Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

“So you made a son and had him cloned.”

“Exactly. And do you know why? Do you understand why he had to be cloned? Why there had to be more than one James J. Halliday?”

I started to think about that one, but the General didn’t wait for my retarded thought processes.

“I didn’t just want my son to go into politics,” he said, edging forward eagerly in his leather chair. “I wanted him to be President! Which meant he had to be a better politician than anyone else. And more knowledgeable about economics. About defense. About foreign policy, and labor, and commerce, and welfare, and everything else that the President gets hit with.”

It was starting to dawn on me.

He bounced up from the chair and started pacing the room, face glowing with ancient excitement, arms gesticulating.

“Look at the Presidents we’ve had before him! Half of them were clowns who didn’t know anything—not a damned thing—except how to win an election campaign. Public relations candidates! Once they were in office they turned into marionettes, run by whoever got closest to them, manipulated by their own White House staffs.

“And the other half… even worse. Single-minded ideologues and fanatics. Jurgenson and his New Capitalism. Fourteen million permanently unemployed and he’s building a retirement villa for himself on public funds. No wonder there were food riots. And that idiot Neo-Socialist Marcusi… I still think he was a Mafia candidate…”

“So you were going to produce the perfect President,” I said.

“Damned right!” He pounded a fist into his palm. “A candidate who knew more about the problems and solutions than any single human being could possibly know. A candidate who had all the time he needed to make the right political contacts, and all the time he needed to learn everything there was to know about every problem area of the Presidency. The perfect candidate and the perfect President.”

“Each member of the clone group is an expert in a different field,” I said.

The General nodded hard enough to send a lock of iron-gray hair down over his forehead. His eyes were bright. “The boys were trained from childhood, from the time they were old enough to read. They knew their mission.”

“How many of them were there?” I asked.

“Eight. Eight brothers… James John Halliday and his seven identical brothers. My son. My sons. Eight sons—and one. Eight bodies and brains, but all the same. My only son—the President of the United States.”

“They were not… totally identical,” Dr. Peña’s weak voice whispered.

The General frowned. “Yes, sure. Not fully identical, no more than identical twins are exactly the same. They all looked and acted alike, but each one of them is a little different from the others. They all have their own little quirks. The psychologists claim…”

“One of them,” Peña gasped, “died… in childhood.”

“Died? Of what?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the General said, annoyed. “He died of natural causes.”

But Dr. Peña, his oxygen mask fallen to his lap, said, “Smallpox. He died… of smallpox.”

“ What?”

“The inoculation… when we vaccinated him… his body failed to develop the immunological response… instead of developing… an immunity to the disease… he died from it.”

The General seemed angry again. “But the others were all healthy, perfectly sound. There’s always a runt in every litter.”

Peña seemed to want to say something more, but instead he fumbled for his oxygen mask and lifted it up to his face.

“So there were seven brothers—identical septuplets—running the campaign for the Presidency.”

“That’s right,” the General said. “You’ve dealt mainly with James John, the first of them. He’s the public-image maker. He makes the political speeches, handles the personal contacts. He’s good at it.”

“Damned good,” I said.

“On occasions, as I understand it, you’ve dealt with James Jackson and James Jason—economics and foreign policy. And Jerome—science policy. He’s the one who died in Boston. Johnny had to give Jerome’s science speech for him. If those two cops hadn’t surprised my men in the alley there…” His voice trailed off. Might have beens.

“And I thought it was just moodiness, or the pressures of the day,” I said, more to myself than to him. “I never knew the difference from one to the other.”

“Nobody does. Nobody except Robert Wyatt and a dozen of my people who work inside the White House.”

“Which is why security has always been so tight around him.”

“Not security. Privacy.” The General’s mouth curled slightly. “It wouldn’t do to have somebody like you burst into the Oval Office and see three or four Presidents conferring with each other.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.

“So there you are,” said the General. “No plot. No cabal. No attempt to kill the President and slide in a phony look-alike.”

“But two of the clones have died.”

“Three,” said Dr. Peña.

I turned to him. “Three? Besides the one who died in infancy?”

“Yesterday… in Washington. When I got the news… I must have collapsed.”

The General’s face clouded again. “It was Jason. They’ve shipped the body to North Lake.”

“How… how did it happen?” I asked.

“Same as the others,” the General said. “He was working in his office in the subbasement of the White House and they found him collapsed at his desk. The body was still warm.”

Suddenly I was on my feet. “Somebody’s methodically killing each one of them.”

But the General grabbed my wrist and yanked me back down to my chair. “Stop looking for plots under every piece of furniture, dammit!”

“But…”

“Look at me,” he commanded. “Do you think for one instant that if I thought somebody was killing my sons, my son, I’d sit here and let the bastards get away with it? Or the President would allow his own brothers to be murdered without finding out who was doing it and nailing him? Do you think this planet’s big enough for such a murderer to hide in? It’s not.”

Finally I was beginning to understand why the President had kept the investigation so small, so tightly secret. It was a family affair, and no outsiders were wanted or needed.

“But what’s killing them?”

“They’re dying of the same thing that killed Jesse, in infancy. Somehow… and he looked at Dr. Peña as he spoke, “somehow their immunological systems are breaking down. Their bodies can’t protect them from germs or viruses. Their biochemistry is screwed up and they die from the slightest infection… anything, a scratch, a common cold could kill them. Somebody sneezing in the same room.”

A clatter made me turn back to the doctor. He had let the oxygen mask fall to the floor.

“No,” he said, as strongly as he could. It was only a harsh whisper. “That is not true! They are not… it cannot be true.”

“Alfonso, nobody’s blaming you…”

Dr. Peña shook his head from side to side. “No, my old friend. You do not understand. We have checked. We have performed tests. The immune defenses of the body… do not suddenly disappear… They cannot.”

The General went to his side. “Now don’t excite yourself.”

“But… you must listen!” Peña could barely get enough breath into him to wheeze out the words. He lifted one frail hand and pointed at me. “He…he is more correct… than you are. They…they are not just dying… they are being killed… murdered…”

“But how?” the General demanded. “You said yourself that there was no sign of violence. No poison. The deaths were from infections… they were natural. Natural!”