Popular Clone (19 page)

“When pigs fly, my good friend, when pigs fly,” said the scrawnier guard.

At that exact moment, a small pig flew through the air above their heads. They stared, their mouths gaping open.

“What in the … ?” said the fat man.

As they watched FP glide to a bumpy landing and then trot happily away, Fisher jumped the hedge and ran silently past them and around the corner, reaching the vent. FP snuck behind their chairs to rejoin Fisher without being noticed.

The guards, after witnessing this sight, looked at each other, then out into space, shaking their heads in confusion.

By then, Fisher and FP were already inside the complex.

CHAPTER 19

Spies have years of training and experience. I had half an hour of panic and a pig.

—Fisher Bas, Into the Dragon's Mouth, (an unfinished screenplay)

Fisher lay on his stomach, pulling himself forward with his elbows through the air duct. The popcorn gun was slung over one shoulder, and every time Fisher moved, it dug painfully into his bony side. He was, he reflected, getting exceptionally good at the air-duct thing. It didn't hurt that he now had gloves and boots that allowed him to grip the duct instead of sliding around like a tilt-puzzle ball. Spying on Two at school had been good practice, as it turned out.

FP followed close behind, dutifully imitating his master and scooting along on his belly, even though he was more than small enough to walk normally in the cramped space.

They went a few inches at a time, Fisher's breathing loud in his ears, trying to make as little noise as possible. At any second, he expected an alarm to start wailing. He knew that he was too far into the narrow duct to make a quick exit. If he were discovered, that would be it, and he could only imagine what kind of punishments Dr. X would cook up for him. Maybe he would be forced to toil forever in the depths of the complex, performing the same task over and over, like a human robot. Or maybe he would become a test subject for X's attempt to complete a human liquefication. Perhaps he'd just be tossed in a room with a defective robot that could do nothing but discuss the romantic plotlines in soap operas.

He shivered.

Fisher followed the duct deeper into the compound, twist after turn. He rapidly lost track of the way he had come, but it didn't matter: he had no idea where he was, anyway, and could only guess about the basic layout of the building. The last hints of the fresh air being drawn in from the outside gave way to the cool, sterile atmosphere of the facility.

After what felt like endless inch-by-inch creeping, Fisher and FP came to a small vent. Peering through the grate, Fisher saw that it looked as though they were directly above a maintenance corridor.

Fisher popped open the vent. He and FP slid into the corridor, following it until they reached a wide, vertical shaft. From below them, Fisher could hear the hum of extremely powerful generators.
The shaft must lead to the complex's power center,
Fisher realized.

“As much as I'd love to trot down there and just turn the whole place off, boy,” Fisher whispered, scratching FP's chin to cool both of their nerves, “Two needs us. We need to find him. He thinks I'm an ally, and he trusts me. Do you trust me, little pig? Do you believe in me?” FP's small, bright eyes winked back at him in the dark. “Maybe it's best you can't talk, so I can just assume that's a yes.”

Fisher located a hatch low down on the wall, rotated its manual locking wheel, and eased it open a fraction of an inch. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes and extracted the camera wire from his left glove. He threaded it through the crack in the door. Slowly rotating his hand, Fisher received a full view of the corridor through the pinhead-sized camera on the end of the wire.

“Clear.” He pushed the hatch open and stepped into the brightly lit hallway.

The interior hallways of TechX were made entirely of gray and white plastic. They were bathed in a uniform white light, but he couldn't see its source. Some doors were unmarked, others clearly labeled—
EXPERIMENTAL RAT PARACHUTE, LASER RECALIBRATION CHAMBER, PROJECT: MAGIC 9 BALL
… and on and on.

Twenty feet later, Fisher stopped, heart leaping up to jostle his Adam's apple. He fought the instinct to turn and run, forcibly steadying his legs.

The hallway came to a fork, one green-bordered passage left, a blue-bordered one right. A guard stood, motionless, a multibarreled beam stunner held over one shoulder. There was no way to go around or past him.

Fisher fought his rising panic. He could handle this.
Two
would handle this, if he was here.

Moving slowly and deliberately, trying to control the spasms in his chest, Fisher removed a small straw from his equipment belt, good for shooting off spitballs.

Or drugged darts.

Taking careful aim, he shot a tiny dart into the guard's neck from behind.

“Ow!” the guard exclaimed, slapping a hand to his neck. “What was that?” As he began looking around, the Memory Loop serum took effect. “Ow! What was that?” he said again, as his memory jumped back to three seconds earlier.

Fisher mentally thanked his mother for inventing the serum. Three seconds was the time it took for his father to recognize that
Arson Detectives: Spokane
, her favorite show and his least favorite, had come on.

Fisher grinned as he and FP walked past the guard, their images not registering with his senses, which would be tied up in the same brief moment for the next half hour. (
Arson Detectives: Spokane
was a half-hour show.) Fisher's confidence was slowly starting to build. He was working his way farther into one of the most secure laboratories on the planet.

That was when he heard the whine and hiss of pneumatic joints and the
clank, clink, clank
of metallic feet.

Something mechanical—and very large—was moving in their direction, and it was coming
fast
. As the footsteps boomed ever closer, Fisher ducked into an alcove and pressed a large button on his backpack. Plastic coils and arms shot out from it in all directions and set themselves into place all around Fisher, with mesh expanding into sections around the framework. A terra-cotta-colored cylinder surrounded his legs, a green camo net covered his body, and dozens of fake branches encircled him and sprouted thick, concealing leaves. This was Fisher's pat-ented and perfected “Shrub-in-a-Backpack.”

Simultaneously, the small device attached to FP's back expanded and surrounded the confused pig with the very convincing appearance of a toolbox.

In seconds, a large robot painted in the standard dark blue, with a white TechX logo on its chest, swept around the corner on its piston-driven legs. It approached the deployed Shrub-in-a-Backpack, examining it closely with dark-lensed camera eyes.

Fisher's pulse hammered in his head.

After what seemed like an eternity, the robot said dully, “New vegetation. Must log.” And it turned away.

Fisher's sigh of relief got caught in his throat as the robot stopped, grabbed the disguised FP, and muttered, “Out of place. Take to maintenance.” The robot then moved off at full clip, carrying Fisher's pig companion in its metal hands.

As soon as the robot was out of sight, Fisher collapsed his disguise, fighting a rising panic. FP had been taken!

Fear and frustration made Fisher careless. He raced down the corridor after the robot, veering right where he had seen the robot make a turn.

And ran straight into a security patrol.

It was not clear who was the most surprised—the four guards, or Fisher. For a second, nobody moved.

Then Fisher unfroze. He twisted his body sharply, and the cylindrical object slung over his left shoulder swung forward into his hands.

He raised the popcorn gun to eye level and held down the trigger.

Popopopopopopopopopopopop!
filled the hallway as Fisher swept his weapon back and forth, sending a hail of scorching-hot kernels into the startled guards, who tripped, leapt, and dove for cover.

It was over in a few seconds. Fisher was breathing hard, feeling his pulse in his forehead. The popcorn gun was so hot it almost burned his hands. The hallway was coated in popcorn.

“Hey!” one of the guards, who had taken shelter in an alcove, picked up a kernel of popcorn and tasted it with his tongue experimentally. “That's not a
real
gun. It's … it's … It's a snack gun!”

The other guards began picking themselves off the ground.

“You think you can scare us with one of your little toys?” another one said, scowling at Fisher.

“Er … um … extra butter, anyone?” Fisher stuttered. He tried firing off more corn, but he was totally out of ammunition. Too bad FP had eaten most of it for break-fast.

There was only one thing left to do. Fisher dropped the popcorn gun and bolted in panic.

“Hey! Get back here!” the leader roared.

Fisher raced down one corridor and turned onto another. Loud boot steps rang out behind him, getting closer and closer. He rounded another corner in desperation, and found himself at a dead end. No doors, no access panels, nothing.

He had one final trick up his sleeve. As his pursuers drew closer, he unsnapped an aerosol can from his tool belt and sprayed it liberally in front of him.

The four guards rounded the corner and found the corridor empty. “Must've taken a different turn along the way,” said the leader. “You”—he pointed to one of the others—“stay here, just in case he tries to double back. Let's go.” The other three hurried off.

Fisher stood pressed against the back wall of the corridor. In front of him hung what appeared to be a hazy, translucent mist. The millions of nanomachines he had sprayed into the air had statically linked with one another and, using light-sensing and color-changing abilities, assumed the appearance of the walls.

The remaining guard shifted back and forth restlessly. There was a tiny crackle, and he raised a hand to one ear. “Mills here. Yeah, it's under control. I'm on sentry in A-17 and the search is expanding. We'll have him soon.” He chuckled. “Yeah, just some twerpy, little kid like we used to throw around back in school. They just don't learn, do they? Guess we'll have to keep teaching 'em, right?” He laughed more loudly. “All right, we'd better cut the chatter. See you next shift. Out.”

Fisher's mind shot back to the Vikings, to their taunts and their tortures.
Just some twerpy, little kid. Throw around back in school.
It sounded just like something Brody and his bonehead followers would say.
Guess we'll just have to keep teaching 'em, right?

Fisher's fear began to tighten into anger and resolve. He smelled the damp pine of closet hiding places, he sensed the swirl of the toilet flushing around his head, he felt punches in the stomach, tasted dirt, and heard the never-ending laughter that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

And just then, Fisher realized something: he was tired of hiding.

His clone had been taken. His
pig
had been taken. He couldn't afford to sneak around on tiptoe and play shrub whenever a footstep spooked him. He was here to do a job, and he wasn't going to let any robots or guards or a scientist with a tic-tac-toe play for a name stop him.

Brazenly, he stepped beyond the haze of the fake wall and tapped the guard on the shoulder. The man jumped in surprise and whipped around.

“You! How did you … Don't move, kid. I'm going to call this in, and then we're taking you to the doctor for a little chat.” He reached for his earpiece.

“I'm afraid,” said Fisher, “that we're experiencing tech-nical difficulties.”