Your One & Only Page 6

  Althea felt herself going through the motions of the Pairing. Hassan-318 kissed her, and his fingers slid up her arm. His kisses were warm and hesitant. She tried to focus, to keep her thoughts pleasant. He did have warm, tan skin, and lovely dark eyes with lashes so black they looked painted on.

  Althea couldn’t remember if she’d Paired with Hassan-318 before, but she remembered what Hassans liked. She pressed against him. One of her sisters had clearly taken the time to teach Hassan-318 a few things. He touched her the way Altheas liked to be touched, and he knew enough to be slow. He slipped from his robe and she untied hers, letting it fall to the pillows at their feet. She kissed him and then slowly pulled back. His hands roamed down her sides, and she let her own linger on his shoulders. They fell back on the pillows and nestled there, facing each other. Then he braced himself on an elbow and looked at her.

  “Should I do something different?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your mind is somewhere else. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Oh.” Althea lay back and gazed at the stars through the tent’s skylight. “Sorry.”

  “What happened with the Carsons tonight, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “But listen, it doesn’t have to ruin our whole night. We can still Pair if you want. No sense in everyone being miserable.”

  He tilted his head at her. “Nah, it’s okay. Sometimes I don’t mind an early night.”

  Althea sighed and nestled closer to Hassan. It would have been nice to let the Pairing take her mind off everything, but it would only work for a few moments, and it wasn’t fair to Hassan that she was so distracted. She didn’t even know why she hadn’t picked the Carson like she was supposed to. Part of her blamed the Council meeting for putting all those thoughts in her head about things that happened ages ago.

  Althea and Hassan lay together while he talked about his apprenticeship in the greenhouses and the new hybrid seedlings. She didn’t mind letting him chatter while her head rested on his shoulder. After a long while, they dressed and Hassan lifted the flap of the tent. The insects outside had grown louder. Althea breathed in, relieved to be out of the heavy, scented air of the Pairing tent.

  “Althea, Hassan!” Nyla-313 emerged from her own tent nearby and pranced toward them, her half-tied gray robe falling from one shoulder. She grabbed Althea’s hand. “I’m glad I caught you. Come with us, we’re exploring!”

  Now that the Pairing Ceremony was done, small groups were forming and heading to the dorms or back to the Commons to spend the rest of the evening enjoying the celebrations. Althea was tired, though, and didn’t want to have to explain herself to her sisters tonight.

  “I’d rather go home,” she said. She turned to Hassan-318. “You can go with them if you like.”

  “Oh, come on,” Nyla said. “Come with us. You can’t go sulk in the dorms for the rest of the night.” Nyla pulled Althea aside. “If this is because of that Carson business, I tried to soften that a bit for you.” Althea wasn’t sure what Nyla meant until Carson-312 emerged from the same tent as Nyla, fastening the leather belts around his robe. Althea hadn’t seen what happened at the rest of the Pairing because she’d rushed off with Hassan, hoping to avoid the glares of the Carsons and her sisters. Now Althea understood. Nyla, trying to ease the sting of Carson-312’s rejection, had paired with him, while her sisters had all Paired with the other Hassans. Althea suddenly felt even worse. Why couldn’t she have just dealt with it and paired with Carson-312? It was all so stupid.

  “Come hang out with us,” Nyla said. “It might make things better. Carson-312 says Copan sent a shipment of Somnium last week and he knows where to find it.” She leaned in to whisper. “He specifically said he wanted you to come. You can’t very well reject him twice in the same night.”

  Althea wasn’t interested in Somnium. She never liked the way it made her feel, the strange thoughts it put in her head that felt like they’d come from somewhere else. She saw her sisters heading back to the dorms. They were alone. After what Althea had done, their own Pairings might have been as beside the point as hers. It’d be better if she faced them tonight, but if she went with Nyla, maybe later she could tell them how she’d made a special effort to be nice to Carson-312, soothing his ego and any lingering resentment.

  Althea nodded to Nyla-313, her decision made. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Four

  Jack

  Jack hated the nights of Pairing Ceremonies. He could always feel the silence descending on the town, even from inside the labs, and he knew everyone around him was celebrating.

  At these times, when the clones working in the labs had left, all he had were his books. Tonight he was reading The Call of the Wild again. His mother had first given it to him because the author had his name, and he’d loved reading about the dog racing through a strange, frozen terrain, so different from the lush jungle Jack had always known. The story stirred something in him. It was violent, and Buck suffered awfully from cold and hunger and the brutality of the other dogs, but he was also wild, powerful, and free. Jack wished he could be more like that instead of stuck inside a sterile, polished lab. He imagined racing headlong through the trees, quick and alive, the walls of Vispera far behind him.

  When he’d lived in the cottage, he and his mother would go for long walks in the jungle, a canopy of broad leaves above them and paths made by animals much bigger than either of them. Once, halting in the middle of dense vine tangles, she’d pulled down the branch of a thin tree with a crown on top shaped like a candelabra.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to a train of ants. “They’re called Azteca ants. They live in the trees, and their whole lifetimes they never touch the ground.”

  “The clones made them that way?” Jack asked.

  “No. We’ve been around only a few centuries. These ants have existed for a thousand thousand years. They evolved.” She let the branch go, and it snapped back into place. “Everything evolves.”

  “Vispera doesn’t,” he said. “The clones don’t.”

  His mother laughed. “We like to think we’re perfect, don’t we? But everything changes, Jack. Everything.”

  She taught him to watch where he stepped, to be wary of trees with needle-sharp barbs spiking from the bark and snakes coiled near rocks. She taught him to always be aware, that the jungle could easily kill you, and without the walls, there was no protection. But Jack had always felt safer out there with her than he did inside the walls of a town that, for him at least, seemed more menacing than the jaguars roaming the rainforest. Someday he would go back to live in the cottage. The clones almost never left the confines of Vispera except to travel by boat to one of their other walled-in towns. One day Sam would come to visit and find him gone, and he’d be free.

  Flipping the pages of The Call of the Wild, Jack froze as noises came from the hallway. There were whispers and shuffling outside the lab door. Lab workers didn’t come by this late.

  “I don’t know about this,” someone said in a hush as the door to the lab opened. It was a girl’s voice. “Where did Nyla and Hassan go?”

  “I told them to search South Lab. We’ll catch up with them later,” a male voice answered. “Come on, quit acting like such a Gen-320 kid.”

  The door to Jack’s room opened onto the lab. At night, he often didn’t close it, and he never locked it. Why should he? Nobody came by except Sam. After more shuffling, the owners of the two voices peered into his room. He heard a gasp from the girl as she saw him. He refused to react or even sit up from the bed. If kids were going to sneak into the lab to gape at him like he was some kind of specimen, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of acting like he cared.

  The girl was an Althea. The guy was a Carson. Of course it was a Carson.

  The two approached him, the Carson with his thumbs hooked in his belt, the Althea standing slightly behind, wide-eyed. Resting his arm casually on his knee, Jack gazed back at them.
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br />   “What d’you know?” Carson said. “It’s monkey-boy.” Carson rocked back on his heels, pleased with himself.

  The Althea glanced from Jack to Carson and back again, a frown suddenly on her face. “You knew he was here. You’ve got Nyla and Hassan off looking for Somnium, when you just wanted to come here.”

  “What?” Carson shrugged. “He’s just sitting by himself. Maybe he’d like to have some fun with us.” He winked at Jack. “What do you say?”

  Whatever the Carson had planned, fun wouldn’t have much to do with it.

  Jack glanced at the Althea’s wrist, but her knit shawl covered it. He couldn’t tell which Althea she was. Not that it mattered, he told himself. They were all the same. There was no sense reading much into a smile two years ago.

  Carson strode up to Jack and grabbed the book out of his hand.

  “Hey!” Jack said.

  “I just want to see what’s so fascinating,” Carson said, flipping through the pages.

  Up close, Jack saw the jagged scar above the Carson’s left eye bisecting his eyebrow, which confirmed what Jack already knew. It was Carson-312. It was always Carson-312.

  “Carson, stop it,” the Althea said. “You’re being a jerk.”

  Carson turned to Althea. “You’re very concerned about the monkey-boy. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Carson made a show of licking his lips. “Nothing. Just wondering why you care.”

  “This is stupid. I’m going back to the dorms. I don’t like the way you’re acting.”

  She headed toward the door of the lab, but Carson tossed the book to the floor and cut her off. He braced his arm against the wall by her head, blocking her way out. “You’re going home, just like that? Come on, have a little fun. You Altheas, you think you’re too good for us.” He lifted a strand of her dark hair and twirled it around his finger. “What makes you think you’re too good for us?”

  She pulled her hair from his fingers and tried shoving him away. “It was just one Pairing, Carson. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

  Carson pressed harder against her, not letting her get to the door. “I’m glad to hear it wasn’t a big deal. It’s still a Pairing night, you know. Maybe you’d like to make it up to me now?”

  “Stop it.” Althea glanced nervously toward Jack.

  Jack had no idea what they were arguing about or why he’d ended up the audience for their little drama, but he didn’t like the way Carson nuzzled his face into the Althea’s neck.

  Jack, unable to stop himself, said, “Let her go.”

  Carson didn’t let her go. Instead he tilted his head in Jack’s direction. “Ah, there he is. I knew I could get you to play. So, monkey-boy, I should let her go? What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nice scar on your face—​maybe I’ll give you a matching set.”

  Carson’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t respond to Jack, but put his mouth to Althea’s ear and whispered something.

  “Carson!” Althea pushed him away with both hands. “The Pairing’s over. I’m going home.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Carson said. He seized Althea’s arm and led her to the bed where Jack still sat.

  Carson was trying to play off his actions like he was joking, but there was something sharp and mean in his eyes. Jack was used to seeing those eyes narrowed on him. Seeing a Carson target an Althea, that was new.

  Carson turned Althea so she was forced to face Jack, her back against Carson’s chest and his arm clutching her shoulders. “Maybe you and the monkey could have a good time together,” he said, his lips brushing her ear. “I can tell you feel sorry for him. I feel it when I touch you, so much it makes me sick. You clearly don’t like Carsons very much, and it’s so obvious you didn’t Pair with Hassan tonight. Maybe this thing is more what you’re into.”

  Jack hated the Carsons, but this girl feeling sorry for him was somehow worse than the contempt and disgust he got from the others.

  The Althea squirmed in Carson’s grasp. Before Jack knew what was happening, Carson shoved her. She screamed as she crashed into Jack. He caught her around the waist to stop her falling from the bed while Carson slipped out the door of the room and locked the latch behind him, trapping Jack inside with the Althea.

  She looked up at Jack from his arms and then pushed away, falling against the wall. One hand pressed the bed frame while the other stretched before her as if warding off an attack. The shawl fell from her arm, uncovering the thin white scar circling her wrist. Jack’s eyes jumped to her face.

  It was Althea-310. The only girl who had ever looked at him and smiled.

  Now her face twisted with fear.

  “Carson!” she yelled. “Get back here!”

  Carson stood in the hall, his face in the window of the door. He rubbed the uneven scar on his eyebrow, a sly grin barely showing his teeth.

  Chapter Five

  Althea

  Althea was practically in Jack’s lap. She found herself looking into gray eyes that registered as much surprise as she felt, but she didn’t see any of her fear reflected back.

  She scrambled away from Jack and yelled at Carson to let her out. What the hell did he think he was doing?

  “This isn’t funny, Carson. Unlock the door!”

  Carson sneered at her through the window. “If you’d rather Pair with him than me or Hassan, here’s your chance.”

  Althea glanced at Jack, who’d backed away from her. Carson was right, she had felt sorry for him, but she’d also seen him dragged away from attacking someone, twice now. He was violent. As if to prove the point, he was suddenly at the door of the lab, pounding it as if he could break it down. When he gave up, he looked out at Carson. “Open the door.”

  Carson laughed, and Jack’s face darkened. If he gets out of this room, he’ll kill Carson, she thought. It was in his eyes, like he was holding something in that might explode.

  “Just let me out,” Althea said. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Have fun, you two,” Carson said, rapping the window as if offering a friendly goodbye.

  “Carson!” Althea yelled. “Don’t you dare leave me here!”

  But it was too late. They could hear Carson laughing as he walked away down the hall.

  Althea put as much distance between herself and Jack as possible in the small room. She crouched warily against the wall and watched him pacing the small space. It was no longer just that he didn’t commune that made him different, or even his strange-colored eyes. When the boys were all fifteen, they and Jack had been basically the same size. Now, only two years later, he was bigger than any of them. He was several inches taller than the Carsons, and at least a head taller than the Hassans.

  One time, some little Gen-320s had chased an injured monkey into a tree. It had been hurt badly enough that it wasn’t able to climb down, and they threw sticks at it and jeered. Jack scared them away, practically growled at them until they scattered, and then climbed the tree to get the monkey. The others had laughed, gone back to calling Jack “monkey-boy” anytime they saw him. But that was when Althea had first noticed that Jack was less . . . willowy than the other males. Not quite as delicate as the Viktors, Samuels, Hassans, or Carsons. She hadn’t felt sorry for him then, even as the others taunted him mercilessly while he climbed. She hadn’t been able to stop staring at the way his hands grasped the thick branches, and his arms flexed as he pulled the weight of his body up limb by limb.

  Jack stared mutely at the locked door and then turned away.

  The humans were so strange. How did they convey feelings to one another if they couldn’t commune? They must have gone through their lives in an unbearable state of uncertainty, trying to guess at people’s feelings all the time, misreading the emotions of even those closest to them. Perhaps that was what made Jack seem so angry all the time. He was isolated, and no one in Vispera could feel what he did. Though, watching him kick the door in fr
ustration, Althea realized it wasn’t all that difficult to discern his emotions, even without communing.

  Althea couldn’t remember if the Council had said what year Jack’s sample was from. If it was a few decades before the Slow Plague, that would put his original’s birth around A.D. 2000. She studied his belongings, trying to remember what she knew of humans. Human history was impossible to keep straight. It had, after all, lasted thousands of years. So many of the records had been lost, whether because of the Slow Plague or the carelessness of her own people in the three hundred years since they’d been created.

  Jack’s room was littered with stacks of human books, a few games. Jack picked up his book from the floor and sat back on the bed. Instead of reading it, however, he dropped his head in his hands. Althea found herself wanting to touch his arm, to comfort him the way the brothers and sisters would do with each other.

  He had hair, she noticed suddenly, on his arms and chest. She could see it peeking from the V of his shirt, soft and pale like a fine down. There was even a shadow of hair on his face. The male bodies in Vispera were bare except for the hair on their heads. As he sat under the fluorescent bulbs, the hair on his arm caught the light like glints of gold.

  “Damn it!” Jack said, hurling his book away. Althea jumped to her feet, all thoughts of going anywhere near him flying from her mind. He looked at her for the first time since Carson had left and then shook his head.

  Althea sat on the floor again, keeping a cautious eye on Jack. “You shouldn’t have mentioned his scar,” she said.