The DC-1O was halfway down the runway when ground control radioed all outgoing flights to hold their positions. In the cockpit, Captain Larry S. Graham knew that if he pulled all power and applied full brakes, he could abort takeoff and perhaps be able to stop by the time he reached the end of the runway. This would cause at least a dozen necks in the cabin to suffer whiplash, trigger half that many lawsuits, ruin $20,000 worth of tires and most certainly screw up his schedule. Specifically, it would keep him two thousand nautical miles away from his weekly poker game in Boston the next night, and he badly needed to make up for last week’s losses. “Fuck those assholes,” he said to his second officer, keeping his hand on the throttle. The DC-10 lifted off.
“Your transmission is breaking up,” the second officer grinned and radioed back to ground control. “Please say again. Repeat, please say again.” The plane banked smartly and headed out over open water, heading due north.
The space Elizabeth and Peter found themselves occupying was a lowceilinged cabin ten feet by six in size. One entire wall was taken up by stowed and locked food carts and a bank of ovens. There were no seats. They sat on the floor, Peter sneaking furtive looks at Elizabeth as he spoke. She sat as far away from him as she could, a space of perhaps four feet. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and her eyes were shut tight. She was, in fact, wishing she could fall asleep, half from fatigue, half from not wanting to finally hear what she was hearing. “It was done almost as a lark,” Peter continued. “Thirty-five years ago. A group of us were working in the same government laboratory complex and one particular scientist took some skin scrapings from the rest of us.” He was talking in a sorrowful whisper, but it was one in which Elizabeth thought she detected an eerie note of pride. It reminded her of something Hans had told her about Robert Oppenheimer and his grand pronouncement after the first A-bomb test. I have become Shiva, destroyer of worlds. Some crap like that. Hans had gone on and on about “Oppy,” and she remembered it was the night he had confessed that he had abandoned a career in physics. Now here was Peter or whoever he was talking about the same sort of thing. She felt sick at heart, but still she listened. What choice did she have? “He extracted the DNA and put it into some mothers’ eggs, just to see if it would work. This was thirty years ahead of what anybody else was doing. Are you with me?” “Yes, thirty years, I heard you.” Everything is true for thirty years. That was one of Hans’s favorite sayings. “The infertile women thought they were getting help from their doctor so they could have children. They became pregnant, that’s for sure, but the DNA in their eggs wasn’t theirs anymore. In the case of Mrs. Brinkman, the DNA was entirely my own. “Did you give your permission?” she asked in a hushed voice. “No,” he said.
“Did you know it was happening?”
“No. We were all experimenting on a wide variety of phenomena in physics, biology, mathematics. And we all used each other benignly as guinea pigs. But I’m not making excuses. At a certain point-much, much later-I did know. I was told. And I eventually went along with it. I did that.” “Go on,” she said, sensing that he was faltering. She was at the center of the known universe and it was hell after all. “So what you’re saying is that you’re Hans. And that you’re Peter. You are Peter’s brain in Hans’s body.” “That’s the simple truth of it, yes. I know you don’t think it could be possible, but it is. Now.” “I said go on,” she snapped.
“It’s appalling. I admit it. I agree.
“You’re a murdering asshole,” she said, as tears started down her cheeks. “I told you it was complicated,” he said, wanting to take her into his arms. “I’m just human after all.” She looked up at him. “You positive about that?” “I’m a fool, I know that,” he said and believed it with all his heart. “That makes me human.” “And a lying bastard,” she added, so loudly he was afraid someone above them might hear. She ignored his alarm. “How could you agree to such a thing?” He stared at his hands. “I was dying. I refused to do it at first. But at death’s door, I broke. And it was something they wanted, it was something they needed so much from me.” “They?”
“My wife. And the man behind it all, Frederick Wolfe. We had been friends and colleagues for many years-the three of us. Beatrice was desperate for me to remain alive and for that I can’t blame her. As for myself, I accept full blame, I do. It’s unthinkable what I’ve done.” “They needed you to work on the weapon.” “That was Wolfe’s need,” he admitted. “I thought it was more out of friendship, but I see now that it was just for his advancement. And for the program’s completion. The project, Fountain Society, is every-thing to him, and to those above him, too. The weapon I was working on, for instance. More than likely it would have died with me. Many other incomplete projects will die unless the lives of their visionaries can be extended.” “And you, you continued to work on this weapon, as before. Never giving it a thought.” “I had my doubts. As time went on more and more. “Uh-huh.”
“Especially after I met you. I promise you that’s the truth.” He reached out for her. “Don’t.”
He took his hand back. There was nothing more he could say. The crockery on the food carts rattled as the plane hit an air pocket. In miserable silence they sat for a moment, until Elizabeth looked at him. “And you man aged to keep all this secret?” She was dismayed by her own curiosity. “Wolfe was funded for secrecy,” he said. “Then, of course, then the Scots blew everything wide open with that damn sheep, Dolly. And so the government’s thinking was, well, the damn Iraqis are going to be putting out cloned armies of Saddams like buns from a baker’s oven, why not clone our best and brightest?” “Don’t want to have a clone gap.
He looked at her and grimaced. “Something like that.” “Or have our lids learning Arabic in the first grade.” She was seething. “That’s the general idea,” he said, looking at her. She saw such regret and frankness and even love in his gaze that she looked sharply away. Don’t let this man charm you, she thought. He can do it. “What did you do in Switzerland?” he asked. “I mean, what do you do?” “I don’t care to discuss it.”
“You’re a writer or an artist?”
“Why the hell would you think that?”
“You just seem so- “What?”
“So bright. So intelligent.”‘
“”For what? A blonde? Or a model?”
“”I see. So you are a model”
“You sound disappointed. You’re even more of a snob than Hans was. “Was Hans a snob?”
“You know what? I honest to God don’t want to talk about this.” But the next moment she felt her curiosity rise again. She was flashing on the two of them, together, Peter’s brain and Hans’s body and herself on the beach of Phosphorescent Bay. Or did that make three people? Three’s a crowd, she thought, with a giddy sense of horror and black humor, remembering the sound of the coquis in the trees. A nameless dread came over her. “So arc you implying that you’re not the only one?” “I am so far. I guess I was the guinea pig.” “Emphasis on the pig,” she said. She focused on the engine’s whine, trying to drown out the coquis, the sounds of which seemed to be mocking her in some horrible fashion from the depths of her memory. “You don’t know who else is on the A-list? The other geniuses in this-what do you call it?” “The code for it is the Fountain Society. And no, I don’t know who else might be cloned, I swear to you. “”And the party back at the base-the one whose loyalty you were asking about-that would be your wife?” “”That’s right,” he said, impressed by her observance and memory. He was gazing at her with admiration and Elizabeth reacted sharply to it.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t look at me like that,” she said. “As soon as this plane lands, I’m going back to Switzerland.” “They won’t let you,” he said, his warning dull and flat. “Not Switzerland, no. That’s too obvious. We could try for something else.” “We?” she said in astonishment.
“You might be stuck with me, actually. What you saw back in Vieques was only a fraction of what they’re capable of. You haven’t even met all the players. You wouldn’t know them if they walked up to you in a crowded room. You wouldn’t know if they were carrying a knife or a pair of handcuffs or a gun- He seemed to be thinking out loud, as though he, too, were learn- ing as well from this litany. And then she saw that his eves were welling up with tears. “What did your parents do for a living?” he asked. She gave him one last look of defiance, then shrugged. “My father was in the Navy, my mother was a housewife.” “And where was your dad stationed?”