Cloneward Bound

by M. E. Castle

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Fisher pointed out.

  “Time is money!” GG barked out. She clapped Fisher on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” Then she winked at FP. “Fame and glory await you, my little pink friend.”

  Fisher looked down at FP as GG McGee walked away. He tried to look as stern as possible. “What have you gotten me into now, boy? If you could go fifteen minutes without a snack …”

  “What was that all about, Fisher?” Ms. Snapper asked.

  Fisher shoved his hands in his pockets. He had been in LA for less than an hour, and already Two’s growing popularity was proving disastrous.

  “Yes, uh, Basley’s my stage name.” Fisher forced a big grin onto his face and avoided Amanda’s eyes. “I made a little tape and some talent scouts must have seen it. But for now, I really want to focus on schoolwork,” Fisher hurried to add. “Just, you know, being a normal kid and everything.”

  “Cool!” Veronica said, turning her beautiful smile on him. The light of that smile warmed him up from his head to his feet. “So Kevin really was waving to you!” she continued, even more excitedly.

  “Uh … yeah, I guess so,” Fisher said as the warmth became a harsh sunburn.

  As the tour resumed, Amanda turned to glower at him. “Listen, Fisher Bas!” she hissed, tugging Fisher away from the other students. “I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but we’re here to find Two, not chase flying-pig movie dreams.”

  “Look,” Fisher said, “That woman—GG—has clearly heard of Two. She might be able to help us find him.”

  “Fine,” Amanda said, putting her hands on her hips. “But I’m going with you to the meeting, and I’m doing the talking. Congratulations, Basley, you’ve just hired your first manager.” She extended her right hand. Fisher knew there was no point in arguing, so he allowed her to crush his hand. Again.

  Less than an hour in Hollywood, and things had gone from bad to terrible.

  CHAPTER 7

  There are three kinds of people in the world: People who cause problems, people who solve problems, and people who sit in comfortable interview chairs saying things about problems and getting paid a lot of money.

  —Dr. Devilish, TV Interview

  “Rat! There’s a rat in the door!”

  The arrival at the King of Hollywood hotel wasn’t going quite as smoothly as planned. Fisher scanned the lobby and felt his blood drain all the way to his toes. Not again. FP was stuck inside the revolving glass front doors. He must have wandered after someone and gotten trapped.

  The original King of Hollywood location had started out looking like any other fast-food place, but as the chain had taken off, it had grown to monstrous size. Now, in addition to the expanded, well-decorated restaurant on the ground floor, a twenty-story hotel soared into the sky. It was an upscale, classy establishment. And not one that Fisher imagined would be welcoming to pigs, even small, flying ones.

  An old woman, wearing a satin evening dress, a string of ping-pong-sized pearls, and spectacles with lenses so thick they would probably stop bullets, continued screaming and pointing. Fisher was barely able to rotate the door back and scoop FP out before several of the hotel staff descended upon them.

  “He’s not a rat!” Fisher protested. “He’s not a rat! He’s a little pig, and he’s fully house trained.” Other than his tendency to stalk people and leap onto buses, Fisher thought, but they didn’t need to know that.

  “I’m sorry, young man,” said a woman, whose name tag identified her as the manager, “but I’m afraid we do not allow pets of any kind in this establishment.” She sniffed in distaste as she looked down at FP. “Particularly not pigs.”

  “But—” Fisher started to protest.

  “No exceptions,” she said sternly. “Now get that thing out of here, before I bring him to the fryer myself.”

  Fisher stalked out of the hotel with FP in his arms, fuming. Amanda and Veronica followed him out.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Amanda whispered fiercely. “Your stupid pig is going to mess up our whole plan to find …” She trailed off when she realized Veronica was right behind her. She settled for crossing her arms and frowning.

  “I’m really sorry, Fisher,” Veronica said. “Maybe we can rig up a bed for FP on the bus. He’ll be happy there, won’t he?”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t add: when FP really does fly. He headed dejectedly toward the tour bus, trying to calculate the odds that FP would be content to sleep on the bus without chewing through all of the seat cushions—and possibly the engine cables—in protest.

  Trevor Weiss was tugging his oversized suitcase with all of his strength, still trying to wrestle it out of the luggage compartment. A final yank sent Trevor rolling backward onto the ground. The suitcase sprang open, and its contents tumbled onto the pavement: some clothes, a small blanket, and a metal contraption that looked like a miniature instrument of torture.

  “What’s this?” Fisher said, picking up the little blanket.

  “My feet get cold, so I always carry an extra blanket,” Trevor explained, pulling himself to his feet unsteadily.

  “And the other thing?” Fisher said. “What is that?”

  “Orthodontic stuff,” Trevor said. “I’m supposed to hook it to my braces when I sleep.”

  Fisher looked back and forth between the blanket and the headgear and the pig. And he had an idea.

  “May I borrow those?” Fisher asked Trevor, indicating the two items. Trevor shrugged and nodded, curious, and Fisher deftly wrapped FP up in the blanket so that only a small part of his head was visible. Then he wrestled the headgear onto FP’s head, pinning down the pig’s ears. FP squirmed and honked a little in protest, but ultimately relented.

  “Voilà!” Fisher said triumphantly. Amanda recoiled. Veronica giggled.

  Fisher had succeeded in making FP resemble a very, very unattractive baby.

  He tucked FP into his arms and strolled back through the lobby, whistling loudly and trying to look casual.

  A young couple strolled up to Fisher and looked down at FP.

  “Oh, hello there!” said the tall young woman, waving at the sleeping pig. “Is that your little brother?”

  “Er, yeah, that’s right,” Fisher said. “His name is FP. That’s, um, short for … Frederick Percival.”

  “Sounds very noble,” said the man, adjusting his glasses. They both bent down to take a closer look.

  “Gee, he’s got such a … distinctive face. Don’t you agree, sweetie?” the woman said with a forced smile.

  “Oh, yes,” the man choked out. “Very distinctive.” He cleared his throat. “Well, have a good day.”

  “You too,” Fisher said as they walked away, before letting out a sigh of relief.

  Fisher found the rest of the class already seated in the restaurant’s massive dining room, sat down, and set FP in his lap. The blanket seemed to have a tranquilizing effect on him, and Fisher listened for FP’s light snoring, to make sure the little pig didn’t suffocate under all the headgear.

  Veronica plopped down next to him.

  “Sheesh. This trip has hardly begun and it’s already crazy,” she said.

  “Y-yes, crazy it has, uh, been,” Fisher said. Veronica’s elbow was touching his, and a feeling of numbness crept into his mouth, as though he’d just been shot with Novocain. He gestured to the sleeping pig in his arms. “He definitely … superbly … he’s trouble.”

  “At least he’s cute,” Veronica said, smiling down at the odd bundle in Fisher’s lap. “So … did you really submit a taped audition to a studio?”

  “I … did, yes,” Fisher said. The pang hit him like a club right to the middle of his chest. More lies. Always more lies. Two had done something great, something that excited Veronica. Something that he could never do.

  He had made Two so that the clone would pretend to be him. Now the only thing that would hold anyone’s attention was pretending to be Two.

  Veronica’s eyes
were shining; he had to keep them shining, even if it did mean using Two for his own personal gain. “It was … kind of unplanned. I’m not sure whether I’ll really be pursuing the Hollywood thing, but I’m keeping my options open.”

  “That’s great,” Veronica said. “I’ll have to … ooh, hang on a second.”

  She whipped around toward one of the restaurant’s many TVs, which had just started playing the music video for the latest Kevin Keels hit, “Gift-Wrapped Heart (Please Don’t Tear the Paper).” Fisher sank a little farther into his seat.

  He dug into the middle of a mountain of Monarch-sized star fries, and something brushed his finger. He thought maybe a napkin had mistakenly been put on the plate, but when he moved a few fries aside, he realized it was a note. He fought back his instinctive reaction with an enormous effort and went on eating, on autopilot, the brief message burned into his mind.

  CHAPTER 8

  All the studying and learning on earth won’t stop the surge of instinct that pops up when you realize you’re being hunted. Of course this doesn’t mean you’ll be able to run any faster.

  —Fisher Bas, Personal Notes

  Wham. Wham. Wham. WHAM. WHAM.

  Amanda opened her hotel room door to Fisher’s frantic knocking.

  “Fisher? What’s going on?”

  “Someone is on to me,” Fisher whispered. “I got a note. Someone knows about Two.”

  “Who do you think it could be?” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure her roommate was still in the shower.

  “I’m not sure, but …” He gulped, and leaned even closer to Amanda. “I’m pretty sure we’re being followed.”

  “Followed?” Amanda parroted, her familiar steely frown returning. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Fisher put his forehead in his hand, sighing through clenched teeth. “The government agency my mother was working for shut down the AGH project and confiscated all samples. They know some AGH is missing, and I think they suspect I took it.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to tell me this particular part of the story?” she said.

  “I didn’t find out until we’d already made our plan. And I didn’t think I was even a suspect until today. Besides, I didn’t want to get you into trouble, on top of everything else.”

  Amanda exhaled. “Well,” she said, “the only thing for us to do is stick to the plan. Go to the meeting with GG McGee, try and find Two from there, and get to him as fast as we can. I trust you’ll figure out a way to deal with the spies by the time we do. You escaped from TechX. How hard can dealing with a couple of government agents be?”

  “Right,” Fisher said, picturing himself handcuffed to a steel chair in a windowless room.

  When he returned to his room, the TV was on, and Warren, his roommate, was sitting on his bed, bouncing slightly.

  “What’s on?” Fisher said. He wanted desperately to distract himself from his growing sense of peril.

  “It’s a preview of Sci-Fi: Survivor!” Warren said cheerfully. “They’re talking about the maze, and the challenges contestants will have to face.”

  The camera was sweeping dramatically over a somewhat cartoonish landscape. There were prehistoric-looking jungles of plastic and gauzy foam, with narrow walkways stretched across bubbling water that was probably about the temperature of a comfortable hot tub. Animatronic dinosaurs plodded clumsily around, swinging rubbery claws and tails. Other parts of the maze were more futuristic and were populated by shining robots that shot foam darts from rotating barrels in their chests.

  “Looks fun,” said Fisher, smiling weakly. He would almost rather be chased by real dinosaurs than be in the position he was in now.

  “Sure does!” said Warren. “I can’t wait for it to premiere next week! Well, time for bed.” He clicked the TV off with the remote and literally passed out sitting up, his unconscious body slowly falling back against the pillows.

  Fisher sighed and climbed into bed next to the already-sleeping FP, wishing sleep would come to him as quickly as it did for Warren. It was going to be a long night of staring at the clock.

  On Saturday morning, during the tour of Hollywood Boulevard, Fisher’s heart jumped every time he spotted someone in a suit and sunglasses. Unfortunately, in downtown LA, that description covered a lot of people. The city was bathed in bright sunlight, keeping the air at an exact 73 degrees, and the Hollywood sign loomed on a hill in the distance, gleaming in the sun, but Fisher couldn’t enjoy any of it.

  Spies seemed to be lurking everywhere, as they had once again in his nightmares. The massive sandstoneblock courtyard of the Egyptian Theatre offered plenty of hiding places with its thick hieroglyph-painted columns and pharaoh-head statues. The El Capitan Theatre’s marquee, made of shimmering gold trim and flickering lightbulbs, made him think of a thousand watchful eyes. Happy tourists babbled in dozens of languages, and almost all of them had cameras. He felt like every lens was trained on him.

  Fisher pulled a tiny spray can from his pocket that was marked with a generic antimosquito label. Its actual properties made light reflect off him in such a way that a camera trying to capture his image would record only a bright yellow blur. He had originally developed the technology—as he did most of his inventions—as a defense against the Vikings’ harassment. Every year on school picture day, the Vikings found some new way to humiliate Fisher. Once they’d stolen a vial of squid ink from the bio lab and flung it all over his shirt. Once they’d stolen the cafeteria’s vat of homemade hoisin sauce, which had been known to permanently stain bricks, and upended it over Fisher’s head. It hadn’t taken long for Fisher to decide that he’d rather have no picture at all than one the Vikings insisted on destroying.

  He sprayed it all around himself until he nearly choked on it. One of his classmates gave him a strange look.

  “Sunscreen,” Fisher said with a nervous laugh.

  Fisher kept his arms locked tightly around FP. The unfamiliar sights, smells, and sounds gave FP the nervous, destructive instincts of a caffeinated hyena. He couldn’t afford to let FP get away when a single wrong turn could land him in the hands of the FBI or the CIA or someone with even scarier initials.

  The Walk of Fame stretched before them, the highly polished black stone decorated with rows and rows of rose-colored marble stars, each bearing the name of a director, actor, or other famous film industry professional in polished brass. People began pointing out their favorite stars and posing for pictures, joining all of the other tourists from across the globe in the excited shuffle.

  It was almost lunchtime. Fisher had only a few hours before his meeting with GG McGee, Agent of Stars—his best shot at finding Two. And he still had no idea how he would get away from Ms. Snapper.

  The Chinese Theatre came into view. Warren started running in crazy loop de loops around the ornamental pillars that flanked the entrance to its main courtyard. As the class came to a stop, Fisher glanced at the street traffic, and his shoulders seized up as an awfully familiar-looking black car came into view. He looked around for a spot to hide himself when he heard a collective gasp from nearby, and turned just in time to see a gang of seven girls who looked about fourteen descend upon him.

  “Basley!” one of them said.

  “Basley!” echoed her companions in eerily identical voices.

  “Can we have your autograph?”

  “Oh my God! You’re even cuter in real life!”

  Fisher was suddenly lost in a whirlpool of perfect tans and bleached white-blond hair. He could hardly tell where one of them ended and the other began. The girls blurred together into a many-headed beast as Fisher tried to free one hand for a pen. One of them noticed FP.

  “Oh my god!” she squealed. “Is this your baby brother or sister?”

  “Yes,” Fisher said, half in a daze, “he’s my brother.”

  “Awwwwww!” they said in disturbing unison. They bent down to get a closer look at the “baby.”

  “Oh … gee,” one said,
as she got a closer look. “He’s very, um …”

  “Pink and healthy-looking,” another chimed in quickly.

  “What’s his name?” one said.

  “FP,” Fisher said, trying to remember what he’d told the last people who’d asked. “It stands for … Frankie Philip.”

  “Ohhh, hi, Frankie!” another one said, waving at FP, who was starting to stir, and looking around in confusion.

  “Hey!” another voice cut in. “I think Kevin Keels just walked into the theatre!”

  Like a flock of pigeons being charged by a small child, the girls exploded into motion, leaving nothing but a dizzy Fisher and a cloud of hair-spray fumes in their wake.

  Fisher shook his head, trying to clear it. FP blinked at him confusedly. The black car was gone. He didn’t know if its occupants had seen him or not, but with any luck the giggly wall that had just surrounded him had done the trick.

  Did those girls really just call him cute?

  Fisher looked up and saw Veronica. She winked at him. “I didn’t really see Kevin,” she said, and he realized that she was the one who had shouted.

  “Thank you,” Fisher said fervently. Veronica smiled at him. He felt like the already bright sun had been dialed up and focused just a little bit right around him.

  As Veronica turned back to admire the architecture, Fisher felt hands gripping his shoulders. Before he could shout, he was spun around on his heels.

  “If you’re not too busy with your adoring fans,” Amanda said, her hands on her hips, “we’ve got work to get done.”

  “There are other ways to get my attention besides grabbing me,” Fisher said, without bothering to conceal his irritation.

  She ignored him. “We have a meeting with GG right after lunch,” she said, tapping her watch. “That gives us less than an hour to prepare.”

  Fisher sighed. “I don’t see how we can do it,” he said. “Ms. Snapper has been keeping a really careful eye on everyone since FP’s incident at the hotel. How are we supposed to get away?”