“Mr. Adams,” he said, “we need to have a talk.”
In his own mind, Jeremiah sneered back at Scott: You’re damn right we need a talk, you spying piece of crap. In reality, he just looked up at him blankly from the chair.
If Scott had any suspicions about the new furniture arrangement, he didn’t mention it.
Jeremiah laid the open book down and walked over to the couch. He sat and put his feet up on the coffee table. “About what?”
“I’ve just come from a meeting with Natalie Young. She tells me you’ve been asking a lot of questions about taking Meld.”
“I don’t like taking it so often.”
“She sets the schedule for when you take it, Mr. Adams. That is part of her job.”
“How do we know that’s safe?” Jeremiah put his feet down and leaned forward slightly. “She keeps saying it’s fine. But there isn’t enough documented information on that. I would know. I doubt anyone has taken this drug more than I have.”
Scott sat down on the couch across from him and looked Jeremiah hard in the eyes with an unreadable expression.
“She is taking it with you, Mr. Adams,” he said. “And she has no concerns about the frequency.”
“She’s not the one being probed. Maybe it’s different. She’s isn’t even taking the same drug I am. I just don’t see the point in taking so much of it. I’m not convinced it’s safe. In fact, I think it might be taking a toll on me.”
“How so?” Scott asked.
“I’m having trouble sleeping, for one thing. Who knows what else it’s doing to me.”
“We can have Dr. Pike check you out,” Scott told him. “I can set that up for tomorrow.”
“Pike’s already checked me out. He says there’s nothing to worry about. He told me it’s stress. He prescribed a sedative.”
“Then I would advise you to take your sedative and stop worrying. You will take the Meld according to Dr. Young’s schedule. It’s imperative to the project. We need to know how the cloning is impacting you. I’m afraid that is part of your contract, Mr. Adams.”
“Ah, yes,” Jeremiah said. “The contract.” He would have liked to add that spy cameras weren’t part of his contract, but he bit his tongue.
“What is it about the Meld that you don’t trust?” Scott asked. “I understand from Mr. Higgins’s recent reports that you’re also upset about the idea of your mother taking the drug. Meld is a miracle drug. It may actually help her, you know. There’s no telling what it will uncover.”
“You might feel differently if it were your mother,” Jeremiah told him. “Taking Meld isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Scott let a trifling, contemptuous laugh escape his lips. “What makes you so certain?”
“You’ve taken Meld?” he asked. “Why?”
But Jeremiah knew exactly why Charles Scott would take the drug. With Pike’s help, it was a way for him to get a copy of his own mind while it was still relatively sound. He would need that, presumably, to implant into his own, healthy clone when the time came.
Jeremiah leaned forward, elbows on his knees, to assess the man’s expression when he lied about his reasons. He was close enough to be certain of it when he saw Scott’s head suddenly jerk to one side in an uncontrollable way, his lips tightening and his eyes darting and blinking rapidly for a good second or two. Jeremiah was silent, but the look on his face must have said enough. Scott looked strangely flustered for an instant, and then stood up and turned his back to Jeremiah without explanation.
“Is something wrong, Dr. Scott?” Jeremiah asked. “Are you okay?”
“You will take the Meld as you are instructed, Mr. Adams,” Scott said firmly, and he strode across the room and out the door without turning around again.
Jeremiah sat, stunned, staring at the door after it closed. There was no mistaking what he’d seen. That was some sort of spasm, a seizure or something. Had Jeremiah been looking the other way, he might have missed it. It was that brief, but it had happened, and it was proof of everything he suspected.
Chapter 18
Day 100
Early on a Thursday afternoon, Jeremiah and Brent settled in for a viewing he was certain would show the clone alone at his desk. He was surprised, then, when the cameras opened up, not in his ViMed office, but once again in his mother’s room at the assisted living home.
“Now what?” he asked cautiously, not really wanting to know the answer. Brent said nothing.
The clone, dressed in his work clothes, was standing just inside the doorway, his back to the camera, and his mother was flitting purposefully around her small room, gathering clothes from the closet and the drawers and stuffing them, unfolded, into a suitcase, which lay open on the bed.
“Mom,” the clone said, and Jeremiah was surprised at how much it continued to bother him to hear the word come from his double’s mouth. The only person in the world
