The Puppet Master

an attractive starlet clone? Or a porn queen like Miss Innocenza?' He laughed again. 'The alternative is much less pleasant, I assure you. All you need do is answer my questions, all of them, accurately and completely. In an aura chamber and instrumented of course, so we can monitor your veracity.

'And do not imagine that silence is an option. If you'd like, I'll show you some of the implements Mr. Carver has at his disposal to ensure that.' He gestured at the muscle.

Mr. Carver. I didn't like the name.

'Mr. Ferguson will perform the interrogation, and Mr. Carver will provide any necessary, ah, incentives. I prefer to be elsewhere.'

Like Ballenger, I thought. 'Why not just drug me?'

'Even the best truth drugs impair accuracy. Torture, or hopefully just the threat of torture, are preferable.'

'What do you do if I die under torture?'

'That won't happen unless you have a cardiac condition. But if it should—' He smiled and pinched my cheek. 'I have two more of you. Backups in storage, so to speak.'

'You don't miss a bet, do you. And if I answer your questions, what happens to the other clones? Do you cut their throats?'

He chuckled. I wondered if he'd been watching mad scientist films from the 1920s. 'Mr. Seppanen, we are not gauche here,' he said, and turned. 'Mr. Ferguson, do you have the, ah, quietus at hand?'

Ferguson put a hand in a lab coat pocket and came out with another hypodermic, a ring of orange tape on its cylinder.

'Put it on my desk, please,' Scheele said, then turned back to me. 'It is a quick poison. Struggles are unseemly. Now. I suppose you're willing to cooperate?'

'I guess I'd better. I don't care much for the alternative. But before you import any porn queens for me, how did you get a bomb in my car? I drove it to work this morning.'

'Ah. I had a certain talented person kidnaped, replaced him with a clone, made other clones of him, each thinking it's the original, and gave them jobs to do. I then disposed of the original. And I did not, I hasten to add, use his ashes to fertilize the garden.

'But enough of that. We'll have time for your questions when I've gotten mine answered.' He looked at Ferguson. 'Mr. Ferguson, please inject Mr. Seppanen with the gamma-Alprazolam.' He smiled at me. 'It allows us to remove your restraints. The gurney doesn't fit in our aura chamber.'

Ferguson took out another hypo, this one with blue tape, and injected me. I didn't feel much effect. 'It will take a few seconds,' Scheele added pleasantly. 'Then you'll be able to get off the gurney and walk unassisted. You'll simply be weak and ill coordinated.'

Ferguson released the strap across my knees, next the one across my belly, then the separate straps that held my arms. 'Go ahead, Mr. Seppanen,' Scheele said. 'Sit up.'

I did, slowly, testing my body. It didn't get a very high grade. Abruptly we were interrupted by an English- accented female voice from a speaker: 'Mr. Scheele! There is a large van on the front lawn, and armed officers are coming onto the porch!'

Scheele's humor, poise, and jaw dropped like a rock, and for a moment he simply stared. Over the intercom I could hear door chimes, and pounding. Inside, someone with a Hispanic accent was talking excitedly.

'Jorge says there are more in back!'

Scheele snapped out of it, and turned to Ferguson. 'Get rid of the others,' he snapped. 'They don't know anything.'

'Yessir!' Ferguson answered, then turned and dashed out. Forgetting the hypo he'd put on the desk, as if he thought it was still in his pocket.

'What do you want to do with this one?' asked Carver.

I heard a muffled explosion over the intercom, as if someone had blown the lock in the front door, probably a heavy security door. That was followed by a scream, and someone shouted an order to spread through the house and search. Scheele stood with his face screwed in a tight frown, pressured by haste, searching for a solution. Neither man was paying any attention to me. I was about ten feet from the orange-taped hypodermic, as close as Carver and closer than Scheele, but wobbly.

Deliberately I staggered and fell, in the direction of the desk. Carver scowled at me, then turned back to Scheele, whose mind seemed still frozen. Taking hold of the desk, I pulled myself back to my feet. 'The vent!' Scheele said suddenly. 'We'll knock him out and stuff him in the vent!' Still leaning on the desk, I moved a step nearer the hypodermic, and heard voices, sounding as if they were coming downstairs to the cellar.

'The vent?!' Carver half shouted it. His pistol turned toward me, boomed, and a blow in the chest knocked me against the desk. For a moment I blacked out, the black rose-tinted, and I realized I was on the floor. Someone screamed, Scheele I think. 'There's no goddamn time for the vent!' Carver continued, yelling now, and fired again. The second shot hit me in the face, with less pain than I'd have thought, followed by spreading numbness. 'I'd need a ladder, for chrissake, and a screwdriver to take the damned grille off.'

Martti, I thought, get ready. Here I come. There was a shout in the corridor—'This way! This way!'—and thudding feet. Carver's pistol boomed again. . . .

15

The others had told about being hit by a crushing headache. Mine was different, short and sharp, leaving little more than its shadow. For a moment the memories confused me, but they weren't horrifying, and the confusion eased as they sorted themselves out. After half a minute I got on the intercom with Frank Brunette, our bomb expert, and we went outside to the public lot, where my car was parked. I felt—weird is the word—but it wasn't really troublesome, beyond interfering with my mental focus. After a five-minute preliminary check for booby traps, it took Frank maybe half a minute to find the bomb, a kind that doesn't require wiring to the electrical system. It had batteries, and a timer that actuated when someone sat in the driver's seat. The bomber must have had a master key for that year's model Mercury Solano, and access to the parking lot wasn't restricted. We went back in then, and Frank called the LAPD for a bomb squad. He could have disarmed it, but the law