James BeauSeigneur - In His Image James

"Obnoxious?" Decker said. "I thought you saved that term for your little sister."

Hope didn't answer but her father's comment reminded her of something. "Mrs. Goodman said that it's tough on Christopher because he doesn't have any brothers or sisters to play with and there's no one else his age in the neighborhood. She said that she and Professor Goodman were both only children, too, and that I was really lucky to have a little sister. I told her I didn't think so. So, anyway, if it's all right with you and Mom, I told her she could have Louisa to keep Christopher company."

Decker rolled his eyes. "Real funny," he responded.

"Yeah, Mrs. Goodman didn't think you'd go for it, either."

As they continued their trip Decker's thoughts went back and forth between his discussion with Goodman and his planned trip to Israel. He looked forward to visiting with the Rosens and he especially looked forward to spending some time with his old friend Tom Donafin who had joined News World magazine a few weeks earlier. He was not, however, looking forward to being away from Elizabeth, Hope, and Louisa for so long, although they would be joining him in Israel for Christmas.

They were now about a hundred and twenty miles from Los Angeles. The temperature was near perfect. The sun would be setting soon. Suddenly Decker took his foot off the gas pedal and let the car drift to a stop on the shoulder of the road. "What's the matter, Dad?" Hope asked. But Decker didn't answer. For a long moment he just stared as if in shock. "How could I have missed it?" he asked himself out loud. "What?" Hope asked.

"We're going back," he said finally. Hope tried to object but it was fruitless. Decker forgot all about his promise to Elizabeth not to be late. Two hours later they were back where they had started at Goodman's house, with Hope, who was still operating on Eastern time, asleep in the back seat. Decker went up to the front door and knocked.

Goodman and Christopher opened the door together. No one spoke for a moment; Goodman just stared at Decker in confusion. Christopher stood beside him dressed in pajamas, his hair still damp and freshly combed after his bath.

"Did you forget something?" Goodman asked finally. But Decker had already stooped down to Christopher's level and was closely examining his facial features.

"Hi, Mr. Hawthorne," Christopher said. "It's so nice to see you again. Can Hope come in and play some more?" The intensity in Decker's eyes began to melt away, until he looked back up at Goodman, who was staring down at him.

"What on earth is the matter with you?" Goodman asked. Decker stood up again. "You did it. Didn't you?" "What are you talking about?" Goodman said, trying to appear calm and in control.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about!" Decker answered without hesitation. Goodman felt like a rabbit in a snare. Dozens of thoughts suddenly raced through his head: short and pointed thoughts. All of them colored by fear. Could Decker have meant something else? he asked himself.

"The cloning!" Decker blurted

"Christopher," Goodman said as calmly as he could, "Mr. Hawthorne and I need to talk for a while. Go back in the house. Tell your Aunt Martha I'm on the front porch."

Decker waited until Christopher closed the door before speaking again. "You cloned the cells from the Shroud!" Decker said in a whisper so loud and emphatic he may as well have been shouting. "Christopher isn't your brother's grandson! You don't even have a brother! You were an only child!" he said out loud, abandoning any pretense of discretion.

The night was warm and the moonlight shone on Mrs. Goodman's flowers; their fragrance filled the air, but it went totally unnoticed by the two men. Goodman looked closely into Decker's eyes and examined his face for any sign of a twitch which might signal that Decker was bluffing. He found none.

Decker hadn't flinched, but he had been bluffing, at least a little. While he now knew that Christopher could not be Goodman's grandnephew, that certainly was not conclusive evidence that he was the clone of the man on the Shroud. The story about Goodman's brother might have been created for dozens of other reasons that had nothing at all to do with the Shroud.

"Decker, you can't tell anyone. You can't," Goodman pleaded. "They'll make him a zoo specimen. He's just a little boy!"

Decker shook his head, stunned that he had been right. "That's why you named him Christopher, isn't it?"

"Yes," Goodman answered, realizing that the damage had already been done and hoping to inspire a cooperative spirit in Decker.

"After Christ!"

For a moment Goodman honestly didn't understand what Decker meant, then it hit him. "Christ!… Hell, no!" he said. "Columbus… I named him after Christopher Columbus."

"Why in the world would you name him after Columbus?"

The question surprised Goodman, who thought that the answer was obvious.

"I told you I had made the greatest discovery since Columbus discovered the New World. I wasn't just talking about finding the cells or the possible medical benefits. I was talking about Christopher. I had already successfully implanted the cloned embryo in the surrogate mother, and she was several months into an otherwise normal pregnancy. The C-cells proved so resilient that transfer of the genetic material to the surrogate's egg was greatly simplified. I was going to tell you about it then, but you got so damned bent out of shape when I mentioned cloning that I didn't dare tell you.

"Damn it, Decker, I've proven that somewhere out there in our galaxy there's life! The man in the Shroud may have come from the same race of people who first planted life on this planet four billion years ago. I thought if I could clone the man on the Shroud, I could learn more about them. I hoped it might lead us to that master race. I hoped that like Columbus, Christopher might help lead us to a new world: a better world.

"After Christopher was born I studied him. I watched him. I tested him. And you know what I found?… Not an alien; not a god. What I found was a little boy."

"He's not just a little boy, though. He's the clone of a man who lived nearly two thousand years ago."

"But he has no memory of any of that. For all he knows, he's just a normal eleven-year-old."

"And you're saying that there's no difference between Christopher and any other kid?" Decker asked incredulously.

"Yes, all right, there are some differences. He's never been sick and when he gets a cut or scrape he heals quickly. But that's all." "He seemed pretty damned intelligent," Decker countered. "He is intelligent," Goodman conceded, "but not exceptionally so. Besides, both Mrs. Goodman and I have spent many hours working with him at home, in addition to his school work."

"Mrs. Goodman?" Decker asked. "Does she know about Christopher?"

"Of course not. After he was born I paid the surrogate and dispatched her immediately back to Mexico to prevent any problems that might arise from bonding. I rented an apartment and hired a nurse to take care of him. I know it sounds terribly irresponsible now, but I had absolutely no plans about what I was going to do with him as he got older. I was so involved with the overall project that I didn't think about the child as a person. By the time I realized my responsibilities, he was nearly a year old. I couldn't just leave him on the doorstep of some orphanage, so I left him on my own doorstep. I put him in a basket, left a note, the whole nine yards. Martha had always wanted children, and after a few days of taking care of him while we 'considered what to do,' it wasn't very difficult to convince her that we should keep him in case the mother ever came back looking for him. Later we made up the story about him being our grandnephew and I had a birth certificate and some other papers forged to cover our tracks.