Cloner A Sci-Fi Novel About Human Clonin - By Emma Lorant Page 0,133

Lisa could see, across the many black and white backs still to come, the yellow of a large lorry pushing them towards her.

The cows pressed closer, surrounding her, crashing both sides, trampling the verges of the rhyne on one side, the road on the other. The mooing sounds of peaceful milch cows turned to lowing, crescendoing into the beat of hoof against tarmac and stones.

‘It’s another yellow one!’ Seb said excitedly. ‘That’s three!’

The driver of the yellow lorry was hooting his horn, banging the side of his lorry with a stick. The animals were threatening to stampede. Where was Mark Ditcheat? He was supposed to have one person at the back, one at the front, to guide his herd. None of the local farmers ever did that, but Lisa could not remember a time when there was no one at all to guide the animals.

A sudden splintering crack. Lisa, horrified, thought her windscreen had been hit, then saw it was her wing mirror. A stone, presumably, kicked up by a hoof, had shattered a star of glass splinters, jagged, spiked. Lisa saw images of cows reflected a hundredfold. She pressed the control to turn the mirror round; the mechanism was intact. Suddenly Lisa caught sight of Janus in it - a myriad Januses, tight-lipped, staring ahead.

A vision of a new world came to her. Not the sad repetitive contained Brave New World Huxley had foreseen, but something infinitely more terrifying – uncontrolled cloning. An exploding world, volcanic. Insects reproducing at exponential rates, invading cities, even bodies. Plants devouring the earth, smothering buildings. Large animals with no space to move. Even humans spurting out clones, great groups of stereotypes, their defects accelerating with each cloning. A horror spreading out its tentacles over the whole planet.

She could see that killing on a world-wide scale would be the only defence. Squads of exterminators would waste all life within their path; troops of cloner hunters, armed with guns. The final solution. Lisa turned the mirror back to the present.

The Volvo rocked from side to side as Lisa gripped the wheel. Would the frightened animals actually capsize the car and butt them into the rhyne?

‘They’re pushing us, Mummy!’ Seb was pounding his little fists against the window behind the driver’s seat. Lisa began to sound her horn, the loud Volvo horn she used to alert her way out of her drive.

The cows, driven between the lorry and herself, became confused. Some turned back on themselves, others began to shy away from her.

‘Ho, ho, ho!’ Janus began to shout, and Jeffrey immediately joined in with him. Seb amplified the cry, and the animals, surprised, steered clearer.

She’d have to take the cow by the horns, Lisa told herself grimly. She and her children would drive through. Once more a feeling of oppression, of forces arraigned to harm her, took hold of her.

Was someone really out to get her children, to kill the remaining triplets? Even though they were now completely harmless?

Lisa jerked the car into gear, blared her horn and began to nose through the milling animals. She could see the yellow lorry parked in the next passing place, the driver shaking his fist at her. She didn’t look at his face, kept her eyes ahead. Sweating now, furious herself, she poked the tank like Volvo through the tail end of the herd and accelerated away as fast as she was able.

‘They tried to knock us over,’ Seb said angrily. ‘He shouldn’t have been hooting at them like that.’

Lisa’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. Those Flaxton drivers were getting out of hand. This time she had the evidence - the shattered mirror to show her husband. She’d tell them all about it at Geraldine’s party. Never mind that it was a special occasion. Fitch-Templeton was, after all, now also a director of the firm. And the rest of them would be there. If they really needed Alec, wanted him to sort things out for them in Glasgow, they’d have to humour her. Pass the word to their drivers to behave. It was time to put an end to this nonsense.

CHAPTER 36

Alec was waiting for her at the main entrance to the showground, together with a young man in a chauffeur’s uniform.

‘You’re late, Lisa.’

‘Sorry. We had to negotiate Mark Ditcheat’s herd. It was a disgrace – ’

‘Later, darling. I’ll walk but Jenkins will drive you to the lake. We’ll take the children on from there,’ he said brusquely. ‘Jenkins can park the car.’ Alec, busy adjusting Janus’s cast,