The Big Sheep (29 page)

A moment later a bank of fluorescent lights flickered on overhead. We were in a small room completely bare of furnishings except for a bed up against the far wall. Lying on the bed, turned away from us, was a slightly built person with a clean-shaven head.

“It would be better if you left her alone,” said Allebach.

“One more word,” I said, “and you're joining Shorty in the closet. Keane, watch the esteemed doctor. And keep an eye on the door.”

I holstered my gun and went to the bed. As I approached, I could see that it was definitely Priya—or one of her clones; it was impossible to tell. She appeared to be breathing.

 

TWENTY-FIVE

I put my hand gently on her shoulder. “Priya,” I said quietly. She didn't stir. I shook her slightly. “Priya,” I said a little louder. “My name is Blake Fowler. I work with Erasmus Keane. We've come to get you out of here.”

Still she didn't stir.

I shook her harder. “Priya! Wake up!”

She sighed and rolled onto her back. For a moment her eyelids fluttered open, and I thought her eyes fixed on me. But then her pupils rolled back into her head, and her eyes closed. She didn't look well. She looked tired and gaunt, and several years older than the other Priyas.

“I'm going to have to carry her out,” I said. “Bring Allebach over here.”

Keane prodded Allebach toward the bed, and I picked up Priya, throwing her over my left shoulder in a fireman's carry. With my right hand, I jerked the sheet off the bed and handed it to Keane. “Tie his hands with this. Shove the pillowcase into his mouth. We need to get out of here. Allebach, hands behind your back.” I drew my gun and held it on Allebach so Keane could tie him up.

“We need to get the sheep,” said Keane, wrapping the sheet around Allebach's wrists.

“Fuck the sheep,” I said, and immediately regretted it. “I mean, we need to forget about the sheep. Priya is a human being. She's our priority. We get her out and then go back for the sheep.”

Keane shook his head. “You take Priya to Roy. I'm going after the sheep.” He had finished tying Allebach's hands and was working on getting the pillowcase off. I was wishing he would hurry the hell up, because Priya was getting heavy.

“Keane, that's crazy,” I said. “You're going to get yourself—”

Behind me, I heard the door open. I spun around in time to see a man in body armor entering the room. It was my old pal Brian, and he'd gotten his hands on another nine-millimeter. The grin on his face told me we'd walked into a trap.

I set Priya down and gave Allebach a kick in the seat of his pants. As he stumbled forward, I grabbed the long end of the sheet hanging from his wrists. He jerked to a halt with a yelp, his arms bending awkwardly behind him.

Two more men came in after Brian, pointing Herstal F2800s at Keane and me. Belgian assault rifles—a nice touch. Keane pointed his gun back at them. I had mine on Allebach because I figured our only chance was if he was worth more to them than Priya.

“Perhaps,” said a woman's voice behind them, “I can help solve your quandary.” Selah Fiore stepped into view.

“Drop your guns,” I said, “or Dr. Allebach gets a bullet in his head.”

Selah shook her head. “That would be a shame,” she said. “Especially considering the fact that you already killed my other chief scientist, Dr. Guryev. Fortunately for me, though, I don't need Dr. Allebach anymore. In fact, today was to be his last day working for me. He's retiring.”

“Please,” Allebach pleaded. “I was going to move to Belize with my girlfriend. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

Selah smirked slightly at this, and then turned back to Keane and me. “Put down your guns and we can talk about you two getting out of here alive,” she said.

“Bullshit,” I said. “This whole operation depends on Dr. Allebach. We know about his memory-transfer theories, how you created clones of Priya and gave them her memories. You can't do that without him.”

“Actually,” said Selah, “I can. You're a bit too late, gentlemen. That was by design, of course. I wouldn't have let you get this close to either Dr. Allebach or Bryn if I still needed them. As you can see, though, Bryn is used up. She'll be dead before morning.”

Behind me, Priya—that is, Bryn—lay where I'd left her, not moving. Her breathing was quick and shallow.

Keane lowered his gun. “Forget it, Fowler,” he said. “We're beaten.”

I held my gun on Allebach for a moment longer, but realized there was no point. If Selah didn't need Allebach any longer, threatening him was useless. Hell, she'd probably kill him herself as soon as she had the chance. Maybe that was what the smirk was about. I let go of the sheet, and Allebach stumbled toward Selah. Brian stepped forward and disarmed us. I wanted to smack the stupid grin off his face.

“What the hell did you do to her?” I asked, looking at Priya. “Lobotomize her? Suck her memories, her personality, her humanity, right out of her head?”

“What I did,” said Selah, “is save her.”

Behind her, Dr. Allebach was struggling to get his hands free from the sheet. Nobody seemed interested in helping him.

“Save her from what? A normal life? Being human?”

Selah shook her head. “Bryn Jhaveri was never going to have a normal life. She was destined to be a star. More than a star, even. She was destined to be a goddess, the embodiment of humanity's hopes, fears, and desires. But deification comes with a price. It was too much for her. Too much for any human being to take.”

“Because you demanded too much from her,” I said. “Because you wouldn't let her be a human being.”

“I'm the only reason she lasted as long as she did,” Selah said. “Do you really believe the solution to Bryn's problems is to treat her like she's just another nobody and hope she doesn't figure out she's special? You think she's paranoid now? Try telling a goddess she's a nobody, that she's just like everybody else. Lie to her every day, build up an elaborate illusion to explain why men obsess over her, why people she barely knows fall in love with her. How long do you think that would last?”

“Maybe if you hadn't carved her up, made her into somebody's idea of an irresistible sex symbol…”

Selah sighed heavily. “You're missing the point, Mr. Fowler. I didn't create Priya Mistry. I saw Priya Mistry in Bryn Jhaveri, the way Michelangelo saw
David
in a block of marble. If I hadn't made Bryn Jhaveri beautiful, she would have been just a freak. She was never going to fit in anywhere but Hollywood. There's no place in our society for remarkable plain women. By making Bryn Jhaveri into Priya Mistry, I allowed her to have something like a normal life, at least for a while. I refuse to apologize for that.”

“She never had a normal life,” I said. “You used her, built an artificial reality around her. It drove her crazy.”

“No,” said Keane.

I turned to Keane. “You're not seriously taking Selah's side.”

“Not at all,” said Keane. “Selah made clones of Bryn Jhaveri in order to capitalize on her investment, without regard to Bryn's suffering, which I think we can agree is morally reprehensible. However, Selah is right about one thing: the clones weren't driven crazy by their circumstances. They went crazy
despite
their circumstances. As I said before, Bryn's paranoia didn't arise from her observance of the conspiracy. It happened the other way around. Bryn's paranoia made the conspiracy necessary.”

Selah nodded approvingly.

“How the hell do you figure that?” I ask.

“Bryn Jhaveri always knew there was something different about her,” said Keane. “She never fit in, anywhere she went. People acted strangely around her, and she couldn't figure out why. It made her neurotic, paranoid. She was desperate for something to change, for somebody to make sense of what she was going through. So when Selah told her she was special, that she was destined to be a star, Bryn wanted to believe her, and to make that idea a reality. She agreed to become Priya Mistry. Agreed to the surgeries, the gene therapy … and even the clones, probably.”

“So it's true,” I said. “There weren't any other actresses. You didn't modify other women to make them look like Priya. You made clones of the original.”

“Correct,” said Selah. “I apologize for misleading you, but you have to understand that cloning human beings is illegal. I thought it better to lie, given the circumstances.”

“And Bryn knew about it?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Selah. “She didn't care. She was willing to do anything to have her uniqueness confirmed, even if it meant making copies of her. Ironic, I suppose.”

“But once it was done,” said Keane, “the clones couldn't deal with their new reality—the idea that there were others of them out there. So Selah's people manipulated their memories, made each of them believe they were unique.”

“That's right,” said Selah. “And spent a great deal of money and effort creating an entire reality around each of them.”

“A padded room,” I said. “With lots of nice scenery.”

“Basically, yes,” said Selah. “It was the best place for them. The only place for them.”

“If you hadn't created them, you wouldn't have needed to put them in padded rooms.”

“True,” said Selah. “But we put a lot of money into Priya. We needed the clones to maximize the return on our investment. Without them, we couldn't have justified the expense. So you see, this really was the best possible option for everyone. Especially considering the clones' short life-span.”

“Because of the artificial aging, you mean,” said Keane. “They burn out quickly.”

“In part,” said Selah. “After a few months, the clones begin to show their age. We've never been able to fully reverse the process, so eventually the clones have to be … retired.”

“The word is
murdered
,” I said. I was somewhat gratified to have had my initial impression of Selah Fiore born out: she was a complete psychopath.

Selah shrugged. “Their physical bodies are destroyed, yes. But the core problem is more fundamental. No matter how convincing we make the illusion, eventually the paranoia takes over. The clones go crazy, generally much sooner than their bodies wear out.”

“So then what?” asked Keane. “What do you do with them once the neurosis has progressed beyond manageability?” Keane seemed more fascinated than horrified.

“We wipe their memories,” said Allebach, stepping forward. I'd almost forgotten he was there. At some point he'd evidently managed to get his hands free and remove the pillowcase out of his mouth. “Then we start fresh, same as we do for the new clones. Transfer Bryn's memories to the clone. With some adjustments, of course. We wipe her memories of this place, for starters, and use an artificial memory programming process I developed to fill in the blanks—things that happened after we began duplicating Bryn. This process is different for each clone, depending on her circumstances. They each have to be programmed to know and trust their own bodyguards, for instance.”

“Why are you telling us all this?” I asked. I turned to Selah. “Why did you bring us here? That was your plan, right? Lure us to your secret hideout?”

Selah smiled. “I don't like loose ends,” she said. “To answer your first question, I suppose I feel you have a right to know, after all you've been through.”

“I guess that means you're going to kill us,” I said.

“I don't kill when I can avoid it. People disappearing … it's messy. No, my plan is to wipe your memories of Priya Mistry and this place and then let you go.”

I couldn't bring myself to thank her for this kindness.

Keane didn't seem to even notice what she'd said. He was deep in thought, still trying to solve some element of the mystery. “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

“We first cloned Bryn two years ago,” said Selah. “We ordinarily keep two or three of them active at any one time. There have been twenty-eight clones altogether, including the two who are currently active.”

“You said the paranoia becomes overwhelming after a few weeks,” said Keane. “They all suffer from it?”

“Every one,” said Selah.

“But the clones are perfect copies of the original, Bryn Jhaveri,” he said, looking at the woman lying unconscious on the bed. “Which means she was insane as well.”

“Yes,” said Allebach. “She had the same inherent flaw as the rest of them. Every ten weeks we erase her most recent memories and start over. We used to tell her she was taking a break from filming to relieve stress. That's why we bought this resort initially. But we've found it makes little difference what we tell her. Ten weeks later she's a basket case, and we have to wipe her memory again. We've tried to pinpoint the source of the psychosis, modify her memories to prevent the meltdown, but nothing works. Bryn was on the verge of a psychotic break when Selah found her, and she's going to have that break no matter what we do. It's hardwired into her brain.”

“Every ten weeks for two years,” said Keane. “That's over ten resets. That can't be good for a person.”

“It isn't,” said Allebach. “Between the resets and the memory transfer process we have to go through every time we activate another clone, her brain is experiencing a lot of trauma. She's begun to have seizures, and we almost lost her last week to an aneurism. The trauma also made her mental state worse, exacerbating her psychosis. Even at the beginning of a reset, we had to keep her on high doses of antianxiety and antipsychotic drugs, and she's begun to experience symptoms of dementia. She was aging nearly as fast as the clones.”

“Was?”
I asked.

“It's not a problem anymore,” said Selah.