Anna To The Infinite Power (12 page)

“I feel fine,” Anna said. She strongly suspected that Michaela would have enjoyed knowing that she was suffering. I wonder why she dislikes me so much, Anna thought. Then the obvious answer immediately presented itself. Because I’m not very likable. And why should it matter what Michaela thought? Anna had never before cared whether anyone liked her or not.

“I think you’re changing, Anna,” Michaela said.

Anna’s eyes widened. She felt as if Michaela were reading her mind. She half expected the woman to tell her that she was nicer to be around these days or something of the sort.

Instead, Michaela said, “You seem to have grown quite a lot taller in the short time I’ve known you. I wouldn’t expect someone of your age to start shooting up so fast.”

She might have known she would never get a compliment from Michaela. “I guess I’m just a late grower,” Anna said.

Anna may have looked pale, but apparently Michaela considered that no reason to back off on the endless exercises and the strict piano discipline. She was a hard taskmaster who, Anna felt, delighted in making her pupil miserable. But as miserable as Anna was, she would not allow herself the indulgence of complaining.

Several times Anna tested herself in the shops of the domed complex center. Each time, she failed, finding that she wanted to slip some attractive piece of merchandise into her carryall as much as ever. Only the thought of the punishment she had chosen for herself kept her from it. But there was still the thought, and she had to punish herself for that.

One evening after dinner, when Anna had gone to her room to do homework, Sarah Hart looked in on her. Anna was sitting at her desk, a book of chemistry open before her, but her mind was far away.

Sarah Hart sat down on the studio bed. “Anna, I’d like to talk to you.”

“Oh, sure, Mom.” As Anna turned her chair around, she was struck by the tall, slim figure of the woman she still thought of as her mother. How like Rowan she was. The same dark eyes and hair, the same olive complexion. Even Dad was dark. How could I have ever thought I was one of them? Anna wondered.

Sarah Hart said, “Rachael Lesser called me today.”

Although Anna immediately guessed what had prompted the dean’s call, her eyebrows lifted innocently. “What did she want?”

“She says your grades have suddenly fallen off.”

Anna was well aware of that. “I just can’t seem to keep my mind on school anymore.”

“Are you feeling well?”

“I’m all right.” It occurred to Anna that she hadn’t even had one of her headaches for a long time now.

“Then what’s wrong, dear?” She reached over and took Anna’s hand.

What’s wrong? Anna wasn’t sure she could have put it into words, even if she felt like trying, which she didn’t. It had something to do with knowing what she was, yet not knowing who she was. She simply shrugged. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Are you upset about learning your true identity?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said, then after a moment added, “Maybe.” That was as close as she could come to admitting her misery to the woman who, she felt, had betrayed her. If it hadn’t been for Mom, and sometimes Anna almost choked on the word Mom, she might never have had this problem, might never have even existed. Anna drew her hand away.

Once again Sarah Hart went through the same old patter about how privileged they both were, how proud they both should be. Anna paid scant attention, only aware of a voice rattling on and on. When it faded, she said, “I’ve been thinking, Mom. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t change my whole program in school.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe I shouldn’t be a physicist after all. I don’t seem to feel very interested in it anymore.”

Sarah Hart looked appalled. “Anna, you can’t mean that.”

“Why not? Why do I have to be a physicist just because she was?”

“I told you why before. Because they’re counting on you.”

“They -- always they! Who are they anyhow?” Looking thoroughly distressed now, Sarah Hart said, “They are a group of reputable American scientists. And your government. It’s not only important that we have a breakthrough on the replicator, it’s vital.”

“Why?”

“You know why. It isn’t exactly a secret that we’re fast depleting the world’s resources. We have to find an answer to that, and soon.”

“Then let the other Anna Zimmermans look for it. I don’t think I want to.”

“Anna, you’re just upset. It’s my fault, I know. I should never have told you when I did.”

“I had to know sometime.”

“But I wasn’t supposed to be the one to tell you, not then, not any time. Now I know why. Somehow I thought it would be better if it came from me. I guess I was wrong. I haven’t been able to make you feel at all good about yourself.”

“Who was supposed to tell me -- a stranger?”

“A trained person, I guess. Someone who would have known how to put it better than I seem to have done. I wish I could let you talk to someone like that now -- a psychologist, perhaps. But you do see why that’s impossible.” She stared anxiously at Anna.

“Of course. I’d have to tell the person what the problem is. And the problem is that I’m a clone. But that’s supposed to be a secret. We aren’t supposed to talk about it.”

“Maybe I should let them know that I went against their advice and told you. Maybe they could suggest something that would help.”

The thought terrified Anna. She couldn’t conceive of herself talking to them. She was sure they were monsters, capable of nothing but diabolical solutions to any problem. “Oh, please don’t, Mom. I don’t want to talk to them -- or to anybody. I’m all right.”

Sarah Hart sounded relieved as she said, “Then promise me you won’t do anything hasty, Anna -- I mean, about school. You’re too talented to waste yourself. Give yourself time to get over any anger or bitterness you feel. Everything will straighten itself out eventually -- you’ll see.”

It hit Anna for the first time that she didn’t belong to herself any more than she belonged to the Harts. She belonged to them. And if she couldn’t fulfill the purpose for which she was intended, what then? What would they do with her? To her? She felt suddenly panicky. “Don’t worry, Mom,” she said trying to keep the sound of fear from her voice. “I won’t do anything about anything.”

May I come in, Rowan?” Anna asked.

Startled, he glanced up from the violin he had just been tuning and over to the entrance to his room where Anna stood. He had not even heard her open the door. How long had she been standing there, listening to him practice? he wondered. “I didn’t think you were talking to me anymore,” he said.

“That wasn’t it exactly. I mean, I didn’t want you to think that. I mean -- ” she hesitated, looking as if she couldn’t find the words to say what she did mean. “Well, anyhow, can I talk to you now?”

He glanced down at his violin in a way he hoped suggested he had more important things to do. “Well, if you make it fast.” He simply did not know how to figure Anna. Just as he’d started feeling that she might, after all, be human, she had closed herself off from him. He resented that. God knows, he’d tried to be sympathetic, tried to understand her strange background, her nightmares, tried to help. Didn’t she trust him?

She came into his room and perched stiffly on the edge of his studio couch. She looked different, he thought, yet he couldn’t quite decide in what way.

“Did you make out all right in the second play-off recital?” she asked.

He gave a casual shrug. “I think so.” He wasn’t about to tell her how he had sweated through that ordeal. After all, if she’d decided she couldn’t confide in him, why should he confide in her? He waited for her to comment. Instead, she sat staring into space, looking troubled. When he could no longer stand the silence, he said, “Well, what do you want to talk about?”

The words seemed to bring her back to herself. She said simply, “I’m worried, Rowan.”

“About what?”

“About -- well, about school.”

For God’s sake, why couldn’t she tell him what was bothering her without his having to pry it out of her? “What about school?”

“It isn’t just school -- it’s -- well, something’s wrong with me. I just don’t seem to be interested in anything I’m studying anymore.”

He still held his violin in the tuning position, making it plain that he was ready to return to work. “That figures. You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

“But it’s more than that. I just don’t seem to be able to do the things I used to.”

“Like what?”

“Well, remember how I used to be able to figure math problems in my head?”

Yes, of course, he remembered. Anna, the human computer. He nodded.

“I can’t do it anymore. I’ve tried over and over. I’ve even written the problems down. Then I close my eyes and try to see the numbers with my mind. I can see them all right, but I can’t seem to channel them into the part of my brain that works them out and comes up with the answers.”

“Can you work them out on paper?”

“Sometimes. But it takes me forever, and I seem to be wrong more times than I’m right.”

She looked so worried he began to forget he was annoyed with her. “You know what I think, Anna? I think you’re still upset over things. Learning who you were was shock enough, but then you had that dream about the concentration camp --”

“It was more than a dream!”

He fully believed she was right, but he was sure that the sooner she forgot, the better off she would be. “Well, whatever it was, it was traumatic. I think that what’s happened to you is like what happens to writers sometimes. They get a block, and they can’t write a word. But they get over it eventually. You will, too.”

“I don’t know.” She sounded doubtful. “Ever since my teachers discovered how much my work has fallen off, I’ve had to take the same kinds of tests I took to get into the academy. They can’t seem to figure out what’s happening to me. On the tests, I don’t show any aptitude for the sciences at all.”

“But, Anna, you wouldn’t if you have a block. Don’t you see? You don’t want to be Anna Zimmerman. You’ve said so yourself. So what do you do? Your mind erases everything about you that you know is like her.”

“You make it all sound so reasonable, Rowan. What you don’t know is what the tests show I do have an aptitude for.”

“What?”

“Art. . . design. They never showed that the first time I took them.”

Rowan absently placed his violin on his desk, taking a moment to mull over her words. At length he said, “You’ve always been so brilliant in math and science that that alone would probably have overshadowed any other talents you might have shown on tests. I’ll bet your art aptitude was just overlooked before.”

“They say not. Besides, I’ve never done all that well in any of the art classes I’ve taken.”

“But you’re not the same person that you were when you took the earlier tests, or even when you took those classes. People change. Their interests change. Maybe even their aptitudes. What’s wrong with that?”

“Plenty, if I’m one of the people.”

“Why?”

“Because they wouldn’t like it.”

“Oh, Anna -- He stared at her incredulously.

“I mean it, Rowan.” She told him what Sarah Hart had said to her about the importance of the replicator.

When she finished, he thought, what nonsense, making Anna feel responsible for the destiny of the whole world. “In the first place, there’s nothing that says that you or--” he almost said the other clones, “anyone else is going to uncover the secret for making a replicator. Personally, I doubt if anyone ever will. In the second place, whether you have a block or whether your interests have changed -- in either case, you won’t be much good to them. And in the third place, if you want to change your studies, what can they do about it?”

“That’s just it -- I don’t know.”

“Well, find out.”

“Oh, Rowan, I’d be afraid.”

“That’s silly, Anna. What do you think they’re going to say -- well, she obviously can’t fulfill our plans, so we’ll just have to do away with her?” Her quick intake of breath and the expression in her eyes told him that was exactly what she thought. Silly kid. All the same he wanted to bite off his tongue. “Anna, they would never--”

“You don’t know, Rowan.”

“Anna, don’t torture yourself with such thoughts. That’s stupid. If you want to change courses in school, why don’t you see what your adviser has to say about it?”

She sighed bleakly. “Maybe I will. I’ll have to think about it.”

As she started out of his room, Rowan’s eyes followed her. Yes, she did look different. She was getting taller and her blond hair was deepening into a gold that glinted with red lights. She was as slender as ever, but her figure was starting to develop a woman’s curves. She was suffering, he knew. Perhaps that was what made her expression so much softer.

Strange, he had never before noticed that Anna was rather pretty.

Anna’s Saturday piano lesson was just about over when Michaela said, “You know, I think you’re actually improving. I guess the exercises were a good idea.”

Michaela’s words came as a surprise. Anna had met with her adviser that morning. Since then she’d been so preoccupied that she felt she had played badly. “You mean I won’t have to do exercises anymore?”

“I mean nothing of the sort. If they’re helping, all the more reason to keep on with them.”

Naturally, Anna thought. She was convinced now that suffering was natural to the human condition, yet how had she escaped it for all those years? It wasn’t until she’d found out she was a clone that it had begun. She glanced at Michaela and decided, no, she was wrong. It had started before that, had started the night when the music drifted across the park and into her room. Reverie. Curious that the woman had played the one piece that could have moved Anna in quite that way. What was even more curious was that the music box had played the same melody. Coincidence? It had to be. After all, it was she who had stolen the box. And yet...

Anna no longer feared Michaela. In fact, she had come to admire the woman. Michaela seemed so strong, so sure of herself. She could see why Rowan found her attractive. Mom was the only holdout. “She’s really terribly overdone, don’t you think?” she had thrown out at the dinner table one night for whomever cared to pick up on the remark.