Strings

by Dave Duncan

  The moody silence needed lubricating, obviously. “Would you like a beer?” Abel offered.

  “Yes, please!”

  Abel sighed deeply. “So would I.”

  Cedric shot him an exasperated look, then settled himself more comfortably, crossing his meter-long legs. “What’re you going to do with the Earthfirsters?”

  “Put ’em on Devil’s Island. We already have—most of ’em—only we told them it was called Paradise Island.”

  Cedric grinned briefly. “Which is it?”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” Abel said. “Good as this—water and pseudograss. It’s bigger than Ireland, so they shouldn’t be bothering us much for a century or three.” He yawned. “And we’ve promised to deliver their families, and supplies—they’ll do a lot better than they deserve.”

  “Yeah.”

  Abel frowned at him. “Don’t go blaming yourself, buddy. You did great. I just wish you’d fried more of them.” Seeing that Cedric continued to stare glumly at the ground, he added, “We lost a lot more guys than they did. Served them right, what you did to them. You’re a hero back in Cainsville.”

  “What’s the word on Barney?”

  “Oh, he’s going to be fine,” Abel said. “Good as new.” That was a lie, but the kid did not notice.

  Suddenly Cedric smirked under his stubble. “I guess I did do a job on those Earthfirsters. I wish I could have seen their faces when they realized I’d opened a window on them and they couldn’t go home!”

  It had not been Cedric who had opened the window—it had been Abel himself, and Fish Lyle. They had closed de Soto and opened Bering, but they would never have managed to corral all the invaders inside one dome had not Cedric knocked out the leaders and then unwittingly turned himself into a human fox and drawn the mob of hounds after him. Fish had accepted the lucky break like the champ he was, overriding the overrides, diverting the two golfies that contained Mother Hubbard and Cheung, and sending the rest on after Cedric. Yet there could be no harm in letting the kid believe that System had obeyed his commands.

  But Cedric had gone back to poking grass with a twig.

  “What’s on your mind?” Abel asked innocently.

  “Alya and I—we’d like to—we thought it might be a good idea to explore the pass through the mountains. The one on the satellite photos.” He waved at the distant peaks, all salmon and peach in the evening sun, and then looked anxiously at Abel. “If you think so?”

  The idea had come from Alya, of course, who had gotten it from Abel himself in the first place.

  “I dunno…” Abel rubbed his chin. His stubble was gratifyingly much more widespread than Cedric’s. “She’s a wonder at translating. We should have called this dump Babel instead of Rome, and it’s going to get worse. Sikhs and Brazilians coming next—can we spare her?”

  Cedric looked up, worried. “We’d be a good scouting team—she can sense danger, and she knows so much—all that science stuff! And I can manage the ponies.”

  “You’re also the best shot in the world.”

  Cedric shrugged, indifferent. “That’s just a knack, though.”

  The hell it was! With a laser, marksmanship was pure iron nerve. The kid was as tough as steel bars and steady as a range of mountains, although he didn’t know it. He was also important to Alya’s intuition, for she had known to save him from the bushwhacker. She claimed that that sort of secondhand warning had never happened before, so he must be critical to her future, and that might mean critical to the colony’s. Cedric was also the best all-round outdoorsman they had. Like it or not, and in spite of his low ambition rating on the GFPP, he was going to start collecting followers. In a few years he would rise to whatever heights the new world then offered: statesman, tribal headman, or senior horse thief.

  Abel leaned back to inspect the sunset again, enjoying the balmy evening air and pretending to consider the request. “You’d be gone—what? Three weeks, maybe? Alya’s all right. Don’t know if we can spare you, though, Cedric.”

  “Me? What use am I?”

  “Might run short of tent poles.”

  “How would you like a broken jaw?”

  “Very much—then I wouldn’t have to talk so much!” Abel laughed and thumped his companion on the shoulder. “Look—it sounds like a great idea. We’re going to have to move half an army through to the other coast before winter, and I’d prefer to make them walk, if I can—good psychology! Exodus, you know? The Long March? Sure! You go scout the best route. Radio back and we’ll pick you up by air, and then you can lead the migration.”

  The Banzarakis would willingly follow their princess, and that would shift Jar Jathro’s political power base well away from the supply depot. Baker Abel’s own power base lay in that cache of supplies and the Institute that was feeding it, and when the string came to an end, then the fast footwork would start. Whoever controlled the equipment would run the world. Having inherited some potent political genes from both his parents, Baker Abel was hoping to give all the Jar Jathro types a few pointers.

  Cedric was scowling, probably at the thought of leading a mass migration. Abel tried to imagine him with a long beard and a staff, and decided that he would make a very good prophet figure. More important, though, a couple of weeks away from camp would do him a world of good. He would stop brooding over the killings and over all the Cedric clones he must keep running into—there were six of them—and it would give Abel a chance to round up the last of the Earthfirsters and ship them off to Devil’s Island. Besides, the guy had earned a honeymoon. Any newly paired couple needed to go off alone and nuzzle undisturbed. It was basic human instinct.

  Seven Cedrics! Of course they would start banding together fairly soon, like identical twins. And this one would be the leader. He was a hero already.

  “When’ll you leave?”

  Cedric beamed. “Tomorrow, first light.”

  “Mmm,” Abel said noncommittally. “Window’s due around noon.”

  Cedric grunted and turned his face away to study the sunset. “Talked to one of the rangers,” he remarked. “One who’d been out west. He said the ocean there is really something. Jellyfish with sails as big as yachts, he said. And things like seals that lie on the rocks and sing.”

  “While vigorously combing their long blond hair, I suppose? She keeps asking for you.”

  “Let her ask.” Cedric rose and stretched, making Abel feel about knee high.

  “What’s so hellish hard about saying goodbye to her?” Abel demanded, craning his neck to peer up at the giant. “Is it Devlin and Eccles that bother you? I know the old woman plays hard-ball—if she didn’t, you wouldn’t be here, bud!”

  “Sure. That must be it. We’ll call you when we get to the sea.” Cedric began to move.

  “Wait, dammit! Sit down again.”

  “No. Gotta go. Lady waiting.”

  Abel sighed and scrambled to his feet also, but he hated having to argue with a man’s collarbones. “Then please, as a favor to me, will you wait around tomorrow and say goodbye to Hubbard Agnes when the window opens?”

  “No.”

  In the baffled silence that followed, Cedric just stood with his arms folded, staring placidly over Abel’s head at the lights spread across the valley, among the tents. Finally he remarked, “See that glow in the west? Alya says it’s the galactic center. She thinks it’ll be a helluva show in the winter sky, when it’s higher.”

  “It’s the clone thing, isn’t it?” Abel asked, wondering how it felt to greet oneself six times every morning.

  Cedric looked down coldly at him, his eyes glinting. “Can I go now, please, sir?”

  “No.”

  The big guy growled low in his throat. “All right. Yes, it’s the clone thing. Who or what am I? Can you imagine what it’s like not to have parents? I thought I was a Hastings clone, but I guess I’m not even that. Not a person! Not human! How the hell do I know what I am?”

  Huh? This was not what Abel had expected.

 
“You could ask her.”

  “I wouldn’t believe her if she told me the sky was blue.”

  “It’s damned near black right now. No, you’re not a Hastings clone—”

  “Then why did System say I was?” Cedric’s voice almost cracked.

  Ah! “It did? What exactly did you ask it?”

  Cedric scratched his chin loudly. “Don’t remember my exact words—but I asked it to compare my DNA and his.”

  “How? Sequence the nucleotides? Just the active sites, I hope?” Surely the kid could not have been dumb enough to ask for chemical analysis?

  “Don’t recall.”

  Abel chuckled. “You may not have asked the right question. If you told it to compare your DNA and a chimpanzee’s, it would tell you a better-than-ninety-nine percent fit, you know.”

  Cedric balled a gigantic fist.

  “Me, too!” Abel said quickly. “Me, too! Human and chimpanzee DNA is that similar, honest! Of course, only about one percent of your DNA is genetically active anyway. Didn’t you know all this?”

  Cedric relaxed somewhat, still suspicious. “I don’t know anything.”

  “You’re learning. But obviously any two human beings are going to be more alike than a man and a chimp, so most of your DNA would match Hastings Willoughby’s—almost all of it, for that matter. If you’d asked System to estimate the relationship between the two of you, it would have compared the common alleles and reported twenty-five percent. You really are his grandson, Cedric.”

  For a moment Cedric was silent. “How can I trust you?” he asked finally.

  “If you’re calling me a liar, then I think I’m going to take you down, sonny, big as you are. Now, which is it to be?”

  For an icy moment Abel wondered if he’d been rash. Then Cedric growled, “Sorry.”

  “Okay. And furthermore, you’re the original, the real Hubbard Cedric Dickson.”

  A long sigh escaped from Cedric’s bony chest. “I am?”

  “Yes, you are. You have six clones, and they’re all here on Tiber now, but you are the genuine article. Cedric—I swear this!”

  “Umph!” Cedric said, then quietly added, “Thanks.”

  Abel poked him with a finger. “And because you’re wondering, yes, I do know what I’m talking about. Because for the last three years I’ve been her backup with the organages. That was why all the Cedric clones, see? She’s been working on this for twenty years. The clones gave her access. Whenever she handed over a clone to be reared, then she became one of the gang; she was trusted. You see?”

  Cedric nodded reluctantly.

  Choosing his words with care, Abel said, “You’re not unlike Willoughby, you see. At three or four weeks old, you’re a quite believable baby Secretary General.”

  “Too believable for comfort! The organages all thought she was fronting for Hastings?”

  “Of course. And of course she had help. There were others in this with her—have you seen the Iskander girls? Four of them? There’s a couple of other sets around. Anyway, she’s old, so she appointed me deputy in case anything happened to her. I’ve been keeping an eye on you all. I liked what I saw.”

  “Damned spy!”

  “Yes,” Abel said, unruffled. Of course, it would take the kid time to adjust. “I was glad to hear you were coming along on this jaunt. Or might be coming along. She had some uses for you first—”

  Cedric grunted angrily. “Even if ends justify means, the means don’t have to like it!”

  “Maybe not.” Abel shrugged. He had done about all he could.

  “And if she planned that, then why did she tell Alya that I wasn’t coming?”

  “Dunno. Maybe she didn’t want emotion messing up intuition? I know she was mad as spit at Alya for turning up in public at HQ. But she’s truly your grandmother and you’re truly what she said—the son of Hubbard John Hastings and Dickson Rita Vossler. The one and only. The real McCoy. Bona very fide. Conceived in utero. All others are imitations.”

  Cedric made an odd noise that seemed to express both satisfaction and surrender. “Awright! Thanks, Abe. Thanks for telling me. And just for that, I will wait around and say goodbye to the old bag. She can thank me for saving Cainsville, if that’s what she wants. I may even thank her for breaking up the organage racket. But I won’t say I love her, because that wouldn’t be true. Or that I forgive her for the way she used me.”

  “I don’t think she’d believe you if you did.”

  “Likely not. But I’ll talk with her. Besides, there’s something else I want to ask her about. G’night.” Cedric turned and started walking away into the dusk.

  Oops!

  “And what might that be?”

  Cedric stopped. He rubbed his chin. “Well…Now I can see roughly what she was up to. She paraded me like a purple poodle at that press conference—but Alya says she was passing different messages to different people. She made me look like a retarded hayseed, and herself not much better—senile old woman doting on idiot grandson. That was one feint, and she maddened the media. That was another. At the same time, she was using me as a red flag over the organages, hinting at clones and going public and so on—threatening hundreds of important people. Thirdly—or ninthly? I’ve lost count…Lastly, then, she was planning to go fishing for the murderers. The poison time capsule was the bait, I was the bent pin, and when they bit, she was waiting to haul in the string.”

  “So?” Abel inquired cautiously, surprised at how well Alya had worked it all out.

  “And the worse mess I made of things the better, from her point of view, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Devlin would never have gone to Nile without me along. And you, because he knew you were important to the Tiber mission.”

  Devlin had known more than that. “Thanks,” Abel said.

  “But I’m still wondering,” Cedric concluded quietly, “why she gave me Grade One rating on System? I mean, it came in damned handy at the end, against the Earthfirsters, but even Gran couldn’t have foreseen that!”

  “Um.”

  “It just seems out of character somehow.” Cedric’s voice trailed off uncertainly. “Well—I’ll ask her. Night, Your Majesty.”

  And it was out of character for Cedric to have thought of the problem in the first place. Obviously it was Alya’s thinking—which made no difference. “Wait!” Abel said. It could not matter now, anyway. When all else fails, be honest. “I would really be much happier if you didn’t bring up that subject with your grandmother, Cedric. Please?”

  “Why not?” Cedric demanded, bristling. His assertiveness and confidence were growing day by day. Pairing with a girl like Alya would do exhilarating things to a man’s self-esteem, of course.

  “Because Mother H. knows nothing about it.” Abel sighed. “She assigned you straight nines—personal grade and work grade both.”

  “Then who—”

  “In confidence? No one else knows this.”

  “Sure. I may tell Alya, of course.”

  “I’m sure you will. It was me.”

  “What? Why? How?” After a spluttering sound, Cedric added, “When?”

  “When? Just as you were flying in with Bagshaw. How? It was easy enough. I grew up around Cainsville and Nauc HQ. Nobody else—nobody!—knows this, but I broke System’s master code when I was thirteen.”

  “Bullshit,” Cedric said calmly.

  “No.”

  “It’s impossible—how?”

  “I hid under a bed and overheard some very high-rank passwords being used.”

  Cedric’s answer was a grunt that stopped just short of expressing more disbelief.

  Abel chuckled. “I can’t make it do everything I want—like I couldn’t find you anywhere that night when she took you off to meet Cheung and Grundy—but most things I can get by.” He grinned at the memories. All through adolescence he had used System as his personal genie for voyeurism, practical japing, cheating—Lord, it had been fun! “I could see you in bed with A
lya that morning. You were lying on your belly and you pulled the sheet over your head.”

  “Bastard!”

  “You don’t sound very grateful.”

  “Well…Then she didn’t know…” Cedric started to laugh, then stopped suddenly. “Why d’you do it? You go around giving Grade One to all your friends?”

  “Ahh!” Abel stretched and yawned while he considered the question. It was a tough one. Why exactly had he thrown virtual control of Cainsville to that elongated hay-in-his-hair innocent? As a practical joke it had been going too far, even for him. Partly he had done it in a fit of anger. Baker Abel had lost his temper only twice before in his life, but that night he had been eaves-dropping on the scene in the President Lincoln Hotel bedroom—spying on what Hubbard and Fish were spying on—and he had been sickened. The strobe hypnosis itself, the ruthless ferocity with which it had been applied, and the beating that Bagshaw had then administered—apparently strong emotion right afterward was supposed to lock in the mind control, but it had still been a beating—all of those things had roused Abel to fury. The way the kid had resisted the treatment without buckling had won his heartfelt admiration.

  Even so, Grade One rating had been going a bit far.

  Abel’s yawn ended. “Dunno. As you say, you made good use of it in the end. Guess I just had a hunch, that’s all.”

  Cedric snorted disbelievingly. “And I didn’t know you grew up in Cainsville!” He sounded hurt, cheated.

  “Given the choice, I’d have taken Meadowdale. Any kid would.”

  “Organage?” Cedric sneered. “That’s for clones, not real people.”

  “Goddammit it, man! Forget that! There’s nothing wrong with being a clone.”

  It must have been his tone, or else Alya’s brains were infectious—Cedric drew in his breath with a hiss. “Tell me!”

  “Sit down.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  Abel sighed and leaned back against the tree to ease his leg. “Okay. Your grandmother’s a strange woman, lad. She doesn’t like failing, not at anything. And she failed at being a mother. She and John fought twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week. She dominated; he rebelled. He skipped when he was in his teens, and they didn’t speak for years. She finally located him when he won the world calf-roping championship.”