The Clone who Didn't Know (The Genehunter)

by Kewin, Simon

  ‘Yeah. Plus they won’t come looking for me with a rocket launcher.’

  ‘You could forget all about them, you know. Change ID, come and have some fun with me. We could see if your stamina has improved any.’

  He shook his head. That was what he should do. He just damn well couldn’t. However he tried to distract himself a little part of his brain whispered away to him, worrying about Kelly and Eloise. It was like he was haunted or something.

  ‘And say you do all this,’ said Devi. ‘What happens after you get the girl?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come on, Simms. You’d get bored within a week without genehunting. You’re always saying that. You’re not cut out for anything else.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe I should go over to the other side, hunt the genehunters for kicks instead.’

  ‘You? Join the GMA? Run around following Ballard’s orders?’

  ‘I’m talking about clONE. Kelly went over to them. I could too. Maybe that’s what they want. I could see myself heading up a death squad. The righteous fervour of the convert. Could be fun.’

  The truth was the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until that moment. As he said it he didn’t know if he was serious or not. By the look on Devi’s face she wasn’t sure either. But maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea. He’d get clONE off his back. The GMA too. The GMA liked clONE, liked their direct approach. There were enough rumours: the GMA men who tipped off clONE death squads because they couldn’t get their man and stay within the law. He’d just have to sort out Forty Days and life would be sweet. He’d miss genehunting, sure, but hunting the hunters could be fun, too.

  ‘I thought you liked being the maverick, the lone wolf, walking the line between all these powerful organisations.’

  Simms shrugged. ‘You can’t beat them, though, can you? Sooner or later one of them will come for you. Might as well pick a side.’

  ‘OK,’ said Devi. ‘So, you need my help to become my mortal enemy. That about it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Well, you know what? I am gonna help you, Simms. Want to know why?’

  ‘Because you value my friendship so much?’

  Devi snorted with laughter. ‘Because your life is a train wreck. You’re a fucking slow-motion explosion, Simms. An ongoing disaster. And I want to see what parts of you are left at the end of it all.’

  ‘Thanks, Devi. I knew I could rely on you.’

  ‘I'd like a full body MRI scan.’

  The doctor assessing Simms blinked only once before replying. They sat in her cool, cream-coloured consulting room in Sydney Central Hospital. Tasteful pictures on the wall and interestingly elegant ornaments on the shelves. She wrote something on the tablet resting on her knee. Completely obsolete technology, of course, but it made her look professional, thoughtful. Simms suppressed a smile.

  ‘I see, Mr. Alietev,’ she said, using the ID Simms had adopted for this little jaunt. ‘And can you tell us why you would like us to carry out that particular procedure?’

  A fair question. He was tempted to tell her the whole thing with Gideon Jones. But she wasn't going to believe it was she? He wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

  ‘I need you to look for any anomalies.’

  ‘Could you explain what sort of … anomalies we’re looking for?’

  ‘Just anything that shouldn’t be there.’

  ‘Perhaps an object has been … inserted into you?’ she prompted. She remained utterly expressionless, professional. Seen it all before.

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ said Simms. ‘I simply have reason to believe someone has left a message within my body.’

  ‘A message.’

  She couldn’t help a flash of incredulity passing across her face. Simms was really quite pleased to have surprised her. He’d be a good story for her to tell her colleagues.

  ‘A message,’ said Simms. ‘Maybe a single word. I have reason to believe someone has … tattooed … it within my body.’

  He could see her longing to ask him what had happened, how such a thing was possible. What the hell he was talking about.

  ‘But you must have checked yourself?’

  ‘I've checked my skin, of course. I need you to scan inside me.’

  ‘You’re aware you can’t have a tattoo inside your body? A tattoo is a skin decoration, ink injected into the dermis.’

  ‘Sure. Obviously. Not a tattoo as such. I don’t know what you’d call it. I need you to scan me everywhere and look for ... anything unusual.’

  She nodded, looked at him for a moment, wrote some more. Simms wondered if she was scribbling nonsense to give herself time to think. Maybe she was consulting with someone electronically about the day’s weirdo.

  ‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘We can do that. And since you’re one of our gold customers we can prep you for the scan first thing tomorrow. If you’re sure this is what you want?’

  Simms nodded. ‘The sooner the better. And I want copies of all the images you take so I can study them myself.’

  The doctor looked like she was about to ask why, but restrained herself. ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘And I also ask that you keep no records of this procedure. In fact I want no trace of my visits at all.’ She’d think he was paranoid. Maybe she’d be right.

  ‘As you wish. We guarantee complete discretion.’

  ‘And while you’re scanning me I’d like a full brain plug-in assay.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘I have some suspicion I’ve been given an implant my normal diagnostic routines have failed to detect. This is ... less likely than the message I described, but I would still like you to check.’

  The doctor said nothing for a moment as she studied him. They had to satisfy themselves any patient requesting treatment was sane. She was clearly having doubts, probably thought he was an alien abduction nut or that he believed shadowy security organizations were trying to track him down. She’d be right there, at least. But she had no choice but to agree to his requests. By any objective measure he was sane. And, more importantly, he was the paying customer.

  ‘Of course,’ she said finally, smiling a little too sweetly. ‘We’ll be sure to check your brain very carefully, Mr. Alietev.’

  Devi pinged him as he trudged home through the familiar, sweet rain of London. He’d stepped into the public jump node in Sydney as Gregor Alietev, a software architect from Kiev. By the time he emerged from the jump network he was officially himself again. He liked to switch IDs in the ether like that, figured it would make tracking him more difficult. Probably wishful thinking.

  ‘Devi,’ he replied as he walked. ‘That was quick. Nothing better to do with your life, huh?’

  ‘I exist only to please you, Simms.’

  ‘Yeah? You don’t do a very good job, then.’

  ‘You want to know what I’ve got or you want to fuck off?’

  ‘Tell me. Sure. I’m grateful, really.’

  A police riot-control tank rumbled up the street behind Simms, blaring its horns at him to get him out of the way, sending crude alarm calls ringing through his plug-ins. Simms turned and stepped backwards from the massive bulk of the vehicle as it loomed over him, yellow lights flashing, guns tracking anything moving. He was more or less at the place Ballard’s grunts had apprehended him after the Zombies of Death affair. Was this another little episode like that? Ballard showing him how hilarious his sense of humour could be? Simms tensed, preparing to run. He was in no mood for Ballard’s games.

  One gun-turret tracked him as the stood there, but the vehicle didn’t slow down. It ploughed up the street, trampling anything in its way. It reached a collapsed building, a rough pyramid of broken bricks and plaster spilling into the street. The tank didn’t stop, just rolled over the blockage. The streets had been choked with cars before the jump network, the air thick with fumes, and they’d all longed for clean air and quiet streets. Now look at it. Really hadn’t worked out, had it?

&n
bsp; ‘Simms? You there?’

  ‘Sure, Devi. Sorry. Go on.’

  ‘OK. I got nothing on any extant clones of Dr. Grendel.’

  ‘So, what, you’re contacting me to gloat?’

  ‘Always. But listen, have you wondered why clONE wants him so much?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I think it’s weird. You know what the original Grendel was?’

  ‘Something to do with early cloning attempts.’

  ‘He was important. Worked on the cloning vat technology. Like, he created it all. At the start of the last century people sometimes referred to clones by Grendel’s own term for them: simulacra.

  ‘So you think clONE wants to punish all his copies because of what he did?’

  ‘For all I know they want to worship them. I stopped understanding clONE a long time ago.’

  ‘But you got nothing on surviving clones?’

  ‘Zip,’ said Devi. ‘But I think clONE is right and they do exist. Or did exist anyway.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘You must know Grendel’s reputation. Used to experiment on himself. Cloned himself repeatedly to test out his devices. Mostly it didn’t work, in the early days. Later, he had more success.’

  ‘But even if those early clones survived they’re going to be dead by now.’

  ‘Sure. But there may be second or third generation copies still around.’

  ‘Why would there be?’

  ‘I don’t know, Simms. You want me to do your damn job for you? But I found out something else, too. There’s not much in the public domain about Grendel. I don’t even know what he looked like. His research was extremely controversial and he went to great pains to stay in the shadows. But there is a surviving grandchild. Maybe she knows something.’

  ‘You got an address?’

  ‘I managed to find it by, let us say, talking nicely to the right people.’

  ‘You’re a bad person, Devi.’

  ‘I love my work, Simms. But listen, talking to Grendel’s offspring may not go well.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘His family despised him. He wasn’t a nice man. I mean, even I think he wasn’t a nice man. He didn’t just use himself in his experiments.’

  ‘His family too?’

  ‘His children, anyone he could get his hands on. A real fucking charmer.’

  ‘Maybe that explains any second or third generation clones,’ said Simms. ‘Plenty of collectors out there who go for the evil dictators and the Dr. Deaths.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘OK, thanks, Devi. I got one other thing I need to do, then I’ll pay a visit to the offspring. I owe you, yeah?’

  ‘You always owe me. Remember it when you come looking for me with your clONE death squad.’

  Simms stood in the shadows at the back of the church of Santa Sofia in Sienna. Sunlight streamed through high windows. The cool interior reverberated to the beautiful harmonies of the choir. He listened for a time, letting a far-away gaze play across his face, like any worshipper or tourist. He pretended not to be watching the door to the crypt.

  Of course, he shouldn’t be there. If his new friends in clONE found out it wouldn’t go well for him. Somehow he didn’t think they’d believe him if he said he’d found God. But he had no choice; he didn’t live in clONE’s simple, black-and-white world. He had Forty Days on one shoulder and the GMA on the other, making their demands. If he didn’t do what they wanted he’d wind up dead or locked away for the rest of his life. Somehow he had to keep them all happy.

  How did life get to be so complicated? He was just trying to do his damn job.

  He’d taken precautions before coming here. To any casual passer-by he wasn’t Simms at all. Anyone browsing him for an ID would now see him as Felippe Lombardi, a wine-maker on pilgrimage from the Mezzogiorno. He’d spent good money to download precisely the right Italian accent. He had a whole damn life-story worked out: family, job, a villa in the sun-kissed hills. His story was so good he found himself envying the fictitious man he’d created. Lombardi’s life seemed so straightforward in comparison to his own.

  He waited for ten minutes more, apparently listening to the singing or lost in prayer, before he acted. He walked down the aisle at the side of the church, stepping past soaring gothic pillars, footsteps echoing in the great space. Half-way down he stopped, as any pilgrim would, to cross himself before the holy remains of Saint Sofia. Her head was kept in an elaborately decorated alcove behind thick glass. The reddish-brown water within was murky, making it hard to see details, but she was certainly in there. Impossible to say whether she was flesh or wax. A young woman, her eyes closed like she was asleep. Simms had seen a lot of things over the years but the sight of her sent a shiver through him. She was little more than a girl, looking like she would open her eyes and see him at any moment.

  He crossed himself again and walked on. His first plan had been to smash the glass, grab the DNA sample and run. He’d dismissed that pretty quickly. The glass was toughened, five centimetres thick. He could probably come up with a way to punch through it, maybe even get the sample if things went well. The problem would be getting away. The church had top-class security; they took no chances with their priceless holy relics. Simms would be surrounded in moments by security guards with a relaxed attitude to the ten commandments. His chances of escaping would be in the region of zero. Was that what Sanchez had tried to do when she’d been here?

  Maybe. And he was only guessing Jones wanted him to acquire Sofia’s DNA. But he clearly needed a different approach to the job. A plan B. Something less dramatic but with a chance of actually working.

  The wooden crypt door was left open in the day. The church was proud of the vaulted ceilings down there, the carved stone of the medieval tombs. Simms ducked through the doorway and descended the worn, stone steps.

  The crypt smelled of dust and wax and the slow passing of centuries. He walked around the maze of rooms, repeatedly ducking under the flanks of the vaulted ceilings. He needed to double-check he was alone, that he hadn’t missed someone coming down here. He walked past the gleaming steel door to the subvault, but deliberately paid it no attention. A few paces farther on he paused and pretended to admire the craftsmanship of a carved doorway, stroking the smooth stone. He slipped the tiny video relay into a crevice where it could see the subvault door, then strode on. Twenty metres away, unwatched by any camera he was aware of, stood the stone sarcophagus he planned to spend the next twenty-four hours inside.

  The lid was a solid slab of marble. He’d calculated he could budge it if his plug-ins flooded his metabolism with enough adrenaline to kick off glycolysis and amp up his muscles. There’d be tearing and bruising to his tissues, but he could put up with that. It wasn’t like he’d be doing much over the next day.

  He glanced around once again and set to work, issuing the commands to his brain hardware. The adrenaline rush flooded through him, sending his heart pumping wildly, accelerating his breathing. He heaved on the stone lid with all his strength, grunting involuntarily. It slid a little. Stale air breathed up at him. He couldn’t stop. If anyone saw him now he’d be in serious trouble. He hauled again, exposing a triangle of darkness in one corner of the sarcophagus. Inch by inch, he made the triangle big enough to squeeze through.

  He climbed onto the sarcophagus and put one leg inside. Bone or stone crunched beneath his foot. So far as he’d been able to tell, the tomb hadn’t held a body for several hundred years. Still, he couldn’t be sure. He might have to share the sarcophagus with a previous occupier.

  He slid his other leg in and squeezed inside, breathing the cold, musty air in short panicky breaths. He lay on a bed of spiky debris, the cuts on his back stinging. It looked like he wasn’t alone in here after all. He tried not to think about it. He braced his shoulders against the base and pushed the lid above him closed again. The angle made it more difficult; he could only move the slab an inch before having to stop to catch his breath. Eventually he worked the t
riangle of light down to nothing. He was alone in the absolute dark. Unless you counted the crumbling shards of bone beneath him. It was just as well he wasn’t easily spooked. Or claustrophobic. Or sane.

  He knew he’d use up the air in the sarcophagus quickly if he continued to breathe so rapidly. He instructed his plug-ins to reverse the metabolism-boost. Ideally he should let himself come down naturally, but he didn’t have the time. His breathing and heart-rate slowed as his body calmed. He wondered what strain he was putting on his organs, how often you could safely pull a stunt like this. He closed his eyes, although it made no difference. His let his core temperature drop and drop towards torpor. He felt consciousness fading. He’d calculated he could last twelve hours like that: cold, barely alive, maybe ten breaths a minute. His brain hardware would rouse him at the right time so he could put the rest of his plan into operation. Of course, if he’d miscalculated how much air he’d have, or if his plug-ins couldn’t bring him round, he’d never wake again.

  If that happened, would he ever be found? Maybe not for a long time. He imagined someone opening the tomb in the far future, and instead of finding the remains of some medieval noble, discovering a dead man from the twenty-second century with high-tech hardware rattling around in his skull.

  His last thought was amusement at what they might make of that.

  When he came to, it felt like he had slept for centuries. His limbs were lifeless, frozen meat. He could see nothing and had no notion of where he was. For several minutes his world consisted of pain: something spiky digging into his back, a heavy throbbing in his head, ice in his veins. He had no choice but to wait; he knew that much at least. His brain hardware would bring him back to life and soothe his pain when he was strong enough. For now, all he could do was endure.

  Finally, full consciousness and understanding returned. He was entombed in the crypt of a medieval church in Italy. OK. He’d had some pretty weird nights over the years, but this one might be the winner.