"You know, he sounds exactly like you," she said to Jude. "This is really amazing. There are two of you."
"You don't know the half of it. Anyway, on this island — and he doesn't know where it is, by the way — there's a group of people like himself—"
"The Age Group," put in Skyler.
"Whatever, the age group. And they're raised to uphold science instead of religion, and they undergo strict physical regimens to make them strong and healthy, but basically, they're prisoners. They're not allowed to leave. If they do, they're tracked down by guys who are called Orderlies, who use bloodhounds. And every so often people on the island die."
At this, Tizzie looked again at Skyler, her eyes wide in disbelief.
"But Skyler did manage to escape. And after a couple of weeks in Georgia, he made his way up here, and he tracked me down through a picture in the newspaper, because — as you can see only too well — he looks just like me. And we can't figure out the explanation for that."
Now Tizzie looked at Jude.
"There's one possibility — that he's a relative, or maybe…" Jude hesitated for a second. "Maybe he's even my twin brother."
"But… but," Tizzie was so confused she was stammering. "You didn't have a twin brother when you were young."
"How do you know?"
"You never… talked about it."
"Maybe I had one and just didn't know it. You know — separated at birth."
"Of course, I know. That's my whole field. But it's just too remarkable, too much of a coincidence."
Now, marshaling his argument, Jude talked faster. "Think about it. What do I know about my parents? Practically nothing — except that they were die-hard scientists who belonged to some kind of scientific cult. Maybe they were engaged in some kind of elaborate experiments. When twins were born into the group, they would separate them — ship one out and raise him under totally different conditions, a controlled environment."
"To what end?" asked Tizzie.
"To tease out all the variables — you know, nature versus nurture. All the things we were talking about before."
"But where's the comparison?" She was looking from one to the other. "Where's the test?"
"It hasn't happened yet."
"That's a lot of trouble to go to for one experiment," she said. "Not to mention the immorality of it. Separating brothers, not telling them about each other. Raising one of them with all the advantages — at least I assume you would have had the advantages, if your parents had lived — and raising the other…" She looked over at Skyler with a hint of sympathy."… in a so-called controlled environment."
Jude noticed that Skyler was stealing stares at Tizzie every so often. Yet when she looked directly at him, he glanced away as if it was hard to bear.
She continued: "People do separate twins, of course — I know that more than anyone. Usually it's an unwed mother who has to give them up for adoption and some stupid, unthinking agency that doesn't realize it's healthier for them to be raised together."
Now she was sizing up Skyler. She spoke about him in the third person, as if he wasn't there. "He looks younger than you," she said.
"Maybe not younger, just thinner," replied Jude. "He's been through a lot."
Suddenly, Skyler talked. "Let me ask…" he began hesitatingly. "How often does this happen?"
"What?"
"That identical twins are born."
"Not very often," said Jude.
"About four births out of every thousand," said Tizzie.
"So any group of scientists could not have a reasonable expectation that its members would produce twins."
"That's a point," Jude conceded.
"And if it happened twice in a small group, that would really defy the odds," Skyler continued.
"So what are you saying?" Jude asked.
Skyler shrugged. "Maybe they found a way to create twins," he said.
Skyler had not expected his remark to carry such weight, but it did. Jude sat there, at first a bit stunned, and then shot him an appraising look, as if to say: I might have overlooked something here. Tizzie appeared to be a little upset, as she had been throughout the discussion — in fact, as she had been since Jude's phone call, which had caused her to leap out of the bed, grab her dress, and regard Skyler as if he was some kind of freak.
Jude told Tizzie about the man who had been following him on the subway, and he filled them in on the murder in New Paltz and the mystery of the DNA match. But he did not tell them that the victim had a hole gouged in his thigh or that he himself had been followed — at least thought he had been followed — on the trip back. They were already nervous enough, he figured, and both of them looked as if they still had some recovering to do from the shocks they'd already received.
"It's just too… strange, too unbelievably strange. It's unthinkable," she said.
"What? Which part?" asked Jude.
"All of it. But to think that people might set up some vast scientific experiment… playing with human lives, I just can't believe it. And yet, damn it, you two do look alike.
"And, look," she said, "you're both frowning in exactly the same way, one hand to the head. Do you notice how you're positioning yourselves unconsciously? Sitting across from each other, almost like you're mirror images. This is amazing — if you guys really are twins. I've sat in on a lot of interviews with separated twins, but never at the moment when they were reunited."
"We don't know that that's what happened," said Jude. He noticed the split in her: the scientist in her was excited by the possibility of identical twins, but the woman who cared for him appeared distraught. He would say anything to console her.
Skyler seemed upset that Tizzie was upset.
The time had come, Jude thought, to take the situation in hand.
"Listen," he said, looking at Skyler. "The first thing we've got to do is make sure you're safe. You're not safe here, because chances are, they know you're here — whoever they are. Tomorrow we've got to find you a place of your own. I think we should disguise you, too. I don't know if it's better for you to look like me, for people to think you're me, or if it's worse. Given all that's happened lately, I suspect it's not a good idea.
"Tizzie, I think you should stay here tonight and not go out. That way we can all get started together tomorrow."
He wanted her to stay for her own safety, and he was also feeling moved that she was so upset by the fact that he had a twin. It could only mean that she felt deeply for him. Maybe he had been wrong about her drawing away.
But she insisted on leaving. She was anxious to spend the night at home, she said, since she had not been there for days.
"Where were you, anyway?" he asked as he walked with her down the stairs.
"Milwaukee," she said. "At my parents'."
"How are they?"
"Not at all well. Just old age, but it's happening so fast. It's like night falling."
He hailed a cab for her, and when she got in, he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. She smiled at him, but it was a brave, false smile.
A few moments later, as he was undressing for bed — this time with Skyler on the living room couch — Jude was again struck by the sheer implausibility of the events of the past two days. More and more he was coming to the belief that Skyler was his brother and perhaps his twin. No one would have believed that this was happening, and yet it had happened — and on top of that, everything was turning out to be such a remarkable coincidence. Here he had met Tizzie while researching an article on identical twins, and he turned out to have one of his own. He went out on a murder story, and the victim had something to do with Skyler. What were the odds of things like that happening?
He had had the strangest sensation some minutes back, when the three of them were in the living room together. So much was going on around them that was unfathomable, and so much was going on among them that was unspoken. He felt that the three of them were locked inside some phantasmal shifting labryinth, that they were a trio picked out by fate.