The Mirror Man, стр. 52
“I do understand,” Brent said, annoyance creeping into his tone. “But why can’t you understand that we need to be careful with this. We can’t afford to do anything that would raise suspicion right now. Let’s just play along for now and keep our eyes open.”
“Play along? We have to do something, Brent. If Charles Scott has the slightest suspicion that Diana knows something, she’s in trouble. Real trouble. You have to help me.”
“You keep saying that Scott is behind this,” Brent said. “But we don’t know that. What we saw implicates the army, the people behind the scenes. Scott is a scientist. He’s in this for the science, Jeremiah, and that science is sound.”
“You’re being played for a fool, Brent. Charles Scott isn’t the champion you think he is. He’s not in this for the betterment of the species, for the good of mankind. There are things you don’t know. You have to help me.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know. Find her. Just tell her to watch her back. Tell her she has to stay at home. Scott won’t try anything with all those cameras around. She’s safer in the house. If you could just tell her. Just try.”
“I can’t do that! I’d lose my job if I so much as glanced at Diana on the street. Are you out of your mind?”
“Your job? That’s what you care about? Your job?”
“Well, yes, actually. I do. And so should you. If I’m gone, Jeremiah, you have no one on the inside.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “You still believe in this, don’t you? Even after what we saw in those files. You still believe in this project? Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m a scientist. There’s still some merit in this, some intrinsic value. That’s what I believe. Cloning is inevitable. It’s the future.”
“Even with all of the ethical implications? The laws against it? That doesn’t concern you?”
“Well,” Brent said, “they make a lot of things illegal that probably don’t need to be. I’m not talking about whole clone armies or cloning the pope. There are good uses, too. I think that’s worth preserving.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, what if we could clone da Vinci or Albert Einstein or Shakespeare?”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t really be them. Without the Meld they don’t actually have minds of their own. How do we know what they’d decide to do? Who’s to say a clone would even come close to the genius of the originals? What if a clone Shakespeare started writing zombie fiction? What if Einstein’s clone decided he’d rather just be a barber? Besides, you saw the emails. We both know they don’t want to clone Shakespeare.”
“This technology works,” Brent said. “In the hands of the right people it could still do a lot of good. I’m sorry, but I still think that’s why Scott is doing this. That’s the point of this whole thing.”
Jeremiah laughed. “That’s not the point. Why is Scott actually doing this? What is he getting out of it? Ask yourself that. What’s his end game? Why is this so important to him? It isn’t the science. Believe me.”
“Fine. If you want to look at it like that. There’s money to be made. There are patents and rights. There’s power. ViMed is going to get the lion’s share of that for the next hundred years or more, and Charles Scott is at the helm. What’s so wrong about that? Jesus, they’ll probably call the whole procedure the Scott Method or something. That’s immortality, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah shook his head and smiled. How could someone manage to be so correct and so off the mark at the same time?
He wasn’t going to be able to convince Brent of anything. Not yet. Not in time to help Diana. If he was going to do something, he’d have to find a way to do it on his own.
“Immortality,” he said finally. “You’re probably right.”
They went to the living room, where Brent took his lab coat from the closet, and Jeremiah fell heavily onto the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table, trying to appear more relaxed, even as his mind was racing for a solution.
“Another exciting afternoon watching my very successful double duplicate my every move at the office,” he said. “The suspense is killing me. You think he’s going to dial the phone with his left hand or his right? Yeah, this science is all so important.”
“Quit complaining,” Brent said. “If you’re that bored, then we’ll just play cards while he works.” He sat down and began dealing out cards for poker. “Stud High,” he said, and threw a beer bottle cap into the pot, in lieu of money, which Jeremiah hadn’t seen or needed in several months.
Two rounds in and several bottle caps richer, Jeremiah looked up from a lousy hand when the clone took a phone call that, judging from his expression, was anything but good news. It was a quick and one-sided conversation, but Jeremiah heard enough to grasp that the Meld shit was about to hit the fan again in a big way.
“...and you’re certain this was the same doctor who saved that kid in the coma?”
“...and they’re sure it was suicide?”
The clone hung up the phone and ran a hand through his hair. The look on his face mirrored Jeremiah’s own alarm.
“Holy crap,” he said to Brent.
“What’s he talking about?”
“Just watch. I have a feeling this won’t be pretty.”
On the screen, his clone picked up the phone again and dialed.
“We have a problem,” he said. Jeremiah could only assume he was speaking to his department director. “That doctor who was singing Meld’s praises all over the news, you know the one with the comatose kid? Yeah, well, he killed himself this morning. And he left a note. He mentioned Meld.”
For the next two and a half hours, Jeremiah and Brent watched as the clone and