The Mirror Man, стр. 42

his eyes and take the objects out, one by one, and had to make up a story about whatever he found there. Ordinary things, items they’d looked at and tripped over ten times a day, were suddenly magical and full of mystery. The stories he told began as nonsensical little things: The pencil and the fish food finally found the car keys and went for a long ride, and he’d look up at her, disappointed that all the anticipation and excitement—all her treasure hunting—had resulted in something so dull. But she would get excited and spur him on with ridiculous, wonderful questions: Which one was driving? Where did they go? Did they stop to eat along the way? It would turn into a long, involved tale, replete with dinosaurs or aerial acrobatics, and he’d add details to it sporadically, right up until bedtime, until he knew he’d never look at a pencil the same way again. It was a wonderful game. He used to try to play it with Parker when he was little, but it never came out the same way, and he’d finally given up. He realized now that he’d never actually told his mother, later in life, how much that game had meant to him. It hadn’t even crossed his mind in years. But he remembered it.

Stuck in the lab, he was struck by the notion that his clone might be remembering the exact same thing, and that possibility infuriated him. It felt like a violation. That was his memory. She was his mother.

It must have been just before seven in the morning when Brent came into the apartment without a knock. He found Jeremiah still sitting on the couch, still in his underwear, cradling his bruised hand in his lap.

“I’m sorry,” Brent told him.

Jeremiah said nothing but looked at Brent with a sort of contempt he hadn’t felt toward him before. As far as he was concerned, anyone involved in this experiment, including Brent, was just another of his captors. Just someone else who wouldn’t give him the keys. And Brent was certainly complicit with that report he’d written for Scott. Sorry, he thought. Yeah, right.

“I just wanted to see if you were all right,” Brent said. “Besides, we have a morning viewing. Basically, I’m just here early.”

Jeremiah turned away from him and stared at the wall.

“Have you eaten? I’ll make something, or I could pick something up if you want. I could probably smuggle in some more doughnuts.”

“No.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Look, I want to help.”

“You want to help? Then open the fucking door and let me out. Get me to my mother’s funeral. That’s how you can help.”

“You know I can’t do that. I wish I could. Believe me.”

“Then shut the fuck up and leave me alone. And I am not watching that fucking monitor today, either. I won’t do it.”

Brent sighed heavily and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, taking in the broken lamp and the books scattered across the floor.

“I know you’re upset,” he said. “You have every reason to be.”

“Fuck you,” Jeremiah told him quietly.

“Look, maybe we can arrange for you to at least view the funeral. That would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it? Maybe give you some closure.”

“I don’t want to watch my mother’s funeral on TV! I want to be there. It’s my mother!”

“I know, I know, but they aren’t going to let you go, Jeremiah. If it were up to me, I’d find a way. But at least this way you’d be able to see it.” It didn’t go unnoticed that Brent had attempted to distance himself from Scott and the rest of them, but Jeremiah wasn’t buying it. Not anymore.

“There’s so much I wish I’d said to her,” he admitted after a moment. He rubbed at his eyes vigorously with his hands. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. Infuriatingly, Brent followed him.

“I think it’s important that you watch the funeral,” Brent said. “I think you need to.”

“How would they do that?” he asked. “I don’t even know where it’s being held.”

“Yeah, but they certainly will. Believe me, Charles Scott keeps very close tabs on that clone. He knows where he is every minute of the day. Nothing escapes him.”

“Brent,” Jeremiah said, and then paused. He grabbed the blender and a handful of ice cubes and turned it on full blast. He couldn’t afford any other ears on what he was about to say. “What exactly did you write in your report to Scott that day we saw my mother with the clone?”

“The usual.” Brent’s voice rose over the din. “An overview of what we saw, your reactions.”

“But you wrote something about my mother not recognizing the clone, right?”

“Well, yeah. I had to.”

“And Scott saw that report?” Jeremiah hit the pulse button.

“Yeah. He sees them every day after the viewing, or the next morning.”

“And he must see the same things we see, right? I assume these viewings are recorded for him.”

“Maybe,” Brent said. “Probably. So what?”

“So, presumably, he also saw what that doctor said, that my mother didn’t have dementia, after all. The Meld showed no sign of it.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Brent looked at him sideways. Jeremiah got more ice for the blender.

“It must have looked to Scott like my mother knew something,” he said. “He must have thought she suspected something about the clone. Something that could threaten this whole thing.”

Brent stared at him blankly.

Jeremiah said nothing but looked at Brent in a way that he hoped completed his train of thought.

“What? No. Jeremiah, come on! I mean, he loves the experiment and all, but come on. This is science. That’s crazy.”

“But all of this is so goddamn important to him. I mean, if he thought there was a chance that someone knew, that someone suspected, who’s to say how far he’d go to save the thing?” He stopped short of revealing to Brent what he knew about Scott’s illness. He couldn’t risk that. Not yet. “He needs that