by Sean Platt
But what else was she going to do with her time? The torture shows on TV hadn’t been interesting when she’d been in The Vineyard and weren’t going to start being interesting now in this fleabag motel with the wrong Ephraim Todd.
“Is this what’s on now?” Ephraim was on the right-side bed, fully clothed atop the comforter, with his eyes on this week’s episode of Beat Me Daddy. Onscreen, a twenty-something woman with large breasts and a skirt so short it might more accurately be called a cummerbund was running from a man with a whip. The man was in a gray suit and a hat with a bright purple feather, a pipe clamped between his teeth. “Half the channels have religious shows. Half have what’s basically abuse or porn.”
“That’s why I don’t watch TV.”
Ephraim flipped the channel, his eyes wide. Talking more to himself than Sophie, he said, “We don’t get much on Eden. I haven’t sat down to watch anything in years.”
“You haven’t missed much.”
“No kidding.” He turned it off. Then he set the remote (ancient like the paperback) on the end table between the beds and rolled to face Sophie. She was sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the corner, behind a small desk. Her hands weren’t cuffed. He’d finally given in on that yesterday, and now only cuffed her at night.
“You’re strange, you know,” he said, watching her.
“I am?”
“I remember when Neven made you. You made the rounds.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “You’re a pig.”
“Not like that. We’re not animals. And Neven was sure to crate you for transport, because Mercer, the guy who took you to the club to give to Ephraim, is an animal. I just meant we all met you. Neven wanted my opinion since you were meant for the other Ephraim.”
“What opinion?”
“On whether you were hot. He wanted to know if I’d be attracted to you.”
“Hmm.”
“I said yes, for the record.”
“That’s great.”
“I won’t lie. There’s chemistry here. Do you believe in fate?”
“No.”
“I heard that my clone and the real Sophie Norris even hit it off. So how do you explain that? Maybe we’re meant to be together.”
Sophie ignored him. After a moment Ephraim rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. He reminded her of a bored and fidgeting child.
“Do you think we could see a movie without you making a scene? I guess it’s not a good idea. I want to see Deadfall, but I can’t get it on that yet.” Ephraim pointed at the TV.
“Let me go, and you can see all the movies you want.”
“Nah,” he said. “See, that’s what I mean. You’ve got a good sense of humor.”
She gave him a look that said, What the hell are you talking about?
“When we met you fresh out of the tube, you were like a zombie. ‘Yes sir, no sir, how may I serve you, sir?’ You know what I mean.”
Sophie didn’t know what he meant.
“And now, you’re like a real person.”
“I am a real person.”
“You didn’t used to be. Most of them don’t act like people.”
“By ‘them,’ do you mean Eden’s other slaves?”
“Right.”
“Maybe you don’t understand what ‘person’ means.”
“See, there’s that sense of humor again. I’d think you were real.”
“I am real.”
“You know. Not a clone.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Clones are things. People are people.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Long pause.
“Explain it to me, then.”
Sophie considered. Why not? He’d unbound her but wasn’t going to let her speak to the outside world. This impasse, in this shitty motel, might go on forever. In theory, Papa could probably find her, but he wouldn’t try while looking for Neven, and given the way things were falling apart over the whole ‘anyone might be a clone!’ panic, the police probably wouldn’t care about one missing girl. Right now, what she needed saving from was boredom.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s look at your clone.”
“What about him?”
“I’d say he’s more of a person than you are.”
Ephraim laughed. But after Sophie held her challenging stare, he replied seriously. “I came first.”
“So did the telegraph and the fax machine. Should we all give up our Doodads and go back to Western Union and Pony Express?”
“What’s Western Union?”
Sophie didn’t want to answer that. It only made her point less elegant. Any mind could be educated. The mind was a muscle. It needed exercise. This Ephraim simply hadn’t tried.
“My clone was made with all kinds of flaws,” Ephraim said instead.
“Whereas you were born with yours,” Sophie said. “I guess neither of you has an excuse.”
Ephraim’s eyes sharpened. Good thing she wasn’t even a little afraid of him. He was an interesting study: half the Ephraim she knew, half what life had made him. The part she knew was sweet, and the part that was uniquely him was more obnoxious than dangerous.
“What’s your point?” Ephraim asked.
“You have a lot of the same memories, but you turned out differently.”
“Right. Mine are real. His are fake.”
“Or maybe it’s the choices he made versus those that you made.”
“He chose to be crazy.”
“You made him crazy. You and your brother and Neven. You did everything you could to make him lose his mind. But instead of choosing to succumb to madness, he chose life.”
“He was a pilot for Neven. A test. I don’t think he chose anything. That was all baked in.”
“How did that test work out for Neven, then?”
Ephraim stopped.
“Do you know what made Ephraim decide to kill Neven?” Sophie asked.
“He said something about it when they were dragging us off. He thought Neven had something on his tablet that would kill him. Self-defense or something.”
“Ephraim was fine with dying himself. It probably sounded like a relief after all you’d put him through. He only came alive and decided to fight when Neven said that he was going to kill me.”
Ephraim was watching her. “You remember all of this?”
“The Change frees minds.”
“So the clone Ephraim decided to save your life, and that’s a big deal?”
“Whose life have you saved?”
Ephraim’s expression was hard. She could see two parts of himself at war: the part (common to her Ephraim) that always wanted to do good versus the bastard he’d turned out to be.
Both Ephraims were kind somewhere inside. But this one’s kindness was buried beneath an enormous scab, a system of values that was selfish first and selfless never.
“I’d do it if I had to.”
“Whose would you save?”
She almost felt bad for him then. Ephraim’s face had been so cocky, but that had collapsed. He didn’t have anyone. From what Sophie had cobbled together, she was fairly certain that Ephraim and Jonathan were estranged from their mother, blind about their father. But whereas her Ephraim had lived a social life, this one had been sequestered on Eden for years. He’d only had his brother, and now that seemed to be gone.
“How about Jonathan?” she asked, picking at the sore because pain often led to redemption. “If he was in danger?”
Ephraim reached for the remote. He turned the TV back on.
“Ephraim?”
“I think we’ve talked enough.”
“I’d like to talk more.”
Ephraim said nothing.
Sophie gambled. She rose from the chair and moved to sit on the bed across from Ephraim. Then she reached out and plucked the remote from his hands, set it aside, and waited.
He stared at her. She kept telling herself: His core is the same. Deep down, he’s the same man.
If each person had nature and nurture inside them, this Ephraim was at least half the same as the man she loved.
“Tell me,” she said.
“No thanks.”
“I mention your brother, and you shut down. But I know he’s the one who sent you here. I don’t understand.”
“Fuck him,” was all Ephraim had to say.
“Who?”
“Jonathan.”
“But he’s your brother.”
“And fuck him.”
“You’re working with him. Don’t you want to go back to Eden? I thought that’s what this was all about.”
She’d have to be an idiot to think he wanted to go back or that this was about any of it. Getting back to Eden now, with as distracted as the law had been, should have been simple for a man who wanted to go and had means, and yet Ephraim hadn’t even tried.
“He turned on you, didn’t he?” she said, faking realization.
“He sure hasn’t tried to get my ass out of here.”
“Have you called Eden?”
“Has he called me?”
Sophie thought it implausible. The fact that Jonathan hadn’t tried to reach his brother didn’t mean he’d turned on him, but the news was doing nothing to remove the poisoned knife.
They’d been in this crap hole for three days, with the TV on for most of that time. They’d watched riots. An inquest in British Parliament because a rumor had spread that one of its members had been replaced by a clone. A report about how whoever was behind the Altruances would soon be able to clone anyone they wanted and anyone, anywhere, might soon find themselves usurped.
Unions were up in arms because clone slaves could become the new robots. And most of all, there had been reactions from Eden; Jonathan Todd defending his company from slings and arrows.
It seemed like a lot of people felt Eden might be behind this and were asking about the absent Wallace Connolly. Jonathan had answers: Ephraim’s conspiracy was behind it all, just as he’d been saying from the start.
But as Real Ephraim watched Jonathan speak, he’d seemed more and more to believe that his brother wasn’t blaming the clone like before. Now he was using his true brother as a scapegoat.
Sophie’s silence was working him in ways that words never could.
Strangely, Real Ephraim was right. There was a curious energy between them, and more than once she’d caught him watching her in the way a schoolboy watches a crush. He’d never act, but the energy remained, between any form of Ephraim and Sophie, like a cosmic connection. Her presence was calming. Persuading him. Her quiet was urging the secrets to spill themselves.
He rubbed a hand hard across his face, near his eyes, as if punching away a tear.
“Ephraim. Look at me.”
Slowly, he did.
“You should let me go.”
“So you can report me?”
“I won’t report you.”
“You don’t need to, right? There’s already an Ephraim Todd, and his reputation sucks. Who am I? Just a drifter. A man with no history.”
Sophie felt a chill. That could have easily described the Ephraim clone’s situation before the world had flip-flopped the two.
“What are we going to do? Sit here in this room forever?”
“I just need time to think.”
“You’ve thought. You’re a smart guy. You’ve already realized this goes nowhere. You had to use credits to pay for the room, so at some point anyone who wants to find us here will be able to.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else.”
“Where people will also be able to find us. Eventually, your money is going to run out. Even if it doesn’t, what’s the point? Are we going to live as fugitives? What happens next?”
“I’m not going to let you go.”
“I’m not asking you to let me go right now. I’m asking what happens next.”
“I don’t know.”
“If you can’t go back to Eden—”
“I said I don’t know!”
He rubbed his face. Aggressively, as if furious with himself for having emotions. Softly he repeated, “I don’t know.”
And Sophie realized how true it was, how desperate it was. He had no idea what came next. He had no home, no friends, no family, no allies. She had no idea where his money came from, but it had to be from something on Eden, or some account set up by Evermore. If Jonathan was turning on him, how long would that account remain open? Even if he hadn’t turned, how long would Jonathan let Ephraim dangle, unheard-from, before he cut ties to save himself?
“Fucking Jonathan,” Ephraim said.
“He might not be thinking what you assume he’s thinking. He—”
“No, I mean this whole thing. He went to Eden, so I went to Eden. He needed a cloned spy so suddenly I’m the donor. I’m tied up in all of it, this whole stupid thing, because of him. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know it’d go this far.”
He looked around the room to see the definition of this far, the noose he’d tied around himself, unshakable and only growing tighter.
But then he stopped. And his face firmed into a grimace. Probably because Ephraim was realizing that it always took two to tango; Jonathan to have the idea and Ephraim to go along.
“He always forced me into his bullshit. It was always his games, his motherfucking plans and schemes. He just dragged me along. I was like his … his toy.”
Sophie reached out. Dared to touch his hand. Ephraim looked over.
“That must have been hard.”
“Fuck him,” Ephraim said, resolute. Then quieter, “I guess fuck me for always going along with it.”
Sophie rubbed his hand.
“It’s just how we always were. How I’m wired, I guess.”
“You wanted your brother’s approval.”
“I suppose. Needed it. With Mom like she was and our dad …” He sniffed. Hard, like a denial.
Push.
“Do you like being like this? Do you like who you are?”
He said nothing, though his body said it all.
“The Ephraim I know? Your clone?”
A hard look from Original Ephraim. Sophie rushed on.
“He’s the same as you. Same genes, a lot of the same mind. But like I said, he’s different. And I think … I think a lot of the time now, he’s happy.”
“You think he’s happy? After—”
“After all of it. Yes. So even though I think you see things as being dark right now, it can be different. You can be different if you want to be. Your clone is proof that you can change.”
She thought he wouldn’t answer, but emotion was clearly overwhelming him. He’d gone through desperate some time when she hadn’t been looking.
This was the first corner of bargaining. If there was a way out, Ephraim was eager to take it. Not just out of this situation, but out of all he’d lived so far.
“How?” he asked.
“Stop doing things that matter only to you. Start doing what matters to other people.”
And again, he surprised her. Same word, same tone. “How?”
“Do you trust me?”
“No.”
“Can things get much worse?”
Almost a smile. Almost. Then, “No.”
“Then let me see your Doodad,” Sophie said.
Chapter 52
Signs of Civilization
At first, Ephraim thought that Papa had gotten everything wrong. His intel was buggy; he’d pulled old satellite imagery, or it was the wrong coordinates; his drone had flown to some hipster city in Europe instead of an island off the Eastern US shore and captured condos designed by a lunatic.
Ephraim had his doubts when they landed at the dock and moved from Papa’s helicopter into a boat that looked like the fisherman’s skiff from Jaws. Papa, despite his wealth, was understated. His suits were nice, but not bespoke. Now he’d changed into jeans like Ephraim’s.
But the shitty boat. Papa saw Ephraim assess its barnacle-covered, chipped-pa
int appearance. “It was the fastest thing I could arrange. Not much of a nautical man myself.”
Nor am I, Ephraim thought, though he’d had his share of adventures on the water over the past half-year.
At least you’re not terrified of open water like Altruance. Just imagine the screams, if Neven sent all those clones to Manhattan by boat. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill themselves on the ride over, each fighting to wear four life jackets apiece.
The thought was funny. Part of Ephraim knew he should smile. But his mind wouldn’t slow down enough to relish the humor. It saw every chip of paint, enough that he could reproduce them with crayon later on. It saw the length of stern to bow, then the width once they’d climbed on board.
“It’ll get us there,” Papa said, a reassuring hand on Ephraim’s back. “We’ll survive, I promise.”
But that’s not what Ephraim was worried about, if he was worried at all.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Papa said in a severe voice, quoting Jaws. Papa saw the similarity, too.
But inside Ephraim’s head, his conditioned responses seemed to be firing all at once. Something Neven had done to him, then undone. Maybe clones weren’t supposed to learn what they were without careful deprogramming.
“You okay, Ephraim?”
Ephraim said he was fine, then went back to thinking that Papa had it all wrong. He thought it as they left the shore. He thought it they motored out under cloudy skies and blessedly still waters, once they were past the choppy coast. And he thought it when he saw the island — when Papa asked Ephraim to kill the outboard and lowered a pathetic-looking electric trolling motor into the water that Ephraim felt sure was nowhere near powerful enough for the boat’s bulk.
He’s wrong. Look at that place. It’s nothing but trees — nothing like the photographs he showed you back at The Vineyard.
They were quiet. Lapping water was loud against the hull. Ephraim was trying to fool himself. Papa was right. The Domain was here, even if you couldn’t see it from the water. He didn’t need to trust Papa. He’d realized during the trip that he remembered every word on Papa’s scattered paperwork — even pages he’d barely glanced at. His mind had built the same case. Arrived at identical conclusions. The Domain was here. In retrospect, that much was obvious.