the Third Twin

47

JEANNIE STUDIED STEVE’S FATHER. CHARLES WAS DARK haired, with the shadow of a heavy beard on his jaw. His expression was dour and his manner rigidly precise. Although it was Saturday and he had been gardening, he wore neatly pressed dark pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a collar. He did not look like Steve in any way. The only thing Steve might have got from him was a taste for conservative clothes. Most of Jeannie’s students wore ripped denim and black leather, but Steve favored khakis and button-downs.

Steve had not yet come home, and Charles speculated that he might have dropped by his law school library to read up on rape trials. Steve’s mother was lying down. Charles made fresh lemonade, and he and Jeannie went out on the patio of the Georgetown house and sat on lawn chairs.

Jeannie had woken up from her doze with a brilliant idea in the forefront of her mind. She had thought of a way to find the fourth clone. But she would need Charles’s help. And she was not sure he would be willing to do what she had to ask him.

Charles passed her a tall, cold glass, then took one himself and sat down. “May I call you by your first name?” he said.

“Please do.”

“And I hope you’ll do the same.”

“Sure.”

They sipped their lemonade, then he said: “Jeannie—what is this all about?”

She put down her glass. “I think it’s an experiment,” she said. “Berrington and Proust were both in the military until shortly before they set up Genetico. I suspect the company was originally a cover for a military project.”

“I’ve been a soldier all my adult life, and I’m ready to believe almost anything crazy of the army. But what interest could they have in women’s fertility problems?”

“Think of this. Steve and his doubles are tall, strong, fit, and handsome. They’re also very smart, although their propensity to violence gets in the way of their achievements. But Steve and Dennis have IQ scores off the scale, and I suspect the other two would be the same: Wayne is already a millionaire at the age of twenty-two, and the fourth one has at least been clever enough to totally evade detection.”

“Where does that get you?”

“I don’t know. I wonder if the army was trying to breed the perfect soldier.”

It was no more than an idle speculation, and she said it casually, but it electrified Charles. “Oh, my God,” he said, and an expression of shocked comprehension spread over his face. “I think I remember hearing about this.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a rumor, back in the seventies, that went all around the military. The Russians had a breeding program, people said. They were making perfect soldiers, perfect athletes, perfect chess players, everything. Some people said we should be doing the same. Others said we already were.”

“So that’s it!” Jeannie felt that at last she was beginning to understand. “They picked à healthy, aggressive, intelligent, blond-haired man and woman and got them to donate the sperm and egg that went together to form the embryo. But what they were really interested in was the possibility of duplicating the perfect soldier once they had created him. The crucial part of the experiment was the multiple division of the embryo and the implanting into the host mothers. And it worked.” She frowned. “I wonder what happened next.”

“I can answer that,” Charles said. “Watergate. All those crazy secret schemes were canceled after that.”

“But Genetico went legitimate, like the Mafia. And because they really did find out how to make test-tube babies, the company was profitable. The profits financed the research into genetic engineering that they’ve been doing ever since. I suspect that my own project is probably part of their grand scheme.”

“Which is what?”

“A breed of perfect Americans: intelligent, aggressive, and blond. A master race.” She shrugged. “It’s an old idea, but it’s possible now, with modern genetics.”

“So why would they sell the company? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe it does,” Jeannie said thoughtfully. “When they got the takeover bid, perhaps they saw it as an opportunity to move into high gear. The money will finance Proust’s run at the presidency. If they get into the White House they can do all the research they want—and put their ideas into practice.”

Charles nodded. “There’s a piece about Proust’s ideas in today’s Washington Post. I don’t think I want to live in his kind of world. If we’re all aggressive, obedient soldiers, who’s going to write the poems and play the blues and go on antiwar protest marches?”

Jeannie raised her eyebrows. It was a surprising thought to come from a career soldier. “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “Human variation has a purpose. There’s a reason we’re born different from both our parents. Evolution is a trial-and-error business. You can’t prevent nature’s failed experiments without eliminating the successes too.”

Charles sighed. “And all this means I’m not Steve’s father.”

“Don’t say that.”

He opened his billfold and took out a photo. “I have to tell you something, Jeannie. I never suspected any of this stuff about clones, but I’ve often looked at Steve and wondered if there was anything at all of me in him.”

“Can’t you see it?” she said.

“A resemblance?”

“No physical resemblance. But Steve has a profound sense of duty. None of the other clones could give a darn about duty. He got it from you!”

Charles still looked grim. “There’s bad in him. I know it.”

She touched his arm. “Listen to me. Steve was what I call a wild child—disobedient, impulsive, fearless, bursting with energy—wasn’t he?”

Charles smiled ruefully. “That’s the truth.”

“So were Dennis Pinker and Wayne Stattner. Such children are almost impossible to raise right. That’s why Dennis is a murderer and Wayne a sadist. But Steve isn’t like them—and you’re the reason why. Only the most patient, understanding, and dedicated of parents can bring up such children to be normal human beings. But Steve is normal.”

“I pray you’re right.” Charles opened his billfold to replace the photo.

Jeannie forestalled him. “May I see it?”

“Sure.”

Jeannie studied the picture. It had been taken quite recently. Steve was wearing a blue-checked shirt and his hair was a little too long. He was grinning shyly at the camera. “I don’t have a photo of him,” Jeannie said regretfully as she handed it back.

“Have that one.”

“I couldn’t. You keep it next to your heart.”

“I have a million photos of Steve. I’ll put another one in my billfold.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

“You seem very fond of him.”

“I love him, Charles.”

“You do?”

Jeannie nodded. “When I think he might be sent to jail for this rape, I want to offer to go instead of him.”

Charles gave a wry smile. “So do I.”

“That’s love, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.”

Jeannie felt self-conscious. She had not meant to say all this to Steve’s father. She had not really known it herself; it had just come out, and then she had realized it was true.

He said: “How does Steve feel about you?”

She smiled. “I could be modest.…”

“Don’t bother.”

“He’s crazy for me.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Not just because you’re beautiful, though you are. You’re strong too: that’s obvious. He needs someone strong—especially with this accusation over his head.”

Jeannie gave him a calculating look. It was time to ask him. “There is something you could do, you know.”

“Tell me what it is.”

Jeannie had rehearsed this speech in the car all the way to Washington. “If I could search another database, I might find the real rapist. But after the publicity in the New York Times, no government agency or insurance company is going to take the risk of working with me. Unless …”

“What?”

Jeannie leaned forward in her lawn chair. “Genetico experimented on soldiers’ wives who were referred to them by army hospitals. Therefore most or all of the clones were probably born in army hospitals.”

He nodded slowly.

“The babies must have had army medical records, twenty-two years ago. Those records may still exist.”

“I’m sure they do. The army never throws anything away.”

Jeannie’s hopes rose a notch. But there was another problem. “That long ago, they would have been paper files. Might they have been transferred to computer?”

“I’m sure they have. It’s the only way to store everything.”

“Then it is possible,” Jeannie said, controlling her excitement.

He looked thoughtful.

She gave him a hard stare. “Charles, can you get me access?”

“What, exactly, do you need to do?”

“I have to load my program into the computer, then let it search all the files.”

“How long does it take?”

“No way of knowing. That depends on the size of the database and the power of the computer.”

“Does it interfere with normal data retrieval?”

“It could slow it down.”

He frowned.

“Will you do it?” Jeannie said impatiently.

“If we’re caught, it’s the end of my career.”

“Will you?”

“Hell, yes.”