Bethany said to Carl May, ‘That was a perfectly horrid thing to do, scraping her neck like that. You’re nothing but a Dracula.’
And he said, still in a bad mood, ‘Be careful or I’ll do it to you too. You might be helped by a little sorting and a proper upbringing, so I should shut up if I were you, or you’ll have a very sore neck indeed.’
So she did shut up, for a time. But unlike Joanna she could see the advantage of being more than one: the thought did not horrify her at all, not one bit. The more of her the better. She would sit back while the other clones did the shopping, yes she would; after all she could rely on them bringing back what she wanted, choosing what she would choose – until, thinking about it, she realized that was like believing you were Marie Antoinette in another incarnation, and not one of her maids, which was more likely statistically (one of Carl May’s favourite words) there being so many more ordinary people than queens in the world. One of the other clones might seize command, and Bethany would be doing the shopping while the Queen clone was the one just sitting – and Bethany wouldn’t know what was going on in the Queen’s head, really, except she’d know it was pretty much what was going on in her own, which might or might not be a help. But somehow Bethany felt she would indeed have the benefit of extra strawberries and cream upon the tongue, not to mention all the lovemaking multiplied, because she’d know what the others would be tasting, feeling, doing, not just having to guess.
And, then again, though Bethany loved her parents, she could see they had not brought her up in a safe or sensible kind of way. Reared in another fashion, encouraged in different directions, Bethany might be a fashion designer, or fly an aircraft, not be just a girl who lived by her looks. Or would she? How could one tell? Except by trying.
Bethany said to Carl May later that evening, when he had calmed down and lost his satanic overtones, and she and he were in the bath – it was too small for their cavortings (she knocked her elbow quite painfully) and white, which she thought boring and old-fashioned – ‘What happened to Joanna’s clones? Didn’t you want to find out?’ and he said, ‘Good heavens, you didn’t really believe that tale did you? I was annoyed with Joanna, that’s all.’
This time Bethany didn’t believe him. Bethany said, ‘You did so do it. You just frightened yourself with what you’d done. You realized, and stopped, the way people do. You set things marching you couldn’t control, so you just shut your eyes, and left it to the other people to clear up the mess! Like the waste from your power plants. What’s going to happen to that?’
Twenty-four going on forty-two. He got out of the bath. Either she annoyed him with her perspicacity, or irritated him with her stupidity. She confused him. He would be filled with tenderness and gratitude towards her, when she had rendered him some peculiar sexual favour – though in theory that was when he should most despise her – and yet wish to push her out of the window if she failed to read his mind properly, or was insensitive to his feelings. Carl May did not like being confused.
‘Oh,’ said Bethany, ‘now what have I said? Why did you get out of the bath?’
‘Because I banged my knee,’ he said, wrapping himself in a towel, which smelt of Bethany, sweet and warm and agreeably cheap, ‘and bed is more comfortable. Let’s go to bed.’
In bed she said, ‘If you were making it up about the clones – and you told me about them yourself once before; did you forget? – why did you take that piece from her neck?’
And he said, ‘To frighten her off. Who wants ex-wives dropping in at any time of day or night, making scenes?’
‘Well,’ said Bethany, ‘if you ask me, it was a bit drastic. Most men don’t behave like that when they find their ex-wife has a lover. And after all, it’s only natural that she should. You have me, after all. And there can’t be one law for men and another for women.’
‘Oh yes, there can,’ said he.
‘Well, don’t have him run over too,’ said Bethany, ‘or there’ll be more talk. Punish him some other way. Have a thousand of him made, each one with a high sex drive but impotent. That should pay him out.’
‘I’ll pay him out the simple old-fashioned way,’ he said, and looked at his watch and laughed aloud.
‘Why are you looking at your watch?’ she asked.
‘Because it’s the most expensive watch in the world,’ he said.
He wondered how Dr Holly was doing; how long he would hold out, when he would give in and return to the fold. Men within a whisper of a Nobel Prize do not easily turn their backs on glory, renown and the plaudits of their peers. If Holly didn’t, there were younger, smarter, more ambitious men in Holly’s own department upon whom Carl May had his eye, more than ready to do a favour or two. But Holly was the best, the most creative, the most imaginative: the younger generation of scientists were more concerned with their careers than the marvels of the universe. You had to pay them to get them to think. He would confront Holly with hard evidence on the absent-mindedness of professors of Egyptology: how they did indeed step out in front of cars: how they died young for reasons which were nothing to do with the Curse of the Pharaohs. Dr Holly would admit Carl May was right, would agree to put at least a section of his department to searching the gut cells of the ancients for living DNA, and get his grant back, and off they’d go again, Holly and May, May and Holly!
Unless of course Joanna was herself the Curse of the Pharaohs. The thought made Carl May laugh aloud.
‘Why are you laughing?’ Bethany asked.
‘Because you’re such an idiot,’ said Carl May, ‘and that’s the way I like it. I want you bright, I don’t want you clever.’
‘I may be cleverer than you suppose,’ said Bethany.
‘What great big teeth you have, Grandmama,’ he said, which was silly, she thought, because she had very little white even teeth of which she was very proud, having spent many years wearing a brace, about which her parents had been very particular, allowing her to take it off only when being kind to their lame ducks, their lonely sea-captains, their newly widowed majors. ‘One day you’ll be pleased,’ her father would say, when she moaned and groaned about the brace, and so she was.
Carl May looked at his watch again, and this time she didn’t ask him why. He had the bright eyes and flushed cheeks of a delinquent child; he was up to something; she knew it, and she thought it might be better, safer, not to know exactly what it was, and she was right.
The next day Carl May took part in a TV programme about the Chernobyl disaster and the question of the threat or otherwise of radiation, which seemed to so absorb the nation. He took an aggressive and positive line, as suited both his whim, his business interests and the future of the nuclear industry; all of these being pretty much the same.
He said he doubted very much the story of 2000 dead and large areas laid waste and desolate, never to grow a blade of grass again. He deplored the scare stories in the media that death was raining down from skies all over the world. He drank a glass of milk front of camera, and said there was more to fear from cholesterol than radioactivity. He said he thought the death toll would be more like thirty-five – very modest for a major industrial accident (though of course tragic for those concerned: families, etc.) and naturally there would be a statistically calculable increase in cancers in those countries subject to fallout but certainly no more than would be produced by atmospheric pollution consequent upon the continued burning off of fossil fuels. These things had to be balanced.
Look, Carl May said, this argument that we should all live as long as we possibly can is barmy: who wants to live an extra five years in a walking frame anyway? Better an earlier death, be it cancer or heart attack, than a later one. It was an old-fashioned sentiment which favoured length of life over way of life, quantity over quality. You found it the other end of the spectrum, when it came to how societies regarded birth: the old school, emotional, religious, said no contraception, no abortions, let the disabled live: the more life the better, regardless of quality of life. A younger, more reasonable, generation said no, let’s have quality not quantity. Freely available birth control, worldwide family planning, sterilizations, vasectomies on demand, terminations all but compulsory for those diagnosed before birth as handicapped, every child a wanted child – and so forth, Carl May said, while Friends of the Earth, a Bishop and the Minister of Energy tried to get a word in edgeways.
Friends of the Earth managed ‘What about childhood cancer? Leukaemia?’ and Carl May replied briskly if this nation really cares about the lives of its children it will stop driving about in cars – how many get killed a year on the roads! – and increase family allowances: if it cares about cancers in the old it will ban cigarette smoking and free hospitals for the potentially healthy and those who have not brought their troubles on themselves.
Now look, said Carl May, people will work themselves up into a state about anything, especially if it’s new. They thought the building of railway lines would destroy the nation, they thought TV would destroy its culture, they thought vaccination killed. (‘They were right, they were right,’ muttered the Bishop.) Nothing much to fear from radiation, compared to other dangers, compared to crossing the road, compared to smoking. A burst of intense radiation could kill you, sure. So could an overdose of aspirin. Nuclear power stations were, if you asked him, even more crippled by safety regulations than they were by the unions, and that was saying something. The unthinking and uninformed always fear an unseen enemy. From reds under the bed to radiation in the head, the public gets the wrong end of the stick, is ignorant and hysterical and impossible.
He stopped. Everyone in the studio was startled; even the camera crews were listening.
Next day Gerald Coustain called from the Department and said he thought Carl May had gone a little far in insulting the public so; it might not be a wise move considering the state of near-panic it appeared to be in. Let him at least appear to take the Chernobyl fallout seriously.
‘OΚ, OK,’ said Carl May. ‘I’ll bleat away in public if that’s what you want.’
‘We’ve now pulled together some very fine and modern instrumentation,’ said Gerald, ‘so we won’t be calling on Britnuc any more. I have to tell you that in some parts of Cumbria, it now seems, the needles had been going once round the dials and back again, and our technicians simply hadn’t noticed: they weren’t expecting it. Human error’s the real problem.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Carl May.
‘Still, we’ve got the problem solved now, I think. We may have to take lamb off the market, though.’
‘That’ll just panic people more,’ said Carl May. ‘If Cumbrian lamb is twice as radioactive as Sussex lamb, why don’t you ask people just to eat one Cumbrian lamb chop instead of their usual two? Or if they’re really hungry, buy Sussex.’
‘Because people’s minds don’t work like that,’ said Gerald.
‘I know,’ said Carl May. ‘That’s the trouble with them.’