"You Dreyer?" he said in a nasal voice.
"That's me." Already didn't like him.
"Where's my clone?"
"Don't know. Never seen anyone who looks like you before."
"Not me, you jog! The Harlow clone!"
"Oh. Who are you?"
"Ned Spinner. Her owner."
Neither of us offered to shake hands.
"Never heard of her."
"Don't give me that dreg! She didn't work last night like she was supposed to. I found your name and address in her room."
Shrugged. "So?"
"So she's mine and she's missing and if you're trying to steal her, you're as good as dead!"
Getting mad now. Gave him one of my best glares.
"Going to say this once, then you can leave: The only thing I like less than clones are people who own them. Goodbye."
He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind. Seemed to believe me. He stalked out without another word.
Easy to see why he wanted Harlow-c back. He'd given up his right to have a child and invested a load of credit to buy a clone gestated from Jean Harlow's DNA, then he'd set her up in a Dydeetown cubicle and proceeded to live off her earnings. Without her he was broke.
My heart was breaking.
Wasn't too much later that Harlow-c herself walked into the office. Saw how the left side of her mouth was swollen and discolored and got a queasy tug inside.
"What did you tell Spinner?"
"That I never heard of you."
"You did? " She looked shocked. "Thanks."
"Why'd you miss work?"
"I can't work. I'm too worried about Kyle. I've got to talk to you!" she blurted, her words tumbling over each other. "It's important. It's about Kyle."
"Sure," I said. "Sit down."
She stood and stared at me, obviously taken aback. "I thought you'd throw me out."
"Now why would I do that? Just because you lied to me about your boyfriend? Don't be silly!"
Knowing what she knew about me made me want to crawl under the desk. But I couldn't let her see any of that. Had my position to maintain. Couldn't let myself feel lower than a clone. So I washed out yesterday. It never happened. That was the only way I could sit in front of her.
"I promised him I'd never tell anyone what I knew about him. But I'm going to tell you everything now."
"You mean that his real name's 'Kel' and that the 'exporting firm' he works for is really Yokomata?"
"His real name's Kyle Bodine – and he works for the R.A."
Almost choked on my tay. Kel Barkham working for the Rackets Authority – this I had to hear.
"Sit down and tell me all about it. All about it."
She sat and began doing just that.
"Kyle is an R.A. agent. He's been working his way up through the ranks of the Yokomata organization for years, waiting for the fight moment to run the whole gang in."
All I could do to keep from laughing in her face – clones are so dumb.
"Why didn't he?" I said. "Understand he's been Yokomata's right-hand man for years."
"He was waiting for the fight moment. And then an undreamed-of opportunity presented itself."
"He met you."
Never thought of myself as a subtle sort, but she flashed me a very genuine smile as the remark whooshed right by her left ear.
"Oh, how nice of you to say that! But the truth is that he had an opportunity to catch The Man From Mars."
Stiffened in my chair. The Man From Mars – second time in as many tenths that his name had come up. Didn't take to the idea of the most notorious smuggler in Occupied Space having a hand in this.
But it made a sort of sense. Earth-produced Zem had a premium value on the Sol worlds, and a triple premium on the outworlds – except on someplace like Tolive where I'd heard it was legal and could be bought over the counter.
Who better to get it off-planet than The Man From Mars?
Had a bad feeling that I was getting further and further out of my depth there. But I couldn't stop now.
"Where do you fit into all of this?"
"I told you: We were going to married and move–”
“–Out Where All The Good Folks Go. Bloaty. But didn't you play any part in the plot?"
"Why...yes. How did you know?"
"Lucky guess. What did you do for Barkham?"
"Bodine – Kyle Bodine."
"Whatever. Talk."
"I delivered a package to The Man From Mars for him."
"You saw him?"
Far as I knew, nobody had ever seen The Man From Mars.
"Not...not exactly. I heard a voice. It told me to put the package down and go. So I went."
"Where and when was this?"
"Friday morning. In a cave on the Maine Coastal Preserve."
"And when did you last see Bar – Bodine?"
"That morning."
"And he was supposed to meet you Friday night?"
She nodded. "We were supposed to leave for the outworlds right away. Kyle said his life in Sol System wouldn't be worth a soupbowl in freefall after he turned in The Man From Mars. We had tickets for the Friday night shuttle."
"How come you waited until Wednesday to come to me? Why didn't you go to the R.A. first?"
"I did. But they said they'd never heard of Kyle. Which was what I expected – Kyle told me his cover was so deep that only a privileged handful in the government even knew he existed."
"Fewer than that even, I'm sure," I said.
She nodded. "Probably. But I was getting so worried when there was no news release from the R.A. about the capture of The Man From Mars... I thought something might have gone wrong. And since he told me never to go to the Officials about him, I came to you."
"My lucky day. Can you find your way back to that cave?"
"Yes. I have the co-ords written down."
That startled me.
"Clones can't write."
Actually, most Realpeople can't read or write, either. But I'd never heard of a clone who could.
She drew herself up. "I'm teaching myself. For Kyle."
Felt a wave of disgust. Poor dumb thing. Led on and lied to by this dregger, teaching herself to read just for him, thinking he was going to take her to the outworlds. Realpeople shouldn't treat clones like that...
But on the other hand, what if he'd been straight with her? If he did work for the R.A., he'd have to get off-planet real fast after blowing his cover. And being with the R.A., he'd be in a position to wrangle a nice new greencard for anyone, even a clone.
Curiouser and curiouser.
"Please find him for me!"
"All right," I said. "I'll stick with this, but only on the condition that you've told me everything you know."
"I have."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
Believed her. But then, I'd believed her last time.
"Give me your greencard."
Her reaction was instantaneous: She clutched at her belt pouch. "No!"
"It may help me trace him."
"You think so?"
"Definitely."
Not definitely, really, but I had a feeling I could learn a lot about Kyle Bodine/Kel Barkham/Whoever when I learned a little more about Harlow-c's greencard.
"I don't know..."
"It might be important."
"It's already important to me. It's..." Her lower lip trembled. "It may be all I have left of him."
"And it may be the key to finding him."
She thought about that for a while, then: "All right."
She fished it out and handed it over to me like she was entrusting me with her only child.
"But take good care of it. It means a lot to me."
"Sure. Guard it with my life."
9.
"Check this out for me, will you?"
Elmero took Harlow-c's greencard and looked it over front and back.
"Check it out how?"
"Want to kn
ow if it's real."
"Easy enough."
He rode his chair over to his all-purpose console.
I’d used the excuse of renting a flitter to get away from Harlow-c. Told her I'd pick her up in half a twentieth on the roof of my office complex.
Instead I'd come to Elmero's.
"Fake," he said, pulling the card out of a slot and sailing it across the room at me.
"That bad, huh?"
Had a feeling Elmero saw more than his share of greencards, real and otherwise.
"Worst fake I ever saw. Too thick, for one thing, and they didn't even bother to encode it with a genotype."
No genotype on the card...and it figured that if Barkham hadn't bothered to make a decent fake of a card, he certainly hadn't made any changes in CenDat.
Poor Harlow-c – that dumb, trusting clone hadn't even bothered to give the card a try-out. She was walking around thinking she could pass for Realpeople, but was still a clone as far as CenDat was concerned.
"By the way," Elmero said. "Heard something new on Barkham. Word is he tried to sell ten vials of the Zem to Lutus on Friday. And Lutus, being a fond, trusting competitor, called Yokomata to ask her what was up. The bounty on Barkham's head hit the tubes a twentieth later."
Interesting. A lot of information was accumulating but none of it was piecing together. Barkham was looking more and more like tube slime, nothing like the clone pictured him. Figured I had nothing to lose by asking a stupid question.
"Say, Elm...any chance of Kel Barkham being an R.A. agent?"
If Elmero was merely ugly when he smiled, he was hideous when he laughed.
"That motherless dregger? If Barkham's R.A., so am I!"
Tucked the worthless greencard away and stood up.
"But about that card," he said, still smiling. "For what it's worth, there is something encoded on it. Nothing to do with greencard information, but there is something. I can find out what if you want."
"Maybe later. Right now I need some firepower."
"You? You couldn't hit the side of Boedekker North at fifty meters. You're better off running."
"Know that. But may not get the chance. Need an edge."
"This have anything to do with looking for Barkham?"
Nodded. "It might."
He rubbed a long-fingered hand along his jaw. "Guess I'd better protect my investment. Got just the thing for you. Strip to the waist..."
10.
Once we had settled into the cab of the rented flitter, Harlow-c wanted her greencard back right away but I told her I needed it just a little bit longer. She didn't like the idea but I didn't give her much choice.
The console asked for our destination and Harlow-c handed me the coordinates she'd written on a slip of paper. Thrust it back at her and told her to read them off, saying I probably couldn't read her handwriting.
Which was true. Also true that I couldn't read most writing unless the words were few and simple and block printed. Never learned. Great with numbers but reading was a useless skill. Like most people, had little need for it. But here I was with a clone who could read. Saw no reason to let her know I couldn't.
She read them off, the flitter rose, and we were on our way.
Except for my skin itching me under the wrist contacts that went along with the chest zapper Elm had fitted me with, it was a comfortable trip. We didn't say much, and when we did, I made sure we avoided the subject of yesterday's stay at Yokomata's. She talked about some of the books she had read recently. Wondered if she was showing off or just trying to make conversation. For a dumb clone she seemed to know a lot.
Less than two tenths after leaving Brooklyn, we were hovering over the Maine Coastal Preserve. Can't imagine why anyone would want to live in Maine. Cold rocks, cold wind, cold water. And trees, lots of trees. The megalops hasn't crept this far north and probably never will. The cave was below – a black hole in the coastal rocks, well above the tide line.
Settled the flitter down and turned to her.
"Once more: What did you do here?"
"I took the box Kyle gave me and carried it down to the cave."
"How big was the box?"
"About this big." She measured out a 25-by-10 centimeter space in the air – just the right size to hold a hundred amps of Zem. "I took it in and a voice from somewhere in the dark told me where to put it. I put it and left."
"And that was it? Nothing more?"
"Nothing. I got back into the flitter that brought me here and let it take me back to L-I Port where I was supposed to meet Kyle for the shuttle out."
"And he never showed."
She shook her head sadly. "No."
Beginning to get the picture now, but needed to explore the cave to confirm a suspicion that had been growing all day.
Left Harlow-c in the flitter – I'd brought a coat, she hadn't – and made my way to the cave mouth with the flit's utility lamp under my arm. The salt-stinking wind off the water was like a vibe blade against my face. Strange to think that everything I was looking at was really there. No holos. Found it disorienting in a way. Also, the wide-openness of the Maine coast left me feeling naked and unprotected. Was glad to get into the comfortable dark confines of the cave.
Didn't take me long to find him. Just followed the whimpers.
Not sure how they did it to him. Must be something the Martian colonists developed. I knew The Man From Mars was involved – he'd left his mark scratched in the dirt next to Barkham's remains: a big circle with four little circles lined up inside along the equator.
Only Barkham's head remained untouched. It sat upright, open mouthed and glassy eyed on a transparent box, blinking in the glare of my light.
Except for the spinal cord and major nerve trunks, his torso was completely gone: skin, muscles, bones, guts, all eaten away or chewed away or melted away, I don't know which. But gone. The lower halves of his arms and legs still had flesh on them but were connected to the rest of him by nerve bundles alone. All the nerves seemed to have been coated with something to keep them viable and then stretched to their limit over the rocks and debris on the cave floor. Where his chest had once been now sat a heart-lung machine, hissing softly as it drew air in and out of the tube jammed into the lower stump of his windpipe, chugging softly as it pumped bright red blood up through his arteries and drew the darker stuff down from his jugulars.
He yelped with every step I took toward him.
At first I thought he was afraid I was one of his torturers come to do more damage, but then realized he could feel every little vibration I made as I approached across the cave floor, and each and every one was translated into pain for him.
Came up and looked him in the eyes. Whatever kind of mind he'd had was pretty much gone. Having his entire nervous system laid bare to the chill Maine air had pushed him into mental subspace.
His pupils constricted as he looked up into the light.
"God?" he said in a voice so hoarse from screaming it was barely recognizable as human. "Is that... you, God?"
Realized he couldn't see me behind the light. He was talking to the light, timing his words with the exhalations of the machine sitting below the stump of his neck.
"Yeah. God. That's me."
"Can I die...now God?...I've had e... nough take me... God I'm ready."
"Not yet. First you answer a few questions."
His eyes squeezed shut. "After I'm... dead God after... I'm dead."
"Now." Didn't give him time to protest again. "You shorted The Man From Mars, didn't you?"
His voice keened, his eyes rolled, his face contorted in a spasm of horror at the mention of that name. Had to let it run its course.
"Didn't you?"
It looked like he was trying to nod but he couldn't, not with his neck muscles detached from the rest of him.
"Yes but on...ly a few...vials."
"So he came for the rest of it."
A sob: "Gave it...to him."
"But still he did this to you."
Another attempt at a nod, then a wail. "Lesson!"
Right. A good lesson.
The Man From Mars already had a ruthless reputation, and when word about this got out, no one would ever try to short him again.
"So he winds up with the Zem and his money."
"Not money...thinks Yoko...has it."
Which meant that as far as The Man From Mars was concerned, the deal was done. Yokomata's lieutenant had tried to short him – Barkham had probably slipped ten dummy vials into the case – but that had all been taken care of. The Man From Mars had all the Zem he had paid for, and was no doubt well on his way to Mars at this very moment.
But Yokomata didn't have the payment. She'd never received it. And she wanted it before word got out about her Number One Man doubling her. She'd lose lots of face if she got left with no Zem, no payment, and no Barkham.
"Where is the payment?"
"Don't you...know, God?"
"Of course. But it's good for you to confess these sins. Cleanses the soul."
"In L-I...Port locker...had it...routed there."
"And the key?"
A grunt – an attempt at a laugh?
"Hidden where...only you can...find it!"
"Where's that?"
"Not of...your making."
Then he began to gurgle and roll his eyes. The more I asked, the more he rolled and gurgled. Was tempted to flick a finger against one of his exposed nerves to get his attention but didn't want to touch him.
Changed the subject.
"What about the Dydeetown girl?"
The eyes widened. "Truly you...are God!"
"We've already established that. Where did she fit in?"
His upper lip curled into a sneer. "Meatbag clone... too stu... pid to know."
"Yeah. You used her to make the drop for you here while you were trying to sell the ten stolen vials to Lutus. Told her you were going to marry her. She loves you."
He made a noise like, "Glah!... stupid clone... going to... leave her stan... ding at the gate."
Said nothing.
"God can...I die...now?"
Turned and started walking back toward the cave mouth.
"Don't think so. You've still got some time coming to you."
His voice rose to a shrill squeak, see-sawing up and down with the in-and-out of the machine's respirations.
"Youuuuproooomiiiised!"
Stopped. Had promised, hadn't I. As he wailed and keened, I turned and walked back toward his set-up, careful to make sure every footstep landed as hard as it could. Was reaching for the power switch when I heard Harlow-c's voice cry out behind me.