He realized that there was nothing he could do; if, like some lovesick suitor, he persisted in bothering Calindy, it would merely make matters worse. Some problems could be solved only by time, if indeed they could be solved at all.
He had plenty to do. He would forget about Calindy...
With any luck, for as much as an hour at a time.
28. Akhenaton and Cleopatra
Sir Mortimer Keynes sat in his armchair in Harley Street and looked with clinical interest at Duncan Makenzie, on the other side of the Atlantic.
“So you’re the latest of the famous Makenzies. And you want to make sure you’re not the last.”
This was a statement, not a question. Duncan made no attempt to answer, but continued to study the man who, in an almost literal sense, was his creator.
Mortimer Keynes was well into his eighties, and looked like a rather shaggy and decrepit lion. There was an air of authority about him—but also of resignation and detachment. After half a century as Earth’s leading genetic surgeon, he no longer expected life to provide him with any surprises; but he had not yet lost all interest in the human comedy.
“Tell me,” he continued, “why did you come yourself, all the way from Titan? Why not just send the necessary biotype samples?”
“I have business here,” Duncan answered. “As well as an invitation to the Centennial. It was too good an opportunity to miss.”
“You could still have sent the sample on ahead. Now you’ll have to wait nine months—that is, if you want to take your son back with you.”
“This visit was arranged very unexpectedly, at short notice. Anyway, I can use the time. This is my only chance to see Earth; in another ten years, I won’t be able to face its gravity.”
“Why is it so important to produce another guaranteed one-hundred-percent Makenzie?”
Presumably Colin had gone through all this with Keynes—but, of course, that was thirty years ago, and heaven knows how many thousands of clonings the surgeon had performed since then. He could not possibly remember; on the other hand, he would certainly have detailed records, and was probably checking them at this very moment on that display panel on his desk.
“To answer that question,” Duncan began slowly, “I’d have to give you the history of Titan for the last seventy years.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” interrupted the surgeon, his eyes scanning his hidden display. “It’s an old story; only the details very from age to age. Have you ever heard of Akhenaton?”
“Who?”
“Cleopatra?”
“Oh yes—she was an Egyptian queen, wasn’t she?”
“Queen of Egypt, but not Egyptian. Mistress of Anthony and Caesar. The last and greatest of the Ptolemies.”
What on Earth, Duncan thought in bemusement, has this to do with me? Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he felt overwhelmed by the sheer detail and complexity of terrestrial history. Colin, with his interest in the past, would probably know what Keynes was driving at, but Duncan was completely lost.
“I’m referring to the problem of succession. How do you make sure your dynasty continues after your death, on the lines you want? There’s no way of guaranteeing it, of course, but you can improve the odds if you can leave a carbon copy of yourself...”
“The Egyptian Pharaohs made a heroic attempt at this—the best that could be done without modern science. Because they claimed to be gods, they could not marry mortals, so they mated brother and sister. The result was sometimes genius, but also deformity—in the case of Akhenaton, both. Yet they continued the tradition for more than a thousand years, until it ended with Cleopatra.”
“If the Pharaohs had been able to clone themselves, they would certainly have done so. It would have been the perfect answer, avoiding the problems of inbreeding. But it introduces other problems. Because the genes are no longer shuffled, it stops the evolutionary clock. It means the end of all biological progress.”
What’s he driving at? Duncan asked himself impatiently. The interview was not going at all in the way he had planned. It had seemed a simple enough matter to set up the arrangements, just as Colin and Malcolm had done, three and seven decades ago, respectively. Now it appeared that the man who had made more clonings than anyone on Earth was trying to talk him out of it. He felt confused and disoriented, and also a little angry.
“I’ve no objection,” the surgeon continued, “to cloning if it’s combined with genetic repair—which is not possible in your case, as you certainly know. When you were cloned from Colin, that was merely an attempt to perpetuate the dynasty. Healing was not involved—only politics and personal vanity. Oh, I’m sure that both your precursors are convinced that it was all for the good of Titan, and they may well be absolutely right. But I’m afraid I’ve given up playing God. I’m sorry, Mr. Makenzie. Now, if you will excuse me—I hope you have an enjoyable visit. Good-bye to you.”
Duncan was left staring, slack-jawed, at a blank screen. He did not even have time to return the farewell—still less give Colin’s greetings, as he had intended, to the man who had created both of them.
He was surprised, disappointed—and hurt. No doubt he cold make other arrangements, but it had never occurred to him to go anywhere than to his own point of origin. He felt like a son who had just been repudiated by his own father.
There was a mystery here; and suddenly, in a flash of insight, Duncan thought he had guessed the solution. Sir Mortimer had cloned himself—and it had turned out badly.
The theory was ingenious, and not without a certain poetic truth. It merely happened to be wrong.
29. Party Games
It was well for Duncan that he was now becoming less awed by conspicuous displays of culture. Impressed, by all means; overwhelmed, no. Too strong a colonial inferiority complex would certainly have spoiled his enjoyment of this reception.
He had been to other parties since his arrival, but this was by far the largest. It was sponsored by the National Geographic Society—no, that was tomorrow—by the Congressional Foundation, whatever that might be, and there were at least a thousand guests circulating through the marble halls.
“If the roof fell in on us now,” he overheard someone remark, rather smugly, “Earth would start running around like a headless chicken.”
There seemed no reason to fear such a disaster; the National Gallery of Art had stood for almost four hundred years. Many of its treasures, of course, were far older: no one could possibly put a value on the paintings and sculpture displayed in its halls. Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci, Michelangelo’s miraculously recovered bronze David, Picasso’s Willie Maugham, Esq., Levinski’s Martian Dawn, were merely the most famous of the wonders it had gathered through the centuries. Every one of them, Duncan knew, he could study through holograms in closer detail than he was doing now—but it was not the same thing. Though the copies might be technically perfect, these were the originals, forever unique; the ghosts of the long-dead artists still lingered here. When he returned to Titan, he would be able to boast to his friends: “Yes—I’ve stood within a meter of a genuine Leonardo.”
It also amused Duncan to realize that never on his own world could he move in such a crowd—and be completely unrecognized. He doubted there were ten people here who knew him by sight; most of them would be ladies he had addressed on that memorable evening with the Daughters of the Revolutions. He was, as George Washington had neatly put it, still of Earth’s leading unknown celebrities. Barring untoward events, his status would remain that way until he spoke to the World on July Fourth. And perhaps even after that...