Constance (Constance #1)(82)
“So, what now?” Con asked.
“Back to DC.”
“What’s in DC?”
“My lab. So we can get to the bottom of what is happening,” Dr. Fenton said.
“You rushed down with ten million to buy me back from the CoA? That’s some next-level customer service, Brooke.”
“Yes, obviously there is more at stake than that. But it all starts with your head. Gaddis is using your head as a hard drive. We knew theoretically it was possible, but it seems he has taken it from the hypothetical to the practical.”
Con let Fenton keep talking, not bothering to tell her that Gaddis had already explained all this. She was curious if the two versions would differ. They didn’t.
“So what do you think is in there?” Con asked when Fenton was done.
“There’s no way to know for sure. Your aunt was working on a variety of new applications of cloning. She really was quite brilliant. Everything from enhanced consciousness to treatments for dementia to cures for a host of genetic brain disorders. Her struggle with Wilson’s disease made that a particularly personal crusade. Any one of them would be worth a fortune on the open market. But you know what I believe it is?” There was an innocence and excitement on her face that Con had never seen before.
“What?”
“Immortality,” Fenton said. “It was your aunt’s dream. What she aspired to—her life’s work—was nothing short of solving death. But she was always limited by the mind-body dilemma. No matter what approach she tried, the consciousness of a sixty-year-old can only be downloaded into a clone that’s genetically and chronologically identical to its original—like for like. Any attempt to download an older consciousness into a younger clone met with catastrophic failure. I think it drove her a little mad toward the end. She knew that when you cut through its sales pitch and artful jargon, all Palingenesis really offered was half measures. A temporary reprieve against what remained the unavoidability of death. No matter how many clones our clients keep, eventually old age claims them as it always had. She felt like a failure. For a long time, I believed that was why she took her own life.”
“You think she solved it,” Con said. The implications were staggering. She wondered whether Franklin Butler would still be happy with his ten million dollars. If Fenton was right, then he’d made the worst deal since the Louisiana Purchase.
“I can’t think of anything else worth the trouble Vernon Gaddis has gone to.”
“Unless it’s you who’s gone to the trouble,” Con countered.
“I know you don’t trust me, but regardless, I believe we can help each other.”
Someone began clapping slowly in the darkness.
A woman’s voice—a weirdly familiar woman’s voice that made every hair on Con’s body stand up—spoke. “Well done, Dr. Fenton.”
They both looked toward the voice. A figure emerged from the gloom like a spirit summoned by an uneasy séance.
“I really didn’t think you were clever enough to figure it out,” the voice said. “Serves me right for underestimating you.”
Then the damnedest thing happened. The figure stepped into the light. In the woman’s hand was a small gun. It was pointed in the general direction of Brooke Fenton, but Con didn’t get the impression it would play favorites.
“Hello, everyone,” Constance D’Arcy said with a sundown smile. “I’m the other shoe.”
PART THREE
THE MOUNTAIN
Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.
—Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Since her revival inside Palingenesis, Con had viewed her own corpse, met the man who would have been her husband, heard her songs sung in a voice that was hers yet not. Again and again and again, she’d been told who she was and who she wasn’t. What she was and what she wasn’t. It had made her question whether she was nothing more than a medical parlor trick fooled by the seamlessness of its own illusion. Her mistake had been in needing the answer to be simple: she was the Con D’Arcy or she wasn’t. A binary yes or no. It had taken a child to remind her that complexity wasn’t necessarily something to fear. A definition of herself, one that allowed her to accept both who she’d been and who she was now, had begun to come into focus.
And then another Constance D’Arcy had strolled out of the dark holding a gun. The punch line to a long, grim joke told by an unsmiling comedian. Fenton wasn’t having an easier time of it. The doctor stood there, mouth agape like someone seeing a dinosaur for the first time in a Steven Spielberg movie. The way a person did when confronted with something they believed impossible.
“Hello, Brooke,” the other Constance D’Arcy said.
The sound of her name jarred Fenton from her bewildered stupor. “How is this possible?”
The other Constance D’Arcy simply shrugged and circled the doctor.
“Answer me!” Fenton demanded. “That son of a bitch built a cloning womb? Where were you created? Do you know how many laws you’ve both broken?”
The other Constance D’Arcy gave her a pitying look. “I’m afraid there isn’t time to play twenty questions. Besides, it doesn’t matter. You won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”