Barry glanced about the lecture room and spotted Mark in the rear, looking sleepy and bored. He shrugged; let him be bored. Three of the brothers were working in the labs, and the fourth was busy in the breeders’ quarters; that left the lecture, and Mark had to sit through it if it killed him.
“The problem we raised yesterday, if you’ll recall,” Barry said then, referring briefly to his notes, “is that we have yet to discover the cause of the decline of the clone strains after the fourth generation. The only way we have got around this to date is through constant replenishment of our stocks by the use of sexually reproduced babies who are cloned before the third month in utero. In this way we have been able to maintain our families of brothers and sisters, but admittedly this is not the ideal solution. Can any of you tell me what some of the obvious drawbacks to this system are?” He paused and glanced about. “Karen?”
“There is a slight difference between the babies cloned in the laboratory and those born of human mothers. There is the prenatal influence and also the birth trauma that might alter the sexually reproduced person.”
“Very good,” Barry said. “Comments, anyone?”
“In the beginning they waited two years before they cloned the babies,” Stuart said. “Now we don’t, and that makes the family almost as close as if they were all clones.”
Barry nodded, then pointed to Carl. “If the human baby has a birth defect, caused by a birth trauma, he can be aborted, and still the cloned babies will be all right.”
“That’s hardly in the nature of a drawback,” Barry said, smiling. There was an answering ripple of amusement throughout the class.
He waited a moment, then said, “The genetic pool is unpredictable, its past is unknown, its constituents so varied that when the process is not regulated and controlled, there is always the danger of producing unwanted characteristics. And the even more dangerous threat of losing talents that are important to our community.” He allowed time for this to be grasped, then continued. “The only way to ensure our future, to ensure continuity, is through perfecting the process of cloning, and for this reason we need to expand our facilities, increase our researchers, locate a source of materials to replace what is wearing out and equip the new laboratories, and we need to complete a safe link to that source or sources.”
A hand was raised. Barry nodded. “What if we can’t find enough equipment in good condition soon enough?”
“Then we will have to go to human implantation of the cloned fetus. We have done this in a number of cases, and we have the methods, but it is wasteful of our few human resources, and it would necessitate changing our timetable drastically to use the breeders this way.” He looked over the class, then continued. “Our goal is to remove the need for sexual reproduction. Then we will be able to plan our future. If we need road builders, we can clone fifty or a hundred for this purpose, train them from infancy, and send them out to fulfill their destiny. We can clone boat builders, sailors, send them out to the sea to locate the course of the fish our first explorers discovered in the Potomac. A hundred farmers, to relieve those who would prefer to be working over test tubes than hoeing rows of carrots.”
Another ripple of laughter passed over the students. Barry smiled also; without exception they all worked their hours in the fields.
“For the first time since mankind walked the face of the earth,” he said, “there will be no misfits.”
“And no geniuses,” a voice said lazily, and he looked to the rear of the class to see Mark, still slouched down in his chair, his blue eyes bright, grinning slightly. Deliberately he winked at Barry, then closed both eyes again, and apparently returned to sleep.
“I’ll tell you a story if you want,” Mark said. He stood in the aisle between two rows of three beds each. The Carver brothers had all had appendicitis simultaneously. They looked at him from both sides, and one of them nodded. They were thirteen.
“Once there was a woji,” he said, moving to the window, where he sat cross-legged on a chair with the light behind him.
“What’s a woji?”
“If you ask questions, I won’t tell it,” Mark said. “You’ll see as I go along. This woji lived deep in the woods, and every year when winter came he nearly froze to death. That was because the icy rains soaked him and the snow covered him over, and he had nothing at all to eat because the leaves all fell and he ate leaves. One year he got an idea, and he went to a big spruce tree and told it his idea. At first the spruce tree wouldn’t even consider his suggestion. The woji didn’t go away, though. He kept telling the spruce tree his idea over and over, and finally the spruce tree thought, What did he have to lose? Why not try it? So the spruce tree told the woji to go ahead. For days and days the woji worked on the leaves, rolling them up and making them over into needles. He used some of the needles to sew them all tightly to the tree branches. Then he climbed to the very top of the spruce tree and yelled at the ice wind, and laughed at it and said it couldn’t hurt him now, because he had a home and food to eat all winter.
“The other trees heard him and laughed, and they began to tell each other about the crazy little woji who yelled at the ice wind, and finally the last tree, at the place where the trees end and the snow begins, heard the story. It was a maple tree, and it laughed until its leaves shook. The ice wind heard it laughing and came blowing up, storming and throwing ice, and demanded to know what was so funny. The maple tree told the ice wind about the crazy little woji who had challenged his powers to take the leaves off the trees, and the ice wind became madder and madder. It blew harder and harder. The maple leaves turned red and gold with fear and then fell to the ground, and the tree stood naked before the wind. The ice wind blew south and the other trees shivered and turned color and dropped their leaves.
“Finally the ice wind came to the spruce tree and screamed for the woji to come out. He wouldn’t. He was hidden deep in the spruce needles where the ice wind couldn’t see him or touch him. The wind blew harder and the spruce tree shivered, but its needles held tight and they didn’t turn color at all. The ice wind now called up the ice rain to help, and the spruce tree was covered with icicles, but the needles held on and the woji stayed dry and warm. Then the ice wind got madder than ever and called the snow to help, and it snowed deeper and deeper until the spruce tree looked like a mountain of snow, but deep inside, the woji was warm and content, close to the trunk of the tree, and soon the tree shrugged and the snow fell away from it and it knew the ice wind could no longer hurt it.
“The ice wind howled about the tree all winter, but the needles held tight and the woji stayed snug and warm, and if he nibbled on a needle now and then the tree forgave him, because he had taught it not to cringe and turn colors and stand naked all winter shivering before the ice wind just because that’s what the other trees did. When spring came the other trees begged the woji to turn their leaves into needles too, and the woji finally agreed. But only for those trees that hadn’t laughed at him. And that’s why the evergreen trees are evergreen.”
“Is that all?” demanded one of the Carver brothers.
Mark nodded.
“What’s a woji? You said we’d know when the story was over.”
“That’s the thing that lives in spruce trees,” Mark said, grinning. “He’s invisible, but sometimes you can hear him. He’s usually laughing.” He jumped down from the chair. “I’ve gotta go.” He trotted to the door.
“There’s no such thing!” one of the brothers yelled.
Mark opened the door and looked out cautiously. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Then he looked over his shoulder and asked the brothers, “How do you know? Have you ever gone out there to try to hear him laughing?” He left them quickly before a doctor or nurse showed up.
Before dawn one morning near the end of May the families began to gather at the dock once more to see off the six boats and crews of brothers and sisters. There was no gaiety now, there had been no party the night before. Barry stood near Lewis and watched the preparations. They were both silent.
There was no way to draw back now, Barry knew. They had to have the supplies that were in the big cities, or die. That was the alternative they had. The toll had been too high, and he knew no way to reduce it. Special training had helped a little, but not enough. Sending groups of brothers and sisters had helped, but not enough. So far in the four trips downriver, they had lost twenty-two people, and another twenty-four had been affected by the ordeal, perhaps permanently affected, and through them their families. Thirty-six of them this time. They were to stay out until frost, or until the river started its usual fall rise, whichever was first.
Some of them were to build a bypass around the falls; some would dig a canal to link the Shenandoah to the Potomac to avoid the danger of the rough water they now had to face with each trip. Two groups were to go back and forth between the falls and Washington and bring out the supplies that had been found the previous year. One group was on river patrol, to clear the rapids that the capricious rivers renewed each winter.
How many would return this time? Barry wondered. They would stay out longer than any of the others had; their work was more dangerous. How many?
“Having a building at the falls will help,” Lewis said suddenly. “It was the feeling of being exposed that made it particularly bad.”
Barry nodded. It was what they all reported—they felt exposed, watched. They felt the world was pressing in on them, that the trees moved closer as soon as the sun set. He glanced at Lewis, forgot what he had started to say, and instead watched a tic that had appeared at the corner of his mouth. Lewis was clenching his fists; he stared at the dwindling boats, and the tic jerked and vanished, jerked again.
“Are you all right?” Barry asked. Lewis shook himself and looked away from the river. “Lewis? Is anything wrong?”
“No. I’ll see you later.” He strode away swiftly.
“There’s something about being in the woods in the dark especially that has a traumatic effect,” Barry said later to his brothers. They were in the dormitory room they shared; at the far end, apart from them, sat Mark, cross-legged on a cot, watching them. Barry ignored him. They were so used to his presence now that they seldom noticed him at all, unless he got in the way. They usually noticed if he vanished, as he frequently did.
The brothers waited. That was well known, the fear of the silent woods.
“In training the children to prepare for their future roles, we should incorporate experience in living in the woods for prolonged periods. They could start with an............