Immunity Index by Sue Burke (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

Henry IV, Jr., or Henry IV, Part II? Is it true that if you clone yourself four times, one will be Chinese? What do you call a pessimistic clone? A double negative. What do you call a female clone? A clunt.

In high school some kids began to say a boy named Hassan had a twin brother who was sent to live with an uncle so no one would think he was a dupe. Others said he really was a dupe. Then they found out he used a hearing aid, so he must have been a failed design. People started mocking him—and Avril had been one of them. He went home early that day and never came back.

She looked at the video again, pausing it to study the woman’s face. It could be a fake. Her father made enemies in his job, and criminals would try to hurt him by hurting his family.

Her mother called. “Your father and I are coming to see you.”

“So I’m a dupe.”

“We’ll talk.” She was using a video call, obviously at work, judging from her surroundings. “We care about you more than anything else.” Avril hadn’t turned on her video, so Mom was staring at a blank screen. “Some things have to be said in person. We’ll be there in an hour, two at most.”

“Okay.” Mom would have denied it over the phone. Having to talk in person meant that it was true. Arriving that soon meant they’d pay extra to have their car travel in the express lane.

“We love you, Avy.” When Avril didn’t answer, her mother ended the call.

Avril considered the equation of love. DNA plus technicians plus womb equals family. Would the equation survive peer review? Her peers. The whole world.

An hour. She tried to do some homework to distract herself, differential equations. She planned—had planned, it wasn’t going to happen now—to specialize in bioinformatics. To fight back against the mumbo jumbo, to fight for freedom.

Studying made no sense anymore. She slammed the button to power off her screen. She turned on some music. That didn’t make her feel better, either.

Eventually, a knock sounded at her door—and there were her parents, looking as somber as if someone had died. Well, yes, their daughter was as good as dead.

Her mom reached out to hug her. Avril stood stiffly.

Her father took a few steps in. “We should leave our electronics here and go talk outside.”

Avril shrugged. It didn’t matter anymore.

Silently, they rode the elevator to the first floor. Her father sniffled a few times. He seemed to have that cold that was going around. She led them to a couple of benches facing each other along the lake, shadowed by trees. The afternoon sun was shining a little too warm even through the leaves. She sat facing them. For a long moment, the only sounds were the distant voices of students on their way to and from classes.

“You deserve the whole truth,” Dad said, as if under courtroom oath and looking as uncomfortable as a witness facing hostile examination. “We really wanted a child.”

“We did,” Mom said, “more than anything else. We were going to get in vitro fertilization, but we both carry recessive genes, we found out, for cystic fibrosis, and some cancer genes, and it would have been complex to edit out. So we decided to get a third-party embryo.”

“So I’ve seen. I’m a dupe.”

“You’re completely ordinary,” Dad said quickly.

“But I have engineered DNA.”

“It was legal then,” he said. “Or not illegal, at least. All we wanted was a healthy child. And that’s what we got. The natural law doctrine came later, and it’s based on irrational fear.”

“I’m healthy and ordinary.” Her tone of voice said she didn’t believe it.

He said, “You’ve lived long enough to know that’s true.”

“So you just, what, went to a lab and told them what you wanted?”

“Actually,” her mother said, “they had a catalog. We took one pretty much at random because we … as he said, all we wanted was a healthy child. We thought of some letters, SD because I grew up in South Dakota, and took one that included SD in the serial number.”

“I was a serial number. You bought me and that was that.” She looked at them, both sitting still with their musty tattoos and piercings, as if the slightest movement would unleash a torrent of emotion. “Why lie about it? You always say, don’t lie.”

“At the time, it wasn’t illegal.” He paused to sneeze. “Sort of a gray area. That changed, and … I come under a lot of scrutiny for my job.”

Avril wasn’t going to cry, wasn’t going to rage. Wasn’t going to forgive. “You always said I looked a lot like Grandma.”

Her mother glanced at him. “Small children don’t understand family secrets, and we needed to tell you something you could repeat because we knew you would repeat it.” Her sentence sounded rehearsed. “But now you’re old enough to understand, and you need to. We’re your parents, not your biological parents, but still your real parents. We love you, Avy, we always did and we always will.”

“They’re going to kick me out of college.”

“First they have to prove your legal status,” he said.

“They can tell just by looking.”

“It will take more than that.” He sniffled again. “They’d need conclusive evidence, and in the meantime there’s a case that should overturn the entire executive order declaring classes of citizens. It’s clearly unconstitutional. There should be an injunction within a month.”

“In the meantime,” Avril said, “dupes get beat up and stuff.”

“You’re entitled to legal protection regardless of your status.”

Yeah, that’ll work. “We know what the Supreme Court will do. Maybe I should come home.”

Her mother sighed. “If you want to. If you’d feel safer.”

“By the time it gets to the Supreme Court,” he said, “a lot might change. Do what you feel you need to do in order to protect yourself, and we’ll support whatever you decide, but this isn’t the end of the world.”

It was up to her. Avril stared at the lake,