It all started with Danny-Boy Mackenzie, on weekdays just the
youngest of his clone-brothers, on weekends the best damned jazz orchestra
conductor in existence. Of course, since this story takes place about fourteen
years after everybody on the planet Earth managed to blow themselves to kingdom
come, that’s not saying a whole hell of a lot.
Breeding females were in short supply back then on Mars. What with terraforming being such a
dangerous occupation, all the really smart girls had stayed back home on Earth
until the job got done right. Unfortunately for everybody, before the job was
quite done the boys with the toys back home decided to get hostile with each
other, so Danny-Boy grew up in a place where the men outnumbered the women ten
to one. Fortunately, it didn’t take long after the big blow-up for the bio-wizards
back at Grissom City to start cranking out the next best thing.
Reverse gender clones, they called them. They weren’t any help
with the population problem since their genes were still XY, but something
those scientists did to the poor things in-utero made them into little girls
with all the trimmings. Danny-Boy
never understood the mechanics of it, but he sure enjoyed the results — in
particular, one by the name of Dorinda who lived next door at the kweesh mill
with her daddy, old Barney Klump, the smartest man in town.
The Mackenzies were kweesh farmers. In fact, practically
everyone in Ozyk had something to do with the weed. In Ozyk it was all about
the kweesh — kweesh lumber for building, kweesh fiber for clothes, and most
importantly kweesh leaves - dried and smoked, powdered and snorted, chewed like
tobacco, baked up in brownies and cakes and eaten. There wasn’t much else to do
in those parts that could make a man feel so good.
One Saturday Danny was in his room conducting to a recording of
Cab Calloway and his orchestra. He was in front of a full length mirror with
his white tailcoat on and was just really gettin’ down with the hi-de-ho’s when
he got a text from Dorinda.
“CM OVR NEED U”
Naturally, he dropped everything and ran right over.
He found Dorinda at the water wheel looking a mite distressed. It
took him a second to figure out why, but he eventually noticed that the canal
was bone dry.
“Where’d all the water go?”
Dorinda shot him one of her looks.
“Daddy took the truck up to the dam yesterday. He thinks there’s
a problem up there with those Grissom City suits and their damned computer
diverting our water. He was supposed to be back this morning at dawn.”
“But it’s noon!”
“Exactly.”
“We could call my da. He’d know what to do.”
“Or we could borrow transportation and head up there to find out
what’s going on ourselves and not bother your father,” Dorinda countered.
Danny stared at her and scratched his head. Although it was true
that his da would probably be pissed if they bothered him in the middle of an
irrigation crisis, neither of them was old enough to drive. He’d just opened
his mouth to point that out when Dorinda gave him his marching orders.
“Go get Colin’s ID. I’ll make us lunch and meet you at the
tether tower.”
His brother Colin was 18, which happened to be the legal flying
age for personal airships. Dorinda didn’t hang around long enough for him to
argue with her, so he went home to get Colin’s ID.
#
“They took him?
Took him where?” Danny’s confusion was typical of his recent behavior. Dorinda
had finally been forced to take the controls from him while he rummaged through
the glove box and under all the seats looking for kweesh.
“He’s been taken to corporate headquarters in Grissom City,”
replied the dam’s security guard in a disapproving tone of voice. “He was
caught trying to sabotage the diversion system.” Dorinda gave the guy one of
her looks. Then she turned to Danny.
“Let’s go. We’re going to Grissom City.”
Back at the airship Danny fumbled with the controls a few times
before she shouldered him aside and did it herself. Once she got them aloft again
and figured out how to set the autopilot for the Grissom City aerodrome she sat
back and looked him up and down. He didn’t look so good.
“You sick, Danny?” He looked half-stoned, even though she knew he
hadn’t had any kweesh all day. “How much kweesh are you doing?” she
probed. Dorinda herself rarely
indulged. Kweesh fogged the brain and interfered with clear thinking.
Danny considered her question with great seriousness. “Not more’n
five or six joints a day. Is that a lot?” In reward for his great mental effort
he got another one of Dorinda’s looks. She turned back to the controls, shaking
her head.
#
By the time they got to
the aerodrome Danny was totally out of his head. The authorities didn’t
question his ID. He looked just exactly like his brother, even had the same
DNA, so Colin Mackenzie got admitted into the Grissom City Medical Center for
kweesh withdrawal. Dorinda left Danny to his IV’s and jello and headed off all
by herself.
The Western Mountain
Terraforming Corporation’s headquarters was a huge red brick monstrosity in the
center of town. Dorinda just marched right in like she owned the place. The plaque next to the elevator had
about two dozen names on it. Right
at the top was the name she was looking for.
“Joseph Wainwright the Fourth, President and CEO,” Dorinda read.
She took a deep breath for courage and turned around.
There was an honest-to-God girl at the reception desk. She had
two inch long zebra striped fingernails, bright purple hair, and a lovely
natural tan. “I’d like to see Mr. Wainwright, please,” Dorinda told the girl
with a friendly smile. The purple-haired one just popped her gum and checked
her computer screen.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked in a bored voice.
“No,” Dorinda admitted. “But it’s very important that I see him
right away.” Miss Zebra Nails
didn’t look impressed. Dorinda stared her down until the girl broke eye contact
to look in the direction of the elevators.
Dorinda turned around just in time to see a grey-haired man in
an expensive silk suit step into the elevator. On a hunch she shouted, “Mister Wainwright!”
and began running toward the elevator. The older man’s head came up in obvious
recognition of his name before the elevator doors shut.
So Dorinda took the stairs.
#
It would make a nice story to say that when Danny woke up in the
hospital his first thought was of Dorinda, but he was a fourteen year old boy
who hadn’t had any solid food in a day and a half, so mainly he just woke up
hungry. His eyes went to the clock on the wall and he did a mental countdown.
“Shit,” he muttered, and rolled out of bed. Somebody from home
would be here soon. He was going to be in big trouble. He pulled the IV
catheter from his arm and rooted in the bedside cabinet for the bag containing
his clothing. Once dressed, he ducked out of his room and down the hallway in
the opposite direction, doing his best to look like somebody who knew exactly
where he was going. It worked until
he got to the lobby. That’s when he noticed the hand plate of the DNA scanner
at the doorway.
Danny walked up to the help desk and gave the guy sitting there
a friendly smile. His name tag said “Tom”. The boy batted long lashes and gave
Danny a slow, shy smile in return.
“Listen, Tom,” he confided. “I was just upstairs with my brother Colin. I’m pretty sure
there was a mix up when we came in. See… we’re clones, and I think the scanner
confused my ID with his.” Danny brought out his own ID and showed it to Tom. The
pretty boy scanned the ID and handed it back to Danny.
“There ya go. You’ll be able to leave now without setting off
any alarms,” he replied, as perky as you please. His eyes went back to the
screen. “And your sister left a message that she’ll meet you at the airship
when she’s done,” he added.
Danny laughed. “Dorinda’s not my sister, but thanks for the
message.”
“Well, I sure never saw two people with identical DNA scans who
weren’t brother and sister, but if you say she’s not, then I guess she’s not,”
said Tom, pouting.
Danny studied the fellow. “What did you say?”
Tom’s eyes grew
wide. He reached out and placed a hand on Danny’s arm. “Sweetie, the only
difference between the two of you… besides the obvious… is a tweak for eye and hair
color. Otherwise both of you have
got to be clones from the same donor,” Tom said, his voice dripping sympathy.
“Didn’t you know?”
Danny just stood there with his mouth open. A second or two later
he shut it, gave Tom an absent nod of thanks and walked out.
#
Dorinda slipped out of the stairwell and onto the fourteenth
floor. It was deserted. She’d managed to knock three times on the irreplaceable
actual oak door at the end of the hallway by the time the security guard caught
up with her and pinned both elbows behind her back.
“Let me go! I just want to talk to him!” she cried, and stomped
as hard as she could on his instep. Her rubber soled shoes didn’t faze him.
“Let her go, Hudson,” said an authoritative voice. Dorinda looked up; the door was open.
Standing in the doorway was the same old guy that she’d seen getting on the
elevator. The building security officer took one look at the old man’s
expression, dropped Dorinda’s elbows, and stepped back.
“But sir, what if she’s…”
“Just look at her, son,” interrupted Wainwright in a tone that
Dorinda found a little insulting. “Does she look like an assassin to you?” The
security guard’s face turned red. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t object when
Wainwright ushered Dorinda into his office and shut the door.
#
Danny hesitated outside the imposing brick building, but it
wasn’t the fifteen stories in front of him that made him stop to think. He was
going in there to find Dorinda — his sister. The concept gave him a headache and
made him want to go find some kweesh.
There was a desk in the lobby, behind which sat a vision of
exotic loveliness. Danny stopped and stared. He wondered whether the hair color
was a “tweak” or a dye. No matter; purple was an awesome color for hair to be.
“May I help you?” she asked with a smile.
#
Joe Wainwright hadn’t gotten rich by ignoring good advice, and
this little girl was making a lot of sense.
“Sir, this is political. They want to shut us down just because
of a few idiots who overindulge, but if you take away our water, you’ll have
all of us on the dole. Kweesh isn’t just a luxury item where I’m from. It’s how
we make our living. My dad knows that. Do you know how many lives your
company’s irrigation strategy will destroy?”
Joe looked at the girl, impressed by her eloquence. Then he
picked up his phone. “Sam? Yeah. Joe here. Let the Klump guy go, Sam. I’m not
pressing charges.”
#
And that was pretty much it as far as the adventuring went. Old Barney had a conference with Joe
Wainwright and his economic advisors. Minds were opened, asses were kicked,
computers were reprogrammed, and Ozyk got its water back. Mackenzie Senior was
so impressed with Danny’s initiative - and his intelligence compared to the
rest of his brothers once he got off the kweesh - that he sent him away to
school in Grissom City. He and Ariel Wainwright hit it off, and Danny ended up
a corporate vice president for Western Mountain Terraforming Corporation. Ariel,
being one of the few fertile females in her generation, eventually did her part
for the balance of the sexes by providing Danny with eight daughters and three
sons.
Old Barney died of a heart condition about four years after his
grand adventure, the same condition that had made him a poor cloning candidate
to begin with. Turns out he’d asked his buddy Mackenzie to donate some DNA to
the cause instead. Neither of the men had apparently given any thought to the
likely consequences of raising a little girl right next door to an entire
houseful of boys without telling any of them that she was their sister, but
things turned out pretty good anyway. Dorinda took over both the kweesh mill
and Barney’s machine repair business. It wasn’t long before she had a
reputation for being even more of a tech-wizard than her daddy had ever been. Over
the years she took it upon herself to teach each of her brothers’ children, cloned
and natural-born, male and female, purple-haired and otherwise, how to
disassemble and then reassemble a household appliance. Most times it even
worked afterwards.
END
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