The Administrator (11 page)

Kate had always liked his blue eyes and thick, grey hair, and admired how good he looked for a man about to be seventy. It’s amazing what absolute power will do for you, she thought. She caught a glimpse of her smooth complexion in the mirror behind his desk. And of course, metabolic slowdown doesn’t hurt either.
 

“Not bad for a 57-year-old woman,” Colonel Gordon whispered into her ear, his eyes meeting hers in the mirror. “You don’t look a day over forty.”

She pulled her attention away from her reflection and took the glass he held out to her. She smiled up at him, kissed his cheek and said, “Thank you, Darling. Neither do you.”

He grinned at her. “Too bad your predecessors weren’t as ... ah ... open-minded as you are. They might still be alive.”

“But then, you wouldn’t have met me,” she teased.

He laughed. “And that would have been a real tragedy.” Then his expression grew serious. “What’s going on with Adam?”

“He’s figured out how to work around the file access blocks, and he’s modified his eyes into something that, conceivably, could be a weapon,” she said as she refilled both of their glasses with sparkling champagne.

“I know,” Gordon said. I saw on the monitor what he did to that yucca plant. I’ve already notified the technicians. They’ll take care of it tomorrow.” He shook his head and chuckled. “He’s a clever little fellow. Gotta’ give him that. Must have modified the eye in the bathroom. That’s the only place we don’t have full surveillance. I’ve handled that too.”
 

Kate wrapped both hands around her glass and studied the amber liquid as her delicate finger traced a stray drop of moisture down the side. “He’s remembering again,” she said softly. “I had to tell him just enough of the truth to get him to trust me. I tried to steer him away from anything that would jog his memory, but it didn’t work.”

The colonel sighed. “I was afraid of that. I guess more shock treatments are in order.”

“How many times does this make?”

“Five.”

“His brain won’t take many more, you know. This one may kill him—or the next one.”

The colonel raised his glass to his lips. “Yes. I know.” He frowned. “It’ll be a shame to lose him. You know, Kate, I was assigned to this project as adjutant to the General when I was fresh out of the academy, and the whole affair was just starting. Just after the crash. I was barely into my twenties. I worked my way up. Now I’m running the show. I’ll kinda’ miss the little goon. In a way, I owe my career to him.” He was silent for a moment, then the frown disappeared, and his eyes gleamed. “But we have his DNA, and thanks to him, we know how to use it.” Then he smiled and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Want to take a look at our babies? They’re almost ready.”

Her eyes blazed with excitement. “Yes! Let’s do.”

Inside the secret laboratory that only Kate, the colonel and a few doctors at the complex knew about, they ambled down the aisles lined with glass, coffin shaped capsules. Inside each capsule rested a perfect, teenage clone of Adam.

Kate gazed lovingly inside one of the capsules and said, “Adam must have been a beautiful little boy before the crash.” She waved her slim hand to take in all of the fifty-four containers. “His clones. They’re all so perfect. Even the girls have a special muscular quality about them.”

“It’s the steroids, my Dear,” he said. “And the other biological enhancements. The nano-techs we introduced into their blood streams last month are working overtime. They’ll be waking up soon.”

She turned to the colonel. “Darling, you never told me what happened to the others like Adam. Are they alive and hidden somewhere else?”

His blue eyes looked almost sad for a moment, then he smiled. “Well, you know that three died in the crash. We managed to get four more out, three boys and a girl, before the orders came down to destroy the evidence of our project. Couldn’t take a chance on anyone finding out, could we? As far as the few who knew of their existence—except for a small, elite group—knows, they were all ... uh ... disposed of ... never existed, but we secretly kept the four. And Adam, of course.”

She looked up at his face. “Where are the other four?”

“They didn’t last long. Two died of brain hemorrhages from some test drug designed to control bleeding if they received an injury. We figured that if they were on a mission and were wounded, they could go a long way with even mortal wounds if we could control the blood loss.”
 

“And the others?”
 

“The girl sliced her own wrists with a dissecting scalpel, and the other died from seizures caused by a genetic abnormality. But none of them were as strong or as smart as Adam. He was always the brightest and best. That’s one reason why we spent so much money to save his life after the crash. There was some dissent in the circle about that, but now we’re glad we did. He’s the last one.”

Kate smiled and caressed the edge of one of the capsules. Inside, a boy that appeared to be about seventeen lay sleeping. His golden hair curled in tangled confusion framing his oval face, and a slight tinge of pink on his dimpled cheeks fairly screamed good health. “What color are their eyes?”

“Blue.”

She smiled up at him. “Blue. I like that. I wonder what they will think when they ... when they are born.

The colonel wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him tightly. “Anything that we tell them to think, my Dear. Anything we tell them.”

This Old House

As the lone cloud reached to devour the sun, the old woman’s death rattle reverberated through the ancient house—the only thing she had ever loved. Her coughing rasp rumbled past the walls, across the floors, up the stairs, and out the windows. The instant the dark shadow caught the face of the sun, the house shuddered with a clattering upheaval—and gasped its first breath.
 

Spasms roared through its halls as it coughed into throbbing life. Its next breath was like a giant bellows stoking an ancient blacksmith’s fire, a rushing subway train slamming past an empty station. The roar became a steady growl, grinding past the mansion’s massive oak staircase, lifting the heavy oriental carpets inches off the floor, then slamming them back against the polished mahogany boards.

Slowly the growling subsided into barely perceptible gusts brushing against the endless, smoked glass window panes, rattling them so they screamed like a thousand tiny chimes tingling in unison. Eventually, the chiming settled into a barely perceptible hum.
 

Maggie became aware slowly. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew something was different. The first thing she noticed was the absence of pain. Her heart no longer pounded angry fists into her chest—in fact, her heart made no movement at all.
 

She opened her eyes, gasped, closed them, and opened them again. She could see everything on her vast estate at once. She was above it, below it, around it, she was it!

She looked down from the pendulous chandelier hanging above her bed and saw herself on the bed. Shrunken with age, wrinkled with selfish greed, dried out with bitterness, her body lay clutching the silk sheets in two withered claws and staring at the ceiling with sightless eyes. Her toothless, crimson mouth gaped open like a sheep’s slashed throat.
 

Damn! I made it. I told them I could take it with me. Did I really look like that? She chuckled, and the walls trembled.

Two days later, the vultures began to arrive. Maggie watched them pull into the driveway as she became part of the verandah. The sleek, black Limo vomited out two equally sleek, mink-wrapped, elegantly coiffured women—Maggie’s sister, Donna, and her niece, Alice. From a sporty, red car emerged her eternally belligerent nephew. As he stepped on the lawn, he crushed out a cigarette in Maggie’s prize rose bed and smashed the orchid plant with his boot as he stood surveying the mansion with greedy eyes. The last car to buzz into the long circular driveway was a yellow and black taxi. From it, a slim, young woman hesitantly climbed out. She glanced around nervously, and looked as though she was about to get back into the taxi when Maggie’s sister called to her.
 

“Helena. Over here, dear.” The woman’s falsetto voice dripped cultured civility as she waved from the front of the black Limo. She turned and whispered something to her daughter standing beside her, and they both pasted welcoming smiles on their painted faces.
 

The young girl took a step toward them, then stopped as the women rushed to greet her. Each sleek woman took one of her arms and propelled her toward the brutish man in the garden.

“Jeffery, you remember Helena, don’t you?” Donna asked her son as they stopped in front of him.

The man pulled another cigarette out of his pocket, lit it with a silver lighter, and sneered, “Yeah. I remember Helena. Uncle Jonathan’s daughter, aren’t you? How is the old man, anyway?” He pulled a long drag on the cigarette and blew smoke directly into Helena’s face.

The girl’s shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t flinch away from the smoke. Looking him directly in the eyes, she said, “Dad’s been dead for a year, and you know it. You were at his funeral just like the rest of the birds of prey.”

“Oh yeah, now I remember.” He said sullenly, as he blew another puff of smoke at her.

“Now, children, let’s not be bickering.” The older woman admonished. She took Helena’s arm and reached for Jeffery. “Come on. Let’s see what my sister looks like. We want her to look her best at her funeral tomorrow, and you know how these hick funeral parlors are. Charge a fortune and do nothing to make the dear departed look nice for their poor, bereaved families.”
 

So that’s Jonathan’s daughter. Maggie thought as she stretched her consciousness into the windows so she could see everything at once, and incorporated herself into the walls. Damn fool. Always too nice. Let everybody run over him, always concerned about peoples feelings. Well, what did it get him? Dead! That’s what. Dead, and he’s rotting away right now . But. not me. I won’t rot. I’ll be in this house forever. I am this house, and no overstuffed idiots will take it away from me. Never. Her thoughts rumbled though the rambling halls as a gust of north wind—icy and hollow.
 

“What was that?” Alice wheezed.

“Nothing, dear, just the wind in this drafty old house. No wonder Maggie died. Probably froze to death.” Turning to the old lady who had been her sister’s maid for as long as anyone could remember, she ordered, “Lily, put some more wood on that damn fire.”

Lily’s still clear gray eyes glared above wrinkled cheeks at the woman, but she turned slowly and wincing with pain from her arthritic knees, shuffled out of the room to get more firewood.
 

“That woman’s got to be a hundred if she’s a day. It’s a wonder she’s still alive. Probably made a deal with the Devil or something.” Donna whispered to the other three, then giggled nervously as she saw their somber faces. None of them smiled.

When the maid returned with the fire logs, Donna asked. “Where is my sister’s body, Lily?”

“Miss Maggie is waiting for you in her room, mum.”

“Waiting? She’s dead Lily.”

“Yes mum.”

“Then how could she be. . . Oh never mind, you senile old woman. Why isn’t she at the funeral home?”

“She wants it this way, mum.”

“Wanted! You stupid, old woman. Past tense. She’s dead. Wanted.”

“Yes, mum.”

“Oh hell, what does it matter? I’ll just go up and pay my respects. You kids want to come? No? Fine. I’ll go alone.”

When she entered Maggie’s bedroom, she gasped. Maggie lay on the bed looking more asleep than dead. Her eyes were restfully closed, her arms had been arranged in a sleeping position rather than in the usual crossed on the chest attitude, and her cheeks even seemed to have a slight flush. The lace coverlet was pulled casually up to her chin, while her thick, gray hair flowed softly across the satin pillowcase.
 

Recovering her composure, Donna smiled. “So, you old hag, even in death, you refuse to admit defeat. You had Lily do this to scare me. Didn’t you? Well, big sister, I’m not scared of you. I’m your closest living relative, so I get it all. I don’t care what your will says. I’ll fight ‘till it’s all mine.” She turned her attention to Maggie’s jewelry closet. She tossed the diamonds and rubies onto the floor like they were costume jewelry as she scratched through the drawers until she found what she was looking for—the key to the safe. Clutching the tiny, gold key to her bosom, she rushed to the small compartment in the closet and grunted triumphantly as she felt the lock turn, and the small door swung open.

Maggie’s rage rattled the chandelier above the bed.

In her greed, Donna didn’t notice.
 

Mine! Screamed Maggie. The shutters banged against the house. Maggie fought to make her words heard. Mine!

Donna’s head snapped up at the clatter of the window shutters. “Wind.” She muttered, and bent to the treasures in the safe.

The three people, huddled in silence beside the fireplace downstairs, jumped simultaneously when they heard her scream.

“Mama!” Alice gasped.

She and her brother exchanged glances. Each waited for the other to start for the stairs, but it was Helena that leapt from her chair and ran toward the scream. Bursting into the room, she stopped mid-stride. Huddled in the corner of the closet, her head buried in her lap, jewels strewn over her body like they had been shot from a cannon, was Donna—babbling and screaming incoherently.