Читать книгу Mars Needs Books! - Gary Lovisi - Страница 8

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEARS DO PASS US BY

For a thirteen-year-old genius girl-child, Arabella Rashid knew that the game she was playing was devious and deadly. But it was also fun. It was her way to change the world that Simon had built all around her since she had been a mere innocent. She hated that world, and she hated Simon. His death had been a true pleasure for her. It meant he would never hurt her or anyone else ever again. Death gave a certain insurance, a reassuring certitude for the living that such evil monsters would never get at another victim.

But she still had the nightmares.

Those never went away. Even when she had become a woman and understood it all. The little girl child deep inside her, was still terrified. That little girl, was always scared. But she was brave and strong and overcame all that life and Simon had thrown at her.

The years passed, and Arabella Rashid grew into womanhood. She became a stunning young lady, but remained aloof and always guarded. She was guarded in her self and thoughts, and of course, literally, being guarded by the top security shock troops the DOC had to offer. And through it all, she never forgot Simon’s ill use of her. She never forgot all she had learned from him as well. She hated Simon and damned him to hell every day for what he had done to her and all the others. Yet even as she tried to fight against everything he represented she was fearful that she was becoming more and more like him every day.

Relentlessly the years passed by. The old Earth flew around the old Sun, and Arabella Rashid thought sometimes of the man called James Ryan. Images of his rugged good looks flashed in her mind. She was saddened at what she had caused to be done to him. First had been the brain wipe, then the implanted memories and instructions. She wondered just what kind of a new man he had become. James Ryan had been a DOC special agent, as cold-blooded and ruthlessly efficient as any the Department of Control and Simon had created in their early clone program. Much like that little girl, who had become Arabella Rashid.

There had been war at the DOC in the days before she had killed Simon. All of Simon’s various early creations having grown up, educated by Simon and the DOC, becoming nice little monsters. So ambitious. So ruthless. They had fought each other behind the scenes in a long clandestine war, teens and pre-teens in a dirty high-tech Lord of the Flies battle for survival—and Simon’s favor—which was after all, the very same thing back then.

Those had been hard days. Arabella Rashid remembered them now with a shudder. These more modern days were different, colder still, after all hope for her was long gone. However the DOC was still unaware of her actions. Though the Authority ruled all, she now realized it was...vulnerable.

Even then she still kept James Ryan in her thoughts. She allowed herself a small smile of joy as her mind imagined his strong face and handsome form. Ryan was older than her by ten years. It was nothing like the age difference with Simon. Her thoughts of Simon caused her great anger but her thoughts of James caused her to smile—almost like a little girl again. He was magic for her soul. She realized now that she had a crush on the man. She’d been only thirteen when she’d first met him but he had not left her thoughts and her dreams since then. She often wondered about him. How was he getting on?

The last contact she’d had with Ryan was when she’d seen to it that an old paperback book had been delivered to him. She wondered what he thought of it. She wondered what his new programming would make of him now. His old personality was gone. Now he was a new person with new memories and programming. A totally different person from the man she had sent for to do some sensitive body disposal work years ago. Nevertheless, he was still a DOC agent even if his memories had been all erased and replaced with new ones. As a DOC agent he must have been brain wiped on many occasions. Now his mind was full of made-up memories and new personality traits. Now he collected and read old hard-boiled crime paperbacks. Obsessively. It was quite ridiculous on the face of it, and Arabella Rashid laughed almost cruelly, but it was an important part of her plan. Meanwhile, poor Ryan’s memories of her and DOC, and the death and disappearance of Simon, were all gone now. Erased forever.

Arabella Rashid smiled. Ryan was an agent of the DOC, like she had been. Still was, in fact. He was not as high up in the hierarchy as she was certainly, but she realized, everyone these days was an agent of DOC in some way. She wondered where Ryan was now. What was he doing?

She wondered where he had come from, what he had done in his long career for the DOC? It must have been many terrible things. Now Ryan’s new implanted programs were all in, and according to her plan they would kick in on the long trip out to Mars. But Ryan wouldn’t be going to Mars for a year yet. In the meantime, she’d had him placed in the general DOC special agent assignment pool. He would be given jobs like any other DOC agent. And he’d perform them like a DOC agent was supposed to perform them. With ruthless efficiency. Doing just as he was told.

Arabella Rashid’s mind kept coming back to that old science fiction paperback. It was with Ryan now, or it would be with him soon. She had given express orders he was to have it on his next assignment and that it was to follow him and be his personal property until he was placed on the ship to Mars. Then it would be taken away from him and on the long trip out to the Red Planet, his new programming would kick in—and he’d become a reader and collector of mystery and crime paperbacks.

She smiled, wondering what Ryan would make of it all, had he but known. But of course, he wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know anything. No matter that his brain had been wiped and re-implanted, Ryan was still an intelligent man. He’d surmise something was up once he saw that book. He wouldn’t remember it, of course, nor anything else concerning Arabella Rashid or Simon, but he’d be very curious. The old science fiction paperback would spark his consciousness, he would know that it meant...something.

But what?

She wanted to give him that hint, just to keep him thinking.

The new Director of the Department of Control read the secret files about the progress of the cloned children of the Janus Project. It told about each clone and who it was based upon—Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Jeffery Dalmer, John Wayne Gacy—the list was endless and ever more horrendous. She read the “Biographies” and “Accomplishments” sections of the host subjects and was truly appalled by one after the other, as atrocity piled upon atrocity.

She signed sadly, “These people aren’t even human beings. They really are something else, something non-human. Simply monsters, each and every one of them, and they shall never see the light of day.”

When she came to the next to last subject, a large “X” had been overprinted. Here it was noted that the host DNA was supposed to have come from Simon himself. Arabella Rashid smiled, and whispered, “Not this time, Simon. You may have saved enough of your DNA for this project in advance of your timely demise, but your clone will never live long enough to use it. You know what that big red “X” means?”

Simon could not answer her, so she told him.

“It means, the fetus was born dead. You see, Simon, I had one of your more amenable DOC scientists insert a deadly virus into the mixture. The fetus developed, but as it developed it was also dying and it was finally born dead. As you should have been.”

Arabella Rashid turned up the screen, clicked on the next file. The name didn’t matter, the contributor of the DNA was listed as Napoleon Bonaparte. She smiled at that, Napoleon tempered with Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King and Albert Schweitzer added to the mix would be beneficial, among with many others.

She said, “Many years from now this one will drop his given name and take up the name Moses Sage. Then he will begin his real work. His work for the freedom and dignity of the human race—which will need him more than he can ever know.”

Arabella Rashid then smiled as her thoughts turned to the man she had sent out to Mars. “Right, Ryan? You know it too. Someday, Ryan, we shall meet again and maybe the world will be a better place for us.”