ONE CYCLE, at my awakening, Solartrance gives me a ration slightly different from the others. I examine the cubic package in my hands. Solid food.
For nine years I didn’t eat solid food.
“We need to stop taking drugs and start staying awake,” Solartrance explains to me when I stare at him in amazement, the package of dried food in my hand. “Our ship is in approaching route to the military base orbiting around Otherworld.”
I simply gaze at him, so Solartrance drags me to the cockpit. When I look out of the tiny porthole on the nose of our spacecraft, I almost scream.
A big, colorful celestial body floats in front of us. It’s so great, so damn huge, it fills the entire porthole. Its size makes me dizzy. I’m sure its orbit will swallow us.
But then another object comes between our spacecraft and the scary planet. A metallic, uneven cluster full of protrusions, turrets, and antennas, and the gleaming of assorted nuclear engines. It’s huge, too. Not as much as the planet, but bigger than our spacecraft.
“The orbiting base,” Solartrance says, pointing at the thing with his finger. “We’ll land there in three hours.”
So this is the end.
My body becomes ice. Thirty-seven years have passed since my birth, and now my trip is over. Prince’s body will arrive at his destination alive, young and perfect as when he left. My mission has been successfully completed.
I should be happy. I should be satisfied and proud of myself; instead, I’m tired and drained and deadly scared.
I run to the sarcophagus. I curl up on the metal edge, leaning to look at Prince’s icy face, at his eyes open and covered with frost.
“I did it,” I say. “We arrived, Prince. Now they’ll awaken you. And… and I don’t know what is going to happen. I hope you’ll remember me. I hope so.”
My heart hammers in anxiety and fear against my rib cage. Prince said he would find a way for us to be together. But he’ll remember the promise? He’ll remember me? And worse, is it fair, forcing him to maintain such a commitment? I shouldn’t interfere in his life, I know. He’s still a boy of twenty, and I’m an old battered clone of almost forty. Do I really have to afflict him with a promise he made me eighteen years ago, at a time when he was scared and upset?
“I can’t answer these questions, Prince. I’m just a poor stupid clone. What I really want is for you to be okay. And I’ll make sure they treat you the right way, I swear.”
I stay next to Prince, as always, for the time Spacefrost and Solartrance deal with the approaching maneuvers. I feel, however, our spacecraft bumping and jolting when we land inside the orbiting base. In a few minutes, some weird soldier clones flock into the cubicle and surround me.
I’ve never seen such scary clones. They are a full head taller than me, wearing dark, matte metal armors, their bare arms swollen with overdeveloped muscles, and strange things implanted in points of their bodies and faces, like breathing tubes and communication devices. All have elongated eyes completely black inside, like insects.
One of them looms over me. “Royal Guard of Senator Coburn,” he says, in a voice so low and deep it makes my stomach liquid. “You can get off the sarcophagus, guardian.”
Okay. There’s not much I can do. I get up and move away just one step, and I observe, anxious, as the soldiers stick some portable engines under the sarcophagus. Although the clones are big and spine-chilling, my instinct is to jump on them and get them to leave Prince alone, leave him to me. I have to repeat to myself that they aren’t here to hurt him.
The portable engines switch on, and the sarcophagus rises with all its precious cargo. Anguish grabs my throat. I remain stuck to the coffin while the senator’s soldiers direct it toward the door, and then toward an unloading ramp magically opened in the tail of our spacecraft.
At the bottom of the ramp, one of the clones puts his enormous hand on my chest. “From now on we deal with it. Your task is concluded, guardian.”
My blood turns to ice. I was afraid of this. I clench my fists. “He’s not yet awake!”
“Your task is to watch over the human during the trip, not to attend in his awakening.”
“But… but I have to! I promised!”
I practically shout the last sentence.
The clone peers at his companions. “We have to call the biomedical service. Another one is gone crazy.”
Heat begins to spread on my face. Oh no. They can’t. They can’t take Prince away from me like this. I take a step aside, in the hope of bypassing the big clone and continuing to follow the sarcophagus, which is dangerously moving away from me, and instead I find myself slammed to the ground, aching and stunned, not even remembering how or when the gigantic clone hit me.
They are really doing it. They are separating Prince from me.
I jump in assault, but someone clings to my waist, keeping me still.
Solartrance.
“Let me go!” I scream. “Let me, they’re taking him away!”
“They will kill you, Phae!”
“I don’t care! Let me go!”
Solartrance is perhaps my only friend. But I beat him. I hit him with my fists and kick and scream. He’s probably right, those monstrous clones will kill me, but I can’t remain here and watch while they take away my Prince. The sarcophagus enters the depths of the orbiting base and disappears from my view.
My heart breaks apart.
OTHER CLONES come, and they are too many. They immobilize me with a sort of cage that holds my arms clasped behind my back. I can’t do anything except scream and cry, my face pressed against the dirty floor.
“Phae?”
I blink. Solartrance kneels next to me. He bleeds. I split his lip with a punch.
“I want my Prince,” I mutter.
Solartrance sighs. “If you behave like that, they take you straight to recycling.”
“I don’t give a shit. I want my Prince!”
“I’ll deal with him,” Solartrance says to someone outside my field of vision. “I’ll calm him down.”
“Must be recycled, you know,” someone says.
“I got it!” Solartrance insists.
The others leave.
Solartrance turns me on my back, then drags me to sit up. My head whirls wildly for a moment. My face is caked with grease, tears, and mucus.
“Phae, look at me,” Solartrance says, shaking me slightly.
I focus on him. “You can’t understand. My life is useless without him!”
“I know. But your task is ended. You have to accept it. Please, Phae, prove you’re able to take another task, or you will be recycled!”
“I don’t want another task! I want my Prince!”
Solartrance sighs. “You need to let your human go, Phae.”
“No!”
Spacefrost approaches from the chute of our spacecraft. “Leave him alone,” he says to Solartrance. “He’s just crazy.”
I clean my face on my shoulder. We are on a dark and crowded landing deck, a kind of platform for small vessels. In a lower level, in a darkness flashing with lights and strange machinery, I catch a glimpse of another huge deck where colossal, elongated spaceships are lined up, gleaming in the dim light. The open space and invisible ceiling, after nine years in a small ship, make me feel dizzy, but I’m too jumbled to care.
“You don’t understand,” I say, trying to stop the trembling in my voice. I appeal to Solartrance, looking directly in his eyes. “I have promised to be present at his awakening. I gave my word. And Prince said he would find a way to stay with me.”
Solartrance frowns. “It’s a dream, Phae. Your human can’t have spoken to you.”
“He spoke to me!” I yell. But then I realize my only hope to be believed is to not sound crazy. And I want them to believe me.
I take a breath. “We had an emergency and he woke up,” I continue, trying to maintain a firm tone. “He spoke to me. And I… I began to be in love with him.”
Solartrance stares at me, wide-eyed, in silence.
“Absurd,” Spacefrost snaps. In these years, he hasn’t been close to me like Solartrance. “Even if this really happened, which I doubt, you can’t mean anything to a human.”
“It’s not true! He’s different. It’s strange, I know, but he isn’t like the other humans.” My eyes fill with tears at the overwhelming memory of the short time I spent with Prince. After eighteen years, I still miss him excruciatingly. “He is special. He has feelings for me.”
“Are you saying that your human… reciprocates your feelings?” Solartrance asks.
“I hope so,” I say. I swallow back the tears. “No, I’m sure of this. He said he would find a way to keep me with him. Even if he has to marry the senator, he could keep me as a servant, or something like that. But first I have to be there when he wakes up, to find out if… if he really remembers me.”
“Absurd!” Spacefrost blurts out.
Solartrance rubs his forehead. “Let me understand. You spoke with your human? He felt something for you? He promised you’d stay together?”
“Yes! It is so! Please. You have to help me!”
“We can’t do anything for you,” Spacefrost says.
“Did he touch you?” Solartrance asks.
I swallow. I want to say it with a firm voice. I raise my chin. “We made love.”
“Oh this is ridiculous!” Spacefrost shouts, while Solartrance gapes at me. “Humans don’t have sex with clones, apart from sex slave clones inside the brothels!”
“I was born on Ship and I’m just a poor stupid clone,” I say, straightening my back. “But I know what I say. Prince felt something for me. I don’t… I don’t expect he still has feelings for me, and I don’t pretend he’ll keep his commitment, but I want to keep mine. I promised to be present when he wakes. Please. If there’s a way….”
“There isn’t,” Spacefrost concludes.
Solartrance narrows his eyes. He touches a point in the restraints that squeeze my arms behind my back, and the metal object opens and falls to the floor. My arms are suddenly free.
“I don’t know if there is a way to help you. But perhaps we can give you the password, Phae,” Solartrance says.
Spacefrost passes a hand over his face. “Oh, fuck.”
IN MUCH less time than I need to overcome the shock of the separation—from my birth, I’ve never been without Prince—I find myself on another boarding bridge, wearing a clean uniform, after a brief stop in a sanitizer that barely scratched the dirt upon my face.
I don’t know the meaning of the password. It’s freedom. I don’t understand this word, but it’s a nice word. And it’s powerful. As soon as I pronounce it, all the clones fall silent and stare at me in awe.
The clones are a lot. And for a lot, I mean a damn awful lot. I never imagined there were so many clones in the universe. I’m standing in the middle of a crowd waiting to embark on one of the space ferries toward Otherworld. All hairless, narrow-eyed clones. Watching them, I can distinguish only four or five types of faces, endlessly repeated in a lot of individuals, the number of whom scares me. My breath runs too fast and my heart hammers against my rib cage. Someone looks at me with curiosity, because as I heard from some clones in the locker room where Solartrance pushed me, I’m a clone of a very old class, with human-shaped eyes. But for the most part, they ignore me, even if they touch me and bump into me. The illogical fear that so many clones can steal my breath invades me.
I close my eyes. Prince, I can do it. I’m going to reach you.
“Phae?”
I jolt. Someone makes his way through the crowd and joins me. It’s Solartrance. “I have a new assignment,” he says. “Paperwork here at the base. I’m assigned to space traffic control.” He tilts his head, studying me. “It’s a good thing. Often, after a long trip in space like ours, clones are simply sent to recycling without even checking their mental faculties.”
“I’m happy,” I say. Inside, I feel like shit. I was so shaken by my personal drama that I didn’t realize he was in danger of being recycled too. I look at his wounded lip. “Sorry I hit you.”
He shrugs. “I’ll never forget the things you taught me, Phae.”
I blink. “Me?”
“A promise is beyond your task,” Solartrance explains. “Feelings are beyond your task.”
Solartrance hugs me. Tight.
I can hear the sigh of astonishment that spreads through the multitude of clones around us. They fall silent—the whole crowd falls silent—just for a simple hug.
“Remember the password and use it,” Solartrance whispers in my ear. “I hope you can reach your human. I hope so.”
He lets go of me and pats my arm. “Do not lose your spirit. Maybe one day things will change.”
Solartrance smiles at me, his eyes wet, then leaves.
“PHAE!”
I sit up abruptly, ripping out a good portion of the needles attached to my arms and in the backs of my hands.
I’m in a white room, so bright it forces me to squint. I sit inside my open sarcophagus. “Where is Phae?”
Three humans dressed in white, two men and a woman, stand around my coffin and stare at me in amazement. “Surprising,” the woman says.
I examine the place quickly. A hospital room richly illuminated by neon, matte aluminum shutters that close the only window, a monitor, and some medical equipment around my coffin. Surely I’m no longer in the crappy abandoned spaceship. A pang of apprehension knots my stomach. “Where’s my guardian clone?”
“He should be at least a little confused,” one of the men says.
Indeed. I realize it’s not like the last time. The previous awakening, I woke up in a fog and barely remembered who I was and my name. I was cold and I felt pain all over my body. This time, it’s as if I had dozed off for five minutes. And I remember everything. Everything.
“I need to have my guardian clone with me. Where is he?”
“You’re safe, Kian Newell,” the woman says. She takes a white dressing gown and lays it on my shoulders. “You are in New Rome, Otherworld.”
It’s not what I asked.
“His vital signs are extraordinarily good,” says one of the men. “Surprising, for a cryosleep period so long.” He turns to look at the monitor connected to my sarcophagus operating system. “One hundred thirteen years of suspended animation in total, without any treatment after the first awakening. Only a single defibrillation to restart his heart. No physical damage or brain damage. He isn’t even confused!”
The three people look at me as if I am a laboratory animal. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I feel so good, and I have to restrain myself from jumping off this damn coffin to run to search for Phae.
Then I perceive something warm against my thigh.
I look down. The spheroid the alien gave me is there and pulses quietly.
Sure, I put it inside the sarcophagus myself, just before Phae convinced me to go back inside. Its energy comes into me. At once, I understand it’s thanks to the spheroid that I feel so good.
The three humans are too amazed to notice the small object. I cover it with a flap of my robe. Then I put on the sleeves and tie the belt and grab the alien orb in my hand, sliding the sleeve over it. Fortunately, this garment is too big for me.
I appeal to the woman, looking her in the eyes. “Please. Can I have news of my guardian clone?”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head slightly, a little dazed. “Your sarcophagus arrived here at the medical center on a vessel of the royal guard. I don’t know anything about a guardian clone. I don’t know what it is.”
“They were clones with the specific task of watching over the hibernating humans during interstellar travel,” one of the men says. “They were called ‘guardian angels.’ They don’t exist anymore, being interstellar travel fell into disuse after the colonization of Otherworld.
I’m not interested in the historical lesson. “I had a guardian angel, and I want to know what happened to him,” I say firmly.
“We don’t consider it appropriate, worrying too much about our servants,” someone says, making me jolt.
A man with a determined stride enters the room and approaches my sarcophagus. He studies me with sharp, piercing eyes and a slightly hungry look. A beard covers his face, and his long hair is streaked with gray, but I recognize him.
“Rein,” I say. I smile brightly, even though my heart is beating like crazy and I want to scream in fear and frustration. “It’s just a whim, but I need my guardian angel with me. You look good, by the way. You aged well.”
The senator of the Otherworld colony smiles at me, but I don’t like him, even if his appearance is attractive. His gray, almost colorless eyes are too cold. Indeed, he gives me a vague sense of revulsion. Eighteen years ago, he seemed just arrogant, but now I sense he has become a much more dangerous man.
“And you’re even more attractive than you looked through the emergency communication eighteen years ago, Kian.” He comes over and lifts my chin. “The legendary last terrestrial. A little skinny and small, but cute.”
As if I were a child.
I jump down from the coffin, taking the alien spheroid inside my sleeve. I raise my head to look the senator in the eyes. He isn’t as tall as Phae, but taller than me. “What do you expect, after one hundred and thirteen years frozen up in that thing? At the very least, I need a decent meal and a bath. And I need my guardian angel.”
Reinhold Coburn smiles, amused. “You will be part of my harem and you’ll have dozens of servants.”
I’m beginning to lose my cool. Did he say harem? And what’s happened to Phae?
“I don’t want dozens of servants,” I say, sounding more scared than funny this time. “I just need my guardian angel.”
I know I’ve asked it too many times, but I can’t help it. Panic is slowly spreading through me. Phae promised to be here at my awakening. If he’s not here, the reason must be serious.
The senator narrows his cold eyes. “The clones are all the same and it’s wrong being so fond of them. Our genetic engineers are having great results cloning some dogs. I’ll get you a puppy.”
This time, I bite my lip to avoid screaming. I don’t raise my fists to beat him, just because I don’t want to drop the alien spheroid, but I can’t avoid my eyes filling with tears. The senator smirks and I know I’m just entertaining him. In eighteen years he has become a nut tougher than I expected. I have to be smart if I want to get anything from him, but at the moment I’m too upset and scared and I can only think that I need to find Phae.
“Now my guards will take you to your rooms,” the man says. “There, you can have everything you want. Food, a bath, dresses. I suggest you get some rest. In the coming days you can explore the royal palace and even the town, but because of my enemies you cannot go out without bodyguards. The public ceremony for our wedding is in three days.” His gaze slides across the slice of bare chest my open robe reveals. “I thought I would give you more time to rest, but given your excellent physical condition, I’ll see you tonight.”
“If you’ll allow me, Senator,” the woman intervenes, “the subject has just emerged from a long period of suspended animation, and maybe we need to keep him under observation….”
“He’s fine, Dr. Rais,” the senator interrupts her. He smiles at me. “Right, Kian?”
Panic sinks its teeth deep into my belly, but if I freak out, I won’t get anything. I need to think about what I should do. Calmly.
I take a breath and square my shoulders. “Sure, Rein.”
THE SPACE ferry to Otherworld takes off.
The rocket starts with a hellish uproar, and my stomach ends up in my throat. We are tossed in a confined space, all upright. There aren’t seats. There’s not even decent lighting, apart from a row of LEDs along the edge of the floor. The big room stinks of grease and perspiration. As soon as the doors closed, a kind of grid fell from the ceiling, and now I understand it prevents us from floating inside the cargo hold.
In semidarkness, pressed against a multitude of other clones, I cling to the grid over my head and close my eyes, trying not to be scared to death. I did it. I’m leaving the orbiting base to reach Prince on Otherworld. But I’m just a stupid clone, and I have to look for Prince on an entire planet. I have no hope.
But I have a magic, powerful word. I use it. Under my breath, savoring it on my lips, I say, “Freedom.”
A couple of clones pressed next to me jolt.
I have already observed this reaction. In the dim light of the cargo hold, the two clones stare at me open-mouthed.
“I need to find a human in suspended animation,” I say. “Where could they take him to awaken him?”
They look at me for a long time. When I begin to believe they won’t respond, one of them whispers, “The New Rome Medical Center.”
“How do I reach this place?”
“With any of the monorail trains,” the other clone responds.
“Jump in the mono and pay attention to the names of the stops,” the first clone adds. “The medical center is not far from the spaceport.”
I have no idea what this mono looks like, and I don’t know how I am going to find it. But I’ll take care of the problem when the time comes. Thanks to the magic word, now I have quite precise directions on where to find Prince. “Thank you,” I say.
There is no way to speak again. The ferry enters the atmosphere and we are tossed about too much to be able to talk. We remain in place thanks only to the metal grid. I think this ferry is a large-scale version of the pipes for transport inside Ship. And even these “mono,” maybe. So I have no reason to be so scared, because it looks like a clone is treated the same way everywhere.
Luckily the trip is short. We land in a turbulent way. The grid raises, a gate opens noisily, and the clones begin to flow out of this hell. I stand in queue, my stomach upside down and my head spinning.
A small flying object enters the hatch and begins to wander over the crowd. When the thing reaches my position, it starts to scream and squeal, casting a blue light on me. Shit.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t hide.
Some soldier clones in black armor run toward me. They grab me and drag me away from the crowd.
“You have no identification code, clone,” one of the soldiers says, his hand closed on my arm like a vise. “Where the fuck did you come out?”
The clone is one of the bug-eyed ones, as the royal guards of the senator, but he doesn’t have the same enormous, absurd physical structure. I wonder if the magic word also works with him. “F-freedom,” I stammer.
His hand on my arm loosens, and his narrow eyes open wide.
Apparently it works.
I DON’T trust the clones of my escort. They are so different from Phae, definitely horrible, to the point of seeming barely to belong to the human race. About seven feet tall, with overdeveloped muscles and bizarre gadgets implanted in various parts of their bodies, they look almost like hybrid creatures, half robots. Their armors include a kind of visor over their eyes, but from what I can see of their faces, they are all identical.
The soldiers lead me onto the roof of the medical facility, where a flying vehicle, a kind of hovercraft, is waiting for me. I go out on the terrace, and I can take in the first sight of the colony of Otherworld.
I gasp.
In front of me extends a city of blackish factories under a color-changing energy dome. The air smells like ozone and my hair stands on end due to the static energy. Slowly I lift my head. Clouds of a reddish and poisonous atmosphere gather around the top of the energy field, releasing crackling lightning bolts.
This is my new home, but I’ve never seen anything more similar to hell.
Yes, I knew Otherworld was under a dome, but more than a hundred years ago, when I started from Earth, they said the dome was only temporary. Soon the reactors for terraforming would have made the atmosphere breathable.
Obviously something has gone wrong.
“Sir?” one of the guards says, his hand on the open door of the vehicle. I jolt.
I approach the vehicle, but before climbing in, I turn to give one last look at the landscape. The entire energy field covers a medium-sized city, a large suburb around a core of dark skyscrapers. Beyond the dome, the landscape is desolate desert. I can see a structure outside, sort of a giant power plant perched on one side of a rocky ridge, connected to the dome with huge galleries. Gray fumes rise from the chimneys and spread to the reddish atmosphere of the planet. From among the ever-changing clouds peeps a small and reddish sun.
A lump in my throat, I climb in the flying vehicle that will take me to the royal palace—to the senator’s harem—and the soldier closes the door behind my back. I collapse in an enveloping seat. There’s no pilot. A servant clone is there for me, apparently with the sole task of taking a drink from the bar unit and offering it to me. She already has an empty glass in her hand.
I grab her arm. “Please, I need help,” I say.
The servant opens her eyes wide and blushes. I realize she’s a young girl. Almost a child. “Sir?” she murmurs.
My stomach rises in my throat when the vehicle lifts off abruptly, and for a moment I close my eyes. The appearance of the colony hit me in the heart. Shit, I need Phae so bad. “What’s your name?” I ask the girl.
Her consternation is total. The clones were treated like crap on Earth, but here it must be even worse. “Don’t worry, you can talk to me,” I add.
“My code is three-four-one-six, sir, Geisha Class.”
I tilt my head to look at her, pissed. “I asked for your name, not for your code or class.”
I managed to scare her. She’s shaking. “My name is Peacehaze, sir.”
I raise my eyebrows. I definitely like it. “I need your help, Peacehaze. I have to find a clone. My guardian clone. We have been separated, but I absolutely have to know what has happened to him. Any idea on how to do it?”
The girl blushes even more. “I… I am just a maid, sir, but every clone has a c-code. Knowing the code of your g-guardian should make finding him easy. The s-scanners know the position of each c-clone at any time.”
I frown. Never heard of a thing like that. “I doubt Phae has a code.”
“Every clone has a code. It’s genetically implanted. If for some reason the scanners don’t read the code properly, the clone is reported and….”
The girl falls silent. The redness on her cheeks turns off.
“And?” I insist.
“And brought to recycling, sir. The senator cannot allow even a single clone going around unnoticed.”
I am more and more puzzled. “But why?”
The girl raises her shoulders. “I’m only a maid, sir.”
I narrow my eyes. “Venture a guess,” I ask in a low voice.
She sighs. She squeezes her eyes shut, then in one breath says, “Clones are three times humans. If only they could gather….”
The vehicle lands with a jolt that makes me nauseated again. The door opens abruptly. Outside stands another one of those creepy bodyguards. “You have arrived at your destination, sir.”
I EXIT the elevator and hurry into the right corridor. I did it. I’m about to reach Prince.
The journey from the spaceport to this medical center wasn’t difficult, although it was horrible. The mono turned out to be a sort of gigantic elevator that moved horizontally on a single rail, almost suspended in midair. A terrible experience, as is the whole colony. I wandered around, constantly shocked, horrified, sick, dizzy. Everywhere I went, the small, irritating flying objects began to scream. I had to use the password dozens of times. Fortunately in this city humans don’t attend the same places as clones, and I didn’t meet a single purebred. Solartrance explained to me that humans are insensitive to the password. Indeed, humans can recycle you just for using it.
My method had been this. Whenever a flying object began to scream and cast the blue light on me, soldiers and guardians approached, so I used the password with them and asked directions on how to continue in my quest for Prince. They gave me instructions and I went on until the next screaming object. Not difficult. Even an idiot like me could do it. Things got complicated when I entered the medical center through a side entrance reserved for clones. In the corridors, I began to see some humans. But no flying objects and it was enough to walk with my head down.
Now I’m wearing a white uniform, courtesy of the password. Some orderlies put me in the right elevator. They say Prince is in this department. And this floor, unlike the others, seems almost deserted. The orderlies explained to me that almost no one is subject to suspended animation, by now.
I walk along the corridor, peeking inside the open doors. In the first room, I see some sarcophagi in disuse, and my heart begins to beat wildly with excitement.
The only closed door is down the hallway. I begin to walk in that direction. But I have to stop and turn around abruptly when a group of humans comes out, chatting.
They don’t pay attention to me. I pretend to walk in the opposite direction, head down. As soon as the humans overcome me and reach the elevator, I run back and slip into the room.
Thirty-seven years to watch that sarcophagus, and of course I recognize it instantly. This is Prince’s sarcophagus.
And it’s empty.
“No, no, no!”
I beat my fists on the brink of the open coffin. Prince woke up and I wasn’t with him. I wasn’t there.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, touching the padding that preserves the shape of Prince’s body. “I’m so damn sorry!”
“You… guardian angel?”
I jump and spin on my heels.
Another person is in the room. At first the empty sarcophagus absorbed all my attention, and I hadn’t noticed the silent human hidden behind some medical instruments. The purebred gets up.
The human is really strange. He’s graceful, delicate, long bones, big eyes, and seems to have no hairs on his face but really a lot of hair on his head. Full of wonder, I realize that I’m probably looking at one of those legendary creatures Blasius called women.
The woman narrows her eyes and looks at me, coming forward, so I’m forced to retreat until my back touches the empty sarcophagus.
“Extraordinary,” she says. “I’ve never seen a clone like you. Are you the last guardian angel?”
I tremble. I have to talk to that human purebred. I absolutely have to, and anyway I have done things far more frightening today. “Yes, I am. Please, woman. Where is my Prince?”
She tilts her head, amused. On her face, a warm expression that I’ve seen only in Prince’s eyes. “Call me Dr. Rais. I guess you are referring to Kian. He also asked for you, waking up.”
I hold my breath. The heat starts from the center of my belly and spreads to my whole body, to my face. “Really? He really asked for me?”
“Repeatedly and insistently. He was unusually lively for one just awakened from a long period of suspended animation.”
Suddenly I want to cry and have to stop myself from hugging her. “Is he well? Did he suffer too much? Where is he now?”
“Slow down!” She laughs. “I was just checking his condition, which as I said seemed excellent, but then came the senator and….” Her expression darkens. “Kian is currently at the royal palace.”
This woman isn’t like all the purebreds. I sort of like her. “Thanks, woman, I mean, Dr. Rais. I have to go.”
I start toward the door, but she puts her hands on my chest. “Whoa, stop, where are you running, guy?”
“I have to go to Prince,” I explain, impatient.
She shakes her head. “You won’t go far. It’s not easy entering the royal palace. And Kian is in a delicate position. Rather unpleasant, if I have to express my opinion. He isn’t just one of the many pastimes of the senator. For Reinhold Coburn, Kian represents the acquisition of an extra power, since he’s a legend as the last terrestrial, and loved by the public.”
I frown.
Dr. Rais narrows her eyes and scrutinizes me. “Can I ask you a question, guardian angel? Why are you looking for Kian, now that he’s awake and your task is finished?”
All right. I sense that she’s a bit like Prince. I know nothing of humans, but I’m beginning to suspect those with that warm, deep look are the best. I have to explain the situation clearly, as I did with Solartrance.
I straighten my shoulders. “There was an emergency. Prince—I mean, Kian—woke up. He taught me how to make love. He didn’t care that I was just a clone. Now we are in love.”
Incredible.
My words have the same effect of the password.
Dr. Rais lights up, her eyes widening. “Fuck! Why are we wasting time here? The senator has stolen my patient from under my nose and I’m going to the royal palace to insist on examining Kian once again. And I just decided that you are my attendant.”
She smiles, then laughs. I laugh too.
Damn.
I think I like women.
IN MY new rooms, I just have time to hide the alien spheroid into the pillows of the bed before the home automation operating system announces a visit. I ask for details. It’s the senator.
I hope he doesn’t want to fuck me yet.
“Can I refuse to let him in?” I ask the home OS.
“Negative, sir,” the synthetic voice answers. “The senator has green code in all the rooms of the royal palace.”
Yeah. I guessed it. My new rooms are, in all respects, a prison. A beautiful prison, with a courtyard in which real plants grow, a spa tub, a real fireplace and all the amenities, but I’m not free to leave. Either the senator is an extremely possessive man, or there’s something else underneath. “Let him in, then.”
The home OS unlocks the door and Reinhold Coburn slips inside, smiling at me.
“I thought I could take a bath and rest for a while,” I say, sulking.
“Sorry,” the man says, narrowing his cruel eyes. “I am here only for your welcome gift.”
I hope the gift is not part of his body. I mean, I know I’m not in a position to refuse anything to him, but I’d like to procrastinate on this unpleasant task as long as possible. I smile at him. “A gift?”
“I wanted to give you jewelry or flowers,” Rein says, advancing toward me, brushing my messy hair with what appears to be affection. “But we are short of both, here on the colony. You will learn that life here is pretty tough, hanging by a delicate balance between the hostile environment and the proper functioning of reactors for terraforming. For many people this is sad, but he who has control of the reactors has a huge power in his hands.”
I muse on him in silence. No need to ask who has the power. I’d like to know, instead, if the senator is deliberately slowing down the process of terraforming to maintain said power. The answer seems obvious and fills me with dread. These colonizers have learned nothing from what happened to Earth.
“However, I found something that surely you’ll appreciate more than flowers or jewelry,” Rein adds.
I smile wide enough to risk facial paralysis. “Really? What is it? I’m terribly curious.”
“First let me say I really appreciate sassy people. They make my day interesting. And I also appreciate that bit of disgust in your eyes at the idea of having sex with me. I’m much more excited with dubious consent.”
The smile freezes on my face.
Rein turns to the terminal of the home OS near the door. “Let in my guards with the… gift.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door unlocks and two gigantic guards come in and slam on the floor a battered clone dressed in a white uniform.
“I specify the gift is to see him for the last time before being taken to recycling,” the senator says.
The clone’s arms are tied behind his back. He rolls on his side and looks at me.
I shout, “Phae!”
PRINCE.
My heart screams.
He falls on his knees and hugs me tight. My arms are tied and I can’t return the hug, but I sink my face in his hair and die.
His scent.
His scent is so good.
Prince bursts into sobs, then covers my face with small kisses. Oh, Corp. Petals and gold. I remember it. Eighteen years have passed, but I remember every kiss, every caress.
“I did it,” I say in the midst of his kisses. “I, a poor clone, reached you. Dr. Rais and I tried to enter the royal palace, but the alarms began to ring. The magic word doesn’t work with the royal guards.”
“Indeed,” the senator murmurs.
“I’ll do anything,” Prince says, turning to the senator, but without letting me go. Oh, Corp, how young he is. How smooth and fragrant is his cheek against my lips, how warm and scented the hollow under his ear where I sink my face. “I’ll do anything you want, Reinhold, but you have to leave him with me!”
“And why would I, Kian? Explain it to me. You will do what I want anyway.”
The senator joins us and crouches in front of us. “The two of you are very moving together, but you see, even if you weren’t mine, Kian, I couldn’t afford to have a clone and a human paired, leaving the people to understand that a similar, obscene mingling is possible.”
The senator smiles to Prince. “I like you, Kian, but you need to be tamed. With your reckless behavior, you have already caused the recycling of that unfortunate maid in your hovercraft.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but Prince jolts. “You… you killed that child?”
“You killed her, Kian. Next time you have to think about what you say and to whom you say it. This will serve you as a lesson. Or you can choose to stay with your clone and follow him to recycling. That will displease me, because I like you, I admit it, but it’ll take me no more than two days to forget about you. Now choose.”
“I’m going to recycling and he stays,” I say quickly.
“Good,” the senator approves, standing. “Your guardian clone is wise, Kian.”
“No, one moment!” Prince shouts. “You can’t kill me like this! I am a legend, public opinion will be against you!”
“You can still have an accident, Kian. Or your awakening can have unexpected complications. Please do not tickle my fancy about it.”
At once, I understand I have to prevent Prince from protecting me, if I want to save him. “You are so young, Prince,” I whisper in his ear.
Prince turns to me, his face streaked with tears.
“You’re so young and beautiful, and I’m just an old clone.”
“Phae,” Prince says, touching my face.
I rub my cheek on his hand and kiss his palm. “It’s not right to force you to keep an old promise. But thank you for remembering me. It has been wonderful to see you one last time.”
“Touching,” the senator says. “Now take him away.”
The enormous bodyguards grab me and pull me up. Prince shouts and throws himself toward me, but the senator grabs him around his waist.
The last thing I see is Prince kicking and screaming my name.
At least I know he’s alive.
THE SENATOR places a bodyguard in my rooms. The clone stands at the door, preventing my escape. I hit his chest with my fists, but as soon as I meet his pecs of steel, I understand I could hit him for weeks without inflicting minimal damage. He doesn’t even move. He might be a robot.
I can’t give up. I have to do something. Maybe I can run to the bathroom to look for a sharp tool with which to threaten to cut my throat. But the senator has made it clear he doesn’t care that much about me. Now I understand. I’m just a puppet for him. And if I refuse to cooperate, he’ll simply get rid of me.
I have no way to save Phae.
“I’ll kill myself!” I shout to the ceiling. “Can you hear me, you bastard?”
“He can’t.”
The enormous guard. He has spoken. I turn around to face him, motionless in front of the door.
“He can’t hear you,” the bodyguard says, his voice so deep it vibrates in my belly. “His private rooms and those of his wives and husbands are the only clean places in the whole colony. The senator doesn’t like being spied on during his embraces.”
Slowly, I approach the clone. He’s awfully tall; I barely reach his diaphragm. And his shoulders are broad like a wardrobe, his biceps as big as my torso. He raises his visor and I startle. His eyes are thin and completely black inside. But the giant tilts his head, and his mouth contracts into a semblance of an unexpected smile.
“I have seen strange things in this room, sir,” the bodyguard says. “A human showing his love for a clone. A clone who used the password. He said the password doesn’t work with the royal guards, but it isn’t exactly the truth. We’re just more cautious. And in any case, what I saw between you two is stronger than the password.”
I open my eyes wide. Perhaps the senator has made a mistake, letting his bodyguards attend our reunion. “The password? Which password are you talking about?”
“Freedom,” the clone says.
I run to the clone and put my palms on his chest, as high as I can get. “Tell me. Tell me you clones have a resistance. A secret revolutionary current. Tell me!”
“Unfortunately freedom is only a concept,” the huge clone says. “At least for now. We know one day freedom will come. If a clone speaks the password, he’s sure he can get help. But that’s all.”
“Well, Phae needs help. Can you take him away and hide him?”
The guard shakes his big head. “We don’t have an organization. We don’t have a place to hide him.”
“Can you help him escape away from here? To an uninhabited part of the planet?”
“The planet outside the dome is too hostile for human life, and the city is fully scanned to maintain control of each clone.”
I groan in exasperation. “There must be something we can do!”
The home OS emits a sound signal. “A visitor for you, sir.”
“Not now!” I cry.
“It’s your doctor, Dr. Rais. Should I send her away?”
I’m going to send anyone away, but then I remember Phae had said he arrived along with this Dr. Rais.
I rub my face. Maybe the doctor is on our side?
“Let her come in!” I shout to the OS.
I HAVE to be strong.
I have to think I was lucky seeing him one last time. Blasius used to say we are different from humans. Humans are greedy; clones can rejoice in the little they have. Prince filled my life, so now I can face my recycling straight on.
I remember what Solartrance said about recycling. He wanted to think of falling asleep and opening his eyes in the body of another clone. But I don’t want that. Please, not another life of hardship, suffering, and loneliness. What I want is Prince. I would like to wake up in a world just for the two of us. Without hatred, without separation between humans or clones. The path full of grass and trees inside Book. I want to imagine the two of us walking along that road, hand in hand, and I want it to be the last image that passes through my mind.
I don’t pay attention to where we’re going. I’m pushed inside an elevator that drops down indefinitely, perhaps underground, but I become indifferent to the surroundings. One of the guards mumbles something through the devices implanted in his neck and ears, but I don’t listen and try to think of Prince. The serenity I’m looking for is ruined by the anguish of having to leave him in the senator’s clutches. But at least my sacrifice will allow him to live.
They push me into a cold and dark corridor, but I close my eyes and try to recreate in my mind the grassy, mysterious path.
“Come in here, clone.”
I climb into the recycling capsule. The tool that tightens my hands opens suddenly, I lie down, and I feel a soft padding against my back. I think it’s a strange gentleness making this thing so comfortable. Then the puff of cold air and the familiar smell of refrigerant surprise me, and I open my eyes wide.
I realize this capsule, with its glass lid, is pretty damn similar to a sarcophagus.
I blink. We are in a small, dimly lit room. A cocoon. And this is a sarcophagus. Two huge bodyguards, forced to keep their heads down under the low ceiling, stare at me with their inscrutable black eyes.
“This is an emergency sarcophagus for high-ranking humans,” one of them says. “In case there is some problem with the terraforming reactors, VIPs have to come in here. There are more or less a hundred of them. But one will disappear, with you inside. At Dr. Rais’s suggestion.”
“What?” I ask in total amazement.
“We have to get you off for a while. The rest of the planet is uninhabitable and all the dome is scanned, so this is a good hiding place.”
I don’t understand. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because you say the password,” the second guard responds. “Because we believe one day we’ll be free. Because a human loves you and you are the first.”
I’m too stunned to understand his words. And suddenly a third guard enters the cocoon, making it look really crowded.
“Wait,” the third clone says. “He gave me this.”
The guard squeezes his enormous frame between the other two to slip something in my coffin. It’s a bundle of soft, white fabric. I recognize the robe Prince was wearing.
A cry of wonder and contentment escapes my mouth. I take the garment and press it against my face, but something rolls out of the crumpled robe and falls between my legs.
The alien ball.
“Your human lover said this thing would make the hibernation process less traumatic for your body,” the guard says. “He says to hold on. He says he’ll make sure to fix things. And he says he will find a way to keep the promise he made to you.”
“But… but… I cannot leave him alone at the mercy of the senator!”
“Your human needs some time to understand how to deal with the senator, and you cannot help him in this. The senator has control of the reactors that change the atmosphere, so it’s necessary to think carefully about how to act in order to avoid war and destruction and the extinction of the human race.”
The huge clone raises his visor to look in my eyes. He smiles. “Let me tell you, your human is quite wise, despite his young age. And he’s not alone. Now he knows the password, too.”
“But he’s not a clone,” I state. “I thought the password would work only for clones.”
The gigantic guard tilts his head. “I think the password applies, if it’s a clone’s lover using it.”
I’m stunned. “What is your secret name?” I ask the clone.
He startles a little. He hesitates, but eventually reveals it. “My name is Souldancer.”
“Will you take care of him, Souldancer?”
He nods. “I’ll do it.”
“All right, then,” I say hoarsely. I take the robe in one hand, the alien orb in the other hand, and I lie down in the sarcophagus. I stare at the three guards directly in their bug eyes. Their insensible look genetically designed to maintain the distance between the two races, makes me sad. “Please. Watch over him.”
“We’ll do our best,” Souldancer repeats. Then, in religious awe, he adds, “He says he loves you.”
So our love became somehow a symbol of their freedom, of a possible union between humans and clones. And I’m okay with this.
I close my eyes when the lid drops on me.
I’m not going to be recycled after all. Maybe one day I’ll awake.
And Prince will be there.