The Ophiuchi Hotline (2 page)

Physically, Lilo was twenty-five. It was a popular age to be, and though Lilo did not like to ape popular trends, she had never felt good looking any older than that. Her body was largely her own, with a few surgical modifications. Her hair was light brown, her eyes were set far apart to accommodate a wide, slightly flat nose. She was tall and slim, and it suited her.

Her one vanity was her legs. She had added ten centimeters to her leg bones, making her two point two meters tall, slightly above average height. She wore fine brown hair, like chinchilla, from midway down her calves to the tops of her feet.

She got up and restlessly paced the room. What amazed her was that, once she had accepted that she was
going to die, suicide began to seem like an attractive possibility. The State of Luna did not care if she killed herself; she was going to The Hole in the morning, dead or alive. No attempt had been made to clear her cell of harmful tools.

The tool she was examining now was a knife. It was a lovely thing. Stainless steel, mirror-bright—it had a symmetry of line she found appealing. Cross-hatched grooves wound around the handle, giving a sure grip on cool metal. She drew it across her throat, keeping her mind blank. Her hand shook as she brought her fingers up to her neck. No blood.

She thought about the two alternatives facing her.

Tomorrow would be an emotional moment. She was sure nothing could possibly match the anticipation of mounting the stairs over The Hole. She had a horror of breaking down completely, of having to be restrained and thrown over the brink rather than stepping off by her own volition.

On the other hand, she felt reasonably calm now. All hope was gone. Could she meet her death now, by her own hand, in private? Was it better to go that way?

It seemed to her that it was. She told herself that three times in succession and reached for the knife. She drew it over her wrist. Shuddered, and felt her heart pound. She opened her eyes and looked down and there wasn’t even a red line. She was
sure
she had been bearing down. Something trickled over her cheek. Alarmed, she brushed it away.

She sat in her chair beside the small table and gritted her teeth. She leaned over the table and rested her forearm on the surface. She put the knife blade to the soft part, looked at it, looked away, dragged her eyes back and felt them drying out as she refused to blink.

There was a red trickle of blood.

“Put the knife down, Lilo.”

She jumped, and dithered with the bloody knife in her hand, blushing furiously. Trying to hide it in the cushions of the chair, she turned to see who had entered the room behind her.

“Is it serious?” he asked, walking toward her.

She looked at it. Just a small cut, the bleeding almost stopped already. He tossed her a cloth, which she used to dab at the blood on her hands. Taking a seat a few meters from her, he waited until she had cleaned herself.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” he said, and gestured toward the cell door. It opened, and her blue-uniformed male guard entered, followed by a nude woman. She was tall, staggered slightly as she walked, and looked drugged. Her brown hair was plastered over her shoulders in ropes and nets; she dripped a thick, syrupy liquid from her hands and nose and chin. Her eyes met Lilo’s for a moment, without comprehension, then she bumped into a chair and fell over. The guard helped her to her feet and half-carried her to the bathroom. A woman, also dressed in blue, entered the cell, and closed the door. She followed the other two. There was the sound of water running.

Lilo managed to look away. The woman’s face had been terribly familiar. It was her own face.

Gold. Everything was yellow-gold. I opened my eyes underwater and knew that I was not breathing. For some reason, it didn’t bother me. I sat up and felt thick liquid roll sluggishly from my body.

I choked, tried to cough, and a great amount of fluid came out of my throat. For a moment I couldn’t cope with it. I was drowning. But someone was slapping me on the back and then I was gasping.

Being born is not easy.

Her eyes wouldn’t focus. Someone was holding something out to her and all she could see was the end of an arm holding the object. It was a cup. She recoiled, but it followed her. She took it, and drank deeply.

She was sitting in a glass tank, wheat-colored liquid up to her waist. Wires trailed from her body, which still twitched from time to time under the influence of the muscle-tone program, winding down now after three
months of enforced exercise.

Disorientation. She couldn’t string two thoughts together. The tank should have meant something to her, but it didn’t.

“Come on, let’s get up,” someone said. It was a woman in blue, who reached over and helped the naked woman out of the tank, to stand dripping, swaying, leaning on a strong shoulder with a hand holding her firmly around the waist. She wanted to go back to sleep.

“Is she ready?”

“I think so.” There was a second person, a man, also dressed in blue. “This won’t take long.”

She knew they were talking about her. She tried to shake the hand off, but she was too weak. It annoyed her, hearing them talk. She wanted them to stop.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“What did she say?”

They were leading her down the hall, helping her step up through the doorways, dogging them behind her. She couldn’t hold her head up; it kept falling to the side. All she could see was her bare feet, her legs, and wetness dripping from her body onto the carpet. It struck her as funny; she laughed, nearly slipping from the woman’s arms.

“What’s the matter with her?”

She didn’t hear the reply, she was laughing so hard. There was another door. They stopped in front of it and she became aware of someone slapping her face. She tried to make him stop but he wouldn’t and she started to cry. Then a harder slap that rocked her back against the far wall. She recoiled, realized that she was standing on her own and looking into the man’s face.

“Are you awake now?” He peered into her eyes.

“Yes…I…” She coughed, and tried to look around her, but he kept pulling her head back until she thought she would cry again. “I…that is…”

“She’s all right. Take her in.”

The man again. “You follow me, you hear? Just follow me.”

She nodded. He seemed to think it was very important and she was willing to do anything if he’d let go of her head. But she was all wet, her hair was all over the place, and she felt clammy. She tried to tell him that, but he had already gone into the room. She felt a shove on her shoulder, and staggered over the lip of the door.

She got a glimpse of the people sitting in the room. There was a man in a funny coat who tickled her memory. She knew him, but couldn’t remember the name. And there was a woman in a chair. She knew that one. It was herself.

I never thought I’d meet ex-President Tweed face to face. You can’t avoid him on the cube; he’s there all the time on one program or another, pushing his crazy schemes. He’d been a fixture on the telepolitical scene since the time I was born.

Tweed dressed like a political cartoon from the turn of the twentieth century. He had allowed himself to develop a paunch, always wore striped pants and a clawhammer coat, top hat, and spats. He smoked a cigar, and when elected, called the Presidential Warren “Tammany Hall.” And he won elections. Though I never followed it closely, I knew he had been elected to three consecutive terms.

He paved the way for the current Lunar clown show we call government. Recognition is all, and the public had shown a perhaps understandable confusion between political rhetoric and the fantasies that surround it on the cube. So now we have our Tweeds, our Churchills, and our Kennedys. There is a Hitler, a Bonforte, a Lewiston, and a Trajan. Put them all in the same place and you might as well call it a circus.

Luckily, elected officials don’t do that much any more; the posts are largely ceremonial or supervisory over the computers who do the actual governing. I’ve never been sure if that’s such a good thing, but Tweed made me thankful for it. Not that my opinions mattered at the moment.

I put political ruminations aside and prepared to
listen to whatever pitch he was about to make. It had to be better than what I was facing.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said, in that famous bass rumble. “I’m protected against anything you might try to do.”

Lilo realized he was talking about attempts on his life. Nothing could have been further from her mind. He was here, where he had no legal right to be, he had just shown her what had to be an illegal clone; she could think of no reason he would have done these things unless he had something to offer her, and she was very interested in hearing it.

“You will find in our future dealings that I am invariably protected.”

“I don’t see how that information can be of any use to me unless I’m going to be dealing with you in the future. As you know, my future is limited at this moment.” She tried to keep it light, to keep the hope out of her voice, but it was impossible. The guilty weight of the knife pressing against her thigh and the trickle of blood on her arm testified to how much bargaining leverage she could bring to the conversation.

“Yes, you will be dealing with me in the future. You—” he gestured toward the bathroom “—or that…other woman. The choice will be yours.”

She could hear voices from the bathroom; the sound of water running and an angry voice that she barely recognized as her own. Her twin was waking up, and she dreaded it.

“What’s the choice?”

“First, understand your position. I—”

“I
know
my position, damn it. Get on with it.”

“Be patient. I want you to know a few things first.” He paused, then took out a cigar and went through the process of trimming and lighting it. He was an extraordinarily ugly person, Lilo thought, with the ugliness that only caricature can achieve. As repulsive as a twisted, stunted ghost from the past on Old Earth.

“The clone was grown illegally, obviously,” Tweed
resumed. “But you are no longer a useful witness to anything. You will never have a chance to tell anyone what you have seen here today, should you refuse me. Your only contact from now on will be with Vaffa and Hygeia, the two guards you just saw. Both are loyal to me.”

“What else can you tell me that I’m so goddam anxious to know? You didn’t do all this to taunt me. You’re a…never mind. I don’t like you much. Never did.”

“And I don’t like you. But I can use you. I want you to work for me.”

“Fine. When do we get started? As you pointed out, we’d better hurry, because I don’t have that long to live.” But the sarcasm fell flat, even in her own ears, because her throat hurt so badly when she said it. He laughed, politely, and she was so receptive to him that she nearly laughed herself. She stifled it when it threatened to turn into a sob.

“There is that little problem,” he agreed. “I’m offering you a chance to bow out of your execution. I’m offering you a stand-in.”

He looked at the bathroom door—there were sounds of a struggle—and back to her. He raised his eyebrows.

The cold water made me gasp and choke, but some of the grogginess washed away. For the first time in that dizzy few minutes I could think straight. More than anything in the world I wanted to sleep, but things were happening too fast, and seemed to be out of my control.

Tweed! That was his name. What was he doing out there in the other room, talking to someone who looked exactly like me, in my own cell? And the tank. Had I died? I woke up in a vat, which had to mean that I had died. But I was under a death sentence; I shouldn’t be waking up ever again.

I pushed my face under the cold stream. Stay awake, stay awake. Something important is happening and you’re being left out. I sputtered and gasped, slapping my face and legs and shoulders. I thought I saw it now
,
and it was dirty, rotten; so bad I couldn’t believe it. But I had to.

I stumbled and fell against the wall of the shower. The woman guard took my arm and pulled me to my feet. My eyes wouldn’t focus. I struck out at her, but she was big and alert and the blow didn’t land. Then I was screaming, lashing out.

She came running out of the bathroom, pursued by the man and woman. The man grabbed her, but she was slippery and powerful with hysterical strength. She got away, kicking at him with her bare heels as they grappled on the floor, then scrambling on her hands toward the woman in the chair. She screamed again.

Banging hard into a table as she tried to get to her feet, she toppled and fell loosely in front of the couch where Tweed sat. The man reached her and started to haul her away, but Tweed held up his hand.

“Let her alone,” he said. “I think this is her room, after all.” He looked at Lilo, sitting in frozen fascination. She couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from the woman on the floor. “That is, unless you want it.”

Lilo tore her eyes from the clone. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words caught in her throat. The clone was looking at her again. The fear on her face was almost too much for Lilo to bear. To accept Tweed’s offer would be to condemn this woman to death. She didn’t want to think about that.

But the clone was looking at Tweed now, and Lilo could almost hear her mind working. She gripped the edge of the couch and got to her knees.

“I don’t know what you were talking about,” she said, “but I think you should tell me. I know I’m not up to date; I just woke up. Things have been happening, I can see that. I got the stay of execution, right? She’s who I think I am, but six months later, right?”

“That’s right,” Tweed said, and smiled at her.

Lilo felt a chill pass through her, and realized she was afraid of the clone. She did not want Tweed smiling at her. There was no reason to think Tweed had a preference;
the clone might do as well for his purposes as the original. Nothing said she had to be the one saved just because she was older.

“Whatever the deal is,” the clone was saying, “I can be just as good at—”