“I can’t decide whether this is a military base or a ghetto,” Al Smith said, as I stepped through the door. The general stood across the room fanning himself with a folder.
We did not have luxuries like ceiling fans in Clonetown. When the days got hot, we could either leave our quarters or stay in and bake; those were the only choices. This was not an especially hot evening, but the humidity had taken its toll on General Smith. His blouse was opened at the collar, and sweat stains showed under his arms. It might have been the heat or simply his girth, but Smith made a wheezing noise as he breathed; I heard it clearly even over the loud sobbing of the woman on my bed.
“General Smith,” I said without saluting. The bastard did not deserve a salute; his bullshit testimony was the reason I was in this detention camp.
“What’s that?” I pointed to the pile of clothes and hair slumped on my rack.
“You don’t recognize her?” Smith asked. “I thought every man in the Unified Authority knew who she was.”
Now that he mentioned it, I did recognize her. Maybe she had washed the red tint out of her coffee-grounds-colored hair, or maybe it only showed in better light. All of the style had gone out of her locks, which now hung in a mop over her face, and shoulders. Misery had whipped the haughty-movie-star glamour out of Ava, but I did recognize her. She sat on the edge of my rack doubled over as if she were sick, her shoulders heaving convulsively with her sobs.
“The actress,” I said, pretending not to know her name.
“Ava Gardner, the galaxy’s most glamorous clone,” Smith said.
“Glamorous” she wasn’t. It was as if somebody had stripped the magic out of the actress, and all that was left was a sweaty, weeping mess. Ava Gardner had become something less than she seemed at the New Year’s Eve party. She had become human. Wearing a plain cotton blouse, white with no frills, she seemed far removed from the arrogant beauty I had seen the night of the party.
“What is she doing here?” I asked.
“What do you think she’s doing here?” General Smith was an important man, but he was also an old man who was hot and uncomfortable in the Texas heat. When they are hot and uncomfortable, old men often become cranky. Smith seemed ready to explode. “She’s a clone, Harris. This is a camp for clones. She’s moving in.”
“I thought that was just Hollywood gossip,” I said.
“Some of Mo Newcastle’s officers found the lab where they built her on New Copenhagen. It was hidden in a movie studio.”
“So you’re sticking a lone woman in a camp with thirty thousand men?” I asked. “Why not just take her out and shoot her?” General or not, I would show this man no respect.
Ava heard my question and moaned as if I’d kicked her in the gut. Until that moment, I thought she might have been drugged.
Smith laughed, and the corners of his dark eyes crinkled. A faint smile formed on his face as he said, “If clones are so dangerous, maybe it’s a good thing …”
“She wouldn’t be any safer with the natural-borns at the fort, and you know it,” I said.
“You’re right,” Smith admitted, the smile vanishing beneath his mustache.
“So what do you expect me to do with her?” I asked.
“That’s up to you, Harris. General Mooreland asked me to get her here safely. As you can see, I kept my end of the bargain.”
“General Mooreland? They promoted Ted Mooreland to general?” I asked, feeling both envious and disgusted. The last time I had seen that bastard, Ava was tucked under his shoulder, and he was a newly minted colonel.
Smith brightened and the crinkles returned to the corners of his eyes. “I’ve got good news for you, Harris. You’ll be back on active duty by the end of the month. In fact, you’re about to receive a promotion as well. General Glade cleared you to receive your second bar effective next week.” Having two bars on my collar points would make me a captain. “And that’s just for openers. We’ve got big plans for you.”
I heard the words, but I did not trust them. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Smith said, sounding amused. “Let’s head over to Fort Bliss. We’ll find ourselves a nice air-conditioned office where we can discuss your orders in more detail.”
“What about her?” I said, pointing to the crumpled heap of dress and hair that had finally passed out on my rack.
“I can leave a couple of men to watch her if you want,” Smith said; “but from what I hear, this gal can take care of herself.”
Something had to give. The humidity and heat, along with the stillness of the night, turned the air into vapor. Sweat rolled down my sides. General Smith, “the old man of the Air Force,” looked like he was suffocating. As we walked out to his sedan, a cloud broke somewhere in the distance. I didn’t see the flash of lightning, but the extended clap of thunder shook the walls of the temporary tin shed I now called home.
“Sounds like rain,” Smith commented, as his driver opened the car door for him.
“Maybe,” I said as I let myself in behind the driver. “From what I’ve seen, we get more lightning than rain out here.”
The first jagged streak of lightning looked like a hairline crack stretching between the earth and sky. It danced and vanished off to the west. Two seconds of thunder followed.
The air remained still. We were in the muggy doldrums.
“Do you get a lot of lightning out here?” Smith asked.
“Maybe, I haven’t been here that long,” I said, as another streak of lightning flashed.
“Sleeping in a metal structure during lightning storms, doesn’t that make you nervous?” he asked.
“I’d prefer something made out of brick. You want to call in the order, sir?” I asked.
Smith gave me a cursory chuckle.
“I didn’t think so,” I said.
“Captain Harris, you wouldn’t be here long enough to enjoy it if I did call it in.” He told his driver, “Take us to the admin building over at Bliss.”
“Yes, sir,” said the driver.
Heads appeared in windows as our little convoy traveled through Clonetown. The guards opened the gate, and we drove into the demilitarized zone between our camp and the fort. Sheet lightning flashed in the sky just beyond Fort Bliss, illuminating the low-slung silhouettes of buildings and a water tower.
“Have you seen the new recruits?” Smith asked. “What do you think of our new natural-born Army?”
“Promising,” I said in a bored voice. I didn’t feel like making small talk, not with this asshole. Whatever assignment General Smith had for me, it would not be good. It could not be good. I was a military clone, an ugly stepchild of a society that wanted to sweep past indiscretions under the rug for good.
When Congress decided to wash its hands of Liberator clones, it eliminated us through attrition. The military stopped incubating us. The Senate banned us from entering the Orion Arm, and the Pentagon sent us into every combat situation until only a handful of Liberators remained. I wondered if history would repeat itself.
We drove up to the guard post at Fort Bliss. Rain began to fall as the guard saluted and opened the gate. It fell in thimble-sized bombs that crashed into the windshield and burst. The thudding of the rain on the roof of the car sounded like suppressed machine-gun fire. With the rain banging against the tin roof of my billet, Ava must have thought she was trapped inside a snare drum.
The rain fell so hard that deep puddles formed by the time we reached the administration building. More lightning flashed, and thunder followed only a second or two behind.
“Nice weather they have here,” Smith said.
“Yeah, it’s a real vacation spot.”
“Like I said, you’ll be out of here before you know it.”
Moments later, the storm had already poured itself dry.
Compared to Clonetown with its tin-and-tent architecture, Fort Bliss looked like a civilization meant to endure. It had brick buildings, tree-lined streets, and grass-covered lawns. Our car pulled up to a two-story building that could have passed for an old-fashioned schoolhouse. Lights blazed in the windows, and guards waited just inside the doors.