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50.
Alex and Maryan had two good years in their little world before everything changed.
They walked arm in arm along the beach. They sailed up and down the coast, bringing back fruit trees. For a while, they kept a monkey as a pet, but eventually it got lonely and ran away, probably looking for a female of its kind; Maryan and Alex missed him, but they couldn’t blame him.
They wanted to create a memorial in the valley, to put all the skulls and bones in one place, but after a short effort they realized that there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of them and they gave up. They had a small pile of skulls, and they threw those into the river with great reverence.
For a while they moved to the island, where they managed a small sheep farm on the high meadow. Then the fog and the eeriness of the sunken village with its burial vaults, and the old woman’s cottage where she had committed suicide, and the beach where he’d found Dot’s body...it all got to be too much and they moved back up to the sky island. They only returned to the village periodically to cull the sheep, to get wool, and sometimes to overnight when they were tired from fishing.
Before they killed the caves once and for all, Alex took Maryan on an exploration of his birthplace. The dead child still floated in its brine, as if made of chalk. Maryan held her palms to her cheeks and was horrified. The clone he’d killed was barely a skeleton anymore, for the healing waters had absorbed him. The birthing tanks were empty. He finally realized that the cave-in had injured the cave so much that it had died. Only the healing waters still showed that same spunky freshness. The area where he’d been born, which was choked with soil and rocks now, was lushly overgrown with grasses and vines. Tiny animals skittered about. Birds marched around, picking and pecking. The hole above was too large to close—he’d thought about bringing the manhole cover from the other place, but the cover was much too small. He did not have the time or the energy to fell trees and drag them over...he’d have to let this go.
The mushrooms still grew here and there, but it was obvious they were dying out. With them, and the miraculous water, Alex knew something precious had been lost that could never be recovered.
The decision to kill the caves came one night when they were sitting around their campfire. They’d had a good day, because they’d located a small field of wild wheat and they’d brought back a basket full of seeds—yes, she knew how to weave baskets, and they made pottery in their kiln—and they were talking about planting fields so they could bake bread and have oatmeal and so forth.
From the darkness came a faint cry that might or might now have been human.
Maryan rose and said darkly: “It’s a sister.”
“Maybe it’s only some small animal,” he said.
They listened, and did not hear anything more.
“I want to destroy the facility,” she said.
He thought about the nutrient mushrooms and the healing water.
“We can’t allow anymore clones to be born, Alex.”
“Okay...” he could see her reasoning. “But then we’d lose the water that saved your life.”
She thought about that. “Then you’ll have to do what’s necessary.”
“And that is?”
“Go in regularly and abort anything that’s growing.”
They thought about this in silence for a while, upset and hurt by their difference of opinions. He had a horrible image in his mind. “I could destroy the mutants without much problem. But what about the next you?” he finished in a whisper: “I couldn’t harm you.”
“Then the right thing is to destroy the entire place,” she said finally.
“Why not just let the healthy clones live?”
“Alex, you are the science major. Think! There is no gene pool. We are doomed. We can only beget inbred idiots—which brings me to the next thing. I’ve been thinking—I don’t want to have children anyway.”
He scratched his head. Of course she was right. He had been so busy surviving that he had not thought about the future much. There was a long silence during which he stirred the fire between them, adding a small log to keep it alive. “You realize that if we don’t let any more clones be born—.”
“I don’t want any more clones born,” she said with finality.
“Okay, then. It means you and I will live our lives out here together and then one of us will probably die first, leaving the other alone.”
She came and embraced him. “I’m sorry, Alex. That’s why we can’t permit another human being to suffer like this.”
They held each other, perhaps loving each other more than any two persons ever have, because they were each all there was, or would ever be.
The next day they set out together for the female birthing caves. The boat needed some repair, so they left it on the beach and walked through the alluvial plain. They each had a bow and arrows, but saw no rippers.
The cave door swung loosely, and the interior smelled of death. “I’m pretty sure the cave itself has died,” he told her.
“Let’s make sure.”
“Okay.”
They inspected the birthing tanks—nothing new growing. He had his heavy mallet with him, and now he smashed the tanks, one by one. When the mallet broke in two, he discarded it. He upended the remaining tanks. If none of them could hold fluid, nothing could grow there.
He knelt down and sniffed the water—it had a flat, greasy smell and debris floated in it. The cave was dead.
They made sure the manhole cover was secure, and on their way out they closed the door and barricaded it with rocks so it could not open again.
They left great smoky, roaring fires burning in the caves, that could be seen for miles at night, in order to eliminate any possibility of further unfortunates being born.
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