Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

She was teasing, toying with me, not taking it seriously.

“Or you,” I said suddenly.

Her smile got wider, but her eyes went cold. “Yes,” she said slowly, “it might even be me. Maybe I want to be President.”

“Or in total control of the President.”

“It’s a thought,” Laura said.

It was like trying to interview a piece of sculptured crystal. Laura sat there, beautiful, smiling, knowing— but not giving me anything.

“I’m calling a press conference tomorrow,” I said. “If there’s no answer by then, I’ll throw it open to the public.”

“Yes. He told me.”

“Who told you? Which one?”

An annoyed shake of her head. “I don’t know. I make it a policy not to ask.”

“You just deal with them…”

“As if there were only one,” Laura finished for me. “It’s easier that way. They’re careful not to let anybody see more than one at a time. They do the same for me… most of the time.”

I could feel my knees getting fluttery. “But… but you are married to James John I mean, he’s the one…”

Her eyes never faltered. She kept looking straight at me, kept her smile going, although now it was starting to look mocking. “I told you, Meric, I never ask. Was it Franklin who said, ‘In the dark, all cats are gray’?”

I felt myself sit with a thump on the edge of the dais.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” Laura said, her voice getting sharp. “You’d do exactly the same thing… men have been doing it for ages. It’s called a harem.”

“No… it’s not…” I was shaking my head.

“Poor Meric. Still a Yankee frontiersman in your head, aren’t you? All the old morality. All the lovely old chauvinist attitudes.”

There wasn’t much I could say.

“Come here, Meric. Sit beside me.” Laura patted the seat next to her.

I went over and sat, like an obedient puppy.

“You realize that if you make this story public it will ruin the President. He’ll be forced to resign.”

“At least.”

Laura put a finger on my lips. “Do you realize that you’re doing this to hurt me? To punish me for choosing him over you?”

“You mean choosing them, don’t you?”

“Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Laura. God knows that’s the last thing in the world I’d want to do.”

“Then drop this press announcement. Cancel the conference.”

“And let one of those brothers finish murdering the rest of them?”

“Let them settle their family matters by themselves. It doesn’t concern you.”

“I can’t!” It sounded more like pleading than a mighty affirmation of morality, justice, and the rule of law.

“Not even for me?”

“Not even for you,” I said. Miserably.

Her hand came back to my face. I could smell a fragrance that she used, a scent I hadn’t known since we were in college together. She brushed at the hair over my ear.

“You don’t understand what I just said, Meric,” she said, very softly. “You can have me… if you still feel the way we used to.”

“The way we used to?” My voice was a strangled squeak.

“Yes. When you loved me and I loved you. We can have that again. The two of us. Just like before.”

I pulled myself away from her. “How in the hell… you must be out of your mind, Laura!”

Very patiently she said, “Listen to me. Jim has a little more than three years to his term. He won’t try for reelection… too much has happened for him to expect that. After he’s out of office, there will be a quiet, amicable divorce. Then you and I… together… anywhere in the world, Meric.”

There must be an instant in a heart transplant operation when the surgeons have removed your original heart but haven’t yet put in the donor organ. That’s how I felt right then. There was a hole in my chest, an aching cavity, livid with flame-hot pain.

“Three years…” I heard myself mumble.

Laura said “I never loved him, Meric. I realize that now. It was all ambition… the power trip. And we could get together from time to time even before the three years is up. I travel a lot, and so does…”

A sudden vision of me waiting at the end of a line, with everybody ahead of me looking like the President snapped me back to reality.

“Sure, we could get together,” I said. “With three of the brothers dead, your dance card must have a lot of holes in it.”

“Don’t be vicious.”

“Then don’t treat me like some high school kid with a hard-on. Jesus Christ, Laura, you’re nothing but a high-classed whore.”

“And what are you?” she snapped back, taunting. “A sniveling little boy who works at the White House and still believes everything they taught him in grammar school about patriotism and loyalty.”

“Damned right I do!”

“Grow up, Meric! Be a man! It’s power that makes the world go ’round. Power! And no matter which one of them ends up with the power in his hands alone, he’ll be mine. I’ll share his power.”

“Yeah… he pumps it into you, doesn’t he? How the hell do you arrange it? Do they each have a certain night, or do you take them all on the same night? Do you have gang bangs in the Queens Bedroom?”

Her smile returned, but now it was etched with acid. “Sometimes.”

“Ahh, shit!” I bolted out of the chair, turned and kicked it, sending it clattering into the row of chairs behind it.

“There are differences among them, you know,” Laura said, gloating, getting even, rising to her feet so she could pour the poison into my ears. “Even in the dark. Meric, they’re each a little different.”

“I don’t give a damn!”

“But it’s so fascinating. One of them likes to be sucked, one of them likes my ass. One of them—I think it’s Joshua—just lets me do whatever I want to him. And then there are the parties… the grand balls, we call them…”

I should have socked her. I wanted to. Instead, I just headed up the aisle toward the exits at the back of the ballroom. Fast as I could. Nearly running.

“Meric!” she called to me.

I got to the last row of seats before I turned. I could hardly see her, my vision was blurry. I was gasping for breath. I felt like I was going to die. I wanted to.

“Cancel the press conference,” Laura commanded. “We’ll find the newsmen you sent those tapes to and shut them up—and you—and your two friends—one way or another.”

I shook my head and staggered out of the ballroom, blubbering like a kid who’s just had his last hope of joy taken away from him.

Hank drove me back to my apartment. My hands were shaking too badly even to hail a taxicab.

“What th’ hell went on between yew two?” he asked, frank astonishment on his face. “Y’all look like somebody put yew through a meat grinder.”

“Somebody did.”

“Th’ President’s lady?”

“She’s no lady”

He shrugged and weaved his way through the mounting afternoon traffic.

“Look at ’em,” Hank said, more to take my mind off my troubles than anything else.

The streets were filling up with demonstrators for the big Neo-Luddite rally that was going to meet at the Capitol at sundown. The local authorities had forbidden a rally during the daylight hours, while the Capitol building was open to visitors. So the Neo-Luddite leaders found a loop-hole in the official decision and organized their people to congregate on the Capitol’s main steps at sundown. They were expecting a hundred thousand people.

“Yew think all these people lost their jobs t’ computers?” Hank asked as we threaded through cars and buses festooned with signs reading STOP AUTOMATION and PEOPLE NOT MACHINES.