Cloneward Bound

by M. E. Castle

  “Well, thanks for covering me. So. We know Two lives somewhere on Melrose. What now?”

  “Two is starting to attract attention,” Amanda said. “I say we hit the street from one side of LA to the other. With any luck, we’ll be led straight to him by a crowd of goggling fans.”

  Fisher noticed that Amanda choked slightly on the words “goggling fans,” but he decided not to comment on it. The idea made him want to choke, too. Besides, he thought it more likely that wherever Two was staying, they would find a bunch of spicy sauce–fueled rockets shooting off the roof. His clone obviously did not know the meaning of the words low profile.

  FP began to snore and then to shiver. He urgently shook his left foreleg, and Fisher suspected that the canine master-of-disguise, Molly, was already giving him nightmares.

  As McGee’s granite slab of a building fell away behind them, Fisher and Amanda passed a huge glass-walled building constructed in a giant pyramid shape. Fisher felt a cold shudder work its way down his spine. He couldn’t help but think of the TechX Enterprises building; it, too, had been built like a towering pyramid. He had very nearly died in the cold, concrete depths of TechX, and he still had nightmares about racing down endless steel corridors being pursued by bizarre and twisted robot creations.

  Just then, a freckly teenager bumped into him, shaking him from his reverie. The Styrofoam coffee cups the teen had been carrying toppled to the ground, splashing coffee all over the pavement.

  “Hey,” the kid said, brushing his moppish red hair out of his eyes. “Watch where you’re—whoa.” He turned back to face the doors of the pyramid building. “Hey, did you hire a stunt double or something?” he shouted.

  Fisher turned to follow the redhead’s gaze. For a second, he froze. Amanda froze next to him.

  Walking out of the building, strutting like an astronaut who’d just gotten back from Mars in time to front a rock band, was Two. He was wearing a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a well-fitted pair of black, boot-cut jeans. Like everyone else’s in this city, his eyes were hidden behind a pair of slick, black sunglasses.

  When he saw Fisher, he lowered the shades and smiled broadly.

  “Brother!” he called cheerily, striding over to where Fisher and Amanda were standing. He clapped the redhead on the shoulder. “Alex, this is my twin, Fisher. Fisher, this is my personal assistant and protégé, Alex Barnaby.”

  “Oh, hello,” Alex said, shaking Fisher’s hand before bending down and trying to recover the coffee cups.

  “Two,” Fisher croaked. Adrenaline was building like liquid fire in his veins. He thought he’d have to turn Los Angeles inside out to find his clone, and within two days he’d literally walked into him. This was his chance to sort everything out. To save himself, and his clone, from an unknown and probably awful fate. He turned around to seek support from Amanda, only to find that she had vanished once again. Where had she gone this time?

  “The artist formerly known as Two,” Two said with an exaggerated wink. Then he turned to Alex. “You can head on home now. I’ll give you a call later, okay?” Alex nodded and hurried off, cradling the cups in his arms.

  Fisher felt a twinge of anxiety. Two looked like he had become comfortable with the Hollywood lifestyle. Convincing him to come back to Palo Alto without revealing the truth to him might be a pretty tough sell. And he had no idea what Two would do if he did reveal the truth.

  “Where’d you get the kid?” Two asked, jerking his head at the bundle cradled in Fisher’s left arm.

  “This is FP,” Fisher said. “I had to disguise him.”

  At the mention of his name, FP began to stir, and his snout poked out of the sheet. It started to twitch back and forth as FP detected the smells of two Fishers. “You have no idea how relieved I am to see you,” Fisher continued. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”

  “We?” Two said, cocking his head to the side. Fisher noticed that Two’s hair seemed to be gelled into place.

  “H-hey,” Amanda said, stepping out from behind a parked car in her normal clothes. Fisher saw a corner of gray suit fabric sticking out of the briefcase. She smiled, looking suddenly nervous.

  “Amanda!” Two cried. Then, as though realizing for the first time that he and Fisher were both standing in plain view, a look of shock crossed his face. “Amanda!” he repeated. “What are you—? How did you?” He turned to Fisher accusatorily. “You told her?!” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and eyed Fisher up and down. “What about the big plot you told me about? The one centered in Palo Alto, and the reason that I always went to school while you only stayed at home and worked surveillance?”

  Fisher knew he should never have lied to Two. He would have to tell Two the truth—but now was definitely not the time. Fisher pulled his clone aside, motioning for Amanda to let them have a moment.

  “It’s all right,” Fisher whispered to Two as they turned away. “She’s on our side. She’s been trying to fight against our enemies for years.”

  Two still looked unconvinced. Fisher couldn’t tell if Two was nervous because he wasn’t sure he could trust Amanda, or whether seeing her was having an entirely different effect on him. If Two really liked Amanda, as he’d seemed to before the TechX incident, maybe Fisher could use his crush to lure him home.

  “We were just talking to GG McGee,” Fisher said. “Trying to find out where you might be.”

  “Ugh,” said Two, wrinkling his nose. “GG’s a nosy, talkative iguana. Lulu O’Lunney really knows what she’s doing.”

  “Is that who you were seeing in there?” Fisher asked, glancing back at the huge building. FP was wriggling around in his arms, his nose still sniffing in Two’s direction. Fisher squeezed his arms around FP to try and keep him from escaping.

  “That’s right,” Two said. “She got me an audition for the Spot-Rite gig. Can you believe it? One step closer to finding our mother. This stuff tastes terrible, by the way,” he added, holding up a bottle of the new, edible Spot-Rite. “It’s like somebody ground up an old tire and made iced tea with it. By the way—I’m going by Basley around here.” He grinned at Amanda, who gave a small, uncertain-looking smile back. She kept adjusting the briefcase in her grip, moving it around and switching it from hand to hand.

  “Basley Bas,” Fisher said drily.

  “That’s right,” Two said, flashing a film-star smile. “Girls really love it,” he said in a slightly louder voice, as though to be sure Amanda could hear him. Fisher saw Amanda’s smile flatten. FP was struggling harder in Fisher’s arms.

  “How did you survive that blast at TechX?” Fisher said. “I was a hundred yards away and it still knocked me flat.”

  Two’s face grew serious. “Dr. X and I were fighting,” Two said. “Everything was falling down around us, and I knew the building was about to blow. Then I saw a couple of the robot prototypes coming up the corridor. They had rocket propulsion built into their frames. I made a bolt for one. Dr. X grabbed at me as I jumped, and pulled out a clump of my hair.” He tilted his head to the side and pointed to a spot behind his left ear where a little tuft was slowly growing back. “But I was able to leap onto the robot and, by blind luck, I triggered its rockets and sped out through a collapsed part of the roof into the sky. I landed hundreds of miles away—luckily, the rocket dropped me directly into Lake Powell. As it happened, I wasn’t too far from here.”

  “That’s … that’s impossible,” Fisher said, shaking his head.

  “Improbable,” Two said. “In fact, the likelihood of my survival was exactly one in 1,072,001.” Two raised his eyebrows at Amanda.

  Amanda crossed her arms quickly across her chest and gave him a thin, terse smile. “Wow. Pretty amazing,” she said flatly.

  Two frowned. “It was amazing—and dangerous. And moving to LA wasn’t much better at first. This city is huge! It will eat you up and spit you out.”

  “Oh, we know,” Amanda said, maintaining the steel in her eyes. “We’ve been t
hrough a lot of it trying to find you.”

  FP was snapping his tiny jaws together inches from Two’s arm.

  “In any event,” Fisher jumped in quickly, wrapping the blanket over FP’s head, “it’s great that we bumped into you. Now we can help you get home!”

  “Home?” Two said. “That place isn’t my home. Our mother is here. When I realized I was in LA, something clicked in my memory. I remembered seeing Mom in the Spot-Rite commercials. She must be close by. After all this time, we can finally be reunited with her. Isn’t that incredible?”

  Fisher wished, more than anything, that he had never told Two that a commercial actress was his real mother. He had done it in a moment of desperation, when Two first emerged from his test tube. But he couldn’t tell the truth now; he just couldn’t. Two would never come home, and he’d never trust Fisher again.

  “Besides,” Two went on, “life is so much better here! My agent set me up with an apartment. I don’t even have to pay rent. I’m going to lots of auditions, meeting important people, going to parties, dinners, dinner parties …”

  “I see,” Amanda said, hugging herself. “That’s what’s keeping you here. The glamorous lifestyle.”

  “No,” Two said, turning to her with a sigh of exasperation. “I have a job to get done. The quality of living around here is just a bonus.”

  Amanda looked away. “There are … there are things in Palo Alto worth coming back to,” she said softly. Then she cleared her throat.

  “Name one,” Two said. Amanda whipped around, and Fisher saw a black flame flare up in her eyes. He hastily stepped between them.

  “Listen,” Fisher said, jostling Two a little to get his attention. “We’re in danger. We …” He glanced at the glowering Amanda, silently pleading with her not to judge him for the lies he was about to tell. “The guards know something strange is going on and they contacted their allies. Agents have been following me. They might have found you. And they might even know that our mother’s here. Look.…” Fisher pulled the threatening note out of his pocket and handed it to Two, who studied it for a minute, turning it over in his hand.

  “Well then,” said Two, with a deep breath, “we need to speed up the effort to find our mother.”

  “What?!” Fisher said. “We can’t risk that! We have to lie low, wait for this to blow over.”

  “I appreciate your caution,” Two said. “I know you’re just trying to protect Mom.” Fisher could feel Amanda’s angry glare on him, burning the back of his neck like a laser. “But sooner or later we have to take action. We can’t keep a lid on this forever, you know.”

  Fisher had no response to that. He turned to Amanda, who was now refusing to look at either of them, and was instead pretending to be interested in a nearby wastepaper basket. Her expression very clearly read: “I am done speaking with both of you.”

  “It’s been great seeing you … both of you,” Two said breezily, although Fisher thought his smile looked a little forced, and he kept glancing over at Amanda. “But I’m afraid that’s my ride.” He pointed to a sleek black town car pulling up to the curb. “I have an audition in half an hour, and this evening I’m going to make an appearance at a costume party at the Hollywood Bowl. Don’t worry, I’ll be in touch soon.”

  “What?” Amanda said, finally turning to him with a sour expression. “No Rolls-Royce? No personal helicopter?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get one of those,” Two shot back. “You look like you could stand to be in low air pressure for a while.”

  Before Amanda could react, he stepped into the opening door of the car and was whisked away into the sunlit streets.

  Two’s words echoed in Fisher’s head as the car pulled away. We can’t keep a lid on this forever, you know.

  CHAPTER 11

  When the floor’s fallen out from under you enough times, you start to think, maybe the problem isn’t a weak floor. Maybe it’s that you’ve got saw blades for shoes.

  —Fisher Bas, Personal Notes

  As Fisher watched the car roll away, he deeply regretted not packing his magnetic harpoon gun. Granted, the last time he’d tried to use it he’d ended up being slung right into the waffle-cone storage at the back of an ice-cream truck, but even a desperate tactic seemed better than nothing at this point. Two didn’t want to come home—and even worse, Fisher couldn’t blame him.

  Two was living a dream life in LA. Free housing, no parents, no school, rising fame, a whole city to play around in …

  In comparison, Wompalog Middle School seemed about as exciting as a chess tournament in a nursing home. And Wompalog was the only other place Two had ever known, thanks to Fisher. Fisher had thrown Two into that festering pit of horror so that he wouldn’t have to suffer through it himself.

  It was hard to blame Two for wanting to escape. It was what Fisher had wanted, too.

  But Two had to come home. The stakes had gotten too high. Fisher knew he was being followed—the note proved it. Agents could be trailing Two right now. This time next week, Fisher could be in a cell on the far side of the moon, and Two could be in a laboratory.

  Fisher felt his stomach dip into the soles of his shoes.

  “Just what exactly was all that talk about sinister agents and evil conspiracies?” Amanda demanded as they watched the car disappear into the blur of traffic.

  “I told you I had to lie to him to keep him in line,” Fisher protested. He didn’t like the way Amanda was looking at him.

  “I guess I didn’t expect you to just keep on doing it,” she said, little embers still smoldering in her eyes. “You got me to agree to help you by telling me the truth. How do you expect to ever earn his trust if you don’t do the same for him?”

  “I will!” Fisher cried out. He passed a hand through his hair. “Just not now.”

  “Right.” Amanda shook her head almost pityingly.

  “So what now?” Fisher said, despondent.

  Amanda exhaled. “I have a plan.”

  “Can’t wait to hear it,” Fisher said hollowly.

  “We know he’ll be at the Hollywood Bowl tonight,” she said. “That place is huge. I’m sure sneaking in won’t be too hard.”

  “And what do you plan to say to him? And that’s if we find him.” Fisher said. “Like you said, the place is huge.”

  Fisher leaned down and freed FP from his disguise so that he could trot around for a little while. The little pig started snuffling around at his feet.

  “I’m going to try the guilt angle. I plan on telling him,” Amanda said, coughing a bit and aiming her eyes directly at the sidewalk, “that I have a huge crush on him, and that if he doesn’t come back to Palo Alto with us my heart will split down the middle and never recover.”

  “So you yell at me because I didn’t tell him the truth, but you’re going to lie about having feelings for him?” Fisher asked cautiously. She hadn’t exactly looked pleased to see him earlier, despite Two’s obvious attempts at impressing her.

  “Do you want him back or don’t you?” Amanda snapped. “My methods have been getting us along pretty well so far. Don’t start doubting them now. Besides, who are you to judge me for lying to him?”

  Fisher held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not questioning your methods,” Fisher said quickly. He paused, considering. “And your idea isn’t bad. I had a conversation with Two about you a few weeks ago, and I think he might genuinely like you.”

  “Wait—what? Really?” Amanda squeaked. Then she coughed and grunted, and resumed in a normal voice: “Well … good then. If that’s the case, then there’s an even better chance my plan will work. Come on.”

  Fisher scooped up FP, who was having a staring contest with a seagull over a discarded half sandwich, and he and Amanda began the long trek back to the King of Hollywood.

  The Southern California sun felt a lot less pleasant after Fisher had spent half an hour marching under it at a pace that would give a drill sergeant an asthma attack. The taxi to GG McGee’s
office had used up what little cash he and Amanda had been given by their parents, so they’d had to walk back. Amanda’s legs were short, but they powered forward like she had a diesel engine embedded in her hip bones. Fisher could barely feel his own legs, and FP’s weight was tugging on his arms like a lead brick. Sweat was dripping from his eyelids by the time they finally made it.

  “Fisher Bas,” Mr. Dubel, one of the chaperones, had just called as Fisher and Amanda slipped through the door of the hotel and joined the rest of their classmates.

  “H-heeeere,” Fisher managed to gasp out, worming his way into the line.

  Mr. Dubel’s dim eyes noted Fisher’s presence, and he moved on in the roll call.

  Ms. Snapper stood in front of the group, her arms crossed, trying to suppress a bitter frown.

  “She doesn’t look too happy,” Fisher said to Amanda, pointing to their teacher. “I wonder how long she stood around waiting for Dr. Devilish to show.”

  “Long enough that our absence went totally unnoticed,” Amanda replied. “That’s all I care about.”

  Fisher thought, not for the first time, that he must be very careful to stay on Amanda’s good side.

  Once the class had been tallied up in the hotel lobby, the group headed out to the bus. Fisher didn’t enjoy having to walk again after barely catching his breath, but at least it was to a bus with comfortable seats.

  The Strange Science set was a very different place in the middle of a shoot. All of the crew members sat or stood quietly at their assigned stations, monitoring screens or sound apparatus. The lighting was on full force, illuminating Dr. Devilish and his laboratory in a yellow-tinged blaze. The class sat on cushioned seats set on risers behind the cameras. FP sat happily at Fisher’s side, free of his disguise. FP seemed to enjoy being free of the frightening steel headgear so much that he was willing to sit still for a while.

  Lucy Fir looked out of sorts as she walked onto the set wearing athletic pants and a Lakers T-shirt.