Cloner A Sci-Fi Novel About Human Clonin - By Emma Lorant Page 0,88

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