The Clone Republic (Clone 1)

by Steven L. Kent

  We got very lost indeed. The twisting network of highways that ran from the airport led in all directions. None of the signs said “Honolulu.” They had equally odd names like “Waikiki,” “Wahiawa,” and “Kaneohe,” none of which meant anything to either of us.

  I didn’t mind being lost. We drove around with the top down, feeling the sun bake our shoulders. We passed beaches and streets lined with people. Over the last few months I had forgotten how to relax, but it was coming back to me.

  Lee pulled onto the side of the road to look at his map. We were on the outskirts of an area called “Waikiki.” Tall hotels lined the roads.

  “Okay. If we are where I think we are, the beach is over there, just beyond those buildings. We will see it if we go down this street. And we can follow this street to Diamondhead.”

  “Look at that,” I said. “It’s a hotel for military personnel.” Just up the street from us was a large hotel with a sign that said “Hale Koa. U.A. Military Temporary Residents.” The building was not as elaborate as some of the towering structures around it, but the grounds were simple and pretty.

  “Oh yeah, the Hail Ko. McKay told me about it.”

  “Hail Ko? How did they come up with these names?” I joked.

  Locating the Hale Koa Hotel gave Lee the bearings he needed to find his way through town. As we drove away, I glanced back at the hotel. It looked beautiful. “Why aren’t we staying there?” I asked.

  “McKay suggested this other place,” Lee said. “He sounded pretty sure of himself. I get the feeling he knows his way around Honolulu.”

  We drove through Waikiki, passing splendid hotels, streets packed with tourists, and crowded beaches. The road led us past parks and up a hill. There the road twisted back and forth as it followed the jagged coastline. At the top of the hill, we found streets lined with homes. Our pad was down one of those streets.

  Lee had rented the house sight unseen based on Captain McKay’s recommendation. The place belonged to a retired combat officer who rented it to him for $200 per day. McKay said that that price was cheap, and that was undoubtedly correct. The truth was that everything in Honolulu was cheap; the U.A. government subsidized the economy and encouraged off-duty military men to visit. Rooms at the Hale Koa, for instance, were free to enlisted men.

  I half expected to find that Lee had rented a dilapidated hut. When we reached the rough-hewn stone wall that surrounded the house, I thought Lee had the wrong address. The wall was tall and thick and made of perfectly matched lava stones. He typed a code into the computerized lock, and the gate slid open.

  “Vince, you got this for two hundred dollars per day?” I asked.

  Looking as stunned as I felt, Lee nodded. We stepped into a perfectly manicured courtyard. A pond ran one length of the yard. Reeds grew in the pond, and fish swam near the top of the water, causing ripples on its smooth surface.

  A tree with white and yellow flowers stood in the center of the small courtyard. I stepped into its shade, and for the first time since I had landed, I felt a cool breeze. “Lee,” I said, “this is the prettiest place I have ever seen.”

  Mynx’s eyes narrowed on its prey and its triangular ears smoothed back against its skull. It kept its gold and black body low to the ground, hiding in the brush as it prepared to pounce. The sinewy muscles in its haunches visibly tightened.

  I leaned over and scooped Mynx up with one hand, and the cat purred as I lowered her into my lap. She had claws, this skinny feline, but she did not swipe at me. She stretched and made herself comfortable across my thighs, plucking gently at my pants with her claws. As Mynx curled up to sleep, her intended prey, a butterfly, flitted out of the garden.

  “Careful, Wayson, you might get scratched,” Lee warned as he joined me for a beer in the courtyard.

  “The note in the kitchen says that Mynx is friendly,” I said, absentmindedly stroking her back. She took a lazy swipe at my hand, but her claws were not extended.

  “Don’t say that I didn’t warn you,” Lee said in a singsong voice. He flipped the cap off the old-fashioned bottle. “To many days of absolute boredom.”

  I held up my bottle and nodded. Mynx, still lying across my lap, stretched her body and dug her claws into my legs again. I laughed, though it hurt a little.

  Warm air, cool shade, cold beer, green plants, and garish flowers—it was paradise. “I don’t imagine that life gets much better than this,” I said.

  “It beats the hell out of Hubble,” Lee said.

  I saluted that comment with my bottle, though it reminded me of my open wounds. We found beer in the refrigerator. It tasted sweet, but it was weak. I could never have gotten drunk on the stuff.

  “Hubble,” I said. “I was just starting to forget about that shit hole.” I rubbed Mynx behind her ears, and she purred.

  “I saw you packing,” Lee said. “It looks like most of your clothes are government-issue. Want to do some shopping?” Unlike me, Lee owned plenty of civilian clothes.

  “I’d like that,” I said. Sweat had soaked through the long-sleeved shirt I wore on the plane. At the moment, I was lounging with no shirt.

  “Either that or you can go around in your armor. That ought to attract some scrub,” Lee said. “Scrub” was the term we used for one-night romances.

  I looked down at the nearly sleeping cat on my lap. “Careful, Vince, or I might toss you a Mynx ball.”

  In many ways Honolulu was designed to accommodate vacationing military men. The store owners recognized every clone as a potential customer. As we walked past storefronts and street-side vendors, people looked at Vince and launched into sales spiels or tried to attract his attention by yelling, “Hey, soldier!”

  “Liberators must have come here a lot in the old days,” Lee commented. “They recognize you.” He never appreciated the tightrope act that the neural programming performed in his head.

  We followed heavy foot traffic into an alley marked “International Marketplace.” “Waikiki Bazaar” would have been more appropriate. Once we entered the market we saw stands, carts, and small shops selling toys, tropical drinks, and gaudy clothing with overly bright colors.

  Lee led me to a woman selling clothing out of a cart, which she kept shaded under a bright red canopy. The woman was tall . . . taller than me. She had long, blond hair that fell past her rather butch shoulders. The caked-on makeup around her eyes made her look old. Seeing Vince, she smiled daintily, and said, “Can I help you find something?”

  “We’re looking for shirts,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve got shirts,” she said as she batted her eyes.

  “We’ll have a look,” Vince said.

  The woman watched as I sorted through a bin of T-shirts with pictures of colorful fish. The shirts and shorts on her cart looked like they might fall apart after a single wash. I felt threads break when I picked up a pair of shorts and snapped the waistband.

  “Two shirts for ten dollars,” the woman said. “Five for twenty.”

  “That’s cheap,” I whispered to Lee. He apparently thought that I wanted help haggling. “Twenty dollars!” he gasped with such awful melodrama that I wanted to laugh. “Twenty dollars for this? C’mon, Harris. No one in his right mind would pay these prices. Every cart on this street is selling the exact same shit.”

  Twenty dollars for five shirts sounded good to me, no matter how poor the quality. I didn’t want them to last my career, just two weeks.

  The woman gave Lee a wily smile. “Eighteen dollars, but you buy now. If you leave, that price goes away.”

  “Is that a good deal?” I asked.

  “I only know one way to find out,” Lee said loud enough so that the woman could hear. “Let’s go check some other stands.”

  “She said she wouldn’t give us that price again,” I said.

  “Look around here, Harris. This place is filled with carts just like this selling clothes just like these.” He spoke in a loud voice, making sure that the woman would hear. Even on vacation, Lee was
political.

  But Lee was right. The marketplace was crowded with stores selling bright shirts and shorts like the ones I was holding. And there I was, in my long-sleeved shirt and heavy and dark pants, sweating up buckets. Every shopkeeper in the International Marketplace would welcome me.

  I decided to risk spoiling the deal. Purposely establishing eye contact with the woman, I tossed the shirts back into the bin and turned to leave.

  “Twelve dollars,” she barked angrily. “Twelve dollars for five shirts or three pairs of shorts.”

  “What do you think?” Lee asked.

  “They’re not great, but they’ll hold up for the next two weeks,” I said.

  “You have shit for taste, Marine,” Lee said.

  “Get specked,” I said.

  “Okay, smart guy,” Lee said. I did not like the mischievous smile that formed on his lips. He walked over to the woman and spoke to her in hushed tones that I could not hear.

  “Mmmmm,” she said, bouncing her head in agreement. She turned to me and winked, putting up a finger to ask me to wait for a moment. When she returned, she held five genuinely nice shirts all neatly folded. She handed me the shirts.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  I looked down and saw a photograph at the top of the pile. The woman had given me a portrait of herself. In the photo, she had a sly, alluring smile. She wore a bright pink bathing suit that did nothing to hide her masculine shoulders.

  “Looks like you found yourself some scrub,” Lee said, choking down a laugh.

  I looked at the photograph again and understood. The hips, the shoulders, the makeup . . . this was a man.

  I handed the shirts and the photograph back. “My friend . . .”

  “Leave my store,” the woman said with a very male voice and an impressive air of dignity.

  As we walked away from the cart, Lee laughed convulsively. I thought he might collapse on the ground. He clapped his hand on my shoulder and leaned his weight on my back.

  “Go speck yourself, asshole,” I said in a quiet voice. Then I thought about it and laughed. “Bastard,” I said.

  Lee started to respond, then gave up in another fit of laughter.

  Despite Lee’s sense of humor, I bought six shirts, three pairs of pants, and a pair of sandals before leaving the Marketplace. My entire wardrobe cost forty dollars.

  At night, the streets of Waikiki took on a Roman Circus air. Rows of glowing red lanterns lined the streets. Strings of white Christmas lights blinked from every tree. Tourists and party-loving locals filled the sidewalks. Bartenders and sober-looking businessmen came to take advantage of them.

  Lee walked over to a small tiki hut to purchase a drink. I watched him carefully, purposefully memorizing the look of his clothes. Half the crowd seemed to be made up of vacationing clones, and I was not sure how I would find him if we got separated.

  When he returned, Lee had a yellow-and-green fruit that looked like a squat bowling pin. Holding the fruit with both hands, he sipped from a straw that poked out of its stem.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Lee said. “The fruit is papaya, but I have no idea what they’ve poured inside it.” He took a sip. “It makes you feel like your head is on fire.”

  A gang of boys stopped to watch Lee drink from that odd fruit. “What’s their problem?” Lee slurred.

  “Probably don’t like drunks,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Lee. “Me neither. You wanna try this?”

  I did not know what was in Lee’s drink, but I decided it would be safer if only one of us tried it. I led the way up the street, trying to keep Vince from bumping into people. It took a lot of work. A few more sips, and he could barely stand. Whatever else they put inside that drink, some of it must have come from Sagittarian potatoes.

  A double-decker bus with a banner that said, “Free Historic Tour,” came rolling up the street. Vince did not look like he could walk much farther, and I thought the night might go easier if I kept him off his feet. I waved, and the bus stopped for us. Our ride took us away from the crowded streets of Waikiki and out toward the airport. We drove past a harbor filled with boats and large ships.

  “This is historic Honolulu Harbor,” the bus driver said over an intercom.

  “Oh, look at the ships,” Lee said, moments before vomiting. The woman sitting across the aisle from us focused all of her attention straight ahead, completely denying our existence. The young couple in the next seat acknowledged us. Lee’s vomit splashed their feet, and they turned back and glared.

  When the bus stopped to let people walk around the harbor, I led Lee away from the tour group. No one seemed sorry to see us go.

  We stopped on a bridge and watched swells roll across the top of the moonlit water. The salt air seemed to do Lee good. He took deep breaths and regained some strength, then threw up again over the top of the bridge.

  “Pathetic bastard,” I said as I patted him on the back.

  This part of town was not nearly as crowded as Waikiki, but a steady trickle of pedestrians moved along the streets. “Are you up for a walk?” I asked Lee.

  He did not answer. I took that for a yes.

  Most of the buildings along the streets were dark. We passed a bar, and I heard dance music and noisy chatter. The farther we walked from the water, the more people we saw, until we reached a building that looked like an auditorium or maybe a movie theater. The sign over the door said, “Sad Sam’s Palace” in foot-tall letters. Under the sign was a marquee that said, “Big-Time Professional Wrestling.”

  Dozens of clones in civilian clothing milled around the entrance. Some sat on benches, others lounged along the walls. Many of them had been on leave for a while and had bronzed tans. A few also had women tucked under their arms.

  “Want to watch wrestling?” I asked Lee as I led him toward the door.

  “Do we get to sit?” he asked.

  “As long as you don’t puke,” I said.

  Lee leaned on the pedestal of a bronze statue as I went to buy the tickets. When I returned, he said, “Sad Sam Itchy-nose,” and laughed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This is Sad Sam Itchy-nose,” he said pointing to the sign.

  I looked at the plaque. It said, “Sad Sam Ichinose, 1908-1993.” “He must have been a famous wrestler,” I said. “Are you okay now?” I asked. “Are you going to puke?”

  Lee shook his head, but he looked awfully pale.

  On closer inspection, Sad Sam’s Palace reminded me of an oversized bar. The building was old, with chipped walls and no windows. We entered the lobby and found ourselves in a crowd waiting for the doors to open.

  “What’s wrong with him?” a clone in a bright shirt asked as we came through the door.

  “He bought a fruit drink that didn’t agree with him,” I said.

  “Hey, I did that my first night. They fill that specker with Sagittarian Crash. I’ll never do that again,” he said cheerfully.

  “Is this wrestling good?” I asked.

  “Best show in town,” the clone said. “Just don’t come on Friday night.”

  “What happens on Friday?” I asked.

  “That’s open challenge night,” he said. I had no idea what that meant; but the doors swung open as he spoke, and the crowd pushed inside.

  “We should get a beer,” Lee said, as we passed the concession stand. He swayed where he stood. His jaw was slack, and slobber rolled over his bottom lip.

  “You’ve had enough,” I said. I wondered if I should take him home.

  Thick red carpeting covered every inch of Sad Sam’s Palace. Inside the second door, we entered a large, square theater with bleachers along its walls and a balcony. I estimated that a thousand spectators had come for the show—and the building was half-empty.

  There was a small boxing ring surrounded by tables. The only lights in the room hung over the ring, but the glare made the room bright enough for everybody.

  An usher aske
d for my ticket at the door. When I showed her, she smiled and led us to bleachers about a hundred feet from the ring.

  “Think we could be any farther from the action?” Lee asked.

  “Lee,” I hissed, “these are good seats.”

  He squinted at me. “My head hurts,” he said.

  A man in an old-fashioned black-and-white tuxedo entered the ring carrying a microphone. “Laaaaaadies and gentlemeeeeen, Sad Sam’s Palace is proud to present, Big-Time Wrestling.”

  The crowd roared. Lee covered his ears and moaned.

  “For our first match, weighing in at two hundred sixtyfive pounds . . . Crusher Kohler.” A fat man with bleached blond hair, yellow tights, and no shirt strode to the ring, growling at people who booed his arrival.

  “Weighing in at two hundred thirty-seven pounds, Tommy Tugboat.” In came a man with balding black hair, dark eyes, and black swim trunks. The crowd cheered for this one.

  Crusher? Tugboat? God, what kinds of names are those?I asked myself. I might have asked Lee, but he sat slumped forward with his head hanging.

  We had mandatory judo and wrestling at the orphanage. I knew what wrestling looked like, and it looked nothing like this. For openers, this fight was in a boxing ring, not on a mat. Tugboat and Crusher ran face-first into the ropes then bounced backward as if the ropes around the ring were made of elastic.

  The crowd roared.

  Tugboat smashed Kohler across the mouth, and the guy staggered like a drunkard. Another punch, and Kohler fell to his knees. Remaining on his knees, he put up his hands and begged for mercy.

  The crowd roared.

  “They’re faking it,” I said. “They must be.”

  By the time it was over, both Tugboat and Kohler had stumbled around as if half-dead, only to suddenly recover. Tugboat once lifted the flabby Kohler over his head, no small feat, then dropped him face first to the mat. After both men had been so pulverized that they should have been dead, the match ended with a simple pin.

  The crowd loved it.