“Until twenty years ago,” Dr. Todd explained, “this was a famous marine biology lab. So it had most of the facilities we need-including isolation.”
“Why is that necessary?” asked Duncan. He had wondered why the clinic was in such an inconveniently out-of-the-way spot.
“There’s a good deal of emotional interest in our work, and we have to control visitors. Despite air transportation, you can still do that much easier on an island than anywhere else. And above all, we have to protect our Mothers. They may not be very intelligent, but they’re sensitive, and don’t like being stared at.”
“I’ve not seen any yet.”
“Do you really want to?”
That was a difficult question to answer, for Dun can felt his emotions tugging in opposite directions.
Thirty-one years ago, he must have been born in a place not unlike this, though probably not as sT)ec tacularly beautiful. If he had gone full term-and in those days, he assumed, all clones did so-some un known woman had carried him in her body for at least eight months after implantation. Was she still alive? Did any record of her name still exist, or was she merely a number in a computer file? Perhaps not even that, for the identity of a foster mother was not of the slightest biological importance. A purely mechanical womb could have served as well, but there had never been any real need to perfect so complex a
device. In a world where reproduction was strictly limited, there would always be plenty of volunteers; the only problem was selecting them.
Duncan had no memory whatsoever of his unknown foster mother or of the months he must have spent on Earth as a baby. Every attempt to penetrate the fog that lay at the very beginning of his childhood was a failure. He could not be certain if this was normal, or whether the earliest part of his life was hidden by deliberately induced amnesia. He suspected the latter, since he felt a distinct reluctance ever to investigate the subject in any detail.
When he formed the concept “Mother” in his mind, he instantly saw Colin’s wife, Sheela. Her face was his earliest memory, her affection his first love, later shared with Grandma Ellen. Colin had chosen -carefully and had learned from Malcolm’s mistakes.
Sheela had treated Duncan exactly like her own children, and he had never thought of Yuri and Glynn as anything except his older brother and sister.
He could not remember when he had first realized that Colin was not their father, and that they bore no genetic relationship to him whatsoever. Somehow, it had never seemed to matter.
He appreciated, now, the unobtrusive skills that had gone into the creation of so well adjusted a “family”; it would not have been possible in an earlier age of exclusive marriage and sexual possessiveness. Even today, it was no easy task. He hoped that he and Marissa would be equally successful, and that Clyde and Carline would accept little Malcolm as their brother, just as wholeheartedly as Yuri and Glynn had once accepted him…. “I’m sorry,” said Duncan. “I was daydreaming.”
“Can’t say I blame you; this place is too damned beautiful. I sometimes have to draw the curtains when I want to do any work.”
That was easy to believe-yet beauty was not the first impression to strike
Duncan when he landed on the island. Even now, his dominant feeling was one of awe, mixed with more than a trace of fear.
Starting a dozen meters away, and filling his field of vision right out to the sharp blue line of the horizon, was more water than he had ever
imagined. It 204 was true that he-had seen Earth’s oceans from space, but from that Olympian vantage point it had been impossible to envisage their true size. Even the greatest of seas was diminished, when one could flash across it in ten minutes.
This world was indeed misnamed. It should have been called Ocean, not
Earth. Duncan performed a rough mental calculation-one of the skills the
Makenzies had carefully retained, despite the omnipresent computer. Radius six thousand-and his eye was about six meters above sea level-that made it simple-six root two, or near enough eight kilometers. Only eight! It was incredible; he could easily have believed that the horizon was a hundred kilometers away. His vision could not span even one percent of the distance to the other shore…. And what he could see now was only the two dimensional skin of an alien universe, teeming with strange life forms seeking whom they might devour.
To Duncan, that expanse of peaceful blue concealed a word much more hostile, and more terrifying, than Space. Even Titan, with its known dangers, seemed benign in comparison.
And yet there were children out there, splashing around in the shallows, and disappearing underwater for quite terrifying lengths of time. One of them, Duncan was certain, had been gone for well over a minute.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked anxiously, gesturing toward the lagoon.
