At the gasketed doorway, he looked back at me tenderly and said, “I’m sorry, Mother, but I must shut the door. I think you know why.”
Yes. I do.
It is not just because of the gases.
It is because of what I might see when he attends to his body, to his needs, and forgets me.
He shut the door gently, and as he did he asked me to set the food and air controls for him. He could not do this himself, he said. (Yes. I remember now. He did not hold the cameras at the tidepools. He did not remove anything from the dredgings of the trawler. He did not pay for anything with his own hand. He did not open doors. He did not prepare food. He ate little, and I never saw it enter his mouth. He was simply a vision—present and loving.)
He has been in there with his proper mix of gases and his nutritive membrane for five hours. The last thing he said to me was: “Don’t worry, Mother. I used a room just like this in quarantine for sixteen months. It really wasn’t so bad.”
How to accept it all? How to accept it without screaming? That August is no clone, that he is not human, that he is not what I see.
That he is but a projection, the gift of illusion, a lie.
That something else entirely lives and thinks there behind the loving face.
As the truth sinks in, I begin to see what the books and tapes dared not explain, what governments must take pains not to reveal, what in my own unwillingness to expose our lives to public scrutiny I kept five experts from telling me.
I begin to understand what the word
Will I be able to live with this? When I touch his arm and feel the pulse just under the skin, what do I really touch? When he kisses me and says, “I love you, Mother, I do,” what is it that really presses itself against my lips? Bony plate, accordion of fat—how can I not see them?
The scream that first rose in my throat has faded. The August-thing will soon be leaving his special room; I must try to pretend that everything is all right. It will see through the pretense, of course, but I must try anyway. As a gesture. It is intelligent, after all. It has feelings. It is a guest in my house. And I, a representative of humanity, must act accordingly. That is all I can do.
It is clear now. It is clear how the Climagos convinced the jaws and talons and eversible stomachs of their world not merely to ignore them, but to help them build a civilization on its way to the stars:
The Climagos are liars too. They have survived for two hundred million years because of the terrible beauty of their lives.
I awoke this morning to an empty, familiar bed.
It was earlier than usual. A sound had awakened me, I knew.
I listened and soon heard it again.
In the next room, on a small foam mattress, I found it. It stopped its crying as soon as I appeared, and like a fool I spent the first half hour inspecting it.
The “evidence” was there of course. Even neonatal physiognomy couldn’t mute that nose. The eyes would darken, yes, but the complexion would remain the same—only slightly lighter than its father’s.
I changed his Dryper and took him to the garden. Soon, he was cooing and chuckling and pulling up the flowers I’d planted only yesterday. He liked the big red zinnias most, of course, bright suns that they are, and in the end the only thing able to distract him was the sight of a cypress silhouetted against a pale morning sky. (I remember how Willi loved such things, staring for hours at a high-contrast print or a striped toy animal.)
We had played for over two hours when suddenly I remembered my appointment. August and I were going to Gualala for crabs! I’d been promising it to him for days.
What to do? (What would
It came to me then like a breeze, a waking dream, in a voice that was indeed Augusts. It was
I rose. I took the baby to the little mattress, kissed it, and left the room without looking back. It did not cry.
Ten minutes later, just as I finished the replanting of the flowers, August appeared.
He was very striking in his navy-blue one-piece, hailing me from the top of the cedar stairs like a sea captain from centuries ago. I felt frumpy and told him so, but he insisted I looked beautiful, even in my earth-stained shorts.
