“So what happened?”
“Apparently what my position offered – power, authority, and so on – wasn’t enough. My clone didn’t just want my job. He wanted my life. My friendships, my relationships, everything. And towards the end, he was willing to do anything to get it, even if it meant putting me in the ground.”
“I take it that didn’t happen.”
“Let’s just say somebody went in the ground,” he stated, giving me a knowing look. “I’ve been against cloning ever since.”
“Is it done, though?” I asked. “Is it over?”
Gray appeared perplexed. “With Jack gone, I would think so.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “The people who authorized Jack’s creation – will they produce another one?”
“I doubt it,” Gray replied. “Not when they learn what he was up to.”
Now it was my turn to look bewildered. “What do you mean?”
“Jack wasn’t just sitting on his laurels when he was out of your presence. He was out there doing stuff. We’ve got evidence that he impersonated a prince from an oil-rich kingdom in the Middle East, as well as a couple of third-world dictators.”
Gray’s words brought to mind Jack’s rooftop statement about having to do things on his own. Obviously, it hadn’t been idle talk.
“Believe it or not,” Gray went on, “you can do a fair amount of damage on the world stage in some of those positions – even if the nation you represent is underdeveloped and non-industrialized, and your tenure’s short-term. Thankfully, it’s been contained, but it’s pretty clear that he had much bigger plans.”
I didn’t comment. I was too busy thinking about the havoc Jack had wreaked on a local level to even contemplate what he’d done globally. There was a long line of people who’d been hurt by his machinations: Incendia, Gramps, Vestibule…
Oh, geez, I thought. Vestibule…
Chapter 97
It took me about twenty minutes to track Vestibule down. After she came to mind, I had quickly brought my meeting with Gray to a close and then teleported to the West Coast.
I tried calling her first, but my call went straight to voicemail. Reaching out to my cousin Avis, I discovered that Vestibule had taken a few days of personal leave from the A-List Supers. Avis provided a couple of other contacts – Vestibule’s friends and such – but no one seemed capable of pinpointing her location for me. (Not even her agent knew where she was at the moment.) Somewhat disheartened, I made a last roll of the dice and got lucky.
*****
I found her in the park she’d taken me to a few days earlier, sitting on the same bench, looking out over the lake. Teleporting here had been a bit of a gamble, but I recalled that this locale seemed to provide her with a sense of serenity. Moreover, it struck me as a place she might retreat to if she were still troubled by what had happened with Jack, and it turned out I was right.
I walked deliberately towards the bench and took a seat next to her. She didn’t say anything; the only acknowledgment of my presence had been a short glance in my direction as I’d approached.
The silence lasted a few minutes, although it didn’t seem as awkward or uncomfortable as one might imagine.
Finally, Vestibule let out a sigh and asked, “What are you doing here, Jim?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” I said, hoping she knew that I was being sincere.
With almost everyone else who had crossed paths with Jack, there was a support system in place – people they could talk to about what had happened. For instance (and taking myself out of the equation), Smokey could always reach out to Li or Electra. Gramps, as another example, had the rest of our family to turn to. I didn’t know if Vestibule had anyone like that in her life. Even if she did, talking about what had happened with Jack would require that she reveal something painfully embarrassing (humiliating, in fact). Bearing all that in mind, I had felt the need to check up on her – to make sure she was okay.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
Rather than simply take her word for it, I reached out empathically, trying to get a sense of her feelings. I picked up on the fact that the experience had rattled her to some extent, but at the same time I detected a surprising strength in her – an inner resolve which indicated that she would not only get past this incident, but any other obstacle life threw in her path. Noting this part of her personality, I was suitably impressed.
“Besides,” Vestibule went on, “what would your girlfriend think about you paying me a surprise visit?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “If I had a girlfriend, I’d ask her.”
“Oh,” she muttered softly, looking chagrinned. “So you and Electra…”
I nodded, as she left the rest unsaid. “Yeah – we broke up.”
“I hope not because of me.”
I shrugged, not caring to verbalize a response.
Unexpectedly, Vestibule leaned towards me, a somber expression on her face. “Look, I didn’t really want to make trouble for you. I just find dating so hard. Most guys are intimidated by me – either my fame, or my wealth, or my powers. I’m a triple threat. And those who aren’t intimidated are just jerks. They want me to do all the work in the relationship. ‘Why do I have to drive when you can teleport?’ Or they think that because I’m rich and like them that I should be their personal ATM. I just wanted to go out one time with a guy who would actually act like a guy and treat me special. And after I heard about you taking Electra to Paris…”
I sat there silently as she trailed off. I
