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I stare at the two photos. One: Christopher Blair, callsign Maverick, taken from a five-year-old issue of the Western Earth Times, smiling and discussing the importance of military readiness without subjugation of more important things to defense spending. In the background was the Academy that he had taught at for almost a decade.
Then, the other. A still from a holo-recording of Christopher Blair, callsign Maverick, frothing hatred and insanity from aboard his frigate. The still bore the insignia of the now-defunct Gemini Alliance.
It made no sense.
The weird thing was, I decided, that the public apparently didn’t give a damn. A lot of them wanted nothing more than for all of the war heroes and ships and bunkers to disappear; they wanted to forget the last fifty years had even happened.
But me…I hate contradictions. And this one: Chris Blair, insane mass murderer vs. Chris Blair, kindly old Academy professor, was big enough to fly a Mustang through.
When I told my editor, he reacted pretty much like the rest of the galaxy. “Who gives a shit?” he had asked. “Dead, alive, nutcase or not…he’s a washed-up war hero whose had enough media exposure for ten of his kind. Nobody wants to hear another goddamn word about Christopher fucking Blair.”
Alright. I can deal with that. So no story.
That doesn’t mean I’m just going to let it rest.
I had spent evenings and weekends gathering data. A lot of the stuff I need is classified; it’s still classified, can you believe that? I could tell you what the President had for breakfast last Tuesday, but couldn’t get defense allocation budgets for a war that had been over for ten years.
So, I fudged my way through the best I could.
In the end, I had all of this wonderful data, and not a damn clue what to make of it. There’s something here…something I’ve gotta be missing.
I look again at the photos, taken within two weeks of each other.
I need a drink.
Tuesday at the Western Earth Times is something of a fruit fly orgy/electrical outlet gangbang hybrid. There’s really nothing quite like it. Monday, when basically all of the shit that wasn’t good enough to go into Sunday’s edition (c’mon, you know it’s the truth. Get over it…we ain’t all Eudora Welty) is dumped in, Tuesday is one of the real “crunch-days”. Long-term assignments, photo shoots, interviews…most of these are set up or conducted or typed on a Tuesday.
Please God…please please please, let me get through this hour without being hassled. Please God…
“Hey, Allan, whatcha doing?”
Shit. So much for me joining the clergy.
“Hi, Rob,” I say blandly, holding a piece of paper and acting like it was the most important thing in the world, scribbling down random notations on my compupad and darting my eyes back and forth, just like busy folk do, all in a vain attempt to get him to go away.
Alright, a mediocre master plan, as master plans go. I’m not that creative.
“Anyway, so I was doing an interview with the Crawdad twins…”
He proceeded to extol upon his virtues as a journalist/lover, as he brilliantly persuaded two porn star sisters to go down on him, only he made them suck his pen first, “for inspiration”, he said, and then…
Hell. You get the picture. I’d rather review holo-tapes of President Reeves’ inaugural speech.
“Yeah, whatever. Look, I’m real busy here…” I began, trying to hint at him maybe GOING AWAY…
“Really? Whatcha got there?” he asked, obnoxiously snatching the piece of paper from my hands.
“Dr. Emil? The geneticist? Isn’t he in jail?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “for complicity with Tolwyn in the Black Lance affair. He was one of the heads of the eugenics portion.”
“Oh,” Rob said simply. I understood the reaction. There ain’t no safe avenues of conversation when talking about this millennium’s Hitler.
“I’m trying to line up an interview, but the military prison system has been fucked up since the Border Worlds Secession, and, well, y’know…”
Whether he did or didn’t, I honestly couldn’t care less.
Dr. Gregory Emil.
He’s no Mengele or Schwartz or Mrola. Least, not as far as moral history is concerned. He was one of Confed’s top geneticists, and perfected or invented many of the clonemeat and other bio-restorative techniques that probably saved millions during the war.
Who’d have thought he’d turn out to be such a bastard?
And who’d have thought he’d end up here?
Hammurabi’s Correctional Center was built during the Counter-counter-revolution of the early 2200s, when Earth was beginning to stink of shitholes and a lot of people were prophesying total ecological collapse in the next hundred years. Tribal communities sprang up all over the place. But even tribes, close-knit units of families and friends, have their malcontents.
And so they built Hammurabi.
“Pass,” the fat guard grunted. It was a demand, not a request. My editor had warned me when he set up this interview that Hammurabi took no disruption or deviation from normal activity. And, he added under his breath, it was the kind of place you could disappear, and no one would have a glacier’s chance in hell of finding you.
I showed him my visitor’s pass, level B, which meant I could actually sit face-to glass pane-to face with whomever it was I wanted to see.
Wanted. Hah. Funny.
Visiting rooms in prisons are a unique locale. On one side, prisoners; clean-cut, for the most part, with just something ‘off’ about them. On the others, you have the girlfriends, the parents, the lovers or the partners. One guy’s wife (I’m guessing it was his wife) was giving him a free striptease.
I didn’t stop to watch. Some things ought to be personal, and a prison jack-off is one of’em.
Sitting down, I saw opposite me an old man, graying, around fifty years old. He was clasping and unclasping his gnarled fingers, as if keeping time to some unheard rhythm.
“Dr. Emil?”
He looked up at me. I felt like a bug in a jar. That’s the kind of looks this man gave.
“Salutations,” he said simply.
Alright. Okay. Breathe. Remember who’s who here. “I’ve uh…that is, I’d like to ask you a few questions…actually, just confirm a few things concerning your, ah, time with the Black Lance.”
“Time? Dear boy, I was the Black Lance. They were my creations,” he said.
“Ah, well, yes. Anyway, I’ve been having some difficulty with a story of mine, and was wondering if you could be of service.”
“All of my testimony and affidavits are on file. There is nothing more to tell.”
“I understand that. This is something that may or may not be connected,” I said, holding up the two pictures of Christopher Blair.
“Do you know who this is?”
Dr. Emil looked closely. “Unless I am sorely mistaken, that would be Christopher Blair, of the Kilrathi War.”
“Mmhmm. Know whatever happened to him, Doctor?”
Dr. Emil thought for a second. “Wasn’t he killed after suffering a nervous breakdown?”
I smiled. “Sorta. He’s also teaching at the Academy. According to existing records, they both happened.”
At that, I was relieved to finally have caught the good Doctor off-guard. “Yeah, me too. Anyway, according to records, his was one of the genetic templates used with the Black Lance soldiers. I was wondering…”
“If we had perhaps cloned him?” Dr. Emil cut in. If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d swear he was angry with me.
“Well, yeah.”
Dr. Emil sat back and cupped his hands behind his head. “Ridiculous!” he laughed. “To think, that I would clone some agrarian sand rat when I had my Lance!”
“So…uh, well, where do you think this second Blair came from?” I stammered. Jesus, what was wrong with me?
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Emil said, still stifling a few chuckles, “but it’s foolish to think he was cloned. Those two are both the same age, and despite my genius, I cannot slow and accelerate cellular mitosis at my leisure. If those photographs of yours are accurate,”
“They are,” I interjected. I had spent hours confirming THAT, at least.
“Well then, if that’s the case, then there’s only one explanation that comes to my mind, borne of the serials of my youth.”
“Oh? What’s that?” I asked. Finally, a coherent sentence!
“Well,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “have you considered a parallel universe Blair crossing over into our own?”
The buzzer rang; visiting hours were over. Silently, each of us filed out, saying goodbye to our loved ones, our hosts. I looked back at Emil, still in stitches over his last little joke at my expense.
What a waste of time. Clones indeed. Parallel universes indeed.
I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t even going to…
To…
Ah hell.
It took about five seconds for me to find a comm-terminal, and another two to locate Howell Quantum Physics Institute. Ten minutes after that, I had an appointment to come by, ostensibly to do a story on their recent advances.
I look at the two pictures again, and shake my head.
Parallel universes.
Fuck me.