by Terry Bisson
Foosh!
He sliced them all with one shot, then scrambled to his feet and ran up the stairs.
The guards sprinted after Adam. One yelled into his phone as he ran: “He’s heading for the west stairwell! We’re right behind him!”
* * *
“Shit!” said Marshall.
He and Talia ran into the central command post just in time to see an entire wall of monitors turn to snow and then to darkness.
“It’s okay,” said Henderson. “We’ve got him trapped. West stairwell. Between thirteen and fourteen.”
Marshall nodded to Talia. “Come on!”
* * *
Adam leaned over the railing and looked up. He saw several pairs of black boots on the landing above.
He turned and started to go back down, but it was too late. He could hear running feet, ascending.
Then the feet stopped.
The silence was more ominous than any noise could be.
It was broken by a voice. Marshall’s.
“You did pretty good!” Marshall yelled from below. “You totally fooled us at the airport. And you turned this place into a shambles.”
Adam leaned over the railing just far enough to see that Marshall wasn’t alone.
“Personally, I’m not surprised,” Marshall said. “I saw what you did in the war.”
Adam unloaded his gun.
“But you know what the situation is now, just as well as we do. You want to make us come and kill you? It makes no difference to me. But Drucker wants to talk.”
Instead of answering, Adam dropped his gun over the railing.
It clattered down the stairwell and landed at Marshall’s feet.
Thirty-two
“Well, well…” said Drucker, as Talia and Marshall led their prisoner into his office. One of them was on each side, keeping him carefully covered. “Adam Gibson!”
“I wish I could say ‘the one and only,’” said Adam.
Drucker allowed himself a slight chuckle. “Looks like we both went back on our word. I admire that.”
“Where’s my family!” said Adam.
“Right to business. Another admirable trait,” said Drucker with a thin, triumphant smile. He plucked a remote from his desk drawer and pointed it at the wall.
A panel slid back to reveal a large-screen LCD monitor.
On the screen were Natalie and Clara, bound, and blindfolded, guarded by Vincent with a foosh gun.
Drucker turned his warmest smile on Adam. “There they are. All safe and sound.”
Adam didn’t move or respond.
“It’s not on him,” Marshall said. “It’s not in his Whispercraft.”
“I knew you’d double cross me,” Adam said. “So I gave it to my clone. If anything happens to me or my family, the next time you see your syncording will be at your murder trial.”
Drucker leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful. “Dr. Weir didn’t tell you, did he? No, of course not. He thinks both the clone and the donor are equal as human beings. I rather like that point of view, being a clone myself.”
“Tell me what?” asked Adam.
Drucker shook his head in mock sympathy. “Adam, Adam, Adam … He’s not the clone.”
Adam stared at Drucker. He knew what was coming next.
“You are.”
He didn’t want to believe it.
“You’re lying.”
But even as he said it, he knew Drucker was telling the truth.
And Drucker could tell it. “Am I?” he asked with a smug smile. “Ask yourself. Do you remember anything after being scanned by my bodyguard? Do you actually remember changing places with your friend?”
Adam searched his memory. He tried not to let his expression reveal that he couldn’t find anything.
“The RePet salesmen thought it was odd that you came into his store … twice. Asked the same questions … twice.”
Adam remembered watching the RePet commercial on the screen in the store. The salesman coming up behind him. The seemingly innocent, but now revealing question, “You lost a dog, didn’t you…?”
Adam touched his chin, looking for the shaving cut that had convinced Hank that he was really himself.
“Your shaving cut?” Drucker waved a hand in dismissal. “Easy to reproduce. So was the scar from your old war wound.”
Adam stared at him defiantly. “I know who I am.”
“Do you?” Drucker turned to the woman behind Adam. “Talia, how many times have you been cloned?”
“I’ve lost count,” said the trim little killer.
“There’s one way to tell,” said Drucker. “Show him.”
Adam watched, as if hypnotized, while Talia lifted her left eyelid and folded it back.
Under the eyelid were five small dots:
• • • • •
“It’s the only way to keep track of what generation a clone is,” said Drucker. “See? Five dots means she’s been cloned four times. When human cloning is legalized, we’ll add our logo.”
He smiled coldly at Adam, then nodded to Talia:
“Show him his.”
Talia pulled a compact mirror out of her purse and opened it.
She held it in front of Adam’s face and gently, like a lover or a girlfriend, lifted his left eyelid.
Adam didn’t want to look in the mirror.
But he did.
Under his eyelid were two dots:
• •
“No!”
But yes, it was true. Adam knew it was true.
“Kinda takes the fun out of being alive, doesn’t it?” Talia said wryly.
“So, you see,” said Drucker smugly, as Adam gasped at the enormity of the situation. “Your family isn’t really your family. They’re his. And you’re in exactly the same boat as us. If Adam Gibson gets that syncording to the authorities, we will all be destroyed.”
Adam didn’t answer. He was numb. The world had just gone blank.
“I’m not making this offer because I have to,” Drucker continued. “I can get everything I need from your memories. But I want you to realize you’d also be serving a higher purpose.”
He stood up and walked to the window.
“In two years, three tops, I’ll control enough votes to get the laws changed. We won’t have to lose our best people. Our Mozarts, our Martin Luther Kings. We can finally conquer death.”
“So who gets to decide who lives and who dies?” Adam asked. “You?”
Drucker turned to face Adam. “You have a better idea?”
“Yes, I do,” said Adam. “How about God?”
“Oh.” Drucker made a face. “You’re one of those. I suppose you think technology is inherently evil.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t think technology is evil. I think you are.”
Drucker’s voice took on a messianic tone. “If you believe that God created man in his own image, then God gave man the power to understand evolution, to exploit science, to manipulate the genome. To do exactly what I’m doing. I’m just taking over where God left off.”
Adam shook his head wryly. “If you think that, you should clone yourself while you’re still alive.”
“Why?” asked Drucker. “So I can understand your unique perspective?”
“No,” said Adam. “So you can go fuck yourself.”
Drucker had heard enough.
He closed the drawers on his desk, stood up, and started for the door. Over his shoulder, to Talia and Marshall, he said:
“Bring him.”
Thirty-three
The Main Lab was dark and almost deserted.
As Drucker watched from the window of Dr. Weir’s office, Wiley and Marshall pushed Adam roughly into a chair next to the syncording machine.
“You won’t find it in my head,” Adam said. “I told him to hide it so I wouldn’t know where.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” said Marshall. He started to fit the syncording lens over Adam’s eye.
“No!
” Adam shook his head violently.
Marshall tried to hold him, and failed.
“Fine … Have it your way,” Marshall muttered. He nodded at Wiley.
Whack!
Wiley cracked Adam in the temple with the butt of his foosh gun.
Adam slumped down in the chair.
Marshall fitted the lens over Adam’s eye. It glowed as it began downloading information.
Adam groaned as he slowly regained consciousness.
“That didn’t hurt so bad, did it?” said Marshall.
* * *
Moments later, Marshall pushed the half-conscious Adam into Dr. Weir’s office overlooking the Embryonic Tanks. Adam stumbled and fell to the floor.
Marshall handed Adam’s syncording disk to Drucker, who inserted it into Weir’s computer.
“Let’s see what you’ve been thinking,” said Drucker. He dialed the Time Index back one hour, and hit PLAY.
On the monitor, a jumble of images appeared. They resolved into an image of the other Adam, seen from Adam’s point of view, walking beside him across the pad to the Whispercraft.
Adam’s voice said, “Keep this and wait here for me. If you don’t hear from me in two hours, take it to the authorities.”
The other Adam took something unseen, then stared at the screen and answered: “Don’t worry. If anything happens to you or my family, I’ll destroy the son of a bitch.”
The Adam on the screen waved good luck as the Adam that was remembering climbed into the Whispercraft and throttled it up.
Drucker turned to Marshall. “Did you spot that location?”
“The airport,” said Marshall. “I was just there. He’ll be dead in twenty minutes.”
He motioned to Talia and they started out the door and down the stairs.
Drucker continued to watch as Adam’s syncorded memories played out onscreen. The scene was Adam’s point of view out the cockpit window as the Whispercraft rose into the air. As the craft flew past a dark building, there was a brief reflection in the cabin glass.
Then it was gone.
Drucker froze the frame. He backed it up.
The reflection showed Adam at the controls—and the other Adam crouched behind him in the back seat.
“Goddammit!” said Drucker. “He did it to us again! Bastard faked his own syncording! They staged that scene for our benefit. The other one was hiding in the Whispercraft the whole time, and this one was deliberately not looking at him so he wouldn’t be in his visual memory.”
Marshall and Talia had run back up the stairs, gun drawn. “The other one’s—here?” Marshall asked.
Adam lay on the floor, pretending to still be recovering from the blow to his head. He opened his eyes as much as he could without revealing that he was conscious and hearing every word.
“Yes!” said Drucker. “Warn Vincent. Put out another alert! This one’s the diversion. He smashes all the cameras and gets himself captured—meanwhile the other one just strolls in and—”
Suddenly the room went dark.
Everyone froze.
There was a whine far below as the emergency generators kicked in. The lights began to flicker—and Adam lunged toward the control room windows overlooking the tanks.
Drucker tried to block him.
With a lightning fast move, Adam threw Drucker into the air and behind him, just as Wiley aimed and—foosh!
Drucker caught the plasma bolt intended for Adam, and fell heavily to the floor.
Marshall and Talia both fell to their knees and tried to get a shot at Adam. But he didn’t give them time. Before they’d raised their foosh guns, he dove through the window in a shower of glass.
Wiley looked on stupidly, his gun arm hanging limp by his side.
Marshall and Talia ran to their boss, who lay bleeding on the floor. They looked toward the broken window, then toward the door …
“Send Talia,” Drucker said to Marshall. “You stay here with me.”
Weapon in hand, Talia ran out the door and down the stairs toward the Main Lab floor and the Embryonic Tanks.
Thirty-four
The lights were still flickering. Vincent was getting worried.
He checked that the door was locked, then checked Natalie and Clara, who were tied up on the floor.
He tried the phone.
Dead.
Wham!
The door exploded inward, and Adam Gibson stood silhouetted in the emergency lights from the hallway.
Foosh!
Foosh!
Vincent’s head exploded as he fell into the desk, and onto the floor.
Adam stepped over him and starting tearing the blindfold off his daughter.
“Daddy!” Clara threw her arms around his legs.
Adam untied his wife and she ripped away her own blindfold. “Adam, what’s going on?”
“I can’t explain now,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “Just follow me.”
Natalie tried to inject a little humor into the situation. “This isn’t because of the cigar, is it?”
“No, honey,” he answered with a wry smile. “This isn’t because of the cigar.”
“Dad, I’m scared!” said Clara.
Adam knelt down and looked her in the eye. “I know, honey. But it’s okay. Fireman?”
Clara squealed happily and jumped into his arms. Adam threw her over his shoulder.
* * *
Blood was seeping into the expensive hand-woven rug in Drucker’s office, spoiling it.
Drucker’s own blood.
Wiley stood by the door, still stunned by what he had done, as Marshall helped Drucker to a chair.
“Sir, you’re hit pretty bad.”
“I know.”
Drucker pointed at Marshall’s foosh gun, and Marshall put it into his hand. Drucker raised it and—
Foosh!
Wiley fell dead by the door, a hole burned through his midsection.
Drucker handed the gun back to Marshall. “And don’t bring him back. Stupid bastard shot me though the chest. I’ll be dead in twenty minutes tops.”
He doubled over in pain, then grinned weakly and looked up at Marshall. “But what better place, huh? Okay. Start warming up a blank. And take a fresh syncording. I want my mind to be up to the minute.”
Marshall nodded and picked up the syncorder. With his other hand, he punched a sequence into a keyboard.
Below, in the lab, a three jointed twenty-foot robot arm descended into a tank, looking for a blank.
* * *
Talia stalked the dark floor of the Main Lab, holding her foosh gun at the ready. She scanned the dark corners for Adam Gibson.
It was a spooky scene. In the tanks, in clear sacs, were blank humans, like giant embryos. Each was the size of a grown person, but with no face, no personality, no gender.
Adam was hiding behind one.
He was holding his breath, suspended in the thick gel, swimming just enough to keep the blank between himself and his pursuer. He had held his breath for almost four minutes. His military training was still good: he had a minute left to go. Then he would have to make his move.
Suddenly something broke the surface of the vat. Adam barely had time to twist out of the way as the robot arm plunged down through the clear fluid, plucked a blank by its sexless midriff, and raised it, dripping, toward the control room.
Adam swam to the next tank.
Talia hadn’t seen him—yet. She had been distracted by the robot arm, and was looking up toward the control room.
Then she continued her search of the Main Lab, playing the light of her foosh gun on all the dark corners.
Adam floated behind another blank. His lungs were bursting. Finally he pulled loose one of the tubes that oxygenated the embryonic fluid and stuck it into his mouth.
He got a little oxygen.
But not enough …
* * *
Marshall helped Drucker down the stairs toward the DNA infusion unit. Drucker didn’t have to be there for the
DNA transfer. But it was his life, after all.
He wanted to watch.
* * *
The robot arm dropped the blank that was going to be Drucker into a cylindrical vat beside the DNA infusion unit.
Tubes extended, connecting the vat with the DNA infusion unit.
Drucker watched fascinated.
Marshall was merely bored.
The DNA fluids began to flow, and the blank began to gradually take on human form.
Drucker’s eye caught movement below, near the Embryonic Tanks. “Is that Talia?”
Marshall nodded.
“I’m okay here. Go help her.”
Drucker waited until Marshall left, then coughed bright blood. He watched the blank becoming more human, taking on his DNA. He was getting weaker as it got stronger.
It was like a race with Death. His new body would be ready just in time …
* * *
Adam had to breathe—or burst.
But he knew if he broke the surface of the fluid, Talia would hear him and see him. She had the senses of a cat.
He pulled the tube loose from the blank again; took another quick gulp of oxygen.
He got a mouthful of embryonic fluid with it this time.
He struggled not to gag.
* * *
“You think he’s still here?” Marshall asked as he quietly fell into step beside Talia.
Talia nodded, her only answer.
She pointed toward a nearby tank. The thick fluid was rippling slightly.
Motioning for Marshall to wait, Talia climbed a metal ladder to the catwalk above the tanks. From here she could see down into the tanks.
* * *
At the top of the stairs, just inside the door to the roof, the other Adam put Clara into Natalie’s arms.
“Stay with Mommy,” he whispered.
He motioned to Natalie to stay put. Then, careful not to let Clara see, he drew two foosh guns from his belt.
Two security guards were on the roof, right outside the door. The duty officer, Henderson, had told them not to take their eyes off the Whispercraft.
So they were both totally surprised when the door burst open behind them.
Each one turned to find a gun in his face.
Each one froze.
“My daughter is right inside that door,” said the other Adam. “I don’t want her exposed to graphic violence. She gets enough of that from the media.”
