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"How do you think I got the genes I worked with? I implanted my own altered DNA into denucleated eggs."
"God help us, they were all your own twins?"
"I'm not the monster you think I am," said Volescu. "I brought the frozen embryos to life because I had to know what they would become. Killing them was my greatest sorrow."
"And yet you did it -- to save yourself."
"I was afraid. And the thought came to me: They're only copies. It isn't murder to discard the copies."
"Their souls and lives were their own."
"Do you think the government would have let them live? Do you really think they would have survived? Any of them?"
"You don't deserve to have a son," said Sister Carlotta.
"But I have one, don't l?" He laughed. "While you, Miss Carlotta, perpetual bride of the invisible God, how many do *you* have?"
"They may have been copies, Volescu, but even dead they're worth more than the original."
He continued laughing as she walked down the corridor away from him, but it sounded forced. She knew his laughter was a mask for grief. But it wasn't the grief of compassion, or even of remorse. It was the grief of a damned soul.
Bean. God be thanked, she thought, that you do not know your father, and never will. You're nothing like him. You're far more human.
In the back of her mind, though, she had one nagging doubt. Was she sure Bean had more compassion, more humanity? Or was Bean as cold of heart as this man? As incapable of empathy? Was he all mind?
Then she thought of him growing and growing, from this too-tiny child to a giant whose body could no longer sustain life. This was the legacy your father gave you. This was Anton's key. She thought of David's cry, when he learned of the death of his son. Absalom! Oh Absalom! Would God I could die for thee, Absalom, my son!
But he was not dead yet, was he? Volescu might have been lying, might simply be wrong. There might be some way to prevent it. And even if there was not, there were still many years ahead of Bean. And how he lived those years still mattered.