The Puppet Master

He'd been held up in traffic. An accident on Cahuenga Pass had blocked a lane on the southbound 101 Freeway, and he'd missed his first chance. Now, though, he stood behind his tripod, peering into the back of what looked like an ancient videocam, large and cumbersome. Briefly he'd pretended to shoot footage up and down Beverly Boulevard, occasionally panning on passersby, most of whom paid little or no attention. But he hadn't actually shot any of them, just pretended to.  

What he was really interested in was across the street in Morey's Kosher Deli. Ferguson had gone over to check, and from the door had given him the high sign: Seppanen was inside eating breakfast.  

One of the important parts of this work was to research your subject, learn his or her schedule, to the extent they had one. Another was to have a reliable assistant. 

At last Ferguson came out, which meant that Seppanen had headed for the cash register. Scheele was so excited, he could taste it. The duplicator was ready, aimed and focused on the open door. With his right hand on the trigger and his left on the locking control, he stood in the mental posture of a leopard waiting to pounce.  

Through the finder he could see someone moving toward the door. Seppanen stepped into the focus field, and in a single quick movement Scheele locked on him, framing him, clearing the field of everything else, then pressed the trigger switch. His target turned ninety degrees and started east down the sidewalk, the locked field holding on him. Scheele pressed the trigger twice more. I've got him! He rejoiced inwardly. I've got the sonofabitch! Three of him! It was all he could do not to dance on the sidewalk.

14

The rest of the story can be confusing, so I'll tell it from one viewpoint at a time, starting with one that woke up strapped to a gurney, in a small concrete cell with no window. I was naked, which meant I'd been stripped, because I knew from Harford's experience that clothes get cloned along with the wearer. Apparently they'd stripped me for the psychological effect: without clothes you feel more powerless, vulnerable.

Being strapped to a gurney does that pretty well by itself, in threatening situations.

I felt lousy: headache, queazy stomach, and an overall, unpleasant squirmy feeling. It seemed to me if someone let me loose, I wouldn't be able to stand up without help. Something held my head down, medical or duct tape I supposed; about all I could move was my eyes, and all I could see besides walls and ceiling was a small glass ball in a ceiling recess, that had to be part of a surveillance system.

I knew right away what had happened, and told myself I should have arranged for a transponder a day earlier. My jailers would have found it when they stripped me, but by then the company computer would have a fix on where I was.

The last thing I remembered before waking up was walking out of Morey's. What had happened must have happened on the sidewalk in front. No one had bumped me or spoken to me, but . . . There'd been a guy across the street with some kind of apparatus on a tripod, like a big old camera, aimed at Morey's. That had to be it.

But then how . . . The answer was unavoidable: I'd been transmitted! Like a radio beam! Jesus, I thought, what am I? Some kind of holo? That made no sense. A holo couldn't be raped, and a holo wouldn't have memories or feelings; it was nothing more than light.

But clone or holo, they'd duplicated me and transmitted the copy! Even though I didn't feel like a duplicate, that was more believable than splitting time, then looping memories from one time line to the other.

After spending maybe a minute on the question, I turned to something more meaningful: escape. I couldn't plan; didn't know enough about the situation. Presumably the original version of me wasn't out of action, and Scheele would know that. He'd cloned me to question me, find out what we knew and what we planned.

Or maybe to get even. I preferred not to look at that one, but there it was. Torture me in the worst way possible, then kill me-the-clone and visit those lovely memories on me-the-original. Ole could handle the situation, of course, or Vic or Tory or Bhiksu. Strip the pain and fear off, and the emotions, leaving just the unburdened memory. But even so, I'd be in for some God-awful hours or days, first here, then later.

I heard a door open, and a moment later a guy in a lab coat was looking down at me. He pressed a hypodermic against my chest and pulled the trigger. There was a hiss, a brief pause, then nothing.

* * *

Meanwhile the original me had gone from Morey's to the office without a notion that anything had happened. I checked the L.A. Times for anything about Ballenger, or anyone found unconscious in a rowboat in Marina del Rey. Nothing. Next I checked to see if Ballenger had phoned Scheele the last two days. He hadn't. So using my weasel, I checked for computer traffic between the two, and again came up with nothing. He'd probably used a pay phone.

There wasn't much I could do but wait, so I went to Carlos, who put me on the Pak Kyung So extortion case, helping Ernie Johnson. Routine digging that required patience and know-how, but no deep immersion—well suited to on-and-off work.

I hadn't left his office yet when the phone rang and Carlos picked it up. It was Tuuli. He poked the speakerphone switch so I could hear. She was telling him something was wrong with me, that I was in trouble.

'He looks okay to me,' Carlos answered. 'He's sitting about six feet away, looking fine.'

'Then he's been cloned,' she answered. 'Somewhere there's another one of him, maybe more than one, on a table or—one of those wheeled tables. He's alive, but he can't move.'

Carlos's lips puckered into an O, and his eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead. 'Cloned,' he said thoughtfully. It occurred to me I hadn't mentioned Tuuli's idea that Scheele cloned people instead of splitting time lines. 'Do you know where he is?'

'I can guess,' she told him.

So could I. So could Carlos. Was there really another me, or maybe more, at Scheele's place?

The upshot was that Carlos told her we'd get right on it, and buzzed Joe. Joe in turn got on the horn and called the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department, asking them to get and serve a search warrant for the property of Charles Scheele, in the Rhubarb Canyon development. The object of the search was detective Martti Seppanen, who'd disappeared while investigating Scheele in connection with a claim by actress Misti Innocenza. She claimed she'd