Steven Kent - Rogue Clone

Archie looked up at me and smiled. “It must have looked awfully funny …me farting with that stunned look on my face.”

I returned the smile. “It did.”

“Mr. Harris, you and Raymond did not need to come here. No one asked you to help us, but you came. And now, once again, we are asking you to extend your generosity.”

I put up my hand. “It’s okay. Coming here was Ray’s idea. You should thank him.”

“He says it’s your ship.”

I nodded.

“Well, I wanted to thank you.” Archie turned and started to walk away.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Anything,” Archie said.

“You don’t believe I have a soul,” I said. I did not really care about whether or not I actually had a soul. I had made it this far without one. But the prejudice bothered me. I had come to help these people. If they considered me less than human, that bothered me a lot.

Archie Freeman stood silent and still as a tree and stared into my eyes. He had dark brown eyes that had yellowed. His eyes were bloodshot and appeared tired and full of intelligence. Staring into those eyes, I decided that Archie Freeman might give in to prejudice, but he would never knowingly lie.

“No, son, I don’t believe you have a soul.”

“Science can create life, but it cannot create a soul?” I asked. “Is that what you believe?”

“Science cannot create life,” Archie said.

“I’m alive,” I said, “and I’m a work of science.”

“I am not trying to judge you, Mr. Harris. I’m sorry for what I said. It was an awful thing to say. I don’t suppose I can ever take it back. No man can tame the tongue. It is a little member that boasts great things.” I did not know if this last bit was poetry or philosophy or scripture, but Archie sounded sad as he quoted it.

“Don’t judge me, judge science. I crawled out of a tube, not a womb. What does your gospel say about that?” Yes, I was spoiling for a fight with a man who had come to apologize to me. I was mad. I was offended. I knew I was wrong, and I did not care.

“Mr. Harris, I don’t pretend to understand cloning. I am a minister, and I have spent the last fifty years of my life on barren planets cut off from men and the galaxy.”

“But you don’t think science can create life through cloning?” I asked.

“Cloning doesn’t create life, it duplicates it,” Archie said. “If I have a fire, and you hold a stick over the flames until it catches on fire as well, you haven’t created a new fire, you’ve simply borrowed a flame from me.

“They didn’t create life when they made you, Mr. Harris. They borrowed genes from one of God’s creations …somebody who had a soul. You got his hair and his skin, and his eyes, but I do not believe you got his soul. I don’t believe his soul was embedded in that DNA.

“Now I think it’s real nice that you and Raymond came to rescue us. And I am grateful that you have been so generous. You appear to be a man of great virtue, though if you are associated with my son, you are probably a professional killer. But unless science has identified the gene that holds the soul, I see no reason to believe that you are anything more or less than a temporal man …a body with an Earthly spark of life and no chance for eternity.”

I thought about Shannon quoting Nietzsche to that archbishop, telling him that no man has a soul. I thought about pointing out that there was a time when white men thought that black men had no souls. None of this mattered. I asked Archie what he believed, and he gave me an honest answer.

“I came to apologize for what I said, Mr. Harris. I am extremely sorry about what I said on your ship. I hope you will accept my apology.” Having said this, Archie turned and walked away.

“That’s not exactly what he told everybody else about you,” Marianne said as she came around the corner.

“You were listening?” I asked, feeling ashamed.

She smiled at me; and her dark eyes, so much like her father’s, seemed to stretch wider with her smile. “He is my father.”

“And that makes eavesdropping alright?”

“Yes,” she hesitated and spoke slowly as if trying to make up her mind. Then, with more certainty, “Yes, it does.”

“What did he say to everybody else?”

“The night you landed, we held a town meeting.”

“I know. I was there for some of it. I left and you followed me and we talked.”

“No,” Marianne said, “that was an open meeting. After you and Raymond left, Archie held a closed meeting, just for the men.”

“And you listened in?”

“Do you want to hear what he said or not?”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“People were scared of you. They said that cloning is an abomination. Archie said that incest is an abomination.”

“That makes me feel better,” I said.

“You don’t understand. Do you read the Bible?”

“Do you follow current events on the mediaLink?”

“Wayson, you’re such an ass.”

“Sorry.”

“Have you heard of Lot?” Marianne asked.

“Sodom and Gomorrah,” I said. “His wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. You don’t need to read the Bible to know that story.”

“Do you know that after his wife died, Lot’s daughters got him drunk and seduced him? They had two sons and both sons created nations.”

“Unless they were cloned, I don’t see what that has to do with me,” I said.

“One of those nations was Moab,” said Marianne. “A woman from Moab married a Jew. Her great-grandson was King David.”

“So?” I asked. I had heard of David and Goliath. I knew he wrote the Psalms. “What does any of that have to do with cloning?”

Jesus was a descendent of David. Had it not been for Lot’s daughters, Jesus would not have been born.

“Don’t you see, Archie justified you? He said that righteous ends can come from evil means.”

The errand was not dangerous. All I was doing was broadcasting out to the middle of nowhere to take some radar readings and locate the Grant. I would not broadcast anywhere near its course, and unless they were looking for a broadcast signature, they would not detect me. If they did detect me, I would broadcast out before they reached me. If they reached me, they still wanted my ship intact. They could not risk shooting at me.

Ray came into the cockpit. Marianne loaded some food in the Starliner’s galley as I prepared to take off. The last people on the Starliner were Archie and Caleb, Marianne’s son. Over the last few days, Caleb had become my shadow, my helper, and my unofficial second-in-command. The boy was twelve years old, far too tall for his age, and headed toward another growth spurt. He liked to ask questions and watch his surroundings with great curiosity.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Marianne asked.

“I’m going along for the ride,” he said.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Marianne said.

“That’s what I told him,” Archie said.

“He’s with me,” I said.

She stared at me as if making sure I was serious. Caleb grinned like a child and squeezed around her as he made his way toward the cockpit. Marianne gave me a nasty look and climbed out of the Starliner.

“Go sit back there,” Ray said, pointing back to the cabin. Caleb and Archie sat on the same row. Caleb sat by the wall and stared out the window. Archie sat by the aisle and watched Ray and me.

“He’s adopting you,” Ray said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Taking a break from my instruments, I looked back at Caleb. I could only see the back of his head. I imagined that he was smiling, excited to fly into space.

“I don’t know much about families,” I said. “Is that what they call it?” I flipped a switch and brought the controls on line. I would take off in another minute.