Clones Read online

  CLONES

  EDITED BY

  JACK DANN & GARDNER DOZOIS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-140-5

  Copyright © 2013 by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

  First printing: April 1998

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  Acknowledgment is made

  for permission to reprint the following material:

  "Nine Lives," by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin. First published in Playboy, November 1969. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

  "Mary," by Damon Knight. Copyright © 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. First published (under the title "An Ancient Madness") in Galaxy, June 1964. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Extra," by Greg Egan. Copyright © 1990 by Greg Egan. First published in Eidolon #2, August 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Out of Copyright," by Charles Sheffield. Copyright © 1989 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Phantom of Kansas," by John Varley. Copyright © 1976 by UPD Publishing Corp. First published in Galaxy, February 1976. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent.

  "Blood Sisters," by Joe Haldeman. Copyright © 1979 by Playboy. First published in Playboy, July 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Past Magic," by Ian R. MacLeod. Copyright © 1990 by Interzone. First published in Interzone 39, September 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agents, Owlswick Literary Agency.

  "Clone Sister," by Pamela Sargent. Copyright © 1973 by Joseph Elder. Copyright reassigned to the author in 1977. First published in Eros in Orbit (Trident Press). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang," by Kate Wilhelm. Copyright © 1974 by Kate Wilhelm. First published in Orbit 15 (Harper & Row). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  PREFACE

  The birth of Dolly, arguably history's most famous sheep (although, admittedly, there's not a lot of intense competition for that title!) early in 1997, lead to a flood of speculation in the media that the cloning techniques used to produce Dolly would soon be adaptable to produce human clones as well. "Hood," in fact, is probably too understated a word to describe the torrent of sudden speculation about the feasibility—and the imminence—of human cloning: "tidal wave" or "tsunami" might describe that torrent of speculation better, as cover stories about cloning appeared in Time and Newsweek and on the front page of nearly every newspaper in the country—and, in fact, around the world. Footage of Dolly the cloned sheep—and a cute little thing she is, too—appeared on practically every TV news show that night, again worldwide, and would be shown over and over again for days to come. The tabloids, of course, went totally insane.

  Suddenly, the general public was aware of the possibility that technology might someday be able to produce human clones; and that it was not only possible that this technology would one day be perfected but, in fact, that it was fairly likely. That human cloning was not an issue that would arise in some remote, misty future, but something that might well happen during the lifetimes of many of the people now alive—perhaps, according to the most optimistic estimates, a breakthrough no more than a decade or so away. (According to the tabloids, of course, it was a capability that we already possessed, with sinister secret government labs busily churning out clones of everyone from JFK to Elvis.) Something that would have to be dealt with soon. By us. Suddenly everyone was talking about clones, and the morality and legality of human cloning was being debated endlessly—and often vitrolically—on TV and radio talk shows, and even thundered about from pulpits and by the Vatican. Publishers were suddenly inundated with proposals for clone novels, with one book editor of our acquaintance saying that he'd received a half dozen or more pitches on the same day for novels about cloning Jesus (an idea dealt with in SF all the way back in 1979, in Gary Jenning's "The Relic"), and no doubt the first cloning movies and TV movies-of-the-week are being rushed into production even as these words are being typed. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a sitcom about clones was in development somewhere right now.

  We can't be too self-righteous about this, of course, since the book that you hold in your hands is obviously also calculated to cash in on this very craze—but we can say that if you really want to know about the potentials and dangers of human cloning, if you really want to get a forecast of the profound and widespread (and sometimes extremely subtle) impact that human cloning could have on human society, then you are far better served by spending your money on this anthology than by buying supermarket tabloids with lurid headlines about JFK's clone, or by plonking down ten dollars for a ticket to the first big-budget clone movie to make it out of the gate.

  For the idea of human cloning is old news to science fiction writers, who have been speculating about it for more than twenty-five years now, long before the average person in the street had even ever heard of the concept. And during that time, those science fiction writers have worked out the implications of cloning for society (some of which are much more widespread and profound than anything speculated about to date in the public press), examined the impact that cloning could have on the lives of every one of us, in far greater depth and detail, with far more imagination and ingenuity, and with enormously more technical sophistication and clarity, than anything you're going to hear said on Geraldo or Oprah . . . or even on 60 Minutes.

  So if you want to really explore the miracles and terrors that cloning could bring to our lives, and get an advance look at the pitfalls and potentialities ahead long before your neighbor has any idea what's about to blindside him, and if you want to be thrilled and elated and moved while doing so (because, of course, the colorful, fast-paced, and imaginative stories that follow were written to entertain, not to inform . . . although, as it happens, they also do a pretty good job of informing as well) . . . or if you'd just like to have a good read, a few hours of imaginative entertainment, then put down those tabloids, shut off the television, put your feet up, open this book—and enjoy. Forget about Dolly! You ain't seen nothing yet! You're about to be transported to worlds wilder than anything you can imagine—so far!

  NINE LIVES

  Ursula K. Le Gumn

  Although science fiction has always been fascinated by the idea of the duplication of human beings, and has long used ingenious twists on the idea of matter-transmission, or sometimes time-travel paradox loops, to produce such dopplegangers (stories about android duplicates of human beings, one of Philip K. Dick's most obsessive themes, are clearly related as well—another few years, and most of the android stories of the fifties would have been clone stories instead, I'm willing to bet), the genre as a whole didn't begin talking about "clones" until the last few years of the sixties, after the appearance of Gordon Rattray Taylor's extremely influential nonfiction book, The Biological Time-Bomb. (Le Guin has explicitly acknowledged Taylor's influence on the story that follows; one of your editors was also writing an early clone story in 1969— "A Special Kind of Morning," published in 1971—before Le Guin's story hit print, and certainly Taylor was his inspiration as well; rarely, in fact, has a nonfiction book had as much impact on the evolution of the genre as Taylor's had.) Although there were earlier stories that dealt with some of the conceptual material of cloning—Theodore Sturgeon's "When You Care, When You Love, " for instance, or Damon Kni
ght's "Mary"—the eloquent and hard-hitting story that follows, "Nine Lives," is perhaps science fiction's first true clone story, and is probably the first to use the word "clone" in its true context.

  It's a story that had a tremendous impact on the field, and one that is still as fresh and germane today as it was in 1969, telling the moving story of a young man who is suddenly left all alone in life in a way that no one has ever been alone before. . . .

  Ursula K Le Guin is probably one of the best known and most universally respected SF writers in the world today. Her famous novel The Left Hand of Darkness may have been the most influential SF novel of its decade and shows every sign of becoming one of the enduring classics of the genre. Even ignoring the rest of Le Guìn's work, the impact of this one novel alone on future SF writers would be incalculably strong. (Her 1968 fantasy novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, would be almost as influential on future generations of High Fantasy writers.) The Left Hand of Darkness won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, as did Le Guin's monumental novel The Dispossessed a few years later. Her novel Tehanu won her another Nebula in 1990, and she has also won three other Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award for her short fiction, as well as the National Book Award for Children's literature for her novel The Farthest Shore, part of her acclaimed Earthsea trilogy. Her other novels include Planet of Exile, The Lathe of Heaven, City of Illusions, Rocannon's World, The Beginning Place, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, Tehanu, Searoad, and the controversial multimedia novel Always Coming Home. She has had six collections: The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Orsinian Tales, The Compass Rose, Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, and her most recent book, Four Ways to Forgiveness.

  She was alive inside but dead outside, her face a black and dun net of wrinkles, tumors, cracks. She was bald and blind. The tremors that crossed Libra's face were mere quiverings of corruption. Underneath, in the black corridors, the halls beneath the skin, there were crepitations in darkness, ferments, chemical nightmares that went on for centuries. "O the damned flatulent planet," Pugh murmured as the dome shook and a boil burst a kilometer to the southwest, spraying silver pus across the sunset. The sun had been setting for the last two days. "I'll be glad to see a human face."

  "Thanks," said Martin.

  "Yours is human to be sure," said Pugh, "but I've seen it so long I can't see it."

  Radvid signals cluttered the communicator which Martin was operating, faded, returned as face and voice. The face filled the screen, the nose of an Assyrian king, the eyes of a samurai, skin bronze, eyes the color of iron: young, magnificent. "Is that what human beings look like?" said Pugh with awe. "I'd forgotten."

  "Shut up, Owen, we're on."

  "Libra Exploratory Mission Base, come in please, this is Passerine launch."

  "Libra here. Beam fixed. Come on down, launch." "Expulsion in seven E-seconds. Hold on." The screen blanked and sparkled.

  "Do they all look like that? Martin, you and I are uglier men than I thought."

  "Shut up, Owen. . .."

  For twenty-two minutes Martin followed the landing craft down by signal and then through the cleared dome they saw it, small star in the blood-colored east, sinking. It came down neat and quiet, Libra's thin atmosphere carrying little sound. Pugh and Martin closed the headpieces of their insuits, zipped out of the dome airlocks, and ran with soaring strides, Nijinsky and Nureyev, toward the boat. Three equipment modules came floating down at four-minute intervals from each other and hundred-meter intervals east of the boat. "Come on out," Martin said on his suit radio, "we're waiting at the door."

  "Come on in, the methane's fine," said Pugh.

  The hatch opened. The young man they had seen on the screen came out with one athletic twist and leaped down onto the shaky dust and clinkers of Libra. Martin shook his hand, but Pugh was staring at the hatch, from which another young man emerged with the same neat twist and jump, followed by a young woman who emerged with the same neat twist, ornamented by a wriggle, and the jump. They were all tall, with bronze skin, black hair, high-bridged noses, epicanthic fold, the same face. They all had the same face. The fourth was emerging from the hatch with a neat twist and jump. "Martin bach," said Pugh, "we've got a clone."

  "Right," said one of them, "we're a tendone. John Chow's the name. You're Lieutenant Martin?"

  "I'm Owen Pugh."

  "Alvaro Guillen Martin," said Martin, formal, bowing slightly. Another girl was out, the same beautiful face; Martin stared at her and his eye rolled like a nervous pony's. Evidently he had never given any thought to cloning and was suffering technological shock. "Steady," Pugh said in the Argentine dialect, "it's only excess twins." He stood close by Martin's elbow. He was glad himself of the contact.

  It is hard to meet a stranger. Even the greatest extrovert meeting even the meekest stranger knows a certain dread, though he may not know he knows it. Will he make a fool of me wreck my image of myself invade me destroy me change me? Will he be different from me? Yes, that he will. There's the terrible thing: the strangeness of the stranger.

  After two years on a dead planet, and the last half year isolated as a team of two, oneself and one other, after that it's even harder to meet a stranger, however welcome he may be. You're out of the habit of difference, you've lost the touch; and so the fear revives, the primitive anxiety, the old dread.

  The clone, five males and five females, had got done in a couple of minutes what a man might have got done in twenty: greeted Pugh and Martin, had a glance at Libra, unloaded the boat, made ready to go. They went, and the dome filled with them, a hive of golden bees. They hummed and buzzed quietly, filled up all silences, all spaces with a honey-brown swarm of human presence. Martin looked bewildered at the long-limbed girls, and they smiled at him, three at once. Their smile was gentler than that of the boys, but no less radiantly self-possessed.

  "Self-possessed," Owen Pugh murmured to his friend, "that's it. Think of it, to be oneself ten times over. Nine seconds for every motion, nine ayes on every vote. It would be glorious." But Martin was asleep. And the John Chows had all gone to sleep at once. The dome was filled with their quiet breathing. They were young, they didn't snore. Martin sighed and snored, his Hershey-bar-colored face relaxed in the dim afterglow of Libra's primary, set at last. Pugh had cleared the dome and stars looked in, Sol among them, a great company of lights, a clone of splendors. Pugh slept and dreamed of a one-eyed giant who chased him through the shaking halls of Hell.

  From his sleeping bag Pugh watched the clone's awakening. They all got up within one minute except for one pair, a boy and a girl, who lay snugly tangled and still sleeping in one bag. As Pugh saw this there was a shock like one of Libra's earthquakes inside him, a very deep tremor. He was not aware of this and in fact thought he was pleased at the sight; there was no other such comfort on this dead hollow world. More power to them, who made love. One of the others stepped on the pair. They woke and the girl sat up flushed and sleepy, with bare golden breasts. One of her sisters murmured something to her; she shot a glance at Pugh and disappeared in the sleeping bag; from another direction came a fierce stare, from still another direction a voice: "Christ, we're used to having a room to ourselves. Hope you don't mind, Captain Pugh."

  "It's a pleasure," Pugh said half truthfully. He had to stand up then wearing only the shorts he slept in, and he felt like a plucked rooster, all white scrawn and pimples. He had seldom envied Martin's compact brownness so much. The United Kingdom had come through the Great Famines well, losing less than half its population: a record achieved by rigorous food control. Black marketeers and hoarders had been executed. Crumbs had been shared. Where in richer lands most had died and a few had thriven, in Britain fewer died and none throve. They all got lean. Their sons were lean, their grandsons lean, small, brittle-boned, easily infected. When civilization became a matter of standing in lines, the British had kept queue, and so had replaced the survival of the fittest with the survival of the fair-minded. Owen Pugh was a scrawny little m
an. All the same, he was there.

  At the moment he wished he wasn't.

  At breakfast a John said, "Now if you'll brief us, Captain Pugh—"

  "Owen, then."

  "Owen, we can work out our schedule. Anything new on the mine since your last report to your Mission? We saw your reports when Passerine was orbiting Planet V, where they are now."

  Martin did not answer, though the mine was his discovery and project, and Pugh had to do his best. It was hard to talk to them. The same faces, each with the same expression of intelligent interest, all leaned toward him across the table at almost the same angle. They all nodded together.

  Over the Exploitation Corps insigne on their tunics each had a nameband, first name John and last name Chow of course, but the middle names different. The men were Aleph, Kaph, Yod, Gimel, and Samedh; the women Sadhe, Daleth, Zayin, Beth, and Resh. Pugh tried to use the names but gave it up at once; he could not even tell sometimes which one had spoken, for all the voices were alike.

  Martin buttered and chewed his toast, and finally interrupted: "You're a team. Is that it?"

  "Right," said two Johns.

  "God, what a team! I hadn't seen the point. How much do you each know what the others are thinking?"

  "Not at all, properly speaking," replied one of the girls, Zayin. The others watched her with the proprietary, approving look they had. "No ESP, nothing fancy. But we think alike. We have exactly the same equipment. Given the same stimulus, the same problem, we're likely to be coming up with the same reactions and solutions at the same time. Explanations are easy—don't even have to make them, usually. We seldom misunderstand each other. It does facilitate our working as a team."

  "Christ yes," said Martin. "Pugh and I have spent seven hours out of ten for six months misunderstanding each other. Like most people. What about emergencies, are you as good at meeting the unexpected problem as a nor . . . an unrelated team?"