I lean against Ivan’s large desk, cross my arms over my chest, and fix my eyes on his carpet, which sports an erratic maroon and gold pattern. “That’s one of the problems taking dupes as slaves, I suppose. They’re the most brilliant members of our species, and if we mistreat them, they can become our worst nightmare.”
She winces at the implications in my comment, and without a touch of tenderness in her voice, says, “You must be very busy. Do you want to work from this office? I’ll be glad to manage your schedule. Have you scheduled a meeting with the Board? I’m sure they’ll want an update and fresh contract with you.”
She reaches for the doorknob, but I raise my voice with a blunt question. “Are you comfortable with what goes on at this facility, Mrs. Williamson?”
Her face contorts to reveal her bewilderment. “What do you mean? I’ve never been in the locked wing, but I am, uh, aware.”
“We, uh, we murder people.” I lock my eyes on hers, and find only a callous disregard for what has so unnerved me. I reword it in terms that might jar her from her complacency. “What Dr. Cranton does to boys in his home is just a less sterilized version of what our scientists do to people in the locked wing.”
“People? You mean, dupes?”
“They’re living human beings. It is an undeniable biological reality, Mrs. Williamson. They have human hearts, human brains, and human emotions, just like you and me.”
“Like a painting of you and me is like you and me.” She clears her throat. “Excuse me.” She turns and marches to her desk, leaving the door open. I follow her.
“Mrs. Williamson?”
“They are not like us, Dr. Verity. Not at all.” By her confident insistence, I suspect that she has something personal invested in this discussion. She stares at her computer screen for a moment. “Computer, awake.” The blank screen flashes to life.
“I suppose you are right in some way. They’re better than us: they don’t kill people to get new bodies.”
I can tell she thinks I’m nuts, but fears me too much to argue with me. “Well, what are you going to do about it, Dr. Verity?”
“You know this company, its inner workings and personnel, probably better than any living person.” I reach for her hand to stop her fiddling with the touchscreen. “Listen to me. I need your help dissolving the New Body Research Center. If you want to keep a job after this company has been euthanized, you will help me, and you will do precisely what I say.”
The color drains from her face. “You’re shutting us down?”
“Not us. Not you. This organization. With Dr. Wilkes dead, I’m the sole owner. It’s my prerogative.”
“Why don’t you just sell it? There’s no reason to waste all of your hard work, ruin your legacy, and Dr. Wilkes’ legacy.”
“With Cranton’s crimes committed with Dr. Wilke’s permission so thoroughly publicized around the world, or soon to be, Dr. Wilkes’ legacy is irredeemable. Mine is not.”
“Dr. Wilkes received offers in the billions of credits.”
“No. What’s happening here cannot continue any more. It’s wrong.”
“Wrong? According to who?”
“According to me!”
She rolls her chair back, steely faced. “The work’s going to continue anyway in some lab somewhere. You must know that. You can impact the ethics of New Body science right here in the driver’s seat of this company much better than you can in a pulpit. Stay in the industry, and don’t ruin your influence for some misguided scruple.”
“Misguided?”
“In my opinion, but to each his own.”
I can’t tell if she’s sincere, or trying to insult me. “If someone else decides to continue killing people for profit, at least the blood’s not on my hands. Now are you going to help me, or do I need to replace you with someone I can trust?”
She taps her fingers on her desk, taking her time. I think I have her right where I want her.
“I’ll help you on one condition.”
“What condition?”
“Let me get my new body first.”
That is a response I never suspected. “Your new body?” Dr. Wilkes’ secretary could not possibly be reimbursed so handsomely as to afford a two-million-amero dupe. “You have one ordered?”
“Dr. Wilkes gave it to me as a gift seven years ago. One more year, and I’ll have my new body. Will you wait until then?”
This feels like a bribe, except it’s not my wealth she wants. No. She wants me to butcher a living human being for her benefit. “No, Mrs. Williamson.”
She grows anxious and slightly tremulous, and her speech is rapid, like a burglar barking out orders to subordinates during a break-in as police sirens near. “Will you let me get my new body early then? Please! I can probably get it as early as next week, if you approve. Maybe I can get the transfer squeezed into tomorrow’s schedule.”
“Settle down, Mrs. Williamson. You do realize what they are going to do to your clone—that thinking, breathing person created from your DNA? They’ll cut her skull open and dig out her brain. Is that what you want?”
“If I don’t take her, they’ll discard her. She’s practically already dead. At least my life can be saved.”
“Your life?”
She nods. “I just know my myasthenia gravis is getting worse, Dr. Verity, and if I don’t do something, I’m going to wind up in a wheelchair like my mother, or a vegetable in a hospital bed in diapers, like my grandmother. I can’t lose weight, no matter how many diets I try. I need a new body so, so badly.”
I sigh deeply. This is an emotional issue for her. “Is there no treatment for what you have?”
“I’m receiving treatment. There’s nothing else to be done besides what Dr. Wilkes has generously offered.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill his promise.”
She bites her lip and her brow furrows. She pierces me with her gaze. “Do you know how much power I have, Doctor?” She stands to her feet and clenches her arthritic fists like a two-year-old threatening a temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store if she isn’t provided a candy bar immediately. “I have been with this company for almost two decades. I have documents, signed documents, evidence that would cast aspersions upon this company.” She raises her voice even more. “I have the ability to make your dissolution of the New Body Research Center seamless and peaceful, or fraught with lawsuits and congressional investigations and riots on the sidewalk outside.”
The peaceful, gentle Mrs. Williamson has turned into a monster, a litigation nightmare, right before my eyes. A rage burns within me at the disrespectful words of this incorrigible subordinate.
“Now, are you going to give me my new body, or not? Are you going to save my life, or are you going to take me on and face the consequences? I have nothing to lose!”
I should probably just give her what she wants as the lesser of two evils. Certainly, she is a very powerful person in this company. I don’t know anything about the inner workings of the business Wilkes built for 27 years while I was on ice. Knowing him, he probably delegated way too much power to his secretary. I would be much more likely to succeed at shutting down the company if I had her as an ally. With her working against me, I may not be able to shut it down at all. Would I be willing to sacrifice the life of one ignorant seven-year-old dupe to win this woman’s favor and save tens of thousands of lives?
“Sit down, and we’ll talk.” Momentarily, she takes her seat. “Now, I realize how important this new body must be to you, but you need to hear me out. Would you be willing to kill one person to improve your health? Just kill ‘em, in cold blood? Would you really be willing to do that?”
“My clone is my property, not a person. The law’s on my side, Dr. Verity. Being CEO of this company doesn’t give you more power than the Supreme Court or the President, or Congress, for that matter. She’s my property, my body.” She taps her chest with her thumb. “I am the host. You will give me my property or I will sue you.”
“You know that you have just extorted me, Mrs. Williamson. Extortion is a crime. It will win no favors from me, and could get you a prison sentence for a long time, even if I do give you your new body.”
“You can’t give me what I already have.” She raises her hand and points the direction of the locked wing. “From what I hear, it doesn’t even have a soul. How can you kill someone with no soul?”
“She’s a person, soul or no soul! I’m not going to let you kill her, even if it does prolong your life, and even if it does help me shut down this company and save lives in the long run. If shedding blood to stop the shedding of innocent blood was justified, you would already be dead.”
She stares at me as if I had just put the tip of a blade under her chin.
“As CEO of New Body Research Center, I’m responsible for the well-being of the person cloned from your DNA.”
“All right then. You’re going to regret it.” She begins to type hurriedly into her computer.
“What? What are you doing? Hey!” I come around her desk to see what she is doing on her computer.
She stands to obstruct my view.
“This computer is company property.” I press my body into hers to move her aside. “Step away from the computer or I will move you away from the computer by force.”
She jerks her hands away from the desk, staring at a memo on her screen as if it were a snake that was about to bite her.
“What were you going to do?” I see the memo on the screen, which looks like an error message. “What did you do?”
“I was going to send sensitive company documents to the media, but now it appears to be unnecessary.” She crosses her arms with a smirk on her face.
“What is that?” I lean forward and read the memo on the computer.
This computer has been insulated against use by Executive Order no. 213202 of the President of the United States Veronica Sayder, and is hereby the property of the federal government. Any tampering of this computer or any of the records or materials of New Body Research Center located at 1000 Ivan Wilkes Drive, Baltimore, Maryland, is a federal crime punishable under the Patriot Acts, 1 through 4.
Mrs. Williamson snickers. “It looks like I’m going to get my new body after all.”
24
TWO HOURS LATER, THE PRESIDENT’S attorneys show up.
I send the company’s three computer whizzes that were trying to regain control of the company computers back to their desks in the basement. But suits stop them in the hallway, frisk them, and take them down the elevator in handcuffs.
When a half dozen Bureau agents, each carrying briefcases and snooty smirks, strut through the door of Ivan Wilkes’ office a few minutes later, I am on the nano with my Senator.
“There they are now. Find out what you can. I’ll call you back.” I tap behind my right ear and stand.
“Senator Morrison isn’t going to help you, and couldn’t if he wanted to.” The tall man, who looks half Caucasian and half African-American, puts out his hand. “Guave Sealdor, U.S. Attorney.”
He looks like he is the youngest of the attorneys in the room, but appears to be in charge. Shaking his hand with a firm grip, I say, “Your intel is two minutes old. That was Senator Philipa.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Guave grins, amused. “As much as Dr. Wilkes donated to Senator Philipa’s campaign to buy her support for your company and your law, I doubt she’ll budge either.”
“Lest you forget,” I take a step back and scour the room of starched, stuck-up Ivy League attorneys, “I am a self-educated esquire, and have been granted an honorary law degree from Yale.”
“Like the so-called ‘key to the city’ the mayor gave you last month, it means nothing. Try to open a door with it.”
I ignore Guave’s interruption and conclude my sentence, “ . . . so spare me the usual deceit and subterfuge. What possible pretext of law gives President Veronica Sayder the right to practically take over my privately-owned company? And what you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, should justice prevail and you be held accountable as an accomplice to this grievous violation of my civil rights.”
“The United States owns 51% of your company,” he takes a seat in the chair across from my desk, and crosses his right leg over his left. “You maintain minority control, Dr. Verity, but the President of the United States has the authority under at least two dozen laws, certainly heretofore unknown to you, having been passed when you were in a cryo-preserved state. She has the precedent of a thousand executive orders, consistently held up in court, to federalize companies that are too big to fail. Consider it a compliment.”
Yep, he’s certainly an attorney.
Guave grins at me with pride, as if I should be glad that they have usurped my authority in the company I founded.
I walk around the desk and sit in my chair. “So I’m being left in control of only 49% of the company I founded?”
“Just like yesterday, when your partner was still alive. Until a suitable replacement for Ivan Wilkes can be found to strengthen the future of the company.”
“Did you speak to Dr. Cranton?”
The room full of attorneys chuckles, as if I am unaware of an inside joke they shared on the elevator on the way up. “With his public reputation going down the drain, we wouldn’t give him the job even if he wanted it.”
“This company has a great future, sir,” I respond. “We don’t need your help—if that’s what you call it.”
“Had a great future. Until yesterday, when Dr. Cranton’s personal amusements were publicized around the world. From the moment Dr. Wilkes’s death was publicized at 9:02 a.m., until the murderer’s internet sabotage was unleashed at 10:59 a.m., your company’s stock took a 21% dive. From that point until the market closed, your company stock plunged 39% further. That trend resumed with the slam of Wall Street’s gavel this morning, where it has continued to dig another . . . ”
Guave glances at another attorney who looks at a handheld computer.
“12.3 percent,” the man answers.
“Your stock presently is worth two-thirds of what it was worth yesterday morning, with no upward swing in sight.”
“There’s always upward swings around the corner . . . ”
“You know that will destroy this company.”
“That’s absurd. We’re strong. Our foundation goes deep. If we get hit hard, we can liquidate assets and rebound.”
“The stock market isn’t known for its commitment to reason, sir. Emotion trumps numbers every time.”
“Spike up or spike down, we are governed by laws, not the whims of imagined dictators in Washington, D.C., who think that they can kidnap companies to improve their stock numbers.” I stretch a mini-CD toward him. “Under our bylaws, if a majority owner dies, the minority owner or co-owners assume majority control at a percentage equal to their previous stock percentage plus the stock of the deceased divided evenly among the directing officers.”
“All subject to and governed by the laws of the United States of America.” Guave waves the CD away. “Page 349, line 8. I have your contract right here.” He taps his temple.
I find it amusing that most of the Administration’s sycophants cluttering my office appear to take this egotistical, self-obsessed speck of humanity seriously. “What? Are you a clone, or just an arrogant peacock of a man, over-impressed with yourself?”
“At twenty-one years of age and leading the President’s legal team, what do you think?”
I wince. “A dupe?”
“Formerly known as Ninety-Nine. Genetically and intellectually superior to my Yale-educated sperm donor and my mother, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, in every demonstrable way. There is no law or judicial precedent that you could cite that I have not mastered forwards and backwards, in multiple languages.”
“Well, it’s good to know our science has served the government so well. How did she get the rights to a coveted savant like you?”
“Condescension
, then flattery,” Guave scoffs. “So predictable.”
“Red herring. Equally predictable for an attorney with something to hide.”
Guave turns to the other attorneys in the room and they share half-grins, either mocking my wit or reveling in an inside joke or the fulfillment of a prediction. “The best law I could cite to make the President’s case, Dr. Verity, is the one that passed just a few weeks ago, thanks to your ceaseless lobbying before the American public on its behalf.”
I sniff back my shame. Yesterday’s money-lust has become today’s merciless guillotine.
“Have no fear, Ray. I have a generous offer from the President.”
That is a comment I did not expect. “She’s going to usurp control over my company, and then give me an offer?”
“She’s not taking your company any more than Dr. Wilkes took your company.”
“Unless it’s a pin in a grenade affixed to her brazier, I’m not interested in anything she has to give me.”
They all laugh long and hard.
Guave Sealdor calms down the laughter with a wave of his hand. “I’ll keep that little comment between ourselves, Dr. Verity, to spare you a visit from the Bureau’s best water-boarders.”
“Alright, what offer does she want to give me, Esquire Sealdor?”
“Don’t fight the government’s assistance. Publicly thank President Sayder for her help. Watch the stock rise further than it ever has, keep control of your 49% and gradually work your way into assuming management responsibilities. When the time is right, she’ll restore you to 51% control, probably in about six months, once we have hand-picked your new partner from qualified applicants.”
I take a deep breath, relieved they aren’t going to nationalize my company. They’re actually going to restore my control over it. The offer tempts me, and the President’s legal team knows it. At least they don’t know my intent to bring down the company. It may take time for me to rise back to the top, but I’ll make it and do what I have to do.
“Dr. Verity, the President knows you want to bring down your company because you are concerned about the ethics of transference and processing.”
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