by John Dalmas
My muse took over then, freewheeling. I could, I said, leak some hints into the Web, things that Scheele would pick up as worrisome but no one else would notice. The trick would be to make them convincing, which could be hard to do, knowing no more than I did. Or I might float Harford's name; I'd have to check with him. Or phone Scheele, tell him what had happened to Ballenger and good old Billy the night before, hinting they'd talked about him when they thought I was unconscious.
Carlos took it all in, then leaned back. "Martti," he said—speaking Spanish, something we often do for the practice, "I want you to be careful. Whatever he did to Harford and the women, he did without anyone knowing. Maybe he can do it to you, too."
Now there was a thought. "Maybe if he did," I answered, "I'd get a clue on how he did it."
"None of the others did."
"None of the others were looking for one, or had any idea what had happened to them. And maybe I can start wearing a transponder. How's that for an idea?"
It seemed to me that was the solution right there. With a transponder, all I needed was to get Scheele to do to me whatever it was he did to the others. I went down the hall and asked Skip if he could fit me with one. He said sure, but he and Sakata were both on a rush project for Torres. I told him the next morning would be fine.
* * *
I took compensatory time the rest of the afternoon, and went to Wu's for my first Choi Li Fut workout in more than a week. I don't go often enough to maintain the flexibility I should, but enough to keep me dangerous. Harve—that's Harvey Wu—had long since quit bawling me out about it, says I'm not a fighter at heart. He said maybe I should switch to Aikido, but I didn't feel like learning a new style from scratch.
Meanwhile, doing the forms relaxes me, a different relaxation than the deep tiredness I get from a Nautilus workout.
After an hour and a half, I went home and took a nap on the recliner, waking up when Tuuli came in. Talking Finnish for the practice, I told her about my discussion with Carlos, and that he was afraid Scheele would zap me like he'd done the others. She wasn't as worried as Carlos had been, but she pointed out that the memories might be ugly.
Then she said something else. "You know, it doesn't have to be two separate time lines. He may just duplicate people—make two of them. Like—what do they call them in plants?"
"Clones?"
"That's it. Maybe he makes clones. And when one of them dies, its soul snaps back into the other. That could explain the headache."
I opened my mouth to object, to ask how in the world anyone could do that without the original knowing. But the words died in my throat, because cloning sounded less extreme than splitting time lines in a way that memories could transfer back. Cloned! That had to be it. Or could be it. Maybe. Something had happened.
After we went to bed, I lay there thinking. Suppose Scheele did clone me in some undetectable way. It seemed to me I could handle it. And with a transponder, we'd have him by the short and curlies.
13
He'd been held up in traffic. An accident on Cahuenga Pass had blocked a lane on the southbound 101 Freeway, and he'd missed his first chance. Now, though, he stood behind his tripod, peering into the back of what looked like an ancient videocam, large and cumbersome. Briefly he'd pretended to shoot footage up and down Beverly Boulevard, occasionally panning on passersby, most of whom paid little or no attention. But he hadn't actually shot any of them, just pretended to.
What he was really interested in was across the street in Morey's Kosher Deli. Ferguson had gone over to check, and from the door had given him the high sign: Seppanen was inside eating breakfast.
One of the important parts of this work was to research your subject, learn his or her schedule, to the extent they had one. Another was to have a reliable assistant.
At last Ferguson came out, which meant that Seppanen had headed for the cash register. Scheele was so excited, he could taste it. The duplicator was ready, aimed and focused on the open door. With his right hand on the trigger and his left on the locking control, he stood in the mental posture of a leopard waiting to pounce.
Through the finder he could see someone moving toward the door. Seppanen stepped into the focus field, and in a single quick movement Scheele locked on him, framing him, clearing the field of everything else, then pressed the trigger switch. His target turned ninety degrees and started east down the sidewalk, the locked field holding on him. Scheele pressed the trigger twice more. I've got him! He rejoiced inwardly. I've got the sonofabitch! Three of him! It was all he could do not to dance on the sidewalk.
14
The rest of the story can be confusing, so I'll tell it from one viewpoint at a time, starting with one that woke up strapped to a gurney, in a small concrete cell with no window. I was naked, which meant I'd been stripped, because I knew from Harford's experience that clothes get cloned along with the wearer. Apparently they'd stripped me for the psychological effect: without clothes you feel more powerless, vulnerable.
Being strapped to a gurney does that pretty well by itself, in threatening situations.
I felt lousy: headache, queazy stomach, and an overall, unpleasant squirmy feeling. It seemed to me if someone let me loose, I wouldn't be able to stand up without help. Something held my head down, medical or duct tape I supposed; about all I could move was my eyes, and all I could see besides walls and ceiling was a small glass ball in a ceiling recess, that had to be part of a surveillance system.
I knew right away what had happened, and told myself I should have arranged for a transponder a day earlier. My jailers would have found it when they stripped me, but by then the company computer would have a fix on where I was.
The last thing I remembered before waking up was walking out of Morey's. What had happened must have happened on the sidewalk in front. No one had bumped me or spoken to me, but . . . There'd been a guy across the street with some kind of apparatus on a tripod, like a big old camera, aimed at Morey's. That had to be it.
But then how . . . The answer was unavoidable: I'd been transmitted! Like a radio beam! Jesus, I thought, what am I? Some kind of holo? That made no sense. A holo couldn't be raped, and a holo wouldn't have memories or feelings; it was nothing more than light.
But clone or holo, they'd duplicated me and transmitted the copy! Even though I didn't feel like a duplicate, that was more believable than splitting time, then looping memories from one time line to the other.
After spending maybe a minute on the question, I turned to something more meaningful: escape. I couldn't plan; didn't know enough about the situation. Presumably the original version of me wasn't out of action, and Scheele would know that. He'd cloned me to question me, find out what we knew and what we planned.
Or maybe to get even. I preferred not to look at that one, but there it was. Torture me in the worst way possible, then kill me-the-clone and visit those lovely memories on me-the-original. Ole could handle the situation, of course, or Vic or Tory or Bhiksu. Strip the pain and fear off, and the emotions, leaving just the unburdened memory. But even so, I'd be in for some God-awful hours or days, first here, then later.
I heard a door open, and a moment later a guy in a lab coat was looking down at me. He pressed a hypodermic against my chest and pulled the trigger. There was a hiss, a brief pause, then nothing.
* * *
Meanwhile the original me had gone from Morey's to the office without a notion that anything had happened. I checked the L.A. Times for anything about Ballenger, or anyone found unconscious in a rowboat in Marina del Rey. Nothing. Next I checked to see if Ballenger had phoned Scheele the last two days. He hadn't. So using my weasel, I checked for computer traffic between the two, and again came up with nothing. He'd probably used a pay phone.
There wasn't much I could do but wait, so I went to Carlos, who put me on the Pak Kyung So extortion case, helping Ernie Johnson. Routine digging that required patience and know-how, but no deep immersion—well suited to on-and-off work.
&n
bsp; I hadn't left his office yet when the phone rang and Carlos picked it up. It was Tuuli. He poked the speakerphone switch so I could hear. She was telling him something was wrong with me, that I was in trouble.
"He looks okay to me," Carlos answered. "He's sitting about six feet away, looking fine."
"Then he's been cloned," she answered. "Somewhere there's another one of him, maybe more than one, on a table or—one of those wheeled tables. He's alive, but he can't move."
Carlos's lips puckered into an O, and his eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead. "Cloned," he said thoughtfully. It occurred to me I hadn't mentioned Tuuli's idea that Scheele cloned people instead of splitting time lines. "Do you know where he is?"
"I can guess," she told him.
So could I. So could Carlos. Was there really another me, or maybe more, at Scheele's place?
The upshot was that Carlos told her we'd get right on it, and buzzed Joe. Joe in turn got on the horn and called the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department, asking them to get and serve a search warrant for the property of Charles Scheele, in the Rhubarb Canyon development. The object of the search was detective Martti Seppanen, who'd disappeared while investigating Scheele in connection with a claim by actress Misti Innocenza. She claimed she'd been kidnaped, and Scheele was suspected. There was also evidence that Scheele might be involved in a possible kidnaping and abuse of Elena Marquez—Mrs. Bo Haugen—and of William Harford, and the denial of their civil liberties. We were carrying out the Harford investigation on a contract with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Sheriff Nyberg wanted to know more about the evidence; the judge would ask. Rather than tell him he'd gotten the information from a psychic, Joe took refuge in the confidential status of the Harford case. He didn't mention that I was sitting across the room from him just then, either.
The whole damned situation felt like something from Alice's rabbit hole. It was Joe who said that, after he'd hung up.
Nyberg pulled it off; he got the search warrant. Judge Santos had always been sympathetic toward the problems of law enforcement. And Prudential's reputation must have helped, and mine; he mentioned my work on the Ashkenazi murder case. Anyway, less than two hours after Tuuli's call, two sheriff's department floaters lifted from their pads, loaded with officers that included a SWAT team. And Carlos, who'd caught a shuttle for Santa Barbara at the Larchmont Station.
* * *
Needless to say, I stayed in L.A. But from another point of view—a clonal point of view—I know what happened, beginning with the next time I woke up. I was still on the gurney, had been drifting in and out of dreams I don't remember, until finally I was fully awake. I wondered if I was wired, maybe to an EEG, because a couple of minutes later the same guy came in. Taking out a pair of heavy scissors, he cut the tape that held my head down. "Congratulations," he said, "you won the wake-up lottery. Time to go for your interview."
While he wheeled me down a corridor, I asked myself what I'd do if they took me off the gurney. They wouldn't, but if they did . . . I got a brief image of kicking the seeds out of everyone there, starting with Scheele, and if they shot me, what the hell? I'd be back at Prudential or wherever the real me was. But I knew they wouldn't let me loose.
The room I got wheeled into was an office. Two guys were there waiting. One was Scheele; I recognized him from his college yearbook. His hairline had receded a bit, and he wore a ponytail now—they were back in style—but he was Charles Scheele. And grinning like someone pleased at how clever he was. The other was the muscle. He didn't look like anyone I'd care to mess with, even if I was at my best. Good Old Billy wasn't in the same league.
"Mr. Seppanen!" Scheele said. "Welcome! I've looked you up. You're quite the Sherlock Holmes."
"And you're quite the Arne Haugen," I told him.
He laughed. "I'm having more fun than Arne Haugen had."
"Not with me, I hope."
He laughed again. "Preferably not. I do want information from you though."
"I suppose we clones are sort of disposable, eh? Question us, then kill us. Ash the remains and fertilize the garden with them."
"My my, Mr. Seppanen. May I call you Martti? You have a creative imagination. No, there are no bodies to dispose of. Not clonal bodies at any rate. If you were to die, you'd simultaneously dematerialize. As a matter of fact, you'd dematerialize after a bit anyway, though with someone of your mass, it might take six or seven weeks."
"What am I then? Some kind of holo?"
Still grinning, he shook his head. "No, you're quite material."
"But—then how would I dematerialize?"
"I haven't worked out the details yet; it's not that important. Basically though, it's part of the process. Have you heard of Linyetski's work on teleportation?"
"C.K.F. Linyetski at the University of Birmingham? The guy who teleported a block of iron, sort of?"
Scheele looked surprised, and mentally I thanked Vic Merlin for bringing it up. Actually I had remembered, from when it made the news, but I hadn't remembered the name. And I wanted to interest Scheele, keep him talking. What I learned, I'd take home with me.
"Correct," he said, "and I'd been working on the same principle. As others had: Schöndienst's work on matrix theory had made it seem distinctly possible. But the actuation?" He laughed again. "Theory is the first challenge, actuation the second. Teleportation seems to result in problems of stability. With Linyetski's work—which still has practical applications, you know—the instability is immediate. With my work it is delayed, the lag period being a function of mass. A second and happier discovery is that the original is not displaced. As I believe you know. Instead, a duplicate is created at the reception point. I must confess that both developments were entirely unexpected, the serendipitous results of incomplete theory. I'd intended only a simple teleport.
"And when dematerialization occurs, whether by, ah, termination or due to time, the duplicate—you for example—is not reduced to its constituent atoms and molecules, as with Linyetski's block of iron. You simply—disappear! And I have no idea what becomes of you. There aren't even gases given off; I've checked. What I would never have expected is what I have named 'the snapback effect,' with the clonal consciousness returning to the original. I learned of it only after, ah, delivering a number of clones to customers. Had I been aware of it sooner, I'd have done things a bit differently."
He peered curiously at me. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Seppanen."
"That's more than they're worth," I said. Actually I was wondering why he'd tell me all this. He must know I'd take it with me. But it wasn't something I wanted to point out.
"Perhaps you're wondering why I'm telling you all this," he said, then laughed at my expression. "Ha! Caught you, didn't I? But believe me, you won't tell anyone, because your original will die while driving home this evening!"
My guts shriveled.
"Yes, Mr. Clonal Seppanen, your original will die on his way home, with a little help from—your humble servant. Among other things, I've made myself quite the expert in explosives." He made a sweeping bow. "And your memories will have no one to home on. They will cease to exist, just as your clonal body will. But if you are sufficiently cooperative, your remaining weeks can be more than pleasant. Would you like to spend some time with an attractive starlet clone? Or a porn queen like Miss Innocenza?" He laughed again. "The alternative is much less pleasant, I assure you. All you need do is answer my questions, all of them, accurately and completely. In an aura chamber and instrumented of course, so we can monitor your veracity.
"And do not imagine that silence is an option. If you'd like, I'll show you some of the implements Mr. Carver has at his disposal to ensure that." He gestured at the muscle.
Mr. Carver. I didn't like the name.
"Mr. Ferguson will perform the interrogation, and Mr. Carver will provide any necessary, ah, incentives. I prefer to be elsewhere."
Like Ballenger, I thought. "Why not just drug me?"
"Even t
he best truth drugs impair accuracy. Torture, or hopefully just the threat of torture, are preferable."
"What do you do if I die under torture?"
"That won't happen unless you have a cardiac condition. But if it should—" He smiled and pinched my cheek. "I have two more of you. Backups in storage, so to speak."
"You don't miss a bet, do you. And if I answer your questions, what happens to the other clones? Do you cut their throats?"
He chuckled. I wondered if he'd been watching mad scientist films from the 1920s. "Mr. Seppanen, we are not gauche here," he said, and turned. "Mr. Ferguson, do you have the, ah, quietus at hand?"
Ferguson put a hand in a lab coat pocket and came out with another hypodermic, a ring of orange tape on its cylinder.
"Put it on my desk, please," Scheele said, then turned back to me. "It is a quick poison. Struggles are unseemly. Now. I suppose you're willing to cooperate?"
"I guess I'd better. I don't care much for the alternative. But before you import any porn queens for me, how did you get a bomb in my car? I drove it to work this morning."
"Ah. I had a certain talented person kidnaped, replaced him with a clone, made other clones of him, each thinking it's the original, and gave them jobs to do. I then disposed of the original. And I did not, I hasten to add, use his ashes to fertilize the garden.
"But enough of that. We'll have time for your questions when I've gotten mine answered." He looked at Ferguson. "Mr. Ferguson, please inject Mr. Seppanen with the gamma-Alprazolam." He smiled at me. "It allows us to remove your restraints. The gurney doesn't fit in our aura chamber."
Ferguson took out another hypo, this one with blue tape, and injected me. I didn't feel much effect. "It will take a few seconds," Scheele added pleasantly. "Then you'll be able to get off the gurney and walk unassisted. You'll simply be weak and ill coordinated."