The Sixth Day

by Terry Bisson

  “Twenty minutes ago,” said the guard, studying his security monitor. “According to this, you just entered a restricted area.”

  “Son of a bitch has my thumb!” Talia whispered to Marshall.

  Marshall turned to the guard. “Deactivate Talia,” he barked with the authority of a man who was used to being obeyed. “Put out a security alert. And seal Drucker’s office. I want it surrounded by our people.”

  The guard nodded and reached for his control board.

  “Come on!” said Marshall, breaking into a run toward the elevators. Talia, Wiley, and Vincent followed, their arguments forgotten for now.

  * * *

  In a corridor deep within the building, Adam paused at yet another security point. He pressed Talia’s thumb to the pad. But instead of a green light came an angry buzz, accompanied by a red light. He’d been rejected.

  He heard footsteps approaching. With them came a cold, suspicious voice: “Can I help you?”

  Adam turned so quickly that, before the guard knew what was happening, the muzzle of Adam’s foosh gun was less than an inch from the tip of his nose.

  “Yes,” Adam said. “You can stick your thumb on that pad.”

  * * *

  The most secure office in the building was also the most elegant.

  Michael Drucker sat at his one-hundred-percent endangered teak desk, scrolling through some financial stats on his computer screen, when the door to his office suddenly burst open.

  Drucker jumped, his heart pounding—

  Then he relaxed. It was Marshall, followed by Talia, Wiley, and Vincent.

  “Thank God!” Marshall said as soon as he saw that his boss was safe. He stuck his foosh gun back into his jacket.

  “What?” asked Drucker. “More fundamentalists?”

  “No. Adam Gibson,” Marshall said. “We think he’s in the building.”

  Drucker shook his head reproachfully. “Why wasn’t he taken care of already? You had all night!”

  Marshall took on the hangdog expression of a small boy being disciplined. “Sir, he’s combat trained. He won medals in the Rainforest War…”

  Drucker interrupted. “And there’s one of him and four of you. Well, there’s two of him, but you get my point. He’s got a wife and kid, right?”

  “Yes sir,” said Marshall.

  “Get them. We might need the leverage.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Drucker turned back to his monitor to let them know they were dismissed. As they filed out of the office, he called after them. “You know it costs me a million-two each time we clone one of you people. Try to be worth the money.”

  Twenty-five

  Adam used the gun as a prod, keeping the guard in front of him as he penetrated deeper and deeper into the Replacement Technologies lab system.

  He walked down a dark corridor, opened another door, and followed a gently curving corridor that opened into …

  Adam stopped, stunned.

  He had found the Embryonic Tanks.

  He stared. Each tank contained an adult-sized faceless human, floating in gel, like a giant embryo. He gazed at the nearest one. It had no features, no gender, no personality, no life, and, he was certain, no soul.

  The guard knew what Adam was feeling. He almost felt pity for his captor.

  “They’ll kill you for seeing this,” he said.

  “They’re doing their best already,” Adam said, prodding the guard once more with the foosh gun. “Where’s Dr. Weir?”

  * * *

  Griffin Weir sat slumped at his desk with his head in his hands. He had come to his office not to work but to mourn. He hardly looked up as the security guard entered.

  He waved a hand dismissively. “I know about the intruder,” he said. “Your office called. Everything’s under control.”

  The security guard suddenly crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  “It’s not under control,” said Adam. Before Weir could respond, he was behind the desk and the gun was at the doctor’s temple.

  “You had me cloned.”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Weir spoke slowly, without moving. The foosh gun was less than an inch from his head. And yet Adam had the distinct impression that he felt no fear, only resignation.

  “You had to have my whatcha-call-it,” Adam said. “The thing in the RePet commercials.”

  “Your syncording,” Dr. Weir said. “We had it.”

  “Give it to me!” Adam said, prodding him to his feet with the foosh gun. “I want my life back.”

  Dr. Weir crossed slowly to a wall shelf filled with disks in plastic cases. He pulled one and handed it to Adam.

  “How did you get this?” Adam demanded. “I’ve never been…”

  Dr. Weir pointed to a device on a corner table that Adam recognized immediately. It looked like a hood with cables attached.

  “Of course,” Adam whispered. “The vision test!”

  Dr. Weir nodded. “Only it didn’t test your vision. It took your syncording, a sample of DNA, and scanned your thumb. We had you on file, so to speak, so we could act quickly when we were told you were killed.”

  “Told I was killed?” Adam prodded the doctor again with the business end of the foosh gun. “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I’ll have to show you,” said Weir.

  He pulled another syncording disk from the shelf and put it into the drive of a computer on his desk.

  “This is Michael Drucker’s. You don’t become one of the world’s richest men without making enemies.”

  Dr. Weir hit a key.

  “We back up his mind religiously…”

  The screen went white, then filled with a familiar image—the view from the inside of a Whispercraft.

  Only it was from the backseat, Adam noticed. The passenger’s seat. It was Drucker’s point of view.

  Hank was up front in the pilot’s seat. The bodyguard sat beside Drucker in the back. Outside, blowing snow obscured the trees as the Whispercraft landed near the mountain cabin.

  Hank called back over his shoulder. “You own the Road Runners, right?”

  “Among other things,” said Drucker. “You a fan?”

  “I’m a fan of both your teams,” said Hank, as he shut the turbines down, slid the door open, and jumped out onto the snow.

  “I’ll have to get you some tickets,” said Drucker as he prepared to follow.

  Suddenly the door to the cabin burst open, and Tripp ran out, firing.

  “Hey!” Hank yelled. He held up one hand, and buckled as he was hit once, twice—

  Adam winced in pain as he watched his best friend die for the second—really, the first—time.

  Drucker backed up, raising an arm into his line of vision. There was a flash of plasma from the muzzle of Tripp’s foosh gun, then a white light, and then nothing at all.

  * * *

  Adam stared at the blank screen, numb.

  “Fundamentalists,” said Dr. Weir. “Killed everybody on board.”

  “It should’ve been me,” said Adam.

  “We thought it was you,” said Dr. Weir. “To resurrect Drucker, we had to cover up the incident.”

  Adam walked back to the security guard and dragged him across the room to one of Dr. Weir’s large computer screens.

  “Keep talking,” he said.

  “We cloned everyone,” said Dr. Weir. “By the time we figured out you had switched places, it was too late.”

  Adam used the security guard’s thumb to log onto Dr. Weir’s computer. He scrolled to the security screens.

  “They’re trying to kill me,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Because there are two Adam Gibsons,” said Dr. Weir. “That’s proof that human beings are being cloned. Which makes you very dangerous to Michael Drucker.”

  Adam dug the earpiece out of the guard’s ear and inserted it into his own. He then started pulling off the guard’s clothes, meanwhile speaking over his shoulder to Dr.
Weir.

  “I don’t have much time. Tell me how that’s a threat to Drucker,” he said.

  “Drucker was killed three years ago,” said Dr. Weir. “We cloned him then, and again yesterday.”

  “So?” Adam started pulling on the guard’s pants.

  “If that came out, Drucker would be destroyed. In every way.” Weir watched with curious calm as Adam pulled off his shirt and shoes and put on the guard’s. The shoes were a better fit than the shirt.

  “A clone has no rights,” Dr. Weir explained. “A clone can’t own anything. Drucker would lose all this. He’d lose everything because Drucker would be legally dead.”

  * * *

  The central command post for the high security sector of Replacement Technologies was a Plexiglas fortress with a bank of video screens covering one wall.

  It looks, Marshall thought, like a discount electronics store.

  A guard worked the displays while Wiley and Marshall scanned the screens, along with Henderson, the duty officer.

  “There!” the guard said. He pointed out a freeze-frame image of Adam, running down a curved corridor with a security guard hostage.

  “That’s on tape,” growled Henderson. “We don’t need to see where he’s been. We need to find out where he is now.”

  “Jesus,” Marshall mused. “We have cameras all over this…”

  He suddenly broke off. Motioning for Wiley to follow him, he ran out the door.

  The guard and the duty officer watched them leave, confused.

  Wiley, stumbling, caught up with Marshall. “What’s up?”

  Marshall, still sprinting, spoke back over his shoulder. “What area is so sensitive that we don’t allow cameras?”

  Both men ran full tilt toward the Embryonic Tanks and the Main Lab.

  * * *

  Adam buttoned the guard’s jacket. It was tight, but passable. Just barely.

  “Drucker will do anything,” said Dr. Weir. “Anything to destroy the evidence.” He paused for effect. “And you’re the evidence.”

  Adam ejected Drucker’s syncording disk from the computer. “This is evidence too.”

  He picked up a big, flat gas-plasma monitor from the desk, yanked out its plugs, and hoisted it to his shoulder.

  With the foosh gun, he motioned toward the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Adam held his gun in his pocket, covering Dr. Weir who walked a few steps ahead of him. He carried the monitor on his shoulder to hide his face from the security cameras positioned at strategic points in the corridor.

  “How can you do it?” Adam asked. “How can you create these freaks of science for Drucker?”

  “Clones are not freaks,” said Dr. Weir. “They’re human beings.”

  “Except human beings are born,” said Adam. “Clones are cooked up in your lab.”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s no difference.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Yes, I can,” said Weir. “My wife died today. She was the first. She really died five years ago. Cloning was the only way to save her.” He paused, staring at Adam.

  Adam stared back.

  “I could have saved her again today, but she wouldn’t let me. She truly believed that she somehow didn’t belong.”

  They arrived at a freight elevator.

  Adam nodded, and Weir pressed the button.

  “Well, maybe she was right,” Adam said.

  “No!” said Dr. Weir, his face twisted with anguish. “I respect her decision but I know for a fact that she was wrong. Whatever mystical thing it is that makes us human, whether it’s a soul that comes from God or a soul that we find in ourselves, the Catherine of the last five years had it every bit as much as the Catherine of before.”

  Adam looked at Dr. Weir with new respect—or at least understanding. He was about to say something when the elevator arrived.

  The door opened and Weir got in.

  Adam followed, still holding the gun on him.

  * * *

  Marshall and Wiley ran full tilt down a long, curved corridor.

  The light was on in Dr. Weir’s office.

  They burst through the door, into the control room overlooking the Embryonic Tanks, but they were empty, except for the security guard, unconscious on the floor.

  Damn! thought Marshall. Still one step ahead.

  * * *

  “Fine,” said Adam, as he and Dr. Weir stepped out of the elevator and started down a deserted corridor. “You loved your wife, but that doesn’t give you the right to play God.”

  “Play God?” said Dr. Weir. “If saving lives is playing God, I’ve been playing God since I left medical school. And I plan to go on playing God!”

  He turned to face Adam, his voice growing shrill. “We’ve saved hundreds of thousands with cloned organs, and there is no medical difference between saving someone by using a cloned heart and saving someone by cloning the person. Sometimes that’s the only way to save a life, and if that’s the only way, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do!”

  Adam shook his head. “Doctor, if it’s all about saving lives, what about my life? You ruined my life. You created this thing that has taken my place. You keep cloning the killers who are coming after me.”

  Dr. Weir’s anguish showed in his eyes. “Why do you think I’m telling you all this?” he asked. “It’s not because of the gun. It’s because I can do nothing to stop what they’re trying to do to you, and what they might do to your family.”

  Adam was on him in an instant. He grabbed the doctor by the collar and lifted him almost off the floor.

  “What about my family?”

  “Drucker has to kill one of you,” said Dr. Weir. “If he can’t kill you, he’ll go for the other one. And your family could get killed in the process.”

  Adam put him down. He pulled the syncording disk out of his pocket and waved it in Dr. Weir’s face.

  “Tell him I have this. Tell him if he touches my family, I’ll use it!”

  Twenty-six

  It was a quiet, ordinary, peaceful suburban home.

  Well, once it had been quiet, ordinary, and peaceful. But no longer.

  The garage door was already a splintered ruin covered with a tarp. Now the front foor was giving way as Talia and Vincent, guns drawn, burst through into the living room of the Gibson home.

  Empty.

  Motioning with her trim little chin, Talia sent Vincent upstairs. She heard him emptying cabinets, overturning tables, dumping drawers. A messy searcher.

  Her instincts were different, but just as thorough.

  She shuffled through the papers on a desk; flipped through the mail; scanned the items on a bulletin board.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Walking quickly into the kitchen she spotted what she was looking for on the refrigerator display:

  CLARA’S RECITAL, 5:30 PM @ school

  On the other side of the city, in the vast Replacement Technologies complex, Marshall sprinted down a corridor.

  His gun was drawn, as were the guns of Wiley and the two uniformed security guards who followed him.

  The corridor ended at a fire door—and the sight of Dr. Weir, handcuffed to the door.

  While he unlocked the cuffs, Marshall opened the door and looked out.

  The sun was blinding, the sidewalk empty, and there was no sign of Adam Gibson.

  Twenty-seven

  Only one theatrical event is more nervously awaited, more avidly attended, more fraught with peril and more saturated with ego than Italian High Opera.

  A grade school play.

  Seated on folding chairs, a select throng of well-dressed parents shuffled and coughed nervously, awaiting the debuts of their pampered children.

  Meanwhile, unseen by them, a helicopter was landing in the parking lot at the back of the school.

  Fwump fwump fwump …

  An SUV pulled up beside it.

  Vincent and Talia got out of the
helicopter. Vincent carried a teddy bear in one hand.

  A handler and three dogs got out of the SUV.

  The dogs were genetically engineered K-9s. If the wires from their craniums to their collars hadn’t given them away, their behavior would have.

  They jumped out of the van and sat in a straight row, at attention, awaiting orders. They were perfectly matched, perfectly behaved.

  And perfectly deadly.

  “How come Wiley is never around when we have to work with the dogs?” Talia asked.

  Vincent was too busy to answer. He took the touchscreen remote from the handler. Then he tossed the teddy bear in front of the dogs.

  They looked at it without curiosity or interest until Vincent pressed a button on the remote.

  SCENT.

  All three dogs pounced on the teddy bear, sniffing it. Vincent pressed KILL, and they began ripping it apart.

  He pressed another button and they immediately returned to their formation and sat in line.

  “Speaking of Wiley?” Vincent said to Talia. “Don’t you wish we could work him with one of these?”

  * * *

  Inside the school, backstage, the teachers were helping the kids into their costumes.

  Teddy-bear costumes.

  Clara Gibson whispered an urgent message to one of the teachers.

  “Okay, Clara,” the teacher said. She asked the group, “Does anyone else need to go to the bathroom?”

  * * *

  Talia held the door of the school open, while Vincent unleashed the K-9s and pointed them inside.

  He pressed FIND and watched them race down the empty corridor, giant claws rattling on the tile floor.

  * * *

  Natalie Gibson nervously grabbed the hand of her husband—or the man she thought was her husband—as the lights went down and the children came out onto the stage in their teddy-bear costumes.

  He gave her a nervous smile and squeezed her hand in return.

  But … where was Clara?

  “Isn’t she supposed to be up there?” he asked in a loud whisper.

  “Maybe she got nervous,” answered Natalie.

  * * *

  Clara came out of the girls’ bathroom in her teddy-bear costume, minus the hat with the furry ears.

  There was a big dog in the corridor. A dog in school?