Image of an Imperfect God

 
 

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Copyright © 1999 by Shane Tourtellotte

First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 1999


“This is a bad idea, Susan.”

Susan Wrigley ignored her sister’s warning, hastening her tottery gait down the bright hospital corridor. She caught a brief glimpse of an emaciated man, unnervingly close to her age, in one semi-private room. She winced from the stench of antiseptics and excreta stabbing into her nose.

“Julia won’t want to see you, Susan. Shouldn’t that be obvious?”

“No, Mag, it shouldn’t.” She scanned the nearest door. Four numbers away. “Maybe this illness has shifted her obstinacy. Maybe she’ll want to reconcile.” Two numbers. “God knows there may not be much more time.”

“Don’t be saying things like that to her.”

Susan turned, mere feet from the door. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t say. Now come inside and be quiet--or stay here and be quiet.”

Susan marched through the door, head high in certainty of her belonging. A nurse was tending to the equipment around the nearer bed. She turned, and sucked in her breath. Her patient lifted her head, and her eyes narrowed to slits.

The faces were the same. The chins jutted the same way; the noses were identically long and thin; the ears had the same large, loose folds; the sad wrinkles cut as deeply. Their once-brown hair had faded to brittle white. Their eyes were the same muted blue, with the same two brown specks above one pupil--but the expressions behind those eyes were not the same.

Susan momentarily recoiled, unprepared for the absolute likeness. Julia wasn’t surprised, and didn’t lose a second.

“I don’t want that woman here!” Julia rasped. “Nurse, get her out!”

Recovering, Susan advanced. “I have a right to be here, Julia.”

“No you don’t. What are you waiting for?” Julia’s eyes left the nurse, settling past Susan. “Aunt Margaret! Why did you bring her here? Why?”

Margaret pulled gently at Susan’s shoulder. “You really should leave.”

“No.” Susan wrenched her shoulder free, but the nurse came, sternly determined. “No.”

“I won’t have my patient disturbed. You two will have to step outside.”

“No,” said Julia. “Let Margaret stay.”

The nurse let Margaret slip past, but firmly herded Susan into the hallway. She looked hard at the woman, the image of her patient, and a frown set upon her mouth.

“I have a right, Nurse--” She squinted at the plate above her breast. “Nurse Delgado. I have a right.” Her insistence was weak, defeated. “At least tell me what her condition is.”

Delgado relented slightly, shepherding Susan to a bench, mechanically helping her sit. “Ms. Wrigley came in with mild pneumonia a week ago. The infection left her susceptible to septicemia, which we caught and treated early. She’s recovering, and should be ready for discharge in--actually, you should speak with Doctor Qiu about details.”

“Has she--has she been in much pain?”

Delgado hesitated. “She’s as comfortable as we can make her. If you’ll excuse me.”

Susan hooked her wrist with knotted fingers. “Could she still die?”

The nurse held her expression steady. “From the septicemia? Unlikely.” She separated herself, but paused. “I want to check my assumption. You are Ms. Wrigley’s mother, correct?”

Susan laboriously raised herself to full height, still rather small. “That’s right.”

A detached mask fell over Delgado’s face. “I thought so. Good-bye.”

She walked back toward Julia’s room, leaving Susan Wrigley fuming behind her. She had seen that look before Delgado cut it off, the disapproval, the instant judgment and condemnation. It was so common of people, so narrow.

It was just like her daughter.


“I tried to tell her, Julia. She wasn’t listening.”

Margaret stroked her niece’s disheveled hair, a soothing action for both of them. “You should have stood in the way,” Julia said, not entirely in earnest. “She couldn’t get past you.”

Margaret smiled discreetly. She was a well preserved seventy-six, and yes, she probably could push around her sister if she wanted to. “Susan’s a stubborn woman,” she said instead. “That shouldn’t surprise you too much.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what, dear?”

“Say “You’re just like her.””

“Honest, Julia, I wasn’t going to say that.” But she had been implying it, apparently to the wrong effect.

Julia brooded for a moment. “You know how I feel about her, as well as anybody.”

Nurse Delgado reappeared. “Excuse me a moment. I have work to finish.”

“Go right ahead.” Margaret gave them space, and herself time for thought. Yes, she did know how Julia felt about her mother. She had carried that burden most of Julia’s life.

Susan Wrigley had rejected notions of family for thirty-five years. She had no misgivings about her own parenting abilities. Her concern was how the father would manage to wreck things, as husband, or live-in, or just as someone who interfered where he was no longer wanted or needed. Even anonymous sperm donation worried her, with its DNA roulette whose odds she couldn’t properly measure.

The Seed Project changed everything.

A daughter conceived entirely of her own genetic material; a duplicate; a clone. Susan knew it was right. How could she not know how to treat herself? Even the child’s clean-slate personality would be the same brand of slate. She couldn’t fail.

The futile protests against the cloning project merely strengthened her resolve. She scorned those people vainly trying to impose themselves on her child. This would be hers, in every possible way.

A month before her thirty-sixth birthday, a cell packed with nucleic material from her stomach lining divided in the Seed Project’s lab. She was implanted the next day, and within weeks knew the pregnancy had taken. It was a wild success, beating the low odds on a single implantation.

The pregnancy developed naturally--one would say uneventfully in most other circumstances. On a snowy day, a Cesarean section delivered her of one of the first dozen human clones in history. The procedure had gone perfectly--even though disaster already loomed.

Nurse Delgado left the monitors to flash and chirp at each other. “Your fever has nearly dissipated,” she told Julia, “and the sputum is beginning to clear. You can wait for Doctor’s Qiu’s confirmation, but I’d say you’re over the hump.”

Julia managed a smile. “Thank you, Alicia,” she said, then gave a short wave of her fingers toward the door. Delgado took the hint, and left them alone.

“I have something for you.” Margaret pulled a small wrapped and bowed box from her purse. “It’s a couple days late, but happy birthday.”

Julia took the box, more graciously than she felt. Turning forty-three didn’t make her want to celebrate. She picked slowly at the paper, her fingers barely able to get a purchase. She got it unwrapped just before Margaret would have interfered on her behalf.

“Oh, this is nice.” It was the latest in wrist-strips, providing time, weather, and news flashes, and lined with gold on its outer edges. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Oh, yes I should.”

Julia smirked. “All right, you should have. It just makes me feel awkward asking a favor of you, right after receiving this.”

“Go right ahead and ask.” Margaret dragged a chair over for herself.

Julia couldn’t mirror her aunt’s ebullience. “They don’t let me have a terminal here--God knows why--so I need you to do research for me.”

“The professional, asking for help? This must be important.”

“It is,” she replied, nettled by Margaret’s natural bantering attitude. “I need a list of nursing centers, anything within fifty kilometers. I’ll find a way to check them out later, but I need the list.” She waited to hear an answer. “I’m not looking for an argument.”

“I hadn’t given one … yet.”

“Well, don’t. My health can only get worse from here on. It’s time to accept that, and act accordingly.”

“And give up your work?”

“I can probably find some place that would allow me computer access. I could maintain a light schedule … or I could just let it go. It isn’t that important. So, will you help or not?”

“I’ll help,” Margaret said contemplatively. “You deserve that.”


She anticipated some time to think once she got back to her condominium. What she got was Susan meeting her almost before she got off the bus.

“You have spare room in your home, right, Mag? Silly, of course you do now. I want to get out of my hotel here. I’m not exactly made of money.”

“Susan--” Margaret sighed. “You’re welcome to stay, but there isn’t much point. Good afternoon, Mister Hutton,” she said to a neighbor.”

“There would--oh, do slow down--there would be if you’d do something.”

Margaret kept herself looking forward. “I’ve been her connection to our family for a quarter century. I think I’ve ‘done something.’”

She unlocked her door, and held it open for Susan. The living room was well lighted, even on that cloudy day. Photographs hung on walls and stood on nearly any open flat surface.

Susan quickly gravitated to one frame. Margaret and her late husband dominated the center, with their three children surrounding them. Julia was with them. She must have been about twenty--and looked like Susan had at thirty-five. Her smile was a shadow compared with all of theirs.

She turned the photo away from her eyes, wincing briefly. “I want her back in my life, Margaret. All you’ve done is shielded her from me, kept her to yourself, as if doing her some favor.”

Margaret bridled, but couldn’t respond. She didn’t know what she could say.

“Why won’t you answer?” Susan said. “Maybe it’s because you understand. Maybe you know you’ve helped her nurse a pointless grudge all her life. I did everything right for my daughter, and have nothing but estrangement to show for it. Do you think that’s somehow right?”

This time, Margaret had an answer. “Yes.” Maybe not fair; maybe not just. In its way, though, it was right.

Even before Julia was born, reports had begun to spread. Cloned animals were starting to show signs of premature aging. The news created alarm, then a backlash against the panic, then a slow, mounting certainty that the studies were right.

Scientists had a reason even before they were sure there was a problem: DNA aged. Every time a cell divided, DNA lost telomeres, pieces of useless information on the ends of the molecule, discarded during duplication. Eventually, the telomeres were used up, and any further division ate into the genes, eroding the foundation of life.

Reproductive cells came complete with full telomere buffers. DNA in the rest of the body reflected the age of the person. When Susan Wrigley, or anyone else, went to be cloned, their ova were stuffed with cellular material from their aged bodies.

Susan tried to keep Julia unaware of these fears. Still Julia learned, through constant precautionary hospital tests, pieces of chatter she heard, and the overpowering sense that something was unspeakably wrong.

She didn’t need overt signs, her menarche in fourth grade, the first indelible lines on her face in sixth grade, or the many smaller deviations from normal girlhood. She knew from the arm’s-length pity of classmates and teachers, and from how her mother was shunned by people who knew, even some family.

From her mother came the constant drumbeat that nothing was wrong with her, that her situation--never ‘illness,' or even ‘condition’--didn’t need to affect her as a person. Too late. It had. It did. No reassurances from her mother changed that, and as the symptoms became plainer, Julia’s resentment spiraled. When the break came, it was final … exactly as Julia intended.

Susan gasped. “What are you talking about? You think I deserve this treatment, for nothing but an accident of birth?”

“Accident?” Margaret erupted. “Julia was anything but an accident. You arranged her. Everything you could control about her coming into being, you controlled. You were so sure everything about her would be perfect, and why? Because it was you, all you. Your plan, your execution, your very own DNA, all yours. You didn’t notice the hubris you were also putting in, though. Oh, some ancient Greek playwright would have made his career writing about you.”

Susan swung around, dragging the photo frame in her hand with her, gouging the dark wood where it had rested. “How can you blame me? How can you hold me responsible?”

Margaret replied very quietly. “I don’t hold you responsible. Julia does, because you didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About your being willing to take personal credit for all her outstanding strengths, then distancing yourself from that one weakness you never imagined could happen. You still thought it was all due to you--all the good, but none of the bad. In her one defining trait, you denied Julia was yours. You disowned her.”

Susan’s hands shook. “Liar!”

“You never let Julia be completely your daughter,” Margaret said, still so gently. “I don’t blame you for her condition. I blame you for pretending it had nothing to do with you. If Julia blames you for worse … maybe she has a right.”

“She has no right. You have no right! I encouraged her to live a normal life, to not give in to the attitude that she was damaged, less than human.”

She thrust the hand holding the picture at her sister. “But she surrendered to it. She retreated, and you helped her. You validated all the prejudice and judgment heaped on me for forty-three years. That wasn’t support. It was justification to be a recluse, to turn her back on life. That’s what you’ve done for her.”

Shuddering and breathing hard, Susan shuffled toward the door, then turned back. “If her life has been miserable, you can blame yourself!” She found the picture frame in her hand, stared in surprise, then threw it. She had aimed for a cluster of photos on a table, but only managed to break hers against its leg.

Margaret let her go, weakly slammed door and all. She bent to collect the pieces, wincing at a twinge in her knees, then at a nick delivered by a shard of broken plastic. That confrontation had been lurking for twenty-five years. It was a miracle it had taken this long, but still it had happened. The enmity had spread; the split had widened. For a short, self-indulgent moment, Margaret wondered whether she would see her sister again.

She gazed at the photo, at herself, Matt, the kids, Julia. A picture of family; a picture of unity. That didn’t break quite so easily.

Her spasm of pity faded. She had work to do for Julia. For family.

As she sat at her terminal, waiting to get on-line, Susan’s spiteful words picked at the bruise they had created. She hadn’t been right … but she wasn’t so far wrong. Combined with what she had experienced at the hospital, it formed a dreary picture. One Margaret decided to try to brighten.

She set to work, with two jobs now in mind.


“Sorry this took two days, Julia. I hope this makes up for the delay.”

Julia held out her hands for the gift, an arrangement of cut flowers in a self-monitoring bowl. “They’re lovely.” She took a sniff, then stretched unsteadily to set them on a table. A coughing fit racked her.

“I’ve got them.” Margaret relieved her of the bowl with a spare hand.

Julia gulped a fresh breath. “Thanks. Oh, give me the instruction booklet out of that side pocket. That much more reading for me.”

Margaret set the booklet by Julia on the bed, then held out her own slip of paper. “I have everything here, and on disk,” she said, patting her purse. “I went farther afield than you asked.”

“All right, but I prefer something close by.”

“I don’t mean farther in distance.” She unfolded the paper and handed it over. “The first group is for nursing homes, like you asked. Those two addresses in the middle are hospices.”

Margaret waited for a reaction, but all Julia evinced while glancing at the listings was the shudder of a suppressed cough. “At the bottom are the important listings. They’re research centers, hospital and university, doing work into ATTs.”

Julia skipped a beat--she of anybody had heard of artificial telomerase therapies--and then tightened. “Not interested,” she said, folding the paper. “You must have heard what happened with those first subjects, their whole bodies a mass of runaway cancers within weeks.”

“Years ago, Julia. Lessons learned.”

“Well, I’d rather not submit myself to their trial and error. You said you had a disk?”

Margaret reached into her purse for it. “They’re trying to help people, reverse aging across the board. They certainly might help you. If you do nothing ….”

Julia filled the heavy silence. “I know what happens if I do nothing. I can accept that. I do accept it.”

Margaret had the disk out, but withheld it. “Julia, you know medical facilities are hotbeds for infections. You put yourself into a nursing center, and with your compromised immunity, something could carry you off before you have a chance to fight. You’d be gone before your time.”

Smiling tolerantly, Julia put her hand on Margaret’s. “I appreciate your caring, but … I think my time is now. I’ve known it would be this way since … since I can remember.”

Julia withdrew her hand, snatching away the disk as she did. She shook out the paper and read it again, paying attention to the middle section.

She was right about that, Margaret thought. She had known about her fate essentially from the beginning, and prepared herself. Even as her affliction pushed her into a shell and severed her from her mother, it steeled her for complete responsibility for herself.

Julia left home the day after graduating from high school, not telling anybody where she had gone. She entered college as planned that August, paying her own way. Her mother found her address on-campus, visited, and went away crushed and angered at the hostile reception from her only child.

Checks came at irregular intervals. They went back more regularly. When Julia found her first junior semester paid off, she wrangled long with the campus bursar to cancel the payment and make it herself. That episode thankfully ended the unwelcome attentions.

She went straight from graduation into work as a freelance researcher. She had the knack of sifting useful knowledge out of the great mass of undifferentiated information, of making neglected databases yield troves of information. She could even search paper and microfilm resources effectively--but didn’t prefer to.

She worked best from home, being useful without being exposed. She was easily good enough to work in a firm, but refused. Layers of disability protection laws would descend to cocoon her, incurring her employer’s resentment, injuring her pride. She told people that, and it was the truth--though it wasn’t the reason.

Julia lived frugally, saving all she could. Her working lifespan would be shorter than most, compared to a senescence promising to be at least as long. It was the only responsible thing she could do.

Her body didn’t deteriorate in perfect synchrony. She escaped the arthritis that pestered her aunt and mother; her mental faculties remained almost untouched; her heart stayed strong, with the modest wear of her modest age. Still, too much inside degraded at a gallop--along with the outside. She soon looked every day her mother’s age.

It was her immunity that did her in, her susceptibility to nagging maladies, and to hardened, treatment-resistant illnesses like the pneumonia that brought her to the hospital. She could possibly keep working, but that took will, a will consumed by the single-mindedness of her life, now perhaps exhausted.

“It’s not like you to quit,” Margaret told her niece.

Julia turned. “It’s not like you to nag,” she said, then returned to her studious repose.

Margaret subsided, then readied herself for a sharper exchange. “My mistake. You are being typically self-centered.”

Julia dropped the list. “Why this sudden viciousness?” she croaked. “If I’ve been self-centered, it’s because I haven’t wanted, or expected, anyone else to take care of me. I assume responsibility for myself. I deserve respect for that. At least I don’t deserve petty shaming.”

“That’s been your shield, Julia, all these years. Look after yourself, and you’ll be spared other people having to look at you at all. You’ve kept your life self-contained. Fine, nobody has gotten through to you, but the opposite’s true, too. You haven’t made a difference to anybody.”

“My work’s made a difference.” She looked hard at the wall. “I’ve been useful.”

“But not meaningful.”

Julia glared balefully. “Not even to you?”

“Family is one thing. Outside your little circle formed by accident of birth, though--”

“Strange phrase to use: “accident” of birth.”

Margaret shuddered at a recent memory, but carried on. “Outside a few family members, it’ll be as if you never existed. You can have oblivion, you can have meaninglessness, if you want it. For once, though, you might think of doing something other than efficiently preparing for death.”

They stared in silence at each other, Julia’s eyes hard with defiance, Margaret’s soft with resignation. The chatter of monitors was the only sound for a long time.

“That’s all I have to say,” Margaret finally told Julia. “Glad you enjoy the flowers.” She shuffled into the fluorescent brightness of the hallway, the weight of more than age pulling down her shoulders.


Dinner was solitary and quiet, as usual. Margaret worked at her computer afterward, catching up on notes to friends and updates about Julia to family.

She saved Susan for last. She was back in Michigan: Margaret had called the hotel to learn that. She deserved a note, some kind of reconciliation--but Margaret’s long, blank stare at the monitor summoned no words. Her mind would not recant; she could not force her fingers to.

The phone jarred her out of a fugue. She picked up after three rings, and found Susan on the screen. Her eyelids were dry but raw, and she spoke raggedly.

“Mag, I was so hurt by what you said … then I kept thinking about it, and it hurt more … because I knew you were right.”

A shudder racked her, doubling her over, almost out of view. Margaret nearly called out in alarm before Susan recovered. Her eyelids were dry no longer.

“How could I admit it? My genes, my cells, my age, all made into her. The clock inside her, the same as mine. How … why would I want to admit it? Poor Julia, rushing pell-mell into age, death … her body perfectly synchronized to break down the same time as mine. So fast … so fast ….”

Margaret quietly watched her sister sob. No, the parallel wasn’t perfect, their times not quite so foreordained--but what did such trivial facts mean in the face of the ultimate fear?

“I can’t stand being alienated … left ignorant … we’re more than mother and daughter, as close as people can be … we should be … so much time lost, lost, and all my fault ….”

Margaret felt tears welling up behind her eyes. She looked around desperately, finally snatching a napkin off the kitchen table just before she too broke.


Julia couldn’t manage to refuse the wheelchair offered her, but did get Margaret to push it rather than Nurse Delgado. She had some standards of pride.

"I said I’d drive you home first, Margaret. Can’t have you walking home, or waiting for some bus.”

“I took a bus to your house to bring the car over. I can take another one back.”

“A waste of your time.” But Julia stopped arguing.

The front doors slid open for their party. Clouds floated overhead, a sheet of cotton picked apart at its edge. The sun hung beneath them, taking the chill out of the wind. Julia lifted herself out of the wheelchair, spasmed briefly with suppressed coughs, then stood erect. She leaned on Margaret, just with the fingers, disdaining support but desiring the balance. Her other arm cradled her bag, lumpy with clothes, books, and a flowerpot.

She spoke a few grateful words to Nurse Delgado as she returned inside with the wheelchair. “Not a bad day,” she then said to Margaret, squinting to shade out the sun.

“Pretty good.” They set off into the parking lot together. “Enough to make you glad you’re alive.”

“You never were subtle. I suppose that’s for the best.”

Margaret held back a smile: she could be a little subtle. “I am glad you made this decision, Julia. It’s the right one.”

“It’s liable to get me killed. I’m liable to wish I’d never done it.” She sighed slowly. “I don’t expect it to help me, but if they learn something that can make life easier for other people like me, or even for average people, I guess it’s worthwhile.”

Margaret delicately moved closer, taking care not to throw off Julia’s balance. “I’ll be around for you.”

“You’d better be. You got me into this, and I’m dragging you along with me.”

Margaret didn’t take Julia’s attitude wrong. She understood the fear it masked.

They reached Julia’s dull-silver car, just as Margaret’s fingers found the envelope in her purse. “What’s that?” Julia asked sharply.

“It’s … from my sister. I printed it out from the e-mail she sent me, but it was meant for you.” She saw the reaction she expected. “You don’t have to take it, but I hope you will. She’s … done a lot of soul-searching.”

Julia’s head shifted in an embryonic nod. “Your influence, I presume.”

“Well, perhaps ….”

“Perhaps, nothing. She wouldn’t shift an inch by herself.” She entered the car, leaving Margaret to realize a moment too late that Julia intended on driving. “Are you getting in?”

Margaret circled the car to enter the passenger’s side. Once inside, she found Julia with her hand on the mirror, frozen in the act of adjustment. Her eyes were locked on the mirror, contemplating her reflection, her other self. It was a long time before she budged.

Julia took deliberate care strapping herself in, setting her bag just right between them, and starting the car. Then, as the engine hummed, with all the outward show of being an afterthought, she took the envelope from Margaret’s hand and stuffed it into her bag.

Margaret said nothing. Best not to strain that pride. Besides, she trusted Julia to open it, eventually. If she was brave enough to offer herself to the telomerase researchers, she could surely read that letter.

She never doubted it for a moment. Like mother, like daughter.


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