Ben Bova - The Multiple Man

So up to the next level I went, stumbling, tripping over the even narrower, steeper steps, cursing the darkness without a flashlight. Once I grabbed at one of the metal railings. It shook in my hand. Not much protection there. Up I went.

Halfway to the topmost gallery I paused to catch my breath. And heard somebody else’s footsteps again. Slow, measured, patient, steady. Clack … clack … clack … clack. The echoes surrounded me. They could have been coming from above me, behind me, right beside me, and I’d never know it. But deep inside my scary guts, I got the firm feeling that they were coming up the stairs from behind me. I was being followed.

I pushed myself up the final sets of stairs to the top gallery.

Puffing, leaning on the balustrade, and staring down at the hard, hard floor a hundred feet below, I realized that the echoing footsteps had also stopped. But before I could try to figure out what that meant, I heard something else. So faint I couldn’t really tell what it was. Breathing. Or maybe the softest kind of a low chuckling laugh.

I looked around the shadowed gallery. Across the dome’s open space, on the other side, the half-hidden figure of a man in a light-colored suit stepped out of the darkness and up to the marble balustrade. I couldn’t see his face; it was in shadows. But I knew that figure. It was one of the brothers. He beckoned to me, waving with one hand.

Like the helpless ingénue in a Gothic nightmare, I started around the gallery toward him. Something in my head was screaming a warning of danger at me, but my body obediently followed The Man’s summons.

As soon as I started moving, the clack … clack of the other person’s footsteps started again.

I paused briefly at one of the narrow, round-topped windows and looked out toward the West Front. The crowd was still there, quiet now, a mass of solidly packed people that covered the western side of the Hill and spilled out across Union Square and around the New Reflecting Pool. Faintly, faintly, I heard the voice of James J. Halliday, electronically amplified, still talking to them. John had been out there for more than two hours now, and was still going strong. Great copy for tonight’s news shows and tomorrow’s papers. The stuff of legends: President meets people, face to face, heart to heart.

I prayed to God and anybody else who’d listen that John would be alive tomorrow to see those headlines. And Vickie. And me.

The echoes of those following footsteps stirred me out of reverie. I looked across the dome again, and he was still standing there, a little deeper back in the shadows now, so that he couldn’t be seen from the floor. But I could see him. I hurried across the gallery to him.

“Jackson?” My whisper bounced crazily and shattered into a million echoes.

“Yes,” he whispered back, and the sound seemed to come from everywhere.

I got up close enough to see that he was still wearing the phony mustache and beard. They helped to make his face disappear into the shadows. As I stepped toward him, he slowly pulled them off and stuffed them into the pocket of his mandarin-style tunic. His teeth flashed white in a big grin.

“Someone’s following me,” I said.

“I know.”

I looked down that deep, dizzying well of emptiness and saw that the bench near Old Hickory’s statue was unoccupied. There was nobody down on the rotunda floor at all. Even the Secret Service guards seemed to have melted away.

“Why would…?”

Jackson gave me the famous Halliday smile. “This involves more than you and me, Meric.”

“But those stairs are awfully tough for a man his age… I damned near collapsed on them.”

“You mean the General?”

Clack … clack … clack … clack. The steps were slow but doggedly steady.

“Yes, the General… who else?”

Jackson said nothing. I tried to fathom the expression on his face, but it was too dark to see him that well. He was grinning, that much I could tell.

For some reason my mouth kept making conversation while those clacking steps drew nearer.

“This whole idea of cloning,” I said. “It seems awfully… planned. You guys were practically programmed to become President, weren’t you?”

“We didn’t lead the carefree lives of your average American boy.” Jackson said it evenly. No humor in it. No bitterness.

“It’s all terribly cold-blooded. I mean, you and your brothers being deliberately trained like that from infancy.”

“Cold-blooded,” Jackson said emotionlessly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with planning,” he said. “Nothing wrong with setting your sights on a goal and then doing everything you can to attain it. That’s how this continent got discovered, you know. That’s how we gained our independence. Move heaven and earth to reach your goal. Pike’s Peak or bust. I shall return. That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

“You’re a historian?” I tried to make it sound light, but those footsteps echoing behind me gave my voice a hollow ring.

“Every President becomes a historian, Meric. You soak in history once you’re in the White House. And what’s the basic lesson of history? The goal justifies the means. If you win.”

If you win… if you win… echoed eerily around the gallery.

“History’s written by the winners,” Jackson said. “Fix your sights on your goal and stop at nothing to reach it. That’s what makes history. Columbus. Old Sam Adams and his Minutemen. The Forty-Niners. MacArthur. Armstrong. Truman. The Kennedys. They all did it that way. And me. That’s the way I’m doing it. It’s the only way it can be done.”

My heart turned to ice.

“You are Jackson?” I asked.

His smile returned. “Yes. I’m Jackson. Don’t be afraid. I am the President.”

Somehow that didn’t reassure me at all.

Jackson turned his head ever so slightly, looked past my shoulder. I turned. Instead of the ramrod-stiff figure of the General that I expected, it was Laura. Dressed in white. Like a bride. Or a mourner from some ancient tribe.

“Those stairs,” she said breathlessly as she approached us. “They’re killers.” Her eyes were bright, gleaming.

Jackson nodded. “Tourists used to collapse on the stairs. That’s why these galleries were closed to the public.”

Laura looked straight at me but didn’t say a word. It was as if she were looking through me, as if I no longer existed for her. She stepped over to the stone niche where the window was set and sat on its sill.

“You didn’t have to come,” Jackson said. “I told you I could handle this by myself.”

Laura smiled at him. “I just wanted to be sure, darling. I wanted to see it for myself.” Her eyes glittered as if she were on a drug trip. And I knew which drug it was: power.

“This is more than a family matter,” I said. “Unless you’re thinking of the whole population of the United States as your family.”

“Don’t be silly, Meric.” It was her first acknowledgment of my presence.

“We’ve got to stop these murders,” I said. “And Jeffrey’s snatched Vickie Clark, and…”

“You’re sure it’s Jeffrey?” Jackson asked.

“I explained it to the General, downstairs. John’s outside with the crowd, right?”

Jackson nodded.

“You’re both certain it’s John out there?”

Laura said, “Of course it’s John. None of the others could handle a crowd like that. John’s the face, the public figure, the candidate and hand-shaker. He enjoys crowds.”

The man whose hand I shook, I remembered.