Swans and Klons Read Online Free Page B

asking me about her, then?”
    “No reason.” Salmon Jo pressed her face into the beanbag chair.
    Suddenly Rubric realized Salmon Jo was scared.
    “Schatzie, tell me,” she whispered. “You can tell me anything.” She stroked Salmon Jo’s soft cheek.
    Salmon Jo lifted her face from the beanbag and muttered, “I was wondering if they took Hollyhock away for treatment.”
    Rubric struggled to understand. “Treatment is, like, when they lock you up and give you brain medication and electric shocks and stuff. Pannas and girls—humans—don’t get treatment. Only Klons who are veruckt. If something goes wrong and they go bad.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. That’s not what Panna Lobe said.”
    Rubric started to feel scared too. “What did she say about treatment?”
    “That in certain rare instances it can happen to humans too. She said it’s so shameful, they always cover up when a human has to have treatment, so people don’t really know about it. Or just no one talks about it. So I started thinking about Hollyhock and all the weird stuff she said. Maybe there was nothing wrong with her kidneys. Maybe they didn’t have any medication that could help her, and they had to take her away for treatment.”
    Salmon Jo didn’t say anything for a while. Rubric wanted to prod her more, but she made herself stay quiet. If she kept badgering Salmon Jo, she would just get all belligerent.
    “The good news,” Salmon Jo said finally, with a crooked smile, “is that a lot of women of my Jeepie Type become Doctors. In fact, forty percent of Doctors are my Jeepie Similars.”
    “Wow!” Rubric said. It would be the most prestigious thing in the whole world if she had a Doctor for a schatzie. Doctors ran Society. “Some of the Doctors I see on edfotunement do look a bit like you. You know, if you had a lot of wrinkles. So what’s the bad news?”
    “Apparently a lot of women of my Jeepie Type have a crisis during their late teens or early twenties. Panna Lobe said they never told me this before because it might mess me up. If my Jeepie Type does well, they usually become Doctors. And some aren’t chosen for careers and are just part of the happy majority. But some of the ones who don’t do very well are set to work supervising the Kapo Klons. She called it being a manager.”
    Rubric gasped. The Kapo Klons had the job of bossing around the other Klons and making sure they were doing what they were supposed to do. That way, humans wouldn’t have to waste valuable time dealing directly with Klons, and humans could get on with their business of achieving personal fulfillment. But, naturally, the Kapo Klons needed to have some humans above them to check that everything was going smoothly. There were only a few Jeepie Types that this kind of career appealed to, not enough to fill all the positions. So it was the only career that humans could be compelled to do. Any other career was purely on a voluntary basis, but the Doctors could actually tell a person they had to supervise Kapo Klons. It was almost like a punishment.
    “Not only that,” Salmon Jo said, nestling farther into the beanbag chair and pulling the neck of her tunic up around her chin, “Panna Lobe said some women of my Jeepie Type were so messed up they weren’t even allowed to supervise the Kapo Klons. Some of them had to have treatment.”
    “This is all totally veruckt!” Rubric said. “I think she was just trying to scare you. I don’t believe it.”
    But Rubric did believe it. She knew every Jeepie Type was different, but Salmon Jo seemed more different than anyone else. And she did all this veruckt stuff like climbing walls and breaking into tunnels. Panna Lobe had once told the class that Salmon Jo’s Jeepie Type had a predilection for breaking rules. And since Society didn’t have any rules beyond the Golden Rule, Salmon Jo had to invent rules to break.
    “She did scare me,” Salmon Jo said. “Especially since no one at academy