The Bradbury Report (19 page)

We were approaching Highgate Springs and the Canadian border, when Anna said, matter-of-factly, “I think someone is following us.”

“You're joking,” I said.

“I'm not.”

I turned around in my seat to look out the rear window of the truck. There were several cars within striking distance. “Are you sure?”

“I'm sure,” she said. “It's the green car. In the left lane. Two cars back.”

I looked again. I could see a green car. “How long have they been there?” I don't know why I said “they.” The car was far enough back that I couldn't see how many people were in it.

“Half an hour,” she said. “Maybe a little longer.”

“Do you know who they are?”

“I can guess,” she said.

“Is it the government?”

“It's far too soon for them.”

“Have we got a gun?”

She laughed. “Don't be ridiculous.”

“The whole situation is ridiculous,” I said. “For all I know, we
do
have a gun and now's the time for me to start shooting.”

“I'm quite sure it's my group,” she said.

“Do you know them?”

“I'm sure I don't.”

“Seriously now,” I said. “Are we in any danger?”

“I can't imagine we are.”

“What are they doing?” I said. “What do they want?”

“I trust we'll find out.”

“You're a cool customer,” I said.

“I expected this,” she said. “We're just at the start.”

There were four cars in line ahead of us when we got to the inspection booth. The green car was two cars behind us. We were stopped, and Anna could look at me when she spoke. She'd taken off her sunglasses.

“I want to tell you something, Ray,” she said,

“I have to say, Anna, knowing that car is there makes it hard for me to pay attention to much else.”

“We'll be fine,” she said. “Think of it as an escort. There will be plenty of time, and reason, to worry.”

“You'll tell me when.”

“I will,” she said. “Listen. I haven't said this to anyone else. I'm
not sure what to make of it. I'll tell you only because it seems to have some at least tangential bearing on what we're up to.” She hesitated, then shook her head. “That's not true. I don't know why I want to tell you this. I just do.”

“I'm flattered,” I said.

“As you should be,” she said. “My husband died in late March. He's been gone only four months, and I'm okay. If I'm not back to my old self, then I'm on to a new one. Is this heartless, faithless of me? Is it indecorous, do you think?”

“I don't think anything,” I said. “I'm sure it's not.”

“I don't think it is,” she said. “I think my ability to cope with his loss, to incorporate it into a workable, purposeful life, does him honor.”

“Probably so,” I said.

“I mean, I was inconsolable at first. I was crippled with grief. People say this, but in my case it was true.” She smiled. “I know people say that, too. The day after he died, when I came out of shock, I stood in the middle of my kitchen, threw my head back, and I wailed. A noise came out of my throat I had never heard before and wouldn't have believed I was capable of making. It felt exactly like my body was trying to turn itself inside out. We had been together nearly forty years. I could see no way of going on without him. I believed I would not go on. Do you know this feeling?”

“Something like it,” I said.

“It so damaged my voice I could barely speak, but it seemed to bring me relief, to make such an ungodly racket. By the third day, I'd got myself under control and reasonably composed. My kids were a comfort. I was embarrassed by my behavior. And it's true, you have no real choice but to go on.”

“I've heard that,” I said.

“At least when you've lived such a sweet and privileged life as I have. I told myself there were still things to do. Though I have to say I had no idea what would soon be asked of me.

“Up until the time he died,” she said, “my husband was the manager of the town's baseball team. He'd been gearing up for spring practice.
All his present players and many of his former players were at the memorial service, with their families. He had coached the fathers and their sons. I can think of no one who didn't like him. He had a few good friends, men he had known since grade school. But there were many more, most of whom I knew, who had relied on him. I was moved by their affection for him.”

“He sounds like a wonderful man,” I said.

“He died of complications resulting from near-total renal failure. I haven't told you this. He was somewhere between six-foot-three and six-foot-four, and, when he was not careful, he could weigh upwards of three hundred and fifty pounds. I tried to help him eat smartly, but I wasn't forceful or fastidious enough. His weight had always been a problem. All the men on his father's side were big. By the time he was fifty, he was Type 2 diabetic. It didn't slow him down one whit. He was tireless. We monitored his blood sugar, and he took his medicine most of the time, when he remembered to. Then his kidneys failed. There are strict limits to how long they'll let you stay on dialysis. Do you know this?”

“No,” I said.

“Three or four days, at most. Just enough time to harvest and transport the replacement kidneys. But we would not have been able to afford the treatment, even for so short a time. We'd both refused to participate in the government's replication program, and the medical insurance we were able to get covered only the most minimal and routine of services. When he was taken to the hospital, the first question the doctor asked him was if he'd had a copy made. Because there was no copy, he was simply not eligible for a transplant, no matter how many serviceable kidneys might have been obtainable.”

“That's hard to believe,” I said.

“It's absolutely true,” she said. “Insult to injury, he had a life insurance policy for one million dollars, which the insurance company refused to pay out. They claimed his death was preventable, that by choosing not to be cloned, he had voluntarily chosen not to avail himself of the appropriate and necessary treatment. We'd begun to make plans to go to Canada, to Winnipeg, where, if they could find a suitable
kidney, they would do the procedure. He was dead before we'd completed the arrangements. He died quickly, which was a mercy.

“He was very brave,” she said. “I'd say he was heroic. He wanted it clear he would rather die than in any way benefit from a practice he found so abhorrent.”

We were the next car to be inspected.

“Have we got anything to worry about here?” I said.

“Through customs?”

“Yes.”

“Like what?” she said.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Are we illegal?”

“Not yet,” she said.

I did not mention the sixty thousand dollars I had stuffed in boot socks in my bag. There was nothing criminal about this, but had the customs officials discovered that much cash, stashed like that, it would certainly have necessitated an explanation. In the event, we were not asked to open our bags.

“Here's what I want to tell you,” she said.

“Be quick,” I said. “We're next.”

Anna would not be rushed. “My husband had been dead no more than two weeks when I began to think in surprising and troubling ways. I began to wonder about the choice we'd made. I knew there was no question he would still be alive and with me, with his children, with his friends, looking forward to grandchildren and a longer life, if there'd been a clone. Even at my weakest, my most uncertain, I had no real doubt we'd made the ethical choice. But I questioned the depth of my own conviction. I wondered if I would, or could, make the same choice again, now, facing the rest of my life without him.”

It began to sound like something she had planned to say.

“I had thoughts stranger and more disturbing than this,” she said. “At the very point when the government stepped in and preemptively took control of cloning, outlawing it in the private sector, the biotech companies were ready to make available to individuals a whole array of cloning possibilities. These included the cloning of the dead. If the cloning industry had been allowed to proceed as it had planned,
it would then have been relatively easy, though expensive, to purchase a copy of a deceased parent, or child, or spouse, or friend. For that matter, if the cellular material, and the rights to it, were available, you could buy a copy of anyone you could think of, dead or alive. After my husband died, I wondered what would it be like if it were now legal to clone the dead? Would I want to see my husband alive again, as an infant? Would I want to raise him as my son? When he was thirteen, I would be eighty. What would it be like to be so old myself and see him so young? I know enough to know his clone would not
be
my husband. And it would certainly not be my son. But I wasn't sure how I would answer these questions if they were more than hypothetical.”

An official waved us forward. We did not move. The car behind us sounded its horn.

“Of this I
am
sure,” she said. “I am grateful this grotesque, incestuous version of resurrection is no longer a possibility.”

Anna put the truck in gear and pulled forward. She'd told me what she wanted to tell me. Then she said, in an offhanded way, meaning to change the subject, “You'd figure there must be a black market somewhere for this sort of ghoulishness, but I'm not aware of it.”

M
ore and more, I have begun to feel I am running out of time. There is, for one, my heart. Should there be another incident, of any moment, I will assuredly die before help reaches me. For another, there is the government, what Anna calls, without a hint of levity, the Dolly Squad. It has been more than a year since Anna and I crossed into Canada and received the clone. If her group can be believed, the Dolly Squad was after Anna even before we got to Winnipeg. And there is no question that, by now, the government will have had to investigate the possibility that I was involved in the disappearance of the clone. Finding me not at home, my absence inexplicable, my whereabouts unknown, they will have begun—long since, perhaps—to track
me
as well. It is who I am, what I know, what I have seen, what I might say. If the government knew about my report, it would be simply another reason for them to want me dead.

What happens to this report if they find me, or my heart gives out, before I've finished it? I am confident my report will, in the end, be far from what Anna's group hoped it would be. I take pleasure and satisfaction in that prospect. I'm not sure I want them to have it, though, having written as much of it as I have—and not for that reason only—I would be sad to think I won't finish it or, should I finish, that it will not find a sympathetic readership.

Our time in Montreal—we spent three nights and all or part of four days there, arriving Friday afternoon, leaving for Ottawa Monday noon—was a sweet, happy, easy time. Innocent. Idyllic. Even, I am in the frame of mind to say, Edenic. A time just before my hitherto nondescript life lapsed suddenly into meaning and menace.

We were both untethered and fearful. I had no idea what to expect; Anna was only slightly less unsure, though, constitutionally, much braver. In Montreal, we shared one hotel room—we registered as man and wife—and it was awkward. My health was a problem. Anna was eager to walk all over the city. I was still weak and quickly tired. Walking any distance, particularly uphill, was hard for me. I went back to the hotel room each afternoon for a nap, because I needed one, and also to give Anna the liberty to walk out at her own speed. She wanted to eat at exotic restaurants; I had to be careful what I ate. She missed her children desperately.

Still, I remember our brief stay in Montreal as one last good, uncomplicated time before we took charge of the clone, a time when, no matter how anxious I was to meet him, the clone—his life, his needs, his significance—remained almost entirely theoretical. The weather was perfect: sunny and breezy and cooler than it had been down in New Hampshire. Our time was our own, and we had lots of money to spend. In addition to the subsidy we'd be given by Anna's group, we had my stash.

 

On the border, on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, the Canadian customs official who processed us was cheerful and efficient. We presented our driver's licenses. The official asked the purpose of our trip, and Anna said, “Pleasure.” The day was clear and bright. The station was not busy. We were an elderly couple, on vacation. That's how he took us, whatever our last names, however far apart we lived when we were at home. He asked, somewhat perfunctorily, if we were bringing any food or plants into the country. He did not check our bags, which were in full view, or ask us to get out of the truck, which he expressly admired. He made some notes, handed back our licenses, wished us
a safe trip in English and French, and sent us on our way. We were through in no more than ten minutes.