The Experiment

by John Darnton

  "Jesus, Skyler. I'm so sorry," Jude said finally, reaching over and patting his knee.

  He was moved by Skyler's story and by the openness and vulnerability he'd displayed in telling it, and again he felt that sensation of brotherly protectiveness. The world was a large and dangerous place, never more so than now, and Skyler was ill-equipped to deal with it. Jude would have to make sure that no harm came to him.

  But at the same time, Jude's gesture had a slight absentmindedness to it, because his mind was elsewhere. For he had heard something in Skyler's long account that set off a giant alarm bell—it appeared to confirm a suspicion that had taken hold in his mind like a tiny dark cloud on the horizon. It had been growing for some time now, and it seemed ready to burst, like the thunderhead that had clapped open upon their heads.

  A smaller, minor suspicion had taken hold, too, and this one he decided to test as soon as they stopped for the night.

  They drove into Albuquerque and found a small hotel on Central Avenue and took three rooms on the ground floor.

  Jude took a hot bath, filling the tub almost to the rim, and soaked in it for a long time, thinking things through. Then he got out, dried himself, changed into a fresh pair of blue jeans and a clean shirt and walked down the hall to Skyler's room. He paused before knocking on the door, thought he heard voices inside, and gave two quick raps with his knuckles. Skyler opened it and Tizzie was there, sitting on the foot of the bed. She seemed embarrassed, and Jude felt suddenly awkward—though he quickly put that to one side and got down to the business at hand.

  "Skyler," he said, looking into that face that so resembled his own, "I've got something to show you. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, I don't want you to get too upset."

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, carefully opening it and smoothing it out upon the top of a table. It was the photograph of the judge that he had taken from the newspaper files.

  Skyler stared down at it fixedly, his mouth dropping open slightly, and Jude could tell from reading his face and seeing the dawning realization begin to contort his features, that his suspicion had been correct.

  The face in the photo was known to Skyler.

  "Where did you get this?" he asked urgently, confused.

  "It's a picture of the judge I was telling you about, the one up in New Paltz. I'm beginning to think the person who was killed up there, whoever it was, looked exactly like him."

  "What's going on?" demanded Tizzie. "What's this all about?"

  "He's older," said Skyler. "The eyes look a little different and the hair's not the same, but otherwise it looks like him..."

  "I was afraid of that," said Jude, speaking softly.

  Skyler sat on the bed, slumped.

  "Come on," insisted Tizzie. "Jude, tell me, for God's sake. What's going on? Who are you talking about?"

  "Raisin," said Jude. "He didn't die in a boat leaving the island. That was a lie. He made it to the mainland. In fact, he made it all the way up to New Paltz, and he was probably there trying to track down his double, the judge. Maybe he even learned the name of his double before he left the island—maybe that's why he left. He might have cracked the code just the way Julia did."

  "And what happened to him?" she asked.

  "He probably made contact with the judge and they killed him."

  Now it was Tizzie's turn to be dumbfounded.

  "And who are they?"

  "That's what we have to find out. But I'll give you odds it's those thick-necked thugs with the streak in their hair—the Orderlies."

  "So they'll do anything," she said. "They'll even use the Orderlies as assassins. "

  Jude turned to her. "Who do you mean when you say they?" he asked.

  But now Tizzie was worried. "What if these Orderlies are after us? What if they're on our trail right now?"

  But Jude was still thinking about his own question to her and did not feel like calming her fears right now. He knew he would be thinking about it later, back in his room, when he replayed the exchange in his mind.

  Skyler looked dreadful; the color had drained from his face, and his forehead had broken out in beads of perspiration that settled in the rivulets of the worry lines. He lay down on the bed and turned his face to the wall. Jude worried that he had broken the news about Raisin too coldly. Tizzie asked Skyler if he were getting sick, felt his forehead with her palm and said she thought he was running a fever.

  But most of all, Skyler just wanted to be alone. He told them so, and they left the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

  Out in the corridor, Tizzie walked, holding Jude gently by the elbow.

  "How did you know the body was Raisin's?" she asked.

  "I didn't know for sure. I guessed. But it was an educated guess. McNichol—he's the Ulster County coroner—initially identified the body as the judge's. The DNA was the same. So it was a clone. Not that many people have left the island. And I remembered that the judge was taking medication called Depakote. It's for the treatment of petit mal epilepsy. One of the organizations he joined as a board member raised money to study neurological disorders. But not until I heard Jude's story did I know that Raisin also suffered from it."

  Tizzie looked at him, impressed.

  "Don't you see?" he continued. "Everyone on that island is a clone of someone over here—that's what they're raised for. A whole legion of doubles. That's what this whole thing is all about—some kind of horrible experiment."

  He could tell that what he was saying upset her, but he needed to air the questions that had been eating away at him.

  "There's one thing I don't get at all. When the judge saw me, he freaked out. He practically fell off his chair. I can't figure that out—I never saw him before in my life. What do I have to do with him or he with me?

  "And another thing. When McNichol did the autopsy, he took samples of the organs and put them away for analysis and someone broke in and stole them. Why? You'd think it'd be to destroy evidence, so that nobody could prove the body was a double. But then why leave behind all the DNA evidence? That's the stuff that really established it. It doesn't make sense—unless they just didn't know what they were doing. And somehow I doubt that. They wanted those specimens for something."

  The hand dropped away from his elbow. Tizzie looked almost as bad as Skyler. She said that she was feeling poorly and thought she would skip dinner. She turned and headed back toward her room, and as she walked away, Jude watched her receding figure, the shoulders uncharacteristically drooping. He wanted to go after her, but he knew it would be a mistake, and he felt a sudden sharp jab of loneliness.

  Jude ordered room service—a ham and cheese sandwich, Diet Coke, potato chips and coffee—and while he was waiting, he opened his computer, plugging the modem into the phone socket. He went on-line and quickly found the web page for W in Jerome, Arizona, and once again the screen filled in with that strange image, the hooded-eye lizard clinging to a rock. He clicked onto the chat room. A discussion was underway.

  "... you remember tithonus?"

  "who?"

  "Tithonus... it's greek mythology. he was a handsome young prince. One day, Aurora, the goddess of dawn, falls in love with him. she wants him for a husband, but after all he's only a mortal with a short life span, so she goes to Zeus and begs him to bestow eternal life on him. Zeus does and she sweeps him off to her palace in the east. For years everything's fine, they live in bliss. But there was one thing she forgot..."

  "what?"

  "she forgot to ask that her prince stay young forever. And so he aged. He got older and older and lost all his strength and shriveled down and his voice turned into a feeble squeak and he ached everywhere and could barely move. he shrank so much that Aurora put him in a little basket in a corner of her palace and he was miserable he only wanted one more thing—to die. But he couldn't. so he just keep shrinking until he turned into a grasshopper and that's what he remained forever and ever."

  "got the point but st
ill i'd want to live a long long time. think about it—what's so bad about old age?"

  "Everything. your teeth rot, your size shrinks, you walk like a cripple, you lose control of your bowels, your memory goes—what's to live for?"

  "still, you're alive. you know the old saying: where there's life, there's hope."

  "where there's life, there's dope. give me kevorkian anytime..."

  "see we've got a newcomer. hello luddite. we're talking about old age. Machiavelli here prefers the live fast die young route. how bout you?"

  Jude typed the first nonsense that came into his head: "i think it's too bad old age is wasted on the old."

  "ha ha. you're as funny as your name."

  Jude asked the question he had come there for: "any you guys talked lately to methuselah???"

  "who he?"

  "i know him but he doesn't hang out here anymore. havent talked to him in weeks. why?"

  "nothing much. just wondered. another thing—why is this site called jerome arizona?"

  "dont know."

  "i think cause that's where it was when it began long time ago. but none of those people come on anymore."

  "who were they?" Jude asked.

  "dont know."

  "me neither."

  Jude didn't want to spend any more time on-line than he had to. "gotta run," he typed.

  "ok. remember: a minute from now you'll have sixty seconds less to live. ha ha."

  "and a minute ago you had sixty seconds more. ha ha"

  Without a riposte, Jude signed off, and was about to shut down the computer when he noticed a blinking mailbox: someone had sent him e-mail. He clicked on the icon, and instantly the screen was swallowed by a message that popped up with an address he did not immediately recognize. At that precise moment he heard a knock on the door—it sounded soft, tentative and his pulse quickened, because his sixth sense told him it was Tizzie.

  He quickly read the name on the e-mail—it was from the University of Wisconsin, from Hartman.

  Then he went to answer the door. A young man was standing there in a slightly frayed uniform, a tray hoisted on a bent wrist. Room service.

  Jude let him in and watched him as he grandly lifted the silver warmer off the plate, revealing a small brown sandwich sitting in a pool of melted cheese, and fished in his pocket for a dollar tip. The man accepted it without a word and closed the door with the pantomimed sycophancy of a retiring butler.

  Jude set the tray by the window and looked out into the darkened, deserted street. A car went by, rumbling with teenagers whose laughter penetrated the window, and then all was quiet again. The sandwich was cold and soggy; he ate only half of it and finished off the potato chips, swilling them down with Coke. Then he sipped his lukewarm coffee slowly, peering onto the street and thinking about their situation, turning the permutations and possiblities over and over. He felt he was groping in the dark, getting nowhere. The reference to Greek mythology played in his mind; he half dreamed that he was in a labyrinth, turning corner after corner, to the left and to the right, each one looking just the same, knowing that somewhere ahead or maybe behind was the dreaded Minotaur, the monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man, who fed on human flesh.

  Then he noticed the laptop screen, still gleaming.

  Hartman's message was brimming with Midwestern friendliness, but was nonetheless succinct.

  I've been thinking of you two and wondering how you're coming on your quest. Hope you remember my words of wisdom. The more I think about your situation, the more I'm convinced that I'm right. One more thing I thought you should know—a couple of days after you left, two men came by asking about you—FBI or at least that's what their badges said. We didn't tell them much, not that we had much to say in any case. And we didn't serve them any of my special concoction. All best, Hartman.

  Chapter 20

  They followed Route 40 into Flagstaff, Arizona, a town set behind long-needle pine forests high in the mountains. On the outskirts, three crude wooden crosses, each with a name stenciled in black, had been hammered into the ground.

  The highway fed into a street of traffic lights and fast-food restaurants and hotels. In the first block were Burger King, Econo Lodge, Hilton, Hampton Inn, Del Taco, Sizzler and Denny's. A Texaco station sold clay cow skulls and bright pottery with Hopi geometric designs.

  Tizzie was feeling better, but Skyler, in the backseat, spent most of the time sleeping. He was still ill.

  Jude looked for a place to stay. He parked in front of a two-story house down the street from Sbarro's Pizza and Mountain Jacks burger house. A ROOMS FOR RENT sign was taped to the window of a back door. He stepped outside and looked up and down the sidewalk. They were on the campus of Northern Arizona University. Young people carrying books walked by—the boys in bowling shirts, Dockers and jeans, the girls in tank tops, bell-bottom pants and shoes with tire-tread soles. Their pierced ears and eyebrows glinted in the sun.

  Jude got back into the car and started the engine.

  "What's wrong?" asked Tizzie.

  "Too cozy. I'm sure it's run by a landlady who sticks her nose into everybody's business and gossips with the neighbors. We'd stick out a mile away. We need a place that's anonymous, where so many travelers come and go that nobody pays any attention."

  Fifty-four miles south on Route 17, he found what he had in mind in Camp Verde, a drab modern crossroads. On one corner was a Giant service station advertising gasoline at $1.05 and $1.25 in yellow letters two feet high; monumental self-service pumps sat in the dark shadow of a concrete canopy. Across the way was a Taco Bell with a long faux Spanish-tile roof, and next door a Country Kitchen, separated by two parking lots. On the other side of the road was a shopping mall—brown windowless structures under a forty-foot flagpole. Overhead was a jumble of traffic lights, telephone lines and highway lamps on huge stanchions with elongated necks.

  A large blue and white sign with yellow letters—Best Western—caught Jude's eye. The motel restaurant advertised BREAKFAST, $2.99 on a green and white banner. Extending behind it was a two-story structure of brown brick, with wide brown doors and rectangular windows covered on the inside with heavy white blackout curtains. A staircase in the center, which had open slats between the steps, led to a walkway that lined the second floor.

  Jude went inside to register. By habit, he asked for three rooms, and when filling out the forms, he checked a box for payment in cash. The woman behind the counter looked him over and stared across his shoulder at Tizzie and Skyler, now stirring inside the car. She asked for two nights' payment in advance. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of large bills—the remains of a $4,000 withdrawal he had made in New York—held it below the counter and peeled off $200. She made out a receipt and directed him to a parking space at the rear.

  They settled in. The rooms were stuffy, so they turned on the air conditioning and met in the restaurant for a cup of coffee.

  "Now what?" asked Tizzie.

  "I'm going to poke around," said Jude. "You get to take the rest of the day off. As for him"—he gestured toward Skyler with his chin—"he looks like he needs some time in bed."

  "Don't you want company?"

  "No. I'm just going to get the lay of the land," he lied.

  Jude headed south. It was a nondescript town, a scattering of stores and houses and schools, except for a scenic backdrop of distant peaks covered with crowns of snow. He found the town hall and located the records bureau in the basement. A buzzer on the counter summoned a clerk from a back room. A middle-aged man, he eyed Jude as if he were a welcome diversion.

  "And what can I do for you?" he asked cheerily.

  Jude pulled out a photostated copy of his birth certificate and said he was passing through town and was curious to see the original. The man peered at it, then sat down at a computer and punched a seemingly endless round of commands; he stared at the screen, punched some more, waited, and repeated the process several times. Finally, he shook his head and came
back to the counter.

  "Well, you must have been born way up in the mountains. 'Cause at that time, looking at your birth date here, babies that were born way up past Cottonwood weren't registered here. They were registered on the Mesa, way up there on the Indian reservation."

  Jude looked at him quizzically.

  "So I'd say," the clerk continued, "you want to see it, you got to go way up there."

  He gave directions.

  Jude thanked him and left. He turned right at the next intersection on 260 West, a narrow, winding road gutted on both sides by dry gullies. He passed through rolling hills covered with patches of green grass and creosote bushes and bleached boulders. He came to Dead Horse Park and felt the road rising continually, twisting as it made its way up toward the Mesa. The wind was strong, sending tumbleweeds crashing into the guardrails.

  For a spell, the road followed a dried-up riverbed, passing from one side to the other over narrow bridges, and when he looked down, he saw a frozen stream of rocks, rounded and gleaming white in the sun. He came upon a huge boulder that thrust out so far the road veered around it; it had a peculiar shape, almost like a giant fist. Approaching it, Jude had an odd sensation; it seemed so familiar. And when he passed the boulder and continued climbing, that feeling persisted.

  Everything he saw—the shimmering heat, the sun glinting off bits of mica, the scrub bushes and tufts of grass and red brown earth gashed out along the roadside—it all combined to thrust him backward, into his childhood. He knew he had been that way before. He sensed a recollection slowly forming, a snapshot taking shape in his mind's eye like a Polaroid. He was in the backseat of a car, a convertible, for the wind was whipping his hair and the sun beat down so hard that when he touched the nickel fasteners on the collapsed roof, it scalded his hand. Someone was driving. His father. When he focused his inner eye, he could see the back of his head, the hairs waving in the wind, the sloped shoulders. He felt safe and protected and excited all at the same time. Where were they going? He had no idea, but he did not need to know, for he had given himself over into the hands of an adult in that childlike way of total trust. It was a feeling he had not experienced for as long as he could remember.