“I wanted to. I wanted kids,” he said. He sent them home early that day.
He kept on teaching them things even after they had mastered the cloning technique. “He just likes having us here,” Keri said as they left one evening. “He’s really lonely.”
“He was in love with my mother.”
“What?” Keri stopped and planted her fists on her hips. “How do you know that? And don’t tell me your ghosts told you!”
“They don’t talk. I just know.” The way he knew when someone was lying. Daniel looked at the jut of her hip beneath her hand, followed its curve. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Want to meet by the horses? Dad and Jess are leaving for another contract job in the morning and we can go hunt for mushrooms.”
“I can’t.” She veered away, following the trail that would take her to the cabin that she had shared with her mother. “You better hurry home or you’ll be late. Your dad’s new contract got postponed for a week.”
“Keri!” he called, but she merely waved and didn’t stop and he found that he couldn’t run after her. A few months ago—a year ago—she would have gone with him. Daniel scuffed his feet, scattering rotting needles and bits of bark.
The trees in this sector had been freshly tapped, and whatever it was in their sap, it had a sharp, not unpleasant smell. Daniel touched his finger to a clear drop that wept from the badly sealed tube of a tap, touched his tongue. The stuff tasted as bitter as tears. He wiped his finger on his jeans and headed upslope as the day died, up to the clearing where his horses grazed.
He hadn’t been back here much since that evening when he had met Albert. Between the tapping and the afternoon cloning lessons there hadn’t been much time—not when he was supposed to be home by dark. The truth was greater than that. Keri had been part of their creation, and her envy had tainted them. Because her paintings were something the horses weren’t.
They were hers.
Now he stood in the darkness, one hand on the crooked trunk of a young cedar, wrapped in chilly night. In the dark, it was easy to imagine them flesh and blood—dark bays or blacks, perhaps. And he realized suddenly that they were almost finished. Another twig, two maybe, and they would be done.
The moon rose finally, nearing the full again, casting its pale radiance into the meadow. The stallion seemed to bow its head to him, but that was just a trick of the uncertain light. A ghost brushed his awareness— old and clammy with years.
Daniel turned away and went home—down through the plantation darkness and the smell of raw sap.
He was late, but the only light he saw on in the house was the porch light. For a minute he thought that maybe Keri had been wrong, and Dad and Jess had left early to carefully remove the diseased and dying trees in the Wallowah Preserve. Then a figure appeared at the edge of the yard, emerging from the shadow of the trees into the yellow glow of the light.
Jess.
Hands in his pockets, he climbed the steps slowly, trailing a musky aura of satisfaction that disturbed Daniel the way Keri’s breasts had disturbed him. He started as Daniel bounded up onto the porch after him, turned around with a scowl. “What are you doing out this late?”
“What are you doing out this late?” Daniel perched on the rickety porch rail so that he could look his brother in the eye.
“I had a date.”
“Did you make love?” Daniel said softly.
“Maybe. What of it?” Jess reached for the door handle.
“Do you love her?
“None of your business, little brother.” Jess grinned. “Just wait a couple of years.”
A scent tickled Daniel’s nose—grass and old needles, and a musky animal scent that squeezed his loins. He sucked in a quick breath. “I want to know who it is.” He pushed past Jess to block the door. “Tell me, Jess!”
“What’s got into you?” His brother stared down with a bemused expression. “Do you really hate Dad?”
Daniel stared up at him, caught off guard by Jess’s unexpected words.
“Because of Mom? Because she could have gotten treatment if he’d worked for the Company instead of being an independent contractor? He thinks you hate him.” He looked sad. “When we’re out on a job together he’s… easy, you know? He jokes around. Laughs.”
“He thinks I’m not his kid.” The bitter words scorched Daniel’s throat. “Don’t you get it, Jess? She was with somebody else.”
In the instant of silence that followed his words, Daniel heard the distant cry of a screech owl hunting mice in the scrub. Then his brother’s palm exploded against the side of his head. He fell hard against the wall, and slid down to the floor, his vision swimming with red light.
“Don’t you ever say that again.” Jess loomed over him, fists clenched. “Or I’ll beat the shit out of you.” He turned away abruptly.
For a moment, the porch light shone full on his face, casting shadow beneath his stark cheekbones. Leaning on his elbows, Daniel stared up at him and swallowed. He finally understood. But before he could say anything, Jess had crossed the lighted yard and vanished into the darkness between the stems of the plantation trees. The distant owl hooted mockingly and the wind sighed in the branches of the plantation trees. Daniel got slowly to his feet. Leaning on the porch railing, he stared after his brother.
“Do you hate me?”
Daniel turned slowly, licking his lips. His father stood just beyond the screen door. They had avoided each other since that night in the kitchen—had both been polite and cautiously distant. Streaked with light, shadowed by the dusty mesh of the screen, he looked… old. “Do you?” he asked again, harshly.
“I guess.” Daniel looked out at the dark trees, unable to he. “She could have gotten cured.”
For a long time his father was silent, and Daniel wondered if he had gone back into the house.
“When she got pregnant with Jess, I told her I was going to take a job with the Company. It scared me that something could happen to her. Or to the baby. We’d only been married a month or two.” His voice came softly through the screen. “She said no. She said I would have to become a different person and she didn’t want me to change. She said she’d take her chances. And Jess got born okay, even though he was early. You, too.” Again there was a long pause. “When the doctor found the cancer, it was too late. Don’t ever blame yourself, she told me. It was her choice. But…” His voice faltered. “It was my choice, too, and it wasn’t me who did the paying.”
Daniel shifted on the warped boards of the porch, choked by words that could never be said.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” his father went on in that same harsh tone. “I see her every time I look at you. You’re like her, too. You’ll do what you want, and do it real well.”
The screen mesh divided them, blurring the expression on his father’s face. “Did you know what she used to do?” Daniel asked softly. “Did you know who she was?”
“Yes.” He nodded once. “She made me promise never to tell anyone— not even you kids. She said it was too easy to let what other folks wanted from you take over your life and run it.”
He had known, and he had never said. And the love in his voice was as real as the yearning brush of the survivalist’s ghost. Daniel bolted off the porch, clearing the steps in a long leap, nearly losing his balance on the dew-wet grass as he staggered into a run.
“Daniel, wait!” his father called.
He kept on running, dodging the humming bio-trees as he stumbled through the darkness on his way to the paved road that led into town.
He entered the clearing in the pre-dawn dark. The stars had vanished and a rising wind gusted through the tree tops with the sound of angry whispering. Keri was there, sitting on the ground beneath a bent cedar. Arms crossed on her raised knees she stared at the horses, her pale hair shining like silver in the moonlight.