“Forty ships that you know about,” Doctorow corrected.
I went on as if I had not heard him. “We have a blockade around your planet. You and your people are safe.”
Doctorow heard this and laughed. “Safe? Your friend with the rifle not only managed to run your blockade, he knew how to find you and put a bullet in your chest.”
“Simunition,” I said.
“What?”
“He used simunition, not a live round.”
“You’re missing my point, Harris. You weren’t even able to protect yourself. You’re in over your head. That’s my point.” Doctorow had raised his voice so that he nearly shouted the words.
Sarah came out to the patio. “How are you boys getting on?” she asked, pretending she had not heard us.
“It appears General Harris here has plunged us into another war,” Doctorow snapped.
“Well, that’s fine then,” Sarah said, the smile never faltering from her face. I wondered if she even heard him. “Now, you boys come in before our dinner gets cold.”
The Doctorows’ dining room was a long and narrow rectangle with a small table surrounded by large empty spaces on either end. When I mentioned this to Ava, she laughed and said that the table could be extended to fill the room.
“The first time I came here, Sarah hosted a dinner party for twenty guests,” Ava said. “We all sat at the same table.” Ava sat to my right. Ellery sat across the table, glaring at me.
The Doctorows ate like people living in a war zone. Sarah had worked wonders with rice and beans and canned meats, but I got better food on the Kamehameha.
Ava and Sarah talked about movies. They chatted like sisters, Sarah asking questions about stars and Ava dishing up insider gossip that might well have been old news three years ago. Not that it mattered to Sarah—her planet had been cut off from movies and movie stars since the day the Mogats destroyed the Broadcast Network.
Doctorow and I traded a few questions, but we mostly listened in on the women. When we spoke, we talked about galactic wars; Ava and Sarah chatted about movie stars and gossip. Their conversation was more interesting than ours.
When Ava and Sarah finally hit a lull in their conversation, I commented that watching them converse, I would have guessed that they had known each other their entire lives, they might even have been sisters.
“We’re new-old friends,” Sarah explained. “We have Ava up to the house every weekend.”
“Really?”
“Well, sure. You asked El to look after her,” Sarah said.
“I appreciate it,” I said, not sure what else to say.
“We’ve loved having her. I did not know what to expect when El first told me about Ava, her being a movie star and all,” Sarah said. “A war hero and a movie star—my goodness, you two are going to be the life of the party wherever you go.”
Ava smiled and gave my hand a squeeze.
We ate and chatted amiably, then Sarah changed the tenor of the evening. “You know, Wayson …Is it all right if I call you Wayson? General Harris just sounds so full of starch.”
Ava chipped in, “I call him Harris.”
“Wayson is fine,” I said.
“You really are a hero. You saved the planet. I mean, I heard all about you chasing away the aliens with so very few men—absolutely amazing, like a miracle or something.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed.
She gushed on about my heroism, but then she said, “Who are you going to war with now?”
“He declared war on the Unified Authority,” Doctorow said.
“But we are part of the Unified Authority,” Sarah said, clearly confused.
“On Earth,” Doctorow said.
“Oh, on Earth,” Sarah said. She sounded impressed. “You better keep the fighting away from Terraneau.”
“We’ll keep you safe,” I said, thinking that Doctorow must have rehearsed the entire night with his wife.
“See, now, Wayson, you’re not listening to me. I have no doubt you will keep us safe, but that is not what I am telling you. What I am trying to say is that given a choice, the people on this planet are surely going to support Earth over a bunch of clones.”
Sarah smiled and passed me the beans, apparently unaware that I might object to her antisynthetic comments.
“But Earth abandoned Terraneau,” Ava said. “They had a fleet of ships circling your planet for four years without ever sending anyone to rescue you.”
“We told them not to. El, didn’t you tell them to leave us alone.” She said this as a statement, not a question. “You told them not to come, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, dear,” Doctorow said. “I think we are all glad that General Harris decided not to listen.”
“Well, of course we are,” Sarah admitted, “but that does not mean we would pick clones over humans if it comes to a war. You understand that, don’t you, Wayson?”
“Yes,” I said. I understood her perfectly.
“God, I hate that woman,” Ava said, as we walked through her front door. I had expected Doctorow to move her in with the girls in the dormitory, but that never happened. She never spent so much as a night in that building.
“I thought you two were old friends,” I said.
“Honey, where I come from, she would not be allowed on the sidewalk without a leash and a muzzle!” Ava said. “I could never be friends with that two-faced, antisynthetic bitch. Do you know what she said behind my back? When she found out her husband wanted to put me in the girls’ dorm, she told her friends they should set me up in a convenience store and call it a ‘home for wayward clones.’ ”
“How about Doctorow?” I asked. “Is he any better?”
“I don’t know how he puts up with her. They’re completely different. He’s a nice man, and he’s honest, and …”
“She’s honest, too,” I said.
“Honestly antisynthetic. Was it always like this for you, Harris? Did people always treat you like that? I don’t think anyone knew I was a clone when I first got here. They knew who I was, you know, they’d seen my movies, but then Sarah started telling everyone I was a clone. She’s like a one-woman mediaLink. God, I hate her.”
“Do you think she speaks for the rest of the planet?” I asked, knowing that in Ava’s experience, Norristown was the rest of the planet. “Who’s got more clout, Ellery or Sarah?”
“If it comes down to a fight between Sarah and Ellery, my money is on Ellery,” Ava said. But I got the feeling she had told me whom she wanted to win, not who she thought would take the title.
I looked around the house. The living room was all done up in bright colors and glass tile. The home probably came furnished, just move in and put your name on the shingle, with a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy when it came to the previous owners. There was a bright square above the fireplace where someone might once have hung a family portrait.
“Did Doctorow give you this house?” I asked.
“I pay the rent by teaching drama classes up at the dorms,” Ava said, brightening up.
“Should I be worried about the other teachers?”
“Other guys? Wayson Harris is worried about other guys?” Ava laughed. She led me into the kitchen, where she picked out two mugs and made us coffee. “Ellery warned everyone about you. Between Sarah advertising that I am a clone and Ellery scaring the guys off, it gets pretty lonely around here.
“How about you?” she asked. “Any other women I need to know about?” She spoke more softly and came close. I put my hands on her waist and brought her toward me. We hugged, and I swung her gently back and forth. A few moments passed before we kissed. Somewhere in her breath, I tasted a trace of the imitation bacon Sarah Doctorow used to flavor her beans, but mostly Ava’s breath just smelled like Ava. She kissed me, rubbed her body against mine, and giggled. “Wayson Harris worried about other guys.” She laughed and pressed her face against my chest.