It was summer now, and the trees that had been bare that icy morning, geologic ages ago, were now full-leafed and rustling softly in a warm breeze. The moon was high and full, bathing everything in cool beauty.
I had the car radio on as I pushed the rental Dart up Route 10 toward the laboratory. Pouring from the speaker came a live interview with James J. Halliday, from his hotel suite in San Francisco.
“. . . and we’re hoping for a first-ballot victory,” he was saying smoothly, with that hint of earnestness and boyish enthusiasm in his voice. I will not let myself get carried away, I told myself. Definitely not.
“On the question of unemployment. . .” the interviewer began.
“I’d rather think of it as a mismatch between—”
I snapped it off. I had written part of that material for him. But dammit, he had dictated most of it, and he never said it the same way twice. He always added something or shaded it a little differently to make it easier to understand. If he was a robot, he was a damnably clever one.
The laboratory gate was coming up, and the guard was already eyeing my car as I slowed down under the big floodlights that lined the outer fence.
I fished in my purse for my Halliday staff ID card. The guard puzzled over it for a second or two, then nodded.
“Right, Ms. Kludjian. Right straight ahead to the reception lobby.”
No fuss. No questions. As if they were expecting me.
The parking area was deserted as I pulled up. The lobby was lit up, and there was a girl receptionist sitting at the desk, reading a magazine.
She put the magazine down on the kidney-shaped desk as I pushed the glass door open. I showed her my ID and asked if Dr. Corio was in.
“Yes he is,” she said, touching a button on her phone console. Nothing more. Just the touch of a button.
I asked, “Does he always work this late at night?”
She smiled very professionally. “Sometimes.”
“And you too?”
“Sometimes.”
The speaker on her phone console came to life. “Nora, would you please show Ms. Kludjian to Room A-14?”
She touched the button again, then gestured toward the door that led into the main part of the building. “Straight down the corridor,” she said sweetly, “the last door on your right.”
I nodded and followed instructions. She went back to her magazine.
Jim Halliday was waiting for me inside Room A-14.
My knees actually went weak. He was sitting on the corner of the desk that was the only furniture in the little, tile-paneled room. There was a mini-TV on the desk. The convention was roaring and huffing through the tiny speaker.
“Hello, Marie.” He reached out and took my hand.
I pulled it away, angrily. “So that ‘live’ interview from your hotel was a fake, too. Like all your taped phone conversations with your think-tank leaders.”
He smiled at me. Gravely. “No, Marie. I haven’t faked a thing. Not even the way I feel about you.”
“Don’t try that. . .” But my voice was as shaky as my body.
“That was James J. Halliday being interviewed in San Francisco, live, just a few minutes ago. I watched it on the set here. It went pretty well, I think.”
“Then. . . who the hell are you?”
“James J. Halliday,” he answered. And the back of my neck started to tingle.
“But—”
He held up a silencing hand. From the TV set, a florid speaker was bellowing, “This party must nominate the man who has swept all the primary elections across this great land. The man who can bring together all the elements of our people back into a great, harmonious whole. The man who will lead us to victory in November. . .”—The roar of applause swelled to fill the tiny bare room we were in—”. . . The man who will be our next President!” The cheers and applause were a tide of human emotion. The speaker’s apple-round face filled the little screen: “James J. Halliday, of Montana!”
I watched as the TV camera swept across the thronged convention hall. Everybody was on their feet, waving Halliday signs, jumping up and down. Balloons by the thousands fell from the ceiling. The sound was overpowering. Suddenly the picture cut to a view of James J. Halliday sitting in his hotel room in San Francisco, watching his TV set and smiling.
James J. Halliday clicked off the TV in the laboratory room and we faced each other in sudden silence.
“Marie,” he said softly, kindly, “I’m sorry. If we had met another time, under another star. . .”
I was feeling dizzy. “How can you be there. . . and here. . .”
“If you had understood Corio’s work, you’d have realized that it laid the basis for a practical system of cloning human beings.”
“Cloning. . .”
“Making exact replications of a person from a few body cells. I don’t know how Corio does it—but it works. He took a few patches of skin from me, years ago, when we were in school together. Now there are seven of us, all together.”
“Seven?” My voice sounded like a choked squeak.
He nodded gravely. “I’m the one that fell in love with you. The others. . . well, we’re not exactly alike, emotionally.”
