White Mountain (41 page)

David’s shoulders slumped.
 
“oh, we know all too well,” he said softly.

“How many?” Jack snapped.

David thought about the Silvia woman and decided not to reveal their most recent project.

“Over the past thirty odd years, twenty in all.”

“What did you do to them, old man?
 
And don’t tell me you created a bunch of monsters, because I was starting to like you.”

“They were perfect babies,” David said.
 
“Beautiful, whole, healthy babies.”

“Then why the long face?” Jack asked.
 
“Why not tell the world that—“

“They’re all dead now…except for one.”

All the air went out of Jack in one swoop.

“How?”

“Mostly self-destructs.
 
I think one died of a heart attack, and another from anorexia and a couple from accidents.”

“By self-destruct, are you implying they killed themselves?”

“Yes, said to say, that is true.”

“Good God!
 
Why?
 
How?”

“It isn’t the how of it that mattered,” David said.
 
“It was the why.
 
Reports were that they claimed to hear voices.
 
Most of them just went mad.”

Jack grabbed David’s arm.
 
“What the hell did you do to those babies?”

“Nothing but give them life again.”

Jack heard, but it took a moment for the significance of what David had said to sink in.
 
Then it hit him.

“Say that again.”

“I said…we did nothing but give them a second chance at life.”

Jack stared at the state-of-the-art equipment, then at the faces of the five old men.

“I don’t want to say what I’m thinking,” he muttered.

“Then don’t,” David said.
 
“I’ll say it for you.
 
We cloned twenty people.
 
And not just any people, but people who had a lot to offer the world.
 
Mathematicians, doctors, scientists, politicians, leaders of our country…even a couple of rather famous entertainers that the world truly loved.”
 
Then he took Jack’s arm, pleading with him.
 
“Don’t you understand?
 
They had given the world so much the first time around, it only stood to reason that they could do it again.”

“But it didn’t work.
 
Why not?” Jack asked.

David glanced nervously at Jasper, who was in the act of turning the last tumbler on the lock.

He squinted his eyes as he gazed into space.

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with—“

David turned, fixing him with a hard, studied stare.

“Samuel had a theory.
 
We took everything into account when we created the clones…except for the fact that they would not have the same soul.
 
Don’t you see?
 
When someone dies…and if you believe in God…then you believe the soul, or the spirit, or whatever you call it…ascends into heaven or descends into hell, as the case may be.
 
Right?”

“Tight,” Jack said.

“So almost every time we began a new project, we were cloning DNA from someone who had already passed on.
 
In effect, their spirit was already gone.
 
The babies were perfect replicas—except for the one thing that had made them great.”

Jack’s breath slid out of his lungs in a whoosh, as if he’d been gut punched.
 
Trying to explain this to the director—if, of course, he lived to tell the tale—would be impossible.
 
Again something clicked.

”You said ‘almost.’
 
That isn’t the same as always.”

David nodded.
 
“I said you were a smart man.
 
Yes, you’re right.
 
We had twenty projects, and nineteen failures, the last of which we just learned of today.”

Jack frowned.
 
“Today?
 
Who…?”
 
Then it hit him.
 
“John Running Horse?”
 
When David didn’t deny it, Jack fired another question.
 
“Who the hell did you clone?”

“We had no idea that old memories would recur in some of the implants,” David said.
 
“They didn’t in all of them, but John was an exception.
 
It was good that people outside the reservation rarely saw his face.
 
It would have started a riot, I think.”

Jack frowned, his mind skimming back over everything he’d heard John Running Horse say.
 
Memphis.
 
Guitar.
 
Singing.
 
Suddenly his mouth dropped.

“God almighty, you didn’t!”

David shrugged.

“How did you get his DNA?”

David shrugged.
 
“Samuel always handled that part.
 
He paid someone at the funeral home, I think.
 
It was usually fairly simple.”

Jack shoved a hand through his hair in disbelief.

“What in hell were you people thinking?
 
The he would just up and reappear, the same old king of rock and roll?
 
Didn’t you take his family’s feelings into consideration?”

“It was all about science.”

Jack felt himself coming unglued.
 
The ramifications of what they’d been doing were like something out of a horror film.

“Didn’t you see him?
 
Couldn’t you tell how tormented he was?
 
My God, man!
 
I only saw him once, but I could feel his pain.”

David’s chin trembled.
 
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t thought before.
 
If only he’d had the guts to call a halt years ago, before they’d destroyed so many lives.

“One survived perfectly,” he mumbled, saying it more to assuage his own guilt than to explain himself to Jack.

“One success out of twenty is damned poor odds,” Jack said.
 
“Do you know where the baby is?”

“Oh yes,” David said.
 
“I know.
 
I helped raise her.”

Suddenly the skin crawled on Jack’s neck as he followed the path of David’s gaze to Isabella.

“Sweet Jesus…not—“

“Samuel couldn’t father children.
 
It was his wife’s greatest sorrow and his cross to bear.
 
She wanted to be the first test subject, but Samuel wouldn’t let her.
 
Then she begged, and she cried, and he relented.”

David’s shoulders slumped, and for the first time since Jack had met him, David Schultz looked every one of his seventy-eight years.

“The pregnancy was perfect, and then she went into labor.
 
She hemorrhaged and bled to death before we could stop it.
 
We lifted the baby out of her belly as she took her last breath.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said.
 
“If the others disintegrated mentally, then why hasn’t Isabella shown the same signs?
 
What’s so different about her?”

“Samuel believed that Isabella wanted the child so much that she somehow refused her place in heaven and sent her soul to the baby instead.”

The look on Jack’s face was incredulous.
 
David sighed.

“I know.
 
I know.
 
It’s a lot to grasp, and frankly, as scientists, we rejected it soundly for years.
 
However, there is no other explanation that we could fathom and have it make sense.”
 
He gave jack a nervous glance.
 
“Does this change your feeling for her?”

“No,” Jack muttered.
 
“Hell no.”

“Then know this, too,” David said.
 
“She must never know what we’ve been doing, or she will guess the rest about herself.”

Jack nodded, knowing that he would lie to his death to protect her from the hell of what he’d learned.

“And there’s something else you must remember.
 
She
is
her mother, and her mother died from an aneurysm in the uterus.
 
If she bears children, the same weakness will be hers, as well.”

Jack looked at her in horror, wondering how he was going to live with this knowledge and not give himself away.

“Are you saying she should never have children?”

“No.
 
Only that you must somehow get the doctor to examine her closely enough to discover it on his own.
 
It can be corrected, and had we known earlier, we could have saved Isabella’s life.”

“But if she had lived, what would have happened to the child?” Jack asked.

David sighed.
 
“Ah yes…ever the conundrum we have asked ourselves.
 
At any rate, I have given you a great secret, and I’m trusting you with our beloved Isabella.”
 
The he glanced at Jasper, who was in the act of opening the safe door.
 
“Whatever happens in the next few minutes, you have to promise me that you will get Isabella out alive.”

Startled, Jack’s gaze moved toward the wall where the others were standing.

“What have you done?” he asked.

“You will see.”

Suddenly Jasper slammed the door to the safe shut and turned a knob.

“It’s done!” he shouted, and dived straight into Rostov’s gun.
 
The gun went off, and the bullet tore through Jasper’s heart, but it didn’t matter.
 
Rufus and Thomas had already ripped Isabella from Rostov’s grasp and shoved her away.

“Take her and run.” David said.

Jack pulled the gun from his boot and started toward the melee, only to be yanked back.

“Get Isabella and run, I say!” David shouted.
 
“You don’t have much time.”

Isabella bolted as Rostov spun, his gun aimed at her back.

Jack fired instinctively as he ran, then fired again, watching as both bullets hit Rostov square in the chest, while Isabella ran screaming into his arms.

“It’s over,” he said, holding her close against his chest.
 
“It’s finally over.”

David shoved them toward the door.
 
Thinking the old men were following, Jack and Isabella were outside the lab before they realized the others were still inside.

“We have started the countdown to demolition.
 
The bomb will go off in fifteen minutes, and it takes eight to get from here to the elevator,” David said.
 
“Remember you promise.”

Then he slammed the door before Jack could react.

Isabella screamed in disbelief and started pounding on the door, but to no avail.
 
It was ten inches of solid steel, and the sound of her hands against the metal could not even be heard inside the lab.

“No!
 
Uncle David!
 
No!
 
Please don’t do this!” she begged, then frantically turned to Jack.
 
“Make them open the door,” she screamed.
 
“Don’t let them do this to me!”

Jack picked her up in his arms and carried her to the nearest cart, dropped her on the seat, then vaulted the hood.
 
When she tried to climb out, he grabbed her by the arm.

“They aren’t doing this
to
you, Isabella.
 
They’re doing it
for
you.
 
Now stay where you are or their deaths will be in vain.”

“Oh my God,” she moaned, and covered her face with her hands as Jack turned the cart around and headed back up the tunnel.

His heart was pounding as he pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, but it didn’t go any faster on the return than it had on arrival.
 
He kept glancing at his watch with every passing second, imagining a blast at their backs that would destroy them all.

Isabella was silent beside him, her head bowed, her hands covering her face.
 
Every so often Jack saw her shoulders shake as she swallowed a sob.
 
He feared for her sanity even more than her safety.
 
She’d gone through hell and still didn’t know the half of it.
 
All he could do was pray to get them out alive and deal with emotions later.

By his best guess, they were about halfway there when the car suddenly stopped.
 
One minute it was moving, and the next it had rolled to a halt.

“Shit,” he muttered, and tried to restart it.
 
He heard nothing but a click.

“What’s wrong?” Isabella asked.

“Batteries are dead,” he said, and grabbed her by the hand.
 
“Can you run?”