The Mirror Man, стр. 43

“No way in hell.” Brent was adamant. “The people involved in this, those investors, I mean, Jesus, it goes up a pretty big ladder behind the scenes. They’d never stand for it. Scott wouldn’t risk it. No way. Put it out of your mind. This is crazy. You’re just emotional. You need some rest.”

Jeremiah looked Brent hard in the eye for a moment. It was obvious he believed what he was saying. He sighed and turned the blender off. Brent was right about one thing: he was exhausted. His head was pounding. He wanted this whole thing to be over. He wanted to go home. If he were at home right now, he’d have made some excuse to walk with Louie, which he knew would have calmed him down some. A long, quiet walk in the woods with a dog can do more good than most people know. Here, he had no such option. He wondered if that’s what the clone was doing at the moment. But no, Louie wouldn’t walk with him. Louie was no traitor. While that thought should have made him feel better, it didn’t.

“Why don’t you just try to get some sleep,” Brent said. “I’ll get you up in time for the viewing.”

Jeremiah nodded. In the bedroom, he fell heavily onto the bed, but thoughts of his mother—the way she’d get excited over seeing a blue jay, the glint in her eye when she smiled at him—kept swimming through his mind, keeping him awake. His growing conviction that Charles Scott was a monster finally drove him out of bed and into the shower. He stood under the water for a full fifteen minutes, hoping it might clear his head, but he emerged as groggy and distressed as before.

When he walked into the living room, Brent was gone. So was the considerable mess from the night before. Jeremiah went to the kitchen, deciding to go with strong coffee if he couldn’t get any sleep. Before he’d poured a cup, Dr. Young arrived at the apartment, coming in, as usual, without so much as knocking.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Jeremiah,” she said, motioning him immediately toward the couch. “Let’s talk for a while.” Her demeanor and tone were such that Jeremiah was instantly skeptical of her sentiments. She was, in typical fashion, all business, and he had the sense that her desire to talk was more for the benefit of the experiment than for him. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust any of them anymore.

Jeremiah didn’t feel like talking. There was nothing to say. And if there were, he didn’t want to say it to her.

“It might help you to remember that your clone is grieving every bit as much as you are,” she said. Jeremiah wanted to swear at her but refrained and was silent.

“Tell me what you’re feeling, Jeremiah.”

“You know what?” he asked harshly, “Why don’t you tell me how I’m feeling. My mother is dead and I can’t even bury her. So, how do you think I’m feeling? How would you feel, Natalie, if it were your mother? She doesn’t have anyone else, you know. I’m the only one.”

“I understand you’re angry. It may help to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Mr. Higgins came to see me. He seems to feel that you might benefit from viewing the funeral,” she said. “I agree. I will suggest to Dr. Scott that he arrange it. And then maybe you can take a day or two off from the viewings after that. But soon, Jeremiah, I’d like to take the Meld with you again. It’s almost time for it, anyway, but I think it’s even more important now, under the circumstances. I can’t have you holding back your feelings from me. This is all part of the experiment, you know. I have a job to do.”

He looked away from her and clenched his fists to keep from speaking. He didn’t trust the Meld. He didn’t trust what would come out of his mind. He couldn’t risk her seeing what he knew.

Two days later he watched on the wall monitor in the laboratory apartment as his mother was laid to rest.

He recognized instantly the Church of Saint Paul in the small New Hampshire town he’d lived in for a brief time as a child, the only Catholic church in which he’d ever attended an actual service. He remembered staring up at the stained-glass windows, trying to decipher their images, making up little stories about them in his head while the priest talked in a way he couldn’t follow. Neither he nor his mother were members of this church, but she’d taken him here a few times. Although she had been raised a Catholic and had raised him with a quirky sort of spiritual foundation, they were not formal members of any particular church—or of any faith, for that matter. He’d never been baptized. She took him to churches of different denominations sporadically, for what she termed “soul visits.” Every now and then they’d just show up at a different church “to hear what they have to say.” It had made him uncomfortable as a child. He always felt conspicuous sitting in a place he didn’t belong, surrounded by people for whom the service was a sacred weekly ritual. The thought of it now, though, made him smile. She had always felt right at home, no matter where they were, so confident and comfortable. They’d been to Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian and Latter-Day Saints. She even took him to a synagogue once, but they couldn’t understand half of what was said in the orthodox service. Afterward they tried to imitate the words and burst into fits of laughter at how badly they managed. But his mother said the sound was beautiful, even if they didn’t know what the words meant.

Her favorite had always been the Baptist churches, because of the