Kim and Jean-Claude spoke for some time. She reassured him Xavier and Emma were safe.
‘Oh Mon Dieu. Zat is such a relief. Are they with you?’
‘I’d rather not say.’ Kim crossed her fingers. She imagined he could work out the clones’ location, but she was trying to stick to her promise not to tell Jean-Claude where they were.
‘Of course, of course, I understand.’ He sighed. ‘What can I do to ‘elp?’
‘Could you give us a bit more information? For instance, Xavier mentioned Osborne and Griffiths. Who are these people, do you know them?’
Kim heard a sigh again at the end of the line. There was a long pause and she wondered for a moment whether they had been disconnected.
‘It’s difficult Mrs Driver. Those two, zey are visionaries. Such plans they had, wonderful ideas to improve the quality of so many people’s lives. When they first began working on clone development as a special project, we all had ‘igh hopes of what they would achieve.’ He sighed again. ‘But then, things changed. They stopped sharing news of how their work was progressing. It took a while before I realised what was happening. You must understand, in the Nurture Unit, my clones, zey need a certain level of light to thrive and there came a time when there was barely sufficient to distinguish night from day in my area. I went to the management to complain. I thought perhaps they were economising on the kind of lightbulbs they were using, but no, they said they hadn’t changed anything. It turned out that the experimental laboratory was diverting more and more power away from the rest of the complex.’
‘So what happened?’ Despite herself, Kim was caught up in the man’s evident passion for his work.
‘That’s just it. Nothing ‘appened. And then one day, there was a malfunction which interrupted the feeding system.’
‘Yes, Xavier told us about that. He said several clones were - um - were lost.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say deconstructed, and dead sounded all wrong somehow.
‘It was a massive power outage and caused beaucoup de problèmes. When it was fixed, that was when I realised some of the clones had been changed.’
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