Taylor Five Read online

  They went to join Pam, hand in hand. The soldiers came and did what had to be done.

  the kidnapped staff from the refuge were not released. They were traced, after several more weeks, to a rebel stronghold in the highlands. All those who had survived the weeks of captivity also survived when the Kandahnese army surrounded the place and convinced the rebels to surrender. Before that time Mary and Ben Walker’s bodies had been recovered from the ruins in the refuge clearing; and his friends had learned that Clint had been “executed,” the same day he was captured. The forest fires of that summer, though they had seemed so terrible on the ground, made a small scar on the thousands on thousands of hectares of remaining forest. The Sultan of Kandah, once more secure in power, set aside another Lifeforce reserve, and in time Tessa Mahakam became warden of a new refuge. After the publicity around the events of that summer, and his tragic death, Dr. Suritobo’s book, The Forest People: Our Gentle Cousins, sold ten million copies in the first week it was published. All the profits went to wildlife conservation. It didn’t do anything to change the fate of the forests.

  Taylor Five Walker traveled halfway round the world, with her gene mother and the bodies of her dead, to England. There was a funeral and a memorial service, at which a lot of people said they were very sorry, and what wonderful people Tay’s mum and dad had been. Pam returned to her work after that, but Tay stayed in England for a while, living with her aunt and uncle in Southampton; and going to visit the cousins who were her only relatives on Mum’s side. She was one of the three Lifeforce Teenagers who were willing to talk to the media. While she was in England, she gave a few interviews for the newspapers and on radio (she refused to appear on television).

  “Lifeforce gave me my childhood,” she said. “They didn’t have to do that. They could have kept us away from everything human and normal and studied us to death. But they weren’t like that. They were real, human people. They did what they did because they thought they had no alternative, and they tried to do it well. I’ll always be glad that I lived in the great forest and knew the red apes in their natural home. I’ll always be glad I had those years with Mum and Dad and Donny, even though it ended so terribly. And I’m very glad to have been partly the means of giving M-389 medicines to the world. Now I’m going to try and go on having a wonderful time. . . . I’m going to live, do good things and be happy: because that’s what my mum and dad and Donny would have wanted. I’m going to have an amazing life.”

  Several months after the events of that summer she was back in Singapore. She was going to live there, with her gene mother, until she went to the Inheritors College, where she would meet Takami Three Abe and Nancy One Delacroix; and maybe the other two extraordinary ordinary teenagers, if they changed their minds. Pam was going to come with her, to make a home for Tay—and one other person who was very important to both of them. Pam would work at Lifeforce Canada for as long as Tay was at college. They would not be parted.

  She walked into the bustling arrivals hall at Changi Airport, and her heart stopped. She remembered another day, a different, small and shabby airport hall. She heard again her brother’s clear voice, shouting joyfully—Hey! There’s my sister!

  No Donny.

  But Pam Taylor was there, and with her, looking as plump and well brushed as a shaggy, shambling orangutan can ever be, was Uncle. The girl and the ape stood looking into each other’s eyes, remembering everything. The gibbons in the bamboo stand. A cake with green and yellow icing. The voices forever stilled, from the chorus that had sung “Rivers of Babylon,” coming down from the outcrop, on Mary Walker’s birthday. Nothing would be lost, because everything would be remembered and woven into the tapestry that was Uncle; that was Taylor Five. They told each other this, silently. Then they turned, hand in hand, to face the unknown future.

  There is no Kandah State on the island of Borneo. There is no “dry northeast corner” on Borneo either: my description of the savannah country is based on Baluran National Park in northeast Java. But it’s true that most of the rain forests in Borneo and Sumatra are gone, and it’s true that the orangutans are almost certainly doomed to lose their natural habitat, very soon.

  Ann Halam was born and raised in Manchester, England, and after graduating from Sussex University spent some years traveling throughout Southeast Asia. She now lives in Brighton, England, with her husband and her son. As well as being a children’s author, Ann Halam writes adult science fiction and fantasy books, as Gwyneth Jones. Her most recent book for Wendy Lamb Books was Dr. Franklin’s Island.

  Also by Ann Halam

  DR. FRANKLIN’S ISLAND

  Published by

  Wendy Lamb Books

  an imprint of

  Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  Copyright © 2004 by Ann Halam

  First published in Great Britain by Orion Children’s Books in 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Wendy Lamb Books is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Halam, Ann.

  Taylor Five / Ann Halam.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Taylor is still dealing with the fact that she is a clone produced by the same company that funds the Orangutan Reserve which is her home on the island of Borneo, when the Reserve is attacked and she flees with her younger brother and Uncle, the Reserve’s mascot.

  [1. Cloning—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Orangutan—Fiction. 4. Borneo—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H1283Tay 2004

  [Fic]—dc21

  2003007859

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89046-8

  v3.0