Authors: Ben Bova
"The bank would get its loan repaid in a few years," Vickie said.
"At the highest interest rates of the century. And Halliday retires from the Army after the loan is paid off and goes to live in Colorado . . ."
"Where he continues to pull the strings . . ."
"And becomes a rich son of a bitch."
We looked at one another. We were grinning and nodding excitedly. Proud of our terrific powers of deduction.
Hank broke the bubble. "But what in hell's all this got t' do with th' President? He wasn't even born yet!"
We went back to being gloomy. Hank produced his thick wad of biographical information about the labs' research staff scientists. With a resigned sigh, Vickie began typing the information into the computer. Most of the data had come from standard reference sources such as
American Men and Women of Science
, so Vickie could simply cite the reference, and the computer would know where to look. Still, it was a long job.
I ducked out to the men's room and then volunteered to take over the typing. "Just tell me what to do," I said.
Vickie argued at first, but finally relented and let me hammer the keys while she worked the kinks out of her hands. Hank disappeared briefly and came back with sandwiches and coffee.
"How long's this place stay open?" I wondered.
" 'Til ten," Hank said. "I just checked."
"We've only got—"
"We've got as long as we need," Vickie said. "I commandeered this room for Senator Markley. Senators and Congresspersons and their staffs can stay all night, if they want to. The computer's on-line twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."
"Wonderful," I heard myself say.
We took a brief dinner break, wolfing the sandwiches and coffee, and then Vickie took over the input typing again.
"Should've brought some beer," I said to Hank.
"Didn't even think of it," he admitted, looking surprised at himself.
Finally the job was done. All the biographical data about every researcher we knew had worked at North Lake was in the computer's memory bank. Vickie punched the request to correlate the data, and while the computer chewed on the problem, she stood up, put her arms over her head and stretched hard enough to pop tendons along her spine. It was a move that stirred my blood, and I could see that it did the same for Hank. Vickie didn't seem to notice, though. Or care.
"How long d'yew think it'll take th' machine to figure things out?"
Vickie shrugged. "A few minutes, maybe. That's a lot of data to cross-correlate."
"You really think this will give us an insight on what's going on at North Lake?" I asked her.
"It will at least tell us the common denominators among the scientific staff there. If it turns out that they're all specialists in building hydrogen bombs, for example, do you think the labs' main interest would be in air pollution studies?"
"Nobody likes a wiseass," I said.
Vickie grinned and started to rub the back of her neck. Hank was over behind her like a shot, kneading her shoulders.
"Learned massage from an ol' Indian," he drawled. Vickie moaned happily and I broiled medium-rare.
The computer screen came to life. A list of words appeared on it. A damned short list. We all huddled around the glowing screen, like kids peeking into a store window. The list read:
MAJOR FIELDS OF COMMON INTEREST
INPUT CODE 042205-B219-004
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
BIOCHEMISTRY
VIRAL BIOLOGY
GENETICS
IMMUNOLOGY
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
BEHAVIORAL PSY-
CHOLOGY
INFORMATION THEORY
We stared at the list for a long time. At last Hank exploded, "That don't tell us diddley-shit!"
"Wait a minute," Vickie said. She sat at the keyboard again and tapped out a query, explaining as she typed the cryptic shorthand words, "I'm asking what kinds of capabilities these fields of interest could produce."
The machine considered this problem for only a few seconds, then flashed a new list on the screen. It was a lot longer, and full of technical terms that I'd never seen before. But three items stuck out and hit me just as if they'd been printed in letters of fire:
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
GENETIC ENGINEERING
CLONING
CHAPTER TWELVE
Before either of the others could say anything, I told Vickie, "Ask the computer for a definition of cloning."
She looked up at me quizzically, but her fingers tapped out the query. The computer screen immediately showed:
CLONE: The descendants produced vegetatively or by apomixis from a single plant; asexually or by parthenogenesis from a single animal; by division from a single cell. The members of a clone are of the same genetic constitution, except insofar as mutation occurs amongst them.
"That's it," I said. "Somebody's made clone copies of the President."
"Hey now, slow down a minute fer us oL' country boys," Hank said. "What're yew—"
Vickie explained, "Scientists can take a cell from your body . . . any cell, like from your skin or a fingernail clipping, and reproduce exact copies of you from it. The babies grown from your cells would turn out to look exactly like you. You could make as many copies of yourself as you want, that way."
"Exact duplicates," I said. "As many as you want."
Hank wasn't as slow as he liked to pretend. "Y'all mean I could make a roomful of copies of
me?
"
"Right."
"Without sex? Just by takin' a few cells off the end o' my nose or somethin'?"
I nodded.
"Sheeit. . . . First place, I don't
want
more copies o' me runnin' around. Second place, I like the old way of makin' babies a helluva lot better."
Vickie was grinning at him, but I said, "It's obvious that somebody wants a lot of copies of the President running around."
"But nobody's cloned human beings," Vickie said. "That whole line of research was shut down years and years ago. The biologists themselves stopped the experiments."
"Nobody's
reported
cloning human beings," I shot back, jerking a thumb at the computer screen. "But the capability's there."
Hank asked slowly, "Y'all think somebody's taken some cells from th' President's body . . . and grown extra people from them? People who look jest like th' President?"
"That can't be," Vickie objected before I could answer. "It would still take forty-some years to grow those cells to the same level of maturity as the President."
It was all clicking into place in my mind. I asked Vickie, "How much do you want to bet that the biologists outlawed human cloning experiments right around the time the General brought out North Lake Labs?"
She stared at me, speechless.
"James J. Halliday was cloned in infancy," I said, the words coming fast and eager, "and his father bought the North Lake Labs specifically for that purpose."
"When th' kid was born?"
Vickie said,
"
Before
the child was born. General Halliday bought the labs before the President was born."
"He did it deliberately," I said. "He planned it all out some forty-five years ago!"
"We're seeing the results of a plan that's been in operation for nearly half a century." Vickie looked and sounded just as awed and frightened as I felt.
Hank tried to pull us back to reality. "But
why?
Why th' hell would he want t' make extra copies of his own son? And what's happenin' to those copies now?"
I had no answer. Yet. "All right, let's put together the pieces we have and see if any of this really makes sense," I said.
They both waited for me to say more. I leaned my rump against the edge of the desk and started ticking off points on my fingers.
"One: when the President's father was a major in the Army Research Office, he pulled a deal that got him major ownership and complete control of the North Lake Research Laboratories."
They both nodded.
"Two: he brings Dr. Alfonso Peña in to head up North Lake. Peña had been working in biological warfare at Fort Detrick."
"Halliday prob'ly knew Peña already," Hank threw in.
I agreed with a nod. "Three: Halliday retires to Colorado and becomes filthy rich. He keeps a commission in the National Guard and becomes a big hero when Denver's threatened by food rioters."
"And in th' meantime he has a son," said Hank.
"Right. What about his wife?" I wondered.
"She died while the boy was still an infant," Vickie said. "I checked that out earlier. Natural causes, although there was some gossip in the underground press around Aspen that she drank herself to death."
"Okay," I said. "Now where the hell are we?"
"Point four."
I saw that my hands were trembling slightly. Nobody seemed to notice. "All right. Four: General Halliday had his son cloned at North Lake, either right at birth or very soon afterward. Vickie, is there any info on
where
the President was born?"
"At the General's home in Aspen."
"So he flew the kid to Minnesota right after birth?" Hank asked.
"Not necessarily," I said. "All they had to do was ship a few cells from the baby's body out to the labs. A little sliver of skin would do."
"Maybe when they circumcised him," Vickie suggested, a trace of a smile on her lips.
"How do you know he was circumcised?"
"I could try to find out."
"Never mind. They only needed a few cells. That would be enough to grow as many 'extra' James J. Hallidays as they wanted. Each of them only nine months or so younger than the original."
"It still don't make sense." Hank was shaking his head doggedly. "Why would th' General clone his son? How could they keep th' thing a secret? Cryin' out loud—they'd have a dozen little James J. Hallidays crawlin' all over th' place!"
"No wonder his mother drank herself to death," Vickie said. But there was no smile this time.
"The General's hideout at Aspen is big enough to stash a battalion of James J. Hallidays," I said.
"But the
secrecy
they'd need t' carry it off!" Hank insisted. "Why, th' General'd have to have a staff of people who looked up t' him like he was God, fer cryin' out loud."
I grinned humorlessly. "Ever meet the General?"
"Nope."
"Or some of his employees . . . like Robert H. H. Wyatt?"
"Oh." Hank had met Wyatt, it was apparent. "Maybe I see what yew mean."
"Okay then . . . putting it all together . . ."
Vickie took over. "The General had his son cloned, and then trained him for a life in politics. He was
programmed
to be President from the instant he was born."
"Before that," I said.
"But why clone him?" Hank asked again. "And why're th' clones droppin' dead? Who's killin' them? And why?"
"That's what we've got to find out," I said.
"How?"
"There's one guy who knows the whole story, and he might be pressured into telling us: Dr. Peña."
Vickie said, "McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman talked with Peña just before they . . . they crashed."
"I know." That's why my hands were shaking, and why I belatedly looked up at the ventilator grill in the ceiling and started to wonder who else had heard our think-tank session.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
General Halliday beat us to the punch.
I got into my office early the next morning and dove into the pile of accumulated paperwork that Greta had left on my desk—until 9:00 Central Time. Then I put in a call to Dr. Peña.
And got Peter Thornton. On the phone's picture screen, he looked even fussier and more officious than he had in person.
"Dr. Peña's not available," he said. "He's been under
enough
strain recently."
"This is important," I said. "I want to fly out there this afternoon and—"
"Absolutely not! Out of the question. Besides, he won't even be here by this afternoon. He's going away for a
complete
rest."
"Away? Where?"
Thornton's normally frowning face wrinkled even further into a scowl. "Oh, come now, Mr. Albano. Why can't you leave the old man alone? He's
very
frail, and quite upset about all this . . . this . . . notoriety."
I leaned closer to the phone screen. "Listen. Would you rather have him talk to me or to the Federal goddamned Bureau of Investigation?"
"Really! I—"
"Where's he going?" I demanded. "To the General's place in Aspen?"
Thornton looked shocked. "How did you know?"
"I've got spies, too."
"But. . ."
"I know," I said. "Dr. Peña needs a complete rest. You just make sure he doesn't get the kind of rest that Klienerman and McMurtrie got."
"What? What are you
saying?"
"Nothing. Just take good care of that old man." I clicked off before he could say anything else.
And called Vickie into my office. In the few minutes it took to get her down the hall I signed half a dozen memos and canceled three meetings that I was supposed to chair.
Vickie came in quietly, without any announcement from Greta, and took the seat in front of my desk. She was wearing a forest-green one-piece jumpsuit, with a yellow scarf tied loosely at her throat.
"Looks like you're ready to go skydiving," I said as I initialed a couple more memos.
She grinned at me. "It's a comfortable outfit. I don't have any outside appointments today, so I can wear what feels best."
"Looks good," I said.
She made a
thank-you
bob of her head.
"I'm going to Aspen," I said. "The General's got Dr. Peña there."
Vickie's face went from pleased to surprised to scared to thoughtful, all in a couple of eyeblinks. She was terrible at keeping secrets.
"What good will that do?" she asked in a level, practicality-above-all tone. "The General probably won't even let you into his house, and even if he does, he certainly won't let you interrogate Dr. Peña."
"Can you think of anything better we can do?"
She pursed her lips for a moment. "Yes. Call a press conference and tell the newshawks what you know."