The Bradbury Report (12 page)

He didn't take the steps necessary to have me dismissed—whatever those steps might have been, and assuming he could have done so—because, when it became clear, as it soon did, that Sara had thrown her lot in with me, to injure me would have been also to injure her. In the car on the way back to Ames, before we were even out of Indianola, I told Sara exactly what her father had said to me.

She was appalled. “How could he have said such things to you?” she said. “How dare he do that? And, think, I brought you to him. I am so sorry. My poor boy.”

“I have to admit,” I said, “I was a bit overmatched.”

She smiled at me, leaned across the front seat, and kissed me on the ear. “Of course you were. Will you forgive me? He said he wanted to meet you. He said he just wanted time to talk with you alone, to get to know you. And then he told me how much he liked you.”

“I don't think he liked me,” I said, with some glee.

In
their
final conversation, which had occurred in the library on the morning of our departure, her father said he'd “very much enjoyed” our talk. Sara took that moment to tell him she had moved in with me.

“He flipped into a rage,” she said

I wondered, not aloud, how much of it was feigned. “He already knew,” I said.

“What?”

“He already knew you were living with me.”

“You told him?”

“He told me.”

“How did he know?” she said.

“I have no idea.”

He told her how disappointed in her he was. That he could not condone her behavior. That her behavior was scandalous. That he was embarrassed for her, embarrassed
by
her. Had she forgotten who she was? Then, as if to punish her, he told her she would be going to Paris in the fall. She said she wouldn't go. She would go, he said, because he had decided she would go. No, she absolutely would not go. Would she defy him? he asked. If she had to, she said. He wanted to know, was it because of me? That was part of it, she told him. She was determined, then, to stay with me? She said she thought she was. He said that if she defied him, he would have no recourse but to disown her. “Go ahead,” she said.

I loved her for that. By that time, I needed no more reason to love her.

 

It was the evening of the last day of Anna's visit. She would leave for Iowa first thing the next morning. It was after we'd eaten a cold supper at the kitchen table, after I'd done the dishes, before we said good
night. We hadn't talked much since the afternoon. No mention of my clone, or her group, or anything else of any seriousness. Not since the conversation in which she told me what they wanted me to do, and how dangerous it would be for me to do it. She'd left the house for several hours. I don't know what she did while she was out. The day was very hot. I was feeling a bit shaky and oddly chilled, and stayed inside. I watched out the window for the twins, Sophie and Marie, but they didn't appear. When Anna returned, she went straight into the guest room to begin packing her things. It was obvious she meant to leave me to myself. I tried to take the time she gave me to think about what she'd proposed. I was dutiful, but more than usually diffuse. When there was nothing left to do with the day but call an end to it—it was what my mother, for reasons unexplained, called the violet hour—we wound up sitting quietly together in the living room. Anna was finishing a cup of tea. I was idle. It was as if
we'd
been married for forty years. It was then—the question came to me only after I'd stopped thinking—I asked her: Wasn't I the very first person the government would look to when they discovered my clone was missing? Wasn't I, therefore, the very last person her group ought to want anywhere near their clone, now they finally had one?

What I asked was something she and the others had thought long about. Her response was seamless and more thorough than seemed necessary—she told me more than, at the time, I wanted to know—as if, as part of her charge, she was bent to the service of logical completeness.

Figure the odds, she said. The likelihood of a clone escaping from the Clearances was negligible. In any case, she said, it would not be an “escape.” The clone would have no concept of escape, no way of planning or imagining his survival outside the Clearances, no idea there existed anything outside the Clearances he might escape to. The clone would have no idea about the possibility of sanctuary, in Canada or any other place. Because, of course, the clone would have no idea about political boundaries or nation states. Should a clone find himself somehow outside the Clearances, she said, he would be absolutely unable to deal with the world. The clone, I must remember,
would not know he was a clone, would not understand the concept of clone, would not know there were originals and copies of originals. The clone would likely not have sufficient language to tell anyone he might encounter who, or what, he was, or where he was from. The clone would likely not understand roads, or cars, or shops, or money. More to the point, the clone—this they knew, empirically, was true—would be medicated to the edge of catatonia. He would very possibly be hit by a car or truck on any road he was unlucky enough to wander on to. Should he survive, he would most likely be reported to the local police as a vagrant, or a drunk, or a lunatic. In which case, he would be picked up and taken into custody. If he then happened to be seen by someone who, observing the barcode on the inside of his left forearm, could deduce its meaning, the clone might be handed over to an official connected with the Clearances, where, because the clone had seen, however dimly, the world outside, he would immediately be executed. If, as was more likely, the clone was not recognized as a clone, and if he did not find some way to kill himself first, he would, sooner rather than later, end up in an institution for the insane.

The chances of any of this happening, she said, were infinitesimal. Even so, there was far less chance that the clone would, before anything else happened to him, come into contact with one of the smattering of resisters—however vigilant they were—who lived on the margins of the Clearances. Far less likely still was the possibility that one of the resisters who recovered the clone would recognize in him his original. The government would have figured that the odds against a wayward clone being found by, or given to, a member of the resistance who just happened to know the clone's original, and who could recognize that original in the clone, were staggering, way too small to be given any consideration at all. Factor in their general operating principle—that an original must never think about his copy, is never contacted, not even when his copy dies—and it is certain that the clone's original would be the very
last
person the government would suspect, or communicate with, when that clone went missing. It was,
thus, precisely me, Anna said, the Dolly Squad (should such an entity actually exist) would come for last.

“But, eventually, they will come,” I said.

“They will come,” she said.

 

The next morning, early, we were in the kitchen. I'd watched dully, while Anna ate a quick breakfast. Now she was ready to go. I'd done nothing to help her get ready. She had beside her on the kitchen floor a suitcase, a shopping bag filled with food and drink for the trip, and a small black satchel I'd not seen before. “I'll call you in three days, when I get back to Iowa,” she said. “You can tell me then what you've decided.”

“What if I need more time?” The question was false. I had, I believe, already made my decision.

“We don't have more time,” she said. “If you decide to do what they've asked, I'll be back to get you exactly ten days from now. You'll have to be ready to go with me.”

“Go where?”

“Canada.”

“Where in Canada?” I said.

“I can't tell you that until you've made your decision.”

“I have an appointment with the doctor,” I said. “In six weeks. He needs to see the damage to my heart. To see how bad it is.”

“There are doctors in Canada,” she said.

“Would I bring along my medical records?” I was nothing other than a feeble old man, standing in the kitchen in his bathrobe and bare bony feet, with his hammertoes and poor circulation, whining about his feeble heart.

“No,” she said. “Listen, Ray. You'll have to leave everything behind. You won't have time to sell your house. Or your car. Or in any other way settle your affairs. You must do nothing of the sort. For as long as possible it must look as if you have not actually left, that you are still living here. If someone notices you are gone, it must seem you will be back shortly.”

“I won't be back.”

“No,” she said. “I have something for you.” She reached into the satchel and pulled out a sheaf of printed pages held together in a green plastic binder. It looked like the kind of packet I might have given to a class. She put it on the kitchen table.

“What is it?”

“I don't know what to call it exactly,” she said. “A notebook.”

“Yours?”

“For you,” she said. “If you want to, read it.”