Connie Willis - Fire Watch

Now I am not so dumb. Even though Marjean is hiding it pretty good, pretending she likes this guy and all, I can tell she is mad. She was dead sent against my sending for a clone.

“It’s a fake,” she says.

“How do you know that? You ain’t even read the ad.”

“The Kiowa know many things,” she says real mysteriouslike. She pulls that Kiowa stuff whenever she don’t have a good answer. She’s no more Indian than them old hippies out on the edge of town. They got long hair and live in tepees, smoking mushrooms and talking a lot of gibberish, but they ain’t Indians, and the Welfare guys know it. They don’t get no Indian checks and neither does Marjean Ramona. So I don’t put no faith in this Kiowa stuff.

“They can’t make clones,” Marjean says, “not for twelve ninety-five.”

“Sure they can. You send in a piece of your hair or a fingernail, something that’s got cells in it. And they put it in a test tube and there you are. One genuine clone.”

I showed her the story that give me the idea in the first place, seens as how she is so crazy for them stories. “Mail-Order Family,” it was called, all about this poor orphan girl who didn’t have no family till she got a clone and then how they was just like twins and they both married brothers and everything, but it didn’t do no good. She just never wants to send for nothing out of her love magazines. I tried to get her to send for one of them holographic nighties in the Fredericks of Hollywood ad, the ones that promise to show you all sides of the merchandise at once, but she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t even let me send for a box of lubricated bionic ripples, and they was only a dollar.

“I don’t care what you say, Marjean,” I says. “I am sending for this clone.”

“You’re wasting your money,” she says, “and even if you had a clone, what would you do with it? What good is a clone anyway?”

“What about 'Mail-Order Family'? What about that, huh? A clone’s good for lots of stuff, Marjean. Lots of stuff.”

So now I got me a clone and I can tell you it is a good feeling to prove old high-and-mighty Marjean wrong for once. But after about two weeks of this guy, I figured Marjean was right about one thing. Clones may be good for lots of stuff, like I said, but I sure as hell couldn’t figure out what. When I asked him about getting a job, he just laughed. He said if he started working it would be like I started working and I’d be off the Welfare rolls like a shot. I figured at least he could go cash my check seens as how we both had the same signature and all. He seemed real willing, especially after he seen how big the check was. But then Marjean real fastlike grabs up both checks and says she wants to go. “You have to cash them at the post office ,” she says to him real seriouslike, and he turns kind of green. After that I can’t hardly even get him to go get us Coors at the Indian camp.

All he wanted to do was set at the kitchen table, talking to Marjean in her nightgown and eating and drinking up every damn thing in the house through that froggy mustache of his. He still didn’t look nothing like me. I spent about an hour looking in the mirror trying to imagine what I’d look like with one of them little black mustaches, but it didn’t do no good. Marjean come and stood behind me. “I can see a big resemblance,” she said, smiling sort of slylike, and sauntered off to the bedroom.

“Well, I sure as hell can’t.” I said that pretty loud and I guess my clone heard me, 'cause he come and put his arm around me, pal-like, and says, “The lack of resemblance perplexes you, doesn’t it?”

“Huh?”

“That we look so different. Clones are identical. That’s what you’ve always heard, isn’t it?”

That made me feel sort of ashamed. The poor guy can’t help it he’s so little and scrawny. But he didn’t act upset. He just kind of laughed and motioned to me to set down at the table. Then he pulled out a pen and a piece of paper. I see the paper is one of them copy sheets and on it is the very same ad I sent in. Right there is my own name and address I wrote myself. This made me even more ashamed. To tell the truth, once or twice I have started to think things are not quite on the up-and-up, if you know what I mean.

He flipped the ad over and started drawing and talking real fast, a whole bunch of stuff about cells and chromosomes. I listened real hard, but it didn’t make much sense. Just a bunch of lines and squiggles.

Then he pulls out a quarter and holds it up in front of me. “What do you see?” he says.

“A quarter.”

“No. I mean, what do you see on the quarter?”

There’s some little words and a guy that looks kind of like Nixon only his hair is in a ponytail. “Some president,” I say, figuring I am safe that way.

He turns it over. “Now what do you see?”

I recognize this one right off. “A bird,” I say.

“George Washington,” he says, and flips the quarter over. “An American eagle.” Boy, am I glad I didn’t go with Nixon. “They’re nothing alike, are they?”

I am getting pretty nervous with all these questions. “No,” I say, only kind of hesitantlike.

“Oh, but they are. They’re two different sides of a quarter. Just as you and I are two different sides of a person.” He flips the quarter over again. The bird is still there.

Well, that made a whole lot more sense than them squiggly chromosomes. I felt real relieved. I was going to ask him about the job thing again while he was in an explaining mood, but just then Marjean come out dressed up fit to kill and said they was going over to the Indian camp, so I didn’t get to.

They was gone a long time. I did the quarter thing a couple more times, and it always worked, so I figured he must be telling the truth. Long about four I went out on the porch where I could see them coming. Not that I was worried or anything. We were two sides of a quarter, he said, and if you can’t trust your flip side, you are in pretty bad shape.

They wasn’t coming yet, but what was scared the pants off me. These two big government cars pulled up in front of the house and four guys got out and come over to the porch. Four guys! Welfare has never sent four before. They only do that when they’re gonna beat the hell out of you for violations.

They already seen me so there was no use pretending nobody was home, and anyway they were wearing suits and didn’t look nearly as big as the Welfare guys usually look, so I stayed on the porch. But I kept a sharp eye peeled for Marjean and my clone. I sure as hell wished they would get home.

Two of the guys stand back with their arms folded and the other two come up on the porch. One of them hands me a piece of paper and says, “Have you seen this ad before?”

Well, hell, it’s that ad my clone had the copy of scribbling on not two hours ago. It is probably still setting there on the kitchen table. Anyway there is my name and address in my own writing, which is on file down at Welfare. They have got me dead to rights. “Marjean made me send for it,” I says, “but she didn’t know it was against the rules. It ain’t listed in the Welfare book. Honest. Anyway, she don’t read too good.”

The two guys in the back whisper to the other two and the two on the porch reach into their pockets. I practically have a heart attack before I see it’s just little cards they’re reaching for. They hold them out to me. “United States Post Office,” one of them says. “Mail fraud division. Did you send for the clone advertised in this ad?”

I read the card to make sure, but I knew they wasn’t Welfare guys all along. “Sure,” I says, “I sent for one of them clones.”

“You sent in twelve ninety-five with your order?”