The Clone Sedition (21 page)

He was not a fighter or a soldier by nature. He was tall—six-foot-five, and naturally strong, but he had a peaceful disposition.
What would Harris do?
he asked himself.
He’d have a gun. He’d turn around and shoot.

He asked himself another question,
What would Freeman do?
First he answered,
He probably carries a nuclear missile in his pocket.
Then he came to another conclusion,
This wouldn’t happen to Freeman; you can’t find him unless he wants to be found.

Watson continued along the street. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the car, he stopped and stared into a store window; but the car was too far back. After a few seconds, Watson moved on.

When he reached an intersection, he stopped to consider his options. If he crossed the street, he would catch a glimpse of the car, but he might catch that glimpse as the car ran him down.

He walked to the corner and stopped. Pretending to read the street sign, he watched the car out of the corner of his eye. It was a silver-colored sedan—four doors, dark windows, absolutely nondescript. The car pulled beside the curb and waited.

Instead of crossing the street, Watson turned right and headed around a corner. A moment of silence passed, then he heard the hum of a car engine.

In his imagination, Watson saw Freeman behind the wheel of the car. In his mind’s eye, Freeman held a rifle that was
equipped with a microphone and a scope, and asked, “Identity confirmed?”

He reminded himself that he’d already decided that Freeman wasn’t driving the car. Hoping to reassure himself with the sound of his voice, Watson whispered, “Not even close.”

He wished he were still in bed with Tina.

Maybe it’s the clone pretending to be Harris,
he thought. No, real or an imposter, Harris was on Mars.

Not Freeman. Not Harris.
Watson was still scared, but not as scared.

He started to reach for his cell, but then he stopped. The phone might act like a catalyst. Suspecting he would call for help, the people in the car might react.

A row of storefronts opened onto the sidewalk. The first was a pawnshop with a window full of jewelry. Watson passed it.

The next store was an old shoe shop that must have gone out of business years ago. He stopped and pretended to look at the dusty display in the window. Mice had gnawed holes in the shoes and left pellets along the shelves; spiders had built a network of webs. The display would have fit better in a haunted house than a store window.

Watson entered the third shop—a small convenience store. He walked up to the checkout stand, and asked, “Got a back door?”

Violent or not, Travis Watson stood six-five. His size made him intimidating. Even when he smiled, and he was not smiling at that moment, he intimidated other men.

The clerk, a man in his fifties, nodded, and said, “It’s got an alarm.”

“Can you let me out without setting it off?” asked Watson.

“I’ve got a key?”

“There are men waiting out there on the street, I need to get away from them,” said Watson.

Starting to warm up to Watson, the clerk asked, “Do you want me to call the police?”

The men in the car had driven slowly down an otherwise-empty street. They had not broken any laws.

“Better not,” said Watson. “Just let me out the back and say I went to the bathroom if anybody asks.”

“We don’t have a bathroom.”

Watson glanced back at the street and saw the car hovering. “Just let me out the back.”

The man pulled the key from under his register, pointed it at the back of the store, and clicked the single button. He said, “You’re good to go.”

“Thanks.” Thinking the men in the car might be watching, Watson forced himself to walk calmly. He stepped around some shelves and entered a small employee area with a table, some cases, and a janitorial closet. The metal door at the very back did not have a knob. Watson pushed and the door swung open to an empty alleyway. He looked to the right, then to the left, and stepped out.

He made a call, and whispered, “Pentagon Security.” When an officer answered, he said, “This is Travis Watson with General Harris’s office.”

A moment passed, and the officer said, “You’re the general’s civilian assistant.”

“Yes,” said Watson.

“What can I do for you?”

“A car is following me.”

The officer said, “Okay, I have your location on satellite. Is it the silver sedan?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

“Listen, Mr. Watson, I’ve run a thermal scan on the car. There’s a driver and two men sitting in the back. Their engine is running. My guess is that they are waiting for you.”

“Yeah?” said Watson, his fears now confirmed.

“Head west.”

“What?”

“Take a right and walk to the end of the block, then turn left and head to the next intersection. It’s going to take me five minutes to get a car out there, so we need to put some space between you and that car.”

“What if they come after me?” asked Watson.

“I’ll keep an eye on them.”

“Interesting friends you got there, Watson,” said Major Alan Cardston, the head of the Pentagon’s security unit. “Want to take a wild guess where they came from?”

Watson and Cardston sat beside a conference table in the Pentagon Security office. Cutter was there in image only. His holographic image was visible through a windowpane called a confabulator. Looking through that device, it appeared that he was actually in the room.

Having arrested the men who had followed Watson, Cardston had called this meeting to learn what he should do with them.

“Are they stowaways from Mars?” asked Cutter.

“That was my first guess, sir,” said Cardston. “They are Earth residents with clean records.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Cutter. “Are you sure they were following you?” he asked Watson.

“They could be holdovers from U.A. military intelligence.”

“War criminals?” asked Cutter.

“Not criminals, just rank-and-file soldiers. We know they all served in the U.A. military,” said Cardston. “The driver was a staff sergeant. The two in the back were corporals. We only prosecuted captains and up.”

“You’re sure they were following you?” asked Cutter a second time.

“It’s a safe bet, sir,” said Cardston. “I don’t suspect three U.A. enlisted men hopped into a rented sedan to go for a 6:00
A.M
. joyride.”

“I don’t like the implications,” Cutter said. “Do we know what they planned to do with Watson?”

“They say they don’t know who he is,” said Cardston.

“Maybe it had something to do with my trip to the U.A. Archives,” said Watson.

“That’s a safe bet,” said Cardston.

“And you are holding them now?” asked Cutter. “Does anyone know you arrested them?”

“No, sir,” Cardston said with obvious cheer.

“Not even their lawyers.”

“We haven’t asked them about lawyers.”

“That’s good,” said Cutter. “That buys us time.”

“What do you want me to do with them?” asked Cardston.

Cutter thought about that for several seconds before finally responding, “I’m open to suggestions.” He added, “Maybe we should throw them in a dark hole and forget about them.”

“Or we could let them go, sir,” said Cardston.

“Let them go?” Cutter asked.

“They were enlisted men, sir. Even if they are working for some faction of the Unified Authority, they’ll just be worker bees. If we let them go, maybe they will lead us to the brains of their operation,” said Cardston. “They may just be a dead end, in which case we can pick them up again and ship them someplace far away; but they could be the tip of a conspiratorial iceberg.

“If we follow them, who knows where they might lead us.”

Cardston asked Watson, “What were you researching in the Unified Authority Archives?”

“I sent him. He’s trying to find Ray Freeman,” said Cutter.

“Freeman?” asked Cardston. He sat up straight and pretended to shiver, then he said, “That specker gives me the creeps.”

“Me, too,” said Cutter. “Watson says he watched a feed that showed Freeman shooting General Harris.”

“That’s got to be a fake,” said Cardston.

“Unless they recloned him,” said Cutter. “The Unifieds kept the feed in their most secure archive.”

“Interesting,” said Cardston.

“There’s something else,” said Watson. “The last time we heard from Harris, he sent us a message.” He looked at Cutter’s holographic image to make sure he had permission to continue.

The admiral said, “Maybe you can help us with it, Major.
Harris said, ‘Anything that can be programmed can be reprogrammed.’ He said it was a message from Freeman.”

Cardston thought but did not speak. Finally, he asked, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Sounds like gibberish to me,” said Cutter.

“What about you?” Cardston asked Watson. “Did you find anything in the archives?”

Watson looked to Cutter for permission a second time.

The admiral nodded.

Both men being clones, Watson worried how they might react. He said, “I think he means clones can be reprogrammed.”

“Reprogramming clones?” Cardston asked. He whistled.

“That’s neural programming, it’s different,” said Cutter.

“He did say
anything
, sir.
Anything
that was programmed can be reprogrammed,” Watson reminded the admiral.

“Why is neural programming different?” asked Cardston.

“Major, clones have brains, not circuits. I grew up in an orphanage, and I can tell you that I never saw anyone with a data port.”

“I grew up in an orphanage, too, sir,” said Cardston.

“What’s your point?”

“They do have data ports, but we don’t think of them as data ports.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Cutter.

“Sight, smell, touch. Every sense provides data.”

“So what, then, hypnosis? Brainwashing? Clones aren’t the only ones who can be brainwashed. You can brainwash natural-borns as well.”

“Brainwashed people act strangely.”

Watson asked, “Do they have temper problems?”

“Brainwashing leaves evidence behind. There are ways of telling when people are brainwashed. They don’t act natural. Brainwashing creates internal conflicts, the people are always fighting battles in their heads.”

“Reprogramming…Sir, if someone erased a clone’s neural programs and rewrote them, there’d be no way of knowing. There wouldn’t be any internal conflicts. We can spot brainwashing with psychological profiling. That would not work on reprogrammed clones; they’d be as natural as the day they left
the tube. And the things you could do with a reprogrammed clone, sir. The possibilities are endless.”

“Like what?” asked Cutter.

“Admiral, we are talking about clones with brown hair and brown eyes who have been so thoroughly programmed that they don’t even recognize their own reflection when they see it in a mirror,” said Cardston. “If you can program someone not to see himself in a mirror, you can program him to do just about anything.”

Only seeing the smaller picture, Cutter did not grasp the ramifications. “What are they going to do, reprogram them one by one to see that they have brown hair? Wouldn’t it be easier to shoot them instead?” he asked, hoping his sarcasm would not be wasted on Cardston.

“They’re also programmed to accept anything they are told by a superior officer. What if they caught an officer, say…a three-star general in the Marines, and they programmed him to tell all of his subordinates that they were clones?”

Watson answered, “You could demolish the entire Enlisted Man’s Marines in a day.”

“Watson, I think it’s time you quit the Marines,” said Cutter.

“Why would I do that?” asked Watson.

“Job security for openers,” said Cutter. “It sounds like your boss has been reprogrammed, and there is no job security working for reprogrammed officers.”

“I see what you mean,” said Watson.

“And then there is the question of your personal safety. If Harris is working for the same people that sent these men after you, you’ll be a lot safer working for me. It seems like they have already picked you as a priority target.

“From here on out, you’re a Navy man. You work for me. Think of it as a promotion; you just went from working for a man with three stars to working for a man with four.” Cutter laughed, and muttered, “If this doesn’t piss Harris off, nothing will.”

Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: April 11, 2519

At Admiral Cutter’s insistence, Watson moved to Bolling Air Force Base.

Watson did not want to move onto a military base, even if it meant living in nicer accommodations; but Cutter paid no attention to Watson’s objections. The military could not ensure Watson’s safety while he slept on civilian soil, so Cutter gave him a choice of billets on the base. He could either move into officer’s housing or the brig.

The house was built for visiting dignitaries. Watson saw the brick façade, the elm-tree-lined driveway, and the cut-pile carpets, and he absolutely despised the place. It was like moving back into the quiet home he had fled when he entered college.

Watson dropped his suitcase on the jade-colored leather couch and examined the kitchen. It was big and spacious with a full pantry and sparkling appliances. Watson did not cook. He bought sandwiches from delicatessens and sometimes lived on candy bars.

He went to the bedroom, stabbed his fingers into the queen-size bed, and sneered at the wooden headboard. Next came the bathroom, with its booth-sized shower, a token effort, and its hundred-gallon tub. Watson was too tall for the shower. He loathed taking baths.

A team of military policemen came with the house. They were his bodyguards.
You can leave the gardens, the kitchen, and the tub behind every morning,
Watson told himself. But the bodyguards stayed with him wherever he went.

When two bodyguards followed him into the bedroom, he spun, and yelled, “Out.”

The two MPs ignored him. They searched the room, then settled by the door, standing as attentively as guard dogs. Watson sneered at them and hung his clothes.