by John Dalmas
Ferguson released the strap across my knees, next the one across my belly, then the separate straps that held my arms. "Go ahead, Mr. Seppanen," Scheele said. "Sit up."
I did, slowly, testing my body. It didn't get a very high grade. Abruptly we were interrupted by an English-accented female voice from a speaker: "Mr. Scheele! There is a large van on the front lawn, and armed officers are coming onto the porch!"
Scheele's humor, poise, and jaw dropped like a rock, and for a moment he simply stared. Over the intercom I could hear door chimes, and pounding. Inside, someone with a Hispanic accent was talking excitedly.
"Jorge says there are more in back!"
Scheele snapped out of it, and turned to Ferguson. "Get rid of the others," he snapped. "They don't know anything."
"Yessir!" Ferguson answered, then turned and dashed out. Forgetting the hypo he'd put on the desk, as if he thought it was still in his pocket.
"What do you want to do with this one?" asked Carver.
I heard a muffled explosion over the intercom, as if someone had blown the lock in the front door, probably a heavy security door. That was followed by a scream, and someone shouted an order to spread through the house and search. Scheele stood with his face screwed in a tight frown, pressured by haste, searching for a solution. Neither man was paying any attention to me. I was about ten feet from the orange-taped hypodermic, as close as Carver and closer than Scheele, but wobbly.
Deliberately I staggered and fell, in the direction of the desk. Carver scowled at me, then turned back to Scheele, whose mind seemed still frozen. Taking hold of the desk, I pulled myself back to my feet. "The vent!" Scheele said suddenly. "We'll knock him out and stuff him in the vent!" Still leaning on the desk, I moved a step nearer the hypodermic, and heard voices, sounding as if they were coming downstairs to the cellar.
"The vent?!" Carver half shouted it. His pistol turned toward me, boomed, and a blow in the chest knocked me against the desk. For a moment I blacked out, the black rose-tinted, and I realized I was on the floor. Someone screamed, Scheele I think. "There's no goddamn time for the vent!" Carver continued, yelling now, and fired again. The second shot hit me in the face, with less pain than I'd have thought, followed by spreading numbness. "I'd need a ladder, for chrissake, and a screwdriver to take the damned grille off."
Martti, I thought, get ready. Here I come. There was a shout in the corridor—"This way! This way!"—and thudding feet. Carver's pistol boomed again. . . .
15
The others had told about being hit by a crushing headache. Mine was different, short and sharp, leaving little more than its shadow. For a moment the memories confused me, but they weren't horrifying, and the confusion eased as they sorted themselves out. After half a minute I got on the intercom with Frank Brunette, our bomb expert, and we went outside to the public lot, where my car was parked. I felt—weird is the word—but it wasn't really troublesome, beyond interfering with my mental focus. After a five-minute preliminary check for booby traps, it took Frank maybe half a minute to find the bomb, a kind that doesn't require wiring to the electrical system. It had batteries, and a timer that actuated when someone sat in the driver's seat. The bomber must have had a master key for that year's model Mercury Solano, and access to the parking lot wasn't restricted. We went back in then, and Frank called the LAPD for a bomb squad. He could have disarmed it, but the law restricted bomb disposal to authorized government agencies, and anyway, no one in their right mind is eager to mess with something like that.
* * *
Most of the rest I only know secondhand, but I'll review it. Carlos is retired now, but he's here from Hawaii for his debrief tomorrow. Joe, who's retired from day-to-day management, will debrief this evening. All of us were debriefed back in '13 by the feebs, but they didn't pass out copies. Too confidential.
Nyberg arrested all of Scheele's employees, including the household staff. My other two clones were taken into custody as evidence and material witnesses. The next day the feebs took them all from the county jail, apparently never to receive a public trial. The U.S. District Court had issued a confidential injunction to all of us peons at Prudential and the sheriff's department against anyone saying anything to anybody.
Meanwhile our security people at the Rhubarb Canyon Development had told us that immediately after the raid, a squad of feebs moved in by floater to guard the place, and that night a military floater had landed at the delivery dock behind the house, presumably to haul stuff away.
A week later, the company got an official statement from the Department of Justice, saying that the parties involved with the William Harford and Elena Marquez cases had been apprehended, as if we didn't know, and thanking Prudential for its "highly professional" services. It added that the case had national security implications, and no further information would be forthcoming. An accompanying document repeated the admonition not to mention this to anyone, under penalty of the Official Secrets Act, as amended 07/19/2006, except that we were authorized to show the statement to Haugen and Marquez as a basis for billing.
A few days afterward, the Justice Department, usually stingy and slow in dealing with private investigation firms, surprised Joe with a transfer of funds that qualified as generous—payment for information leading to solution of the Harford case.
My clones were never mentioned, but they were questioned exhaustively, without knowing each other existed. And held, still separately, till on the forty-fifth day they jumped me only minutes apart. I'd been expecting them.
Meanwhile I seined the open Web for a few months until nothing more seemed likely to show up, watching for anything about certain people and certain places. Carefully of course, so it wouldn't draw attention. It brought me some interesting information. Any items that hadn't made the major media, I hand-carried to Joe and Carlos, but none of us said anything about any of it, even to each other. I didn't even say anything to Tuuli. Now, though, with recent developments, the records have been opened, some of them anyway, adding to what we already knew.
A week after his transfer to the federal high security prison near Bitter Springs, Nevada, Charles Scheele suicided. So the records say; I doubt it to beat hell. Two days later, his attorney, along with four other passengers, died aboard a transatlantic airliner, of salmonella poisoning, supposedly from eating tainted whitefish. Ferguson, Scheele's lab assistant, was reported killed that same week in a prison fight, a matter of homosexual jealousy. Carver, Scheele's muscleman, was "shot to death while assaulting a guard with a knife." Could be.
The day after Scheele's arrest, Buddy Ballenger was confidentially pulled in, questioned, and released, a no doubt very sobered reverend. Two days later he died in a traffic accident, along with an employee, William Bradley. The "accident" made the papers.
Within six weeks, Ibadhan's Minister of Finance died when his home was bombed; Shiite terrorists were blamed. That one came from UPA wire services. Three weeks after that, a massive explosion destroyed a weapons research installation in northern India, virtually wiping out its staff, and getting a lot of media attention. I could guess how it got detonated.
It took a year before I stopped worrying about something happening to me, and even then I wasn't totally sure. The government didn't want even a whiff of a hint that anything like a cloner existed, and I didn't blame them.
* * *
Then, last August, a news item hit the Web, papers, newsfaxes, and TV news channels: A physics professor at the University of Bologna, in Italy, had undertaken the maiden test on his newly invented teleport. He'd put a stone on the sending plate and closed the switch—and the stone still sat there, so he assumed it hadn't worked. Then his assistant in the other room shouted, "It works! It works!" The prof went in to see what the guy was shouting about—and there was a duplicate of the stone on the receiving plate. So he tried it with his watch, and got two watches, both showing precisely the same time.
He'd hurried to the Biology Department, borrowed a white mouse, and duplic
ated it too. Less than an hour later, while showing the two mice to his department chairman, one of them disappeared before their eyes. Then he'd checked his desk drawer, and the duplicate watch was gone.
By suppertime, the entire physics department, a bunch of other professors and grad students, a TV camera crew, and all of Italy had been treated to demonstrations. The cat was very thoroughly out of the bag, and by now, of course, the whole world knows about it. Which, along with the latest reform of federal security agencies, is why we got clearance to debrief ourselves on this, though the debrief is confidential.
Myself, I wish none of it had happened. The country—the world!—is having a hard time adjusting to the continuous major changes that shake their whole reality. Joe says we'll adjust, that most of us already are, and in the process we'll become a wiser species. I hope to hell he's right.
THE END
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