Trifecta

by Pam Richter

  When they finally were ushered in, Burgess let the silence grow and looked at them without moving, from behind his oddly hooded eyes. His loud, "Well?" cut the silence.

  Ivar, double agent, and as such, consummate actor, almost flinched. He began a monotone recital of the day's activities, repeating the lies he had told Malcolm, covering the time he had spent with Eve.

  Burgess Whitcomb had the disturbing ability of maintaining a totally neutral expression. He sat impassively through his agent's monologue and the presentation of the audio tape recording. He let the silence run.

  Finally, Burgess said, "Your backup agents didn't intercept or even find the Miller women. Or Mark Ponti. Right now their whereabouts is unknown. You should have followed and kept radio contact. Right now, we're combing the Fairfax district."

  Ivar was thinking, Christ, We are in deep shit.

  Malcolm, a very facile talker, quickly surprised Ivar by taking the blame. Knowing his own car had been identified, he had made the decision not to follow Sabrina and Mark.

  Burgess finally said he thought he had made it very clear that they were to break cover. He wondered aloud why Ivar had not been able to do this with Sabrina Miller after following her all evening in public places. Ivar knew he had taken the bait from the remark Mark had made and believed that Sabrina was Eve. He didn't know if it mattered or not.

  * * * * *

  The three people in Sabrina's apartment slept the sleep of the deeply emotionally and physically fatigued, oblivious of watchers outside the building. Sabrina had been up since four a.m. the morning before, and she was totally unaware of Mark's arm around her, giving comfort in the night, except on a subconscious basis.

  Eve, sleeping in the living room on the couch she had carried across the room the day before, did have dreams, but they involved Ivar and were pleasant. She did not cry out during the night. Even during sleep, Eve's computer was checking the surroundings, noting shifts in body and room temperature, making slight adjustments in her metabolism to compensate, and taking over the function of the autonomic nervous system by slowing the heart beat and respiration to the lowest possible levels so that the body would conserve energy.

  Morning came too quickly. Mark had to rush to dress in the clothes he had worn the day before. He had a quick cup of coffee and left Sabrina with a peck that landed near her chin.

  As Sabrina was cooking breakfast she saw Eve sip the coffee and grimace.

  "I hope you don't feel too bad about what Alexander said." Sabrina spoke a little hesitantly. "About your mother."

  "Why?" Eve asked.

  "I mean, she sold you." Sabrina flipped the eggs.

  "I don't have a mother."

  "Well, you did."

  "Not any more. Nothing is left of the baby. Genetically, I am your twin."

  Sabrina shook her head. "I can see you sometimes know what I'm thinking."

  "I receive more and more of your thoughts as time goes by. I usually obey them, but sometimes they don't apply."

  "I don't understand." Sabrina sat down at the small round table across from Eve, sipping her coffee.

  "Well, yesterday I had a Sabrina Thought that I should not walk alone on the street after dark. That someone might try to take the purse. I knew no one could do it, so it did not apply to me."

  Sabrina laughed and then sobered quickly, "But someone might have tried to take the purse at gun point. Or maybe a gang would try to hurt you."

  "The statistics are slim." Eve took another sip of the coffee, frowning. "I don't think I like this stuff."

  "I didn't either," Sabrina said. "The taste has to be acquired."

  "Like wine?"

  "Yes." Sabrina paused and then said, "Eve, it's dangerous to think you're invincible."

  "You worry?"

  "I was so scared when you were gone last night."

  "Then I want to tell you what's bothering me." Eve related the incident at the gym.

  "The man at the gym knocked you down. But you felt no pain?"

  "None."

  To want to kill someone who unintentionally bumped Eve was a little extreme, Sabrina thought.

  "I don't even know if all the hormones are in force yet. So I thought I could use a tranquilizer. I think the brain is not functioning correctly in the emotional mode."

  "The best thing would be to talk to Ferd."

  "I tried to sedate myself with alcohol. I don't know if it worked, because right in the middle of it this drunk started rubbing my knee."

  "Good grief, where were you?"

  Eve told Sabrina about the snooty French hostess, the lecherous drunk and all about Ivar Cousin.

  Sabrina sat perfectly still, stunned.

  "So Alexander was right when he said we were being followed, because Ivar was following me," Eve continued, as though she had said nothing surprising.

  "You had sex with a government agent?" Sabrina asked a little shrilly.

  "He was in the bedroom with the door closed, so I didn't get the whole conversation. Sex makes me sleepy."

  "With all your experience you should know," Sabrina said, smiling slightly. All that had happened to Eve, Sabrina thought, even before they broke into Ferd's place, demolished the laboratory and hid on the roof.

  "It was my first time," Eve said.

  "It's just so incredible. You go to a bar, meet a man and have sex with him, and he's a spy."

  "I was sad about that," Eve said.

  "He probably liked you a lot, Eve. He didn't have to have sex with you. Not even spies do that to get information."

  "Well, we started and then he stopped all of a sudden, so I asked him to continue."

  "He didn't have to. Begin again, I mean." Sabrina sat thoughtful for a moment. "Who started?"

  "He did."

  "He wouldn't have started if he didn't want to."

  "You're right. He likes me a lot."

  "Are you sure he's a government agent?"

  "I overheard him say on the telephone that he had broken cover. Then he said that there were some unusual things about Eve Miller, the dark haired women. Not the redhead that they had under surveillance, also. He said I was very intelligent, strong and unusually heavy."

  "Have you weighed yourself?" Sabrina asked.

  "I'm two hundred and fifteen pounds on the scale in the bathroom. I am reinforced and my muscles are more compact, so that I can carry the weight."

  "The important thing, though, is that we're being followed and spied upon."

  "Eventually, we will be picked up," Eve said. "If someone tries to poke or prod me, to see if I'm different, I'm going to get angry. I might hurt someone."

  "Let's call Ferd."

  "Ferd is being watched too," Eve reminded her.

  Sabrina nodded and thought that they were already linked to Ferd, and to his sons Alexander and Stephan. Hell, the spies were probably watching Mark by now.

  Sabrina was terrified and angry at the same time. Maybe the phones were tapped and people were already listening to their conversations.

  "We can't use a cell phone. Better go to a pay phone," Eve said, almost reading her thoughts. "Not that it will do much good. Ferd's phone in the hospital is probably bugged. That's a funny expression, isn't it. Bugged." Eve seemed to relish the word and repeated it, smiling and nodding her head.

  Sabrina went over to the wall phone in the kitchen and unscrewed the mouth piece. She wouldn't know a transmitter if she saw one, but she couldn't find any pieces that looked abnormal or like they could be detached. She did the same for the telephone in the bedroom, with Eve trailing behind her.

  "Can you see anything wrong with the phones?" Sabrina asked.

  "No."

  "Well, I don't want you to be alone from now on. The government will probably bring us in for questioning, like you said. We need some documentation for you. A drivers license, birth certificate, and some credit cards."

  "I want to see Ferd," Eve said. "In person."

  "We'll go right now."

 
Sabrina had seen Ferd only once, when he had explained his special filtered tanning device to her. Now, when she looked at him through the glass window outside his hospital room, she had the impression of a sweet, gentle and very sick old man. His whole face, but particularly his jowls, seemed to sag with the weight of many years.

  Ferd visibly brightened when they walked into his room. His eyes sparkled and his arms trembled, and then he held his hands out to them. He looked intensely at them both, as though surprised and pleased at his own creation. He squeezed Sabrina's hand and released it. Looking at Eve, he asked, "How are you?"

  "There are problems," Eve said.

  Ferd reached to the table at the side of his bed. He turned on the television that was hanging in a metal ceiling stand across the room. The volume was so loud it was hard to hear him speak.

  Eve sat on the side of Ferd's bed, still holding his hand. Sabrina pulled a chair close and leaned down. They spoke in whispers. Sabrina explained how they had dismantled his laboratory the night before. Ferd nodded his head with what looked to be satisfaction.

  Eve told Ferd about her problems. The nightmares. The rages. Not blinking. The extreme fatigue and faintness after the healing process.

  "Eve also craves bones to eat, and she has memories that could only come from primitive man," Sabrina told Ferd.

  Ferd took out a prescription pad and wrote on it. He handed it to Eve. "This is a light tranquilizer. It won't take the scary dreams away, altogether, but it should help you sleep through the night."

  "But what should we do?" Eve asked.

  "I have given power of attorney to my son, Stephan. He is going to open a bank account for you, Eve. There will be enough money for you to live for many years, in case something happens to me."

  "You are my father," Eve said.

  Ferd nodded sadly. "I'll get Stephan to work on providing you with a driver's license and birth certificate."

  Sabrina could see the special bond that the old man and Eve had. But did Ferd really believe that Stephan would act in Eve's behalf, opening a bank account for her and providing the documentation she needed? Just last night Stephan had been waving a gun at them.

  "Tell me why I'm not performing correctly," Eve said.

  "I'm trying to weigh the evidence, and I am afraid that there are some biological predispositions that you can expect to occur in the future. You see, through hundreds of thousands of years, the human brain has become civilized, to a certain extent. But there is a dark side to the interesting, intelligent animal called homo sapien. There are laws because people steal, cheat, lie and kill. There are still wars. Man is an extremely hostile, greedy and aggressive mammal.

  "The thin veneer of civilization might be absent in you, Eve. The frontal lobes, behind man's high forehead, expanded most during man's evolution. The brain can be thought of as divided into two broad segments, the paleocortex or the old primitive part of the brain, and the neocortex, or the new brain. Man's brain is now about eighty five percent neocortex. In the older part, many of the evolutionary functions, like a fishes ability to swim and the bird's ability to fly, are still believed to be buried. The paleocortex controls respiration, movement coordination and the regulation and transmission of impulses like hunger, thirst and the sex drive. The frontal lobes of the brain are the sites of memory and intelligence.

  "If your brain is not fully completed, you might have tendencies like extreme eruptions of anger, and fierce protectiveness to those you have attachments to. But, you would probably be an excellent mother, protecting your babies ferociously. And you would be more likely to have the racial memories Sabrina spoke of."

  "I am all one gigantic Id?" Eve asked.

  Ferd smiled and shook his head. "No, not at all. You will probably always produce more of the hormone adrenalin, but you have the computer for logic. You are a genius. You can live a normal life. Sometimes there will be a whip-saw of emotions, but you can live with that because of your high intelligence. The connections between the two parts of your brain might make accessible the ancient memories, because of the computer."

  "How do you know all this, Ferd?" Sabrina asked.

  Ferd told them that if the copy process had really completed, Eve would have been an exact duplicate of Sabrina. The machinery copied the molecular structure exactly, and if it was copying a biological or live structure, it also made a DNA reproduction so that there would be a perfect living image of the organic structure.

  "My hair was white," Eve said.

  "That was the DNA reproduction. If the copy process had finished, you would have had Sabrina's hair color, exactly."

  Ferd went on to say that he had been blinded by years of research. He would never let power hungry people have control of the scientific knowledge to implant computers. He had no interest in going public, now that he believed the government might plan to use that information to justify their politics. Or to change people.

  "What if Eve faints because she's hurt and can't get to her syrup in time?" Sabrina asked.

  "The brain maintains the same usage of resources whether asleep or awake, consuming up to 40% of the total oxygen and nutrients consumed daily. So Eve should make sure to get enough calories every day. Eve will have strong impulses to overeat, and to be very aggressive, physically and sexually. You have probably produced all of the hormones now that you will ever have. You don't have to be afraid of losing emotional control."

  As to the agents that were following Sabrina and Eve, Ferd suggested the women might try to deactivate them by letting the agents know they were aware of them. If they continued to do this they might get an idea about the scope of the investigation, and maybe put a hardship on the inquiry. On the other hand, to know who the agents were could be an advantage.

  Ferd seemed to be tiring rapidly, leaning further into his pillows. Sabrina was just deciding that they should leave when a doctor walked into the hospital room.

  When Ferd introduced Eve and Sabrina Miller to his doctor, the microphone in the room picked up their voices and the television monitor over the bed filmed their images.

  * * * * *

  Sabrina had parked at the Beverly Shopping Mall because the parking rates were outrageous at Cedars Sinai Hospital. As they went to her car, Eve said. "I've spotted two teams of men following us."

  "No shit?" Sabrina said, alarmed.

  "No shit," Eve repeated, smiling. "One team is probably government agents. The other is Japanese."

  The women rode the escalators up into the mall.

  "This is frightening," Sabrina whispered.

  "I've caught glimpses of the Japanese before, but they seem more adept than the Americans. They've already disappeared."

  "What can we do?" Sabrina asked.

  "Deactivate one. Just to see if we can. And we can keep the other one as a known agent. Divide and conquer," Eve said.

  Sabrina rolled her eyes.

  They decided to deactivate the short stocky bulldog, and keep the other one, a medium guy with medium brown hair, as a known agent. Eve and Sabrina parted, each walking in a different direction to split up the agents. Divide and conquer, Sabrina thought. She shook her head. There was an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. Having Eve around was so much fun. It was also scary as hell.

  The bulldog went after Eve. She walked quickly until she got to Brentano's Books and went inside the store. Convex mirrors stood in the corners of the store to monitor for shop lifters and Eve stood behind a wall of books, watching the mirror. The store was very crowded, which was an advantage. With all the foot traffic the man would wonder if he had somehow missed her as time went by.

  It took five minutes for the agent to come inside. He moved slowly and seemed to browse, but Eve saw him glance quickly down each of the aisles. She stayed at the back of the store and watched him finally start to circle the perimeter. He was moving faster now, maybe believing he had lost her.

  Eve jumped out so she was in plain view for a moment and then hurried through several row
s to hide again. She stayed ahead of the man, guessing exactly where he was going and occasionally letting him get a glimpse of her.

  It was like playing lethal jungle warfare or hide and seek. Almost as exciting as hunting for wild animals. She had an impulse to smile and wink at the agent, as she led him inexorably towards the front of the store, where he would have to follow her to see if she left.

  Enough fun and games, Eve thought finally. Time to make contact. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and goose bumps grew on her arms. Eve knew she was not in danger and wondered at the body's anticipatory response. Her hackles were rising.

  As the bulky investigator walked past Eve, she pulled a book off of a shelf, turned around and stepped into his path, bumping him. She stepped on his toes, and elbowed him high in the rib cage. She was careful not to hurt him.

  As it was, the man was disabled enough by his injuries to grab the hurt foot with both hands and make a loud, strangled gasping sound, while hopping in a tiny circle on the uninjured foot.

  Eve turned around. She tried to look surprised.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't see you. Are you all right?" She took hold of the man's shoulder to help prop him up.

  "I'll be fine." His voice was strained and his mean little eyes glared at her with angry suspicion.

  "Perhaps you should sit down?"

  The man repeated he would be fine. Eve watched him leave the store, trying to appear apologetic and appropriately concerned.

  Eve found Sabrina waiting for her on the top floor of the mall where the restaurants and movie theaters were located. She was sitting with a cup of coffee. Eve noticed the 'medium' agent sitting across the mall from Sabrina.

  Eve's eyes sparkled and she smiled radiantly as he leaned forward to whisper. "The agent is deactivated. He will be easy to recognize from now on."

  "What happened?"

  "I bumped him. He now moves with a pronounced limp."

  Sabrina had a sudden disquieting premonition that Eve was going to get them into a lot of trouble.