Kaleidocide

by Dave Swavely

  “What happens if he doesn’t take it?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant about how I might feel when the double finally looked up at me.

  “He would get very sick,” one of the triplets said, obviously monitoring my audio in that seemingly omniscient way of theirs. “And because of the ADA imbalance, the Makeover would fail and his face and ears would become unstable.”

  “It would look like hell,” another of the triplets said, “and feel worse.”

  “Well,” I said to the double, “I certainly appreciate you doing this.”

  “You’re welcome,” the triplet said. “Or were you talking to Mr. Cates?” I then realized that the double couldn’t hear me, because my voice was only in the cyberspace between Terrey and his Trois. I said yes, and she added, “Say it again … now.”

  Suddenly my sitting form appeared on one side of the room, the holographic image coming from the cameras from the netkit in my room. So now I was looking at myself through Terrey’s contacts, and my voice was recorded by my net room and broadcast into theirs.

  “I appreciate you doing this,” I said again.

  As if on cue, the double handed the used triangle to a triplet, and looked up at my figure on the screen. He and I both watched my chin jerk up slightly from the inevitable shock of seeing two of myself, but my first thought after that was that he didn’t look as much like me as I thought he would.

  “You don’t see yourself as often or as accurately as others do,” Terrey said, reading my mind again. “But we’re more objective, and we’re happy with the likeness.”

  “The hair will actually be better,” said a triplet, “when the cut and color aren’t so fresh.”

  “I’ll miss my beard more than anything,” the double spoke for the first time, causing me to knit my brow at the sound of his voice … or my voice.

  “Our voices are very different from when we hear them in our own heads,” Terrey explained. “The combined effect of the throat patch and your copied neuropaths will be sufficient to trick most people, if not the best voiceprint systems. But in case of the latter, you can talk through the speakers on his glasses when you’re riding with him.”

  “Did the Makeover change his eye color, too?” I asked, knowing that the double’s eyes had been blue, while mine were green.

  “No, we did that the old-fashioned, low-tech way,” Terrey said. “Green contacts.”

  “Should we be calling him by his name?” I asked. “From now on?”

  “We won’t, when we’re in his presence. But I don’t have a problem with us or you doing it when we’re secure online.”

  “Won’t that be confusing for him?”

  “Not enough to cause a problem. He’ll be concentrating hard, earning the big bikkies and saving his life, as well as yours. And he’s a well-educated man … another coup for us. I think he can handle it.”

  “That’s right,” I said to the man who looked like me. “What did you teach?”

  “Mostly history,” he answered in my slight accent, which must have been the neuropaths at work. “Some literature.”

  “Not British, was it?” I said, my mind on the accent and Terrey’s comments about uncanny coincidences.

  “Some.”

  “What’s a favorite?” I asked, trying to make a connection with him, but feeling like maybe I shouldn’t, for some reason that was still at the back of my mind.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’?”

  “Yeah, good stuff.”

  Then we both froze and stared at one another, like twins who realized something at the same time. For me, it related to the thought that had been at the back of my mind, and was now passing to the front. “In Memoriam” was about a dead friend, and this double was a dead man walking. Multiple assassination methods were about to rain down on him in a storm that had taken the life of everyone who had faced it so far. And he would be dying in my place, so I had to try to push aside the natural guilt I felt for this by reminding myself that he had been planning to kill himself already, and that he might possibly survive and become a rich man. Rich, and maybe even healthy.

  Terrey cleared his throat. “As much as I would enjoy a poetry recital right now, we have other business to attend to.” He placed his hand on the double’s shoulder, which turned out be a symbol of how I was about to go from being inside Terrey to being inside the other man. “While we make our way up to the house to meet the rest of the team, you two can get used to riding together.”

  A link appeared at the bottom right of the wall screen, beckoning me to open it. I did, and now found myself looking through the eyes of the double as he followed Terrey and the triplets out of the sickbay. I knew that these “eyes” were more literal than Terrey’s, because Jon wasn’t wearing cyber contacts. The neuroware in his brain actually allowed me to use his optic nerve in the same way he himself did. I saw exactly what he saw, though without the peripheral vision, because I was looking at a 2D screen right now instead of using the 3D hologram of the entire net room. (I wasn’t ready to become that intimate with him yet.)

  The first thing I noticed about my double’s view was that he was blinking noticeably more than Terrey, probably because he was nervous. The second thing I noticed was that his gaze was often directed at the bodies of the two triplets who were walking in front of him—especially one particular part of their bodies. I found myself unconsciously participating in this examination, my eyes drawn to the strategically placed holes in their black bodysuits, where the multicolored, moving nanotech tattoos covered the jackpatches that were used for access to their cyber systems. There was one on the side of each of their shoulders, one just above the back of each knee, and a big one down low on their backs, just above the body part that Jon was looking at the most. I wouldn’t say their figures were highly attractive, not in a classic sense at least, because their shapes were slightly different from most women. But like the whole impression given by the triplets, it was interesting and attractive in its own peculiar way.

  The other part of their bodies that the double obviously found interesting, and I did too, was on their backs above the big jackpatch. Something protruded there, like a thin backpack, which probably contained some of the extra hardware that made them so superhuman in their abilities.

  “Can you hear me, Jon?” I said, interrupting his ogling. “I think it’s just you and me on this line.”

  “Yes,” he said, too loudly.

  “You can talk as softly as you want. I can hear everything through the implant, except your thoughts.”

  We could have upgraded his ’ware to accommodate thought commands and communication, but it would have taken too long to install, and had a steep learning curve beyond that. So he would have to communicate with me verbally, unless it was impossible for him to do so, like in a situation where he had to impersonate me in a conversation with someone else. In some of those cases, he might be able to communicate with me using texting, a finger mouse, or electronic paper, but those methods would often be too suspicious. So I knew there might be times when he was on his own, with only my voice in his ears to guide him. That’s why we would keep him in the hill as much as we could, and another reason we were very grateful for his higher education and extra motivation.

  “Can you hear me?” Terrey said into his earpiece, and both Jon and I answered “yes,” so he was obviously broadcasting into Jon’s cyberware and into my wall monitor. We were now all riding in the elevator that led to the garage that was attached to my house on the surface. Lynn and I had joked about how at the end of the workday I walked into the house from the garage like other men, except that many times I had been working underneath the house instead of somewhere else, and arrived in an elevator instead of a car. On those days “Honey, I’m home!” meant I was just a few hundred feet higher than I was before.

  “Do you have a term of endearment for Lynn?” Terrey asked me.

  “Pies,” I answered, knowing where he was going with this, then felt like I nee
ded to explain. “Like in sweetie pies.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Terrey said, and through Jon’s eyes I could see the mocking look on his face. “Jon, I’ll do most of the talking. Just say ‘Hi, Pies’ at first and try not to say too much else, because the voice emulation is probably the weakest part to someone who talks with Michael all the time.”

  Terrey, the two triplets, and the double stepped out of the elevator and over to the door leading into the house, and then through the hallway and into the foyer, where Lynn and the rest of the protection team were gathered, sipping coffee and nibbling on snacks that she had made for them. She was always eager to play the hostess, even in an extreme circumstance like this.

  “Lynn, I didn’t tell you Michael was coming,” Terrey said to her as we entered the room, “because I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “What…?” she said and stopped as she looked at the double, but I couldn’t tell whether it was just surprise, or whether she was already realizing it was not me. But when Jon said, “Hi Pies,” all doubt was removed. She gasped and almost dropped the coffee cup she was holding, fumbling with it as the black liquid slopped over the sides.

  “Oh God, Terrey,” she finally said. “Who the hell is that? What kind of … monster did you bring into my house?!”

  “Told you,” I said to Terrey.

  “Can you do better?” he asked the triplets.

  “Don’t panic yet,” one of them answered him. “She’s not exactly a typical test case. Try the Russian.”

  “Don’t ignore me,” Lynn broke in firmly. “What are you doing?”

  “Bear with me for a moment, marm, please.” Terrey said this as charmingly as he could, and then looked at a bald, pockmarked man who was the biggest figure in the room, except for Min. Terrey approached him and beckoned the double to do the same.

  It took me a few moments to realize that I recognized the big Russian, and had actually met him before, so the Makeover job by the triplets was about to get a second test that would be much more fair than the first one that was just blown up by my dear wife. She had always been clairvoyant when it comes to anything about me, and in fact another nickname I had for her was “Claire,” because of that. I should have told the double to use that one.

  20

  HOME INVASION

  “Valeri,” Terrey said as he reached the Russian man, “you met Michael one time before, right?”

  “Da,” the big man responded, too puzzled by Lynn’s hysterics to remember to speak English. The double stepped closer to him, and I told Jon what to say.

  “We only seem to meet in unfortunate circumstances,” Jon said, and put out his hand.

  “Da…,” Korcz said again, hesitatingly shaking his hand.

  “I’m glad you could come back to BASS,” the double said, repeating my words to him again.

  “Valeri,” Terrey said after a moment, “do you know why Mrs. Ares responded that way to her husband?”

  “Nyet,” Korcz said, still confused. “I do not understand. I think she said you changed him, but he look the same to me.”

  Terrey looked pleased and nodded to the triplets.

  “We didn’t tell you all about this,” he said to everyone, “because we wanted to see how well we had done, and Mrs. Ares and Mr. Korcz were the only safe way to test it, because they know Michael. But I’d like you all to meet Jon Cates, who from now on will be Michael Ares until the danger is over.” He could have added or until he is killed, but I was glad he didn’t. This wasn’t the right time for that unvarnished truth.

  “Who is he?” Lynn said, still disgusted, but trying to hide it for the double’s sake. Her sensitivity to others’ feelings extended as far as her hospitality instincts.

  “He’s a man who was wanting to have a new life, and willing to take a significant risk to get it. More than that, no one has the need to know, nor do we have the time to discuss it right now.”

  “I’ll say what I need to know,” Lynn barked. “Min, were you a part of this?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the big cyborg answered. “Considering the time constraints Mr. Thorn just mentioned, I think we did as well as we could in choosing him.”

  “Well, if Min says that, it makes me feel better,” she said to Terrey. “You can talk about what you need to now, but we’ll discuss this more later.”

  “Yes, marm,” my friend said. “Thank you.” Then he addressed everyone again. “The real Michael is in hiding at a place known only to himself.” Then when he saw Lynn frowning again, he added to her, “Something we can also discuss later. But Michael can communicate with us through a net link that is more secure than Fort Knox, and he can ride with the double, as he is now.”

  “Hi, everyone,” I said in my net room at the cottage in the vineyards.

  “Hi, everyone,” the double said in my house on Stags Leap.

  “We’ll keep the double here most of the time,” Terrey continued, ignoring further looks from Lynn. “But occasionally we will have to take him out in public, to avoid suspicion and perfect the ruse. When he’s here and when we go out, you all will guard him with everything that’s in you, because the longer we keep him alive, the more assassination methods we can smoke out, and the better chance we have of our Chinese friend giving up. We also may be able to find something we can use as leverage in the public arena, and make it too much of a risk for him to try again.

  “So let’s finish our introductions,” he continued, “and then we’ll get to work.” He moved over to a short man, who looked even shorter next to Korcz. “This is Lawrence Stephenson, Korcz’s partner from Gotham Security. Lawrence, this is Michael Ares and Michael Ares.” We shook hands with the little man, and I noticed that he had a boyish face with a thick head of slightly gray and slightly wavy hair. “And this is Tyra Ponchinello. She has graciously agreed to be our ‘cupbearer,’ as I call it.”

  “It’s a blood debt,” the dark-haired, dark-skinned woman said as Jon shook her hand and looked her over. He didn’t spend as much time checking her out as he did the triplets, because she was overweight and not nearly as attractive. “Thank you for the chair,” she added. She was sitting in a floating wheelchair, or really an “airchair,” which was powered by the Sabon antigravity system.

  “And you both know everyone else,” Terrey finished, and Jon’s eyes surveyed the room, taking in the triplets, Min, and Lynn, whom he looked up and down several times. I didn’t blame him for it, because she was the best-looking woman in the room, even with her pregnant swell.

  “The first thing we did,” Terrey said, “was scan the entire property with equipment too expensive for most countries to afford, doing our best to make sure there are no explosives, poison, or any other kind of booby traps that could have already been planted on the grounds. And then we installed scanners all around the house to make sure nothing gets past them from now on. In one of the kaleidocide killings, a bomb was found and deactivated barely in time, and in another a postal envelope emitted a gas that killed two of the target’s family members. In the third, the target died of poison introduced into his food by a lover who had been turned against him.”

  There was the idea of betrayal again. As Jon glanced at the different people in the room, I noticed how well Terrey had done at staffing this security team with those who had no prior relationship to me. I hoped he could prevent them from being contacted or turned by the enemy in the coming days.

  “Poison is a favorite method of assassins,” Terrey continued, “especially those who betray someone close to them, because it gives the killer an opportunity to escape before the method is discovered, yet assures that it will be fatal.” He moved closer to the Black Italian woman again. “This is why we must begin right away with our cupbearer here. That term comes from the practice of ancient kings who would have someone else taste their food before they ate it. I know it sounds bizarre, and will be inconvenient and hard to get used to, but from this moment on, no one who’s in this house can eat or drink anything, take any p
ills, or even wash with water until Tyra has tested it first.”

  “What are the chances that something would get past all the scanners you’ve installed?” Lynn asked, clearly uncomfortable with this invasion of her beloved home.

  “Does it matter how unlikely it may be?” Terrey said right away, as if he had faced objections to this before. “Do you want to take any chance at all with your life, or the life of your baby?”

  Lynn didn’t answer the question, which was clearly rhetorical.

  “One of the Trois will give Tyra a crash course on cupbearing,” Terrey continued, looking at the triplets until one gestured to herself. “So rather than taking the time to educate everyone here, you’ll just have to listen to Tyra’s instructions and trust her. Do what she says or you could be endangered—”

  “How can I trust her with something like my food,” Lynn said, “when I don’t even know her?” Food was as close to Lynn’s heart as her house was. I was really starting to feel bad for her.

  “That’s the point, Lynn,” I said from the cottage, and Jon repeated it to her, already getting the hang of the double routine. “We can trust her more because we don’t know her.” As Jon said this, Lynn looked visibly disoriented.

  “Is that you talking to me, Michael?” she asked, and I and the double both said yes.

  “Please don’t,” she said. “I can talk to you later on the phone. I don’t want to do it through that … thing.”