The Clone Sedition (20 page)

A shotgun lay on the ground under the train track with a hand hanging from it, the finger still trapped in the trigger guard.

A group of New Olympians ran toward me along the
platform, slipping in the blood and stumbling over body parts; but they did not have the opportunity to shoot. My men spotted them and shot them from the balcony.

The wounded did not give up. Men with multiple bullet holes tried to aim their shotguns at me. I killed some, my men killed the rest. The only Martian Legionnaires who would survive this battle were the ones who lost so much blood that they were no longer conscious, and they’d die soon enough.

Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: April 10, 2519

Watson entered the Blue Duck, wearing a charcoal gray suit and a red tie. He knew where to sit and what to order. He knew how to discourage the women he did not find attractive and how to welcome the ones he did.

He kept his coat unbuttoned because he wanted to look casual. The cut of his jacket emphasized his broad shoulders and his narrow waist. As he crossed the bar, he scanned for girls of interest and past playmates. He had come for new blood; revisiting old acquaintances did not interest him.

Watson had cruised the Blue Duck before. It was one of his favorite east-side bars, but he only visited it twice a year to avoid developing a reputation. Players who went to the same establishments too often exposed themselves as players.

Travis Watson did not want to be known as a player; he wanted to play.

There were thirty-two people in the bar, eighteen of them women, one of whom mildly interested Watson. She had long blond hair with curls and twists, blue eyes, and a black dress that showed off two-thirds of her cleavage. Watson liked her face. Her breasts were small, far too small for the panoramic showcase in which she had placed them. He didn’t mind girls with small breasts, but small-breasted girls with pretensions did not interest him.

If she was around for another hour and nothing better came in, Watson might introduce himself.

In the meantime, Watson found a secluded table. He sat and watched patrons as they entered and left. Three girls walked into the bar together. One had short black hair and a
red dress. Another had dark brown hair that hung past her shoulders. Both appealed. The third had red hair. Watson could not see her face. In Watson’s mind, they were not a package deal. Even when women came in with dates, Watson did not necessarily consider them unavailable.

There had been occasions when Watson had gone home with a couple of girls. In recent times, that had become fashionable, two or three women taking one man home with them. Watson had fallen into that trap a couple of times, and did not enjoy it.

When a waitress came by to take his order, Watson asked for Scotch. She returned a moment later with his drink. By this time, the dark-haired girls and their redheaded friend had chosen a table no more than ten feet from where he sat. The redhead stole a glance at him. So did the girl with the pixieish black hair. The redhead was pretty and voluptuous, but he liked the look of the girl with the short hair.

This was a moment Watson enjoyed. As they inspected him, he neither looked away nor stared in their direction. He did not pretend not to notice them. He smiled. The girl with the short hair smiled back. So did the redhead. The one with the long, dark hair turned to have a look.

Watson settled back in his seat, in his own world. Any one of these girls would have interested him. All three did not. He pushed the girls out of his mind.

He thought about his visit to the U.A. Archives and Freeman while trying not to think about video feeds marked
EXPEDITED
. He tried not to think about the red vapor that surrounded Turnbow’s head and the look of terror on old Morgan Atkins’s face…and Wayson Harris flying backward as his chest exploded.

How could Harris have survived that?
Watson asked himself. He knew the answer. He could not have survived it. In his mind, bullets were more lethal when they came from Ray Freeman’s rifle.

“Should I feel insulted?”

Watson looked up. It was the girl with the short black hair. She had a lithe, slender figure. Her breasts were smaller than the ones the blonde had on display, but this girl did not misrepresent
them. She had a short, sunset red dress that showed off her hips and her legs and her tiny waist, and clung to the curve of her ass. She looked athletic.

Glad to wash Freeman from his thoughts, Watson said, “I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

She smiled and sat in the chair across from him.

Watson’s patter did not include rehearsed lines. He knew how to flirt and how to make small talk. Mostly, though, he knew how to listen. He liked listening to women, though he had no interest in listening to the same woman for the rest of his life.

In Watson’s mind, men and women did not so much chat in bars as hold negotiations. He liked the sound of women’s voices and the cat-and-mouse games of intergender conversation. They knew what he wanted, but they pretended not to know. He, being an experienced negotiator, recognized smart women pretending to be ditsy and dumb girls who needed to be praised for their intellect.

He gave them what they wanted. If a girl with insipid thoughts wanted to be told she was profound, he did it. Those deals were easy. He enjoyed both the challenge of women who were comfortable with themselves and the ease of girls who wanted compliments for what they weren’t.

Watson said, “I saw you and your friends come in.” He left it at that, leaving it to her to make the next move.

“Don’t you like parties?” she asked.

“It’s my traditional upbringing,” he said. “Two is company, four’s a crowd.”

She considered her options, made her decision, smiled. “You could buy me a drink.”

After years of flirting and playing the field, Watson had developed a reliable ability to profile and categorize. He already knew the woman better than she would have guessed. She would be a secretary or a receptionist with ambitions of office management. She was bright but not college educated. Judging by the way she talked, the way she dressed, the style of her hair, and her walk, Watson guessed that she liked to dance, and she liked the outdoors.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

She was not the beer type, not in this setting. If he went home with her, he thought he might find beer in her fridge, but he thought she would order something with vodka or whiskey.

She said, “How about a whiskey sour? Was that what you expected?”

He smiled. “Not far off,” he said.

“How often do you troll these parts?” she asked.

“Is that what I’m doing? Trolling?”

A smile crept along the left side of her mouth and spread to the right. Her eyes sparkled in the bar light. She said, “I bet you can name every bar in the east end.”

He said, “You’d lose that bet,” then signaled the waitress as she walked past and asked for the whiskey sour.

“With whiskey, not bourbon,” the girl said. As the waitress walked away, she told Watson, “Sometimes they use bourbon instead. It’s supposed to be more upper-crust.”

“Good to know.”

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

He let her control the conversation because she wanted to lead. He didn’t mind. He said, “Travis.”

“Travis?” she asked in a voice that suggested she did not believe him. “Not Bob? Not Frank or Ted?” She laughed, and added, “That’s a good name; how long have you had it?”

“All of my life. What is your name?”

“I’m not sure I’m ready to answer that,” she said.

“It’s Tina,” said the girl with the red hair.

“Bitch,” said Tina.

“Slut,” said the redhead.

“You’re just jealous,” said Tina. She smiled at Watson, and said, “She’s just jealous. Anna and Kim wanted in.”

The drink arrived in a four-inch glass, a wedge of lemon balanced over the rim, a bright cherry drowned near the bottom. Tina let the waitress place the drink on the table, waited for her to leave, then lifted her drink. Watson could tell that she saw the waitress as competition. He saw it in the way she turned quiet and watchful as the waitress approached.

“What kind of work do you do?” she asked.

“Government work.”

“Are you a holdover from the U.A. government? I hear things are tough.”

“I work in the Pentagon.”

“You work with the clones?” She was interested. “Shit, that must be scary.”

“Not really,” he said. “Usually, it’s pretty boring.”

“You don’t plan attacks or anything?”

He laughed, and said, “Purely civilian work. I’m natural-born…but then every clone thinks he’s natural-born. Maybe I’m fooling myself.” As he said this, he thought about Harris, who knew he was synthetic.
Does he know he’s a duplicate?
Watson wondered.
He could not possibly have survived Freeman’s bullet.

The video files had polluted his mind, and he was having a flashback.

“What are they like? Are they polite to you? Do they really not know they are clones?”

“They’re just people. There are nice ones and real bastards. I mean, well, they’re soldiers, but they’re just like everyone else.”

“Do you really believe that?” she asked. “They’re not…I don’t know, violent and scary? Don’t they scare you?”

Watson noticed that she had used the term “scared” twice now. He wondered why she feared them. “They have never given me any reason to be scared.”

“You must be brave,” she said.

“Not particularly,” he said. He was telling the truth.

They talked for an hour. He bought her three drinks, but she barely touched the third. By that time, her friends had left the bar. Watson paid the tab and left the waitress a large tip.

Tina took Watson home to her apartment. She was not drunk, and neither was he. He let her control the conversation and he let her decide when to stop talking. After that, he took control.

The ringtone woke Watson. He sat up in bed, found his pants, and fished his phone from the pocket.

Tina asked, “Do you always get calls at three in the morning?”

He looked at the phone and saw the call was from Admiral Cutter. He said, “Comes with the job. The guy on the phone is an admiral.”

She moaned, and asked, “Why is he calling at three in the morning?”

“He’s in space. He probably doesn’t care about Earth time zones.”

Tina rolled so that her back faced him as he climbed out of bed. Speaking in a whisper, he said, “Watson.”

Cutter asked, “Have you heard from Harris yet?”

“Not a word, Admiral.” Watson drifted across the apartment as he spoke, leaving the bedroom, crossing the hall, and hovering in the kitchen near the sink. It was a small apartment. The bedroom and the bathroom had doors. The kitchen, living room, and entry blended into each other.

Watson glanced back at Tina lying on her bed with her sheets pulled up to her chin, and asked, “Are you sure the man who went to Mars was really Harris?”

“Who else could he have been?”

“The Unifieds may have assassinated Harris. While I was at the archive, I saw a video feed…”

Cutter interrupted to say, “I know what you’re talking about, but he didn’t die. The Unifieds shot him when they attacked Terraneau.”

“What if he did die? What if they killed him? Could the Unifieds have killed him and recloned him?”

Cutter said, “No, that’s our Harris all right. There’s only one Wayson Harris, thank God.”

“But what if he did die on Terraneau?” asked Watson.

“That would make the one we have now a very good imposter.”

“He’s a clone. Clones should be the best kind of imposter.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Cutter.

“Freeman killed Harris on Terraneau. I saw it. I saw the video feed,” said Watson. “His whole chest was blown out. Ray Freeman shot him.”

“Freeman?” asked Cutter. “That doesn’t make sense. Freeman and Harris are friends. Harris may be the only man in the universe Ray Freeman wouldn’t kill.”

“I found the feed in the U.A. Archives. It was dated December 18, 2516. Harris landed a civilian aircraft on an airstrip outside Norristown. He stepped off the plane, and Freeman shot him in the chest.”

“And you’re sure he died?” asked Cutter.

“The bullet blew out his chest.”

Cutter whistled. “If anyone could kill Harris, it would be Freeman,” he said. “But they couldn’t have killed him and replaced him. Not Harris. It’s just not possible. Liberator DNA is in short supply.”

Watson listened quietly, but he was not convinced.

They spoke for a few more minutes, then Cutter hung up. Watson stole into the bedroom as silently as he could, but Tina was already awake. She said, “Is everything okay?”

“My boss is on Mars,” Watson said.

“Oh, God, I hear Mars is a mess,” said Tina.

Watson climbed under the sheets with her. She kept her apartment cold, but her body was warm, and she pressed herself against him. She was young and athletic, with long legs and a flat stomach. She had that girl-next-door kind of beauty, friendly, not glamorous. He liked her more than most, but he had no intentions of seeing her again.

“He’s a Marine. He’s used to bad places,” Watson said as he silently asked himself,
Could Harris have died on Terraneau?
He was the last of the Liberators, but that did not make him bulletproof. Watson decided he would not know the
answer until he found Freeman, and he wondered how Freeman would react when he was found.

His thoughts did not remain on Freeman for long, however. Tina distracted him.

Leaving Tina’s apartment building, Travis Watson knew without looking behind him that the only moving car on her street was following him. He decided someone other than Ray Freeman must be driving. People did not see Freeman until it was too late.

It was a particularly cold day for April in Washington, D.C. Puddles gleamed like mirrors along the curb. Dressed in his suit and tie, now wrinkled from spending a night folded on a desk, Watson pretended not to notice the car.