Popular Clone (14 page)

CHAPTER 13

The principal is just a person. It's the office that gets you. It sits there, smirking with its wood paneling and worn-down furniture, dozens of books on its shelves, and seems to say, “I have always been here, and I will always be here, waiting. Waiting for someone like you.”

—Fisher Bas, Personal Notes

Fisher turned himself around in the duct as quickly as he could and wracked his memory, trying to recall the layout of the air system. With chants and cheers still echoing in the tiny metal tube, he crawled up the steep incline he had tumbled down.

FP, still engrossed by the spectacle in the cafeteria, was trying to squeeze and push his way through the vent to get some of the food. He kept on trying until Fisher's hand reached back and pulled him by the tail.

At the top of the incline, the tunnel once again dipped downward. Fisher scooted along hastily, and FP slid down on his belly. Fisher took a moment to look at the three branches of the duct in front of them, closed his eyes to picture the plan, and turned left.

Fisher checked each classroom as he crawled along above them, looking for the principal's office. In each one of them, there were kids with KOH fries, slurping special sauce with their fingers and bartering with each other for extra spoils.

“If you give me half of your fries, I'll do your homework for three days …”

“I'll do it for a week!”

“Kids!” Mr. Gertzweinner, the eighth-grade German teacher, held up a hand to silence his class. Fisher froze in the duct. Gertzweinner wasn't even his teacher, and Fisher was terrified of him.

“I won't assign homework for a month,” Mr. Gertzweinner resumed, dropping his voice to a whisper, “if you all agree to turn over your fries to me… .”

Fisher shook his head in disbelief and continued crawling.

Finally, he found it: he recognized the leather armchair and the enormous desk. Fisher had been to the principal's office before (on more than one occasion he had gone there on purpose to avoid the Vikings) though he had never been
sent
there. Through the narrow slats of the vent, he saw his clone, sitting patiently in a chair.

Fisher wasted no time. He removed from a pocket the Screw Liquefier he had been working on in his home lab and drained the four screws holding the vent in place into a small bottle.

“Stay where you are, boy,” he commanded FP.

He carefully removed the vent and slipped out, dangling from the ceiling by one hand as he fumblingly pushed the vent back into place. With his free hand, he replaced the screws in seconds by applying the liquefier's spray nozzle to the proper spots.

“Argh!” Fisher's arm strength gave way, and he dropped from the ceiling and landed, clumsily, in the middle of the office. Two sprang to his feet, grinning broadly.

“Brother!” he exclaimed. “Did you come to join in the invest—”

But before he could complete his question, Fisher exploded. “Don't ‘brother' me! What were you thinking? You were supposed to avoid drawing attention to yourself, and now the whole school's in an uproar!”

“I wasn't going to let the Vikings keep pushing me around like that,” Two said, obviously pleased with himself. “It's like Napoleon said: don't stomp a slug unless you want goo on your shoes.”

“Napoleon did not say that!” Fisher clenched his fists.

“But Wikipedia—”

Fisher cut him off. “And what about the spectacle in the cafeteria? We're in an extremely delicate situation, and every time you pull something like that, you get more eyes on you. Who knows what could happen next?”

Two's grin faded. He grew serious.

“This is a bad place, Fisher, but lots of these kids are still good! It would be selfish to work only for our own goals when we could undermine the evil powers-that-be and free others like us.”

Fisher was on the verge of simply blurting out that he had made everything up about the evil plans, and that Two's obsession with a cleaning-product commercial was reaching unstable levels, but before he could get out another word, he heard the doorknob rattle.

He had just enough time to take two running steps and dive into a closet, wrapped in coats and jackets, before the door opened and he heard Mr. Teed's soft but precise footsteps. Something that felt like an enormous, furry spider fell on his head, and Fisher stifled a yelp, swiping it away. Then he realized it was just one of Mr. Teed's ridiculous tufted toupees, which had fallen on him from above.

The footsteps continued their slow, methodical plod across the soft office carpet until Fisher heard the famous
crrrreeeaaakk
of Mr. Teed's office chair.

“Hello, Fisher.”

Fisher tried to squeeze himself into a position where he could look out through a crack in the door. In the meanwhile, Mr. Teed went on by asking the traditional principal's question: “Do you know why you're here?”

“Yes, Mr. Teed,” came a meek-sounding reply. Fisher bumped a leaning umbrella over with his shoulder and had to stretch out an arm to keep it from falling into the door. He breathed shallowly for a few seconds before reaching over and very gingerly setting it back into place.

“Over the past two days, it seems the Fisher we all knew and admired has gone away. You have always been among the best-behaved and most respectful students at this school, and your record is exemplary. Spotless, in fact. In terms of academic work, you are leaps and bounds ahead of your classmates. You've shown yourself to be dedicated to learning and the pursuit of knowledge. Few people your age have your respect for education.

“I don't know where this sudden change has come from. Frankly, the entire faculty is mystified. We all know that middle school presents many pressures and problems. And I am aware that some of the other students have taken it upon themselves to pick on you and mistreat you, but I believed you to be a young man intelligent and mature enough to handle them. Now, I am not so sure. I'm very disappointed in you, Fisher.”

Still no reply from Two. Fisher finally got close enough to see through the narrow slit and saw his clone sitting with his head bowed.

Could it be that Two actually felt bad for what he had done? Unlikely. Two didn't seem capable of feeling sorry. He was surely just pretending to feel bad so he could get out of the office as fast as possible.

Teed continued, “You've caused a great deal of chaos in the past few days, Fisher. Now, don't you think your intellectual powers would be much better put to use if focused on your studies? I will be giving you a week's detention during which to contemplate this. In addition, I think you owe your teachers, and your fellow students, an apology. I've got paper and a pen for you, and you can take the next class period to write something appropriately well thought out.”

Teed reached into his desk and slid a small stack of paper and a pen to Two, whose head stayed down. Then, with the hint of a sniff, Two reached into his pocket and pulled out a single tissue.

Maybe, Fisher thought, Mr. Teed's stern coldness had actually succeeded in upsetting Two's perfectly calm and cool exterior.

Two started to lift the tissue up toward his face, and Mr. Teed's expression lost some of its sharpness.

“Now, listen,” he said. “Maybe I was a bit harsh …”

At that moment, Two flung it down onto the ground, and with a crackling
whisshh
, a blinding-white smoke cloud filled the room.

An acrid, rotten smell emanated through the office: it was the stench of a thousand rotten eggs being hardboiled in a sulfur pit.

Mr. Teed coughed and sputtered.

“Fisher!” he roared as Two bolted for the door, obscured by the cloud.

Fisher, barely able to see or breathe, pushed his way out of the closet after him, groping wildly in the smoke-clotted air. One hand hooked an adjusting loop on Two's backpack strap. He felt Two thrash back and forth like a bull trying to buck its rider, and he clung on for dear life as the awful white cloud stung his eyes and filled his nose.

Then, something gave way, and Fisher went toppling backward. The backpack flew toward him, hitting him squarely in the head as he collapsed onto the floor. Two had wriggled out of his shoulder straps. Fisher tried to get to his feet when he felt Mr. Teed's arms close around his ankles, and he fell flat on his face.

Two was long gone, and Mr. Teed's iron grip was locked in place.

“Not so fast, Mr. Bas,” he growled.

CHAPTER 14

Have you ever been framed for a crime you did commit?

—Fisher Bas, Extended Clone log

Fisher kept his head down as he walked across the school parking lot to his mother's waiting car. A creeping dread spread over him like an upended bucket of icy snails.

Pulling a prank in a bio class was one thing. Detonating explosive stink bombs in the principal's office fell into a whole new category.

The principal had decided, after consideration, that Fisher's punishment would be extended to
two
week's detention, and had counted on Fisher's parents to handle the rest.

Fisher would rather have been chained up in the school's boiler room for a day or two. At least then he would've gotten some peace and quiet.

His mom's car was equipped with a number of automatic functions added by his parents. Fisher knew all of them well. Nevertheless, it still always startled him when the back door opened by itself. His mother's silhouette in the front seat remained motionless.

Fisher slipped into the backseat, wondering if he could do it quietly enough that she wouldn't notice he was there. That idea was foiled when the popcorn kernels still in his back pocket crunched loudly as he sat down.

“Let's go home, Fisher,” said his mother in a frosty voice, and the door slammed itself shut. Fisher slid as far down in the seat as he could.

There had been no sign of Two since his escape. Fisher's hands bunched up into nervous fists, imagining what he could be doing. Setting zoo animals loose and riding an elephant at the head of his own critter army? Pumping powdered sugar into the water supply? He was just waiting for the sirens to start wailing.

This was it. The experiment, and all of the hard work that Fisher had put into it, was an utter failure. More than that: it was a disaster. Most failed experiments you can just clean up and try again. But Two was in the world now, and Fisher couldn't un-make him.

“Kitchen,” his mom commanded as soon as they were inside the house.

Fisher sat down at the kitchen table, feeling like a prisoner waiting for his sentence in front of a judge. His mom paced back and forth, her hands twitching like caffeinated octopi. The only other motion in the room came from the faint twin glow of Lord Burnside's eyes, which followed her back and forth in her pacing. Even the fridge seemed like it was humming less loudly than usual.

“Frankly, we were shocked when we heard about your antics today,” said his dad, punctuating his remark with a swoop of his crayfish net. He had been working in the bogs earlier. “We're completely at a loss. Where did this aggression come from so suddenly?”

Fisher sat at the kitchen table, arms crossed in front of his chest, watching his parents do their best tough-parent pace back and forth in front of him. They'd never really had to give him a talk like this before and probably weren't entirely sure how it was done.

His mom spoke up next. The miniature microscope lens dangling in front of her eye bobbed up and down. “Fisher, we know that things are difficult for you at school. We had a tough time, too, remember. But there are ways to deal with that frustration and ways not to.”

“What you did today showed great disrespect to your teacher and to your fellow students,” his dad continued. “You disrupted class,
and
someone might have gotten hurt.”

Fisher looked down at the floor. He was filled with a white-hot fury. Two was to blame for all of this mess. And every second that passed gave Two time to wreak more havoc. So far, there had been no major explosions in the vicinity, but Fisher didn't count on that to last.

“Excuse me!” said the toaster. Fisher's parents turned to look at Lord Burnside with mildly annoyed looks on their faces. “I thought I might offer what little wisdom on the subject I can muster.” The glowing eyes made halfsquinted thinking expressions for a few seconds. Fisher drummed his fingers on the table. “It seems I cannot presently muster any wisdom. Carry on!”

“I haven't got time to be dealing with this, Fisher,” Mrs. Bas said, continuing to pace. “The AGH project is attracting attention from a lot of bad people. I have neither the time nor the energy to deal with your antics.”

Fisher opened his mouth to protest, then closed it quickly. He wanted to tell her that he had battled some of those bad people just yesterday and driven them out of the house! But, of course, he couldn't.

She brushed a stray lock of frizzy hair out of her eyes. “I don't know what it is you're trying to accomplish, Fisher, and you seem unable to tell us. I guess we just have to make it clear that we aren't going to tolerate this behavior. You're very smart, and you are capable of quite a lot. But using your brains to be disruptive and simply to please yourself, with no thought for the consequences to the people around you, is exactly what Dr. X does. Do you want to end up like him?”

Fisher could feel his cheeks heating up. He decided not to mention his evil mastermind fantasy. He kept his eyes on the oak table in front of him.

“We were there, too, Fisher. We were the students who outshone everyone else. And we got picked on and insulted and bullied. The kids around us were jealous, or they didn't understand, and they took it out on us. But that doesn't go on forever. Once they started to grow up, they realized they'd been wrong all along. Those same kids who had taunted and abused us began to admire and even follow us.
We
became the cool ones. Sooner or later, everyone realized what we had always known: humans don't have wings or claws or gills. We aren't that strong and we can't see very well in the dark. Our brains are what make us powerful, and what make us unique. Our minds are what make us special.”

Fisher sat through her speech and didn't say what was really on his mind. Everything bad that had ever happened to him had happened because he was unique, because he was special. He didn't want to shine the brightest. He wanted to shine the same as everyone else so he could feel like he belonged with them. All being “special” did was make him feel alone.

“Dr. Xander,” she went on, refusing to refer to him again by his nickname, “sent me a message today. It was a card congratulating me on my latest breakthrough. Vague, but clear. He knows about what I'm doing, and he plans to get his hands on the AGH. Do you understand that my work— that our
family
—is at risk? This project is extremely important. It could usher in an entirely new era of medical breakthroughs. But with any advancement this big, there are very big risks, and it's a delicate line for me to walk. I am close to having the balance disrupted, and I cannot let that happen.”

She finally stopped pacing, stopping directly in front of the kitchen table and leaning toward Fisher, so he had no choice but to look at her.

“I have to be more creative in disciplining you than most parents,” she said, crossing her arms. “I can't just send you to your room. You're never happier than when you're there. No, I have to go further.” She took a deep breath, looking regretful for what she had to do. “Fisher, you are forbidden to do any scientific research or lab work, outside of school, for one month.”

The room seemed to grow darker. Fisher heard the word
month, month, month, month …
echoing as if his mom had shouted it down a bottomless well. She might as well have said three months or six months or six
years.
He would never last that long.

Fisher sucked in a deep breath. Ever since Fisher had created the clone, things had been spiraling out of control. He didn't think he'd be able to keep Two a secret for much longer, especially not with the forces of Dr. X closing in.

Fisher looked up into his mother's eyes. He had to come clean. The situation would just get worse if he kept it a secret. She'd be furious, of course, but if he waited until she found out for herself it would be apocalyptic. He steeled himself and quickly imagined a list of small island countries he could flee to if she took the news badly.

“Mom,” he said. “I have to tell you something. I—”

Just then, the doorbell rang. Fisher nearly jumped out of his chair. His mother sighed in frustration.

“Computer, identify!” she barked.

“Single visitor, youthful, female,” said the computer. “Shall I apply discouraging electric shocks? Or release the poisonous darts? Should I immobilize and apply frizzing hair treatment?” it asked, eerily eager.

Fisher's dad gave his mom a surprised, questioning look.

“No, no,” she said, looking slightly guilty. “I'll get it.”

She walked out of the kitchen and to the door. Fisher gripped the sides of his chair. Now that he had decided to spill his secret, he could barely keep himself from blurting it out. He looked at his dad, who tried to keep a stern look on his face. He wasn't very good at being stern. Ordinarily his mom wasn't, either, but her recent stress seemed to have brought out a much scarier side to her.

“Fisher,” she said, walking back into the kitchen, “there's a girl here to see you.” She was trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal her surprise. No girl had ever come to see Fisher before.

Fisher felt his eyes widen and his cheeks flush.

“There is?” he said, also trying not to seem shocked.

“She's waiting at the door,” she replied. “We'll continue our talk later.” His dad followed her out of the kitchen with a final swoop of his crayfish net.

Fisher slid out of his chair, snuck to the hall, and peeked around the corner.

Standing on his front porch was Veronica Greenwich.

Fisher's pulse flipped from a piano sonata into a punk rock tune on fast-forward. He felt his legs wobble slightly, and he rubbed his eyes and blinked several times.

Veronica Greenwich was still standing on his front porch.

“Hi, Fisher!” she called, spotting him, just as he was about to duck back into the kitchen. He walked up to her slowly, feeling slightly off balance. “How are you?”

“I, uh, I'm … ,” he started, trying to keep his vision focused, “ … that is, I've been, er, busy. You know, with … business. Busy, busy business. And stuff.”

Nice going
, he thought to himself.
That's just how you want to talk to a brilliant scholar of English and French literature.

He put his hand out to steady himself on a display case. Unfortunately, the case held Mr. Bas's very top-heavy and imbalanced buffalo camouflage suit. As he leaned, the case started to fall toward him, and he had to catch it on his knee. A horn slipped out and punctured him in the thigh, and he stifled a yelp as he stuffed it back into the case.

Veronica laughed her soft, tinkling laugh, which nearly made him lose his balance again.

“Listen, you want to get together to study sometime? I could use a hand with my chem work, and I could help you out with the trickier parts of Shakespeare.”

Her warm, bright smile had a crippling effect on Fisher's brain functions.

“Study? Study …” What did that word mean again? “Sure. Yes. Great!” He tried to smile back and had no idea if he succeeded.

“Good!” she said, her own smile getting even bigger. Fisher could swear he saw gleaming ribbons of sunlight streaming from it. “Maybe even tomorrow? Like around two
P.M
.? I know it's a Saturday, but if you don't have anything else to do …”

“Yes,” he said. “Shakespeare is. Totally. Saturday study. Yes. I could very certainly use your help with pants—er, pent—pentameter.”

Veronica giggled. “Great. See you then!” She turned and walked away. Fisher stood watching her, half expecting her to reach the front gate and turn into a cloud of mist or a flock of doves.

He closed the door behind her and leaned back against it, sliding to the ground.