Robert Silverberg - Short Stories Vol 2

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Ltd..

• "Looking for the Fountain" First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1992.

1957, 1985 by Agberg, Ltd..

• "Sailing to Byzantium" First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1985.

Agberg, Ltd..

• "The Pope of the Chimps" First published in Perpetual Light, ed. Alan Ryan, Warner Books, 1982.

ISBN 1-59062-528-5

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or

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fines or imprisonment.

Introduction

Few people would argue with the proposition that Robert Silverberg stands among the greatest science

fiction writers of the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century. His career spans over forty years, and

continues in full force today. Indeed, many critics feel Silverberg's recent work is among the most

compelling of his entire career.

This collection presents a sample of Robert Silverberg's short works. They span many different segments

of his career, and include some of his most acclaimed stories, such as the Nebula Award winning and

Hugo nominated story “Passengers,” the Nebula Award winning “Sailing to Byzantium,” and the Nebula

Award nominated “Pope of the Chimps.” Four more excellent short works, spanning from 1957 to

1995, round out this diverse collection.

We hope you find it as interesting as we did to compare these stories. They follow Silverberg's

progression from a promising young writer in the 1950s to a clear master of the form in the 60s, to his

ascension through the 70s and 80s, to a towering figure in the field of science fiction in the 90s and today.

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In the Clone Zone

THE AIRPORT was very new. It had a bright, shiny, major-world-capital feel, and for a moment

Mondschein thought the plane had landed in Rio or Buenos Aires by mistake. But then he noticed the

subtle signs of deception, the tackiness around the edges, the spongy junk behind the gleaming facades,

and knew that he must indeed be in Tierra Alvarado.

“Senor Mondschein?” a deep male voice said, while he was still marching down the corridors that led to

the immigration lounge. He turned and saw a short, wide-shouldered man in a beribboned green-and-red

comic-opera uniform which he remembered after a moment was that of the Guardia de la Patria, the

Maximum Leader's elite security corps. “I am Colonel Aristegui,” he said. “You may come with me,

please. It was a good journey? You are not overly fatigued?”

Aristegui didn't bother with passport formalities. He led Mondschein through a steel doorway marked

SEGURIDAD, INGRESO PROHIBIDO which admitted them to a series of bewildering passageways

and catwalks and spiral staircases. There was no veneer back here: everything was severely functional,

gunmetal-gray walls, exposed rivets and struts, harsh unshielded light-fixtures that looked a century old.

Here it comes, Mondschein thought: this man will take me to some deserted corner of the airstrip and

touch his laser pistol to my temple and they will bury me in an unmarked grave, and that will be that, five

minutes back in the country and I am out of the way forever.

The final visa approval had come through only the day before, the fifth of June, and just hours later

Mondschein had boarded the Aero Alvarado flight that would take him in a single soaring supersonic arc

nonstop from Zurich to his long-lost homeland on the west coast of South America. Mondschein hadn't

set foot there in twenty-five years, not since the Maximum Leader had expelled him for life as a sort of

upside-down reward for his extraordinary technological achievements: for it was Mondschein, at the turn

of the century, who had turned his impoverished little country into the unchallenged world leader in the

field of human cloning.

In those days it had been called the Republic of the Central Andes. The Maximum Leader had put it

together out of parts of the shattered nations which in an earlier time, when things were very different in

the world, had been known as Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. During his years of exile in Europe Mondschein

had always preferred to speak of himself as a Peruvian, whenever he spoke of himself at all. But now the

name of the country was Tierra Alvarado and its airline was Aero Alvarado and its capital was Ciudad

Alvarado, Alvarado this and Alvarado that wherever you looked. That was all right, a fine old South

American tradition. You expected a Maximum Leader to clap his own name on everything, to hang his

portrait everywhere, to glorify himself in every imaginable way.

Alvarado had carried things a little further than most, though, by having two dozen living replicas of

himself created, the better to serve his people. That had been Mondschein's final task as a citizen of the

Republic, the supreme accomplishment of his art: to produce two dozen AAA Class clones of the

Maximum Leader. which could function as doubles for Alvarado at the dreary meetings of the Popular

Assembly, stand in for him at the interminable National Day of Liberation parades, and keep would-be

assassins in a constant state of befuddlement. They were masterpieces, those two dozen Alvarados—all

but indistinguishable from the original, the only AAA Class clones ever made. With their aid the

Maximum Leader was able to maintain unblinking vigilance over the citizens of Tierra

Alvarado—twenty-four hours a day.

But Mondschein didn't care how many Alvarados he might be coming home to. Twenty, fifty, a hundred,

what did that matter? Singular or plural, Alvarado still held the entire country in his pocket, as he had for

the past generation and a half. That was the essential situation. Everything else was beside the point, a

mere detail. To Mondschein the clones made no real difference at all.

In fact there was very little that did make a difference to Mondschein these days. He was getting old and

slept badly most of the time and his days were an agony of acute homesickness. He wanted to speak his

native language again, Spanish as it had been spoken in Peru and not the furry Spanish of Spain, and he

wanted to breathe the sharp air of the high mountains and eat papas a la huancaina and anticuchos and a

proper ceviche and maybe see the ancient walls of Cuzco once more and the clear dark water of Lake

Titicaca. It didn't seem likely to him that Alvarado had granted him a pardon after all this time simply for

the sake of luring him back to face a firing squad. The safe conduct, which Mondschein hadn't in any way

solicited but had been overjoyed to receive, was probably sincere: a sign that the old tyrant had

mellowed at last. And if not, well, at least he would die on his native soil, which somehow seemed better

than dying in Bern, Toulon, Madrid, Stockholm, Prague, wherever, any of the innumerable cities in which

he had lived during his long years of exile.

* * * *

They emerged from the building into a bleak, deserted rear yard where empty baggage carts were strewn

around like the fossil carcasses of ancient beasts, a perfect place for a quiet execution. The dry cool wind

of early winter was sweeping a dark line of dust across the bare pavement. But to Mondschein's

astonishment an immense sleek black limousine materialized from somewhere almost at once and two

more Guardia men hopped out, saluting madly. Aristegui beckoned him into the rear of the vast car.

“Your villa has been prepared for you, Dr. Mondschein. You are the guest of the nation, you understand.

When you are refreshed the Minister of Scientific Development requests your attendance at the Palace of

Government, perhaps this afternoon.” He flicked a finger and a mahogany panel swung open, revealing a

well-stocked bar. “You will have a cognac? It is the rare old. Or champagne, perhaps? A whiskey?

Everything imported, the best quality.”

“I don't drink,” said Mondschein.

“Ah,” said Aristegui uncertainly, as though that were a fact that should have been on his prep-sheet and

unaccountably hadn't been. Or perhaps he had simply been looking forward to nipping into the rare old

himself, which now would be inappropriate. “Well, then. You are comfortable? Not too warm, not too

cool?” Mondschein nodded and peered out the window. They were on an imposing-looking highway

now, with a city of pastel-hued high-rise buildings visible off to the side. He didn't recognize a thing.

Alvarado had built this city from scratch in the empty highland plains midway between the coast and the

lake and it had been only a few years old when Mondschein had last seen it, a place of raw gouged

hillsides and open culverts and half-paved avenues with stacks of girders and sewer pipes and cable reels

piled up everywhere. From a distance, at least, it looked quite splendid now. But as they left the

beautifully landscaped road that had carried them from the airport to the city and turned off into the urban

residential district he saw that the splendor was, unsurprisingly, a fraud of the usual Alvarado kind: the

avenues had been paved, all right, but they were reverting to nature again, cracking and upheaving as the

swelling roots of the bombacho trees and the candelero palms that had been planted down the central

dividers ripped them apart. The grand houses of pink and green and azure stucco were weather-stained

and crumbling, and Mondschein observed ugly random outcroppings of tin-roofed squatter-shacks

sprouting like mushrooms in the open fields behind them, where elegant gardens briefly had been. And

this was the place he had longed so desperately to behold one last time before he died. He thought of his

comfortable little apartment in Bern and felt a pang.

But then the car swung off onto a different road, into the hills to the east which even in the city's earliest

days had been the magnificently appointed enclave of the privileged and powerful. Here there was no

sign of decay. The gardens were impeccable, the villas spacious and well kept. Mondschein remembered

this district well. He had lived in it himself before Alvarado had found it expedient to give him a one-way

ticket abroad. Names he hadn't thought of in decades came to the surface of his mind: this was the

Avenida de las Flores, this was Calle del Sol, this was Camino de los Toros, this was Calle de los Indios,

and this—this—

He gasped. “Your villa has been prepared for you,” Aristegui had told him at the airport. Guest of the

nation, yes. But Mondschein hadn't thought to interpret Aristegui's words literally. They'd be giving hima

villa,some villa. But the handsome two-story building with the white facade and the red tile roof in front of

which the limousine had halted was in facthis villa, the actual and literal and much-beloved one he had

lived in long ago, until the night when the swarthy little frog-faced officer of the Guardia had come to him

to tell him that he was expelled from the country. He had had to leave everything behind then, his books,

his collection of ancient scientific instruments, his pre-Columbian ceramics, his rack of Italian-made suits

and fine vicuna coats, his pipes, his cello, his family albums, his greenhouse full of orchids, even his dogs.

One small suitcase was all they had let him take with him on the morning flight to Madrid, and from that

day on he had never permitted himself to acquire possessions, but had lived in a simple way, staying

easily within the very modest allowance that the Maximum Leader in his great kindness sent him each

month wherever he might be. And now they had given him back his actual villa. Mondschein wondered

who had been evicted, on how much notice and for what trumped-up cause, to make this building

available to him again after all this time.

All that he had wanted, certainly all that he had expected, was some ordinary little flat in the center of the

city. The thought of returning to the old villa sickened him. There would be too many ghosts roaming in it.

For the first time he wondered whether his impulsive decision to accept Alvarado's astonishing invitation

to return to the country had been a mistake.

“You recognize this house?” Aristegui asked. “You are surprised, are you not? You are amazed with

joy?”

* * * *

They had made no attempt to restore his lost possessions or to undo the changes that had come to the

house since he had lived there. Perhaps such a refinement of cruelty was beyond the Maximum Leader's

imagination, or, more probably, no one had any recollection of what had become of his things after so

many years. It was just as well. He had long since managed to put his collections of antiquities out of his

mind and he had no interest in playing the cello any more, or in smoking pipes. The villa now was

furnished in standard upper-class Peruvian-style comfort of the early years of the century, everything very

safe, very unexceptionable, very familiar, very dull. He was provided with a staff of four, a housekeeper,

a cook, a driver, a gardener. Wandering through the airy rambling house, he felt less pain than he had

anticipated. His spirit was long gone from it; it was just a house. There were caged parrots in the garden

and a white-and-gray cat was slinking about outside as if it belonged there; perhaps it was the cat of the

former resident and had found its way back in the night.

He bathed and rested and had a light lunch. In the afternoon the driver came to him and said, “May I

take you to the Palace of Government now, Senor Dr. Mondschein? The Minister is eager.” The driver

must be a Guardia man also, Mondschein realized. But that was all right. All of it was all right, whatever

they did now.

The Palace of Government hadn't been finished in Mondschein's time. It was a huge sprawling thing made

of blocks of black stone, fitted together dry-wall fashion to give it a massive pseudo-Inca look, and it

was big enough to have housed the entire bureaucracy of the Roman Empire at its peak. Relays of

functionaries, some in Guardia uniform, some not, led him through gloomy high-vaulted corridors, across

walled courtyards, and up grand and ponderous stone staircases until at last an officious florid-faced

aide-de-camp conducted him into the wing that was the domain of the Ministry of Scientific

Development. Here he passed through a procession of outer offices and finally was admitted to a brightly

lit reception hall lined with somber portraits in oils. He recognized Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci and

guessed that the others were Aristotle, Darwin, Galileo, perhaps Isaac Newton. And in the place of

honor, of course, a grand representation of the Maximum Leader himself, looking down with brooding

intensity.

“His Excellency the Minister,” said the florid aide-de-camp, waving him into an office paneled with dark

exotic woods at the far end of the reception hall. A tall man in an ornately brocaded costume worthy of a

bullfighter rose from a glistening desk to greet him. And unexpectedly Mondschein found himself staring

yet again at the unforgettable face of Diego Alvarado.

One of the clones, Mondschein thought. It had to be.

All the same it felt like being clubbed in the teeth. The Minister of Scientific Development had Alvarado's

hard icy blue eyes, his thin lips, his broad brow, his jutting cleft chin. His smile was Alvarado's cold smile,

his teeth were Alvarado's perfect glistening teeth. He had the coarse curling bangs—graying now—that

gave the Maximum Leader the look of a youthful indomitable Caesar. His lanky body was lean and

gaunt, a dancer's body, and his movements were a dancer's movements, graceful and precise. Seeing him

awoke long-forgotten terrors in Mondschein. And yet he knew that this must be one of the clones. After

that first shock of recognition, something told Mondschein subliminally that he was looking at an example

of his own fine handiwork.

“President Alvarado asks me to convey his warmest greetings,” the clone said. It was Alvarado's voice,

cool and dry. “He will welcome you personally when his schedule permits, but he wishes you to know

that he is honored in the deepest way by your decision to accept his hospitality.”

The aging had worked very well, Mondschein thought. Alvarado would be about seventy now, still

vigorous, still in his prime. There were lines on this man's face in the right places, changes in the lines of

his cheekbones and jaw, exactly as should have happened in twenty-five years.

“It wasn't any decision at all,” Mondschein said. He tried to sound casual. “I was ready and eager to

come back. Your homeland, your native soil, the place where your ancestors lived and died for three

hundred years—as you get older you realize that nothing can ever take its place.”

“I quite understand,” said the clone.

Do you? Mondschein wondered. Your only ancestor is a scrap of cellular material. You were born in a

tissue-culture vat. And yet you quite understand.

I made you, Mondschein thought. I made you.

He said, “Of course the invitation to return came as an immense surprise.”

“Yes. No doubt it did. But the Maximum Leader is a man of great compassion. He felt you had suffered

in exile long enough. One day he said, We have done a great injustice to that man, and now it must be

remedied. So long as Rafael Mondschein y Gonzalez dwells in foreign lands, our soul can never rest. And

so the word went forth to you that all is forgiven, that you were pardoned.”

“Only a man of true greatness could have done such a thing,” said Mondschein.

“Indeed. Indeed.”

Mondschein's crime had been the crime of overachievement. He had built Alvarado's cloning laboratories

to such a level of technical skill that they were the envy of all the world; and when eventually the

anti-cloning zealots in North America and Europe had grown so strident that there was talk of trade

sanctions and the laboratories had to be shut down, Mondschein had become the scapegoat. Alvarado

had proposed to find him guilty of creating vile unnatural abominations, but Mondschein had not been

willing to let them hang such an absurdity around his neck, and in the end he had allowed them to

manufacture supposed embezzlements in his name instead. In return for a waiver of trial he accepted exile

for life. Of course the laboratories had reopened after a while, this time secretly and illicitly, and before

long ten or eleven other countries had started to turn out A and even AA Class clones also and the

industry had become too important to the world economy to allow zealotry to interfere with it any longer;

but Mondschein remained overseas, rotting in oblivion, purposelessly wandering like a wraith from

Madrid to Prague, from Prague to Stockholm, from Stockholm to Marseilles. And now at last the

Maximum Leader in his great compassion had relented.

The Minister said, “You know we have made vast strides in the biological sciences since you last were

here. Once you have had some time to settle in, we will want you to visit our laboratories, which as you

may be aware are once again in legal operation.”

Mondschein was aware of that, yes. Throughout the world Tierra Alvarado was known informally as the

Clone Zone, the place where anyone could go to have a reasonable facsimile manufactured at a

reasonable price. But that was no longer any concern of his.

“I'm afraid that I have very little interest in cloning technology these days,” he said.

The Minister's chilly Alvarado-eyes blazed with sudden heat. “A visit to our laboratories may serve to

reawaken that interest, Dr. Mondschein.”

“I doubt that very much.”

The Minister looked unhappy. “We had hoped quite strongly that you would be willing to share the

benefits of your scientific wisdom with us, doctor. Your response greatly disappoints us.”

Ah. It was all very clear, now, and very obvious. Strange that he hadn't foreseen it.

“I have no scientific wisdom, really,” said Mondschein evenly. “None that would be of any use. I haven't

kept up with the state of the art.”

“There are those who would be pleased to refresh your—”

“I'd much rather prefer to remain in retirement. I'm too old to make any worthwhile contributions.”

Now the thin lips were quirking. “The national interest is in jeopardy, Dr. Mondschein. For the first time

we are challenged by competition from other countries. Genetic technology, you understand, is our

primary source of hard currency. We are not a prosperous land, doctor. Our cloning industry is our one

great asset, which you created for us virtually singlehandedly. Now that it faces these new threats, surely

we may speak to your sense of patriotism, if not your one-time passion for scientific achievement, in

asking you—” The Minister broke off abruptly, as though seeing his answer in Mondschein's expression.

In a different tone he said, “No doubt you are tired after your long journey, doctor. I should have

allowed you more time to rest. We'll continue these discussions at a later date, perhaps.”

He turned away. The florid aide-de-camp appeared as though from the air and showed Mondschein out.

His driver was waiting in the courtyard.

Mondschein spent most of the night trying to sleep, but it was difficult for him, as it usually was. And

there was a special problem this night, for his mind was still on Swiss time, and what was the night in

Tierra Alvarado was in Switzerland the beginning of a new day. His thoughts went ticking ceaselessly on,

hour after hour. Sleep finally took him toward dawn, like a curtain falling, like the blade of a guillotine.

* * * *

Colonel Aristegui of the Guardia de la Patria came to him, phoning first for an appointment, saying the

matter was urgent. Mondschein assumed that this would be the next attempt to put pressure on him to

take charge of the cloning labs, but that did not appear to be what was on Aristegui's mind. The

wide-shouldered little man looked remarkably ill at ease; he paced, he fidgeted, he mopped his sweating

forehead with a lace handkerchief. Then he said, as if forcing the words out, “This is extremely delicate.”

“Is it?”

Aristegui studied him with care. “You control yourself extremely well, doctor. In particular I mark your

restraint in regard to the President. You speak of your gratitude to him for allowing you to return. But

inwardly you must hate him very much.”

“No,” Mondschein said. “It's all ancient history. I'm an old man now. What does any of it matter any

more?”

“He took away the scientific work that was your life. He forced you to leave the land of your birth.”

“If you think you're going to get me to launch into an attack on him, you're totally mistaken. What's past

is past and I'm happy to be home again and that's all there is to it.”

Aristegui stared at his brilliantly gleaming patent-leather shoes. Then he sighed and raised his head like a

diver coming up to the surface and said, “The country is dying, doctor.”

“Is it?”

“Of the Latin American disease. The strong man comes, he sees the evils and injustices and remedies

them, and then he stays and stays and stays untilhe is the evils and the injustices. President Alvarado has

ruled here for thirty-five years. He drains the treasury for his palaces; he ignores what must be done to

preserve and sustain. He is our great burden, our great curse. It is time for him to step aside. Or else be

thrust aside.”

Mondschein's eyes widened. “You're trying to draw me into some sort of conspiracy? You must be out

of your mind.”

“I risk my life telling you this.”

“Yes. You do. And I risk my life listening.”

“You are essential to our success.Essential. You must help us.”

“Look,” said Mondschein, “if Alvarado simply wants to do away with me, he doesn't have to bother with

anything as elaborate as this. Nobody in the world cares whether I live or die. It isn't necessary to

inveigle me into a fantastic nonexistent plot on his life. He can just have me shot. All right? All right?”

“This is not a trap. As God is my witness, I am not here as part of a scheme to ensnare you. I beg for

your assistance. If you wish, report me to the authorities, and I will be tortured and the truth will come

out and I will be executed, and then you will know that I was honest with you.”

Wearily Mondschein said, “What is all this about?”

“You possess the ability to distinguish between the brothers of Alvarado and Alvarado himself.”

“The brothers?”

“The clones. There is a secret method, known only to you, that allows you to tell the true Alvarado from

the false.”

“Don't be silly.”

“It is so. You need not pretend. I have access to very high sources.”

Mondschein shrugged. “For the sake of argument let's say that it's so. What then?”

“When we aim our blow at Alvarado, we want to be certain we are assassinating the real one.”

“Yes. Of course you do.”

“You can guide our hand. He often appears in public, but no one knows whether it is really he, or one of

the brothers. And if we strike down one of the brothers, thinking we have killed the true Alvarado—”

“Yes,” Mondschein said. “I see the problem. But assuming that I'm able to tell the difference, and I'm not

conceding that I can, what makes you think I'd want to get mixed up in your plot? What do I stand to

gain from it, other than useless revenge on a man who did me harm a very long time ago? Will his death

give me back my life? No, I simply want to live out my last few years in peace. Kill Alvarado without me,

if you want to kill him. If you're not sure whether you're killing the right one, kill them all. Kill them one by

one until there are none at all left.”

“I could kill you,” Aristegui said. “Right now. I should. After what I have told you, you own my life.”

Again Mondschein shrugged. “Then kill me. For whatever good it'll do you. I'm not going to inform on

you.”

“Nor cooperate with me.”

“Neither one nor the other.”

“All you want is to live in peace,” said Aristegui savagely. “But how do you know you will? Alvarado has

asked you to work for him again, and you have refused.” He held up a hand. “Yes, yes, I know that. I

will not kill you, though I should. But he might, though he has no reason to. Think about that, Senor

Doctor.”

He rose and glared at Mondschein a moment, and left without another word.

Mondschein's body clock had caught up with Tierra Alvarado time by this time. But that night, once

again, he lay until dawn in utterly lucid wakefulness before exhaustion at last brought him some rest. It

was as though sleep were a concept he had never quite managed to understand.

* * * *

The next summons came from Alvarado himself.

The Presidential Palace, which Mondschein remembered as a compact, somewhat austere building in

vaguely Roman style, had expanded in the course of a quarter of a century into an incomprehensible

mazelike edifice that seemed consciously intended to rival Versailles in ostentatious grandeur. The Hall of

Audience was a good sixty meters long, with rich burgundy draperies along the walls and thick blood-red

carpeting. There was a marble dais at the far end where the Maximum Leader sat enthroned like an

emperor. Dazzling sunlight flooded down on him through a dome of shimmering glass set in the ceiling.

Mondschein wondered if he was supposed to offer a genuflection.

There were no guards in the room, only the two of them. But security screens in the floor created an

invisible air-wall around the dais. Mondschein found himself forced to halt by subtle pressure when he

was still at least fifteen meters short of the throne. Alvarado came stiffly to his feet and they stood facing

each other in silence for a long moment.

It seemed anticlimactic, this confrontation at last. Mondschein was surprised to discover that he felt none

of the teeth-on-edge uneasiness that the man had always been able to engender in him. Perhaps having

seen the clone-Alvarado earlier had taken the edge off the impact.

Alvarado said, “You have found all the arrangements satisfactory so far, I hope, doctor?”

“In the old days you called me Rafael.”

“Rafael, yes. It was so long ago. How good it is to see you again, Rafael. You look well.”

“As do you.”

“Yes. Thank you. Your villa is satisfactory, Rafael?”

“Quite satisfactory,” said Mondschein. “I look forward to a few last years of quiet retirement in my native

country.”

“So I am told,” Alvarado said.

He seemed overly formal, weirdly remote, hardly even human. In the huge hall his crisp, cool voice had a

buzzing androidal undertone that Mondschein found unfamiliar. Possibly that was an atmospheric

diffraction effect caused by the security screens. But then it occurred to Mondschein that this too might

be one of the clones. He stared hard, trying to tell, trying to call on the intuitive sense that once had made

it possible for him to tell quite easily, even without running the alpha-wave test. The AAA Class clones

had been intended to be indistinguishable from the original to nine decimal places, but nevertheless when

you collapsed the first twenty or thirty years of a man's life into the three-year accelerated-development

period of the cloning process you inevitably lost something, and Mondschein had always been able to

detect the difference purely subjectively, at a single glance. Now, though, he wasn't sure. It had been

simple enough to see that the Alvarado who had greeted him in the Ministry of Scientific Development

was a replica, but here, at this distance, in this room that resonated with the presence of the Maximum

Leader, there were too many ambiguities and uncertainties.

He said, “The Minister explained to me that the national genetic laboratories are facing heavy competition

from abroad, that you want me to step in and pull things together. But I can't do it. My technical

knowledge is hopelessly out of date. I'm simply not familiar with current work in the field. If I had known

ahead of time that the reason you had decided to let me come home was to that you wanted me to go

back into the labs, I never would have—”

“Forget about the labs,” Alvarado said. “That isn't why I invited you to return.”

“But the Minister of Scientific Development said—”

“Let the Minister of Scientific Development say anything he wishes. The Minister has his agenda and I

have mine, doctor.” He had dropped the first-name talk, Mondschein noticed. “Is it true that there is a

method of determining whether a given individual is an authentic human or merely a highly accurate

clone?”

Mondschein hesitated. Something was definitely wrong here.

“Yes,” he said finally. “There is. You know that there is.”

“You are too certain of what I know and what I do not know. Tell me about this method, doctor.”

He was more and more certain that he was talking to one of the clones. Alvarado must be staging one of

his elaborate charades.

“It involves matching brain rhythms. When I created the AAA Class Alvarado clones, I built a

recognition key into them that would enable me, using a simple EEG hookup, to distinguish their

brain-wave patterns from yours. I did this at your request, so that in the case of a possible coup d-'etat

attempt by one of the clones you'd be able to unmask the pretender. The method uses my own brain

waves as the baseline. If you jack my EEG output into a comparator circuit and overlay it with yours, the

two patterns will conflict, the way any two patterns from different human beings will. But if my EEG gets

matched against one of your clones, the pattern will drop immediately into alpha rhythms, as if we're both

under deep hypnosis. It amazes me that you've forgotten this.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you're not

Alvarado at all, but simply one of his—what's the word?—one of his brothers.”

“Very good, doctor.”

“Am I right?”

“Come closer and see for yourself.”

“I can't. The security screens—”

“I have switched them off.”

Mondschein approached. There was no air resistance. When he was five meters away he felt the

unmistakable click of recognition.

“Yes, I am right. Even without an EEG test. You're a clone, aren't you?”

“That is so.”

“Is the real Alvarado too busy for me today, or is it that he doesn't have the courage to look me in the

eye?”

“I will tell you something very strange, which is a great secret,” said the clone. “The real Alvarado is no

longer in command here. For the past several months I have run the government of Tierra Alvarado. No

one here is aware of this, no one at all. No one except you, now.”

For a moment Mondschein was unable to speak.

“You seriously expect me to believe that?” he said at last.

The clone managed a glacial smile. “During the years of your absence there have been several internal

upheavals in Tierra Alvarado. On three occasions assassination plots resulted in the deaths of Alvarado

clones who were playing the role of the Maximum Leader at public ceremonies. Each time, the death of

the clone was successfully covered up. The conspirators were apprehended and things continued as if

nothing had occurred. On the fourth such occasion, an implosion grenade was thrown toward the

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Fictionwisewww.fictionwise.comCopyright©information:•"IntheCloneZone"FirstPublishedinPlayboyMagazine,March1993.Copyright©1993AgbergLtd..•"LookingfortheFountain"FirstpublishedinIsaacAsimov'sScienceFictionMagazine,May1992.Copyright©1992Agberg,LTD.•"WorldofaThousandColours"FirstpublishedinSuperScienceF...

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Robert Silverberg - Short Stories Vol 2

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