Mr. Real

by Carolyn Crane

  “Sounds splendid.”

  The teapot whistled. She watched him pour the boiling water into the china teacup, which he balanced on a saucer. Paul would never use a teacup and saucer.

  Sir Kendall took it upstairs. Quietly, she carried the box into the living room and hit the knob on the wall barometer. Workmen had found a little cubby in the floor of the front closet that unlatched via the barometer—all very weird and secret, but useful now.

  She felt so confused. Maybe it would be better to send him back. She wished Paul had more objectivity so they could talk about it. She just wanted to do the right thing. Why did it have to be so hard?

  When the box was safely stowed, she called the restaurant and got put on hold to elevator music. She waited, wondering whom Sir Kendall could possibly be emailing. The only elements he’d come with were the elements of the still from the commercial, like the car pictured behind him, so he certainly couldn’t be emailing people from his fictional world. She supposed he could strike up new acquaintances, but why? Or was he just pretending to be emailing, like kids in the Red Owl, pushing the toy carts, pretending to shop?

  The hostess finally answered, and Alix made reservations for two. They’d have a long, leisurely dinner away from Paul. He’d get more acclimated to the world, and she’d figure out what to do.

  And there was one more upside: she’d be able to wear her ruby necklace, and a fabulous outfit with all the accessories she’d ordered from the computer. The other day she’d looked at the stuff in her closet, and it was more amazing than she remembered. Even the boots seemed cooler. Like they’d evolved, somehow.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sir Kendall stared at Paul “Puma” Reinhardt’s bio on MMAWorld.com. Why give the clone such an elaborate history, if he’d been created just to stand in for him? It said Puma had entered the professional ranks six years ago, at the age of twenty-three. There was footage from a few fights. Doctored? But the men Paul fought also had extensive histories. They were real. The MMA blog accounts of Puma Reinhardt seemed genuine. Something about a breakdown just weeks ago.

  He went back to the earliest Paul Reinhardt image: a photo of a rural Ohio middle school baseball team taken some dozen years ago, a pretty good likeness of Paul in the third row left.

  An impulsive, unsophisticated fighter from the American Midwest; the opposite of Sir Kendall, yet a clone. Was this Hyko’s revenge scheme in motion? Or something far more dangerous?

  Because there was something about this Paul—a terrible familiarity—and it wasn’t just the identical appearance. Sir Kendall couldn’t identify the something; he knew only that when he looked at Paul, he had this overwhelming sense of pain and threat. It wasn’t so much that Paul was the threat—Paul struck Sir Kendall as an innocent, oddly. No, it was more that he was a vulnerability. As though Sir Kendall could be gotten at through Paul. Yet it made no sense. Could this strange, vulnerable sense of connection be an effect of the cloning process?

  It didn’t matter. If the feeling persisted, it would make Paul the most dangerous threat of all: an Achilles heel.

  He went back over what he knew about the case at hand. There was no question Hyko’s launch site was near the equator; where was the question. Yet Hyko was in town. Alix worked for him, or at least she was in the game somehow. But what possible function did the parents and that party serve? He pictured Alix, kneeling in the lawn, pretending fondness for that rabbit lawn statue in a kind of tableau vivant of nonsense.

  He could almost see Hyko—perverse, vicious, irreverent, brilliant Hyko—blowing resources to create such a moment…almost. When Hyko made a decision, he went for it with everything he had. This decisiveness was a known liability of Hyko’s.

  Yet, it didn’t feel right. The strangeness here was too comprehensive, too contextual, for even Hyko to have engineered.

  It was the place.

  He had spent some time in the woods alone that afternoon, lying in the dirt, studying a leaf. He’d meant to look for clues, but he couldn’t get over the way it looked when one held it up and allowed the sun to illuminate its profusion of tiny veins, which were like an intricate system of rivers locked inside its little world. It seemed so delicate, yet so mighty, too, as though it thrummed with the energy of the sun. And there were millions of leaves all around him, and each one had its own system of veins, its own delicate might. How had he never noticed leaves?

  And then he’d found a flower, and a bug, and these things held their own surprises. How had he neglected to notice so much? What did it mean?

  What did this anarchy of details mean? It was as if there was no governing intelligence, no organizing principle here whatsoever, save, perhaps, for a kind of mad exuberance.

  No, there was always an organizing principle. It was supposed to be the launch. Stopping Hyko’s destructive launch.

  He thought about the night he’d spent in Alix’s “sister’s” room, walls plastered with childhood memories. Alix and her sister had laughed about a group of boys pictured on the posters—New Kids, they had called them. The two of them had gone on and on about fan letters, schoolwork, and a board game, as though it were perfectly normal to remember such things in vivid detail.

  He’d been a boy. He would have had a room with pictures. Why on earth couldn’t he remember any such thing? He had never found it odd before, not to remember, but now he found it…disturbing.

  He finished typing his email to George Frame, though it would probably bounce back like the rest. He could draw no conclusions until he got in touch with one of his contacts. He had the wild idea of asking George Frame a question about his own boyhood, as a point of comparison.

  What a strange thing to do, though. He was starting to feel desperate. He never felt desperate.

  Alix came to the office yet again and stood at the open doorway. “Knock knock,” she said.

  “One moment.” He hit send and tapped the button that dimmed the screen. “Come in.”

  She entered, eyeing the computer, and then him, quizzically, as though he had just balanced the thing upon his nose rather than typed on it.

  “Our reservations are for seven,” she said. “And it’s almost six. And I’m going to dress up. In honor of…well, we’ll think of something to celebrate.”

  “Splendid.” He’d wear the tuxedo from the car. He always felt his best in a tuxedo. “I’ll finish up here.”

  “Anything interesting?” she asked.

  He smiled. “It’s all interesting.”

  She turned and left.

  His thoughts went back to Paul. Paul made him vulnerable. One cut out one’s vulnerabilities.

  Ding. A new email. No—a bounce back. Another undeliverable to Henry, his man inside Hyko’s organization. This was the fifth message that had bounced back over the secure network, as if Henry had never existed. Had Henry seen trouble coming and shut down his identity? Just when Sir Kendall needed to warn him about the clone? Luckily, they’d agreed on a backup communications venue, the forum at www.parrotfanciers.com, complete with code names. But he had to access the site from a public place. He snapped up his car keys and headed downstairs. The girl was in the kitchen.

  “I need to run a quick errand,” he said.

  “Really?”

  He smiled and kissed her on the forehead. “Back before you know it.”

  Seven minutes later, he arrived at the coffee shop. The boy, Benji, was at his usual post, and regarded him warily. Sir Kendall selected a wrapped cookie and placed it on the counter. “Let me guess: the last time I was here, I behaved like an oaf.”

  “Oh, no, you just seemed out of it…”

  Sir Kendall explained about his “twin.” He paid for the cookie, dropped a five into the jar, and settled into the computer station to fashion the coded message. After he was finished, he erased his history from the machine, and laid false tracks with a speed that surprised him. Was he getting smarter? He certainly felt stronger these days.

  The response to the communiq
ué would take a while. Henry would have to make it alone to a very public computer. If he still could.

  Back home, Sir Kendall bathed, took his time dressing, and then went downstairs to await the girl, quietly perusing the shelves and closets, looking for the small chest she’d carried in from the carriage house. She’d deposited it somewhere on the first floor; of that he was sure. Yet it was nowhere to be seen. So she’d hidden it. He smiled. As if anyone could hide anything from him.

  Noise out front. He went to the window just in time to see both trucks, piled with garbage, rumbling away. Soon after, Alix descended the staircase wearing a ridiculous outfit. Oh, the dress itself was passable, what women like to call ‘the little black dress,’ but her white boots were thick with fringe and tassels, and she wore a white belt and, strangest of all, a rather impressive necklace of what looked to be genuine rubies.

  He stood, made his way toward her and quickly ascertained that they were, indeed, not only genuine, but also astonishing in their saturation and fluorescence, as only the most prized rubies were—particularly the three large ones in the center. “My dear,” he whispered. “Do you mind if I ravish you right here and now?”

  She reached the bottom step, grinning broadly. “You look quite dapper yourself, Sir Kendall.” She opened a small purse that matched her white belt and boots. Vinyl, all of it. “Let me make sure I have everything,” she said.

  The back screen door clopped; footsteps through the mudroom. Sir Kendall braced himself as his grimy clone emerged from the kitchen wearing only jeans. The man’s chest and arms shone with dirt and sweat, his short dark hair was plastered to his forehead, and a long swipe of dirt, maybe oil, stretched like war paint all the way up from his chin to the bandage on his brow.

  And his eye was still puffy. What was wrong with the poor devil? Why hadn’t his injuries healed? Did they hurt?

  Alix drew in a breath at the sight of the clone, then quickly busied herself by rooting in her small purse, as though to keep herself looking anywhere but at him.

  Interesting.

  The clone looked her up and down with undisguised awe—of the positive sort. Apparently discriminating taste didn’t survive the cloning process. The clone continued on upstairs.

  Alix pulled out a chapstick and drew it over her lips. “We need to take your car. Mine is still oil-challenged.

  “Splendid,” Sir Kendall said.

  The clone appeared on the landing at the middle of the staircase. Alix couldn’t keep her eyes off him. Sir Kendall couldn’t either. And why should he care whether those injuries hurt? He really ought to kill him soon.

  “Where’re your towels?” Paul asked.

  Alix frowned and snapped her little purse shut. “What is this, a hotel? Seems to me you have plenty of funds.”

  “Can’t dry myself with cash.”

  Alix huffed and stomped up to the landing where Paul stood, flung open a small closet, pulled out a towel, and shoved it into his arms.

  He unfolded the towel and twirled it into a long roll in the small space between them, muscles flexing. Alix watched hungrily as he draped it over his shoulders. “Thank you,” Paul said.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Out,” she snapped.

  “Out where?”

  Alix smiled savagely. “None of your business.”

  My, these two were a volatile combination! Anger, dissent, and lust among the enemy ranks. Delicious. Not to mention exploitable.

  “We’re heading out to the supper club,” Sir Kendall called up from where he stood on the landing. “I don’t suppose you’re hungry.”

  Alix finally managed to tear her eyes from the clone. “He can’t come. There’s food in the kitchen.”

  “My dear, the man’s just done a full day’s worth of menial labor.”

  Paul smiled. “I could use a nice steak.”

  Alix snapped her head back around to him. “No, you couldn’t.”

  “I’ll stand you dinner,” Sir Kendall said. “Go clean yourself up. We’ll wait.”

  The clone lit up with annoyance at the order, then seemed to tamp himself down.

  Alix descended the steps, glaring. “You can’t—”

  “Ten minutes, old chap.”

  Paul went up.

  Alix reached the bottom. “What the hell? I can’t believe you just invited him.”

  Sir Kendall smiled. He found it was easiest to prevail upon Alix when he took her by surprise. He kissed her forehead. “My dear, I hope you’ll indulge me. Come.” He went to the kitchen, heard her follow behind. He poured them each a glass of wine.

  She said, “I don’t want him along.”

  “You know what they say about keeping your enemies close.” He handed her a glass, swirled the liquid in his own. “I know of only one reason Hyko would clone me: so that the man might eventually take my place. Clones aren’t made for sport. I must know him, and that’s all there is to it. You can’t blame me, can you? Wouldn’t you insist on the same if you were me?”

  “He’s not going to take your place.” She seemed to believe this completely.

  “What’s his purpose then?”

  She shrugged. “Just to be.”

  The desperate feeling was creeping back. He didn’t like it. They finished their wine and sauntered out to the front driveway. Sir Kendall opened the passenger door and she got in.

  “You putting Paul on the hood, or what?”

  “You’ll see.” He gunned the engine and honked.

  Paul came out the door wearing jeans, though less holey than the previous pair, and a deep red shirt, a color Sir Kendall himself favored; red tended to look good with his hair.

  “Where am I supposed to ride, the hood?”

  “A five minute spin,” Sir Kendall said. “Surely you can take Alix on your lap.”

  Paul and Alix glared at each other. Splendid. If they didn’t want to be thrown together, best to throw them together.

  “I don’t mind,” Sir Kendall said. “She’ll hardly go in for the copy now.” In fact, he was banking on just the opposite; the closer and more emotional their bond, the better. They clearly had a history of some kind. He could use them to break each other.

  Connections made you vulnerable.

  Alix got out of the passenger seat with a smirk. Paul gave her a stern look and sat, and then she sat on his lap and shut the door.

  Sir Kendall gunned the engine and roared down the long drive.

  “So what kind of car is this?” Paul asked. “A foppish ascot?”

  Alix snickered.

  Sir Kendall frowned. Paul would pay for that. “It’s an Alfa Romeo Spyder,” he bit out.

  Sir Kendall had never seen anything quite like the Malcolmsberg Supper Club, which struck him as a cross between a mockery of a German castle and the hunting lodge of a halfwit. Mottled glass globes hung from decorative chains, throwing a ghastly glow onto the dark wood tables and chairs. Glossy walls of faux wood paneling were adorned with deer heads whose fur looked vaguely moth-eaten, and souvenir German plaques exhorted the frumpy patrons to drink and be merry.

  The hostess came up to her stand, found their name on her list, and scowled. “I only have you down for two.” She looked back and forth between him and Paul.

  Sir Kendall gave the woman a seductive smile. “Well, as you can see, my arch enemy has seen fit to clone me, and here my clone showed up without notice, and, well, look at him, all beaten up. Can we honestly let this poor devil go without supper?” The hostess laughed at his little joke, and nearly fainted when he handed her the fifty from Paul’s truck.

  She turned to Paul. “You poor clone.”

  Paul shrugged. “He’s the do-over, not me. I’m the one they got perfect.”

  She smiled and led them to a table for four. A red, stained-glass candleholder glowed in the center of the table, next to a basket of crackers that were individually wrapped in cellophane. They ordered drinks from an elderly wait
ress with unfeasibly tall hair and white earrings the size of gumballs. Sir Kendall added an order of frog’s legs to start them off. “I hear they’re excellent here,” he said.

  The waitress beamed at him. “You heard right.” She asked him where he was from, and he offered his usual reply about the south of England. Idyllic pasturelands and all that. So then why couldn’t he remember more of his childhood? It had never mattered, but now he desperately wanted to recall just one little detail. A toy. A book.

  Why was he different? What was he not seeing?

  He felt Paul studying him. “Where are you from, Paul?” he asked once the waitress had departed.

  Paul flicked a hard glance at Alix. “Clones are from test tubes, are they not?”

  Paul knew something. They both knew something. Was it about the launch or something else? “And where was the test tube located, old chap?”

  Sir Kendall could see from the frenetic way Paul unwrapped a pack of crackers that the term still jarred him greatly. “Ohio,” he said.

  “Ah.” Upsetting him was almost too easy. Sir Kendall reached over and touched Alix’s hand, watched the planes of Paul’s face harden. “Do pass the basket.”

  She passed the basket of crackers. Sir Kendall took a pack and passed the basket back. If he could get Paul unbalanced enough, the man might give him something.

  “Do you know how old you are?”

  “Twenty-nine,” Paul said.

  “Touché.” Sir Kendall smiled. “When did you appear? Two years ago? Four?”

  Alix snickered softly. She sat up and planted her fists on her hips. “My name is Puma Reinhardt, and I’m four years old!”

  Paul smiled. He seemed to find her brand of humor funny.

  The waitress delivered their drinks. Bottles of beer for Alix and Paul, Denali neat for him. Paul grabbed his beer and took a healthy swig. Well, he’d need more reinforcement than that.

  “You really are going to have to work on that accent, old chap.”

  The vein in Paul’s neck became slightly more defined. “Actually, I don’t have to work on it.”