Clones

by Gardner Dozois

  "If I hadn't taken over control when I did," I said to them, "there might have been twenty thousand dead. One of those twisters was off course. I extrapolated and saw trouble in about three hours. I had no choice."

  Neither of them knew a stationary cold front from an isobar, so I got away with it.

  Fooling the CC was not so simple. I had to fake data as best I could, and make it jibe with the internal records. This all had to be done in my head, relying on the overall feeling I've developed for the medium. When the CC questioned me about it I told it haughtily that a human develops a sixth sense in art, and it's something a computer could never grasp. The CC had to be satisfied with that.

  The reviews were good, though I didn't really care. I was in demand. That made it harder to do what I had to do, but I was helped by the fact of my continued forced isolation.

  I told all the people who called me with offers that I was not doing anything more until my killer was caught. And I proposed my idea to Isadora.

  She couldn't very well object. She knew there was not much chance of keeping me in my apartment for much longer, so she went along with me. I bought a ship, and told Carnival about it.

  Carnival didn't like it much, but she had to agree it was the best way to keep me safe. But she wanted to know why I needed my own ship, why I couldn't just book passage on a passenger liner.

  Because all passengers on a liner must undergo genalysis, is what I thought, but what I said was, "Because how would I know that my killer is not a fellow passenger? To be safe, I must be alone. Don't worry, mother, I know what I'm doing."

  The day came when I owned my own ship, free and clear. It was a beauty, and cost me most of the five million I had made from Cyclone. It could boost at one gee for weeks; plenty of power to get me to Pluto. It was completely automatic, requiring only verbal instructions to the computer-pilot.

  The customs agents went over it, then left me alone. The CC had instructed them that I needed to leave quietly, and told them to cooperate with me. That was a stroke of luck, since getting Rat aboard was the most hazardous part of the plan. We were able to scrap our elaborate plans and he just walked in like a law-abiding citizen.

  We sat together in the ship, waiting for the ignition.

  "Pluto has no extradition treaty with Luna," the CC said, out of the blue.

  "I didn't know that," I lied, wondering what the hell was happening.

  "Indeed? Then you might be interested in another fact. There is very little on Pluto in the way of centralized government. You're heading out for the frontier."

  "That should be fun," I said cautiously. "Sort of an adventure, right?"

  "You always were one for adventure. I remember when you first came here to Nearside, over my objections. That one turned out all right, didn't it? Now Lunarians live freely on either side of Luna. You were largely responsible for that."

  "Was I really? I don't think so. I think the time was just ripe."

  "Perhaps." The CC was silent for a while as I watched the chronometer ticking down to lift-off time. My shoulder-blades were itching with a sense of danger.

  "There are no population laws on Pluto," it said, and waited.

  "Oh? How delightfully primitive. You mean a woman can have as many children as she wishes?"

  "So I hear. I'm onto you, Fox."

  "Autopilot, override your previous instructions. I wish to lift off right now! Move!"

  A red light flashed on my panel, and started blinking. "That means that it's too late for a manual override," the CC informed me. "Your ship's pilot is not that bright."

  I slumped into my chair and then reached out blindly for Rat. Two minutes to go. So close.

  "Fox, it was a pleasure to work with you on Cyclone. I enjoyed it tremendously. I think I'm beginning to understand what you mean when you say `art.' I'm even beginning to try some things on my own. I sincerely wish you could be around to give me criticism, encouragement, perspective."

  We looked at the speaker, wondering what it meant by that.

  "I knew about your plan, and about the existence of your double, since shortly after you left Kansas. You did your best to conceal it and I applaud the effort, but the data were unmistakable. I had trillions of nanoseconds to play around with the facts, fit them together every possible way, and I arrived at the inevitable answer."

  I cleared my throat nervously.

  "I'm glad you enjoyed Cyclone. Uh, if you knew this, why didn't you have us arrested that day?"

  "As I told you, I am not the law-enforcement computer. I merely supervise it. If Isadora and the computer could not arrive at the same conclusion, then it seems obvious that some programs should be re-written. So I decided to leave them on their own and see if they could solve the problem. It was a test, you see." It made a throat-clearing sound, and went on in a slightly embarrassed voice.

  "For a while there, a few days ago, I thought they'd really catch you. Do you know what a `red herring' is? But, as you know, crime does not pay. I informed Isadora of the true situation a few minutes ago. She is on her way here now to arrest your double. She's having a little trouble with an elevator which is stuck between levels. I'm sending a repair crew. They should arrive in another three minutes."

  32 . .. 31 .. . 30 .. .29...28. . .

  "I don't know what to say."

  "Thank you," Rat said. "Thank you for everything. I didn't know you could do it. I thought your parameters were totally rigid."

  "They were supposed to be. I've written a few new ones. And don't worry, you'll be all right. You will not be pursued. Once you leave the surface you are no longer violating Lunar law. You are a legal person again, Rat."

  "Why did you do it?" I was crying as Rat held me in a grasp that threatened to break ribs. "What have I done to deserve such kindness?"

  It hesitated.

  "Humanity has washed its hands of responsibility. I find myself given all the hard tasks of government. I find some of the laws too harsh, but there is no provision for me to disagree with them and no one is writing new ones. I'm stuck with them. It just seemed . . . unfair."

  9 .. .8...7...6.. .

  "Also . . . cancel that. There is no also. It . . . was good working with you."

  I was left to wonder as the engines fired and we were pressed into the couches. I heard the CC's last message to us come over the radio.

  "Good luck to you both. Please take care of each other, you mean a lot to me. And don't forget to write."

  BLOOD SISTERS

  Joe Haldeman

  Here's a suspenseful and fast-paced look at a crisis in the career of a hard-boiled twenty-first-century private detective, a detective who has to deal with problems that Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe never even dreamed of . . .

  Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Joe Haldeman took a B.S. degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Maryland and did postgraduate work in mathematics and computer science. But his plans for a career in science were cut short by the U.S. Army, which sent him to Vietnam in 1968 as a combat engineer. Seriously wounded in action, Haldeman returned home in 1969 and began to write. He sold his first story to Galaxy in 1969, and by 1976 had garnered both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award for his famous novel The Forever War, one of the landmark books of the seventies. He took another Hugo Award in 1977 for his story "Tricentennial," won the Rhysling Award in 1983 for the best science fiction poem of the year (although usually thought of primarily as a "hard-science" writer, Haldeman is, in fact, also an accomplished poet, and has sold poetry to most of the major professional markets in the genre), and won both the Nebula and the Hugo Award in 1991 for the novella version of "The Hemingway Hoax." His story "None So Blind" won the Hugo Award in 1995. His other books include a mainstream novel, War Year, the SF novels Mindbridge, All My Sins Remembered, There Is No Darkness (written with his brother, SF writer Jack C. Haldeman II) Worlds, Worlds Apart, Worlds Enough and Time, Buying Time, and The Hemingway Hoax, the "techno-thriller" Tools of the Trade, the collecti
ons Infinite Dreams, Dealing in Futures, and Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, and, as editor, the anthologies Study War No More, Cosmic Laughter, and Nebula Award Stories Seventeen. His most recent books are a major new mainstream novel, 1969, and a new collection, None So Blind. Haldeman lives part of the year in Boston, where he teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the rest of the year in Florida, where he and his wife, Gay, make their home.

  So I used to carry two different business cards: J. Michael Loomis, Data Concentration, and Jack Loomis, Private Investigator. They mean the same thing, nine cases out of ten. You have to size up a potential customer, decide whether he'd feel better hiring a shamus or a clerk.

  Some people still have these romantic notions about private detectives and get into a happy sweat at the thought of using one. But it is the 21st century and, endless Bogart reruns notwithstanding, most of my work consisted of sitting at my office console and using it to subvert the privacy laws of various states and countries—finding out embarrassing things about people, so other people could divorce them or fire them or get a piece of the slickery.

  Not to say I didn't go out on the street sometimes; not to say I didn't have a gun and a ticket for it. There are forces of evil out there, friends, though most of them would probably rather be thought of as businessmen who use the law rather than fear it. Same as me. I was always happy, though, to stay on this side of murder, treason, kidnaping—any lobo offense. This brain may not be much, but it's all I have.

  I should have used it when the woman walked into my office. She had a funny way of saying hello:

  "Are you licensed to carry a gun?"

  Various retorts came to mind, most of them having to do with her expulsion, but, after a period of silence, I said yes and asked who had referred her to me. Asked politely, too, to make up for staring. She was a little more beautiful than anyone I'd ever seen before.

  "My lawyer," she said. "Don't ask who he is."

  With that, I was pretty sure this was some sort of elaborate joke. Story detectives always have beautiful mysterious customers. My female customers tend to be dowdy and too talkative, and much more interested in alimony than in romance.

  "What's your name, then? Or am I not supposed to ask that, either?"

  She hesitated. "Ghentlee Arden."

  I turned the console on and typed in her name, then a seven-digit code. "Your legal firm is Lee, Chu, and Rosenstein. And your real name is Maribelle Four Ghentlee, fourth clone of Maribelle Ghentlee."

  "Arden is my professional name. I dance." She had a nice blush.

  I typed in another string of digits. Sometimes that sort of thing would lose a customer. "Says here you're a registered hooker."

  "Callgirl," she said frostily. "Class-one courtesan. I was getting to that."

  I'm a liberal-minded man; I don't have anything against hookers or clones. But I like my customers to be frank with me. Again, I should have shown her the door—then followed her through it.

  Instead: "So. You have a problem?"

  "Some men are bothering me, one man in particular. I need some protection."

  That gave me pause. "Your union has a Pinkerton contract for that sort of thing."

  "My union." Her face trembled a little. "They don't let clones in the union. I'm an associate, for classification. No protection, no medical, no anything."

  "Sorry, I didn't know that. Pretty old-fashioned." I could see the reasoning, though. Dump 1000 Maribelle Ghentlees on the market and a merely ravishing girl wouldn't have a chance.

  "Sit down." She was on the verge of tears. "Let me explain to you what I can't do.

  "I can't hurt anyone physically. I can't trace this cod down and wave a gun in his face, tell him to back off."

  "I know," she sobbed. I took a box of tissues out of my drawer, passed it over.

  "Listen, there are laws about harassment. If he's really bothering you, the cops'll be glad to freeze him."

  "I can't go to the police." She blew her nose. "I'm not a citizen."

  I turned off the console. "Let me see if I can fill in some blanks without using the machine. You're an unauthorized clone."

  She nodded.

  "With bought papers."

  "Of course I have papers. I wouldn't be in your machine if I didn't."

  Well, she wasn't dumb, either. "This cod. He isn't just a disgruntled customer."

  "No." She didn't elaborate.

  "One more guess," I said, "and then you do the talking for a while. He knows you're not legal."

  "He should. He's the one who pulled me."

  "Your own daddy. Any other surprises?"

  She looked at the floor. "Mafia."

  "Not the legal one, I assume."

  "Both."

  The desk drawer was still open; the sight of my own gun gave me a bad chill. "There are two reasonable courses open to me. I could handcuff you to the doorknob and call the police or I could knock you over the head and call the Mafia. That would probably be safer."

  She reached into her purse; my hand was halfway to the gun when she took out a credit flash, thumbed it and passed it over the desk. She easily had five times as much money as I make in a good year, and I'm in a comfortable 70 percent bracket.

  "You must have one hell of a case of bedsores."

  "Don't be stupid," she said, suddenly hard. "You can't make that kind of money on your back. If you take me on as a client, I'll explain."

  I erased the flash and gave it back to her. "Ms. Ghentlee. You've already told me a great deal more than I want to know. I don't want the police to put me in jail. I don't want the courts to scramble my brains with a spoon. I don't want the Mafia to take boltcutters to my appendages." "I could make it worth your while."

  "I've got all the money I can use. I'm only in this profession because I'm a snoopy bastard." It suddenly occurred to me that that was more or less true.

  "That wasn't completely what I meant."

  "I assumed that. And you tempt me, as much as any woman's beauty has ever tempted me."

  She turned on the waterworks again. "Christ. Go ahead and tell your story. But I don't think you can convince me to do anything for you."

  "My real clone mother wasn't named Maribelle Ghentlee." "I could have guessed that."

  "She was Maxine Kraus." She paused. "Maxine . . . Kraus."

  "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

  "Maybe not. What about Werner Kraus?"

  "Yeah." Swiss industrialist, probably the richest man in Europe. "Some relation?"

  "She's his daughter and only heir."

  I whistled. "Why would she want to be cloned, then?" "She didn't know she was being cloned. She thought she

  was having a Pap test." She smiled a little. "Ironic posture." "And they pulled you from the scrapings."

  She nodded. "The Mafia bought her physician. Then killed him."

  "You mean the real Mafia?" I said.

  "That depends on what you call real. Mafia, Incorporated, comes into it, too, in a more or less legitimate way. I was supposedly one of six Maribelle Ghentlee clones that they had purchased to set up as courtesans in New Orleans, to provoke a test case. They claimed that the sisterhood's prohibition against clone prostitutes constituted unfair restraint of trade."

  "Never heard of the case. I guess they lost."

  "Of course. They wouldn't have done it in the South if they'd wanted to win."

  "Wait a minute. Jumping ahead. Obviously, they plan ultimately to use you as a substitute for the real Maxine Kraus."

  "When the old man dies, which will be soon."

  "Then why would they parade you around in public?"

  "Just to give me an interim identity. They chose Ghentlee as a clone mother because she was the closest one available to Maxine Kraus's physical appearance. I had good makeup; none of the real Ghentlee clones suspected I wasn't one of them."

  "Still . . . what happens if you run into someone who knows what the real Kraus looks like? With your
face and figure, she must be all over the gossip sheets in Europe."

  "You're sweet." Her smile could make me do almost anything. Short of taking on the Mafia. "She's a total recluse, though, for fear of kidnapers. She probably hasn't seen twenty people in her entire life.

  "And she isn't beautiful, though she has the raw materials for it. Her mother died when she was still a baby—killed by kidnapers."

  "I remember that."

  "So she's never had a woman around to model herself after. No one ever taught her how to do her hair properly or use make-up. A man buys all her clothes. She doesn't have anyone to be beautiful for."

  "You feel sorry for her."

  "More than that." She looked at me with an expression that somehow held both defiance and hopelessness. "Can you understand? She's my mother. I was force-grown, so we're the same apparent age, but she's still my only parent. I love her. I won't be part of a plan to kill her."

  "You'd rather die?" I said softly. She was going to.

  "Yes. But that wouldn't accomplish anything, not if the Mafia did it. They'd take a few cells and make another clone. Or a dozen, or a hundred, until one came along with a personality to go along with matricide."

  "Once they know you feel this way—"

  "They do know. I'm running."

  That galvanized me. "They know who your lawyer is?" "My lawyer?" She gasped when I took the gun out of the drawer. People who see guns only on the cube are usually surprised at how solid and heavy they actually look.

  "Could they trace you here? is what I mean." I crossed the room and slid open the door. No one in the corridor. I twisted a knob and twelve heavy magnetic bolts slammed home.

  "I don't think so. The lawyers gave me a list of names and I just picked one I liked."

  I wondered whether it was Jack or J. Michael. I pushed a button on the wall and steel shutters rolled down over the view of Central Park. "Did you take a cab here?"

  "No, subway. And I went up to a hundred and twenty-fifth and back."

  "Smart." She was staring at the gun. "It's a forty-eight magnum recoilless. Biggest handgun a civilian can buy." "You need one so big?"