Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

“It can’t be!” Joshua said firmly. “I just won’t believe it. Not unless you can show me how the murders were done. Hell, we don’t even know that they were murders.”

“Wrong, Josh,” said John softly. “I know.”

Wyatt looked up at him. “Tell me. Tell me how it was done and make it convincing, because I don’t think I could ever believe that one of you boys is killing the others.”

“It’s very simp1e,” John said. “I merely asked myself how I’d go about killing the rest of us. Once I became convinced that they were murders, I tried to work out in my head what I would have done if I’d wanted to murder my brothers. It didn’t take long to figure it out. Just the past few days… that’s all the time I needed.”

“And?”

“The key was Jesse.”

“He died nearly forty years ago.”

“Yes, but how did he die?’

Wyatt answered, “From a breakdown of his body’s immunological defenses. He lost his immunities to disease germs. The only way he could have been saved would have been to put him in a germ-free chamber, but we didn’t recognize that untilit was too late.”

John nodded agreement. “And Joe, Jerry, and Jason all died the same way. All body immunities suddenly gone. Common cold germs became fatal to them.”

No one moved. No one answered. We all focused on John so intently that an ICBM attack could have hit Washington and we’d never have known it.

“I checked with North Lake a week ago,” John said. “Put in a scrambled call to their contracts department. They gave me a list of the research contracts they’re now working on for the Defense Department. One of them is for the development of a mutated virus that breaks down the human body’s immunological systems, like AIDS, only faster. It’s top-secret work. Access to information about it is limited to only a handful of people in the Pentagon.” He almost smiled, sadly. “I had to remind the man I spoke with that I’m the Commander-in-Chief.”

“A virus that breaks down the body’s immune systems?”

“Non-traceable,” John said. “Apparently the Defense Intelligence Agency wants to develop the virus as a standby for perfect assassinations. No visible cause of death. The victim just stops living. Any germs in his body can multiply out of control and kill him in less than a day.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And you’ve known about this for a week?” I asked.

John gave a helpless shrug. “I’ve worried over it for a week. I guess I didn’t want to face reality. You forced me to bring it out into the light of day, Meric.”

“This virus is being developed for the Defense Department?” Joshua asked.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” Jeffrey snapped.

“Nobody’s saying you did,” John answered.

“This virus,” Wyatt asked, “it’s been tested? It works?”

“It’s been used on primate apes and other lab animals. Totally successful. One hundred percent fatal. The North Lake people haven’t tried it on human beings, for obvious reasons…”

“But you’re saying,” Wyatt’s voice trembled badly “that one of you boys—one of you in this room—got his hands on samples of this virus and used it…used it to…” His voice cracked altogether. He buried his face in his hands.

John stepped over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “We have to face the facts, Robert. It’s what I would do, if I wanted to be the only resident of this house. And we all think pretty much alike, don’t we?”

“That’s for sure,” Jackson said.

“So—what do we do?” Joshua asked, his voice pitched higher than the others.

Jeffrey gave a sharp, bitter laugh that was almost a cough. “It’s simple. We wait until there’s only one of us left, and he’s the guilty one.”

“Or,” John countered, “we let the guilty one know that we’re aware of what he’s doing, and how he’s doing it, and we ask him to come forward and admit it.”

They looked uneasily at one another.

“I think we all know that whoever’s doing it is mentally unbalanced,” John said. “We won’t punish him. We want to take care of him, cure him. Whichever one of us it is, he’s our brother. We want to help him, not punish him.”

No one moved, except to search one another’s eyes for an admission of guilt.

Finally Joshua said, “We’d better bring the General out here. Maybe he can get to the bottom of this.”

Wyatt shook his head. “No… he’s an old man. He’s not as tough as he pretends to be. If he ever found out about this…”

Jackson said, “If he ever finds out that we went through this without bringing him in on it, it might kill him.”

Jeffrey grinned ruefully. “Or he might kill the rest of us.”

John said to Wyatt, “Robert, you’d better go out to Aspen and tell him about this. In person. No phone calls. See what he wants to do.”

“He’ll come boiling back here at Mach Five,” Wyatt said.

“All right. If that’s what he wants to do, we won’t stand in his way.” He turned to his brothers. “Right?”

“No way we could stop him,” Jackson admitted.

“Someone should check out North Lake Labs,” Joshua said. “It might be possible to find out who took the virus samples.”

“Ridiculous!” Jeffrey snapped. “Even if one of us was foolish enough to acquire the virus cultures in person—which I doubt—he wouldn’t have given his correct name. None of the lab people can tell us apart. Not even Peña could.”

“I suppose so,” Joshua admitted. “We used to play all sorts of tricks on him,” he said to me wistfully.

But John said, “We should check out the lab, though. I’ll get Pournelle at the FBI to take charge of that end of things personally.”

“You’re not going to tell him about us?” Jackson asked sharply.

“Of course not,” John said. “But I want to find out who made off with that virus sample.”

“If anybody did.”

“Somebody must have. And Pournelle’s people can find out who and when. Then we find the man and talk to him ourselves.”

“If it was a man,” Jackson said, with a slight smirk. “You’re lapsing into male chauvinism, Johnny. Don’t do that in front of the voters.”

They all laughed. Somehow, it annoyed me.

“Hold it!” I heard myself shout at them.

They stopped and turned toward me, four identical looks of polite amusement, four faces saying, What’s the hired man doing, yelling at us?

“It’s not good enough,” I said.

“What’s not?”

I had to face them down. All of them. “You’re still treating this as if it’s a family squabble.”

“Isn’t it?’’

“Hell, no! It’s still a plot to kill the President, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Meric, we’re taking the strongest action we can,” John said. “You don’t want us to do anything that will tip off the press to our… brotherhood, do you? That would ruin everything. I’d have to… we’d have to resign the Presidency.”

“That would put Lazar in the White House.”

“This nation’s not ready for a Jewish President.”

“Not with the Middle East at war again.”

I stood my ground. They were making me sore, tinkering with the Presidency, the nation, the whole goddamned world as if it were a private family affair.

“I don’t care what you say,” I told them. “This isn’t enough. Checking North Lake Labs and sitting around here chatting with each other. For Chrissakes, one of you has killed three of your brothers!”

“That’s our business,” Jeffrey said, glaring at me.

“The hell it is! It’s mine, and every other citizen’s, too.”

“What are you trying to say, Meric?”