by Terry Bisson
Each of the two guards nodded stiffly.
“So you have a chance to live. Very slowly, put your guns on the roof.”
Each one did as he was told, very slowly.
“Now. Go inside and say ‘Have a nice flight, little girl.’ Then run down the stairs, and if you want my advice, just keep going.”
Each one stepped inside the door and said, “Have a nice flight, little girl,” in a soft, choked voice.
And then each one ran down the stairs and, taking the other Adam’s advice, just kept going.
Thirty-five
Talia moved above the tanks, looking down at each blank, one after the other.
Below her, Adam squeezed closer to his blank, hoping he was invisible from above.
Then Talia’s foot slipped.
Her gun hit the railing with a loud clank!
Suddenly the soulless eyes of Adam’s blank popped open. In a reflex action, like a galvanized frog leg, the blank pulled its arms inward, clutching Adam in a bear hug.
* * *
Bubbles! Talia looked down. Was that…?
She aimed the laser pistol straight down, into the clear fluid.
Adam saw her every move.
He knew he had only one chance. One slim chance.
He kicked off the bottom of the tank, and rose straight up, like a missile fired from a submarine.
His hand caught Talia’s foot, pulling her off her feet just as she fired—
Foosh!
The plasma bolt cracked the edge of the tank. It exploded outward—
Fwoooooosh!
The embryonic fluid spewed out in a tsunami, sweeping everything before it.
Marshall barely had time to look up before it washed over him.
Adam was caught in the raging torrent of embryonic fluid. He held onto Talia’s feet, pulling her off the catwalk, down into a tangle of plastic tubes of all sizes and colors.
Adam was being swept toward Marshall, who was struggling to regain his feet.
Then he stopped. Something was holding him.
He looked up and saw that Talia’s neck was caught in a loop of plastic tube, which made a perfect noose.
Her eyes were wide open, and she was trying to scream. But she had no air.
Adam knew exactly how she felt. He almost felt sorry for her—almost.
He held on tight and watched her die.
* * *
Drucker watched, horrified as the wave of embryonic fluid flowed over the Main Lab floor toward the DNA infusion unit.
The wave washed over the unit, which sparked and crackled—then went dark.
It was shorted out!
Weak from loss of blood, Drucker tried to start the machine again. It sparked once … then the cylinder opened, and the unfinished blank slid out onto a steel table. Then the machine went dark again.
Drucker’s clone lay on the table, half formed, like a grotesque parody of a human being. Still a blank.
Drucker felt the life ebbing out of him. He had to bring the clone to life, finished or not! He pulled the syncording hood down over the clone’s head and hit the switch.
It worked!
The hood glowed, and the clone twitched.
Once, twice.
Then lay back, lifeless.
* * *
The Whispercraft was powered up.
Adam helped Clara and Natalie inside, then jumped into the pilot’s seat.
With a smooth rush the craft rose off the roof and into the night.
* * *
The flood was over. The river of embryonic fluid settled into a lake of sticky gel.
Using Talia’s lifeless body, Adam pulled himself to his feet.
He looked around for Marshall. Then he saw him.
* * *
Drucker tried again.
He lowered the syncording hood over the head of the hideous, half-formed clone.
The hood glowed once more.
Drucker removed it.
Nothing. Lifeless.
Drucker sank to his knees beside the table. He was going to die. To actually die. Nothing he had ever done, or ever known, had prepared him for this.
He hung his head in despair.
Suddenly the clone sat up. “Wiley! You shot me!”
The clone felt its chest with its half hands, half flippers.
Then it noticed Drucker on his knees by the table, coughing blood.
“Oh yeah,” it said in a slurred voice. “That was you.”
The clone stood up, wobbling. “I have to get dressed.”
Drucker shrank away in horror as the hideous half-formed imitation of himself began pulling at his clothes.
“You’re not even going to wait for me to die?”
“Would you?” asked the clone.
Drucker coughed again.
“Oh, look, you’re getting blood on the jacket!”
* * *
The flood had piled up the blanks like logs. Marshall lay at the bottom of a pile of unformed flesh.
He looked dead to Adam.
Adam pulled Marshall’s gun out of his hand, and began making his way cautiously across the Main Lab floor, toward the DNA infusion area.
There was a light ahead. And movement.
He stopped and watched from the darkness.
Drucker was lying on the floor in a mess of blood and embryonic fluid. He was almost naked.
A hideous half-formed imitation of Drucker was clumsily trying to get into Drucker’s clothes. The creature’s muscles didn’t seem to work right.
Drucker pulled at the clone’s ankles.
“What?” asked the clone. “What?”
Drucker pointed to Adam, who was standing at the edge of the light with a foosh gun in his hand. Then he fell back, dead.
The clone saw Adam, and looked around for a gun. Drucker’s was on the floor, out of reach.
The clone’s head bobbed and it tried to smile. “Listen to me. We can make a deal.”
Adam looked at the clone in horror. Its skin was tight in places, and loose in others; white and gooey, like the skin of a burn victim. Its eyes were uncoordinated, one opening while the other shut. The mouth drooled saliva and other, stranger fluids.
“Please,” it said. “Don’t kill me. I did nothing to you.” It pointed at Drucker’s corpse with a wavering, unfinished hand.
“It was him.”
Adam considered this.
There was a certain truth to it.
A certain truth and a certain justice.
He raised the foosh gun toward the clone—then past, above it to the control room windows.
Through the window, he could see the syncording library, where all the DNA transfers were kept.
Foosh!
He incinerated the syncording library with a single blast.
“Have a nice life,” he said to the clone. He headed for the exit at a run.
Thirty-six
It was a hell of a way to hail a cab.
The driver saw the flurry of paper, which he mistook for a raised hand from someone in the shadows on the dark street.
He slowed slightly.
Then he saw the light shining straight down, and he realized that the paper was blowing in the downdraft of a landing ’copter.
Fwump Fwump Fwump …
He slowed some more.
Then the Whispercraft landed right in front of the cab on the dark, empty street.
The driver slammed on the brakes. It was a hell of a way to hail a cab!
* * *
The other Adam popped the cockpit door open with one hand, while he scooped up Clara with the other.
“Taxi!”
Dragging the confused Natalie behind him, he hurried across the street. He quickly thrust the woman and the girl into the backseat of the taxi.
“Take Clara to your mother’s,” he said to Natalie. “And stay there till I come for you.”
Natalie nodded and pulled her daughter to her.
“Stay with us, Daddy,”
said Clara.
Adam kissed her on the top of the head.
“I’d like to, Angel, but I have to help—my friend.”
He slammed the door and ran back toward the Whispercraft.
Before the cab driver could get his fare’s destination, the Double X Whispercraft was rising into the night sky.
* * *
“Did you see that?”
The clone Drucker was jerkily shaking its head. “He didn’t have the guts to shoot me.”
Marshall was silent. He had pulled himself from the bottom of a disgusting pile of blanks, and now he was face-to-face with one—half finished and totally grotesque.
And it insisted on talking to him!
“He didn’t have to,” Marshall said.
The clone faced Marshall with what passed for a crude anger. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Take a look at yourself,” said Marshall. “You go out in public like that, you might as well wear a sign saying ‘I’m a clone.’”
The clone walked over to a stainless steel wall panel to see its reflection. It moved its face closer, then up, then down, looking for a panel that wasn’t distorted.
Then it realized that it was the distortion.
It groaned and turned away, face muscles twitching uncontrollably.
“We can’t panic,” it said. “We’ll explain this somehow! First we’ve got to kill Adam Gibson. Both of them.”
“You’re crazy,” said Marshall. He started for the door.
“What?” The clone’s voice rose shrilly. “The minute things start to get tough, you’re leaving?”
Marshall paused in the doorway. “Don’t you get it? It’s all over.”
He turned and started through the door.
“It’s not all over for me,” said the Drucker clone, picking up the foosh gun from the floor. “It’s all over for you.”
Foosh!
As the laser beam seared through Marshall’s spine, his body crumpled to the floor, as lifeless now as any of the unfinished clone blanks.
Thirty-seven
Adam stepped out of the rooftop door, closing it behind him. The roof was lit from below by two huge skylights. On the other side of them, Adam saw the Replacement Technologies helipad.
No Whispercraft. Good! That meant they had made it. Still, he felt a moment’s disappointment …
Bam! The rooftop door burst open, and six guards ran out. Adam saw the hideous Drucker clone he had neglected to kill, leading them, foosh gun in hand.
They spotted him and opened fire.
Foosh!
Foosh!
Adam dove, then rolled across the glass panel of a skylight, counting on his speed to keep him from breaking through the panes.
Just barely!
Foosh! Foosh!
Adam dove across the second skylight. He rolled under the metal stairs that led up to the elevated landing pad.
Foosh!
Adam pulled himself up onto the stairway, trying to keep cold metal between himself and the guards’ foosh guns.
But they were on all sides now.
Foosh! Foosh!
The Drucker clone watched it all with a lopsided grin, standing on top of the stairwell over the rooftop door. He held his pistol in both malformed hands, looking for a shot.
The guards were closing in on Adam.
Fwump fwump fwump …
Suddenly the Whispercraft swooped over the roof, low, scattering the guards like field mice running from an owl.
Adam ran up the stairs and flattened himself on the landing pad.
The Whispercraft came in low, hovering.
Foosh!
The Drucker clone’s shot drilled a hole in the Plexiglas, barely missing the pilot.
The man in the Whispercraft barely noticed, as he finessed the huge but agile machine to within inches of the platform. He opened the door for Adam …
Who stood up …
And ran …
Foosh!
The Drucker clone’s shot seared a hole in Adam’s thigh. He spun like a top and fell. Raising himself up on one elbow, he waved frantically at the pilot:
“Get the hell out of here!”
Instead, the pilot jumped out of the Whispercraft and landed on the pad near Adam. He, too was Adam.
The other Adam.
He had the remote on one hand, and a foosh gun in the other.
Foosh!
Foosh!
He fired a couple of blasts to keep the Drucker clone and the guards down. Then, as the empty Whispercraft zoomed off, he dragged the wounded Adam to the edge of the helipad.
They both dropped over the edge to the roof, ten feet below. The other Adam dragged the wounded Adam into cover, behind the struts that held up the pad, then handed him the remote.
“Can you fly this?”
“Better than you,” Adam muttered through his pain. “What are you doing here? We agreed you wouldn’t come back.”
The other Adam gave him his shoulder and helped him crawl through the struts toward the ladder that led back up to the landing pad. “Yeah?” he said. “Well then, why’d you go to the roof? We agreed you’d get out through the ground floor.”
As he was being dragged, Adam concentrated on flying the Whispercraft with the remote. Watching it in the tiny monitor, he kept it hovering just below the roof-line.
“I came up here,” he muttered, “because I knew you’d come back for me. I didn’t want you to get your ass killed waiting for me.”
The other Adam shook his head. “I give up!”
He dragged Adam onto the stairs and started up. The stairs were exposed, but they were the only way back up to the helipad—the only way out.
* * *
Across the rooftop, the hideous unformed face of Drucker’s clone broke into a grin.
He had his shot.
Foosh!
* * *
Clang! The blast barely missed.
Adam and Adam rolled back under the stairs, into the darkness.
The stairway was too exposed.
But the guards were making their way through the struts, step by step. Cautious, but getting closer.
Adam concentrated on the remote. He centered the Whispercraft in the tiny monitor, adjusted the pitch of the rotors, then signalled to the other Adam: Help me up. Let’s try it again!
* * *
This was perfect!
The Drucker clone couldn’t believe his luck as he saw the two Adam Gibsons limp out of the darkness and start up the stairway again.
They were close together, so he could take out both with one shot. And they were moving more slowly, so he had time to take careful aim.
It was almost as if they wanted to be eliminated. And he was happy to oblige. He was just squeezing the trigger when he heard something behind him.
Fwump fwump fwump …
He turned and saw the Whispercraft, slicing down toward him, the blade aimed like a saw for his midsection.
It was too late to shoot, or run, or duck. So he jumped …
… and hit, sprawling, on the skylight over the atrium.
Four stories straight down through the glass, he could see the pools, the plants, the marble floor.
The glass was cracking with a sound like static.
The clone stood. The glass spiderwebbed under his feet. But held.
He took a step.
Another.
Then suddenly the world opened up beneath him and he fell.
There was a long silence. Then a tinkling sound, as the glass hit the marble floor.
Then a solid, sickening …
Splat!
Then more tinkling …
A light came on. A smiling face appeared.
A handsome face.
It was the hologram of Michael Drucker, activated by sound. As far as it knew, a visitor had arrived in the atrium.
“Thanks for visiting Replacement Technologies. We’re in the business of life!”
And the hologram was rig
ht. A visitor had arrived … from above.
The visitor bore a strange resemblance to the hologram. Like a bad copy.
While the hologram droned on, the visitor lay bleeding the last of its pitiful, partial life beside the atrium’s goldfish pool, where the carp were discovering a new taste.
For blood.
Thirty-eight
Meanwhile back on the roof …
The other Adam had put the wounded Adam’s arm over his shoulder so that he could stand.
The Whispercraft was coming straight at them, to pick them up.
Adam was working the remote. By flexing a finger, he could cause the machine to slow; by wiggling another, to hover. It was like playing a piano, except the piano wasn’t playing.
He flexed. He wiggled. But nothing happened.
The Whispercraft was coming straight at them. Too fast.
Adam looked at the remote. He turned it over. Smoke drifted out of a neat little hole that had been drilled through it by one of the Drucker clone’s shots.
Adam and Adam looked at each other.
“Shit!” they both said at once.
They flattened on the helipad just as the Whispercraft was about to slice them in half.
The other Adam lunged up and grabbed at the open door.
He held, it held—and they were both dragged upward by the out-of-control Whispercraft, which was plunging into space off the edge of the building.
Adam looked down, toward the lights of the city.
The other Adam looked up. “Try to climb up over me!” he said.
The wounded Adam pulled himself up, inch by inch, into the cockpit, jamming his knees against the frame. Then with a last desperate effort, he yanked the other Adam into the cockpit, where he fell into the seat and reached for the controls—just as the Whispercraft was about to fly into the black glass wall of a supermodern office skyscraper.
The other Adam pulled back and spun the yoke, hitting the throttle with his other hand, and the pitch controls with his knee.
The Whispercraft banked steeply and flew past the building, so close that the rotor blast shook the glass.
The two Adams looked at each other.
They grinned, the same grin.
Thirty-nine
There is something terribly sad about an apartment that has just been emptied.
Particularly a friend’s apartment.