The Parallel Man (11 page)

I gazed at him in consternation, suddenly realizing how much I had been looking forward to seeing my other self. “Disappeared?” I said.

Droste nodded. “He left Central Receiving soon after Nurse Nerere talked to him. At first we thought he’d been kidnapped, but it seems he foiled a kidnap attempt on his own and went exploring . . . We’ve traced him as far as Carpathia, the real Carpathia. But the trail ends there; he seems to have vanished completely after the destruction of Mortifer’s laboratory.”

I glanced sharply at Droste. “Mortifer is a man of these times then?” I asked.

Droste shrugged. “Perhaps of these times and the times of Casmir the Tenth,” he said. “There’s a Mortifer in many of the old tales and legends of Carpathia. It may just be a family name, but there seems to be no record of a young Mortifer or a father and son Mortifer alive at the same time. We have techniques for extending life; what’s popularly called Life-stretch. The ordinary limit is about three hundred years, but Mortifer knows a lot about the life sciences. Perhaps he’s found a way to extend his own life even longer; perhaps he’s even cloned himself and transferred memories. We just don’t know.”

“So the Mortifer I remember. . .” I said slowly.

“May be a mixture of memories of the ‘original’ Mortifer and the one alive today, if they aren’t the same man,” said Droste. “But there’s one further complication. As far as we can guess as to what he was up to Mortifer’s plan must have involved giving you and your double the same experiences at the same times. When you and your double both saw Mortifer at least one of them must have been an android. There’s something called a repeating android, which is a duplicate of a human keyed to exactly duplicate the actions taken by that human. A ruler who feared assassination might have a duplicate throne room built, hidden away somewhere. In the hidden room he might interact with holovision pictures of the people in the real room; they would see the android do just the actions the ruler was performing. But if an assassin torched the android the ruler would be unharmed.”

“So Mortifer, too, has a double,” I said slowly, as my mind raced over the possible complications of this.

“Perhaps not any longer,” said Droste. “We found the remains of a repeating android in the ruins of Mortifer’s laboratory. Perhaps he has another up his sleeve though; he certainly has enough accumulated wealth and expertise to build a dozen of them. His duplicates, however, can only do what the real Mortifer is doing. Your double is another human being, very much like you but free and independent. Even if it’s true, as some claim, that clones given identical stimuli would act the same, he’s had thirty days of experiences you haven’t had. But I’m inclined myself to believe that clones are individual persons who could react differently even given the same history and environment.”

“Be that as it may,” I said. “I have a good idea of what my double is doing now. He pursued Mortifer to—what did you call it?—his laboratory. When he found only this duplicating thing you told me of I think that he must have continued to pursue the real Mortifer. Find Mortifer and you’ll find the other Casmir not far behind him, I suspect.”

Justinian Droste gave me a wry smile. “We’ve been hunting Mortifer ever since we first had evidence of his experiments,” he said. “Your double had better luck than we did. My best plan now is to give you every assistance I can and let you see if you can duplicate the success of the other Casmir. And may the Mercy help Mortifer if either of you catch him! First things first though.” He turned to the gray-haired woman. “Does he need any treatment?” he asked.

The woman surveyed me with a disgruntled air. “Oh, he’s healthy enough,” she said. “I’ve seldom seen a better physical specimen. I’d like to give him an injection of Lysergol for that nerve-path scarring. Normally it’s not policy to let anyone with that in their blood out of custody since the Lysergol will inhibit the action of a neural interrupter. In this case I presume that’s something of an advantage.”

I looked to the dark woman for an explanation and she did not fail me. “A neural interrupter is a device which can render you unconscious; our peace officers use it for social control. Both you and your double have had one used on you repeatedly. I suspect that Mortifer simply rendered you unconscious when something started to go wrong in his experiments. That would account for the ‘falling sickness’ that the other Casmir described. As I told him, there’s no organic reason for you to suffer fainting spells.”

My heart leaped; this made up for much. “My thanks, Lady,” I said. “When my quest is done I would like to thank you more adequately.” I turned to Droste. “This land is strange to me,” I told him. “I’ll find Mortifer but it will be quicker if you help.”

He nodded. “You’ll have all the help that the Citizen’s Liberty Union can give you,” he said, “and to begin with, I’d like to register you as a citizen of the Commonwealth. It obliges you to keep our laws. But I think you’ll find those simple and reasonable enough. In return you’ll have the privileges of a citizen, which include a basic allowance of credit for food and other necessities. Anything beyond that you’ll have to earn by your own efforts. But I have the authority to put you on staff as a temporary investigator for the C.L.U.; we can cover your expenses and even pay you a modest wage. By the time you find Mortifer I suspect you will have found a place in our society that you want to occupy.”

I hesitated but then agreed. I knew nothing of the laws of this land and perhaps it was rash to agree to obey them, but from what I have seen of Droste and the others they seemed decent folk; I thought that I could live by the laws they lived by. I was asked to put my hand on a gray box and repeat my name. “Casmir the King. . .” I began, then stopped, remembering what my kingdom consisted of. “Casmir T. King,” said a voice from the box. Then a light flashed and the voice said, “Duplicate file, Casmir F. Thorn.”

“I could have told you that,” said the gray-haired woman.

“The C and C chip keys on the genotype; when I worked in Maternity we always had trouble recording identical twins. The simplest thing to do immediately is to key it as a lost chip replacement until you can get it straightened out with Central.” Droste nodded and she did something to the box that caused the light to go out. I felt a faint tingle on my wrist and when I raised my hand from the box I found a circular patch of blue on my wrist.

The dark woman came to my aid again. “It’s just a patch of stuff that sticks to your skin,” she said. “Move it around to avoid skin irritation. If you want to buy anything you’ll put your patch in contact with a terminal and credit will be transferred from your personal account. Any credit you earn will probably be transferred directly to your account. The color of the patch indicates your credit balance. Green is normal; yellow and orange indicate increasing depletion of the account and red means that you’re broke. Blue, indigo and violet indicate increasing credit surplus. Since yours is blue I presume that the C.L.U. has already credited you for the job they want you to do . . .”

“No,” broke in Droste, “we haven’t.” He gave a short laugh. “Since this is a duplicate chip that must mean that the other Casmir has earned a credit surplus somehow. Furthermore that credit surplus was either originated here at Home or else a surcharge was paid to post it in Central Credit. I think we can stop worrying about your double, ‘Casmir King’; he seems to be doing very well in our society.”

Before they let me go free from the “hospital” they held a thing to my arm which they said would put a healing liquid in my blood and subjected me to a few more of their glittering boxes. I used the opportunity to find that the dark woman’s name was Molly Nerere and that she could always be reached through Central Receiving Hospital in Alba Cirque. At last I was allowed to leave with Droste; we ascended again to the roof and took our flying disc again to another monstrous building. Another sinking disc took us to a corridor with several doors. At Droste’s instruction I pressed my wrist with its colored patch on a shining metallic plaque near one door. The door flashed white and vanished and we walked into a room with a bed, table and chairs, decorated in muted colors.

“This is a fairly standard transient hostel room,” said Droste. “You can pay more for something more luxurious if you like but that’s on your personal credit; the C.L.U. will credit your account to cover this.” He moved about the room, showing me how to get food from a niche in the wall and cleanse myself in what he called the “convenience.” “If I were you I’d rest for a while,” Droste told me. “The oval patch on the wall is called a View; if you press the contact on the bed frame there it will show you pictures that you may find interesting. It’s for entertainment more than for education but you can learn quite a bit from watching it. I’ll be back in the morning with what information I can get on Mortifer and on ‘Casmir Thorn.’ You’re certainly free to leave the room and wander around the city but I think you may have had enough culture shock for one day.”

I was suddenly conscious of a great weariness. As soon as Droste left me I flung myself on the bed and fell asleep almost immediately, though my dreams were troubled. When I awoke I broke my fast to the accompaniment of music and a picture of a rushing mountain stream; the result of my first experiment with the “View.” It made me long for the woods of my boyhood, or rather, I realized, the boyhood of King Casmir the Tenth of Carpathia.

I thought of leaving the room then but the thought of the mistakes I might make in finding my way about discouraged me. Instead I began to see what I could learn from the “View.” The solid-looking, marvelously realistic pictures it showed soon fascinated me and when Droste returned he found me propped up on the bed watching the pictures.

He laughed when he saw what I was watching. “They call those ‘soaps’ for some reason,” he said. “They’re dramas of domestic life; a very good choice for learning some everyday things about our society. I can’t get over how quickly both you and the other Casmir have adapted yourself to our society. Ability to adapt is one component of intelligence of course, but it’s more than that. Most people are strongly conditioned by their culture; they expect things to go a certain way and react with confusion or hostility if things aren’t as they expect.”

I shrugged. “The change from my old life was so drastic and so sudden that there was no choice except to learn quickly and to seize every opportunity,” I said.

Droste laughed again. “Well, your double certainly seized every opportunity. So far as we can reconstruct his adventures this is what happened; an attempt was made to kidnap him from the hospital in Alba Cirque by a man disguised as an android by wearing a blue cap that simulated the blue dome of an android control unit. The other Casmir overpowered the kidnapper and left him in his own hospital bed, then made his way out of the hospital. Then somehow he hooked up with a rather criminal type named Joseph Pellow who was also disguised as an android. Apparently Pellow was attempting to spy on or steal from a rich merchant, Flavia Lorne, by using the android disguise. However, Lorne is none too honest herself; she involved your double in a scheme to impersonate her cousin. She was on the brink of financial ruin and the idea was to convince her creditors that her wealthy cousin was on good terms with her and would back her financially. The other Casmir used his impersonation to make friends with a wealthy trader named Benton who is an enthusiast for hunting wild animals. The other Casmir so impressed Benton and his sister Mirianne that they used their business connections to get him starpassage to Carpathia. Have you realized, Casmir, that the real Carpathia is a world circling another star?”

I nodded somberly. “Putting together some half-legendary lore preserved by the Knights of Thorn with what I’ve seen on the View, I’ve realized that this is not the world I remember. In fact, it can only be Earth, the place where the human race originated.”

Justinian Droste looked at me in amazement. “No wonder your prototype was able to unify a planet; your ability to make use of scraps of information is truly extraordinary. Most people call this planet simply ‘Home’ now; a fashion that started in the colonies but spread back to Earth. Carpathia is what we call a ‘terranorm’ planet, very much like Earth, which is why it was colonized.”

“What happened to the other Casmir on Carpathia?” I asked.

Droste shook his head, his face somber. “We know very little,” he said. “He appeared one day at Castle Thorn and created considerable furor by taking a sword out of a lock field on the tomb of Casmir the Tenth. The lock field was keyed to Casmir the Tenth, so of course either you or your double could retrieve objects from it. Apparently your double used the sword to fight off some sort of attack prompted by Mortifer. Then an agent of Mortifer’s, pretending to be a monitor—a peace officer—got him to go to Mortifer’s laboratory, probably by trickery. A young scholar your double had befriended used the incident with the sword to raise a mob to try to rescue him from Mortifer. But when they broke into the laboratory the place looked as if it had been destroyed by a series of explosions and there was no sign of any human being; only the destroyed repeater android.”

I looked at Droste. “And that’s the end of the story?” I asked. The story had told me one thing that Justinian Droste seemed to have missed. The other Casmir evidently had, and was putting to good use, the Jagellon gift for inspiring personal loyalty in people after a very brief contact. Each of the people the other Casmir had come into contact with had done everything in their power to help him. Some of them, no doubt, had convinced themselves that they were using the other Casmir for their own purposes, but all of them had served his purpose. Droste himself, if he but knew it, was serving me as well as if he had been my sworn man. The responsibility that goes with the Jagellon gift is to see that no one suffers by serving us.

Droste was speaking in reply to my last question. “The only person we haven’t managed to contact is the captain of
Argo
, the starship that took your double to Carpathia. She’s taken her ship on a trading tour of the more primitive worlds and there’s no way to contact her without a tremendous expenditure of credit. The trail of both Mortifer and the other Casmir seems to end on Carpathia.”

“So be it,” I said. “To Carpathia I will go.”

“Well, I suppose we can arrange that,” said Droste with a show of reluctance. “You seem to be our only hope of catching up with Mortifer.”

“Oh, I’ll catch up with him,” I said absently, remembering that Mortifer was one of the few men I had met who was able to resist the Jagellon gift. “But what happens then is less certain. When the boar turns to bay then he is most dangerous.”